Briefer Mention

BRIEFER MBNTIOH Apter, T. E. Fantasy Literature: An Approach to Literature. Bloomlngton: Indiana Univ. Press, 1982. $20.00 Apter holds that the "aim and purpose of fantasy In literature are not necessarily different from those of the most exacting realism." Fantasy is the means by which truths are disclosed rather than disguised. ELT readers might direct attention to "Fantasy as Morality: Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness' and Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter" and "The Double": Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Hoffmann's The Devils Elixirs, Dostoevsky's The Double." Bottlghelmer, Karl S. Ireland and the Irish: A Short History. New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1982. $19.95 Says Bottlghelmer, this book is "meant to make comprehensible the basic contours of a rich and complex past. . . . My concern is to provide in brief and summary form an account of the sweep of Irish history that renders less mysterious and arcane the enduring problems associated with Ireland in mv_ time." His principal hope is not merely to "relate" the past but to "explain it." Of interest to ELT readers: (6) "Catholic Ireland Resurgent: The 19th Century"; (7) "A New State Established: Triumphs and Dilemmas"; (8) "The Irish Abroad: Examples and Conclusions"; (9) "Literature and the Irish." Cosslett, Tess. The 'Scientific Movement' and Victorian Literature. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1982. $22.50 Cosslett attempts to see "how scientists and Imaginative writers are expressing shared values and assumptions." She wants to "draw attention to the positive ethical and aesthetic implications of Victorian science as they appear in literature . . . ." After a chapter entitled "The Value of Science," Cosslett devotes chapters to Tennyson, Eliot, Meredith, and Hardy. Crawford, Fred D. Mixing Memory and Desire: "The Waste Land" and British Novels. University Park and London: Pennsylvania State Univ. Press, 1982. $16.50 Chapter 2 traces the influence of Eliot's poem in E. M. Forster's A Passage to India, Ford Madox Ford's Parade's End, and D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover. Ellmann, Richard, ed. The Artist as Critic: Critical Writings of Oscar Wilde. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1982. $10.95 Ellmann's 1969 publication is in paperback, and as he says in the introduction: "Wilde is the one writer of the Nineties whom everyone still reads, or more precisely, has read. The mixture of frivolity and pathos in his career continues to arrest us." Hone, Joseph, ed. J. B. Yeats: Letters to His Son W. B. Yeats and Others 1869-1922. London: Seeker & Warburg, 1983. £ 7.95 This re-Issue of J. B. Yeats's letters to his son and others—such as Susan Mitchell, John Quinn, Lily, Elizabeth and Jack B. Yeats—contains a memoir by Hone and a preface by Oliver Elton, just as the 1944 edition did. As Elton asserts, the letters show that "ceaselessly, humorously, and with rare exceptions tolerantly" J. B. Yeats "brooded on the scene and the people that surrounded him." 336 Poupard, Dennis, ed. Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism, Vol. 9. Detroit, MI: Gale Research, 1983. $76.00 TCLC is designed to serve as an introduction to significant commentators on authors who died between 1900 and 1960. The length of an author's section is intended to be representative of the amount of critical attention received in the English language (articles and books not translated into English are excluded). The series attempts to Include excerpts from important essays on each author's work. Volume 9 considers such figures as D. H. Lawrence, Olive Schreiner, and G. B. Shaw. In addition to selected critical commentary, each entry offers a photograph, a brief biographical sketch, and a list of principal works. Watts, Cedric, ed. Selected Writinge of Cunninghame Graham. London and Toronto: Associated Univ. Presses, 1981. $22.50 This selection includes political journalism, tales and essays. Professor Watts believes the political and literary works demonstrate an interesting parodox : Graham was "an activist in a hurry to change the world, yet he was also a thinker keenly aware of the impotence of all reforming activities when measured against . · . human myopia." While Graham may argue for the underdog, he cannot help expressing a "pessimistic, even elegiac reflectiveness." 337 ...