...Dale Fancher Enggass Copyright © 2022 Duke University Press 2022 dale.enggass@utah.edu 19 Poetry: The 1950s to the Present Dale Fancher Enggass i Reading Form Two books by Craig Dworkin aim to demonstrate the interpretive potentials of unusual ways of reading (and writing) for literary...

... to their constitutional promise. When the cheap press made possible widespread spectatorship of sensational trials, actual legal crises over slavery became central to abolitionist print campaigns, as DeLom- bard demonstrates in her readings of both actual and literary “trials.” Central to her discussion...

... and collections, but by and large contextualized close readings tend to dominate. i  African American Poetry Perhaps the most exciting salient feature this year is the amount and quality of work on modern African American poets that appeared over the course of the year. The rich and varied literary...

... classic work Herman Melville: A Critical Study (1949) in order to suggest that we might recover from his work an approach to Melville studies appropriate to our post-Cold War moment. In Chase’s allegori- cal reading of Melville, Castiglia argues, we can find an imaginative idealism that might...

... novels elicit new readings that blend transnationalist, ecocritical, ideological, and queer theory interpretations. Melville’s own penchant for employing somewhat disparate source materials makes his literary works fertile ground for new scholarship that draws freely from the toolbox of recent...

... diverse books. The tales and sketches—particularly ‘‘Bartleby, the Scrivener’’ and ‘‘Benito Cerenoreceived a number of fine readings. Also notable is a special issue of Leviathan: A Journal of Melville Studies devoted to pedagogy. i General Several works deal with biography. Elizabeth Hardwick’s...

... and the nature of a scholarly edition. At 733 pages, it is massive, and even fuller than the first volume in the sense that it does not need to contain the extensive, excellent critical introductions. Read- ers who can follow Mark Twain’s eccentric, rambling, chaotic plan will be rewarded on every page...

... to textual studies, global visions of these writers, and readings that look beyond the genre of poetry. There is increasing emphasis on political science perspectives in Whitman scholarship and new popular culture studies work in Dickinson scholarship. Stephanie M. Blalock contributed the Whitman section...

... studies. Scholars also provide intriguing readings of works by Wash- ington Irving, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and John Neal. African American writers receive less attention, as do Native American writers. Prominent literary women, among them Julia Ward Howe, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Margaret Fuller...

... Sensibar’s pages as a woman who, with her own mother, gave Faulkner a “first language” of visual art that nearly all read- ers remark in his prose. Such new material allows Sensibar to augment the record. Although she admits that in the process she “had to speculate more than [she] would have liked...

... interpretive trends—for example, New Critical, post-structuralist, feminist, and sexuality studies readings. Beuka reveals how these and other critical modes have different claims and points of emphasis based, in part, on larger scholarly concerns in given eras. His thorough and very mineable...

.... Wolff is careful to qualify her basic claim in the opening analytical section: “William Faulkner’s ready access to this particular set of ledgers, his repeated readings of it, as well as his close friendship with its owner make this particular plan- tation diary a likely source of material...

... principles (“wldn’t myself add . . . either the ‘aunties’ or the ‘grandpas’  Ben Hickman looks at the anthology’s considerable influence in Britain ( pp. 81–108), which helped forge connections between American and British poets as well as a 1965 reading at Royal Albert Hall featuring Jim Cocola 365...

... America. Bernadini argues that the poems Campana produced on this trip evidence a Whitmanesque mythopoetic sensibility of America and “can be read as Campana’s creative response to Whitman’s idea of ‘America’ as the source of an extra-European newness, freedom, and regeneration.” Gary Schmigdall...

... (Stanford). A more helpful title would have included the words “published poetry,” for three-quarters of the book offers close, often brilliant readings ofBattle- Pieces, Clarel, John Marr and Other Sailors, and Timoleon. The first quarter of the book, a dense discussion of form...

...: Religious Difference and the Shape of Melville’s Career (Northwestern) is an ambitious attempt to trace Melville’s lifelong interest in different and competing religious faith traditions. Yothers’s opening chapter examines how Melville’s reading informed “the interplay between faith and doubt...

... to generate new insights on identity in a transnational context. (The other essays in this group are discussed where appropriate below.) In “Melville in the Asylum: Literature, Sociology, Reading” (AmLH 26: 234–61) David J. Alworth proposes a new method for reading devel- oped from the intersection...

... of the war’s impact on regions other than the South. i  Women and Literature While not very detailed in its readings of individual texts, Elaine Sho­ walter’s A Jury of Her Peers certainly helps to demonstrate the keynote theme of this year’s scholarship. Overall, this book offers a compre- hensive...

... his cosmopolitanism, global reading public, and internationalist politics. “Geographies” supplies scientific, naturalistic, commercial, and cultural contexts, with special attention to the South Seas, the Atlantic trade, and the Eastern Mediterranean. “Nations” centers on Melville’s political...

... discussion of Melville’s reading throughout his last 40 years will also provide scholars with many suggestions for further study. In addition, this biography is particularly extensive and valuable in detailing Melville’s family and its significance in his life and works. Parker’s portrayal lets us see...