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