Ransom Center Magazine

Articles

Meticulous free verse: Mallarmé’s Un Coup de Dés and Ellsworth Kelly

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“The literary value, if I may say it, of this span of empty space on the page, which mentally separates groups of words or words themselves, is to periodically accelerate or slow the movement, the scansion, the sequence even, given one’s simultaneous view of the entirety of the page…” (Stéphane Mallarmé, “Observation Relative au Poème Un Coup de Dés jamais n’abolira le Hasard,” Cosmopolis, May 1897, p. 412 [trans.]) [Read more…] about Meticulous free verse: Mallarmé’s Un Coup de Dés and Ellsworth Kelly

Cold War culture

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Erik Mortenson discusses his book Ambiguous Borderlands and the pervasiveness of shadow imagery in Cold War materials.

Ambiguous Borderlands: Shadow Imagery in Cold War American Culture (Southern Illinois University Press, 2016) investigates the role shadows play in Cold War literary and popular texts. Informed by research at the Ransom Center, it examines Beat literature, postwar photography, film noir, Twilight Zone episodes, and more to explain why shadow imagery had such a hold on American imaginations in the mid-twentieth century. [Read more…] about Cold War culture

Scholarship, time machines, and madness

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by Beth Burns, Hidden Room Theatre Artistic Director

John Wilkes Booth’s promptbook for Richard III

“Ready trumpet. Boy ready with armor. Take time. More piano. Long flourish continued till discovery, next Sc. – and do not W Till Mr Booth is on stage.” [Read more…] about Scholarship, time machines, and madness