James O'Rourke

Metaromanticism : aesthetics, literature, theory

Paul Hamilton here redefines romanticism in terms of its philosophical habits of self-consciousness. According to Hamilton, metaromanticism, or the ways in which writers of the romantic period generalized their own practices, was fundamentally characteristic of the romantic project itself. Through bracing analyses of the aesthetics of Friedrich Schiller and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and key works by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Percy and Mary Shelley, John Keats, Sir Walter Scott, and Jane Austen, Hamilton shows how the romantic movements struggle with its own tenets was not an effort to seek an alternative way of thought, but instead a way of becoming what it already was. And yet, as Hamilton reveals, the romanticists were still not content with their own self-consciousness. Pushed to the limits, such contemplation either manifested itself as self-disgust or forced romanticists to search for a discourse outside of aesthetics. Adding greater clarity to our understanding of romanticism and shedding much-needed light on the commerce between English writers and philosophers in Germany and France, this study should be valuable to students of literature, aesthetics and critical theory.

Major and Minor Narratives in “Tintern Abbey”

“Tintern Abbey” tells two distinctly different stories about Wordsworths visits to the Wye valley in 1793 and 1798. While the poems major narrative traces a clear developmental arc from youthful spontaneity to mature wisdom, an oblique minor narrative tells a cautionary tale about reawakening dormant memories. The major narrative moves “from joy to joy,” beginning with the memory of being “like a roe” in 1793 and arriving at the discovery of “something far more deeply interfused” in 1798, but the minor narrative remembers a different “something” in the 1793 visit; it recalls being “more like a man flying from something that he dreads.” The engagement with this dreadful, enigmatic “something” draws the poem into what Keats called its “dark passages,” where Wordsworth becomes uncertain about his standing in “the ballance of good and evil.”

The guilty pleasures of bigotry: ethnic stereotypes in Trevor Nunn's Merchant of Venice and Dave Chappelle's pixie sketches

ABSTRACT Trevor Nunns 1999 Royal National Theatre production of The Merchant of Venice and Dave Chappelles “pixie sketches”, produced in 2005 for Comedy Central USA, addressed the same challenge: how does one present ethnic stereotypes in a way that undermines those stereotypes rather than reinforcing them? The different representational strategies adopted by Nunn and Chappelle illustrate the different conventions that govern the representation of ethnicity in high and popular culture. Nunn downplayed the most stereotypical elements of Merchant and guided viewers towards a clear and obvious moral choice. He updated the setting of the play to Weimar Germany, evoking a strong sense of specific social context and prompting the audience to identify with Shylock as the victim of a toxic culture. Chappelle presented a series of hyperbolic racist caricatures that tempted his audience to make the wrong choice. The pixie sketches both solicit and chastise laughter, potentially making viewers aware of their momentary indulgence in the guilty pleasures of bigotry. In Nunns Merchant, the antidote to racism is empathy, and the audience is reassured of its moral probity; in Chappelles pixie sketches, the antidote to racism is critical reflection, and audience members are left wondering whether they really should have laughed at Chappelle being called a “big-lipped bitch”. Reading Merchant through the rough representational logic of the pixie sketches can offer a richer sense of Shakespeares treatment of ethnic stereotyping than can be found within the conventions of the naturalistic theatre of empathy.

What Never Happened: Social Amnesia in Sense and Sensibility

By granting the character of Elinor Dashwood dominance over the narrative function of Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen is able to solicit the reader’s identification with the Cinderella fantasy of the marriage plot, while at the same time casting doubt on the reliability of this Elinorcentric narrative. Blurring the borders between free indirect discourse and narrative authority, Austen illustrates the fictional quality of both the inner lives of individuals and the agreed truths of an organic social unit.