Rocky Mountain E-Review
of Language and Literature
Volume 57, Number 1
Spring 2003
CONTENTS
Articles | Reviews
Articles
Abelard and Heloise's Love Story from the Perspective
of their Son Astrolabe:
Luise Rinser's Novel Abelard's Love
Albrecht Classen
University of Arizona
In Luise Rinser's novel Abelard's Love (1991) we are confronted with a remarkable
but very little known literary treatment of the love affair between the famous
twelfth-century philosopher Abelard and his wife Heloise, seen from the perspective
of their son, Astrolabe. Whereas recent research has paid much attention to this
extraordinary couple because of their love poetry, their noteworthy correspondence,
and their highly intellectual contributions, practically nothing is known about their
son. In Rinser's novel, Astrolabe intensively struggles to get to know his distant
parents and to understand their love for each other in light of their extremely
difficult conditions as university teacher and, respectively, abbess. Astrolabe's
almost desperate attempts to get close to his parents dramatically reveal the
author's own approach to love in a world surrounded by hostility. Contrary to
general concepts about Abelard's alleged mistreatment of his mother, the young
man realizes the tragic but fundamental love between his parents. As the analysis
of Rinser's novel reveals, even when words fail to address love appropriately, its
lifelong force continues to exert its influence.
Riddled Romance: Kingship and Kinship in Pericles
Jeanie Grant Moore
University of Wisconsin Oshkosh
Despite the construction of a fantasy romance world in Pericles, where goodness
is rewarded and regeneration is realized, contradictions within the text seem to resist
romance. Pericles in no way lacks romance conventions, but a full awareness of them
leads paradoxically to the conclusion that the play uses those generic conventions to
challenge the basic assumptions of romance. Naturalized representations of power and
patriarchy undergo a critique, as Shakespeare addresses familiar discourses and reverses
their dynamics to emphasize that they are not as natural as we assume them to be --
inside the romance world and perhaps outside it as well.
Humor and Eroticism in Baltasar del Alcázar's
Joyous Supper (Cena jocosa)
Eloy R. González
Washington State University
The last quarter of the last century witnessed an expansion of the burlesque universe in the
poetry of the Spanish Renaissance and Baroque. Needless to say, the increased awareness of the
texts that have now entered the literary mainstream is changing our appreciation for both
periods. There comes an increasing need to understand the multifaceted nature of burlesque
and burlesque-erotic poetry. This study proposes a semantics-based categorization of Spanish
Renaissance burlesque-erotic poetry and close analysis of one of the best known poems of
the time, highlighting the rhetorical devices with which the poet mocks the most cherished
values of his society and culture.
Navigating "The Storm, the Whirlwind, and the Earthquake":
Re-Assessing Frederick Douglass, the Orator
Andrea Deacon
University of Wisconsin—Milwaukee
Although Frederick Douglass is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most powerful
American orators, there remains a curious dearth of critical analysis among communications
and literary scholars regarding his public addresses. This lack may be the result of
Douglass' oral rhetoric (as opposed to the more widely analyzed rhetoric of his three
autobiographies) being perceived and dismissed as epideictic or ceremonial in nature.
An examination of the rhetorical, cultural, and racial contexts surrounding this
"epideictic" labeling indicates that Douglass' oratory more accurately reflects a
dramatic form of political or deliberative rhetoric -- a rhetoric that
deserves to be taken seriously, especially in its formation of a collective identity
for African Americans within antebellum American and its potential for current,
interdisciplinary scholarship and pedagogical application.
Reviews
The Political Theory of Christine de Pizan,
by Kate Langdon Forhan
Reviewer: Christine McWebb
Fangs of Malice: Hypocrisy, Sincerity, and Acting,
by Matthew H. Wikander
Reviewer: Catherine Wiley
Approaches to Teaching Shakespeare's
Romeo and Juliet, ed. Maurice Hunt
Reviewer: Karen Charmaine Blansfield
Triumph in Exile,
by Victoria D. Schmidt
Reviewer: Aleksandra Gruzinska
Coleridge's Idea of Wordsworth as Philosopher Poet,
by David D. Joplin
Reviewer: Kandi Tayebi
The Biology of Horror: Gothic Literature and Film,
by Jack Morgan
Reviewer: Steffen Hantke
Hidden Hands: Working-Class Women and
Victorian Social-Problem Fiction, by Patricia E. Johnson
Reviewer: Michael Kramp
Russian and West European Women, 1860-1939:
Dreams, Struggles, and Nightmares,
by Marcelline J. Hutton
Reviewer: Tatyana Novikov
Merchant Moscow: Images of Russia's Vanished Bourgeoisie,
ed. James L. West, Iurii Petrov, et al.
Reviewer: Natasha Kolchevska
Approaches to Teaching the Works of D.H. Lawrence,
ed. M. Elizabeth Sargent and Garry Watson
Reviewer: Logan Dale Greene
Living at the Edge:
A Biography of D.H. Lawrence and Frieda von Richthofen,
by Michael Squires and Lynn K. Talbot
Reviewer: Margaret Heukaeufer
Revised Editions of Tolkien Scholarship
Tolkien's Art: A Mythology for England, by Jane Chance
The Lord of the Rings: The Mythology of Power, by Jane Chance
Splintered Light: Logos and Language in Tolkien's World, by Verlyn Flieger
Reviewer: Daniel J. Smitherman
Russian Pulp:
The Detektiv and the Way of Russian Crime,
by Anthony Olcott
Reviewer: Elena Baraban
Encyclopedia of Literature in Canada,
ed. William H. New
Reviewer: Norman Weinstein
Caribbean Autobiography: Cultural Identity
and Self-Representation, by Sandra Pouchet Paquet
Reviewer: Deborah Weagel
Brazilian Popular Music and Globalization,
ed. Charles A. Perrone and Christopher Dunn
Reviewer: Steven F. Butterman
Rethinking Writing,
by Roy Harris
Reviewer: Matthew Bullen
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