Papers by Dennis Wilson Wise
The Baum Bugle, 2019
An analysis of L. Frank Baum's use of the magic word "pyrzqxgl" in *The Magic of Oz*, plus a disc... more An analysis of L. Frank Baum's use of the magic word "pyrzqxgl" in *The Magic of Oz*, plus a discussion of magic words in later fantasy literature.
Journal of Tolkien Research, 2020
This article examines major academic approaches used in the study of J.R.R. Tolkien. It argues th... more This article examines major academic approaches used in the study of J.R.R. Tolkien. It argues that certain themes from political philosopher Leo Strauss, by helping us to develop a new theoretical lens, can elucidate several politically salient aspects of Tolkien's work, including thymos and his dialectic between ancient and modern. Four previous (though flawed) Straussian interpretations of Tolkien are highlighted. Finally, by analyzing the tensions that arise when pairing critical theory and its attendant bias against nature with Tolkien and epic fantasy, this article argues for the timeliness of a Straussian lens for studying fantasy and Tolkien alike.
Law & Literature, 2020
Stephen R. Donaldson is a major modern writer of speculative fiction for whom the issue of sexed ... more Stephen R. Donaldson is a major modern writer of speculative fiction for whom the issue of sexed violence, including rape, plays an important role. This article examines “Reave the Just,” the keynote story in his award-winning collection Reave the Just and Other Tales, as a gateway into how Donaldson examines sexed violence in his long-form fiction. While the story reflects a strong feminist commitment to gender equality and individual agency, I argue that Donaldson’s liberal individualist conception of the law, which retains wide contemporary cultural and juridical support, has also become problematized through recent radical and postmodern feminist discussions on victim blaming. After assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the liberal position articulated by “Reave,” I suggest that Donaldson’s story helps revive a link between agency and victimization—first advanced by second wave feminists—that, by the time of the story’s composition in the 1990s, had generally lost feminist support.
Aliens in Popular Culture, 2019
Supernatural Studies, 2020
Prior to 1926 when H. P. Lovecraft first published “The Call of
Cthulhu,” his finest short story ... more Prior to 1926 when H. P. Lovecraft first published “The Call of
Cthulhu,” his finest short story is generally considered to be
“The Rats in the Walls.” Contradictory evidence, however, laces
this short tale. Are Lovecraft’s eponymous rats supernatural
entities, or are they simply the mad ravings of an unreliable
narrator? Most commentators have preferred a realistic or
naturalistic framework of explanation, but I argue that the rats’
ontological status remains inherently undecidable. Using
Tzvetan Todorov’s theory of the fantastic as a starting point,
this article suggests that when a reader hesitates over the rats’
reality, this hesitation raises questions about the shifting
boundary between real and unreal, which in turn accentuates
the precarity within what I have elsewhere called Lovecraft’s
moment in the international weird.
Mythlore, 2017
Literary reasons for why J.R.R. Tolkien might have co-nominated (alongside Lord David Cecil and ... more Literary reasons for why J.R.R. Tolkien might have co-nominated (alongside Lord David Cecil and F. P. Wilson) the British author E. M. Forster for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Also, a discussion about whether the triple nomination for the Cambridge-based Forster may have been partially to help C. S. Lewis gain a professorship at Cambridge.
New Boundaries in Political Science Fiction, 2008
New Boundaries in Political Science Fiction, edited by Donald M. Hassler and Clyde Wilcox, U of S... more New Boundaries in Political Science Fiction, edited by Donald M. Hassler and Clyde Wilcox, U of South Carolina P, 2008, pp. 290-98.
Journal of Tolkien Research, 2016
A great gap in Tolkien scholarship has been to miss how deeply Saruman answers the age-old antago... more A great gap in Tolkien scholarship has been to miss how deeply Saruman answers the age-old antagonism between rhetoric and philosophy. Like John Milton, Tolkien cannot bring himself to trust rhetoric. It threatens the unitary truth of a divinely-revealed moral order and, ironically, Tolkien applies great rhetorical skill to convince his reader of rhetoric’s illusionary nature. In this matter Tolkien has been largely successful, since few readers (if any) question the de-privileging of Saruman’s perspective. In the process, though, I suggest that Tolkien has developed in his master rhetorician a new relationship between rhetoric (eloquence) and rage (thymos). The “wild beast” (LOTR III.10 563) in Saruman’s nature eventually overwhelms the Art of his Voice. Yet by examining Saruman in light of another “wild beast,” Plato’s Thrasymachus (Republic 336b), we begin to see how Tolkien has subverted the hierarchy first established by Plato between art and anger. Thrasymachus subordinates his rage to his rhetorical skills, but Saruman allows his skills to wane as his anger waxes. The example of Sauron, who needs no rhetoric, drives home to Saruman the (mistaken) lesson that rhetoric is superfluous. It belongs to the weak. Saruman thereby allows his anger freer rein. Following his defeat at the Battle of Isengard, Saruman’s rage overwhelms him completely, and that rage quickly turns to resentment (ressentiment). After Saruman escapes Treebeard’s watchful eye, a “new” Saruman emerges. Following Peter Sloterdijk’s Rage and Time, I then expand my argument to suggest that Sharkey’s Shire exemplifies the forces of rage and resentment in modern politics. Defeating Sharkey, though, comes at a high price for the hobbits of the Shire. Since the meek do not inherit the earth, rage and eloquence must be marshalled together to defeat their oppressor—a situation tragic to Tolkien because it finds no easy reconciliation with his Christian beliefs.
Scientia et Humanitas, 2014
The sixteenth-century English poet Edmund Spenser has long seemed full of contradictions. On one ... more The sixteenth-century English poet Edmund Spenser has long seemed full of contradictions. On one hand, Spenser is a poet of " twelue priuate morall vertues, " falling into the civic-humanist tradition advocated by his predecessor Sir Philip Sidney. On the other hand, Spenser's A View of the State of Ireland advocates a brutal and bloody colonial policy in relation to the Irish, views which seem incompatible with a master of moral poetry. I suggest that we understand the apparent contradiction as a conflict between Spenser's classicism and his apparent acceptance of modern political philosophy, initiated by Niccolò Machiavelli. According to Leo Strauss, Machiavelli was an " esoteric " writer, someone who did not openly proclaim his doctrines of realpolitik. Machiavelli's method broke with classical political philosophy, which— like the classical literature championed by Sidney—often taught moral or imaginary ideals as a guide to action. I argue that Spenser read Machiavelli well, understanding those chapters of The Prince most closely pertaining to Spenser's own colonial situation in Ireland, and wrote A View according to those views. Spenser's personal experience as a colonial administrator led him (following Machiavelli) to break decisively with classical political philosophy, even while Spenser's literary theory refused to diverge from Sidney. In other words, Spenser is ancient in his art and modern in his politics. Rather than being simply a poet of the " State " or of nascent English nationalism, Spenser actually understands and encompasses the contradictions and changes of his own historical moment.
Book Reviews by Dennis Wilson Wise
SFRA Review, 2022
At this point, it seems almost obligatory for anyone who mentions John Wyndham's life to begin by... more At this point, it seems almost obligatory for anyone who mentions John Wyndham's life to begin by quoting his reputation as science fiction's "invisible man. " Although not as mysterious as Elena Ferrante, nor as reclusive as J. D. Salinger and Thomas Pynchon, Wyndham nonetheless let personal reticence become a defining feature of his public identity. In fact, his best comparison is probably to C. S. Lewis. For most of Lewis's life, the Oxford fantasist cohabitated with a woman two decades his senior, the mother of a friend who died during the First World War, and neither friends nor his brother Warnie (with whom Lewis was quite close) ever knew the precise nature of their relationship. Considering Wyndham's deep-set disdain for religion, this comparison with Lewis would probably have irked him. It remains apt, though, and so his "hidden" life thus forms the main subject for Amy Binns's snappy new biography, Hidden Wyndham. For the most part, her research derives from the Wyndham Archive at the University of Liverpool. Among other documents and paraphernalia, this collection holds over 350 private letters between Wyndham and his long-term partner Grace Wilson. In addition, Binns puts her journalistic training to good use, especially when studying the earlier portions of Wyndham's life. For example, she supplements her biography with primary source material from newspapers and court cases; these documents detail the bitter, contentious, and distressingly public legal wrangle that embroiled Wyndham's self-destructive father George Harris against his (then) wife's upper-middle-class family of "new money" industrialists. To this traumatic and shameful scandal Binns attributes much of Wyndham's extreme personal reserve.
Journal of Tolkien Research, 2022
SFRA Review, 2021
Robert H. Waugh's latest collection of critical essays is an odd book-a throwback, really, to byg... more Robert H. Waugh's latest collection of critical essays is an odd book-a throwback, really, to bygone days filled with humanist values and New Critical precepts. Virtually absent from The Tragic Thread in Science Fiction is historical context. Authorial biography fares a little better, but only just. Yet no matter how deeply readers look, they'll not find any critical terminology, no theories or critical topics, from the last thirty years. In a way, this makes sense. The oldest essay in this collection hails from 1985, the second oldest from 1990. To be fair, Waugh significantly revised both essays-though not his third reprint, an article from 1997-for The Tragic Thread in Science Fiction, evidently in a sincere (if uneven) attempt to make this book read as a book rather than as a disjointed collection of essays. Still, this stylistic facelift leaves the articles' core arguments untouched-and it shows. In neither case do Waugh's revisions, despite a few updated citations, address major recent works or trends in SF criticism. Likewise, although Waugh's nine other non-reprint chapters forego any dates of composition, they too exude the faintly musty aura of Rip van Winkle. These essays are formal, intelligently written, and sometimes even charmingly learned, but they nonetheless retain the terms and methodologies of our New Critical forebears. The real connecting thread in The Tragic Thread in Science Fiction, far from the "heroism, grandeur, and tragedy" stated in the introduction (7), is Waugh's resurrection of close reading for imagery, quest functions, literary influence, source hunting, thematic oppositions, and aesthetic form and structure-especially aesthetic form and structure, in fact-in isolation from broader historical and cultural concerns.
Science Fiction Film & Television, 2019
this page deliberately left blank] 290 DVD reviews and humans can get along peacefully, humanity'... more this page deliberately left blank] 290 DVD reviews and humans can get along peacefully, humanity's ideological obsession with purity threatens to doom them all. iZombie is not alone in recent zombie narratives to reject the genre's history of binary thinking. The recent booktofilm adaptations The Girl with All the Gifts and Warm Bodies (Levine US 2013) deal with similar thematic territory. This illustrates a shift away from the at-times reactionary undertones of the zombie genre. iZombie therefore ultimately becomes a meditation on one of the oldest questions in sf: what, exactly, does it mean to be human?
Fafnir: Nordic Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy Research, 2020
Journal of Tolkien Research, 2019
Journal of Tolkien Research, 2018
FAFNIR: Nordic Journal of SF&F Research, 2016
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Papers by Dennis Wilson Wise
Cthulhu,” his finest short story is generally considered to be
“The Rats in the Walls.” Contradictory evidence, however, laces
this short tale. Are Lovecraft’s eponymous rats supernatural
entities, or are they simply the mad ravings of an unreliable
narrator? Most commentators have preferred a realistic or
naturalistic framework of explanation, but I argue that the rats’
ontological status remains inherently undecidable. Using
Tzvetan Todorov’s theory of the fantastic as a starting point,
this article suggests that when a reader hesitates over the rats’
reality, this hesitation raises questions about the shifting
boundary between real and unreal, which in turn accentuates
the precarity within what I have elsewhere called Lovecraft’s
moment in the international weird.
Book Reviews by Dennis Wilson Wise