55-2-2001

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.

Lengua y literatura: Hacia una pedagogía intercultural
en la enseñanza de español para hispanohablantes

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