Nicholas Meagher

If a narrative lacks the key ingredients of a compelling tale, yet still manages to cast influence over the evolution of Western literature, the question is no longer: is the Romance of Tristran valuable? Its value is vindicated by our contemporary discussion of Béroul. The question becomes: what is the nature of Béroul’s enduring value despite its shoddy design? How can we make sense of its overwhelming 12th century popularity despite our contemporary bewilderment? A question of brow-raising intrigue to the undergraduates who instinctively recoil from Béroul.

In this paper I argue that Eliot successfully elevates the mere empiricism of detached observation to the sublime art of moral sentiment by articulating the events of Middlemarch through an allusive network of scientific metaphor. This strategy implies a mode of observation which asserts Eliot’s moral position and unifies it with the broader enterprise of Victorian progress. Fundamentally, Eliot augments our concept of interpersonal truth by omnisciently explicating the events of Middlemarch through this allusive network. The focus of this paper will be upon the structure of scientific metaphor as it is the vehicle of implication for Eliot’s morality.

In this paper I argue that a country’s economy, politics, and historical background are essential to the study of their national literature. Understanding these contextual dimensions is essential because they constitute the form, content and variety of images furnishing a particular literature. Their examination also allows the comparatist to illuminate the conduits of transmission between evolving literatures. In fact, by being constitutive, these dimensions go beyond essential consideration; they are unavoidable. Whether a writer conjures her imagery in harmony with the norms implied by the economy, politics and history of her context, or conjures contra with iconoclastic contempt, she is, in either case, reacting to the same unavoidable contextual dimensions.

The Importance of Being Earnest is a snake's nest of paradox and deception in which "Wilde simultaneously engage[s] with and mock[s] the forms and rules of Society" (Jackson 1997 p. 169). Beneath an enchanting veneer of triviality, Oscar Wilde lambasts Victorian rectitude with witty wordplay and ceaseless inversion. As a vehicle which achieves elaboration through compression, Wilde's play conveys manifold meaning whilst retaining a lithe elusiveness.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is “meta-aesthetic” (Grady 2008) in that it incessantly foregrounds a self-awareness of the underlying principles of Elizabethan dramatic convention and generates comedy through their transgression. This establishes an underlying comic cycle which relies on the link between transgression and transformation for impetus. This comic cycle - being Dream’s fundamental dramatic mechanism – transgresses an extant order to recombine its elements through a transformation which replenishes the play with a stability ripe for re-disturbance.