Renascence

Editor's Page

Conversation with Jon Hassler: Grand Opening

Plut interviews novelist Jon Hassler about all ten of his novels and also his two short story collections, Keepsakes and Rufus at the Door. Among other things, Hassler wrote the Rufus at the Door before he wrote the novel about Dodger's Return, and when he began to write the novel.

The Joseph M. Schwartz Memorial Essay, 2005

Griffin presents a snapshot of the large body of writing interpreting the caper at Merry Mount and the day in Salem when John Endicott mustered the troops. Owing to the recent emergence of postcolonial studies, how one interprets the colonial past has resurfaced as a topic of pressing interest, and it has produced a turf-battle that seems stuck at a stubborn impasse.

'The Minister's Black Veil' and Hawthorne's Ethical Refusal of Reciprocity: A Levinasian Parable

Boone places two enigmatic expositions side-by-side between two writers, Nataniel Hawthorne and Emmanuel Levinas. Also, some light can be shed on Levinas's philosophy, especially concerning its limitations; some of the more radical elements of his thought regarding reciprocity and community need to be explored and critiqued. Most of the criticism of The Minister's Black Veil focuses on interpreting the meaning of the veil and/or the character of the Reverend Parson Hooper.

Chesterton's Realism

According to G. K. Chesterton one of the main delusions to which one can succumb is the belief that the outside world is created by the self. In combating this illusion, Gill shares how Chesterton defends philosophical realism--the belief that the objects of thought have a real existence independent of the thoughts of the inquirer.