NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW ON-LINE

This is a self-proclaimed 'journal of scholarly criticism'. It aims to keep college and university literature teachers abreast of new developments in the theory and practice of literature and to provide them with new ways of studying and teaching new bodies of literature while helping them experience old literature in new ways. It aims to cover the full range of what is being read and taught in (American) college literature classes and encourages a wide range of content in terms of nationality and types of literature. The contents relate to teaching, textual analysis and literary theory and include shorter 'notes', reviews and commentaries.

While this is fine for lecturers it is perhaps daunting for the general reader. The kind of content can be judged by some of the essay titles such as Stephanie Chamberlain's WIFE AND WIDOW IN ARCADIA: RE-ENVISIONING THE IDEAL or BJ Manriquez' ANA CASTILLO'S SO FAR FROM GOD: INTIMATIONS OF THE ABSURD. However, for the reader who is prepared to persevere the essays, although long (3,500 words), are interesting and readable. For example, Richard A Kaye's essay THE RETURN OF DAMON AND PYTHIAS:... has an interesting take on the portrayal of homosexuality. He says that although homosexual relationships have been portrayed primarily in aesthetical and gothic fiction we should look to Victorian Melodrama as another area where homosexuality was articulated.

The shorter 'notes' might well appeal to general readers with an interest in how to approach literature. In CLOSE(D) READINGS OF SHAKESPEARE: RE-COVERING SELF-REFLEXIVITY IN THE CLASSROOM Crystal Downing explores the change in the term 'self-reflexivity' in literature studies. She highlights the danger of close reading a text because the writer did not necessarily think as the reader does. This can cause 'blindness' to one's own personal reactions. She prefers the newer use of the term to refer to the situation of a reader who

self-consciously discusses how personal experiences affect his or her response to a text.

These thought-provoking works as well as book review and review essays make this a 'heavyweight' journal but one that well repays closer acquaintance.

COLLEGE LITERATURE is a professionally produced academic journal designed to keep its readers up to date with new developments in the theory and practice of literature. A glance at the impressive list of National/International members of the Editorial Board shows that it enjoys the support of top names like Terry Eagleton, Stephen Greenblatt, J. Hillis Miller and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak.

This special issue is devoted to literature and the visual arts. The star articles are concerned with visual connections in the poetry of Sylvia Plath. Marsha Bryant writes with entertaining insight about Plath's poetry and the sort of 1950s advertising addressed to housewives that appeared in magazines like the LADIES' HOME JOURNAL (which incidentally had a good reputation for publishing poetry, including Plath's), with Plath torn between domesticity and despair until the tragic end. Sherry Lutz Zivley discusses Plath's interest in modernist painters, such as De Chirico, Klee, Matisse, Picasso, van Gogh and others. Both articles on Plath really do help to explain her tense, extreme poetry.

The other articles and reviews in this issue also make good reading, being challenging without obscurity, illuminating without eliminating all the shadows. Clearly this is not a journal for the amateur writer, but for those who teach literature it offers a substantial and varied diet.

This is an expertly-produced, high quality academic journal, with articles that are uniformly interesting, and which are presented in a clear and user-friendly layout. This issue contains eight key articles, a review-essay, four reviews, and a comprehensive list of books received. Taken together, these materials alone could form a valuable resource. But what is very important here, I believe — and, judging from my own experiences at academic conferences in Europe, something not well understood outside North America — is the sense of interplay sought between theoretical literary criticism and the practicalities of classroom and lecture-hall dynamics. Plainly these authors are seeking to develop mutually an attitude that welcomes the freshness and vitality of learning as it is experienced viva voce, utilizing it as an additional tool to the hothouse productions of theorists and critics who disengage themselves from their students' input and responses. Thus there is something here to inspire both teachers and students who are committed to their subject's survival and expansion in the increasingly rarefied discourse of literary studies.

Sadly, the opening article on Jamaica Kincaid's A SMALL PLACE, by Rhonda D. Frederick is the most disappointing. Although it is earnest and informed, highlighting very clearly the issues at stake, it remains unsatisfying insofar as it does not work out more fully the implications of its line of reasoning, or explore the pragmatics of its standpoint sufficiently to be really elucidating. Similarly, Jane O'Sullivan's article on post-modernism and John Fowles stands out from the group for its inaccessibility, its unevenness of register and its uncertain place among its peers in this issue.

By contrast, Elaine R. Ognibene's work on THE POISONWOOD BIBLE, Margaret D. Bauer's on Ernest Hemingway, Ed White's on Poe, and William Atkinson's on Tanizaki are all very strong and insightful. I found Betina Entzminger's essay on Eudora Welty's DELTA WEDDING a fascinating re-mix of ideas, straightforward and yet suggestive, albeit somewhat diffuse in its ending. Likewise, Benton J. Komins's and David G. Nicholls's piece on American Studies in Turkey was very informative, very topical, and yet not as thought-provoking as some of its neighbors here.

The long review-essay on aspects of Romanticism, by James Najarian, was equally interesting, with many careful and well-judged readings, which more than compensate for its inexplicably harsh construction.

All in all, this is a very well-made journal from West Chester University in Pennsylvania, and its slant, as much as its range of interests, deserve wide notice by anyone in the profession.

This edition has an eclectic range of essays, starting with an article on the language of TRAINSPOTTING by Bonnie Blackwell, amusingly titled THE SOCIETY FOR THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO NARRATIVE and ending with one on the language of UNDER THE VOLCANO by Camille La Bossière. There are several studies of poetry including Asian diaspora poetry in Canada and the poetry of John Yau, as well as a new look at Genevieve Taggart's CALLING WESTERN UNION.

I was particularly attracted by Kelly A. Marsh's analysis of BRIDGET JONES'S DIARY and BRIDGET JONES: THE EDGE OF REASON criticism. She shows how Bridget's character and attitude to life are quite differently interpreted either side of the Atlantic. The author places Bridget in a long line of self-deprecating diary-writing heroines, both non-fictional — Dorothy Wordsworth — and fictional — Richardson and Smollet. She argues that rather than see Bridget as a failure in American feminist terms, she should be understood as unavoidably out of control of her life in the context of Blair's Britain. As such, Fielding shares the same concerns as British writers A.S. Byatt and Anita Brookner.

Ranen Omer-Sherman's essay on Shalamith Haraven's THIRST: THE DESERT TRILOGY also caught my eye. It analyses the author's re-reading of Old Testament wilderness material through feminine (feminist?) eyes.

Haraven's insistence that the sacred text serve the moral dilemmas of the present, offers a compelling meditation on the traumas of a rebuilt Jerusalem.

This issue contains discussions on a range of different subject matter from Jennifer Putzi's study of "RAISING THE SIGMA:" BLACK WOMANHOOD THE MARKED BODY IN PAULINE HOPKINS'S CONTENDING FORCES to women's war writing and aspects of German fascism.

The essay by Robert Genter, called "I'M NOT HIS FATHER;" LIONEL TRILLING, ALLEN GINSBERG, AND THE CONTOURS OF LITERARY MODERNISM explores the relationship between Lionel Trilling and Allen Ginsberg. Following his rise to fame as a beat poet, Ginsberg returned to Columbia University in 1959 to participate in a poetry reading. He dedicated one of the poems to Lionel Trilling and this was followed by speculation about their professional and social relationship. The essay explores the nature of this relationship and the problems associated with new ways of looking at literary criticism:

Indeed, Trilling defended modernism as a canon, a body of formalist theory, criticism, and literature that served to give structure to reality since reality seemed unable to offer any structure for the aesthetic object.

College Literature is suitable for anyone studying approaches to the social and historical framework of literature.