E.M. Forster\u27s Lecture Kipling\u27s Poems : Negotiating the Modernist Shift from the Authoritarian Stock-in Trade to an Aristocratic Democracy

In 1909, Forster delivered a scathing lecture about Rudyard Kipling, which outlines the political dangers implicit in Kipling\u27s aesthetic. This introduction to the lecture briefly examines Forster\u27s critique of Kipling\u27s politics and aesthetic found in both the lecture and subsequent reviews of Kipling\u27s work. Central to Forster\u27s critique is his conviction that contemporary culture is and should be moving from authoritarian to democratic political systems. While Forster acknowledges Kipling\u27s power and skill as a writer, he suggests that Kipling\u27s aesthetic genius belongs to an earlier stage in the world\u27s development, when authoritarian political models dominated. Within Forster\u27s aristocratic democracy, Kipling\u27s poetry is not only found wanting; it is politically debilitating and dangerous

The Scandal of Jewish Rage in William Styron\u27s \u3ci\u3eSophie\u27s Choice\u3c/i\u3e

Scholars have suggested that William Styron’s Nathan in Sophie’s Choice is insane or depraved—a character whose motivations lack rationality at best and are unambiguously evil at worst. Elie Wiesel, the author of the famous Holocaust memoir Night, has been very critical of Styron’s novel. Ironically, by using the Yiddish version of Wiesel’s memoir Night, it is possible to demonstrate that Nathan’s behavior is more “logical” than scholars have previously understood. This approach offers us a new way of reading and interpreting Styron’s novel by clarifying how Nathan’s character functions within a well-established tradition of sociopolitical outrage about racial oppression, which is best exemplified in James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time, a text that Styron strategically references in Sophie’s Choice

A.S. Byatt\u27s Morpho Eugenia : Prolegomena to Any Future Theory

The traditional view holds that love and knowledge are only possible if a person can transcend the human—love is that which overcomes biological urges like lust, while knowledge is that which gets beyond self-interested perception. In the nineteenth century, when theories about anthropomorphism came to dominate, the traditional views of love and knowledge were exposed as incoherent. In Morpho Eugenia, A.S. Byatt brilliantly dramatizes how these intellectual developments impacted the lives of a wide range of nineteenth-century characters—some sunk into nihilistic despair, some became dogmatic scientists, some became tortured existentialists, and some tried to build a new and more reasonable conception of love and knowledge. In my essay, I examine the necessary consequences the nineteenth-century’s anthropomorphic turn had on theories about knowledge and love. Put simply, Byatt suggests that the major shift in our theory of knowledge, while devastating for many, actually set the stage for political empowerment for many others

Kipling\u27s Poems

In this 1909 lecture, E.M. Forster develops a critique of Kipling, alternately praising and criticizing the Nobel Laureate\u27s political agenda as well as his aesthetic vision. This lecture is extremely valuable in that it gives us insight into an early critique of Kipling thepoet and Kipling the man, but it is also valuable insofar as it sheds light on Forster\u27s method and approach to interpreting poetry as a literary andpolitical critic

The Art of Reading-To and the Post-Holocaust Suicide in Schlink\u27s \u3cem\u3eThe Reader\u3c/em\u3e

In Bernhard Schlink\u27s The Reader, former Nazi perpetrator Hanna Schmitz commits suicide, and scholars have not yet answered the question why. When Michael visits Hanna\u27s cell after her death, he notices books on her shelf by Primo Levi, Elie Wiesel, Tadeusz Borowski, Jean Améry, Rudolf Höss, and Hannah Arendt. By citing works from these authors, I argue that Hanna kills herself because she discovers that Michael has become what she once was. I also demonstrate that through her suicide, Hanna fulfills a major demand found in the works of Améry, and by fulfilling that demand, Améry and Hanna are united

Virginia Woolf and British Russophilia

Roberta Rubenstein convincingly demonstrates that England was infatuated with all things Russian between the years 1912 and 1922. These were some of the most formative years in the development of Woolf ’s writing and thinking, and consequently, Rubenstein argues that prominent Russian writers heavily influenced Woolf the writer and Woolf the critic. Given the degree to which Russian writers influenced Woolf in particular and England more generally, Rubenstein suggests that the Russian influence had a decisive impact in determining the shape of British Modernism

Oscar Wilde and the Invention of a Life-Creating Fiction

When discussing the origins, rise, and contemporary legitimization of biofiction, Oscar Wilde is a crucial figure. This is not just because he authored one of the first and most important reflections about the aesthetic form, but also because he became the subject of many biofictions, most notably Desmond Hall\u27s I Give You Oscar Wilde: A Biographical Novel {1965), Peter Ackroyd\u27s The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde (1983), Louis Edwards\u27s Oscar Wilde Discovers America (2003), and Colm Toibin\u27s The Master (2004). Some, of course, would question and challenge my decision to include Toibin\u27s novel in this list, as many would say that The Master is a biographical novel about Henry James. But as I will demonstrate, Toibin has a commanding grasp of literary history, and The Master accurately foregrounds the crucial role Wilde played in both the rise ot the biographical novel and the fall of the historical novel, which is why I argue that Wilde is the primary master of The Master