Joan Aleshire: Whose Universe Is It, Anyway? (July 1997)

Acknowledging the problems with modernism’s claims to universality, but suggesting, too, that an exclusive focus on otherness can lead us to see the other as alien, Joan Aleshire asks us to consider alternative ways of negotiating difference and common ground. Through close readings of a passage from Hamlet and of poems by Carolyn Farrell and Elizabeth Bishop, Aleshire suggests that close attention to particularity can yield a “crossroads,” in the world we all share, where one imagination can meet another.