•  
  •  
 

The Midwest Quarterly: A Journal of Contemporary Thought

Contents

ARTICLES 

The Changing Seasons of Liberal Leaming  

The Secretive Democratic Regime and the Cover-up of Political Evil  

Dangers of Teaching Literature 

The Globe-trotting Professor: David Lodge's Romance of the Modern Literary Critic  

From Europe to America: Medical and Gender Themes in Late Eighteenth-century Politics 

Witchcraft Pamphlets in Renaissance England: A Particular Case in which the Tale was Told  

POEMS 

Dying Mole 

Dialogue #1: The River  

Sallana 

River  

Transformations  

Central Mountain Time  

Numbers  

Mockingbird 

Stillness of Winter Fields 

Close to Where the Animals Gather  

Fire  

all the news that's fit to eat 

Cricket  

Where the Air is Wild  

Immersions in the Garden 

REVIEWS 

Dennis Donoghue; The Old Moderns: Essays on Literature and Theory 

Julia Markus; Dared and Done: The Marriage of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning 

Earl Lee; Drakulya 

Richard Botelho; The New Individualism: Personal Change to Transform Society 

Abstract

DAVID D. COOPER explores the generational storms that swept across university campuses in the 60s-70s and now the 80s-90s and the meaning of a liberal arts education in response to the values articulated by today's students. Associate Professor of American Thought and Language at Michigan State University, Cooper has written half-a-hundred articles on American literature and culture, literary theory, educational philosophy, psychology and religion, composition studies, literacy, and the philosophy of values. Author of Thomas Merton's Art of Denial: The Evolution of a Radical Humanist (University of Georgia Press, 1989), Cooper's next will be "Amending the Heart: An Essay on Literacy, Morality, and Liberal Learning in America," from which the present essay was taken.

HAIM GORDON wonders why modem democracies connive in ignoring the presence of evil, even to the point of officially denying what the rest of the world knows to be true. Citing several examples of such behavior, Gordon asks if secrecy and justice can ever coexist. Gordon is an Associate Professor of the Department of Education at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. His most recent books are Sartre and Evil and Quicksand: Israel, the Intifada and the Rise of Political Evil in Democracies.

HAROLD P. SIMONSON suggests teachers take seriously the destructive side of literature by respecting the ambiguities, the tension between good and evil that infuses both real and fictional life, rather than relish the dark or extol the light to the exclusion of the other. Author of numerous articles, mainly on American literature, several textbooks and editions, and eight books, including most recently Prairies Within: The Tragic Trilogy of Ole Rolvaag (University of Washington Press, 1987) and Beyond the Frontier: Writers, Western Regionalism, and a Sense of Place (Texas Christian University Press, 1989), Simonson recently retired from the University of Washington after twenty-three years as Professor of English.

JOHN FAWELL looks into the world of the literary deconstructionists as related by David Lodge in his 1984 novel of academia, Small World. Assistant Professor of General Studies at Boston University, Fawell has published articles on French film and theory and 19th-century literature, particularly Symbolist aesthetics, as well as informal essays on beer advertising and the experience of watching videos at home.

PAUL CHRISTENSEN has published five collections of poetry, including most recently Signs of the Whelming and Weights and Measures (1985). He has published book-length studies of Charles Olson and two other American poets, and his poems have appeared in Southern Review, Prairie Schooner, Shenandoah, and seventy other journals. He lives in College Station, Texas.

HENRIETTA S. GOODMAN, Missoula, Montana, has published poems in Passages North and Cutbank.

GEORGE GOTT has published poetry in numerous journals, including The Midwest Quarterly. He has also published two chapbooks, and a collection of poems, Here and There. He lives in Superior, Wisconsin.

FLEDA BROWN JACKSON's second collection of poems, Do Not Peel the Birches, won the 1993 Verna Emery Prize from Purdue University Press. Yarrow published a chapbook of her poems, The Earliest House, in 1994. She has new poems in Iowa Review, Ariel, and American Poetry Review. Her poems have appeared previously in The Midwest Quarterly. She lives in Chesapeake City, Maryland.

JOHN KENNEDY, Branford, Connecticut, has published poetry in The Florida Review, Tar River Poetry, Southern Humanities Review, and other journals. He works as a revenue agent for the Connecticut Tax Department and teaches poetry in elementary schools part-time.

ROBERT KING lives and writes in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

JAMES MERSMANN, Birmingham, Alabama, has published poems in Southern Poetry Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, and Southern Humanities Review. He has also published Out of the Vortex: A Study of Poets and Poetry Against the War, and articles on contemporary poets.

GERI ROSENZWIEG published a book of poems, Under the Jasmine Moon, in 1992. Her poems have also appeared in numerous journals, including Poet & Critic, Greensboro Review, and Lullwater Review. She is a native of Ireland but now lives in Chappaqua, New York.

JUDITH SKILLMAN, Bellevue, Washington, has published poems in many journals, including Poetry, Iowa Review, Poetry Northwest, and Journal of the American Medical Association. Her first book, Worship of the Visible Spectrum, was published in 1988. She has received a Writer's Fellowship from the Washington State Arts Commission and is currently translating poems from Perugia, Italy, which will appear in an anthology, The Poems and the World, #3. Her poems have appeared previously in The Midwest Quarterly.

KATHERINE SONIAT's third collection of poems, A Shared Life, was awarded the Piper Prize by the University of Iowa Press 1993 and also won a Virginia Poetry Prize. Her poems have appeared m The New Republic, The Nation, The North American Review, The American Scholar, and numerous other journals. She lives in Blacksburg, Virginia.

JAMES VALVIS lives and writes in Interlachen, Florida.

JEANNE MURRAY WALKER's third play, Rowing into Light on Lake Adley, won the Virginia Duvall Mann Award at the Charlotte Repertory Theatre New Plays in America Festival in 1995. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals, including The Midwest Quarterly. She lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

TIMOTHY WALSH, Madison, Wisconsin, has published poems, stories, and essays in various journals, most recently in Outerbridge, West Wind Review, and The Christian Science Monitor.

RONALD WARD ALL was born and grew up on the Yakima Indian Reservation in Washington, and now lives in Brooklyn, New York. His poems have appeared in Mudfish, White Sands Poetry Review, and in a chapbook published by the New York School for Social Research. In addition to writing poetry, among other jobs, he has worked at repairing railroad bridges, professional acting, teaching, and is currently an educational lobbyist.

ARTHUR SCHERR reveals the cult of "manliness" as practiced in the years following the inauguration of George Washington as the nation's first president. Using a variety of sources, from newspapers and writings by prominent authorities of the time, Scherr shows a connection between republicanism and virility which informed politics in that age. Having taught history and literature at Kingsborough Community College, Bernard Baruch College, and to newly arrived Russian immigrants in New York City, Scherr is a New York City social worker currently pursuing a doctorate at the City University of New York. He has published in many different journals, including a previous essay on Candide in The Midwest Quarterly.

PATRICK JOSEPH O'CONNOR examines the literature of English witchcraft, taking one case, that of Margaret and Phillip Flower, to illustrate the rhetoric of demon-hunting. A Masters graduate of Wichita State University, O'Connor is currently assembling a collection of essays on the underground of Wichita. He has published essays on the "Vaudeville Venues in Kansas" and "The Weasels: The Underground Success of a Kansas Rock Band."

CHARLES CAGLE is an award-winning creative writer in the Department of English at Pittsburg State University. He teaches his art both on and off the PSU campus.

SUSAN CARLSON, Assistant Professor of English at Pittsburg State University, received her Ph.D. from Ohio State University. She has contributed a chapter on Charlotte Bronte's childhood writing to Women's Writing as a Creation of Safe Space forthcoming from SUNY Press.

PATRICIA De La FUENTE is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at The University of Texas-Pan American. She has co-edited a critical anthology on Sabine R. Ulibarri forthcoming from the University of New Mexico Press.

MARJORIE DONOVAN is Associate Professor of Sociology at Pittsburg State University. Her article "Compulsory and Mass Education" is in Survey of Social Science: Sociology (Salem Press, 1994).

ANNOUNCING THE ANNUAL VICTOR J. EMMETT, JR., MEMORIAL PRIZE AND LECTURE

The editors of The Midwest Quarterly invite submission of articles on any aspect of Victorian literature, Modem British literature, literary criticism and theory, or the teaching of literature to be considered for the annual Victor J. Emmett, Jr., Memorial Prize. The winning article will be published in The Midwest Quarterly, and the author will receive an honorarium and will be invited to Pittsburg State University in September of each year to deliver the Emmett Memorial Lecture. The late Dr. Victor J. Emmett, Jr., was for many years Professor of English at Pittsburg State University and this journal's Editor-in-Chief. The Emmett family endowed this prize and lecture in Dr. Emmett's memory.

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.

Download

Share

COinS
 
 

To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately,
you may Download the file to your hard drive.

NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if you are using a modern (Intel) Mac, there is no official plugin for viewing PDF files within the browser window.