Rocky Mountain E-Review
of Language and Literature
Volume 59, Number 1
Spring 2005
CONTENTS
Articles | Reviews
Articles
Bob's Dreaming: Playing with Reader Expectations
in Peter Carey's Oscar and Lucinda
Sue Ryan-Fazilleau
University of La Rochelle
Oscar and Lucinda is the third novel in the postcolonial phase of
Peter Carey's search for an Australian identity. For the first time, he takes a
good look at the British imperial influence. The action of the novel takes
place during the Victorian period, and Carey chooses to dress his-story up in
the corresponding genre -- the Victorian novel, which he borrows from the
English canon for the occasion. He then proceeds to break its rules. He plays
with reader expectations and provokes anger. Carey is a literary gambler; in Oscar
and Lucinda he takes the risk of alienating readers by "cheating" them of
their "due." The payoff is the possibility of succeeding in channeling this anger
to his own ends. A look at Carey's techniques reveals how he shakes up his Australian readers'
complacency about official versions of Australian history with their
traditional heroes and their exclusion of the Aboriginal perspective. Carey
combines the Victorian leitmotif of gambling and the contemporary Australian
obsession with this activity in order to highlight and give meaning to the
narrative gambles he takes.
MAR: Mars, Mare, and Mater
in
Raymond Radiguet's Le Diable au corps
Kathryn E. Wildgen
University of New Orleans
A close textual reading of Radiguet's Le Diable au corps reveals a vast number of
occurrences of the suite of letters MAR, far too vast to be coincidental or insignificant.
Clearly and appropriately, the most significant MAR is the one which forms part of Marthe's
name; she bears within herself the themes of war and motherhood, death and life, and her womb
functions as a great fecund sea. Mars, Marthe, and the Marne form a triad around which the
entire novel is constructed, and the repetition of MAR is a constant reminder of the fact
that the Narrator as narrator, and hence the novel itself, exists because of the interplay
among these three entities. Diable is built on the foundation of these three letters.
Gender Images in Dieter Wellershoff's Der
Liebeswunsch
Katja Fullard
University of St. Thomas
This study focuses on the gender images and gender relations presented in Wellershoff's
latest novel, Der Liebeswunsch. To the German author, this novel finally brought
commercial success and critical praise, particularly for his insight into the human
psyche and his realistic, thoughtful depiction of a woman in love. An analysis of
the protagonists, however, reveals only limited, stereotypical female characters and male
characters who fight their insecurity by exploiting the female stereotypes. Again in
this novel, as in previous ones, the author remains trapped in a traditional world view.
Reviews
At the Margins of the Renaissance: Lazarillo de Tormes
and the Picaresque Art of Survival, by Giancarlo Maiorino
Reviewer: Jessika L. Thomas
Milton Studies 43 (2003), ed. Albert C. Labriola
Reviewer: Kirk G. Rasmussen
Joyous Greetings: The First International Women's
Movement, 1830-1860, by Bonnie S. Anderson
Reviewer: Victor P. Unda
A Historical Guide to F. Scott Fitzgerald, ed. Kirk Curnutt
Reviewer: Catherine Kunce
One-Smoke Stories, by Mary Austin
Reviewer: Jennie A. Camp
The Tragedy and Comedy of Resistance: Reading Modernity
Through Black Women's Fiction, by Carol Anne Taylor
Reviewer: Doreen Alvarez Saar
L'Écriture Mère et Fille chez
Jeanne Hyvrard, Chantal Chawaf, et Annie Ernaux, by Monique Saigal
Reviewer: Helynne Hollstein Hansen
To the Boathouse: A Memoir, by Mary Ann Caws
Reviewer: Joanne Craig
A Philosophy of Second Language Acquisition,
by Marysia Johnson
Reviewer: Eva Nunez-Mendez
Cultural Studies in the Curriculum: Teaching Latin America,
ed. Danny J. Anderson and Jill S. Kuhnheim
Reviewer: J.P. Spicer-Escalante
© 2004 ROCKY MOUNTAIN MODERN LANGUAGE
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