Archives: Articles


Sharon R. Wilson – In Search of the Dead in Atwood’s “Isis in Darkness” and Other Texts: A Response to Burkhard Niederhoff’s “The Return of the Dead in Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing and Alias Grace

In Search of the Dead in Atwood’s “Isis in Darkness” and Other Texts: A Response to Burkhard Niederhoff’s “The Return of the Dead in Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing and Alias Grace”1) Sharon R. Wilson Published in Connotations Vol. 19.1-3 (2009/10) Atwood’s non-fiction work, Negotiating with the Dead (2002), underlines many of […]

Fiona Tolan – The Psychoanalytic Theme in Margaret Atwood’s Fiction: A Response to Burkhard Niederhoff

The Psychoanalytic Theme in Margaret Atwood’s Fiction: A Response to Burkhard Niederhoff6) Fiona Tolan Published in Connotations Vol. 19.1-3 (2009/10) In Margaret Atwood’s 2003 dystopian novel, Oryx and Crake, the protagonist and narrator Jimmy—later known as Snowman—persistently presses the beautiful and enigmatic Oryx for details of her exotically traumatic past; […]

Margaret Rogerson – Should we believe her? Margaret Atwood and Uncertainty: A Response to Burkhard Niederhoff

Should we believe her? Margaret Atwood and Uncertainty: A Response to Burkhard Niederhoff Margaret Rogerson Published in Connotations Vol. 19.1-3 (2009/10) Burkhard Niederhoff’s analysis of Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing (1972) and Alias Grace (1996) speaks cogently of the Canadian author’s fondness for ghosts, her interest in the notion of survival, and […]

Henry Hart – Lowell’s Tropes of Falling, Rising, Standing: A Response to Frank J. Kearful

Lowell’s Tropes of Falling, Rising, Standing: A Response to Frank J. Kearful Henry Hart Published in Connotations Vol. 19.1-3 (2009/10) Frank Kearful has written an insightful essay on some of Lowell’s fundamental preoccupations in Lord Weary’s Castle. I was impressed by the critic’s investigation of Lowell’s poetics—of his tropes, metrical […]

Efraim Sicher – Reanimation, Regeneration, Re-evaluation: Rereading Our Mutual Friend

Reanimation, Regeneration, Re-evaluation: Rereading Our Mutual Friend Efraim Sicher Published in Connotations Vol. 19.1-3 (2009/10) Leona Toker’s essay “Decadence and Renewal in Dickens’s Our Mutual Friend,” published in a section under the somewhat ghoulish heading “Restored from Death,” takes up the Jamesian disdain for Dickens’s last novel as a product […]

John R. Reed – A Letter in Response to Leona Toker’s “Decadence and Renewal in Dickens’s Our Mutual Friend

A Letter in Response to Leona Toker’s “Decadence and Renewal in Dickens’s Our Mutual Friend” John R. Reed Published in Connotations Vol. 19.1-3 (2009/10) The argument of Toker’s essay mainly focuses, in different ways, on patterns of decline that either fulfill themselves or are reversed. I think all readers of […]

Graham Allen – Reanimation or Reversibility in “Valerius: The Reanimated Roman”: A Response to Elena Anastasaki

Reanimation or Reversibility in “Valerius: The Reanimated Roman”: A Response to Elena Anastasaki Graham Allen Published in Connotations Vol. 19.1-3 (2009/10) It has been a struggle to transcend the essentially biographical manner in which Romantic women writers like Mary Shelley have traditionally been read.31) In her introduction to the Pickering […]

Anita Gilman Sherman – “Donne’s Sermons as Re-enactments of the Word”: A Response to Margret Fetzer

“Donne’s Sermons as Re-enactments of the Word”: A Response to Margret Fetzer Anita Gilman Sherman Published in Connotations Vol. 19.1-3 (2009/10) Margret Fetzer is surely right that John Donne used theatrical strategies of impersonation and identification in his sermons so as to bring home the drama of salvation. By re−enacting […]