George MacBeth - An Approach

Clutching at things, plain things

The poetic universe of George MacBeth is determined and defined, in a large number of his poems, by plain, common, everyday things, personal objects and sometimes plants or animals which are obsessionally used in a variety of poetic images. But the poetic image is not created for its own sake; it carries along with it a great number of connotations which sometimes elevate it to the point of becoming a universal symbol and a key for the poet's philosophical anxiety.

Graham Greene - A Tribute

The invisible side of exoticism: Phuong's character in the Quiet American

Phuong's character in The Quiet American is one of the most difficult to define, as she holds no real leading part in the novel and her particular characteristics are shown to the reader through the eyes of Fowler, the narrator, that is through the deforming prism of both a male vision and a European spirit. Attempting thus an approach to Phuong's character, one should beware of a number of traps liable to mislead one's judgement - if it is ever possible to fully analyse a character whose only known aspects are those revealed to us by the author himself through the character mostly acting as his mouthpiece.

On Popular Fiction

A widespread literary paradox

"Popular fiction" is by definition meant to appeal to a large, if not the largest, part of the reading public in literate societies. From the Bible (or even Homer) to Walter Scott and from Goethe to Raymond Chandler, the nature of this literary phenomenon presents a considerable range of variations according to the historical background of each era. What in particular seems to correspond to the term in question the last two or three centuries, and especially during and ever since the Industrial Revolution, consists mainly of a secondary, "unofficial" kind of literature with less, or, sometimes, no literary value (to the extent, of course, that such an attribute can be objectively assessed), easy to read and highly digestible, usually doomed to oblivion after a meteoric success. From this rule must, of course, be exempted the works which, due to their own exceptional merits, managed to resist time and establish themselves as classics, like those of Balzac, Dickens or Zola.