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This article explores the profound impact of the thought of Claude Bernard (1813-78) and his philosophy of experimentalism elaborated in his masterwork An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine. I argue that Bernard's far-ranging theoretical impact on medicine and biology marks the end of conventional vitalism and the elusive notion of a "vital force" as a legitimate scientific concept. His understanding of medicine is as epistemologically significant in its time as Newton's contribu

“What do you mean by rashes of ash?” So begins Charles Bernstein’s “A Test of Poetry,” which consists of questions about passages from his own poems. He explains that “A Test of Poetry” “is based o...

The Wife of Bath's Prologue contains more references to urine than any other text produced by Geoffrey Chaucer. It is not, however, Chaucer's most scatological or disgusting work: while it abounds in urine, it makes no mention of feces. This essay examines how a surplus of urine in the absence of fecal matter affects the tone of the Wife's prologue. Chaucer associates the Wife of Bath with urine because antifeminist traditions often represented females as liquid, dripping creatures and because u

The disjointed repetitiveness of the Monk’s brief tragedies has irritated and bored many readers. The tragedies, however, become much more appealing if one reads them like a monk. Boredom, as an ascetic challenge and as a component of meditative relaxation, is an integral feature of the long monastic tradition that Chaucer inherits. Chaucer’s “An ABC” and Deguileville’s Pèlerinage de la vie humaine exemplify the monastic poetics informing the Monk’s Tale. Monastic literature encourages readers t

It is well known that Austen closely studied Samuel Richardson’s novels, and her so-called juvenilia include epistolary works (“Amelia Webster,” “The Three Sisters,” “Love and Freindship,” “Lesley ...

A careful study of the writings of Algirdas Julien Greimas refutes many of Paul de Man’s influential criticisms of semiotics. Greimassian narratology neither reduces rhetoric to grammar nor simply conflates grammar with logic. Instead of forming “a closed totality”, the Greimas square is an open-ended analytical device; it is not the semiotic equivalent of the Schillerian chiasmus. Despite de Man’s claims for the disruptive agency of rhetoric, the elementary structure of signification organizes

Isabella Knightley argues with her father about the merits of “sea air and bathing.” Mr. Woodhouse proclaims, “the sea is very rarely of use to any body. I am sure it almost killed me once.” Emma, ...

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image sizeKeywords: William Butler YeatsHenry David ThoreauoccultNeoplatonism

Paul de Man’s interpretation of Proust’s metafigural argument is fundamentally correct. Both critics of this interpretation and some of de Man’s defenders have misunderstood how metaphor functions in Proust’s reminiscence of summer, which uses resemblance to evoke reconciliatory totalities. Proust’s passage contains classical metaphors—not synecdoches that merely resemble metaphors. But de Man’s attempts to justify his interpretation are unpersuasive. Indeed, they are so unpersuasive that they b

Mac Low, perhaps the “most dedicated literary avant-gardist” among twentieth-century U.S. poets (Perreault 202), is best known for his use of “nonintentional methods” (Mac Low, Interview with Kevin...