ISSN 0030-8129 I / ■ I ^umc I / ■ I Number 1/ Publications of the Modern Language Association of America Mav 1989 New Paperbacks From Princeton Narrative and Its Discontents Problems of Closure in the Traditional Novel D. A. Miller "Closure, or how the ending completes the meaning of a narrative. Is the subject of D. A. Miller's Narrative and Its Discontents. By examining the works of three nineteenth- century novelists—Jane Austen, George Eliot and Stendhal—Miller sets out to show that even in traditional narratives the endings do not exert 'the totalizing powers of organiza­ tion' that have been claimed for them. ,.. Miller undertakes a thoroughly engrossing analysis which ends with the conclusion that... when all Is said and done, endings prove inadequate to their narratives." —World Literature Today Paper: $9.59 ISBN 0-691-01458-2 Cubism, Stieglitz, and the Early Poetry of William Carlos Williams Bram Dijkstra "(Dljkstra) Is primarily Interested In the school of Alfred Stieglitz and its Influence In shap­ ing Williams' theory and practice.... Mr. Dljkstra has demonstrated beyond any doubt that Williams was enormously Influenced by experimentation in the visual arts and that he attempted to emulate the Stieglitz group In focusing on the object Itself, delineating It as precisely as possible and letting it represent the moment of perception without intruding personal comment." —Comparative Literature Paper: $9.95 ISBN 0-691-01345-4 The Look of Russian Literature Avant-Garde Visual Experiments, 1900-1930 Gerald Janecek "The Look of Russian Literature Is an Invaluable source of Informa­ tion for the student of avant- garde art and literature. ... But besides being of Interest to the spe­ cialist, this book will also appeal to the average reader with an appre­ ciation for the arts. In fact. Its Intrinsic value is complemented by Its very good 'looks.' " —Slavic and East European Journal 188 illustrations. Paper: $14.95 ISBN 0-691-01457-4 Walden Henry D. Thoreau Editea by J. Lyndon Shanley Walden, Thoreau's account of a year spent alone In a cabin by a pond In the woods. Is one of the most Influential and compel­ ling books In American literature. This paperback version contains the complete, authoritative text approved by the Center for Edi­ tions of American Authors of the Modern Language Association. "... It Is the Walden of my adolescence I remember most viv­ idly-suffused with the powerfully intense, romantic energies of ado­ lescence, the sense that life Is boundless, experimental, provislon- ary, ever-fluld, and unpredict­ able. ..." —Joyce Carol Oates, from the Introduction Paper: $6.95 ISBN 0-691-01464-7 Drawing by David Johnson AT YOUR BOOKSTORE OR Princeton University Press 41 WILLIAM ST. . PRINCETON, NJ 08540 . (609) 452-4900 . ORDERS 800-PRS-ISBN (777-4726) May 1989 Publications of the Modern Language Association of America Volume 104 Number 3 PUBLISHED SIX TIMES A YEAR BY THE ASSOCIATION The Modern Language Association of America ORGANIZED 1883 INCORPORATED 1900 OFFICERS FOR THE YEAR 1989 President: Victor Brombert, Princeton University First Vice President: Catharine R. Stimpson, Rutgers University, New Brunswick Executive Director: Phyllis Franklin EXECUTIVE COUNCIL For the term ending 31 December 1989 Peter Elbow University of Massachusetts, Amherst Joan M. Ferrante Columbia University Patricia Meyer Spacks Yale University For the term ending 31 December 1991 Joan DeJean University of Pennsylvania Frances Ferguson Johns Hopkins University Myra Jehlen Rutgers University, New Brunswick For the term ending 31 December 1990 Thomas M. Greene Yale University Lawrence Lipking Northwestern University Judith Ryan Harvard University For the term ending 31 December 1992 Andrew P. 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Contents • May Editor’s Column ......... 277 Notes on Contributors..................................................................... 280 Forthcoming in PMLA . .281 Special Topics..................................................................... 282 Criticism in Translation ........ 283 Presidential Address 1988. Limelight: Reflections on a Public Year. Barbara Herrnstein Smith................................................. 285 Poetics against Itself: On the Self-Destruction of Modern Scientific Criticism. Roger Seamon .................................................. .......... 294 Abstract. Modern critical theory is commonly thought of as a collection of diverse methods, schools, systems, and approaches. There is, however, a significant pattern in the diversity. This pattern is generated by the conflict between the widespread effort of twentieth-century theorists to make criticism scientific and the internal resistance to that effort presented by the hermeneutic impulse. The scientific tradition is characterized and unified by a set of common theoretical principles and by a common sequence of transformations that each school within it undergoes. The result of these transformations is that every proposed scien­ tific model for criticism changes into an interpretive method and the project of scientific criticism is subverted. (RS) Foucault’s Oriental Subtext. Uta Liebmann Schaub . . 306 Abstract. Foucault’s work has been investigated from within the Western intellectual tra­ dition. My study approaches it from outside that tradition, from the perspective of Oriental thought. Oriental concepts were appropriated by the Western counterculture of the sixties and were espoused by associates of Tel quel when Foucault began to develop his radically subversive critique of Western discourse formation. Eastern models appear to have shaped his own discourse to such an extent that they function as a concealed subtext in his work. He criticizes the West for its anthropocentrism and logocentrism, its antagonistic dialec­ tics, and its confidence in an unlimited advance of systematic knowledge. Foucault’s enterprise is grounded in Oriental, chiefly Buddhist, systems that emphasize a progressive decentering of the individual through praxis rather than theory, a logic of coexisting opposites, a paradoxical language, and a knowledge unattainable through logocentric rationality. (ULS) Baudelaire’s Theory of Practice: Ideology and Difference in “Les yeux des pauvres.” Geraldine Friedman........................................317 Abstract. Baudelaire’s poetry dramatizes the self-effacing quality of dominant discourse so well that until recently critics have failed to engage his interest in ideology. In the prose poem “Les yeux des pauvres,” the traces of that self-effacement allow us to read the ideo- logical implications of what seem to be the text’s purely aesthetic and ethical dimensions. By staging encounters with social and sexual difference, “Les yeux” challenges the princi­ ple of reflexivity underlying its announced aesthetic of the correspondences. In question­ ing the logic of the same that governs the mystified speaker’s figuration and psychology, the text asks whether and how an Other can escape the confines of the official egalitar­ ian ideology of post-1848 France, which tends to cast alterity in its own image. (GF) Art and Power in the Spectacle Plays of Calderon de la Barca. Margaret Rich Greer........................................................... 329 Abstract. The court spectacle plays of Calderon de la Barca, when viewed within their historical, physical, and dramatic context, reveal a polysemous structure of meaning that both supports and criticizes the ruling monarch. The first of these, El mayor encanto amor, reproves Philip rv’s pursuit of sensual pleasures in time of war and his surrender of power to his prime minister; the last, Hado y divisa de Eeonido y Marfisa, attempts to forge a credibly regal image of the weak Charles n. These plays dramatize the belief that the poly­ phonic richness of theatrical representation can not only serve and guide the king but also generate his authority, that the proper constitution of the central figure in the theater of power may depend on the power of theater. (MRG) Recipes for Reading: Summer Pasta, Lobster a la Riseholme, and Key Lime Pie. Susan J. Leonardi................................................. 340 Abstract. Recipes, whether in cookbooks or in other texts, exemplify embedded and gen­ dered discourse. In the 1951 edition of Irma Rombauer’s The Joy of Cooking, Marion Becker’s editorial altering of the proportions between “bed”—the narrative that frames the recipes—and recipe erodes the bed and erodes as well the usefulness of the recipes. More cognizant than Becker’s text of the importance of this bed, E. F. Benson’s comic novel Mapp and Lucia both embeds the recipe for those masculine—whether male or female—readers unaware of the recipe’s social significance and establishes a connection between recipe with­ holding and narrative. Nora Ephron’s Heartburn uses the recipe and its social meanings to play with notions of reproducibility both literary and culinary and thereby elaborates a connection, implied in the early versions of Joy, between recipe sharing and narrative production and consumption, a connection that “Recipes for Reading” itself attempts to reproduce. (SJL) The Virtues of Reading. Carmen Martin Gaite .... 348 Forum................................................................................................... 354 Report of the Executive Director ...... 363 Forthcoming Meetings and Conferences of General Interest . . 372 Index of Advertisers..................................................................... 373 Professional Notes and Comment ...... 386 Announcements 386 Journal Notes 390 Minutes of the MLA Delegate Assembly 392 Meeting of the MLA Executive Council 402 In Memoriam 410