503 research outputs found
Textual aporias: Exploring the perplexities of form and absence in Australian verse novels
No full textKerry Mallan and Roderick McGillis have collaborated on a groundbreaking article exploring verse novels generally and Australian verse novels in particular. This article, valuable because it invites discussion rather than resolves issues, is a welcome companion to the growing number of verse novels appearing in several countries. It also explores the process of academic discourse by presenting a dialogue rather than the traditional formal monologue
Reviews
No full textStudies in the Literary Imagination. Vol. XIV, No. 2. Fall, 1981. Georgia State University. Ed. by Rayond Carter Sutherland. Reviewed by Nancy-Lou Patterson.
The Mists of Avalon. Marion Zimmer Bradley. Reviewed by Benjamin Urrutia.
The Harmony Within: The Spiritual Vision of George MacDonald. Rolland Hein. Reviewed by Roderick McGillis.
C.S. Lewis and the Church of Rome. Christopher Derrick. Reviewed by Lee Speth.
Between Heaven and Hell. Peter Kreeft. Reviewed by Nancy-Lou Patterson
Review of \u3ci\u3eHe Was Some Kind of a Man: Masculinities in the B Western\u3c/i\u3e by Roderick McGillis
No full textIt takes something of a masochist to watch close to two hundred B westerns, but Roderick McGillis claims to have done that in researching this book. For those of you who are not film history buffs, a B movie was a cheap, relatively short (sixty to seventy-five minutes), formulaic genre film made to be the second half of a double feature. A lot of B movies were westerns because they were cheap and popular, particularly with boys and young men. They had their own stars, many of whom moved on to television, which killed the B movie: Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Tex Ritter, William Boyd (Hopalong Cassidy), Bob Steele, and Johnny Mack Brown. John Wayne began in B westerns but graduated to the top of the bill in John Ford\u27s Stagecoach. Like author Roderick McGillis, I remember when B westerns were a staple of early afternoon television programming on just about every local channel. I also recall realizing by the time I was ten that these films, though bearing different titles, were so limited by generic conventions they were sometimes hard to tell apart: white hats versus black hats, the same set and stock footage, the inevitable chase on horseback, the climactic fight between hero and villain. For McGillis, the nostalgia for a mythic, morally unambiguous American past communicated by these movies reinforces his own nostalgia for them as a crucial part of his boyhood
Between a frock and a hard place : camp aesthetics and children's culture
No full text Camp is associated with a particular kind of performance in which the overt meaning of what is performed is subverted or inverted by drawing attention to the fact that it is a performance, and thus a kind of lie (drag being a perfect example). Thomas 103 French: Se Camper.To Posture or Flaunt In exploring camp and children’s culture, we raise the following contrasting viewpoints. The conventionally accepted view, derived from Susan Sontag’s Notes on Camp, is that ‘‘camp’’ is a style or a sensibility (275–7). More recent queer accounts of camp see it as an oppositional critique (of gender and sexuality) embodied in a ‘‘queer’’ performative identity (Butler 233–6). Camp is also a social practice for many, and a style and an identity performed in many types of entertainment (for example: film, cabaret, and pantomime). In this respect, it is indicative of the competing and conflicting cultural elements within Western societies. Such conflict heightens the visibility of ‘‘difference’’ particularly with respect to queer communities, and the blurring of gender/sexual identity as a singular, homogenous entity. In other words, camp sensibility and camp performance embrace difference while they also gather performers into communities we might label ‘‘queer.’’ Queer communities differ from non-queer communities and defer any notion of stability. Both queer and camp are outside notions of stability; they are border activities. </jats:p
Reading : From Turning the Page to Touching the Screen
No full textThis chapter considers the ways in which contemporary children’s literature depicts reading in changing times, with a particular eye on the cultural definitions of ‘reading’ being offered to young people in the age of the tablet computer. A number of picture books, in codex and app form, speak to changing times for reading by their emphasis on the value of books and reading as technologies of literature and of the self. Attending to valuations of literacy and literature within children’s texts provides insight into anxieties about books in the electronic age
Reviews
No full textVictorian Fantasy. Stephen Prickett. Reviewed by Roderick McGillis.
Worlds Beyond the World: The Fantastic Vision of William Morris. Richard Mathews. Reviewed by Nancy-Lou Patterson.
Dorothy L. Sayers: The Life of a Courageous Woman. James Brabazon. Reviewed by Nancy-Lou Patterson.
Patches of Godlight: The Pattern of Thought in C.S. Lewis. Robert Houston Smith. Reviewed by Nancy-Lou Patterson.
Tolkien: New Critical Perspectives. Ed. Neil D. Isaacs and Rose A. Zimbardo. Reviewed by Nancy-Lou Patterson.
Journeys of Frodo: An Atlas of J.R.R. Tolkien\u27s The Lord of the Rings. Barbara Strachey. Reviewed by Nancy-Lou Patterson.
Lion of Ireland: The Legend of Brian Boru. Morgan Llywelyn. Reviewed by George W. Colvin.
The Atlas of Middle-Earth. Karen Wynn Fonstad. Reviewed by Thomas M. Egan
I See by Your Outfit: B Westerns and Some Recent Texts about Cowboys
No full textA review of Roderick McGillis' book about B westerns, and its applications to some recent texts of children's literature
Text Culture And Post-Colonial Children’s Literature: A Comparative Perspective.
No full textDiscussion of English, American and Irish children's literature
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