Rocky Mountain ReviewVolume 62, Number 2 Articles Martin Montanus as Entertainer and Social Critic Albrecht Classen Contrary to common assumptions, sixteenth-century German literature contains numerous collections of Schwänke: that is, hilarious, entertaining, didactic, but ultimately epistemological short stories. The laughter that the authors evoke intends to teach, but also to illuminate and to help the audience to grasp fundamental aspects of their lives. This finds strong confirmation in the humorous tales by Martin Montanus who obviously cared little about theological issues that seemingly dominated that century; instead he offered delightful, skillfully developed Schwänke in which he exposed people's weakness, foolishness, failures, and foibles. Because of the strategic employment of laughter, however, the recipient is invited to join the learning process and to recognize basic elements of human life. Upanishadic Perceptions in T.S. Eliot's Poetry and Drama P.S. Sri The Upanishadic leitmotif of the twin selves of a human being -- one active and worldly and the other contemplative and spiritual -- haunts the works of T.S. Eliot. By juxtaposing his insights with those of the Upanishads, we may gauge their deep influence on Eliot's Weltanschauung and grasp his vision of the human condition. Dialectics of Representation in Xosé Neira Vilas' Ana Carballal Xosé Neira Vilas' Memorias dun neno labrego (1961) serves as the ideal example of the arguments sustained by Fredric Jameson in his work The Political Unconscious. Written in 1981, one of the objectives of Jameson's work was to dismantle the inscrutable imaginaries that all types of ideologies fall into, what Jameson himself considers "utopian elements." Neira Vilas' novel is depleted of such representations. The book, set in Galicia, the northwest region of Spain, in the 1950s, is an autobiography of Balbino, a five-year-old child who relates the oppression and the hopelessness of living with his family and always being at the mercy of a ruthless and tyrannical boss. Through Jameson's work, Galicia may be seen in this novel as an institutionalized text in which only the upper classes have a decision in its organization. Nevertheless, it is within this text that Balbino starts a revolution that will challenge that fixed representation, trying to create a balance among all the social groups and its interests. Anne Fontaine and Contemporary Women's Cinema in France Rachel Ritterbusch Contemporary French filmmaker Anne Fontaine rejects the label "woman's film" that critics frequently apply to her work. However, if the concept of "women's cinema" is defined according to specific textual and enunciative processes rather than the gender of the filmmaker, it becomes apparent that Fontaine's dramas are indeed "women's films." In particular, her Nettoyage à sec (1997) exhibits a uniquely feminine aesthetic that breaks with dominant ideology both in terms of content -- through the presentation of a self-confident, sexually uninhibited heroine -- and in terms of form -- through the foregrounding of the act of spectatorship. Forum An Interdisciplinary Examination of U.S. Racism Carol Anelli and Richard Law U.S. racism is deeply rooted in the sciences, as the late Stephen Jay Gould detailed in his Pulitzer Prize winning book, The Mismeasure of Man (1996). To bridge the "Two Cultures" gap between the sciences and the humanities, we paired Gould's book with Ralph Ellison's classic work, Invisible Man, and report here our approaches and our students' response to them. Reviews Chaucer and Langland: The Antagonistic Tradition, by John M. Bowers Books Under Suspicion: Censorship and Tolerance of Revelatory Writing in Late Medieval England, by Kathryn Kerby-Fulton Gutenberg and the Impact of Printing, by Stephan Füssel Print and Power in France and England: 1500-1800, ed. David Adams and Adrian Armstrong Travel Narratives from the Age of Discovery: An Anthology, ed. Peter C. Mancall Profiling Shakespeare, by Marjorie Garber Shakesfear and How to Cure It: A Handbook for Teaching Shakespeare, by Ralph Alan Cohen Milton Studies 47 (2007), ed. Albert C. Labriola Robert Southey: Entire Man of Letters, by W.A. Speck New Frontiers in Early American Studies Language and Revolution in Burke, Wollstonecraft, Paine, and Godwin, by Jane Hodson James Fenimore Cooper: The Early Years, by Wayne Franklin Reading Melville's Pierre; or, The Ambiguities, by Brian Higgins and Herschel Parker Mark Twain and the Spiritual Crisis of His Age, by Harold K. Bush, Jr. Working Fictions: A Genealogy of the Victorian Novel, by Carolyn Lesjak Cruising with Robert Louis Stevenson: Travel, Narrative, and the Colonial Body, by Oliver S. Buckton Modernist Aesthetics and Consumer Culture in the Writings of Oscar Wilde, by Paul Fortunato Twilight: A Drama in Five Acts, by Elsa Bernstein Rudyard Kipling: The Books I Leave Behind, by David Alan Richards The Nothing Machine: The Fiction of Octave Mirbeau, by Robert Ziegler Cupboards of Curiosity: Women, Recollection and Film History, by Amelie Hastie Lovers & Beloveds: Sexual Otherness in Southern Fiction, 1936-1961, by Gary Richards Reviewer: Erin Clair Don DeLillo: The Possibility of Fiction, by Peter Boxall Writing the Southwest, ed. David King Dunaway and Sara Spurgeon Hot Coffee and Cold Truth: Living and Writing in the West, ed. W.C. Jameson Chicana Creativity and Criticism: New Frontiers in American Literature, ed. Maria Herrera-Sobek and Helena Maria Viramontes Frauenkrimi/polar féminin. Generic Expectations and the Reception of Recent French and German Crime Novels by Women, by Nicola Barfoot Reviewer: Cornelius Partsch Leslie Marmon Silko: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Louise K. Barnett and James L. Thorson The Politics of Life Itself: Biomedicine, Power, and Subjectivity in the Twenty-First Century, by Nikolas Rose Everything You Need to Know About Creative Writing (but knowing isn't everything...), by Heather Leach and Robert Graham Mexican Americans and the Politics of Diversity, by Lisa Magaña Teaching French Grammar in Context, by Stacey L. Katz and Carl S. Blyth
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