Papers by Elizabeth Alsop
Narrative, 2019
ABSTRACT:This article examines the high degree of parallelism and repetition that characterizes d... more ABSTRACT:This article examines the high degree of parallelism and repetition that characterizes dialogue in Henry James's late fiction and considers both the function of such "consensual talk" in the context of James's novels and its implications for understandings of speech in the novel, more generally. Taking The Ambassadors (1903) as its primary case study, the article argues that dialogue's consensual structure is used to express a fantasy of reciprocity that is at once broadly attributable to the novel's speakers and to James himself, stung by the failure of his theatrical work and the lack of commercial uptake of The New York Edition. In particular, it draws on his 1905 lecture, "The Question of Our Speech," in which James conveys his aspirations that "conscious, imitative speech" could serve a unifying function in the social realm. Yet closer analysis of The Ambassadors reveals the extent to which James's theoretical ideals are at once dramatized and ultimately discredited in his fictional work. In the process, the article models a rhetorical approach to interpreting character dialogue, which treats it as an expressive affordance of the author as well as the character. In this way, it frames novelistic speech as less an instance of mimesis than poiesis and Jamesian dialogue as just one example of the ways fictional conversations get "made."
Feminist Media Studies 19.6, 2019
Journal of Film and Video 71.3, 2019
Quarterly Review of Film and Video , Feb 2015
The Velvet Light Trap, Sep 2014
Unlike its source text, herman Melville's 'Billy Budd', Claire Denis's 1999 film Beau Travail end... more Unlike its source text, herman Melville's 'Billy Budd', Claire Denis's 1999 film Beau Travail ends ambiguously, with neither the Billy nor the Claggart character definitively dead. in this essay, i explore the possibilities engendered by Denis's divergence from Melville's text. By redistributing narrative emphasis, Denis focuses attention less on the story's central moral dilemma than on an equally crucial thematic conflict that emerges in Melville's work-the tension between desire and its obstruction. as i demonstrate through close analysis, Denis dramatizes this structuring opposition through the film's staging of bodily movement. The result, i suggest, is a rewriting of 'Billy Budd' that is less interested in moral questions than in phenomenological ones. in this sense, by departing from Melville's text, Denis succeeds not so much in refuting it-as critics such as Richard Middleton-Kaplan have argued-than in offering an illuminating commentary upon it.
College Literature, Aug 1, 2012
Essays by Elizabeth Alsop
The Atlantic, Jul 8, 2015
The Los Angeles Review of Books, Apr 17, 2014
The New York Times Magazine, Sep 14, 2012
Books by Elizabeth Alsop
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Papers by Elizabeth Alsop
Essays by Elizabeth Alsop
Books by Elizabeth Alsop