Rezensionen 134 marriage) in 1942 drove him into a serious nervous breakdown, and a seven-month hospitalization at White Plains (paid for by Luce), where he found spiritual support in religion and was treated by insulin injections and electroshock therapy. He never fully recovered, but always retained a streak of persecution mania. He remained bitter about not being taken back on Time, even when Luce gave him a three-year subvention to write a biography of Hawthorne (1948). When Chambers’ crusade to expose Communists in the US Government led to the Alger Hiss trials of 1949, Cantwell lived in perpetual fear of being called upon to testify. Afraid to speak out, yet fearful that silence might be construed as an admission of complicity, he remained haunted by “irrational fears” and by the “inner storm” of his “unresolved relationship” (271) with Chambers. In 1956 he entered upon a 22-year-long connection with Sports Illustrated, which was his “lifesaver” (274). Respected by his coworkers, he rose to Senior Editor and was “liberated into a new writer’s life” (276). In almost 100 articles for the magazine - as well as work of “lasting value” like The Hidden Northwest (1972) - he now “vindicated” his early promise. Many saw him as a saddened, disillusioned man who felt he had failed and been tragically victimized by the fatal influence of Chambers. Yet, in his final years, Cantwell gradually mustered the courage to confront the ghosts of his past openly and directly. He was shocked to discover that his FBI file (now accessible under the Freedom of Information Act) held 20,000 pages: the bulk concerned Chambers using Cantwell’s name as his alias. It was not granted him, however, to fulfill his self-imposed duty to explore “the subject so long resisted, if not dismissed” (292): he died on 8 December 1978. In Seyersted’s estimate, if we consider “Cantwell’s complex and complicated nature, with its many vulnerabilities, it is very impressive that he managed to achieve what he did.” (289) Given the historical and political conditions under which he had to labor, Cantwell’s career remained a matter of unfulfilled promises. The more tragically so, Seyersted believes, as given his extraordinary talents his name “might have” resounded more lastingly in American literature. Hans Bak American Studies Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands Klaus Benesch and Kerstin Schmidt, Space in America: Theory- History-Culture. Architecture-Technology-Culture 1. Amsterdam- New York: Rodopi, 2005. Jaroslav Kušnír This massive collection of essays is loosely arranged around the idea of space and its various forms in the geographical, theoretical, and cultural context of the USA. The essays are grouped around the themes of theory, landscape/ nature, architecture, AAA Band 32 (2007), Heft 1 Rezensionen 135 literature, and other forms of art (performance, film, visual arts). The collection does not represent a systematic exploration of theoretical models of space, but rather offers various views on the idea of space, its forms and representations not only in different kinds of arts, but also in theory and fields which are only loosely connected to art and the aesthetic concept of space (fields such as geography, sociology, partly architecture, and urban studies). This provides a collection with a ‘necessary’ interdisciplinary character many academic publishers currently prefer, although such an approach requires readers’ knowledge in fields s/ he may not be necessarily familiar with. The space in the main title of the collection refers not only to a theoretical, but also to a living space which, in Klaus Benesch’s view, has always been a space of action, communication, and discourse; how we perceive it, appropriate it, or exploit it as resource is constantly being transformed by technological and scientific progress and its concomitant erosion of traditional worldviews […] under changed economic and technological conditions, definitions of time and space change accordingly. (15) The editor’s words suggest one characteristic of the essays from the collection, that is that they deal with changing perceptions of space in different contemporary discourses, arts, and theories. In addition, many essays from the collection discuss connections between nature, city, and current technologies, understood as the relationships influencing our visions of the world. The majority of the essays address differences between traditional visions of space and nature as a coherent entity, versus a modern, postmodern, and contemporary understanding of it as rather fragmentary, chaotic, simulative, or alternative (virtual) space. In other words, many authors contributing to this collection focus on nature and human closeness to - or distance from - nature as understood through different concepts and representations of space in the past and in modern and postmodern times. Theoretical considerations of space in postmodernism and the representation of space in literature, film, and dance comprise, for this reviewer, the most interesting and relevant essays from the collection. So, for example, Wilfried Fluck deals with space as “aesthetic object”. Drawing on John Dewey’s, Jürgen Peper’s, but especially on Czech structuralist Jan Mukar ovský’s theories of aesthetics, he argues that literary as well as pictorial, represenations of space […] create not only mental but an imaginary space; even where this representation may appear life-like, truthful and authentic, its actual status is that of an aesthetic object that invites, in effect, necessitates a transfer by the spectator in order to provide meaning and to create an aesthetic experience. (34) Although Fluck does not systematically treat the American context of arts or theories of space and does not give too many examples from American arts (he rather refers to the Western arts), he launches a theoretical proposition related to an understanding of space as a fluid, unstable, and transitory phenomenon influenced by a subjective perception of it. Individual transfer of experience from the outer world is understood as the source of the formation of aesthetic experience. Very stimulating and more specific is Lothar Hönnighausen’s essay on the relationship between place, locality and space and his reflections on these relationships in the context of individual’s perception of postmodern reality. His ideas related to postmodern reality are Rezensionen 136 based on Merleau-Ponty’s, Paul Virilio’s, Pierre Bordieu’s, Clifford Geertz’s, Jean Baudrillard’s and Michael Foucault’s theories, which propose a different understanding of space in postmodern times and its virtual, visual and mediated aspects. Such a perception of space manifests itself, in Hönnighausen’s view, in the novels of William Gibson, Don DeLillo, Thomas Pynchon and Paul Auster, for example. These authors’ works serve Hönnighausen to illustrate and support his ideas, even though there are no close analyses of these works, and the inclusion of Paul Auster’s novel Moon Palace (1989) as an example of a text that offers innovative representations of space is not sufficiently substantiated and, thus, not completely convincing. Very interesting and perhaps most innovative are the last two contributions in the Theory section by Jochen Achilles and Hanjo Berressem, respectively. As the title suggests, Achilles’ essay is a survey of theories of landscape, consciousness, and technoscape; the author’s reflections on these theories (since Emerson and Thoreau) are arranged according to the Subject-Object paradigm and are grouped and discussed according to their orientation and emphasis on the subject or object. Achilles understands contemporary environmental theories (L. Buell, Ch. Taylor, J. Ritter) as rather object-oriented, while the Boston Transcendentalists (Emerson, Thoreau), Modernist theories of Consciousness (W. James, H. Bergson) and contemporary theories of cyberspace (N. Wiener, M. McLuhan, D. Haraway), in Achilles’s view, tend to be subject-oriented. Achilles does not simplistically group the theories into prescribed categories but tries to find a connection between these theories’ treatment of inner and outer space and different kinds of reality in the context of various visions of the world as represented by diverse artistic tendencies. Thus, from the point of view of the subject and her or his perception of the world, he also sees a parallel between the Romantic and postmodern vision of the world. Hanjo Berressem’s article takes an idea and a metaphor of the crumpled space and fold(ing) from Deleuze’s and Guattari’s critical studies to create a text oscillating between a critical study, a philosophical reflection and an almost artistic and selfreflexive work based on the use of the method treated in the article itself. Thus the quotations from Deleuze’s, Guattari’s, Koolhaas’s and other critics’ works form an intertextual space and the example of the crumpled and fold-in method, and thus also a new kind of space the author is treating here in its manifestations in various forms of arts and theories. Commenting on Koolhaas’s architectural theories, Projective Verse by Charles Olson, Burrough’s cut-up and fold-in methods and other kinds of artistic representations, Berressem emphasises a fluidity and “materiality” of the virtual space, his aim being to “… link space and materiality: to fold virtual space back onto real space through the concept of topological foldings, in which space and materiality are inextricably combined” (103). Thus Berressem’s article comes across as a successful application of space combined with materiality through the method of folding, consisting of Berressem’s comments, quotations, and reflections which form equal parts of the author’s critical and artistic ‘space’. Quite a considerable space in the collection is devoted to the chapter entitled Landscape/ Nature, yet most of the essays there are thematically rather loosely connected sociological (Fröhlich, Hoppe) or environmental studies (Robin Morris Collin and Robert W. Collin, Hoppe), some of which one might expect to find in different chapters of this book. For example, Gerd Hurm’s study of poetry would logically fit into the Literature section; Helmut Fröhlich’s interesting sociological study Rezensionen 137 of California is thematically and methodologically closer to Astrid Böger’s study of Chicago in the Technoscape/ Architecture/ Urban Utopia section; and one of the most interesting papers in this section, David E. Nye’s study of the technological narrative, deals mostly with literature, thus it would be more logical to find it in the Literature section. In his essay, Nye develops his theory of technological foundation narratives based on different perceptions and understandings of the land by Native inhabitants and the White colonizers of America, and their representations in literature. He understands technological foundation narrative as “the story of transforming a new space with powerful technologies” (121), which he associates with the settlers’ approach to the land. He genuinely points out a change in the perception of space and geography by the immigrants with the introduction of the cartographic grid system after the American Revolution, and, finally, offers his idea of the counternarratives, which he understands as the stories “told from the point of view of the indigenous community and […] emphasize the ecological effects of technological change” (131). This essay offers an inventive and innovative treatment of the understanding of the changing perceptions of space in America since colonial times through the use of a combination of geographical, cartographic, historical, sociological, and mainly literary approaches. Different from some of the sections mentioned above, the sections on Literature and Performance/ Film/ Visual Arts - with the exception of Brigitte Georgi-Findlay’s article on the American West - show the most coherent thematic unity of the collection since, however diverse the genres discussed in the essays, what unites them is the authors’ focus on arts, which creates a logical cohesion. Georgi-Findlay’s article is a very interesting sociological, cultural, and perhaps also urban study of the territory, its changing ethnic nature, rural and urban space, but it does not deal with arts, so with its focus and approach it is closer to the articles of Böger and Fröhlich mentioned above. What is interesting is that the essays from the Literature section do not generally treat the most respected or best-known works, and that they mostly do not focus on recent literature (such as Ruth Mayer’s study of the road novels by Stewart O’Nan and Stephen Wright; Elisabeth Schäfer-Wünsche’s ecocritical study of T.C. Boyle’s novels; and Florian Dombois’ study of Arthur Clarke’s sci-fi novel Richter 10), but that many essays try to re-assess older literary works from a different perspective, applying contemporary theories. Thus Heike Schäfer’s essay deals with the representation of place in H.D. Thoreau’s, Mary Austin’s, and Annie Dillard’s works; Joseph C. Schöpp’s article looks at the immigrant experience of the European German-speaking authors Charles Sealfield and Ferdinand Kürnberger in America and their vision of America’s culture and politics as influenced by their different cultural, social, and political backgrounds (Sealfield seeing America as a vast space of free businessmen, Kürnberger as a land of independent individuals, cultural diversity, and political unity); and Ulfried Reichardt’s is an innovative study of subject, self, object, and external environment understood as the relationship between the internal and external space expressing a changing sensibility at the beginning of the 20 th century, as it manifests itself in Henry James’ (The Ambassadors) and Edith Wharton’s novels (The House of Mirth). Concerning other sections, three more articles should be mentioned here: Arakawa and Madeline Gins’ project of “architectural body” and their reconceptualization of space in contemporary times that emphasizes an active role of Rezensionen 138 the subject in the perception of space. And, for the systematic, comprehensive, and inventive study of their topics, Martina Leeker’s study of contemporary dance and Kerstin Schmidt’s essay on John Jesurun’s drama. Both authors focus on the role of digital technology, media such as TV, and their manipulation and creation of a virtual space which not only replaces physical space but is actually equal to it. Both essays emphasize the active role of technology and media in dance and theatrical production, as well as in contemporary art. Although theoretical concepts of space are not studied systematically in this collection of essays, with its diversity of approaches, topics, and methodologies as well as with the innovative understanding and use of space (Berressem), this volume represents an important contribution to the current discussion on the nature of space and its various forms of presentation in the arts and other areas of study. Since the colonial times, the American context has mostly been seen as influenced by modern technologies and media which both have created and manipulated the understanding and representation of space. One might argue that this collection of essays could have been much more coherent and convincing, e.g., by reducing the too broad interdisciplinary scope and rearranging some of the essays in different sections/ chapters closer to their field of study; and that the sociological, urban, architectural studies could have formed a separate section, or perhaps even a different book. Yet the volume, which also supplements its diverse essays by adequate pictorial and graphic appendixes with tables, illustrations, figures, and pictures, represents current theoretical perspectives and critical ideas by significant, mostly European, scholars in the field and provides a highly informative survey of the contemporary discussion on the topic. Jaroslav Kušnír The University of Prešov Slovakia Christa Jansohn (ed.), Queen Elizabeth I: Past and Present. (Studien zur englischen Literatur, 19). Münster: Lit Verlag, 2004. Christa Jansohn (ed.), In the Footsteps of William Shakespeare. (Studien zur englischen Literatur, 20). Münster: Lit Verlag, 2005. Horst Zander In der Reihe “Studien zur englischen Literatur”, die Dieter Mehl im Jahre 1990 begründet hat, sind inzwischen mehr als 20 Bände erschienen, die einzelnen Autoren, Epochen oder spezifischen Fragestellungen gewidmet sind. Christa Jansohn, die bereits früher eine Monographie in der Reihe publiziert und dort zwei Anthologien ediert hat, ist auch die Herausgeberin der beiden hier vorliegenden Bände. Der erste, AAA Band 32 (2007), Heft 1