Rachel Trousdale | Framingham State University (original) (raw)

Papers by Rachel Trousdale

Liverpool University Press eBooks, Sep 1, 2023

Edinburgh University Press eBooks, May 1, 2019

The T.S. Eliot studies annual, 2018

Oxford University Press eBooks, Dec 16, 2021

Marianne Moore treats humor as a way to recognize what we have in common with others and to creat... more Marianne Moore treats humor as a way to recognize what we have in common with others and to create understanding across difference. In her early work, Moore experiments with combinations of satire and empathy. In “A Prize Bird” and “The Wood-Weasel,” she uses humor as a test of friendship, and suggests that sympathetic laughter constitutes a distinctively American approach to collaborative artistic creation. Humor in “The Pangolin,” like the artists’ tools Moore discusses in the poem, is an end in itself and a way to discover new possibilities: it marks shared humanity and unites the human with the divine. Moore’s laughter occurs when we understand intuitively what it is like to be someone else; the more apparently unlike us the other, the more satisfying the laughter. Throughout Moore’s work, humor can be read as an ars poetica, modeling the synthesis of diverse components that she performs in her poetry.

Liverpool University Press eBooks, Jul 15, 2023

Scandinavian Studies, Jun 22, 2002

ISAK DINESEN'S "The Deluge at Norderney" (1934) is a tale about self-invention and ... more ISAK DINESEN'S "The Deluge at Norderney" (1934) is a tale about self-invention and its role in resisting the impositions of others. (1) Characters who invent themselves based upon artistic models find that the results of their inventions can far exceed their models; in a startling move away from the usual sequence of events, the most successful characters become idealized versions of their flawed originals. The similar activity of rewriting the past has a still more dramatically redemptive result: it allows Miss Malin Nat-og-Dag to go to her grave a free and happy woman. In the moment of death, memory and fantasy are indistinguishable, and the characters' masquerades become true. It is nearly impossible to summarize the plot of "The Deluge at Norderney" in a satisfactory manner. The frame narrative, if stripped of its descriptions and explanation, is too simple even to be a story: A young man, a young woman, an aristocratic old maid, and an old Cardinal are all stranded in a barn in the flooded German countryside. If the barn does not collapse by dawn, they will be rescued. They pass the night by telling stories. Early in the night, the young woman and the young man are married to each other by the Cardinal. Just before morning, the Cardinal reveals that he is not a Cardinal at all, but the Cardinal's valet; he killed his master when the flood began and has taken his place during the day's rescue work. The story ends at dawn, the barn's collapse imminent. The magic and delight of "The Deluge at Norderney" is in the interaction of the stories-within-stories. There are two kinds of these embedded tales: the omniscient narrator's asides, in which we learn the history of Cardinal Hamilcar von Sehstedt's life and his actions (or rather, the impostor, Kasparson's, actions) on the day of the flood, and the story of the old lady, Miss Malin Nat-og-Dag; and the tales told by the refugees in the barn. There are three of these: an autobiography, told by the young man Jonathan Maersk; a biography, told by Miss Malin about her young friend and fellow-castaway Calypso; and a fantasy, told by the Cardinal about St. Peter and Barabbas. (2) Calypso tells no story; Miss Malin, whose story we already know from the narrator, almost re-tells it herself, but interrupts herself at dawn. This progression--biography told by the omniscient narrator; autobiography; biography told by a character; fantasy; interrupted autobiography--is essential to the development of "The Deluge at Norderney." The tale passes through five degrees of invention, in which the truths and central obsessions of the narrators' and/or main characters' lives are presented with varying layers of sympathy and differing attempts at concealment. I will argue that each embedded tale is a story not only of self-invention (which should be more or less clear from the tales themselves), but also of re-creation. The characters are telling stories which, in retrospect, become the truth. For Robert Langbaum, the purpose of the time in the barn is to give the characters the chance "to make death their ultimate triumph over conditions" (71). But in order for the characters to achieve this triumph, they must first overcome past impositions and learn to invent their own life stories, thus reclaiming and shaping their identities. Marcia Landy writes that "only through the mirroring of self through others, through art, and through language is it possible to restore the integrity of the self" (401), but it seems that in "The Deluge at Norderney," the self can only escape from the misreadings and projections of others when it is telling its own story. When the characters in the barn tell their stories, they make their lives complete and worthwhile. (3) Any lies they tell are in the search for a fundamental truth. The tale begins with an example of misguided reinvention, the sort of thing the characters must struggle to escape. Norderney is not an obvious place for a seaside resort; it is, in fact, only made one by the romantic imagination, which "delighted in ruins, ghosts, and lunatics" (Dinesen 1). …

Comparative Literature Studies, 2013

Palgrave Macmillan US eBooks, 2010

Transnational fiction builds its home in the no man’s land between fact and interpretation. It as... more Transnational fiction builds its home in the no man’s land between fact and interpretation. It asks us to recognize that cultural demarcations, like historical narratives and national boundaries, gain their status as “true” from group consensus. The fantastic literary worlds of transnational fiction lead readers through a trial-and-error process, teaching us what materials are most amenable to reinterpretation and recombination. Like transnationality itself, hybrid world-fashioning can produce durable changes in our understanding of group identity. Readers are asked to use the imaginative underpinnings of identity categories to render cultural affiliations and national histories portable between languages and continents.

Studies in American humor, 2016

But ironically, some of the examples in the evolution of the sitcom point to a weakening of its l... more But ironically, some of the examples in the evolution of the sitcom point to a weakening of its long-term aesthetic impact, with certain postmodern comedies so often overly-laden with topical references and metadata that they may lack relevance for future audiences and be relegated to ephemera, not unlike Austerlitz’s observation about All in the Family (CBS, 1971–1979), “a product of its time that is hard to watch today” (127). Conversely, TV’s earliest sitcoms like the Honeymooners and the indomitable I Love Lucy (CBS, 1951–1957) endure due to their broad comic strokes and beloved characters that transcend time and translation and are still in syndication worldwide after half a century. The notion at least stirs: the sitcom may have reached its apex at a young age. Austerlitz handily chronicles the sitcom’s under-examined history with a framework that serves as a reference point for further scholarly inquiry and discourse. Sitcom is brimming with insights, salient facts, and entertaining trivia of value and interest to academics and armchair aficionados alike.

The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, Mar 30, 2017

Like his protean characters, Rushdie has changed dramatically over the course of his career. His ... more Like his protean characters, Rushdie has changed dramatically over the course of his career. His shifting discussion of Islam's internal diversity is exemplified by the brief possibility of a pluralist Islam in The Satanic Verses, by the idyllic past of anti-communitarian Kashmir in Shalimar the Clown, and by the catastrophic results when outsiders conflate these Islams with those of the fundamentalist Imam in The Satanic Verses or the Iron Mullah in Shalimar the Clown. But the shift from the novels to the memoir seems greater than the shifts within the novels, as Rushdie appears to reject the novels' attempts at sympathy with his opponents. His treatment of Islam in Joseph Anton simplifies his own investigations of how religion, race, and cultural identity interpenetrate for moderate Muslims and atheists of Muslim descent, and the role of racism and xenophobia in solidifying "Islam" as an object of fear. This article tracks how Rushdie's treatment of Islam as variously practised by individuals, Islam the global religion, and extremist terrorism are increasingly collapsed in The Satanic Verses, Shalimar the Clown, and Joseph Anton. The memoir suggests deep changes in Rushdie's attitude.

Journal of Modern Literature, 2012

treats humor as a means of both recognizing commonality and creating mutual understanding between... more treats humor as a means of both recognizing commonality and creating mutual understanding between individuals. In two comparatively minor poems, "A Prize Bird" (1915) and "The Wood-Weasel" (1942), Moore uses humor as a test of friendship, and suggests that sympathetic laughter constitutes a distinctively American approach to collaborative artistic creation. Humor in "The Pangolin" (1936), like the artists' tools Moore discusses in the poem, is both an end in itself and a means to evergreater things: it becomes the marker of shared humanity and a medium for uniting the human with the divine. Throughout Moore's work, her humor can be read as a kind of ars poetica, modeling the synthesis of diverse components that she performs in her poetry.

Slavonic and East European Review

The version in the Kent Academic Repository may differ from the final published version. Users ar... more The version in the Kent Academic Repository may differ from the final published version. Users are advised to check http://kar.kent.ac.uk for the status of the paper. Users should always cite the published version of record.

Humor, Empathy, and Community in Twentieth-Century American Poetry

Brown’s sense of humor provides guiding principles for real-world action while making the Black t... more Brown’s sense of humor provides guiding principles for real-world action while making the Black tradition of private anti-racist laughter public. Brown examines the violence of traditional superiority humor in poems like “Sam Smiley,” in which Black laughter is silenced by lynching. Rather than simply rejecting such humor, Brown gives readers alternatives: his anti-hierarchical approach in the “Slim Greer” poems inverts Bergson’s logic, making humor a precondition for empathy. The partial resemblance we see between ourselves and the object of laughter can teach us to recognize our commonality even with our enemies. For Brown, the ethical underpinnings of art lie in artists’ awareness of contingency, complexity, and the subjectivities of unlike others. Empathic humor turns laughter from a zero-sum game to a game everyone can win by rejecting not just racism but hierarchical thinking as a whole. Brown shows how empathic laughter can reframe our knowledge of other people and upend the ...

Humor, Empathy, and Community in Twentieth-Century American Poetry

Marianne Moore treats humor as a way to recognize what we have in common with others and to creat... more Marianne Moore treats humor as a way to recognize what we have in common with others and to create understanding across difference. In her early work, Moore experiments with combinations of satire and empathy. In “A Prize Bird” and “The Wood-Weasel,” she uses humor as a test of friendship, and suggests that sympathetic laughter constitutes a distinctively American approach to collaborative artistic creation. Humor in “The Pangolin,” like the artists’ tools Moore discusses in the poem, is an end in itself and a way to discover new possibilities: it marks shared humanity and unites the human with the divine. Moore’s laughter occurs when we understand intuitively what it is like to be someone else; the more apparently unlike us the other, the more satisfying the laughter. Throughout Moore’s work, humor can be read as an ars poetica, modeling the synthesis of diverse components that she performs in her poetry.

Humor, Empathy, and Community in Twentieth-Century American Poetry, 2021

Twenty-first-century poets use humor to examine and convey different kinds of knowledge—cultural,... more Twenty-first-century poets use humor to examine and convey different kinds of knowledge—cultural, scientific, and emotional. Laughter in the work of poets like Raymond McDaniel, Stephanie Burt, Cathy Park Hong, Albert Goldbarth, Kim Rosenfield, Jamaal May, Patricia Lockwood, and Lucille Clifton prompts us to examine competing epistemologies. These poets examine how we exchange the material of laughter, and expose the ways that affective responses can determine what we think we know. They show how laughter can re-shape our sense of canons and render unfamiliar material accessible, expanding our literary knowledge and the sympathetic capacities that knowledge carries with it. They demonstrate how laughter breaks down categories like “science” and “literature,” expanding the kinds of knowledge that we value as “fact.” At the same time, they warn that laughter’s power to heal trauma or mediate other minds is limited, and that we should not trust humorous insights too far.

Liverpool University Press eBooks, Sep 1, 2023

Edinburgh University Press eBooks, May 1, 2019

The T.S. Eliot studies annual, 2018

Oxford University Press eBooks, Dec 16, 2021

Marianne Moore treats humor as a way to recognize what we have in common with others and to creat... more Marianne Moore treats humor as a way to recognize what we have in common with others and to create understanding across difference. In her early work, Moore experiments with combinations of satire and empathy. In “A Prize Bird” and “The Wood-Weasel,” she uses humor as a test of friendship, and suggests that sympathetic laughter constitutes a distinctively American approach to collaborative artistic creation. Humor in “The Pangolin,” like the artists’ tools Moore discusses in the poem, is an end in itself and a way to discover new possibilities: it marks shared humanity and unites the human with the divine. Moore’s laughter occurs when we understand intuitively what it is like to be someone else; the more apparently unlike us the other, the more satisfying the laughter. Throughout Moore’s work, humor can be read as an ars poetica, modeling the synthesis of diverse components that she performs in her poetry.

Liverpool University Press eBooks, Jul 15, 2023

Scandinavian Studies, Jun 22, 2002

ISAK DINESEN'S "The Deluge at Norderney" (1934) is a tale about self-invention and ... more ISAK DINESEN'S "The Deluge at Norderney" (1934) is a tale about self-invention and its role in resisting the impositions of others. (1) Characters who invent themselves based upon artistic models find that the results of their inventions can far exceed their models; in a startling move away from the usual sequence of events, the most successful characters become idealized versions of their flawed originals. The similar activity of rewriting the past has a still more dramatically redemptive result: it allows Miss Malin Nat-og-Dag to go to her grave a free and happy woman. In the moment of death, memory and fantasy are indistinguishable, and the characters' masquerades become true. It is nearly impossible to summarize the plot of "The Deluge at Norderney" in a satisfactory manner. The frame narrative, if stripped of its descriptions and explanation, is too simple even to be a story: A young man, a young woman, an aristocratic old maid, and an old Cardinal are all stranded in a barn in the flooded German countryside. If the barn does not collapse by dawn, they will be rescued. They pass the night by telling stories. Early in the night, the young woman and the young man are married to each other by the Cardinal. Just before morning, the Cardinal reveals that he is not a Cardinal at all, but the Cardinal's valet; he killed his master when the flood began and has taken his place during the day's rescue work. The story ends at dawn, the barn's collapse imminent. The magic and delight of "The Deluge at Norderney" is in the interaction of the stories-within-stories. There are two kinds of these embedded tales: the omniscient narrator's asides, in which we learn the history of Cardinal Hamilcar von Sehstedt's life and his actions (or rather, the impostor, Kasparson's, actions) on the day of the flood, and the story of the old lady, Miss Malin Nat-og-Dag; and the tales told by the refugees in the barn. There are three of these: an autobiography, told by the young man Jonathan Maersk; a biography, told by Miss Malin about her young friend and fellow-castaway Calypso; and a fantasy, told by the Cardinal about St. Peter and Barabbas. (2) Calypso tells no story; Miss Malin, whose story we already know from the narrator, almost re-tells it herself, but interrupts herself at dawn. This progression--biography told by the omniscient narrator; autobiography; biography told by a character; fantasy; interrupted autobiography--is essential to the development of "The Deluge at Norderney." The tale passes through five degrees of invention, in which the truths and central obsessions of the narrators' and/or main characters' lives are presented with varying layers of sympathy and differing attempts at concealment. I will argue that each embedded tale is a story not only of self-invention (which should be more or less clear from the tales themselves), but also of re-creation. The characters are telling stories which, in retrospect, become the truth. For Robert Langbaum, the purpose of the time in the barn is to give the characters the chance "to make death their ultimate triumph over conditions" (71). But in order for the characters to achieve this triumph, they must first overcome past impositions and learn to invent their own life stories, thus reclaiming and shaping their identities. Marcia Landy writes that "only through the mirroring of self through others, through art, and through language is it possible to restore the integrity of the self" (401), but it seems that in "The Deluge at Norderney," the self can only escape from the misreadings and projections of others when it is telling its own story. When the characters in the barn tell their stories, they make their lives complete and worthwhile. (3) Any lies they tell are in the search for a fundamental truth. The tale begins with an example of misguided reinvention, the sort of thing the characters must struggle to escape. Norderney is not an obvious place for a seaside resort; it is, in fact, only made one by the romantic imagination, which "delighted in ruins, ghosts, and lunatics" (Dinesen 1). …

Comparative Literature Studies, 2013

Palgrave Macmillan US eBooks, 2010

Transnational fiction builds its home in the no man’s land between fact and interpretation. It as... more Transnational fiction builds its home in the no man’s land between fact and interpretation. It asks us to recognize that cultural demarcations, like historical narratives and national boundaries, gain their status as “true” from group consensus. The fantastic literary worlds of transnational fiction lead readers through a trial-and-error process, teaching us what materials are most amenable to reinterpretation and recombination. Like transnationality itself, hybrid world-fashioning can produce durable changes in our understanding of group identity. Readers are asked to use the imaginative underpinnings of identity categories to render cultural affiliations and national histories portable between languages and continents.

Studies in American humor, 2016

But ironically, some of the examples in the evolution of the sitcom point to a weakening of its l... more But ironically, some of the examples in the evolution of the sitcom point to a weakening of its long-term aesthetic impact, with certain postmodern comedies so often overly-laden with topical references and metadata that they may lack relevance for future audiences and be relegated to ephemera, not unlike Austerlitz’s observation about All in the Family (CBS, 1971–1979), “a product of its time that is hard to watch today” (127). Conversely, TV’s earliest sitcoms like the Honeymooners and the indomitable I Love Lucy (CBS, 1951–1957) endure due to their broad comic strokes and beloved characters that transcend time and translation and are still in syndication worldwide after half a century. The notion at least stirs: the sitcom may have reached its apex at a young age. Austerlitz handily chronicles the sitcom’s under-examined history with a framework that serves as a reference point for further scholarly inquiry and discourse. Sitcom is brimming with insights, salient facts, and entertaining trivia of value and interest to academics and armchair aficionados alike.

The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, Mar 30, 2017

Like his protean characters, Rushdie has changed dramatically over the course of his career. His ... more Like his protean characters, Rushdie has changed dramatically over the course of his career. His shifting discussion of Islam's internal diversity is exemplified by the brief possibility of a pluralist Islam in The Satanic Verses, by the idyllic past of anti-communitarian Kashmir in Shalimar the Clown, and by the catastrophic results when outsiders conflate these Islams with those of the fundamentalist Imam in The Satanic Verses or the Iron Mullah in Shalimar the Clown. But the shift from the novels to the memoir seems greater than the shifts within the novels, as Rushdie appears to reject the novels' attempts at sympathy with his opponents. His treatment of Islam in Joseph Anton simplifies his own investigations of how religion, race, and cultural identity interpenetrate for moderate Muslims and atheists of Muslim descent, and the role of racism and xenophobia in solidifying "Islam" as an object of fear. This article tracks how Rushdie's treatment of Islam as variously practised by individuals, Islam the global religion, and extremist terrorism are increasingly collapsed in The Satanic Verses, Shalimar the Clown, and Joseph Anton. The memoir suggests deep changes in Rushdie's attitude.

Journal of Modern Literature, 2012

treats humor as a means of both recognizing commonality and creating mutual understanding between... more treats humor as a means of both recognizing commonality and creating mutual understanding between individuals. In two comparatively minor poems, "A Prize Bird" (1915) and "The Wood-Weasel" (1942), Moore uses humor as a test of friendship, and suggests that sympathetic laughter constitutes a distinctively American approach to collaborative artistic creation. Humor in "The Pangolin" (1936), like the artists' tools Moore discusses in the poem, is both an end in itself and a means to evergreater things: it becomes the marker of shared humanity and a medium for uniting the human with the divine. Throughout Moore's work, her humor can be read as a kind of ars poetica, modeling the synthesis of diverse components that she performs in her poetry.

Slavonic and East European Review

The version in the Kent Academic Repository may differ from the final published version. Users ar... more The version in the Kent Academic Repository may differ from the final published version. Users are advised to check http://kar.kent.ac.uk for the status of the paper. Users should always cite the published version of record.

Humor, Empathy, and Community in Twentieth-Century American Poetry

Brown’s sense of humor provides guiding principles for real-world action while making the Black t... more Brown’s sense of humor provides guiding principles for real-world action while making the Black tradition of private anti-racist laughter public. Brown examines the violence of traditional superiority humor in poems like “Sam Smiley,” in which Black laughter is silenced by lynching. Rather than simply rejecting such humor, Brown gives readers alternatives: his anti-hierarchical approach in the “Slim Greer” poems inverts Bergson’s logic, making humor a precondition for empathy. The partial resemblance we see between ourselves and the object of laughter can teach us to recognize our commonality even with our enemies. For Brown, the ethical underpinnings of art lie in artists’ awareness of contingency, complexity, and the subjectivities of unlike others. Empathic humor turns laughter from a zero-sum game to a game everyone can win by rejecting not just racism but hierarchical thinking as a whole. Brown shows how empathic laughter can reframe our knowledge of other people and upend the ...

Humor, Empathy, and Community in Twentieth-Century American Poetry

Marianne Moore treats humor as a way to recognize what we have in common with others and to creat... more Marianne Moore treats humor as a way to recognize what we have in common with others and to create understanding across difference. In her early work, Moore experiments with combinations of satire and empathy. In “A Prize Bird” and “The Wood-Weasel,” she uses humor as a test of friendship, and suggests that sympathetic laughter constitutes a distinctively American approach to collaborative artistic creation. Humor in “The Pangolin,” like the artists’ tools Moore discusses in the poem, is an end in itself and a way to discover new possibilities: it marks shared humanity and unites the human with the divine. Moore’s laughter occurs when we understand intuitively what it is like to be someone else; the more apparently unlike us the other, the more satisfying the laughter. Throughout Moore’s work, humor can be read as an ars poetica, modeling the synthesis of diverse components that she performs in her poetry.

Humor, Empathy, and Community in Twentieth-Century American Poetry, 2021

Twenty-first-century poets use humor to examine and convey different kinds of knowledge—cultural,... more Twenty-first-century poets use humor to examine and convey different kinds of knowledge—cultural, scientific, and emotional. Laughter in the work of poets like Raymond McDaniel, Stephanie Burt, Cathy Park Hong, Albert Goldbarth, Kim Rosenfield, Jamaal May, Patricia Lockwood, and Lucille Clifton prompts us to examine competing epistemologies. These poets examine how we exchange the material of laughter, and expose the ways that affective responses can determine what we think we know. They show how laughter can re-shape our sense of canons and render unfamiliar material accessible, expanding our literary knowledge and the sympathetic capacities that knowledge carries with it. They demonstrate how laughter breaks down categories like “science” and “literature,” expanding the kinds of knowledge that we value as “fact.” At the same time, they warn that laughter’s power to heal trauma or mediate other minds is limited, and that we should not trust humorous insights too far.

Modern poetry, at least according to the current consensus, is difficult and often depressing. Bu... more Modern poetry, at least according to the current consensus, is difficult and often depressing. But as Humor in Modern American Poetry shows, modern poetry is full of humorous moments, from comic verse published in popular magazines to the absurd juxtapositions of The Cantos. The essays in this collection show that humor is as essential to the serious work of William Carlos Williams as it is to the light verse of Phyllis McGinley. For the writers in this volume, the point of humor is not to provide “comic relief,” a brief counterpoint to the poem's more serious themes; humor is central to the poems' projects. These poets use humor to claim their own poetic authority; to re-define literary tradition; to show what audience they are writing for; to make political attacks; and, perhaps most surprisingly, to promote sympathy among their readers.

The essays in this book include single-author studies, discussions of literary circles, and theories of form. Taken together, they help to begin a new conversation about modernist poetry, one that treats its lighthearted moments not as decorative but as substantive. Humor defines groups and marks social boundaries, but it also leads us to transgress those boundaries; it forges ties between the writer and the reader, blurs the line between public and private, and becomes a spur to self-awareness.