Kathleen Donegan
Auteur de Seasons of Misery: Catastrophe and Colonial Settlement in Early America
Œuvres de Kathleen Donegan
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Membres
Critiques
Statistiques
- Œuvres
- 1
- Membres
- 31
- Popularité
- #440,253
- Évaluation
- 3.5
- Critiques
- 3
- ISBN
- 3
I have nothing against interdisciplinary work per se (I have a graduate degree in comparative literature, where one does nothing more than wear divers academic hats, none of them quite fitting right), but Misery is structured neither as history nor as a literary reading of specific historical documents. The author explains: "As a reader of the texts of early settlement, I am interested in both literary exegesis and historical recovery, and throughout this study I use the tools of both literary criticism and narrative history" (13).
But the texts take a back seat. (Ostensibly they are written in the English language, making them fair game for a professor of English, but I digress). Instead of giving a literary reading of one or more texts specific to her topic, Donegal structures the book into four separate seasons of misery--Roanoke, Jamestown, Plymouth, and Barbados--and it is these seasons or epochs themselves that are "read," with various texts such as George Percy's Trewe Relacyon playing a supporting role within the governing seasons (which are not proper histories themselves). Vague topics like "bodies", "catastrophe", "colonialization", and "identity" are discussed.
With neither the history nor the literary explication in focus, readers from both fields are left wanting. Misery has an interesting subject matter and benchmark texts that are worthy of greater and sharper focus, but in its present guise warrants only three out of five stars.… (plus d'informations)