EXPLICATORPub Date : 2021-04-21DOI: 10.1080/00144940.2021.1920357
Yanbin Kang
{"title":"Dickinson’s daisy/sun(set), Daoism, and Emerson","authors":"Yanbin Kang","doi":"10.1080/00144940.2021.1920357","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00144940.2021.1920357","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Regarding “The Daisy follows soft the Sun -” (Fr161), the interpretive energy has been invested upon formulating the love relationship between the daisy and the sun, describing her humbleness, faithfulness, and masochistic attachment, her transformation from subservience to assertiveness or her assertion in disguise of humility. From a combined perspective of Daoism and Ralph Waldo Emerson, this essay argues that this poem features the course of nature, the transcendent moment that gravitates within, and an impersonal love. The poem dramatizes a process of returning to quietude characterized by stillness, darkness, and serenity. The Emersonian vein is clearly evidenced in the daisy’s posture of “[Sitting] shyly” at night, returning to solitude, and finding a rest within an edifying sentiment. The daisy-sunset love echoes Emerson’s spiritual love which presupposes a non-possessive attitude. This strand of theme intersects with softening the light, an idea which is essential for a flourishing state of being and interaction.","PeriodicalId":42643,"journal":{"name":"EXPLICATOR","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-04-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/00144940.2021.1920357","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42895114","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EXPLICATORPub Date : 2021-03-09DOI: 10.1080/00144940.2021.1891015
Jingjing Zhao
{"title":"From “Haworth Churchyard” to “Courage”: Emily Brontë Perceived by Matthew Arnold","authors":"Jingjing Zhao","doi":"10.1080/00144940.2021.1891015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00144940.2021.1891015","url":null,"abstract":"Matthew Arnold wrote the poem “Haworth Churchyard” in 1855, seven years after Emily Bront€e’s death. The poem is a moving tribute stimulated by her sister Charlotte Bront€e’s death, at a time when Arnold was not very active poetically. Remarking upon the achievements of more than one female writer, Arnold had nevertheless shaped the ending of the poem to resonate with the ending of Emily’s novel Wuthering Heights: the plover is heard on the moors, Yearly awake to behold The opening summer, the sky, The shining moorland – to hear The drowsy bee, as of old, Hum o’er the thyme, the grouse Call from the heather in bloom! ... the rain Lashes the newly-made grave. Unquiet souls! (Arnold, 429) It is not difficult to see that these lines echo the last lines of Wuthering Heights: I sought, and soon discovered, the three headstones on the slope next the moor ... I lingered round them, under that benign sky: watched the moths fluttering among the heath and hare-bells; listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass; and wondered how any one could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth. (Bront€e, 300)","PeriodicalId":42643,"journal":{"name":"EXPLICATOR","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-03-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/00144940.2021.1891015","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49555351","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EXPLICATORPub Date : 2021-03-04DOI: 10.1080/00144940.2021.1891013
W. Kim
{"title":"“Ethical” or “Ethnical”?: Some Textual Errors in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird","authors":"W. Kim","doi":"10.1080/00144940.2021.1891013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00144940.2021.1891013","url":null,"abstract":"One of the most distinguished American scholars of the mid-20th century, F. O. Matthiessen was fascinated by that strange, suggestive phrase “soiled fish of the sea” in Herman Melville’s fifth novel White-Jacket. Matthiessen was so taken with the phrase that in his American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman, he provided a metaphysical and detailed interpretation of the fish. The phrase turned out to be, however, a mere typographical error of “coiled fish of the sea,” the mistake that an unimaginative typesetter inadvertently created, not Melville. The renowned textual scholar Fredson Bowers demonstrates this as an apposite illustration of the extent to which textual criticism is a most important and fascinating branch of study. This scholarly episode clearly shows that it is all too easy, without a reliable text, to build a scholarly castle in the air. This particular issue related to textual criticism is, by and large, not solely applicable to classic literary works but also to what has been oxymoronically called “modern classics”. It is all too easy to forget that more recently published works are not free from typographical error and mistakes. Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), inarguably one of the best-known (and most widely read) books in the United States, provides an excellent illustration of how extremely difficult it is to establish a reliable, authoritative text. First published in 1960 by J. B. Lippincott, the book has sold more than 40 million copies globally, and continues to sell more than a million copies a year and has been translated into more than 40 languages. Unfortunately, however, the novel contains a few textual errors, which have been overlooked by literary critics and scholars. The two standard texts of To Kill a Mockingbird are a hardcover 40th Anniversary edition published by HarperCollins in 1999 and a paperback Harper Perennial Modern Classics edition published in 2002 by HarperCollins—including a mass market paperback edition published in 1982 by Warner Books, replaced by Hachette Book Group in 1988 and the electronic version of the text published in 2014 by HarperCollins. In Harper","PeriodicalId":42643,"journal":{"name":"EXPLICATOR","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-03-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/00144940.2021.1891013","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48690887","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EXPLICATORPub Date : 2021-02-22DOI: 10.1080/00144940.2021.1891011
J. Hwang
{"title":"Narratives of “borders conquered, disfigured” in Myung Mi Kim’s Under Flag","authors":"J. Hwang","doi":"10.1080/00144940.2021.1891011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00144940.2021.1891011","url":null,"abstract":"The experimental nature of Myung Mi Kim’s first book Under Flag still defines her poetry as “too obscure” (Huang 86). This response is not exaggerated as the narratives of Korean immigrants, a substantial part of the book, are always obfuscated in fragments. Yet the obscurity of Kim’s poems also invites readers to reassemble pieces, fill in the gaps, and reconstruct a narrative, albeit incomplete, from various points of view. An example can derive from a contemporary understanding of “borders” that appears twice in the title poem, “Under Flag.” Borders have conventionally been deemed fixed and territorial, serving to divide a nation-state from others, to ensure sovereignty and national security, and to shape national identity and character. The migration and mobility, however, reindicates borders as the business of not only nation-states but also migrants who may find themselves as others inside territory. While migrants’ status reveals that “borders can be anywhere” (Rumford 13), borders also offer an opportunity for connection. The presence of borders leads us to recognize people outside the territory, interact with them, and influence each other. Under Flag embodies the complexity of borders to both divide and connect by focusing on the Korean War, frequently referred to as the “forgotten” war. Kim’s use of fragments can then be understood as a way to show the insufficient recognition of border-crossing effects in American society and thereby to reassess American heritage and history from the perspective of a Korean immigrant who experiences multiple borders. The notion “borders” cannot be overlooked at the beginning of “Under Flag”:","PeriodicalId":42643,"journal":{"name":"EXPLICATOR","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-02-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/00144940.2021.1891011","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42927084","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EXPLICATORPub Date : 2021-02-16DOI: 10.1080/00144940.2021.1891014
Sarah Yoon
{"title":"Color Symbolisms of Diseases: Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death”","authors":"Sarah Yoon","doi":"10.1080/00144940.2021.1891014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00144940.2021.1891014","url":null,"abstract":"Four months before the publication of the short story “The Masque of the Red Death” in Graham’s Magazine, Edgar Allan Poe’s wife contracted tuberculosis. While singing at the piano, nineteen-year-old Virginia began coughing up blood (Quinn 347-48; Silverman 178-81). In the following months, Poe took to drinking heavily, which led to a period of alcoholic amnesia in June 1842 (Silverman 184; Kennedy 24, 45). “The Masque of the Red Death,” published in May 1842, bears the traces of Poe’s despair over his wife’s illness and his deepening dependence on alcohol. In this short story, the masque is brought to an abrupt end with the appearance of the Red Death, who lays low the revelers and dancers. Remarkable for its color symbolisms, this short story also reveals how the physical symptoms of diseases can provide visual cues to explore the unknown processes of transmission and infection. The color symbolisms can also be associated with the symptoms of epidemic diseases throughout nineteenth-century Europe and America. In the nineteenth century, tuberculosis (or consumption) was a widespread killer, leading to more deaths than cholera and smallpox combined (Byrne 1). Pulmonary tuberculosis caused a fifth of all deaths in England in the first decades of the nineteenth century, with deaths declining from 1830 (Byrne 12). In America, tuberculosis caused up to an estimated fourth of all deaths in the nineteenth century (Silverman 182). Katherine Byrne writes that, during this period, tuberculosis was “the biggest single killer of men and women in their physical and productive prime ... those aged between fifteen and thirty-five” (12). Both Poe’s parents likely died from tuberculosis in the early 1810s, shortly after his birth (Kennedy 19). Besides tuberculosis, cholera epidemics also spread through Europe and America from the early 1830s. Cholera had earlier struck Europe in 1832 before spreading to Canada and America in 1833. The various symptoms of these diseases invite literary exploration through color symbolism, which is a marked feature of Poe’s “The Masque of the Red","PeriodicalId":42643,"journal":{"name":"EXPLICATOR","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-02-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/00144940.2021.1891014","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44429622","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EXPLICATORPub Date : 2021-02-16DOI: 10.1080/00144940.2021.1891012
Meichen Liu
{"title":"Dysfunctional tribalism in Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises","authors":"Meichen Liu","doi":"10.1080/00144940.2021.1891012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00144940.2021.1891012","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper explores the cliquish behavior of the group of friends and acquaintances in Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, arguing that sexual dysfunction is portrayed as part of a larger malaise of dysfunctional tribalism which affects social dynamics in the modern world.","PeriodicalId":42643,"journal":{"name":"EXPLICATOR","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-02-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/00144940.2021.1891012","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47880229","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EXPLICATORPub Date : 2020-12-23DOI: 10.1080/00144940.2020.1868390
Hannah Claire Dillashaw
{"title":"“‘Aint Never Done Anything but Sing”: Understanding Betsey through Her Canary","authors":"Hannah Claire Dillashaw","doi":"10.1080/00144940.2020.1868390","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00144940.2020.1868390","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The protagonist in Mary Wilkins Freeman’s short story “A Poetess” has a complex relationship with her poetry and how others perceive it. This relationship can be analyzed and understood through the actions of her pet canary and how it behaves in certain instances.","PeriodicalId":42643,"journal":{"name":"EXPLICATOR","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-12-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/00144940.2020.1868390","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49212118","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EXPLICATORPub Date : 2020-12-23DOI: 10.1080/00144940.2020.1868389
Qin Lin
{"title":"Bacon’s The Advancement of Learning: A Possible Influence on Jonson’s The Alchemist","authors":"Qin Lin","doi":"10.1080/00144940.2020.1868389","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00144940.2020.1868389","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Although sources for parts of the plot of Ben Jonson’s The Alchemist, particular scenes, specific speeches, and its use of the language of alchemy have been suggested, critics have ignored the connections between the play and Francis Bacon’s The Advancement of Learning. This article argues that Jonson’s dramatization of astrology, magic, and alchemy in The Alchemist is probably informed by Bacon’s ideas about the three distempers of learning in his The Advancement of Learning.","PeriodicalId":42643,"journal":{"name":"EXPLICATOR","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-12-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/00144940.2020.1868389","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46401834","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EXPLICATORPub Date : 2020-10-01DOI: 10.1080/00144940.2020.1844123
Hogan D. Schaak
{"title":"The Give and Take: Feminist Redefinition of Detective Fiction in Maisie Dobbs and Death at La Fenice","authors":"Hogan D. Schaak","doi":"10.1080/00144940.2020.1844123","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00144940.2020.1844123","url":null,"abstract":"Jacqueline Winspear and Donna Leon have written two very different, but both feminist, detective novels in Maisie Dobbs (2003) and Death at La Fenice (1992). The novels take place in London and Ven...","PeriodicalId":42643,"journal":{"name":"EXPLICATOR","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/00144940.2020.1844123","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44304434","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EXPLICATORPub Date : 2020-10-01DOI: 10.1080/00144940.2020.1844125
D. M. Powell
{"title":"An Operatic Inspiration for F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “Winter Dreams”","authors":"D. M. Powell","doi":"10.1080/00144940.2020.1844125","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00144940.2020.1844125","url":null,"abstract":"In December 1922, when F. Scott Fitzgerald had published two successful novels and two short story collections and was generally near the height of his popularity, Metropolitan magazine brought out...","PeriodicalId":42643,"journal":{"name":"EXPLICATOR","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/00144940.2020.1844125","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42941042","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}