Forster's musical Lucy Churchill and proto-nuclear aesthetics: A Closer Look at JML 47.4

In a special feature for the Indiana University Press blog, author Ryan James McGuckin discusses female musicality in A Room with a View, and sees in the novel's inconclusive romance—as well as in Forster's 1958 essay "A View without a Room"—hints that the fear of nuclear annihilation forecloses hope about the future. Read it at https://iupress.org/connect/blog/e-m-forsters-nuclear-aesthetics-a-closer-look-at-jml-47-4/

McGuckin's JML 47.4 essay, “E. M. Forster’s Female Musicality: Inconclusive Counter-romance in A Room with a View,” is available to read for FREE.

A Closer Look at JML 46.3: Beckett's Permanent Revolution

 

In a special feature for the Indiana University Press blog, Cristina Ionica discusses how Beckett's works activate empowering forms of solidarity by using angry, action-oriented forms of laughter. Read it HERE.

Her JML 46.3 essay is available for FREE; see link in the post. 

Conrad and Moral Luck: A Closer Look at JML 46.1

 

Take a closer look at JML 46.1. Author David Dwan discusses the concept of luck in Conrad's work, writing

I first became interested in luck in Conrad when I learned that the entire existence of his oeuvre depended on luck—on the happy botching of his attempt at suicide at the age of twenty-one. Understandably, luck became something of an idée fixe for Conrad. “You must not [...] believe in either good or bad luck” (Najder 64), Conrad’s uncle advised, but his nephew was not to be dissuaded. “There are runs of bad luck,” Conrad insisted, “which no foresight and no incantation can turn away” (Letters III 267). Success in the literary marketplace was, he believed, a function of luck and it seems appropriate that his most successful publishing venture came with the title Chance. Even the writing process was luck-governed: “For me it is a matter of chance, stupid chance” (Letters III 85).

Chance, of course, can make us all feel stupid by making the world seem unfathomable. [Click HERE to continue]

Dwan's essay, “Unlucky Jim: Conrad, Chance, Ethics,” is now available on Project Muse, FREE for a limited time.

Woolf's Winged Creatures: A Closer Look at JML 45.1

 

Take a closer look at JML 45.1. Author Tali Banin shares how Virginia Woolf's novel The Waves uses winged creatures to develop its unusual approach to a love story in this post for the Indiana University Press blog

Her essay, “The Winged Creatures of The Waves and Virginia Woolf’s Figurations of ‘The One’,” is now available for FREE on Project Muse.

Pets' Inner Lives: A Closer Look at JML 45.1

 

Take a closer look at JML 45.1. Author Calista McRae shares how Stevie Smith's poetry explores the inner lives of pets and the way domestication shapes human perception of animal emotion and thought in this post for the Indiana University Press blog

Her essay, “‘More human than others’: Stevie Smith and the Minds of Pets,” is now available for FREE on Project Muse.

Ray Bradbury's Afrofuturist Mars

 

JML author Steve Gronert Ellerhoff discusses the background of his research on Ray Bradbury's anti-racism at work in two science fiction short stories, in a post for Indiana University Press, available HERE.

Ellerhoff's essay is now a read for FREE feature:

"White Supremacy and the Multicultural Imagination in Ray Bradbury's Afrofuturist Stories of Mars." Journal of Modern Literature, vol. 44, no. 4, Summer 2021, pp. 1-18.

Christine Brooke-Rose speaks to our precarious times

Take a Closer Look at JML 44.3 (Spring 2021). Author Marija Grech discusses the continued relevance of Christine Brooke-Rose’s work and how it engages with some of the most pressing issues of our time. Her essay is a Read-for-Free feature, linked in the post: https://iupress.org/connect/blog/christine-brooke-rose/

Jean Rhys's Lively Objects and Objectified Lives

 JML author Laurel Harris discusses the "impasse genre" and her research on the lively objects and objectified lives in Jean Rhys's fiction, in a post for Indiana University Press, available HERE.

Harris's essay is now a read for FREE feature:

"Impassagenwerk: Jean Rhys’s Interwar Fiction and the Modernist Impasse." Journal of Modern Literature, vol. 44, no. 3, Spring 2021, pp. 19-34. 

Becoming Laura: A Closer Look at JML 44.1

 Take a closer look at JML 44.1. 

Author John S. Bak shares some background into his fascinating archival study of a previously unpublished Tennessee Williams introduction to the play he co-wrote with Donald Windham, You Touched Me! Read it HERE.

Bak’s essay, “Tennessee Williams’s ‘“Homage to Ophelia” (A Pretentious Foreword)’ with Commentary,” is a read-for-free feature on JSTOR. 

Gertrude Stein and the Future of Intelligence: A Closer Look at JML 43.3

Take a closer look at JML 43.3 (Spring 2020). Isabelle Parkinson discusses how her inquiry into the rhetoric of a 1920s debate over Gertrude Stein’s authorship cracked open a complex discursive network circling around the question of the role of literature for the future of intelligence. 

Read the post HERE

Parkinson's essay is a special read-for-free feature. Follow links in the post to access it.

Turbulent Democracy: A Closer Look at JML 43.3

Take a closer look at JML 43.3 (Spring 2020). Author Seth McKelvey considers how Joan Didion's 1984 novel Democracy speaks into our present moment of national unrest. "In Democracy," he notes, "'turbulence' is not a threat to this thing we call democracy, but rather its essence." 

Read the full post HERE

His essay is a read-for-free feature: follow the links in the post to access it.

Fossil Fuel Modernities: A Closer Look at JML 43.2

Now on the IU Press Blog: Nathaniel Otjen discusses how attending to energy concerns in H.G. Wells's The War of the Worlds yields new understandings of fin de siècle anxieties about the end of western modernity.

Read the post HERE.

Otjen's essay, "Energy Anxiety and Fossil Fuel Modernity in H.G. Wells's The War of the Worlds" is a special "Read for FREE" featured piece on JSTOR. 

Find it HERE.