Forthcoming in PLL

JENNIFER STAFFORD BROWN, "Sympathy for the Devil: The Problem of Montherlant and the Medieval"

ABSTRACT: During the Second World War, both ends of the French political spectrum, resistants and collaborators, used medieval imagery to strengthen and enrich their political language. The history and the spaces of France--knights, castles, heroes--were disputed territory, each side claiming that the "true" France was, and had always been, politically theirs. In the midst of this dispute, Henry de Montherlant wrote his wartime collections of essays, in which he promoted a certain ideal of knighthood: young, individualistic, and contemptuous of modern, degenerate society. Naturally, this ideal appealed greatly to fascists and Vichy authorities. This article will argue that these criteria for the modern knight derive less from a fascist aesthetic and more from Montherlants driven, hidden sexuality: he had created a "knightly" aesthetic that justified and idealized his pedophilia long before the first fascists came into being. This sheds light both on the homoerotics of fascism and on Montherlants own work.

REBECCA N. MITCHELL, "Learning to Read: Interpersonal Literacy in Adam Bede"

ABSTRACT: In George Eliot's Adam Bede, literacy serves as a useful paradigm for understanding human nature. This essay argues that the careful discernment acquired by learning to read people as well as texts and its subsequent effect on an individual's understanding of her community and herself are primary motivations of the novel. These motivations also, perhaps surprisingly, unite the characters of Hetty Sorrel and Dinah Morris. Both women must learn to control the "texts" they present to others via their bodies and to control the way they read the other individuals who comprise the community of Hayslope. This analysis, which seeks to articulate the ground shared by the two women, thus complicates readings of the novel which situate Dinah as the good, saintly, selfless foil to the flawed, deviant, and selfish Hetty.

ADONICA SENDELBACH, "The Realization of Solov'ev's Philosophical Treatise The Meaning of Love in Pasternak's Zhivago Poem 'Winter Night'"

ABSTRACT: As a former student of philosophy, Boris Pasternak often interwove philosophical arguments into his writing, including those of Russian philosopher Vladimir Solov'ev. Many of the philosopher's theories in The Meaning of Love are found within the prose and poetry of Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago. In particular, the protagonist's sacrifice of personal happiness in order to fulfill his role as an artist echoes Solov'ev's concept of sacrifice in connection with ideal love, a blending of the physical and the spiritual--of Logos and Sophia. Zhivago's poem "Winter Night" provides a most compelling example of Pasternak's ability to manifest Solov'ev's philosophical views on ideal love and artistic creation. Pasternak weaves elements of Solov'ev's theories with the imagery of the poem, which includes Christian symbolism, as well as within its language as the poet demonstrates how an artist approaches total unity, or Solov'ev's ideal of universal harmony, and attains immortality through art.

MANISH SHARMA, "Hiding the Harm: Revisionism and Marvel in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight"

ABSTRACT: A rarely discussed, and rarely observed, element of the Christmas "gomen" which the Green Knight proposes at Camelot is its openness with regard to the kind of blow that initially can be inflicted and even the implement that can be employed to inflict this blow. Those scholars who have discussed this ambiguity have not noted the narrative inconsistency it generates. I will argue that this inconsistency is an instance of metanarrative revisionism that participates in larger patterns of narrative deformation and reformation within SGGK problematizing any reading of the poem as a critique of courtly culture or as immanent to its cultural milieu.