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Barbara M. Benedict – Chance, Choice, Evolutionary Canonicity, and the Anthologist’s Dilemma: A Response to William E. Engel

Chance, Choice, Evolutionary Canonicity, and the Anthologist’s Dilemma: A Response to William E. Engel Barbara M. Benedict Published in Connotations Vol. 34 (2025) Abstract This response takes issue with Professor Engels’s contention that literary anthologists choose texts that perforce provide readers with a literary canon. By examining the British literary […]

Francesca Orestano – Dickens’s Reality Show: Chromophobia in American Notes

Dickens’s Reality Show: Chromophobia in American Notes Francesca Orestano Published in Connotations Vol. 34 (2025) Abstract This article originates from the Dickens Seminar, traditionally a feature of the biennial ESSE—European Society for the Study of English—Conference, which was held in 2022 at the Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany. The Dickens […]

Richard Dury – Familiar Studies: Stevenson’s Multiple Voices

Familiar Studies: Stevenson’s Multiple Voices Richard Dury Published in Connotations Vol. 34 (2025) Abstract Stevenson’s ten essays collected in Familiar Studies (1882) differ stylistically from other contemporary studies of history, literary criticism, and literary history. They lack the single, authoritative, and impersonal voice that readers would expect of such methodical […]

Roger E. Moore – Medieval Jane Austen: A Response to Fritz Kemmler

Medieval Jane Austen: A Response to Fritz Kemmler Roger E. Moore Published in Connotations Vol. 34 (2025) Abstract In this essay, I respond to Fritz Kemmler’s provocative suggestion that Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is indebted to medieval Christian traditions of moral instruction, particularly the seven deadly sins and their […]

Henry Vaughan’s Poetic Identities: A Response to Jonathan Nauman

Henry Vaughan’s Poetic Identities: A Response to Jonathan Nauman Thomas Willard Published in Connotations Vol. 34 (2025) Abstract Jonathan Nauman suggests that Henry Vaughan twice inaugurated himself as a poet in a new subgenre: first as a Welsh river poet in Olor Iscanus (1651) and then as a born-again Christian […]

Katrin Berndt – “Speak, Mnemosyne”: Genre Performance and Metagenre in Petina Gappah’s Memoir-Novel The Book of Memory

“Speak, Mnemosyne”: Genre Performance and Metagenre in Petina Gappah’s Memoir-Novel The Book of Memory Katrin Berndt Published in Connotations Vol. 34 (2025) Abstract This article contends that the genre of the memoir-novel is inherently metageneric in purpose and design, arguing that it combines the novel’s aesthetic and thematic diversity with […]