Rocky Mountain Review

74-2 Fall 2020

CONTENTS 

Guidelines for Submission for Articles and Book Reviews

Articles

Articles are in alphabetical order according to the name of the author. 

Sarah Manley, University of Utah

Persian Miniatures as Textual Unconscious: Illustrations of Layli va Majnun in the 1431 Hermitage Khamsa

Manley's Article 

Nizami’s love story Layli va Majnun is frequently depicted in medieval Islamic manuscripts. The poem operates on two simultaneous levels: the plane of earthly desire and the realm of spiritual pursuit of the Beloved. One particular illustrative sequence of the story, found in the 1431 VR-1000 Khamsa manuscript kept by the State Hermitage Museum, is more than a merely mimetic reflection of the text. Taking up American medievalist Stephen G. Nichols’ conceptualization of the textual unconscious, this article examines the text/image relationship in VR-1000 to reveal how the images exceed, undermine, and ultimately allegorically reinforce the textual narrative. 

 

Hildy Miller, Portland State University

Refiguring The Birds as Modern Female Gothic in the Kennedy Era

Miller's Article

This essay examines the Alfred Hitchcock cult film The Birds, situated in the transitional era of the Kennedy presidency, from the perspective of the enduring historic female Gothic in literature and film. The feminist reading expands John Hellman’s historical critique by focusing specifically on the representation of women characters—situated in the Kennedy era, but also reflecting the underlying energy and restlessness of women throughout the “long 1950s,” (1946-1964) which preceded the transition into second wave feminism. Melanie, Annie, Lydia, Cathy, and even some of the minor female characters reflect gender role tensions of the era. Far from victims of patriarchy brutally reasserting itself, most of the women, though partially thwarted, do exercise agency in their struggle to break free.

 

Judit Palencia Gutiérrez, University of California, Riverside

Rafael Chirbes’s En la orilla: Allegories of Cryptic Transgenerational Trauma

Palencia Gutiérrez's Article

Rafael Chirbes’s 2013 novel En la orillais a paradigm of transgenerational trauma, focusing on the protagonist’s relationship with his father following the Spanish Civil War. Two figures, the marshland and the calendar, are read allegorically to understand the complexities of trauma, a phenomenon that calls for articulation at the same time as it resists representation.

 

Jaime W. Roots, Washington and Lee University

Making Mythology: The Role of Ancient Faith in Crafting a Unifying Narrative

in Teutonic Mythology and Children’s and Household Tales

Roots' Article 

Works by Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm, with particular focus on Teutonic Mythology andChildren’s and Household Tales, were written to establish tangible objects, written histories, and thereby a Germanic identity, which existed outside of any particular geographical location. Recreating a Germanic paganism faith formed an essential cornerstone of both ancient and modern German society. In blending pagan and Christian elements and focusing on the cultural implications of ancient myths, the Grimms vivify ancient myth in order to revive a contemporary pagan religious significance to the tales, and therefore elements of ancient pagan faith itself into the daily lives of Germanic peoples.

 

 

Sterling Keynote 2020

Since the RMMLA Annual Convention was not held in 2020 due to the Corona virus pandemic, the full text of David Caldwell’s timely Sterling Keynote Address is included in this issue. 

David Caldwell, University of Northern Colorado

You Are Invited to a Masked Ball. P.S.: Do Not Wear a Mask

Caldwell's Sterling Keynote

Reviews

Reviews are in alphabetical order according to the name of the author reviewed. Access all reviews by clicking the link above.

Making Conversation in Modernist Fiction, by Elizabeth Alsop.

Reviewer: Joy Landeira

The Hong Kong Modernism of Leung Ping-kwan, by C. T. Au.

Reviewer: Howard Y. F. Choy

Medieval Things: Agency, Materiality, and Narratives of Objects in Medieval German Literature and Beyond, by Bettina Bildhauer.

Reviewer: Albrecht Classen

The Art of Teaching Russian: Research, Pedagogy, and Practice, by Evgeny Dengub, Irina Dubinina and Jason Merrill, editors.

Reviewer:  Maria Mikolchak

Hemingway in Comics, by Robert K. Elder.

Reviewer: Wayne Catan

OYO: The Beautiful River, by Mark B. Hamilton.

Reviewer: Jeffery Moser

Diplomacy Arabic: An Essential Vocabulary, by Elisabeth Kendall and Yehia A. Mohamed.

Reviewer: Mouloud Siber

The Norton Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales, by David Lawton, editor.

Reviewer: Peter Fields

Recepción y canon de la literatura española en el cine, by Rafael Malpartida Tirado.  

Reviewer: Juan García-Cardona

Chinese Poetic Modernisms, by Paul Manfredi and Christopher Lupke, editors. 

Reviewer: C. T. Au

La alegría del capitán Ribot, by Armando Palacio Valdés.

Reviewer: Gustavo Pérez Firmat                                 

The Ethics of Persuasion: Derrida's Rhetorical Legacies, by Brooke Rollins.

Reviewer: Lee Chancey Olsen

The Canterbury Tales Handbook, by Elizabeth Scala.

Reviewer: Peter Fields

Wharton, Hemingway, and the Advent of Modernism, by Lisa Tyler, editor.

Reviewer:  Wayne Catan

Eternalized Fragments: Reclaiming Aesthetics in Contemporary World Fiction, by W. Michelle Wang. 

Reviewer:  Lucien Darjeun Meadows

The Marginal Revolutionaries: How Austrian Economists Fought the War of Ideas, by Janek Wasserman.

Reviewer:  Daniel C. Villanueva

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