Rocky Mountain E-Review
of Language and Literature
Volume 58, Number 2
Fall 2004
CONTENTS
Articles | Forum | Reviews
Articles
Controversy and the Single Woman in
The Maid's Tragedy and The Roaring Girl
Adrienne L. Eastwood
University of California - San Diego
Research on unmarried women in early modern England has shown that as a social
category, single women lacked agency and were much maligned; however, the representation
of single women in literature is a site of ideological contention. Representations
of single women in the theater, particularly in works of the seventeenth century
during the height of the Swetnam debates (1615-1620), dispute the status of women
in society. What we find are figures that disrupt constructions of femininity in
ways that would have resonated significantly with a growing, and at least partially
rebellious, female audience. For some, the voice of the single woman would have provided
a scathing critique of emergent patriarchal structures; others would have been interested
in the unruly woman's containment (either by marriage or by death) within the narrative.
Like actual single women during the period, the single woman on the stage slides between
social ranks and genders; she eludes containment, expanding agency and redefining
femininity through performances of social rank, gender, and sexuality. Yet at the same
time, because of her marginal status, the figure of the single woman functions to
defuse the rebellious impulses she provokes. Since she exists primarily on the social
fringes, the positions she voices and represents can also be dismissed. The ambiguity
of the play leaves decisions up to the audience, but even in discourses that appear
dominant, alternate and possibly resistant voices are evoked.
Coercion and Confinement in
Eleonore Thon's Adelheit von Rastenberg
Bernadette H. Hyner
Washington State University
Thon's drama is a gender-conscious criticism of Storm and Stress dramatic tenets. It
centers on women's lack of autonomy and explores possible behavior models for women
who are at the center of romantic pursuits. Thon juxtaposes social reality, which
opposes gender parity with claims of gender equality imbedded in the
sentimental love paradigm. While the romantic hero of the Storm and Stress era
undermines convention to secure a mate, he ironically relies on the separation
of the sexes. Thon subverts standard sympathetic portrayals of passionate
aggressors and exposes the violence concealed in their highly charged love
rhetoric. Her theatrical use of spaces aligns itself with the employment of
rhetoric to emphasize the love interest's mental and physical abuse.
The Motive for Murder in
"The Cask of Amontillado" by Edgar Allan Poe
Elena V. Baraban
University of Victoria
"The Cask of Amontillado" (1846) by Edgar Allan Poe depicts a man who makes his confession
about an atrocious murder he committed in the past. A seeming absence of motive for this murder
puzzles the reader and has intrigued critics, but a close reading of "The Cask of Amontillado"
helps uncover the motive for Montresor's crime. An examination of onomastic and semantic
characteristics of the text reveals that the characters' social status and their class
affiliations lie at the heart of the conflict depicted in the story.
Forum
Bridges from Content Experts to Novice Learners
in 21st-Century Classrooms
Susan J. Kilgore
Washington State University
I started out my grown-up life as a good teacher. I turned into a very bad teacher.
After a number of wounding and frustrating years, I am beginning to be a better teacher,
more professional, more visible, and more able to explain how, why, and what my
students are learning. To become more professional, I have had to learn to be more
intentional, more thoughtful about what I am doing, to ask better questions of myself
about my teaching, and to become more systematic about recording what worked and what
did not. What follows is a short trek down that path from good to bad, a path I don't
think I'm alone in having traveled.
Reviews
The Vulgar Tongue:
Medieval and Post Medieval Vernacularity, ed. Fiona Somerset and Nicholas Watson
Reviewer: Rick McDonald
Medievalia et Humanistica. Studies in Medieval
and Renaissance Culture. New Series #30: Humanist Educational
Theory, Gregory the Great, and Culinary Comedy
Reviewer: Albrecht Classen
Directing Shakespeare: A Scholar Onstage,
by Sidney Homan
Reviewer: Joanne Craig
Milton Studies 42 (2002),
ed. David Loewenstein
Reviewer: Todd Butler
The History of the European Family: Volume 2;
Family Life in the Long Nineteenth Century, 1789-1913, ed. David I. Kertzer
and Marzio Barbagli
Reviewer: Helynne Hollstein Hansen
Approaches to Teaching Gothic Fiction:
The British and American Traditions, ed. Diane Long Hoeveler and Tamar Heller
Reviewer: L. Adam Mekler
Approaches to Teaching Conrad's Heart of Darkness
and The Secret Sharer, ed. Hunt Hawkins and Brian W. Shaffer
Reviewer: Cathia Jenainati
Beauty Raises the Dead: Literature and Loss
in the Fin de Siècle, by Robert Ziegler
and
Shirley Jackson's American Gothic, by Darryl Hattenhauer
Reviewer: Carol Siegel
Surveying the Literary Landscapes of
Terry Tempest Williams: New Critical Essays, ed.
Katherine R. Chandler and Melissa A. Goldthwaite
Reviewer: Deborah Weagel
The Modern World of Neith Boyce: Autobiography and Diaries,
ed. Carol DeBoer-Langworthy
Reviewer: Catherine Kunce
Maurice Blanchot et la fin du mythe, by Daniela Hurezanu
Reviewer: Elisabeth Arnould
Splitter: Sondierungen zum Theater,
ed. Axel Schalk and Christian E. Rochow
Reviewer: Irmgard Hunt
Imperial Ascent: Mountaineering, Masculinity, and Empire,
by Peter L. Bayers
Reviewer:
Cliff Toliver
Phenomenological Approaches to Popular Culture,
ed. Michael T. Carroll and Eddie Tafoya
Reviewer: Daniel Smitherman
Silicon Literacies: Communication,
Innovation and Education in the Electronic Age,
ed. Ilana Snyder
Reviewer: John Rothfork
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