UpDate - Vol. 14, No. 16, Page 7
January 5, 1995
Three by UD scholars; University Press releases 22 new titles

     In the last six months, the University of Delaware Press has
published 22 new titles-three by UD faculty-in the fields of 18th-
century studies, Shakespearean and Renaissance studies, 20th-century
literature, art history, sociolinguistics, disaster research and
history. All titles are available at the University Bookstore.

     Planning the French Canals: Bureaucracy, Politics and Enterprise
under the Restoration, by Reed G. Geiger, history professor at the
University of Delaware, tells the story of the Becquey Program, which
tripled the length of the French canals, and reexamines the alleged
weakness of French economic liberalism and the backwardness of the
French economy.

     Twenty-eight authors have contributed to Disasters, Collective
Behavior and Social Organization, edited by Russell R. Dynes, research
professor, sociology, and Kathleen J. Tierney, associate professor,
disaster center, both of the University of Delaware. Topics include a
discussion of patterns of crowd actions, social movements and social
behavior in the wake of disasters.

     The complete poetic works of the 18th-century Irish poet Thomas
Sheridan are presented for the first time in retired University of
Delaware professor Robert Hogan's The Poems of Thomas Sheridan, which
includes a biographical introduction, explanatory notes and an
appendix of poems written to and about Sheridan by prominent writers
of his day.

     'Clarissa's' Plots, by Lois Bueler of California State
University, won the press' 1992 18th-century studies award for its
analysis of the novel's three literary plot types-the Tested Woman
plot, the Don Juan plot and the Prudence plot.

     In Romantic Ideology Unmasked: The Mentally Constructed Tyrannies
in Dramas of William Wordsworth, Lord Byron, Percy Shelley and Joanna
Baillie, Marjean D. Purinton of Westfield State College examines the
ideology embedded in romantic dramas to reveal the mental processes on
which the issues explored in such dramas are based.

     Since Leslie A. Marchand, professor emeritus at Rutgers
University, completed his edition of Byron's letters in 1981, further
letters have come to light and are now published in his 'What comes
uppermost': Byron's Letters and Journals, Supplementary Volume.

     Faint Praise and Civil Leer: The Decline of 18th-Century
Panegyric, by Jon Thomas Rowland of the University of Toronto, is a
rhetorical study of the relationship between satire and praise in
writing by Samuel Daniel, Andrew Marvell, Jonathan Swift and Charles
Churchill from 1603-1764.

     In Cavaliers, Clubs, and Literary Culture: Sir John Mennes, James
Smith, and the Order of the Fancy, Timothy Raylor of Carleton College
explores the largely uncharted territory between the official culture
of the 17th-century court and the often oppositional culture of
London, and offers a controversial new reading of Cavalier culture.

     In Labyrinth of Desire: Invention and Culture in the Work of Sir
Philip Sidney, William Craft of Mount Saint Mary's College argues that
Sidney's work reveals the limits of Tudor cultural codes invented to
manage political and erotic experience, even as that work leads
readers to see invention as a necessary and constant human act.

     Written from a feminist perspective, independent scholar Marliss
C. Desens's The Bed-Trick in Renaissance Drama: Explorations in
Gender, Sexuality and Power places a stage convention in its
historical and theatrical context to challenge widely held assumptions
about its theatrical history and use on the stage.

     Reforming the 'Bad' Quartos: Performance and Provenance of Six
Shakespearean First Editions, by Kathleen O. Irace of the University
of California, Los Angeles, presents intriguing new evidence
confirming the view that the actors reconstructed these plays from
their memories of performances.

     In Teaching With Shakespeare: Critics in the Classroom, edited by
independent scholar Bruce McIver and Ruth Stevenson of Union College,
six prominent Shakespeare scholars and critics explain distinctive
critical premises, interpretive strategies and pedagogical methods
used today to interpret Shakespeare's works.

     A selection of the best papers read at the Fifth World
Shakespeare Congress is presented in Shakespeare and Cultural
Traditions, edited by Stanley Wells, director of the Shakespeare
Institute, Tetsuo Kishi of Kyoto University, and Roger Pringle,
director of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust.

     Through a study of theatrical practices such as "remakes,"
"sequels" and censorial interference, Giorgio Melchiori of the
University of Rome examines in Shakespeare's Garter Plays: Edward III
to Merry Wives of Windsor the genesis and growth of the second cycle
of Shakespeare's histories.

     Talking Back to Shakespeare, by Martha Tuck Rozett of the State
University of New York, Albany, discusses both student texts and
published works that offer alternatives, fill in gaps and challenge
the ideological premises of Shakespeare's plays.

     Twelve essays focus on a variety of late-19th- and early-20th-
century texts in American Realism and the Canon, edited by Tom Quirk
of the University of Missouri-Columbia, and Gary Scharnhorst of the
University of New Mexico.

     Jan Nordby Gretlund of Odense University argues in Eudora Welty's
Aesthetics of Place that Welty's fiction represents the collective
experience in the South from the Depression to the present because of
the determining influence of place on her work.

     Tracy K. Harris of Bradley University based Death of a Language:
The History of Judeo-Spanish, a sociolinguistic study describing the
development of a now-dying language, on interviews with native
speakers of Judeo-Spanish.

     The six essays in Art and Life on the Upper Mississippi 1890-
1915: Minnesota 1900, edited by Michael Conforti of the Minneapolis
Institute of the Arts, examine advances in architecture, design and
painting in a region now recognized for its contribution to the Arts
and Crafts and Prairie School movements.

     Heinz Warneke (1895-1983): A Sculptor First and Last, an
illustrated study by independent scholar Mary Mullen Cunningham,
documents the work and career of the German-American sculptor.

     Embattled Bench: The Pennsylvania Supreme Court and the Forging
of a Democratic Society, 1684-1809, by G. S. Rowe of the University of
Northern Colorado, examines forces within Pennsylvania that influenced
the court and assesses its role both in retarding innovation and in
urging reforms.

     By examining the case of Elizabeth Canning, from her charges of
assault and kidnapping against two other women to her own conviction
for perjury, The Appearance of Truth: The Story of Elizabeth Canning
and 18th-Century Narrative, by Judith Moore of the University of
Alaska, Anchorage, raises issues of probability, class, gender, truth
and authority.