Rocky Mountain E-Review of Language and Literature
Volume 61, Number 1 SPRING 2007
Articles
Quantitative Verse, Bookselling, and Thomas Campion's Observations in the Art of English Poesie
Barclay Green Northern Kentucky University
Thomas Campion's Observations in the Art of English Poesie (1602) critiques the use of rhyme and meter in English poetry and develops the prosodic foundation for vernacular quantitative verse. However, the treatise also responds to what Campion saw as the unfortunate conditions under which learned, serious poets had to labor and reacts to the rise of print and the business of bookselling. Through close attention to the early chapters of Observations, we appreciate more fully the serious motivations behind the quantitative movement, expand our knowledge of Campion's contributions to it, and raise questions about how Elizabethan critics responded to changes in their culture's literary systems.
Larry Watson's Montana 1948 and Euroamerican Representation of Native/Euroamerican History
Peter L. Bayers Fairfield University
Like other recent films and texts, Larry Watson's Montana 1948 is preoccupied with the legacy of the U.S. conquest of Native America and the ongoing colonial relationship between the U.S. and Natives. But Montana 1948 also self-consciously calls attention to the problems endemic to Euroamerican efforts to "revision" Euroamerican/Native history. Watson suggests that at best most Euroamericans engage in shallow, self-congratulatory pieties to relieve themselves of guilt in regard to Native America, and that when it comes to telling stories about Euroamerican interaction with Indians, these stories are mired in tired Indian representations that mystify material history and the ongoing colonial status of Natives in the United States. Through his flawed narrator, Watson underscores that Euroamericans must be more rigorously self-critical as they engage questions of representation and their own deeply held colonial desires when telling history.
Faith, Hope and Service in Denise Chávez's Face of an Angel
Linda Naranjo-Huebl Calvin College
Denise Chávez's Face of an Angel navigates a difficult path celebrating service in a tradition -- Chicano Catholic culture -- that often valorizes the complete effacement or the martyrdom of women. The novel's protagonist wants to reject the traditional "angelic" role of a woman in a male-dominated culture and religious tradition while embracing the virtue of service that is also part of those cultures. By examining the diverse aspects of the order of angels that structure the book, one can track Soveida's personal growth, healing, and understanding of service as love of self and others.
The Desert Noir Detective Novels of Jon Talton
David William Foster Arizona State University
Jon Talton is one of the most interesting writers about Phoenix. By contrast to others who use Phoenix as a convenient setting for detective fiction, Talton uses this genre to interpret the past-as-present. In Dry Heat (2004), moreover, his narrative focuses on the contrasting fate of two famous Phoenix residential neighborhoods.
Forum
Multilingual Awareness through Travel
Albrecht Classen University of Arizona
The motivation to study one or more foreign languages can be vastly improved through a travel experience. But I propose a structured travel course through various European countries focusing on a specific topic, such as the history of the Middle Ages. As part of this travel experience, students also acquire basic knowledge of various languages and gain a new understanding of the wealth of linguistic differences in the global community. This article analyzes a questionnaire handed out to a group of students at the end of a three-week summer travel course and argues that a multi-language exposure can have tremendous, long-term effects on students because they gain a new degree of inspiration and motivation to acquire more than one, if not many, foreign languages.
Reviews
Dreaming the Great Brahmin: Tibetan Traditions of the Buddhist Poet-Saint Saraha, by Kurtis R. Schaeffer Reviewer: Daniel Gustav Anderson
Bibliophiles and Bibliothieves: The Search for the Hildebrandslied and the Willehalm Codex, by Opritsa D. Popa Reviewer: Albrecht Classen
Reading Medieval Culture: Essays in Honor of Robert W. Hanning, ed. Robert M. Stein and Sandra Pierson Prior Reviewer: Robyn Malo
The Romance of the Rose Illuminated: Manuscripts at the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth, by Alcuin Blamires and Gail C. Holian Reviewer: Albrecht Classen
Les Femmes et la tradition littéraire, by Vicki Mistacco Reviewer: Jocelyne Le Ber
Death by Drama and Other Medieval Urban Legends, by Jody Enders
Reviewer: Joanne Craig
Writing from the Edge of the World: The Memoirs of Darién 1514-1527, by Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, ed. and trans. G.F. Dille Reviewer: McKenna Rose
La Florida del Inca and the Struggle for Social Equality in Colonial Spanish America, by Jonathan D. Steigman Reviewer: José I. Suárez
More Recent Publications in Oxfordian Studies The Secret Love Story in Shakespeare's Sonnets, by Helen Heightsman Gordon Oxford's Letters: The Letters of Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, CD, read by Derek Jacobi De Vere as Shakespeare: An Oxfordian Reading of the Canon, by William Farina Reviewer: Michael Delahoyde
Searching for Shakespeare, by Tarnya Cooper Reviewer: Joanne Craig
Approaches to Teaching Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights, ed. Sue Lonoff and Terri A. Hasseler Reviewer: Véronique Machelidon
Agent of Empire: William Walker and the Imperial Self in American Literature, by Brady Harrison Reviewer: Amy T. Hamilton
The American Counterfeit: Authenticity and Identity in American Literature and Culture, by Mary McAleer Balkun Reviewer: Michael Pringle
Stephen Crane Remembered, ed. Paul Sorrentino Reviewer: James W. Long
Proust in Love, by William C. Carter Reviewer: Catherine Marachi
Chesnutt and Realism: A Study of the Novels, by Ryan Simmons Reviewer: Susana M. Morris
The Inordinate Eye: New World Baroque and Latin American Fiction, by Lois Parkinson Zamora Reviewer: Matthew S. Landers
The Spaces of Violence, by James R. Giles Reviewer: Kyle Wiggins
Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945, by Tony Judt Reviewer: Daniel C. Villanueva
Character and Satire in Postwar Fiction, by Ian Gregson Reviewer: Mimi R. Gladstein
Masculinity in Fiction and Film: Representing Men in Popular Genres 1945-2000, by Brian Baker Reviewer: Cindy A. McLeod
Cosmos, by Witold Gombrowicz, trans. Danuta Borchardt Reviewer: David Thomas Holmberg
Soi-Disant: Life-Writing in French, ed. Juliana De Nooy et al. Reviewer: Helynne H. Hansen
La séduction policière: signes de croissance d'un genre réputé mineur: Pierre Magnan, Daniel Pennac et quelques autres, by Pierre Verdaguer Reviewer: Sophie Boyer
Ukraine's Orange Revolution, by Andrew Wilson Reviewer: Daniel C. Villanueva
Beyond Grief and Nothing: A Reading of Don DeLillo, by Joseph Dewey Reviewer: Randy Laist
Fictions of Globalization: Consumption, the Market and the Contemporary American Novel, by James Annesley Reviewer: Aliza Atik
Odd Tribes: Toward a Cultural Analysis of White People, by John Hartigan, Jr. Reviewer: Daniel Gustav Anderson
A Research Guide for Undergraduate Students: English and American Literature, 6th ed. by Nancy L. Baker and Nancy Huling Reviewer: Michael C. Boecherer
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