Volume 123, Issue 3

The essay sets out to place Beckett's later drama in an intermedial relationship with Minimal Art. Rather than pointing out that Beckett's later drama reaches for something ‘beyond minimalism’, I shall argue that Beckett's work shares with Minimal Art an epistemological interest in, for instance, geometry and the precision of mathematical series. It is the utter concentration (rather than reduction), the application of a rigid methodology, and the extremely disciplined spatial (and verbal) structuralisation which works of art such as Footfalls and Quad share with Minimal Art and which will bestow on Beckett's later drama a new and unique place both in Beckett's oeuvre and in twentieth-century literary and art history.

National literary histories constitute significant media of institutionalized collective memory, which contribute substantially to the creation of historical meaning and cultural identity. The discourse of literary history is multifunctional to the extent that it lends itself to diverse projections, ranging from the occupation of aesthetic positions to the assertion of a privileged national character. The present paper explores the formation of classicism and romanticism in English and French literary histories from the 19 th century and the mechanisms employed by their authors to disseminate images of the national self and other. Adopting the perspective of the history of knowledge, the investigation shows that the divergent national constructions of classicism and romanticism primarily reflect concurrent needs for identity rather than merely the literary referent objects they are supposedly devoted to.

Although recognized by his contemporaries as a major writer, Oliver Goldsmith was also widely ridiculed. This essay reads the unresolved tension between the acknowledged writer of genius and the foolish public figure as a manifestation of his desire to succeed as a professional writer and yet to be considered a gentleman. After years in which Goldsmith expressed considerable disdain for professional authorship, he eventually embraced it and, after the publication of “The Traveller”, became one of the shrewdest exploiters of the literary market-place. While the status of the “Traveller” increased his success as a professional writer, it also helped him to identify himself as someone above the market, as someone outside of, and not defined by, its logic. However, this reconciliation of his pro-market and his anti-market sentiments was short-lived. Despite his success, Goldsmith never resolved the contradictions inherent in his position as a professional writer determined to transcend that position. A discussion of the purposes of Goldsmith's notorious sartorial choices, perhaps the most prominent aspect of his celebrity, alongside the argument concerning luxury presented in “The Deserted Village” shows that his second major poem dramatizes these contradictions but cannot resolve them.

Good fiction relies to a large extent on an appropriate relationship between style and content. A narrative's story and its treatment should support each other, lest the effect of the work of art be confusing to the reader and hence a failed effort to create an aesthetic version of reality. A novel that attempts to retell the tragic history of a violent revolution and at the same time tries to entertain the reader with a wealth of comic elements is facing a tough challenge, a challenge that Tibor Fischer takes on in Under the Frog . This essay deals with how Fischer combines what might seem to be mutually exclusive attitudes; the argument also examines the author's idiosyncratic comic technique. A close reading of Under the Frog shows that while the story supplies the tragic element, the novel's comic style provides the contrast and counterweight to the seriousness of its topic.

Ulf Schulenberg, Rhetoric and Worldly Criticism Susanne Pichler, A Polyphony of Voices: Searching for Common History, Common Memory in Caryl Phillips's Crossing the River (1993)

Adrian Pilkington, Poetic Effects: A Relevance Theory Perspective (Uta Lenk) The Cambridge Dictionary of English Place-Names. Based on the Collections of the English Place-Name Society , ed. Victor Watts, John Insley and Margaret Gelling (Klaus Dietz) Manfred Görlach, Einführung in die englische Sprachgeschichte (Andreas Mahler) Diachronic Perspectives on Address Term Systems , ed. Irma Taavitsainen and Andreas H. Jucker (Manfred Markus) Anna Helene Feulner, Die griechischen Lehnwörter im Altenglischen (Klaus Dietz) King Alfred's Old English Translation of Pope Gregory the Great's ‘Regula Pastoralis’ and its Cultural Context: A Study and Partial Edition According to All Surviving Manuscripts Based on Cambridge Corpus Christi College 12 , ed. Carolin Schreiber; The Old English Version of the Enlarged Rule of Chrodegang: Edited together with the Latin Text and an English Translation , ed. Brigitte Langefeld; Ursula Kalbhen, Kentische Glossen und kentischer Dialekt im Altenglischen. Mit einer kommentierten Edition der altenglischen Glossen in der Handschrift London, British Library, Cotton Vespasian D.vi (Klaus Dietz) The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Women's Writing , ed. Carolyn Dinshaw and David Wallace (Charity Scott Stokes) James Simpson, Reform and Cultural Revolution (Carolin Schreiber) The Mirroure of the Worlde: A Middle English Translation of Le Miroir du Monde , ed. Robert R. Raymo and Elaine E. Whitaker (Charity Scott Stokes) Three Receptaria from Medieval England. The Languages of Medicine in the Fourteenth Century , ed. Tony Hunt (Klaus Bitterling) Takako Kato, Caxton's ‘Morte Darthur’: The Printing Process and the Authenticity of the Text (Peter J. Lucas) New Medieval Literatures IV , ed. Wendy Scase, Rita Copeland, and David Lawton (Michael W. Twomey) New Medieval Literatures V , ed. Rita Copeland, David Lawton, and Wendy Scase (Richard Utz) Jeremy Tambling, Allegory and the Work of Melancholy: The Late Medieval and Shakespeare (Andrew King) Christian Schmitt-Kilb, ‘Never was the Albion Nation without Poetrie’. Poetik, Rhetorik und Nation im England der Frühen Neuzeit (Michael Szurawitzki) Ina Habermann, Staging Slander and Gender in Early Modern England (Renate Haas) Sylvia Kasey Marks, Writing for the Rising Generation. British Fiction for Young People 1672–1839 (Emer O'Sullivan) Tilman Fischer, Reiseziel England. Ein Beitrag zur Poetik der Reisebeschreibung und zur Topik der Moderne (1830–1870) (Claude D. Conter) Cornelia Schulze, The Battle of the Sexes in D. H. Lawrence's Prose, Poetry and Paintings (Hans Werner Breunig) Katherine Mullin, James Joyce, Sexuality and Social Purity (Ingrid von Rosenberg) Christian Huck, Das Paradox der Mytho-poetik: Dichtung und Gemeinschaft in der irischen Literatur (Frank Kearful) Rolf Breuer, Irland. Eine Einführung in seine Geschichte, Literatur und Kultur ; Rüdiger Imhof, A Short History of Irish Literature (Jürgen Elvert) Barbara Korte and Claudia Sternberg, Bidding for the Mainstream? Black and Asian British Film since the 1990s (Robert Murphy) The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction , ed. Edward James and Farah Mendlesohn (Katja Kanzler) Discipline and Practice: The (Ir)resistibility of Theory , ed. Stefan Herbrechter and Ivan Callus (Anthony Banks) Erzähltextanalyse und Gender Studies , ed. Vera Nünning und Ansgar Nünning (Peter Hühn und Markus Kempf) Eating Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Food , ed. Tobias Döring, Markus Heide, Susanne Mühleisen (Karin Ikas)