Laurent Dubois

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to the WMQ online. About 237 words from this article are provided below; about 558 words remain.

If you are a individual subscriber to the William and Mary Quarterly, you may:: • login here if you have already registered for online access.; • Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
• Set up your online account for the first time.
If you are not a subscriber to the William and Mary Quarterly, you can:: • subscribe here.
• Purchase this article in PDF form for $10.00.
• Purchase a research pass to gain two hour access to the entire History Cooperative web site. You will have full access to current issues of the William and Mary Quarterly (104.3-present). Note: the Research Pass does not provide access to JSTOR's holdings of the William and Mary Quarterly.
Instititutions can:: • Subscribe to this journal and receive print and electronic issues.
• Activate your existing subscription so that we recognize your IP number ranges.

Laurent Dubois | Reviews of Books: Declarations | The William and Mary Quarterly, 65.2 | The History Cooperative

Declarations

WHEN in the course of academic life it becomes necessary for one scholar to write a book review about another, a decent respect for the well-being of their colleagues requires that they avoid the ever-inviting perils of such an endeavor: quibbling obsessively with odd details while overlooking the main point; emitting a why-didn't-you-write-the-book-that-I-wrote complaint; delivering a condescending and effacing pat on the back; writing the review that is not a review but rather a continuation of some otherwise-forgotten battle; or, most attractively for writers and odious for journal editors, never writing the review at all. This new style of forum, happily, represents an invitation to do precisely what one often wants to do in a review: dive away from the book into the broader sea of questions raised, problems posed, and stories that it inspires one to want to tell and, along the way (and why not?), make some declarations of one's own.

I hold this truth to be self-evident: that Armitage's book is a very compelling work, showcasing erudition, elegant analysis, and a style that is fluid and deceptively straightforward, since the argument is complex and multilayered. Among many other things, it is a striking example of the potency of literary analysis, for here is a contextualizing reading of a certain text's production in a certain context and of the way that it unwittingly created a genre of enormous popularity.

. . .

There are about 558 more words in this article. Please log in (or, if you are not yet an authorized user, please go to the User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.