Ambiguity and the Search for Meaning: English and American Studies at the Beginning of the 21st Century Volume 1: Literature Ambiguity and the Search for Meaning: English and American Studies at the Beginning of the 21st Century Volume 1: Literature Edited by Monika Coghen Zygmunt Mazur Beata Piątek Jagiellonian University Press The publication of this volume was supported by the Faculty of Philology of the Jagiellonian University, and the Institute of English Philology, Jagiellonian University. BOARD OF REVIEWERS Teresa Bela Joelle Biele Julie Campbell Benjamin Colbert Marta Gibińska-Marzec Aleksandra Kędzierska David Malcolm Irena Przemęcka Krystyna Stamirowska-Sokołowska Lisa Vargo Anna Walczuk COVER DESIGN Marcin Klag TYPESETTING Sebastian Leśniewski TECHNICAL EDITOR Mirosław Ruszkiewicz © Copyright by Monika Coghen, Zygmunt Mazur, Beata Piątek & Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego First edition, Kraków 2010 No part of this book may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher. ISBN 978-83-233-3117-9 I WYDAWNICTWO] UNIWERSYTETU JAGIELLOŃSKIEGO www.wuj.pl Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego Redakcja: ul. Michałowskiego 9/2, 31-126 Kraków tel. 12-631-18-81, 12-631-18-82, fax 12-631-18-83 Dystrybucja: tel. 12-631-01-97, tel./fax 12-631-01-98 tel. kom. 0506-006-674, e-mail: [email protected] Konto: PEKAO SA, nr 80 1240 4722 1111 0000 4856 3325 A Bibl. Jagiell. ■ Contents Preface................................................................................................................................... 9 ELINOR SHAFFER Seven Times Seven Types of Ambiguity: William Empson and Twentieth-Century Criticism....................................................................................... 11 ROBERT REHDER Meaning and Change of Form: Eliot, Pound and Niedecker............................................. 25 TERENCE MCCARTHY Ambiguity or “The Eye of Mere Observation” in Malory’s Morte Darthur . 51 Part I Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century British Literature 65 BARBARA NAPIERALSKA The Freedom of Art, The Art of Freedom: Sir Philip Sidney’s An Apologie for Poetrie and George Puttenham’s The Arte of English Poesie....................................... 67 MICHAŁ CHOIŃSKI Pathos, Logos and Ethos'. Rhetorical Duel between Brutus and Antony in William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar............................................................................ 77 JOANNA MOCZYŃSKA The Anatomy of Ambiguity: Interpreting John Lyly’s Euphues ...................................... 89 CLARINDA E. CALMA Symbolism of Light and Darkness in Selected Prose and Poetry of John Donne . 99 KLAUDIA ŁĄCZYŃSKA “A Spectacle of Blood”: The Art of Suffering in Andrew Marvell’s “The Unfortunate Lover”...................................................................................................109 6 CONTENTS Part II Eighteenth-and Nineteenth-Century British Literature 119 JOANNA MACIULEWICZ Fanny Burney’s Cecilia, or An Heiress’ Search for Meaning in the World of Fashion .........................................................................................................................121 ELEANOR SPENCER The Ambiguity of Violence in the Poetry of Robert Browning....................................... 133 AGNIESZKA SETECKA “Knitting the Days Away”: Needlework in Margaret Oliphant’s Salem Chapel . 145 ANA CRISTINA BANICERU Lewis Carroll’s Alice Books: A New Perspective ........................................................... 155 MONIKA MAZUREK “Going over to Rome”: The Changing Attitudes towards Roman Catholicism in Disraeli’s Sybil and Lothair ..........................................................................................167 Part III Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century British Literature 177 IZABELA CURYLLO-KLAG The Artist versus Commodity Culture: Wyndham Lewis and the Dilemmas of Bourgeois-Bohemianism...............................................................................................179 IZOLDA GABRIELE GENIUSIENE Meaning Created by the Language of Geoffrey Hill’s Poetry ......................................... 187 OLGA GLEBOVA Uncanny Authors, Ambiguous Tales: Metafictional Discourse in J. M. Coetzee’s Novels Foe and The Master of Petersburg ............................................ 199 AGNIESZKA MIKSZA “The Doer is Merely a Fiction Added to the Deed: The Deed is Everything” (F. Nietzsche). Tales of “Doing Gender” in Tipping the Velvet.......................................211 SCOTT THURSTON “Need Keeps the Book of Dying Open”: Negative Capability in Gil Ott’s The Whole Note..................................................................................................................221 CONTENTS 7 STEPHEN REGAN The Poetry of Seamus Heaney and the Ambiguous Politics of the Ceasefire . 229 ANNA WALCZUK Unfinished Narratives of Sparkian Finishing School....................................................... 241 EWA SZYMANSKA-SABALA The Cons and Pros of Being Dead: The Meaning of Life and Language in Hotel World by Ali Smith ............................................................................................ 251 BEATA PIĄTEK “The Waxworks of Memory” or the Search for the Meaning of Life in John Banville’s The Sea ............................................................................................... 261 Part IV American Literature 269 SARKA BUBIKOVA Ambiguous Heritage and the Search for Identity in Native American Fiction . 271 MICHAŁ PALMOWSKI Instilling the Sentiment: The Poetic Philosophy of Ralph Waldo Emerson .... 283 DANUTA ROMANIUK The Jewish Other Half: Girlhood on the Lower East Side as Presented in Immigrant Narratives ....................................................................................................293 LYUBA PERVUSHINA, RICHARD R. E. KANIA Raymond Chandler and His Ambiguous Relationships to Women: A Search for Hidden Meanings within His Crime Novels................................................................303 KATARZYNA HAUZER Ambiguity and the Grotesque: History, Humor, and McCarthyism in Joseph Heller’s Catch-22...............................................................................................................313 JULIE CAMPBELL The Legacy of Samuel Beckett in Paul Auster’s Work.................................................... 325 DAMIAN PODLEŚNY Media Simulation and Manipulation in Two Novels of Philip K. Dick from the 1960s................................................................................................................... 339 8 CONTENTS Part V Comparative Literature 349 BARTŁOMIEJ BŁASZKIEWICZ The Motif of Darkness in John Dowland’s “In Darkness Let Me Dwell” and George Harrison’s “Beware of Darkness”................................................................. 351 MARGARETE RUBIK Hyperbole and Understatement in the Depiction of the Emotions ..................................361 MONIKA COGHEN Byronie Outcasts and Polish Exiles...................................................................................377 CLAUDIA IOANA DOROHOLSCHI Weak Authorities: Authorship and Meaning in the 1890s ..................................... 387 GRAŻYNA BRANNY The “Pearl Effect”: Familial Taboos of the South in E. A. Poe, E. Glasgow, P. Taylor and W. Faulkner................................................................................................ 401 IB JOHANSEN Spooky Houses in Western Fiction: From Poe’s House of Usher to Danielewski’s House of Leaves....................................................................................411 PAUL TITCHMARSH Myth and Reality: Points of Departure in American Literature and Culture in the Nineteenth Century..................................................................................................425 WOLFGANG GÓRTSCHACHER Michael Hamburger’s Crusade against Ignorance and Prejudice: German Poetry and the United States.........................................................................................................441 Preface The present volume offers a selection of papers presented at the Eleventh In­ ternational April Conference “Ambiguity and the Search for Meaning: English and American Studies at the Beginning of the 21st Century,” which took place in Kraków on 23-25 April 2008. The occasion gathered specialists in English and American studies from several European countries and the United States, continuing the tradition of triennial meetings held in Kraków since 1978. It has become a tradition for each successive April Conference to attract more participants than the previous one; in 2008, 138 linguists and literary scholars met in Kraków and 120 papers were read. This volume contains a selection of 37 papers on literature and culture. The authors address one of the main dilemmas facing the literary scholar: how to position themselves towards the issue of ambiguity in literature. The universality of the theme resulted in a variety of critical approaches, starting from Terence McCarthy’s staunch defence of definite meaning in Malory’s Morte Darthur to Robert Rehder’s celebration of ambiguity in Modernist poetry and art. Elinor Shaffer reminded us of the significance of William Empson’s Seven Types of Ambiguity, whose 80th anniversary of publication comes in 2010, for the development of English studies. The articles span over 600 years of writing in the English language from Malory to Banville,