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Thomas Mann, “Bilse and I” (1906): A Critical Introduction
May 7, 2025
In October of 1905, a defamation trial that would have a lasting impact on the development of literary modernism took place in the sleepy German harbor town of Lübeck. A lawyer with the slightly preposterous name “Ritter aus Tondern” was suing his cousin, the regionalist writer Johannes Valentin Dose, claiming that Dose had maliciously portrayed him as an alcoholic and an adulterer in the 1904 novel The Milksop ( Der Muttersohn )
A Secret Practice: Roland Barthes and the Writing of the Visual
May 1, 2025
In October 2018, I took a research trip to the Fonds Roland Barthes at the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris. I had just started writing a book on Barthes, and I wanted to learn more about the amateur painting and doodling that flits through Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes : for example, an early drawing in marker whose pleasure and stupidity Barthes comments on in the lower left corner
Distances Blued and Purpled by Romance: Revisiting the Midcentury Colonialist Gaze in Black Narcissus
Mar 12, 2025
Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s midcentury psychological fantasy Black Narcissus (1947) is enjoying something of a resurgence, available to be rewatched and taught more widely than ever before. For much of the 70-plus years since its release, the movie was difficult to find except as written descriptions, movie stills or poster art (fig. 1). It was a tantalizing entry in filmmaker lore that the likes of Martin Scorsese and Tilda Swinton cite as formative influences, while...
From Mentor to Supplicant: The Correspondence of Jessie Redmon Fauset and Langston Hughes
Jan 29, 2025
On January 6, 1925, Jessie Redmon Fauset wrote a letter to Langston Hughes from Paris. It's a long letter—over a thousand words—and it balances advice with appeal in ways that capture the intimacy and strength of their friendship. Her first novel, There is Confusion , had been published in 1924 and Fauset was on leave from her position as the literary editor of The Crisis, studying and writing in Paris. She had planned the trip as a celebration: finally, at forty-two, she...