New Orleans Review LOYOLA UNWERSITY VOLUME 11NUMBER3141$11.00 Cover: "Robert the Iceman" by Lee Crum l ;'O ,·~· New Orleans Review Fall/Winter 1984 Editors John Biguenet, Art and Literature Bruce Henricksen, Theory and Criticism John Mosier, Film, General Editor Managing Editor Sarah Elizabeth Spain Design Vilma Pesciallo Contributing Editor Raymond McGowan Founding Editor Miller Williams Advisory Editors Richard Berg Doris Betts Joseph Fichter, S.J. Dawson Gaillard Alexis Gonzales, F.S.C. John Irwin Wesley Morris Walker Percy Herman Rapaport Robert Scholes Marcus Smith Miller Williams The New Orleans Review is published by Loyola University, New Orleans, Louisiana 70118, United States. Copyright © 1984 by Loyola University. Critical essays relating to film or literature of up to ten thousand words should be prepared to conform with MLA guidelines and sent to the appropriate editor, together with a stamped, self-addressed envelope. The address is New Orleans Review, Box 195, Loyola University, New Orleans, Louisiana 70118. Fiction, poetry, photography or related artwork should be sent to the Art and Literature Editor. A stamped, self-addressed envelope should be enclosed. Reasonable care is taken in the handling of material, but no responsibility is assumed for the loss of unsolicited material. Accepted manuscripts are the property of the NOR. The New Orleans Review is published in February, May, August and November. Annual Subscription Rate: Institutions $25.00, Individuals $20.00, Foreign Subscribers $30.00. Contents listed in the PMLA Bibliography and the Index of American Periodical Verse. US ISSN 0028-6400. CONTENTS POETRY AND FICTION The Other Agency John Bovey 104 Driving Home in Winter Barbara Moore 94 It's Going to Snow. Francis Jammes/tr. Dennis Tool 111 Names Eugenio de Andrade/tr. Alexis Levitin 118 The City at Noon S. J. Makielski, Jr. 155 Reading on the Roof Michael J. Rosen 133 A Song for Easter Jack Butler 102 Keep the Faith Jack Butler 128 Out of the Ghetto of Angels Jack Butler 88 The Ledger William Virgil Davis 129 The Past Alex Argyros 160 Before the Beginning Alex Argyros 149 Seven Last Words Jean McGarry 79 PORTFOLIO Portraits of New Orleanians Lee Crum 73 NON-FICTION Introduction Herman Rapaport 5 Augustine, Spenser, Milton and the Christian Ego Marshall Grossman 9 Le Jargon D'Orleans Tom Conley 18 Crystal Gazing: Spenser's Cinematic Apparatus Ronald Ehmke 28 Atopos: The Theater of Desire Herman Rapaport 43 Rembrandt and the Pragmatics of Self-Reference: The 1660 Self-Portrait in the Louvre Robert Brinkley 47 Taking the H out of Shame: The Blemished Mirror in La Tour's Magdalen and Herbert's "Easter-wings" Peter Morrison 54 Penetrating "Upon Appleton House" Martina Sciolino 69 FILM Re-viewing The Rain People Bert Cardullo 112 Gimme Shelter: The Documentary Film as Art Sheila Johnson 150 James Dean the Rebel: His Cause and Effects Michel de Benedictis 95 An Interview with Steve Tesich Andrew Horton 80 PERSPECTIVES Criticism and Social Change by Frank Lentricchia Dennis Patrick Slattery 89 Seeing, Saying, Knowing: Hamlet and the Tenuous Project of Drama Semiotics Una Chaudhuri 119 Foucault and Marx: A Critical Articulation of Two Theoretical Traditions James A. Winders 134 Foucault, History, and Social Order John W. Murphy 161 New Orleans Review is grateful to Herman Rapaport, the Guest Editor of this issue's special section on Renais­ sance literature and painting as represented in post-modern theory. Mr. Rapaport's book, Milton and the Post-Mod­ ern, has established him as an important revisionist reader of Renaissance culture; it, and the papers he has gath­ ered here, may prove to be part of a far-reaching refashioning of the Renaissance. Herman Rapaport INTRODUCTION Although Renaissance literature has not been think Freud's metapsychological theory offers .t'\. frequently studied from the perspectives of useful perspectives on the activity of verbal de­ the newer languages of criticism and theory, it fense practiced by writers in various fields, in­ has not escaped some distinct influences with re­ cluding the sciences."3 Defenses, for Ferguson, spect to general issues and questions which the are interdisciplinary, desiring, metapsychologi­ newer languages of theory have raised. In Light cal, and articulated in a struggle for political in Troy, for example, Thomas Greene has talked power. As such they are disruptive and recon­ about Petrarch's Laura as an absence in the text structive; moreover, we can learn from the Ren­ filled in by signifiers that are always already dis­ aissance to what degree contemporary theory is placed, and Anne Ferry in The "Inward" Voice has itself involved in such relations which a study of embarked on a reading of Renaissance sonnets the Renaissance defenses help to clarify. which avoids the Cartesian reductions of a new These examples of some of the more recent and critical tradition: the presupposition that the self prominent studies of Renaissance texts point to who writes is a distinct formation reflected in the the fact that contemporary theoretical issues have poem. Ferry notices, of course, that this forma­ had an impact on Renaissance scholarship and tion is itself one that is historically situated in the that, perhaps more importantly, Renaissance Seventeenth Century and that a reading of son­ studies are having some impact on the way we nets by writers like Wyatt or Sidney can not think in terms of contemporary theory. Yet, in all merely presuppose the cogito as a kind of liter­ the studies mentioned, the influences of con­ ary constant.1 Again, in Stephan Greenblatt's in­ temporary ideas is kept very much at arm's fluential Renaissance Self-Fashioning, Michel Fou­ length, as if direct appropriations would con­ cault is acknowledged as Greenblatt carefully taminate an otherwise neutral or objective treat­ examines history and literature in order to deter­ ment of the texts themselves. mine the relations of power exercised through Studies of Renaissance texts by French theo­ social practices bearing on the identification and reticians have been far more direct about using classification of individuals. "The individual contemporary philosophical models for the conscience as a fertile field of knowledge is at least reading of Renaissance texts. Michel Foucault's in part the product of a complex operation of The Order of Things is a key reevaluation of Ren­ power-of watching, training, correcting, ques­ aissance discourse and is most direct in its use of tioning, confessing." 2 In another major study of concepts borrowed from structuralism (the em­ Renaissance literature by Margaret Ferguson, phasis on synchronic and archaeological forma­ Trials of Desire: Renaissance Defenses of Poetry, we tions) and post-structuralism (the decentering of have again a very scrupulous analysis of Renais­ the concept "man").4 As is well known, Fou­ sance materials which touch on very contempo­ cault's study considers an epistemic break in dis­ rary theoretical issues. For example, Ferguson in course formations which occurs at about the time discussing the defense in terms of the difference of the writing of Racine's major plays. A world of between speech and writing directly addresses a correspondences-Traheme still holds on to this deconstructive problematic in Jacques Derrida's view-gives way to a world of classifications Of Grammatology, and in so far as the defense is through which sciences can articulate them­ at once dangerous and vulnerable, she is also selves. At the same time a Medieval ideology of contextualizing the Renaissance defense within wealth as immanent value gives way to a more a Freudian perspective. "It should be clear that I cosmopolitan idea of wealth as that which is de- 1 Anne Ferry, The "Inward" Voice (Chicago: University of 3Margaret W. Ferguson, Trials of Desire: Renaissance De­ Chicago Press, 1983). Thomas Greene, Light in Troy (New fenses of Poetry (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), p. Haven: Yale University Press, 1982). 13. 2Stephan Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning (Chicago: 4Michel Foucault, The Order of Things (New York: Random University of Chicago Press, 1980), p. 80. House, 1970). RAPAPORT 5 termined through the power accumulated by way image as signified depends upon the exchange of exchange. Treasure gives way to the market. of the portrait such that a currency of represen­ The signifier' s metaphorical power thus gives tation occurs that appears to be underwritten by way to the signifier's metonymical power, a shift royal power. This power is itself a kind of capital which constitutes a fracturing or rupturing that accumulated through the power of money to be happens throughout the Seventeenth Century exchanged. Although power is not to be found but becomes generally evident to everyone as originating in the monarch, it appears through having occurred by the 1660s or thereabouts. exchange as if it were. And yet, there is the odd Historians have noticed that Foucault's readings perception, verified too by Hobbes, that in order are open to question when one opts not to take to have a system of exchange one first has to have French culture as the norm; yet, The Order of a figure in whom absolute power is manifested. Things is indicative of the strength of a structur­ Marin argues with respect to historical narra­ alist linguistic model when applied to historical tives that here, too, the power of the monarch is research. However much we may challenge Fou­ constituted in the exchange of signs such that no cault's overall interpretation, we cannot doubt one, not even the historian himself, would sup­ that having used structuralist and also post­ pose that power is anything but transcendental structuralist perspectives to point out relations to the text, that the text's power is vested in the that have never been clearly perceived, the na­ monarch himself. Whereas Foucault saw an epis­ ture of Renaissance research has itself been af­ temic break between a Medieval notion of treas­ fected in terms of the ways in which we must ap­ ure in which value is transcendental and abso­ proach certain discourses and documents.