This paper recasts the normative shape of Fear and Trembling by presenting an ‘ethical reading’ based on an ethic of care. It will be argued that Abraham's response represents a commitment to sustain and deepen his fundamental relationship with God, to make absolute his relation to the Absolute. Since most readers tend to focus myopically on ‘the trial’ itself, apart from the context and history of the God-relationship, the proffered interpretations tend inevitably to distort the nature and significance of Abraham's (...) form of life. By remembering the pattern of attachment between God and Abraham, I think that a different normative picture will emerge, one which can be expressed in the grammar of care. (shrink)

An attempt to reinterpret American literature "as a kind of imaginative and experimental projection" of the "American Dream"--the ideal of perfect freedom and democracy. The author's critical and methodological principles, unfortunately, are never quite made clear.--L. H.

The author of this perceptive but sometimes rather obscure study treats a number of the major long works of modern poets as expressions of the common theme of metamorphosis. Not only do the metamorphoses of classical mythology figure prominently in the subject matter of works like The Waste Land and the Cantos, but the notion of metamorphosis has become an important means of conveying the "message" of such works: modern man's "need and desire to transcend the psychologically repressive conditions of (...) his mechanized milieu." Sister Quinn is most clear and convincing when she is interpreting poems as literary creations, less so when she attempts to describe, in philosophical terms, what they mean or express.--L. H. (shrink)