Rocky Mountain E-Review 
of Language and Literature

Volume 55, Number 2
Fall 2001


Articles

Drawing Borges: A Two-Part Invention on the Labyrinths 
of Jorge Luis Borges and M.C. Escher

Allene M. Parker 
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University

Many parallels may be observed between the literary art of Jorge Luis Borges and the visual art of M.C. Escher. The fantastic worlds found in Escher's art provide visual analogies to the fantastic worlds chronicled by Borges in many ways. Four stories (ficciones) by Borges are discussed here -- "The Circular Ruins," "The Secret Miracle," "The Library of Babel," and "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" -- in contrapuntal harmony with selected Escher prints.


Colonizing the Universe: Science Fictions Then, Now, 
and in the (Imagined) Future

Greg Grewell 
Washington State University

As a genre, science fiction productions -- whether cinematic or literary -- are based on earthly narratives of colonization. The imaginative impulse informing its productions takes from and revises earth history, putting it out there in a (de)familiarized but cognitively plausible and contextually recognizable "future." There are three basic models of science fiction colonial narratives -- the explorative, domesticative, and combative -- each of which represents a progressive stage in a continuum motivated by more efficient means of colonization. Most contemporary science fiction productions are of the combative model, which reveals a postmodern penchant for deflating space and collapsing time, for making the alien familiar and the familiar alien, the universe known and mapable. The article examines a number of earthly colonial narratives, early and recent science fiction films, and schemes for colonizing the universe found on the Internet.


I Can See Queerly Now -- The Reign is Gone: 
The Path to Liberation and the Development of Homoerotic Themes in 
Pureza Canelo, Andrea Luca, and Ana Rossetti

Steven F. Butterman 
University of Miami

Using recent theoretical constructs that treat the lesbian postmodern, revised notions of desire, and the renovation of gender categories, the article traces the development of consciousness of lesbian sensuality and sexuality in contemporary Spanish poetry. The analysis of poems written by Canelo, Luca, and Rossetti attempts to placate the development of queer consciousness within the spectrum of "feminization" initially proposed by Elaine Showalter and later contextualized by Sharon Keefe Ugalde. In order to provide insights as to what stage of maturity this process has reached -- "embracement," "subversion," or "revision" -- the article examines collections written at different stages of recent history. The intent is to parallel the "herstory: of the three authors included: that is, the maturation of their own psychosexual development as reflected in their poetry.

María Asunción Gómez 

Florida International University

In the last three decades, the teaching of Spanish for Hispanic bilingual students has focused on the development of a multicultural and antiracist pedagogy that anticipates the "border pedagogy" that became popular in the humanities and social sciences in the '90s. The construction of a polyphonic cultural project, whose goal is the articulation of a communicative competence that involves a diversity of cultures, implies revisiting the monodisciplinary, literary, nature of the programs of study in many language departments. Some have voiced their concern about the use of literary canonical texts in teaching Spanish to heritage students. This article discusses some of the curricular, linguistic and pedagogic reasons that justify a systematic -- rather than sporadic -- use of literary texts, both canonical and non-canonical. After presenting the enormous pedagogical potential of such texts as tools for bilingual language acquisition, the article addresses some of the aspects that must be taken into account when integrating them in the curriculum. [The article is in Spanish.]


Forum

The Never-Ending Story of the (German) Middle Ages: 
Philology, Hermeneutics, Medievalism, and Mysticism

Albrecht Classen 
University of Arizona

The relevance of Medieval Studies has never been more acknowledged and simultaneously criticized as in the current time. Whereas Medievalists are struggling to maintain their position within academia, some Modernists go so far as to septicly separate their field from anything written prior to 1800 or so. Both the very traditional philological approach to medieval literature and its radical rejection prove to be foolish, as literature has always represented the inter-relatedness of cultural periods. Past voices have always had an impact on the future, and modern concepts increasingly prove to be highly productive in analyzing medieval texts. The novels of five twentieth-century German writers (Musil, Mann, Hesse, Grass, and Muschg) demonstrate that medieval and Baroque literature had a considerable impact on their thinking, and in this sense the past proves to be the text which was inscribed on the readers of the future. In fact, modern literature, whether German, English, French, or Russian, cannot be fully grasped if we ignore the powerful influence of past authors on the writers from today.


Reviews

Barbarians in the Gates: Recent Beat Scholarship 
"A Clown in a Grave": Complexities and Tensions in the Works of Gregory Corso, by Michael Skau 
The View from On the Road: The Rhetorical Vision of Jack Kerouac, by Omar Swartz 
Jack Kerouac's Duluoz Legend: The Mythic Form of an Autobiographical Fiction, by James T. Jones 
Jack Kerouac, The Word and the Way: Prose Artist as Spiritual Quester, Ben Giamo 
The Bop Apocalypse: The Religious Visions of Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Burroughs, by John Lardas
 
Reviewer: Kurt Hemmer

Unearthing the Past: Archaeology and Aesthetics in the Making of a Renaissance Culture, by Leonard Barkan 
Reviewer: Eugene R. Cunnar

Charismatic Authority in Early Modern English Tragedy, by Raphael Falco 
Reviewer: Kirk G. Rasmussen

Teaching Shakespeare through Performance, ed. Milla Cozard Riggio 
Reviewer: Vivian Foss

Ideologies of History in the Spanish Golden Age, by Anthony J. Cascardi 
Reviewer: A. Robert Lauer

Adventures in Paradox: Don Quixote and the Western Tradition, by Charles Presberg 
Reviewer: Eloy R. González

Social Authorship and the Advent of Print, by Margaret J.M. Ezell 
Reviewer: Marjorie Swann

Romanticism and Colonial Disease, by Alan Bewell 
Reviewer: Holly Blackford

Jane Eyre, CD-ROM 

Reviewer: Carolyn Daughters

A Historical Guide to Walt Whitman, ed. David S. Reynolds 
Reviewer: Catherine Kunce

Amy Levy: Her Life and Letters, by Linda Hunt Beckman 
Reviewer: Marianne Golding

The African American West: A Century of Short Stories, ed. Bruce A. Glasrud and Laurie Champion 
Reviewer: Joe Staples

Pulp Surrealism: Insolent Popular Culture in Early Twentieth-Century Paris, by Robin Walz 
Reviewer: Linda White

The Years of Bloom: James Joyce in Trieste 1904-1920, by John McCourt 
Reviewer: Lynn Deming

A Dubious Past: Ernst Jünger and the Politics of Literature after Nazism, by Elliot Y. Neaman 
Reviewer: Daniel P. Reynolds

Women Writers in German-Speaking Countries: A Bio-Bibliographical Critical Sourcebook, ed. Elke P. Frederiksen and Elizabeth G. Ametsbichler 
Reviewer: Carol Anne Costabile-Heming

New Strangers in Paradise: The Immigrant Experience and Contemporary American Fiction, by Gilbert H. Muller 
Reviewer: Tomas N. Santos

Autobiographical Inscriptions: Form, Personhood, and the American Woman Writer of Color, by Barbara Rodríguez 
Reviewer: Becky Jo Gesteland McShane

Poeticized Language: The Foundations of Contemporary French Poetry, by Jean-Jacques Thomas and Steven Winspur 
Reviewer: Catherine Perry

Writing Outside the Nation, by Azade Seyhan 
Reviewer: Heike Henderson

Rhetorical Bodies, ed. Jack Selzer and Sharon Crowley 
Reviewer: Brad E. Lucas

Preparing a Nation's Teachers: Models for English and Foreign Language Programs, ed. Phyllis Franklin et al. 
Reviewer: Sonja G. Hokanson

Does Literary Studies Have a Future? by Eugene Goodheart 
Reviewer: Robert M. Hogge

StyleEase: A paper and reference formatting software using the Modern Language Association Handbook Style.
Version 1.0
 
Reviewer: Asao B. Inoue