Abbott Ikeler on Blogger

By Abbott Ikeler ‍           Readers of  Wuthering Heights  have generally settled on a patronizing view of Nelly Dean. As chief narrator, she seems at once an irritating petty bourgeois and a necessary counterpoint to the Byronic excess of the central characters. At the very least, her pedestrian moralizing functions as chorus, even as legitimizing context, for events we might otherwise find intolerably perverse or melodramatic. Some students of the novel have suggested that it is in fact precisely Nelly’s insensitivity to romance that compels us to sympathize with Heathcliff and Catherine¹. In either case, critics emphasize her emotional inadequacy on the one hand, and her practical good sense on the other.           One less conventional reading suggests this estimate may be mistaken. Gideon Shunami, looking at both Lockwood and Mrs. Dean, insists they are unreliable narrator...

Abbott Ikeler gained professional teaching experience at Emerson College. He spent ten years teaching undergraduate and graduate students majoring in communications. As a published writer, Abbott Ikeler has received multiple positive reviews on his book Puritan Temper and Transcendental Faith - Carlyle’s Literary Vision. Published by The Ohio State University press in 1972, Puritan Temper and Transcendental Faith - Carlyle’s Literary Vision discusses Thomas Carlyle’s legacy in English literature. The book examines and sets aside multiple explanations for Carlyle’s contradictory opinions and his attitude toward aesthetic experience, along with a thorough analysis of his early writings compared to his later works. Additionally, the author provides a novel approach to understanding Carlyle, citing the latter’s relationship to Goethe, his own father and his religious beliefs as thedominant sources of influence on his writing. The book received good reviews in the New York Times Book Revie...