The Midwest Quarterly; Vol. 34 No. 4

Authors

• D. G. Myers
• Terry White
• Sheldon W. Liebman
• Judith Ann Spector
• Mark Allister
• Joy L. Davis
• Kat Snider Blackbird
• Midwest Quarterly Editors

Contents

ARTICLES 

Robert Penn Warren and the History of Criticism  

Allegorical Evil, Existentialist Choice in O'Connor, Oates, and Styron 

Still Crazy After All These Years: Madness in Modern Fiction 

Marriage, Endings, and Art in Updike and Atwood 

Living the Questions, Writing the Story: Sue Hubbell's A Country Year 

The Rituals of Dining in Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence 

POEMS 

COVEN POEMS 

1. Called or Uncalled 

2. The Artist's Talk About Domestic Animals  

3. A Trip to Atlantic City 

4. Soft Nightgowns the Color of Gray Sky 

5. Her Name is Helen 

6. Divorced White Female Seeking  

7. Warrior 

8. Painting the Shadow 

9. The Nightmares She Dreams for Us 

10. The Proper Woman 

11. Still Believing in Androgyne 

12. On the Late Acquisition of a Soul 

13. Letting the Body Love What it Loves 

GREAT BLUE HERON POEMS 

1. Confession 

2. Revelation  

3. Conversion  

4. Supplication 

5. Forgiveness 

INDEX to Volume XXXIV 

Abstract

How should literary critics accomplish their necessary judgments? Robert Penn Warren, though marginalized by some historians of literary criticism in the twentieth century, has, in D. G. MYERS's opinion, an important contribution to our understanding of the discipline. Professor of English at Texas A & M University, Myers has published articles on the history and theory of criticism in a number of journals and is completing a book on the history of creative writing in American literary education.

TERRY WHITE explores the writings of three contemporary authors on the nature of the choices humans face when confronted with evil. Assistant Professor of English at the Ashtabula Branch Campus of Kent State University, White has written a drama on Dr. Josef Mengele, a thriller novel, and his revision (for Greenwood Press) of Myron J. Smith, Jr.'s Cloak and Dagger Fiction: An Annotated Guide to Spy Thrillers is to appear this year.

Surveying madness as it has been used by twentieth-century writers, SHELDON W. LIEBMAN divides them into those who see the madhouse as a refuge for those wiser than their peers, as a prison for those who hold opinions dangerous to those who hold power over them, and as a moral indictment against conventional society. Lecturer in English at Roosevelt University and Lead Teacher of Lewis University College Program of Stateville Correctional Center, Liebman has published scholarly articles on Hawthorne, Emerson, Poe, James, Frost, and T.S. Eloit.

KAT SNIDER BLACKBIRD is a Ph.D. candidate in English at Kent State University. Her poems have appeared in The New York Quarterly, Poetry Motel, Slipstream, The Coventry Reader, The Cleveland Reader, The Icon, and other journals. She is founder-director of the Blackbird-Walker Center for the Living and Performing Arts, which is devoted to celebrating and nurturing creativity and the human spirit. She lives with her family in rural Burton, Ohio.

Just what follows marriage in the view of two contemporary novelists? The problem, as JUDITH ANN SPECTOR examines it, is that males and females may see it differently and yet in the same way wonder how life goes on and how it all ends. Specialist in gender studies and psychoanalytic criticism of contemporary literature, Spector is Associate Professor of English at Indiana University-Purdue University Columbus. In addition to articles in a number of journals, she is the contributing editor for Gender Studies: New Directions in Feminist Criticism published by Bowling Green Popular Press.

If divorce sunders a marriage of many years, how does one recover? For writer Carol Bly, as MARK ALLISTER explains, this involved re-seeing nature on her Ozark farm by means of writing about the small/large world around her. Teacher of American literature and writing at St. Olaf College in Minnesota, Allister has published essays on Faulkner and James Agee, on writing and teaching literature, and on autobiography and non-fiction.

Edith Wharton uses occasions of dining to dissect the often-vicious underside of outwardly polite ritual in the Victorian Age, as JOY L. DAVIS shows. During a career of 35 years Davis was Professor of English at the University of Missouri, Boston University, Ohio Wesleyan University, and the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota, and she is now, in retirement, host of the "Joy Davis Seminars" in American, English, and European Literature.

Permissions to Use

In accordance with database agreements, the full text of the issue is not available for download. Pittsburg State Digital Commons has only provided the front matter for author and publication information.

Recommended Citation

Myers, D. G.; White, Terry; Liebman, Sheldon W.; Spector, Judith Ann; Allister, Mark; Davis, Joy L.; Blackbird, Kat Snider; and Midwest Quarterly Editors (1993) "The Midwest Quarterly; Vol. 34 No. 4," The Midwest Quarterly: A Journal of Contemporary Thought: Vol. 34: Iss. 4, Article 1.
Available at: https://digitalcommons.pittstate.edu/mwq/vol34/iss4/1