Virginia Woolf interweaves allusion and image to construct character, define theme, and structure Mrs. Dalloway. Shakespearean allusions combined with mineral and flower imagery identify Lady Bruton and Sally Seton as representatives of the dying aristocracy and the flourishing industrial class. They also embody the alternatives open to Clarissa: sterile aristocratic society or life-giving passion. An allusion to the dirge from Cymbeline sounds the theme of death and rebirth echoed in Peter's dream, the beggarwoman's song, and Septimus' and Clarissa's experiences. Quotations from the dirge and a complex of symbols originating in its heat and cold imagery link Septimus' and Clarissa's successive deaths and rebirths. A modern incarnation of the dying god archetype, Septimus ultimately gives Clarissa new life through his death.

Two allegorical movements dominate the central books of the Faerie Queene, the generative cycle and Britomart's quest for Artegall. Britomart's assumption of her role as mother of the British line depends on the reconciliation of these two movements, the one natural, the other historical. The Garden of Adonis presents an emblem of the generative cycle, the desire of Venus for Adonis mirroring the desire of Form for union with Matter. This search of the Female for the Male is presented sequentially in the story of Florimell and Marinell, whose adventures are juxtaposed with those of Britomart and therefore form a bridge between the emblem of the Garden and the sequence of Britomart's quest. We see the coalescence of the two in Isis Church, where Britomart's dream has both sexual and historical significance, and in her resumption of femininity after her rescue of Artegall from Radigund.

The art of Juan Ruiz must be understood in the light of the medieval conception of art as facere, a conception that postulates the artistic independence of a work while emphasizing its didactic nature in the use that individuals can make of it following their own personal motivations. The independent artistic form of Ruiz's work is at the same time an autobiographical form, wherein lies its fictional character. The fiction of the Book of Good Love is not to be seen as the fiction of its imaginary adventures but as the psychological fiction of its protagonist, i.e., the literary illusion that this protagonist mistakes for reality. Such an illusion is best exhibited in the central episode of the book, that of don Melón and doña Endrina, Ruiz's own amplified translation of Pamphilus de Amore. The autobiographical form of the book, therefore, should not be seen as a conventional literary device for self-expression but as an ironic portrait of Juan Ruiz, the man, taking for reality what Juan Ruiz, the artist, knows to be only literary fiction. (In Spanish)

Analysis of descriptive passages in Camus's “Le Renégat” shows that the protagonist associated violence with a means of escape from his unpleasant surroundings in France. Fascinated by violence, he goes to convert the cruel inhabitants of Taghâsa. But on arriving at the town built of salt, excessively hot and violent, he is enslaved. After a time the protagonist freely adores the idol of Taghâsa, believing it to represent a universal and eternal principle of violence, thus becoming the Renegade. He kills the next Christian missionary to come to Taghâsa, but in a decor which negates, thematically, the universality and the eternity of the evil principle of violence which he adores. After this futile murder, the story ends with the Renegade's more futile repentance. The thematic structures of this short story seem to embody the same rejection of violence which can be found in the last section of L'Homme révolté. (In French)

The numerous interpretations by critics of all decades of Rimbaud's sonnet on the “Vowels” are mostly based on considering A E I O U solely as letters and not as sounds. New perspectives on the poem can be opened by emphasizing its sonorous aspects and stressing the importance of vowels as primeval shouts. An analysis of the sound structure in the sonnet reveals that the profusion of images, colors, movements, emotions, evoked by the five vowel sounds, appear to be derived directly from larynx vibrations and from the shape and movement of the lips as they pronounce each key vowel. This discovery of the “naissances latentes” possible origin in the “Vowels” relies greatly on Rimbaud's other poetic works and on his new theories on poetry. A close look at some of his predecessors' ideas, themes, and images—like Victor Hugo's and Baudelaire's—that elicit a probable influence on the young poet or a strange correspondence with his own objectives further unveils, in the study of each vowel, the esoteric aspects and poetic elaboration of the “Vowels.” A living vestige of Rimbaud's adolescent voice speaking to us in its original spontaneity, the sonnet thus discloses the poet's secret: shown in the very process of creating a new language, he is like a true God: through the magic of his word, he creates light, colors, a whole new world of vivid sound-objects, that illustrate the five stages of man's life from nonexistence to eternity. (In French)

In attempting to make sense of the vacillating, inconsistent, and often bizarre behavior of the underground man, critics have employed two distinct modes of analysis, thematic and psychological. The psychological approach seems more appropriate; the novel is essentially a portrait of a character. As yet, however, critics have not approached the work with a psychological theory that is congruent with it and adequate to its complexities. The underground man's character structure, attitudes, and behavior can be understood in terms of Karen Horney's analysis of neurotic processes. In Horneyan terms, the underground man is a detached person whose aggressive and compliant trends are very close to awareness and rather evenly balanced. He experiences severe and almost continuous conflict between all three of his trends and is caught in a devastating crossfire of contradictory “shoulds.” He compensates for his feeling of worthlessness by self-glorification and then hates himself even more because he cannot live up to his idealized image. The novel's philosophic passages are an integral part of Dostoevsky's portrait of his character. The underground man's worship of freedom, will, caprice, and individuality, and his phobic reaction to anything suggesting coercion, conformity to law, or ordinariness are all aspects of his detached solution.

Where they touch on political themes, Browning's early works—particularly Sordello and the plays—are reflective less of the kind of liberalism he derived from Shelley than of a growing skepticism as to the value of partisan commitments and a distrust of merely “political” solutions. In Strafford, Sordello, Pippa Passes, The Return of the Druses, Luria, and A Soul's Tragedy, Browning explores the relationship between a character or group of characters and a culture in turmoil. Virtually all the characters, in their limitations—whether imposed by blind idealism, indecision, or charlatanism—are unequipped to assume a truly heroic role, and they are frequently poised between two equally unacceptable political alternatives. The rare, truly heroic figures of Browning's poetry are those who transcend the political obsessions of their culture and decisively assert their own best selves. In his distrust of institutional machinery and his emphasis on personal salvation, Browning belongs with Victorians like Dickens and Carlyle; in the major monologues, most of which followed this formative period, he views religion, art, and human love, rather than political action, as the motivating forces in human relationships.

Critics have said that Niebla shows both the protagonist's emergence into conscious existence and the author's attempt to create himself through the novel. But the plot repeatedly points up the character's self-deception, which makes the author's effort problematical. Niebla begins with a comic view of Augusto Pérez's falling in love with the image of a woman he has invented; it ends with a philosophical defense of the confusion of fiction and reality. The ambiguity caused by these incompatible approaches is heightened by the similarities between Augusto's ideas and Unamuno's. The ironic exposure of selfdelusion alternates with a serious theory of fantasy. In the last chapters Unamuno, like Augusto, seems to argue for total delusion. This view is most explicitly formulated in the “Historia de Niebla” which appeared as a prologue to the 1935 edition. In it Unamuno fuses legend, novel, nivola, and eternal life into the image of a communal mist in which one can be saved. Throughout his life Unamuno tried to see himself as a substantial entity and not merely an idea in the minds of others. As that goal became more elusive, he chose instead to imagine that the world was a dream in which he could be eternally represented. In order to perpetuate his illusory self, he turned all reality into fiction. Niebla anticipates this maneuver.

In an effort to correct the overidealization of Brutus, recent criticism has tended to obscure the distinctions between Brutus and his fellow Romans. Yet, Shakespeare was at some pains to depict him as the noblest Roman of them all. That is not to say he was flawless: the noblest pagan was still pagan, and as such was guided only by the light of Reason and tempted to trust in himself. If contemporary prose treatises are any key to Elizabethan attitudes toward ancient philosophy, Shakespeare's audience regarded the Stoic with ambivalence: they admired his constancy, purity of motive, and pursuit of virtue; yet they distrusted his pride, his self-sufficiency, and his hardness. By contrasting Brutus with Cassius and Caesar, Shakespeare has shown him as possessing the best of the Stoic characteristics commingled with touches of Christian compassion and ordinary human weakness. The elements are seen to be so mixed in him that one must say of him with both pride and humility: This was a man.