Anton Pavlovich Chekhov spent 6 of the last 7 years of his life at Yalta (located on the Crimean Peninsula) where he had a house constructed in order that he might live in a climate favorable to his failing health. During these years Chekhov married the actress Olga Knipper and met Leo Tolstoy, who was near the end of his life. Chekhov also…

Discusses the emergence of a new kind of criticism which has as its philosophical starting point the rejections of mimesis, and traces the process leading up to the development of this critical theory--a process which began in English criticism of the romantic period. (DD)

Discusses the Fluxus revolution in literary expression during which the tradition of letters was challenged through erasure of the separation of the verbal from other forms of expression and through the rejection of the passive role of the reader. Distinguishes Fluxus works from Concrete Poetry, one of their direct precursors. (RS)

The present study, in an attempt to suggest factors which were at work in giving a man of such varied interests and predispositions the peculiar shape that they did, focuses upon the pathway that Wilson took during the 1920s, while questing for the mysteries of Axel's castle. (Author)

Born in 1900, Jacques Prevert was destined to become one of the most popular poets of the twentieth century. After spending his young adulthood with artists linked with the surrealist movement, Prevert became a satirist, social critic, songwriter, writer of children's stories and television programs, and poet. Prevert's interests in the visual…

Presents a perspective on the teaching of literature from the 1940s to the 1970s. (DD)

Assesses 50 years of scholarship on American muckrakers and muckraking, identifies works devoted significantly to that topic, and suggests a fundamental issue to be confronted in studying muckraking. (GT)

In 1927 the Brazilian modernist writer, Jose Bento Monteiro Lobato, traveled to New York City with his family, where he took up a position as economic attache at the Brazilian Consulate. For 4 years he and his family lived in Jackson Heights, while he worked and observed the feverish activity that was making the United States the foremost and most…

Puts four poems written by Vladimir Mayakovsky into social and historical context by performing a content analysis. Discusses the revolutionary nature of the poetic and typographic communication and the circumstances surrounding the poems' publication. (KEH)

To study any social movement is ultimately to examine an intricate social drama. With the publication of "The Jungle" in 1906, Upton Sinclair emerged from the stormy background of the muckraking movement to become one of that movement's principal actors. But in the 1920s, long after the Progressive reformers dusted and put away their…

Intended to expose the oversimplifications and misrepresentations of popular readings of the Harlem Renaissance, this book reveals the truly composite nature of American literary culture. Noting that a broader sense of the intellectual context of the Harlem Renaissance has been missing from literary histories, the book supplies an appreciation of…

Taking off from the theme that makes Laurence Yep such a popular and beloved young adult author--the outsider seeking identity and connection in a strange, foreign world--this study of Yep's most important works shows how his experiences as a Chinese American in San Francisco fill his stories with firsthand knowledge of what it is like to be an…

In the 19th century alone, Christopher Columbus was the subject of hundreds of poems that rarely questioned his voyage, his methods, or his place in human history. However, the scholarly work and political realities of the 20th century have undermined the noble, heroic visions conveyed by the poets. Modern readers/students have a dual duty to…

Part of a larger rhetorical biography, this essay examines several of the narratives of the southern writer and humorist, Irvin S. Cobb (1876-1944), to understand the unhappy "ordinary experience" of Southern racism and sexism. Following a biographical introduction, the first section discusses Cobb's narratives, while the second deals…

Explores difficulties in translating and understanding visual poetry created by a linguistically different culture. Provides historical context and analyzes the design process of El Lissitzky's typographic presentation of Vladimir Mayakovsky's poems. Transposes the visual wordplays found in the original Cyrillic typography into the Roman alphabet.…