Rocky Mountain E-Review
of Language and Literature
Volume 55, Number 2
Fall 2001
CONTENTS
Articles | Forum | Reviews
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
Amy Levy: Her Life and Letters,
by Linda Hunt Beckman
Reviewer: Marianne Golding
The African
American West: A Century of Short Stories, ed. Bruce A.
Glasrud and Laurie Champion
Reviewer: Joe Staples
Pulp Surrealism: Insolent Popular
Culture in Early Twentieth-Century Paris, by Robin Walz
Reviewer: Linda White
The Years of Bloom: James Joyce
in Trieste 1904-1920, by John McCourt
Reviewer: Lynn Deming
A Dubious Past: Ernst Jünger
and the Politics of Literature after Nazism, by Elliot Y. Neaman
Reviewer: Daniel P. Reynolds
Women Writers in German-Speaking
Countries: A Bio-Bibliographical Critical Sourcebook,
ed. Elke P. Frederiksen and Elizabeth G. Ametsbichler
Reviewer: Carol Anne Costabile-Heming
New Strangers in Paradise: The
Immigrant Experience and Contemporary American Fiction, by
Gilbert H. Muller
Reviewer: Tomas N. Santos
Autobiographical Inscriptions:
Form, Personhood, and the American Woman Writer of Color,
by Barbara Rodríguez
Reviewer: Becky Jo Gesteland McShane
Poeticized Language: The Foundations
of Contemporary French Poetry, by Jean-Jacques Thomas and
Steven Winspur
Reviewer: Catherine Perry
Writing Outside the Nation,
by Azade Seyhan
Reviewer: Heike Henderson
Rhetorical Bodies,
ed. Jack Selzer and Sharon Crowley
Reviewer: Brad E. Lucas
Preparing a Nation's Teachers:
Models for English and Foreign Language Programs, ed. Phyllis
Franklin et al.
Reviewer: Sonja G. Hokanson
Does Literary Studies Have a
Future? by Eugene Goodheart
Reviewer: Robert M. Hogge
StyleEase: A paper and reference
formatting software using the Modern Language Association Handbook
Style.
Version 1.0
Reviewer: Asao B. Inoue
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