Argues that the black aesthetic can be affirmed while also insisting that its affirmation cannot be achieved or denied by mere a priori assumptions, polemics, personalisms, and vague generalities--its affirmation must be based in and validated by the tradition--historical, cultural, and socio-political--of Afro American expression, it is stated.…

The most valuable contribution of a viable gay criticism may be in promoting interaction between homosexual and heterosexual segments of the literary public. (JH)

"Fantasy-theme analysis" suggests that the individual and collective dramatizations of a group's goals, scope, and activities--the group's conceptualized reality, or fantasy theme--can be used to study social movements. Based on the notion of fantasizing in small groups, this analytic approach provides a method of discovering how…

A recounting of how the author's graduate training failed with everything he considered important. (JH)

Written to stimulate interest in an evaluation of Hamlin Garland's total production of work on the American Indian, this article suggests a reevaluation of some of Garland's work in light of the current interest in American Indian studies. (JC)

An increasingly popular form of mass media persuasion is the "docudrama," a hybrid of the informative documentary and the dramatic film. The docudrama format presents viewers with a purposive viewpoint or value-laden interpretation of reality and contains some degree of historical accuracy and factual authenticity. The docudrama also…

Presenting the argument that contemporary criticism has lost its moral authority (and blaming modernism for that loss), Goodheart focuses on contending spiritual views. In particular he analyzes the dialectic between the Protestant-inspired humanist tradition of Carlyle, Arnold, Ruskin, and Lawrence and the decay of Catholicism represented by…

The essays in this collection touch upon most of the major themes in Fitzgerald's work and upon his strengths and weaknesses as a writer. In selecting materials an attempt was made to focus upon recent critical articles, to avoid reprinting articles already available in other collections, and to refrain from using portions of books. Articles…

This study sought to discover what critical apparatus would be most appropriate for observers of verbal discourse who choose to accept Aristotelian or "information theory" causal accounts of dynamic process. The major conclusions were: (1) Both causal systems employ a static grid to express relationships; but while the Aristotelian relations are…

The twelve essays (each by a different author) in this volume cover drama in a liberal education, comment on the tragic hero, remarks on "Hamlet" and "Hedda Gabler," notes on music and drama, comment on didactic drama, an examination of "Andre," studies of the Haymarket Theatre, London productions of American plays,…

This book is based on the York Computer Inventory of Prose Style, which seeks to provide a quantitative description of the syntactic characteristics of the literary language of specific authors over the last 400 years. After a brief theoretical introduction and a description of texts and sampling procedures, the discussion turns to specific…

The insistence on "sticking to the issues" in political argument is presented as an ideological commitment rather than a dictum of logic. Edmund Burke's alternative criterion of decision, derived from public evaluation of a leader's image, is used to contrast the contemporary dedication to issue-oriented political argument. (JF)