PMLA

Intimate Editing: The Textual Poetics of Susan Howe's Collage Poems
Anne Marie Thompson
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 May 2023, pp. 241-257
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Susan Howe's recent collage poems—an intricate, sui generis form—are the flowering of her editorial theory, which I describe as “intimate editing.” I challenge scholarly assumptions that sideline Howe's engagement with the field of textual criticism from accounts of her poetry by showing how her unique approach to texts puts avant-garde poetry and textual editing into conversation, introducing reciprocal possibilities for both. Poems can model new forms of editing, and editorial debates can expand the reach and resonance of innovative poetry. Drawing on The Birth-mark, Howe's collection of creative-critical essays that probe the motivations and ethos of textual criticism, I show how intimate editing expands the typical, often rigid, values of traditional editing and contributes to growing discussions about what a feminist textual criticism might look like. Then I discuss the collage poems, particularly those in Concordance, as whimsical manifestations of Howe's textual approach.

404 Utopia Not Found: Cyberpunk Avatars in Samanta Schweblin's Kentukis
Alexandra Brown
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 May 2023, pp. 258-273
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Science fiction criticism has long attended the relationship between form and utopian thought. However, increased study of Latin American narratives has allowed for a return to foundational science fiction theories with renewed perspective. While critics have recognized the tendency of Latin American science fiction to slip between genres, a trend termed the “slipstream phenomenon,” there has been little analysis of its impact on utopian imagination. As a result, we miss one of the region's most unique contributions to broader science fiction traditions. In response, this article locates Samanta Schweblin's Kentukis (2018) within the legacies of cyberpunk and argues that the novel uses slipstream to establish and dismantle a series of classic utopian horizons by shifting its genre identity. In doing so, this work identifies a turn in recent Latin American science fiction that metacritically questions the ability of science fiction form itself to imagine a utopian horizon beyond global capitalism.

Rereading Elizabeth I as Europa
Carmen Nocentelli
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 May 2023, pp. 321-342
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Albeit widely cited, the 1598 engraving known as Elizabeth I as Europa is something of a mystery: little to nothing is known of its authorship or of the circumstances of its production and circulation. Tracing the print's origins to one of Europe's earliest news periodicals, I argue that Elizabeth I as Europa is not about Elizabeth but about Europa—which is to say, about the construction of an early modern public that could understand itself as European. The print participated in this construction in two interrelated ways: as an intervention in Europa Regina cartography, it thematized Europe as a shared (if highly contested) space of discourse that could cut across national, linguistic, and confessional differences; as a piece of transnational reportage meant for broadscale circulation, it helped conjure up the public on which that space of discourse depended.

Publications of the Modern Language Association