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Category Archives: Reviews
Review of Christos Tsiolkas, Dead Europe
Vintage, 2005, reviewed by Humphrey McQueen A spectre is haunting Dead Europe – the spectre of post-Communism. Post-Communism isn’t the only ghost in this, the third fiction by the Greek-Australian writer Christos Tsiolkas. His new novel implies that after the breaching of the Berlin Wall, all manner of ghouls were let loose, taking flight with [...]
Review of Jonathan Gottschall’s Literature, Science, and a New Humanities
Book under Review: Literature, Science, and a New Humanities, by Jonathan Gottschall. N.Y.: Palgrave Macmillian, 2008. xvi + 217 pp. Abstract Gottschall aims to connect two undeniable patterns in contemporary literary intellectual life: the slow decline into seeming irrelevancy of much of the humanities and the inexorable growing into cognitive dominance of the sciences, physical, [...]
Review of Two Books on Snakes
Books under Review: Them that Believe. The Power and Meaning of the Christian Serpent-Handling Tradition, by Ralph W. Hood Jr. and W. Paul Williamson. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2008. xvi+301 pp. ISBN 978-0-520-25587-6. The Fruit, the Tree, and the Serpent. Why We See so Well, by Lynne A. Isbell. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University [...]
Review of Blakey Vermeule’s Why Do We Care About Literary Characters?
Book under Review: Why Do We Care about Literary Characters? by Blakey Vermeule. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010. 296 pp. Abstract Why Do We Care about Literary Characters? answers the question of its title with a solid understanding of cognitive science and evolutionary psychology. Vermeule posits that our capacity for paying attention evolved in an [...]
Review of Three Books on Evolution and Religion
Books under Review: The Faith Instinct. How Religion Evolved and Why it Matters by Nicholas Wade. New York: Penguin Press, 2009. 310 pp. ISBN 978-1-59420-228-5. The Evolution of Religion: Studies, Theories, and Critiques edited by Joseph Bulbulia, Richard Sosis, Erica Harris, Russell Genet, and Karen Wyman. Santa Marguarita, CA: Collins Foundation Press, 2008. 406 pp. [...]
Review of Clinton Machann’s Masculinity in Four Victorian Epics: A Darwinist Reading
Book under Review: Masculinity in Four Victorian Epics: A Darwinist Reading by Clinton Machann. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010. 166 pp. ISBN 978-0-7546-6687-5. $89.95. Abstract Clinton Machann employs the methods of literary Darwinism to analyze Victorian epic poems by Tennyson, Barrett Browning, Clough, and Browning. This review of his book focuses on the ways Machann bridges [...]
Review: Social Philosophy after Adorno
Lambert Zuidervaart Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. By David Brian Howard “It is not the portrayal of reality as hell on earth but the slick challenge to break out of it that is suspect. If there is anyone today to whom we can pass the responsibilities for the message, we bequeath it not to the [...]
Review: Media Discourse and the Yugoslav Conflicts. Representations of Self and Other
Pål Kolstø (Ed.) Farnham, Burlington: Ashgate, 2009. by Paul C. Bott The relevance of mass media in conflicts has got much attention by the academia over the last years. The anthology edited by Pål Kolstø presents important findings of a research project conducted by The Department of Literature, Area Studies and European Languages at the [...]
Review: Political representation
Frank Ankersmit Stanford: Stanford U Press, 2002 By Peter Csigo In this book review, my aim is to present Frank Ankersmit’s aesthetic theory of democratic representation, as it has been deployed in his book ‘Political Representation’. The reason why I have undertaken the unconventional task of reviewing a seven years old work is my conviction [...]
Review of Andrea Levy, Small Island