Précis

I Précis I Elizabeth Howells University of North Carolina, Greensboro The Conradian: Journal of the Joseph Conrad Society (U.K.). Volume 23 (Autumn 1998), Number 2. 94 pp. Individuals £15 Libraries £20.00 Publishing scholars from Tokyo and Amsterdam, Hong Kong and Edinburgh, this particular number of the Conradian Journal is characterized by a range in subject matter, such as Asako Nakai's "Journey to the Heart of Darkness: Naipaul's 'Conradian Atavism' Reconsidered," which examines how Naipaul appropriates Conrad's acts of cultural imperialism, thereby making the "great tradition" adapt to post-colonial discourse; and there is Amy Houston's "Joseph Conrad Takes the Stage: Dramatic Irony in The Secret Agent," which analyzes Conrad's adaptation of the novel to the stage and his resulting compensation for the loss of authorial voice by use of dramatic irony. A more anecdotal variety of article also appears in 23.2, Yoko Okuda's "East Meets West: Tadaichi Hidaka's Ά Visit to Conrad,'" a record of Conrad's visit with Japanese scholar Tadaichi Hidaka; and Gene Moore's '"An Outpost of Progress' on Film" presents his discovery of the film version of a Conrad short story. This 1998 issue is rounded out by three articles on possible new sources useful when approaching various Conrad texts from short stories to novels: David Gill's "Joseph Conrad, William Paramor, and the Guano Island: Links to A Personal Record and Lord Jim"; Douglas Kerr's "Conrad and the 'Three Ages of Man': Touth,' The Shadow-Line, 'The End of the Tether'"; and Zdzislaw Najder's "Conrad and Ukraine: A Note." Hardy, Thomas. The Mayor ofCasterbridge. Keith Wilson, ed. and intro. London: Penguin, 1997. lii + 393 pp. Paper $7.95 £2.50 While most editions put forth the final, revised 1912-1913 version of the novel reconstructed by Hardy for placement in the Wessex series, Penguin Classics offers this first 1886 version. It suggests how Hardy's Mayor ofCasterbridge would have appeared in serial form in its first presence, with the original plates by Robert Barnes, which editor Keith Wilson calls "the most accomplished ever prepared for a Hardy serial." The bogeyman of chance and the evocative Dorsetshire landscape haunt this tragedy of Michael Henchard's struggle with the past, the present, his inclinations and his social responsibilities . According to Wilson, the novel realizes "the universal human predicament of being the only species possessed of rational or moral consciousness in a world governed by nothing much more meaningful than chance." Wilson's edition is augmented by a chronology of Hardy's life, a glossary of place names, 355 ELT 42 : 3 1999 maps of Dorsetshire and Casterbridge, excellent notes both clarifying obscure references and identifying locations of later revision, and an appendix that includes Chapter XLIV (added later). There are also Hardy's 1895/1912 prefaces and a discussion of the illustrations. The Penguin Mayor offers a unique opportunity for scholars and classroom readers alike to visit Hardy in the form he would have appeared to his public at the dawning of his series of great tragic novels, long before he perhaps even dreamt of abandoning the form all together . Hawthorn, Jeremy. A Concise Glossary of Contemporary Literary Theory . New York: Arnold, 1998. Third Edition, xi + 274 pp. Paper $18.95 From Kristeva's "abject" to Showalter's "wild zone," from "deconstructionism," "post-colonialism," and "narratology" to identifying key terms for schools or approaches such as "author," "subject," or "discourse," this resource attempts to gloss all the essential nomenclature for contemporary literary theory. Published five years after the second edition, Jeremy Hawthorn has expanded this 1998 third edition to include, among other additions, more post-colonial terms. Entries may begin with the general use of a given term outside academia or historically (for example, "canon" as a biblical term). General use of the term in literary theory often follows. (The discussion of "Ideology" while concerned with power and power struggles pauses to focus the lens and account for the term's implications to literary studies.) Entries conclude with discussions of how terms are employed by particular thinkers. ("Function" is discussed in reference to structuralists and formalists, Propp, Barthes, Genette, and the like.) Definitions seem to...