The Paramaterial Phantasy
For the past few days, I have been working on a long essay on the anatomy of the eye and the importance of the crystalline humor in early modern elite and popular discourses on sight, but I took some time away from editing to play around with both Flash and a digital edition of George […]
As I have only been starting to blog in earnest for a few months, my experience doing so has given me occasion to reflect on the typical form of the journal article and scholarly publication. While many journals now have online editions or make their publications available through PDF versions, those online editions try to […]
William Baldwin’s Beware the Cat remains shrouded in mystery. The bulk of the short fiction supposedly recreates an oration given by Gregory Streamer on December 28th of the preceding year. Streamer’s fantastic tale concerns an “experiment” he performed that allowed him to hear the language of cats. Streamer’s oration, split into three by the character […]
While writing my last post on Ambroise Paré’s monstrous Phantasy, I came across a reference to Genesis 30 that captured my own imagination. Having researched and written before on the passages from Paré and Montaigne I discussed there, I somehow overlooked the bizarre Biblical reference that appeared in each. In previously thinking about representations of […]
Any film adaptation of a novel, even a popular and already cinematic novel like Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games, requires amendments, omissions, and alterations in the shift from page to screen. One major alteration in Gary Ross’ recent film adaptation created a stir with adoring fans even before the film’s opening day. The famous mockingjay […]
To begin at the beginning of Book II of More’s Utopia, I begin with a footnote: “[Utopia] is about the size of England; it is the shape of an atoll or (for the Freudian-minded) of a womb” (31). While still trying to repress my own latent Freudian thought (my honor’s thesis advisor as an undergraduate, […]
First published in Antwerp around 1521, Lawrence Andrewe’s English translation of the Dutch Der Dieren Palleys of the previous year presents a bold title that indicates that its text will reify the separation of man from beast and declare the nobility of human existence in a world of animals. Through the English title, the bestiary […]