Professor of Comparative Literature Peter Rabinowitz recently published two articles. "Lolita: Solipsized or Sodomized?; or, Against Abstraction--in General" appeared in A Companion to Rhetoric and Rhetorical Criticism, edited by Walter Jost and Wendy Olmsted, (Blackwell). The essay shows how reader perception of a novel's genre (often influenced by reviews and academic criticism) can influence interpretation. This is turn helps illuminate both the reasons behind the widespread misreadings of Nabokov's Lolita and the ethical implications of literary academia's love affair with abstraction.
A second article, "Music, Genre, and Narrative Theory" has appeared in Narrative Across Media: The Languages of Storytelling, edited by Marie-Laure Ryan, published in the "Frontiers of Narrative" series (University of Nebraska Press). This essay applies rhetorical narrative theory to music -- specifically, the music Jerome Kern wrote for Show Boat --and offers both an interpretation of the musical (one that pays particular attention to its complicated treatment of sexuality) and an explanation for why that interpretation has not found widespread favor.
The Ohio State University Press series ("Theory and Interpretation of Narrative") that Rabinowitz co-edits with James Phelan has published a new book, I Know That You Know That I Know, by George Butte. According to the dust jacket, it "explores how stories narrate human consciousness. Butte locates a historical shift in the representation of webs of consciousness in narrative--what he calls "deep subjectivity"--and examines the effect this shift has since had on Western literature and culture." The book covers both novels and films.
