Text Matters: A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture, No. 3 (2013)

Jadwiga Uchman

Issue 3 (2013) of Text Matters, entitled Eroticism and Its Discontents and edited by Professor Jadwiga Uchman (University of Lodz), is a collection of essays that concentrate on representations of eroticism in literature and film. The main section is divided into two subsections, the first of which, "Eroticism in Medieval and Renaissance Literature," consists of six scholarly texts. They discuss erotic imagery in the works of the anonymous Pearl Poet, William Shakespeare, Geoffrey Chaucer, Giovanni Boccaccio, Middle English mystical writers, and John Fletcher. The second one, "Eroticism in Modern Drama, Film and Prose," includes eight articles that approach the main theme of the volume in the oeuvre of such renowned authors as Samuel Beckett, Christina Reid, Sarah Daniels, Harold Pinter, and Salman Rushdie. They also explore the following notions: eroticism in urban drama, sexually explicit content in modern European cinema, and nudity in cinematic and stage adaptations of Shakespearean plays. Additionally, the volume continues the main subject of issue 2, "Marginalia/Marginalities," in the second part of an essay devoted to Ira Daniel Aldridge, the son of a famous 19th-century Shakespearean actor. The concluding section contains three reviews (of Writing as Resistance: Literature of Emancipation, edited by Jaydeep Sarangi; the fifth edition of J. A. Cuddon's A Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory, revised by M. A. R. Habib; and Czytanie Literatury [Reading Literature], a journal of the Institute of Polish Studies, University of Lodz) and two interviews (with Dan Rebellato and Rukmini Bhaya Nair).