David Musselwhite

David Musselwhite (3 December 1940 – 23 February 2010) was a British literary critic and academic.

He was born in Bristol and studied first at Cambridge University, then later at the University of Essex, where he subsequently became a Senior Lecturer. He also taught in Argentina, at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica, and at Curtin University in Western Australia.^[1]

He was the author of two books – Partings Welded Together: Politics and Desire in the Nineteenth-Century English Novel (Methuen, 1987), and Social Transformations in Hardy’s Tragic Novels: Megamachines and Phantasms (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003). Both books were widely reviewed, with the latter described by Tim Armstrong as “...a theoretically provocative and fascinating study.” (The Modern Language Review^[2]) and by Andrew Radford as "...not only accessible to Hardy enthusiasts, but necessary to academic specialists".^[3][4]

He initiated the Essex Sociology of Literature Project at the University of Essex in 1976. This involved a set of conferences that according to literary critic, Terry Eagleton "...have a quasi-mythological status in the minds of some who weren’t even born at the time".^[5]

His main research areas were the English novel, Latin American literature, and the Enlightenment, and he published numerous articles in these fields.^[6]

Publications

Books

Partings Welded Together: Politics and Desire in the Nineteenth-Century English Novel, Methuen, 1987.

Social Transformations in Hardy's Tragic Novels: Megamachines and Phantasms, Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.

Articles

• "El Perseguidor: un modelo para desarmar", Nuevos Aires, No. 8, Buenos Aires, 1972, 23-36
• "El astillero en marcha", Nuevos Aires, No. 11, Buenos Aires, 1973, 3-15
• "Cecilia Valdes", New World, Jamaica, 1973
• "Los Premios entre lo todo y la nada", Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, Número 314-315, (Agosto-Septiembre), Madrid, 1976, 520-566
• "La vida y la muerte de Berthe Trepat", Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, Número 320-21 (Febrero y Marzo), Madrid 1977, 341-359
• "Women in Love: a flawed novel", Essays in Poetics, Vol. I, No. 1 Keele 1976, 48-60
• "Wuthering Heights: the unacceptable text", Red Letters, No. 2, 1976, 3-5
• "Towards a political aesthetics", Literature, Society and the Sociology of Literature, Proceedings of the Essex Conference, ed. F. Barker et al., Essex, 1976, 8-17
• "The novel as narcotic", Proceedings of the Essex Conference, ed. F. Barker et al. Essex, 1978, 207-224
• "The Trial of Warren Hastings", Proceedings of the Essex Conference, ed. F. Barker et al., Essex, 1982, 226-251
• "Notes on a journey to Vanity Fair", Literature and History, 1982
• "Reflections on Burke's Reflections 1790/1990", in The Enlightenment and its Shadows, ed. Peter Hulme and Ludmilla Jordanova, Methuen, 1990, 142-162
• "Hardy's Mega-Machines", in Thomas Hardy: Revista Portuguesa de Estudios Anglo-Americanos, Oporto, 1992, 69-92
• "Death and the Phantasm: A Reading of Cortázar's 'Babas del diablo!", Romance Studies 18, June 2000, 57-68
• "Phantasm and Nation: Sarmiento's Facundo", New Comparison 29 (Spring 2000), 5-26
• "Tess of the d'Urbervilles: 'A Becoming Woman' or Deleuze and Guattari go to Wessex", Textual Practice, 14.3, 2000, 499-518
• "The Colombia of Maria: un paìs de cafres", Romance Studies Vol. 24 (1), March 2006, 41-54
• "Deleuze Goes to Xanadu", Deleuze Studies, vol. 1 no. 2, Dec 2007, 100-125
• "Heart of Darkness: A Minority Report", Salt, issue 3, 2010^[7]

Obituary

• Del Valle Alcalá, Roberto (2010) "David E. Musselwhite, 1940-2010", 'The European English Messenger', 19.2 View entire article in pdf: http://www.britannica.com/bps/additionalcontent/18/57457689/Obituaries

References