UpDate - Vol. 13, No. 8, Page 10
October 21, 1993
Twelve new titles released by University Press

     The University of Delaware Press announces 12 new publications in the
fields of literature, education, science, theology, history, art and
comedy. All titles are available at the University Bookstore.

     In The Fiction of Hortense Calisher, Kathleen Snodgrass, an adjunct
faculty member in the English department, has completed the first,
book-length examination of works by this prolific writer. Calisher has long
been known as a "writer's writer," a consummate stylist and an author given
to an impressive range of subjects. However, any thematic unity in
Calisher's works has eluded critics. In her study, Snodgrass identifies a
motif of rites of passage and extradition and applies this structural
framework to examine Calisher's 11 novels, six collections of stories and
novellas and two autobiographical works.

     Opening the American Mind: Race, Ethnicity and Gender in Higher
Education is a collection of essays representing efforts to understand the
theoretical, institutional and disciplinary problems created by the
diversification of American culture. The first section of the book
addresses the broad theoretical question of cultural literacy, the second
part identifies changes that will be necessary to implement cultural
diversity in American institutions of higher education and the final
section deals with changes that will need to take place both in individual
disciplines and in classroom practices.
     The editors are on the faculty at Rutgers University. Gregory Sill is
associate professor of English, Miriam Chaplin is professor and chairperson
of the Education Department, Jean Ritzke is assistant professor of
linguistics and David Wilson is associate provost.

     In Visible and Apostolic, Robert Cornwall demonstrates how high-church
Anglican ecclesiology underlies many of the important controversies faced
by both church and state during the period 1688 to 1745. Cornwall's study
sets high-church ecclesiology in its social, political and religious
context. Cornwall is assistant professor of religious studies at William
Carey International University and adjunct assistant professor at Fuller
Theological Seminary.

     Douglas Bisson's The Merchant Adventurers of England: The Company and
the Crown, 1474-1564 offers a pioneering account of how the Merchant
Adventurers of London, the preeminent trading company of 16th-century
England, both shaped and was shaped by trade policy and diplomacy during
the early Tudor era. Bisson's work, which elucidates the roles played by
Tudor politicians and merchants during an age of acute confessional and
dynastic conflict, fills an important gap between studies of the medieval
origins of the company and those that have traced the company's declining
fortunes during Elizabeth I's reign. Bisson is assistant professor of
history at Belmont University.

     In Comic Practice/Comic Response, Robert Williams examines comedy as a
neglected art, raises issues concerning the nature of play, aesthetic
response and even consciousness. Williams' examination centers on the comic
form, but is not limited to comic works: slant forms, including
comic/serious literature and television's situation comedies and variety
shows. According to Williams, comedy emerges as a "mega-art," transcending
particular media and our preconceptions about what constitutes comic art
and artifice. This work appeals not only to lovers of comedy, but also to
those interested in aesthetics, performance theory and the psychology of
everyday life.
     Williams is associate professor of English at Portland State
University.

     In The First French Canadians: Pioneers in the St. Lawrence Valley,
the six members of the demography department at the University of Montreal
have complied data on French men and women who settled in the St. Lawrence
Valley before 1680. Their construction of a data base that contains
important demographic behavior and other characteristics of early pioneers
represents a significant step forward in understanding and illustrating
elements of population reproduction and genetics. Their book not only
examines the demographic contours of New France but also sheds light on the
rhythms of life as experienced by colonists themselves. As such it is of
interest for students of Canadian, family, demographic and migration
history, as well as population genetics and several areas of sociology.
     Hubert Charbonneau, Bertrand Desjardins, Andre Guillemette, Yves
Landry, Jacques Legare and Francois Nault are the authors.

     In The Idea of Rococo, William Park provides a complete exposition of
the rococo and its influence on architecture, painting, decoration and even
literature. Park claims that rococo is not just a style of interior
decoration, nor is it merely one among several 18th-century styles. Rather,
Park contends that rococo is a genuine period style that gave plastic
expression to the principles underlying almost all the art and most of the
thought of early eighteenth-century Europe.
     Park teaches at Sarah Lawrence College.

     Harold T. Parker's An Administrative Bureau during the Old Regime
throws light on the qualities of the French royal administration during the
reign of Louis XVI and on the relations of that administration to the
French economy and people. Parker describes how the bureau's four executive
intendants of commerce, individually and collegially, operated during 29
months in routine performance and in the management of two major crises:
the mass mutiny of most French textile artisans against the bureau's new
textile regulations and the developing surge of British inventions,
productivity and competitiveness, especially in textiles and iron and
steel. Parker is professor emeritus at Duke University and the author of
many articles and books on the period of the Old Regime, the French
Revolution and Napolean.

     Settlements in the Americas: Cross-Cultural Perspectives, edited by
Ralph Bennett is a collection of essays presented at a symposium on
settlements and urbanism that took place in March 1986. The purpose of the
compilation of papers is to exemplify the benefits of cross-cultural and
cross-scholarly perspectives on settlements and urbanism. Topics include
the role of Indian labor in the Central American Spanish colonies, the
Quaker agricultural economy, the frail agricultural base of the Tidewater
and France's North American colonies. Also included are discussions of the
Spanish tradition. the Charleston city plan and the French tradition of
territorial control in Europe and its export to North America. Bennett is a
professor of architecture at the University of Maryland, College Park.

     Biblical References in Shakespeare's Comedies is the third volume of
Naseeb Shaheen's study of biblical references in Shakespeare's works. This
volume, focusing on comedies, provides a comprehensive survey of the
English bibles of Shakespeare's day (noting their similarities and
differences and indicating which version the playwright knew best). He
carefully analyzes the biblical references in each of the comedies. Shaheen
has also studied every source that Shakespeare is known to have read or
consulted before writing each play, searching them as well for biblical
references. He points out which references in his literary sources
Shakespeare accepted and how he adapted them in his plays. This volume on
the comedies is a companion to the author's Biblical References in
Shakespeare's Tragedies and Biblical References in Shakespeare's History
Plays, also published by the U.D. Press in 1987 and 1989. Shaheen is
professor of English literature at Memphis State University.

     In Shakespeare, Harsnett and the Devils of Denham, F. W. Brownlow
seeks to determine the full extent of the influence of Samuel Harsnett's
Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures on Shakespeare's King Lear.
Although scholars have attempted to interpret Harsnett's presence in Lear,
the absence of an accessible, accurately dated and annotated edition of his
text, compounded by lack of reliable information about Harsnett himself,
has been a hindrance to criticism. In the first part of the work, Brownlow
explains how Harsnett's work came to be written, who its author was and
what kind of document Shakespeare found himself reading.
     Brownlow is professor of English at Mount Holyoke College.

     Action and Reaction: Proceedings of a Symposium to Commemorate the
Tercentenary of Newton's Principia, edited by Paul Theerman and Adele
Seeff, is a collection of essays presented at a symposium commemorationg
the 300th anniversary of the publication of Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophiae
Naturalis Principia Mathematica. This collection samples the best current
scholarship on the Principia, its context and its influence and represents
the depth of inquiry and diversity of research that have characterized the
last generation of work on Newton. Theerman has been assistant editor of
The Papers of Joseph Henry-based at the Smithsonian Institution-for the
past nine years. Seeff is executive director of the Center for Renaissance
and Baroque Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park.
                                                  -Andrea K. Newlyn