Rocky Mountain E-Review 
of Language and Literature

Volume 59, Number 1
Spring 2005

Articles

Bob's Dreaming: Playing with Reader Expectations
in Peter Carey's Oscar and Lucinda

Sue Ryan-Fazilleau 
University of La Rochelle

Oscar and Lucinda is the third novel in the postcolonial phase of Peter Carey's search for an Australian identity. For the first time, he takes a good look at the British imperial influence. The action of the novel takes place during the Victorian period, and Carey chooses to dress his-story up in the corresponding genre -- the Victorian novel, which he borrows from the English canon for the occasion. He then proceeds to break its rules. He plays with reader expectations and provokes anger. Carey is a literary gambler; in Oscar and Lucinda he takes the risk of alienating readers by "cheating" them of their "due." The payoff is the possibility of succeeding in channeling this anger to his own ends. A look at Carey's techniques reveals how he shakes up his Australian readers' complacency about official versions of Australian history with their traditional heroes and their exclusion of the Aboriginal perspective. Carey combines the Victorian leitmotif of gambling and the contemporary Australian obsession with this activity in order to highlight and give meaning to the narrative gambles he takes.

MAR: Mars, Mare, and Mater
in Raymond Radiguet's Le Diable au corps

Kathryn E. Wildgen 
University of New Orleans

A close textual reading of Radiguet's Le Diable au corps reveals a vast number of occurrences of the suite of letters MAR, far too vast to be coincidental or insignificant. Clearly and appropriately, the most significant MAR is the one which forms part of Marthe's name; she bears within herself the themes of war and motherhood, death and life, and her womb functions as a great fecund sea. Mars, Marthe, and the Marne form a triad around which the entire novel is constructed, and the repetition of MAR is a constant reminder of the fact that the Narrator as narrator, and hence the novel itself, exists because of the interplay among these three entities. Diable is built on the foundation of these three letters.

Gender Images in Dieter Wellershoff's Der Liebeswunsch

Katja Fullard 
University of St. Thomas

This study focuses on the gender images and gender relations presented in Wellershoff's latest novel, Der Liebeswunsch. To the German author, this novel finally brought commercial success and critical praise, particularly for his insight into the human psyche and his realistic, thoughtful depiction of a woman in love. An analysis of the protagonists, however, reveals only limited, stereotypical female characters and male characters who fight their insecurity by exploiting the female stereotypes. Again in this novel, as in previous ones, the author remains trapped in a traditional world view.

Reviews

At the Margins of the Renaissance: Lazarillo de Tormes and the Picaresque Art of Survival, by Giancarlo Maiorino 
Reviewer: Jessika L. Thomas

Milton Studies 43 (2003), ed. Albert C. Labriola 
Reviewer: Kirk G. Rasmussen

Joyous Greetings: The First International Women's Movement, 1830-1860, by Bonnie S. Anderson 
Reviewer: Victor P. Unda

A Historical Guide to F. Scott Fitzgerald, ed. Kirk Curnutt 
Reviewer: Catherine Kunce

One-Smoke Stories, by Mary Austin 
Reviewer: Jennie A. Camp

The Tragedy and Comedy of Resistance: Reading Modernity Through Black Women's Fiction, by Carol Anne Taylor 
Reviewer: Doreen Alvarez Saar

L'Écriture Mère et Fille chez Jeanne Hyvrard, Chantal Chawaf, et Annie Ernaux, by Monique Saigal 
Reviewer: Helynne Hollstein Hansen

To the Boathouse: A Memoir, by Mary Ann Caws 
Reviewer: Joanne Craig

A Philosophy of Second Language Acquisition, by Marysia Johnson 
Reviewer: Eva Nunez-Mendez

Cultural Studies in the Curriculum: Teaching Latin America, ed. Danny J. Anderson and Jill S. Kuhnheim 
Reviewer: J.P. Spicer-Escalante