About this Issue

Welcome to the Spring 2011 issue of the Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association. Once again, it offers to the reader the best scholarship of the full range of our members, from graduate students to senior faculty, all asking challenging and provocative questions. As is our custom with the Spring issue, Volume 44/1 presents shorter essays or working papers, some of which have emerged from talks given at the 2010 M/MLA convention in our home city of Chicago, while others represent the current research of our members in a wide range of fields. This issue is particularly broad in scope, both chronologically and geographically, extending from late mediaeval Italy (Kristen Grimes on Petrarch) to contemporary Senegal (Vlad Dima on Safi Faye), with stops along the way in 17th-century England (essays on Milton by Jane Blanchard and Lacey Conley), the world of Dickens (Stacey Kikendall), 20th-century American autobiographical fiction (Micki Nyman on Dorothy Richardson), the contemporary language classroom (Kashamba Mulamba on the speech act of apology across languages), and the twin worlds of Renaissance Florence and 19th-century Chile (Patricia Vilches in a cross-disciplinary essay on Machiavelli and José Miguel Carrera).

The JMMLA has a long history of presenting quality scholarship with the broadest possible scope, and continues to offer a forum for scholarship across the entire range of fields in and approaches to literature, a place where scholars can speak with one another across the boundaries of period, methodology, and discipline. We hope you find this issue stimulating to your own work, and as always we encourage our readers to contribute themselves to future installments of this ongoing conversation.

About the Cover

The puzzle of life is neverending. Figuring out the right pieces is what makes the game worth playing.

Cover design by Bernadette Steele