ELT & Literary Studies Books
Faber & Faber Selected Poems of Stephen Spender
Book SynopsisStephen Spender, the son of a journalist, was born in London in 1909. He was educated at University College, Oxford, where he met, among others, W. H. Auden, Christopher Isherwood and Louis MacNeice, with whom he was to develop a poetics of engagement, writing powerfully of the confusion and alarm of 1930s Europe. He visited Spain during the Civil War, in 1937, where he assisted the Republican cause with propaganda activity. His post-war memoir World within World was recognised as one of the most illuminating literary autobiographies to have come out of the 1930s and 1940s, distilling a distinctively personal, humanistic socialism. His poetry has been praised for its exploratory candour, its personal approach to the stresses of modernity, and its exact portraiture of social and political upheaval. Grey Gowrie''s new selection offers a timely and incisive revaluation of Spender''s substantial poetic corpus.
£15.29
Faber & Faber Now All Roads Lead to France The Last Years of
Book SynopsisEdward Thomas was perhaps the most beguiling and influential of First World War poets. Now All Roads Lead to France is an account of his final five years, centred on his extraordinary friendship with Robert Frost and Thomas''s fatal decision to fight in the war.The book also evokes an astonishingly creative moment in English literature, when London was a battleground for new, ambitious kinds of writing. A generation that included W. B. Yeats, Ezra Pound, Robert Frost and Rupert Brooke were ''making it new'' - vehemently and pugnaciously. These larger-than-life characters surround a central figure, tormented by his work and his marriage. But as his friendship with Frost blossomed, Thomas wrote poem after poem, and his emotional affliction began to lift. In 1914 the two friends formed the ideas that would produce some of the most remarkable verse of the twentieth century. Their writing was far more than just war poetry, but it was World War I that put an ocean b
£11.69
Faber & Faber Collected Poems of Samuel Beckett
Book SynopsisIt was as a poet that Samuel Beckett launched himself in the little reviews of 1930s Paris, and as a poet that he ended his career.The Collected Poems is the most complete edition of Beckett''s poetry and verse translations ever to be published, as well as the first critical edition. It establishes a significant new canon, and the commentary draws on a wide range of published sources, manuscripts and Beckett''s extensive correspondence. The notes place each poem in context, detailing the history and circumstances of its composition; they indicate significant variants and help explain obscure turns of phrase and allusions (frequently sourced to Beckett''s notebooks); they also identify resonances between poems and across Beckett''s work as a whole. The commentary is written in a lively and engaging style and is intended equally for the general reader, the student of modernism and the Beckett specialist.
£21.25
Faber & Faber Seeing Stars
Book SynopsisSimon Armitage''s new collection is by turns a voice and a chorus: a hyper-vivid array of dramatic monologues, allegories, parables and tall tales. Here comes everybody: Snoobie and Carla, Lippincott, Wittmann, Yoshioka, Bambuck, Dr Amsterdam, Preminger. The man whose wife drapes a border-curtain across the middle of the marital home; the English astronaut with a terrestrial outlook on life; an orgiastic cast of unreconstructed pie-worshipers at a Northern sculpture farm; the soap-opera supremacists at their zoo-wedding; the driver who picks up hitchhikers as he hurtles towards a head-on collision with Thatcherism; a Christian cheese-shop proprietor in the wrong part of town; the black bear with a dark secret, the woman who curates giant snowballs in the chest freezer. Celebrities and nobodies, all come to the ball.The storyteller who steps in and out of this human tapestry changes, trickster-style, from poem to poem, but retains some identifying traits: the melancholy of th
£11.69
John Wiley and Sons Ltd Classical Literature
Book Synopsis* A accessible one--volume survey of the literature of Greece and Rome. * Covers the period between Homer around 700 BC and Augustine around AD 410. * Highlights what is important historically and of continuing interest and value in classical literature.Trade Review"The book is a tour de force ... Rutherford speaks directly to his readers, telling them what they need to know to set a work into its historical and social context ... Even scholars who are completely familiar with all the texts Rutherford discusses will profit from consulting this book." Times Literary Supplement 'Rutherford's book provides an accessible, affordable, and concise introduction to its topic.' Bryn Mawr Classical Review "As well as Rutherford's broader constituency, this book should make particularly invaluable reading for undergraduates, sixth-formers who are looking to pursue Classics at university (and it should be a must for school libraries)." Greece and RomeTable of ContentsPreface. Acknowledgements. Abbreviations. Maps. Introduction. 1. Epic. 2. Drama. 3. Rhetoric. 4. History, Biography, Fiction. 5. Erotic Literature. 6. Literature and Power. 7. Aspects of Wit. 8. Thinkers. 9. Believers. Appendix 1 Translations of Four Longer Passages. Appendix 2 Timeline. Appendix 3 List of Roman Emperors. Appendix 4 Major Greek and Roman Gods. Notes. Further Reading. Index
£31.30
Harvard University, Asia Center Writing Margins
Book SynopsisIn texts from the mid-Heian to the early Kamakura periods, certain figures appear to be marginal or removed from centers of power. But why do we see these figures in this way? Kawashima seeks to answer this question by examining the details of the marginalizing discourse found in these texts.
£28.01
Harvard University, Asia Center The Red Brush
Book SynopsisOne of the most exciting developments in the study of Chinese literature has been the rediscovery of a rich, diverse tradition of women's writing of the imperial period. This anthology differs from previous works by offering a glimpse of women's writings not only in poetry but in essays and letters, drama, religious writing, and narrative fiction.
£28.86
The Department of Sanskrit and Indian Studies Katha Aranyaka
Book SynopsisDating to the first half of the first millennium BCE, the Katha Aranyaka is a ritualistic and speculative text that deals with a dangerous Vedic ritual that provides its sponsor with a new body after death. In a new critical edition, Michael Witzel presents this work which transitions the Vedic ritual into the philosophy of the Upanishads.
£28.86
Harvard University Press Rome in Triumph Volume 1
Book SynopsisBiondo Flavio was a pioneering figure in the Renaissance discovery of antiquity and popularized the term Middle Age to describe the period between the fall of the Roman Empire and the revival of antiquity in his own time. Rome in Triumph is the capstone of his research program, addressing the question: What made Rome great?
£25.46
Harvard University Press The Old English and AngloLatin Riddle Tradition
Book SynopsisWordplay has been at the heart of Western literature for many centuries, and medieval riddles provide insights into the extraordinary and the everyday. The Old English and Anglo-Latin Riddle Tradition assembles, for the first time ever, an astonishing array of riddles composed before 1200 CE that continue to entertain and puzzle.Trade ReviewA comprehensive new collection beautifully edited…Riddles represent the whole of Anglo-Saxon life. These short pieces range about as widely as possible in tone and form, from ribald cracks to grammar lessons to ornate religious puzzles by the archbishop of Canterbury. For perhaps the first time, Orchard’s collection gathers these early medieval riddles from across centuries and languages. -- Adrienne Raphael * New York Times Book Review *The size of the work alone bespeaks years of industrious effort…I should say as well that these riddles are immense fun (a statement that cannot be made about every weighty tome of Anglo-Saxon literature), and these two volumes [this volume and Orchard’s A Commentary on The Old English and Anglo-Latin Riddle Tradition] make them accessible to all…An immensely valuable contribution to scholarship. -- David Porter * Bryn Mawr Classical Review *
£25.46
Harvard University, Asia Center Monstrous Bodies
Book SynopsisMiri Nakamura examines bodily metaphors such as doppelgangers and robots that were ubiquitous in the literature of imperial Japan. Reading them against the historical rise of the Japanese empire, she argues they must be understood in relation to the most “monstrous” body of all in modern Japan: the carefully constructed image of the empire itself.
£28.86
Harvard University, Center for Hellenic Studies Poetry as Initiation
Book SynopsisThe Derveni Papyrus, discovered accidentally in 1962, is the oldest known European book. Papers in Poetry as Initiation address many open questions about the papyrus, including its authorship, the context of the peculiar chthonic ritual described in the text, and the relationship of the author and the ritual to the so-called Orphic texts.
£18.86
Harvard University Press Fragments of Old Comedy Volume II Diopeithes to
Book SynopsisThe era of Old Comedy (ca. 485ca. 380 BC), when theatrical comedy was created and established, is best known through the extant plays of Aristophanes. But the work of many other poets, including Cratinus and Eupolis, the other members, with Aristophanes, of the canonical Old Comic Triad, survives in fragments.Trade ReviewThis edition of Old Comic fragments is a welcome addition to the world of classics...This is a comprehensive and all-encompassing work; the introductions, the bibliographies, the notes, the apparatuses, the treatment of the papyrus fragments, the vase-section, have all been conscientiously and assiduously composed; and so these volumes will serve as an immensely useful tool for both scholars and students for a considerable time. Storey is to be highly commended for bringing this intricate task to completion. -- Athina Papachrysostomou * Bryn Mawr Classical Review *
£23.70
Harvard University Press The Greek Anthology Volume I
Book SynopsisThe Greek Anthology contains some 4,500 Greek poems in the sparkling, diverse genre of epigram, written by more than a hundred composers, collected over centuries, and arranged by subject. This Loeb edition replaces the earlier edition by W. R. Paton, with a Greek text and ample notes reflecting current scholarship.Trade ReviewUnder the auspices of the Loeb Classical Library, Michael A. Tueller has published the first volume (books one to five of sixteen) of a projected complete edition of the whole gigantic thing—a fully updated revision of W.R. Paton’s five-volume Loeb from a hundred years ago. It is an ambitious and worthy enterprise. -- Hayden N. Pelliccia * New York Review of Books *
£23.70
Scribner Book Company Odysseus in America
Book Synopsis
£15.30
Cornell University Press The Origins of Greek Thought
Book SynopsisJean-Pierre Vernant's concise, brilliant essay on the origins of Greek thought relates the cultural achievement of the ancient Greeks to their physical and social environment and shows that what they believed in was inseparable from the way they...Trade Review"One of the most stimulating and thoughtful accounts of the invention of Greek philosophy by the Greeks. . . . A masterpiece of popular exposition, rich in information and insight."—Times Literary Supplement
£19.94
Cornell University Press Narrative Discourse Revisited
Book Synopsis
£19.94
University of Nebraska Press Antisemitism Its History and Causes
Book SynopsisIntends to ask why the Jews have aroused such hatred for three thousand years. This title considers whatever in the Jewish character might be to blame for antisemitism. It looks outward to those nations among which the Israelites dispersed, examining the different faces of antisemitism from Greco-Roman antiquity to the end of the 19th century.
£11.39
Stanford University Press Historian of the Strange Pu Songling and the
Book SynopsisThis is the first book in English on the seventeenth-century Chinese masterpiece Liaozhai's Records of the Strange (Liaozhai zhiyi) by Pu Songling, a collection of nearly five hundred fantastic tales and anecdotes written in Classical Chinese.Trade Review"It is good to see a whole book devoted to the Liaozhai in English, that gives it as serious a study as it deserves: an informative and fascinating account of the background and world that produced it."—Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society"Zeitlin's book may be described as a study of the Liaozhai tales in their cultural and intercultural context. She analyzes selected tales in relation to three topics or themes—obsession, gender dislocation, and dream. . . . The central theme of each chapter is enhanced by the inclusion of a network of related topics to cover a wide range of ramifications, such that the narration forms a richly patterned discourse. The book provides both learned description of these selected cultural contexts and an extremely subtle and brilliant reading of some of the most intriguing classical tales ever written in Chinese, all couched in Zeitlin's graceful and poised prose. . . . Her extraordinary sensibility, her in-depth engagement with the texts, indeed may serve as a model for the reading of Chinese texts in general."—Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies
£22.49
Stanford University Press From Energy to Information
Book SynopsisThis book offers an innovative examination of the interactions of science and technology, art, and literature in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Scholars in the history of art, literature, architecture, computer science, and media studies focus on five historical themes in the transition from energy to information: thermodynamics, electromagnetism, inscription, information theory, and virtuality. Different disciplines are grouped around specific moments in the history of science and technology in order to sample the modes of representation invented or adapted by each field in response to newly developed scientific concepts and models. By placing literary fictions and the plastic arts in relation to the transition from the era of energy to the information age, this collection of essays discovers unexpected resonances among concepts and materials not previously brought into juxtaposition. In particular, it demonstrates the crucial centrality of the theme of energy in moTrade Review"The essays in this remarkable collection are productively disruptive of disciplinary and historical boundaries, richly detailed, and elegantly argued. Written by some of the leading figures in the history of art, literary studies, and science studies (as well as a handful of emerging stars), these essays are virtuoso performances that will capture a wide audience in a number of disciplines and interdisciplinary fields."—David Horn, Ohio State University"Beyond the intrinsic merit of the essays in From Energy to Information, the collection also demonstrates the payoff of such work for our understanding of major issues in modernism and postmodernism."—Modernism/ModernityTable of ContentsILLUSTRATIONS CONTRIBUTORS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Introduction BRUCE CLARKE AND LINDA DALRYMPLE HENDERSON From Thermodynamics to Virtuality BRUCE CLARKE Part One. The Cultures of Thermodynamics Introduction 1. Time Discovered and Time Gendered in Victorian Science and Culture M. NORTON WISE 2. Dark Star Crashes: Classical Thermodynamics and the Allegory of Cosmic Catastrophe BRUCE CLARKE 3. Energetic Abstraction: Ostwald, Bogdanov, and Russian Post-Revolutionary Art CHARLOTTE DOUGLAS Part Two. Ether and Electromagnetism: Capturing the Invisible Introduction 4. Lines of Force, Swirls of Ether BRUCE J. HUNT 5. The Real and the Ethereal: Modernist Energies in Eliot and Pound IAN F. A. BELL 6. Vibratory Modernism: Boccioni, Kupka, and the Ether of Space LINDA DALRYMPLE HENDERSON Part Three. Traces and Inscriptions: Diagramming Forces Introduction 7. Representation on the Line: Graphic Recording Instruments and Scientific Modernism ROBERT M. BRAIN 8. Concerning the Line: Music, Noise, and Phonography DOUGLAS KAHN 9. Bodies in Force Fields: Design Between the Wars CHRISTOPH ASENDORF Part Four. Representing Information Introduction 10. On the Imagination's Horizon Line: Uchronic Histories, Protocybernetic Contact, and Charles Babbage's Calculating Engines DAVID TOMAS 11. Escape and Constraint: Three Fictions Dream of Moving from Energy to Information N. KATHERINE HAYLES Part Five. Voxels and Sensels: Bodies in Virtual Space Introduction 13. Authorship and Surgery: The Shifting Ontology of the Virtual Surgeon TIMOTHY LENOIR AND SHA XIN WEI 14. Eversion: Brushing against Avatars, Aliens, and Angels MARCOS NOVAK Part Six. Representation from Pre- to Post-Modernity Introduction 5. Puppet and Test Pattern: Mechanicity and Materiality in Modern Pictorial Representation RICHARD SHIFF 16. Dinosaurs and Modernity W. J. T. MITCHELL NOTES INDEX
£31.50
Stanford University Press Mediated Memories in the Digital Age
Book SynopsisMany people deploy photo media tools to document everyday events and rituals. For generations we have stored memories in albums, diaries, and shoeboxes to retrieve at a later moment in life. Autobiographical memory, its tools, and its objects are pressing concerns in most people's everyday lives, and recent digital transformation cause many to reflect on the value and meaning of their own mediated memories. Digital photo cameras, camcorders, and multimedia computers are rapidly replacing analogue equipment, inevitably changing our everyday routines and conventional forms of recollection. How will digital photographs, lifelogs, photoblogs, webcams, or playlists change our personal remembrance of things past? And how will they affect our cultural memory? The main focus of this study is the ways in which (old and new) media technologies shape acts of memory and individual remembrances. This book spotlights familiar objects but addresses the larger issues of how technology penetrates ouTrade Review"The book is accessible to undergraduates and provides an excellent framework for postgraduates both in terms of its clarity in developing the conceptual tool of 'mediated memory' and in addressing some aspects of the digital in relation to this. One of its strengths concerns the way in which van Dijck unpacks the conceptual flaws conventionally associated with collective memory and the problematic assumptions that underlie much of the discussion of the relationship of media to this... The book is beautifully written, telling an engaging story, as well as tackling with academic erudition the study of mediated memories in the digital age." -- Memory Studies"Van Dijck shares many fascinating insights." -- CHOICE"Mediated Memories in the Digital Age is an engaging and important book that challenges scholarly understanding of the relation between memory, memory artifacts, and memory practices and elucidates how these relationships are changing in the digital age. José van Dijck brings a theoretically sophisticated yet pragmatic approach to bear on her survey of today's most widespread digital practices of mediating memories. Her persuasive and timely thesis is solidly grounded in cultural and media studies, and her work is well informed by recent research in cognitive science, neuroscience, psychology, and visualization technologies." -- Richard Grusin * ayne State University *"The medium is the experience. A personal memory box full of private media objects was the inspiration for José van Dijck's newest and most innovative contribution to the zone between media studies and science studies where she has been such an important voice internationally. Detailing the ways that media and memory are not separate experiences through readings of the digital diaries and lifelogs of people suffering from Alzheimer's disease, Dutch recorded popular music, and still and moving images from a range of contexts, van Dijck presents an exciting new way of thinking about cultural memory and a cultural sense of self." -- Lisa Cartwright, University of California * San Diego *"José van Dijck performs a sophisticated analysis that blends neurological research on memory, media technologies, and the "personal cultural" construction of memories into a coherent, far-reaching theory of the function, role, and significance of memory as we move from analogue to digital representations. Filled with deep insights and surprising observations, this book should be required reading for anyone interested in memory, digital technologies, and their co-evolution." -- N. Katherine Hayles, University of California * Los Angeles *Table of ContentsContents Preface Acknowledgements 1 Mediated Memories as a Conceptual Tool 2 Memory Matters in the Digital Age 3 Composing the Self 4 Record and Hold 5 Pictures of Life, Live Pictures 6 Projecting the Family's Future Past 7 From Shoebox to Digital Memory Machine 8 Epilogue Notes Bibliography Index
£17.99
New Directions Publishing Corporation Final Exam
Book SynopsisOne of Julio Cortázar's great early novels. Anyone who doesn't read Cortázar is doomed.Pablo NerudaTrade Review"The stream-of-consciousness narrative helps to make this one of Cortázar's key works." -- Multicultural Review"Final Exam is an intriguing book for any reader with avant-garde sympathies, or for anyone who—like most who know him—loves Julio." -- San Francisco Chronicle"The publication of Final Exam is a literary event." -- The Seattle Times"[A] major undiscovered work...a novel about Buenos Aires which one night turns into a Kafkaesque nightmare." -- Harry Morales - Worldview"Cortázar spoke of something more than novelty or progress--he spoke of the radically new and joyful nature of every instant, of the body, the memory and the imagination of men and women." -- Carlos Fuentes"Anyone who doesn't read Cortázar is doomed." -- Pablo Neruda
£14.24
University of Minnesota Press Curiouser
Book SynopsisContributors: Lauren Berlant, U of Chicago; Andre Furlani, Concordia U; Judith Halberstam, U of California, San Diego; Ellis Hanson, Cornell U; Paul Kelleher; Kathryn Kent, Williams College; James Kincaid, U of Southern California; Richard Mohr, U of Illinois, Urbana; Michael Moon, Johns Hopkins U; Kevin Ohi, Boston College;.
£19.79
University of Minnesota Press At the Borders of Sleep
Book SynopsisTable of ContentsContentsPrefaceAcknowledgments1. Toward SleepWriting HypnagogiaThe Obbligato EffectFalling Asleep While ReadingAgatha: or, Sleep2. SleeplessNightThe Insomniac WriterNight Watch3. Leaving SleepWaking Up AwryLacan’s Wakeup CallInterminable Waking4. SleepwakingDisquietThe Subdrama of WritingExperiment, ExperienceNotesBibliographyIndex
£17.99
University of Minnesota Press The Forbidden Worlds of Haruki Murakami
Book SynopsisTrade Review" In a masterful synthesis, Matthew Strecher delves deeply into questions of language, religion, mythology, psychology, and the boundaries between literature and journalism to demonstrate with great clarity and concreteness how Murakami belongs in the company of such writers as Pynchon, Eco, and Rushdie." —Jay Rubin, author of Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words"This guide clearly synthesizes the inner world enshrining Haruki Murakami’s characters."—World Literature Today"Strecher’s latest book is erudite without being overly academic. A lively and engaging read."—The Japan Times"Strecher neatly maps out the impression the young Murakami made on the hidebound world of Japanese literature and its overarching literary guild, one entrenched by respect, routine, and what literature ought to do."—Pop Matters"An original and insightful book—a genuine pleasure to read."—H-Net"Useful for providing frames through which to read Murakami and for a detailed overview of his work."—CHOICE"This well-researched monograph not only contributes to deepening our understanding of Murakami’s work, but, more importantly, Strecher reaffirms the bottomless possibilities to enjoy reading this author’s stories."—Asian Studies Review"Like its subject, Strecher’s book does not offer an overall master map to this world but rather presents us with a variety of intriguing ideas to ponder and to provoke us toward our own interpretations of this tantalizing, multifaceted author."—Journal of Japanese StudiesTable of ContentsContentsPrefaceAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: The Power of the “Story” 1. New Words, New Worlds2. Into the Mad, Metaphysical Realm3. Gods and Oracles, Fate and Mythology4. Murakami Haruki as Literary Journalist5. Forbidden Dreams from “Over There”Epilogue: The Roads Not TakenNotesBibliographyIndex
£17.09
University of Minnesota Press The Age of Lovecraft
Book SynopsisTrade Review"The scholarship throughout is sharp, current, and often makes use of one of the greatest strengths of Lovecraft study: his abundant published correspondence."—Publishers Weekly"An excellent read for the committed Lovecraft scholar."—Fortean Times"[An] excellent collection of scholarly essays."—PopMatters"Lovecraft’s many and deep flaws are almost beside the point – he was a writer who achieved importance by saying one or two things memorably and very clearly. This is why Lovecraft is an important figure not only in popular culture but in other disciplines as well."—Times Literary Supplement"Highly recommended."—CHOICE"Sederholm and Weistock perform an exemplary balancing act in neither dodging the controversies surrounding Lovecraft’s grotesque racism nor granting that the issue diminishes the legitimacy of scholarly interest in the author or his work. Lovecraft scholars will find much of interest here, but so too will anyone wanting further insight into the ongoing cultural resonances of various (and often noxious) early twentieth-century neuroses."—Paradoxa"A welcome addition to the growing body of scholarship focused on Lovecraft."—Los Angeles Review of Books"A total success."—Journal of Popular CultureTable of ContentsContentsForeword: Lovecraft AppreciatedRamsey CampbellAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Lovecraft Rising Carl H. Sederholm and Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock1. “Ghoulish Dialogues”: H. P. Lovecraft’s Weird Geographies James Kneale2. Lovecraft’s Things: Sinister Souvenirs from Other WorldsJeffrey Andrew Weinstock3. Hyper-Cacophony: Lovecraft, Speculative Realism, and Sonic Materialism Isabella van Elferen4. Prehistories of Posthumanism: Cosmic Indifferentism, Alien Genesis, and Ecology from H. P. Lovecraft to Ridley Scott Brian Johnson5. Race, Species, and Others: H. P. Lovecraft and the Animal Jed Mayer6. H. P. Lovecraft’s Reluctant Sexuality: Abjection and the Monstrous Feminine in "The Dunwich Horror"Carl H. Sederholm7. H. P. Lovecraft and Real Person Fiction: The Pulp Author as Subcultural Avatar David Simmons8. A Polychrome Study: Neil Gaiman’s “A Study in Emerald” and Lovecraft’s Literary AfterlivesJessica George9. Lovecraft: Suspicion, Pattern Recognition, Paranoia David Punter10. Lovecraft’s Cosmic Ethics Patricia MacCormack11. Lovecraft, Witch Cults, and Philosophers W. Scott PooleInterview with China Miéville Jeffrey Andrew WeinstockContributorsIndex
£17.99
Duke University Press The Female Complaint
Book SynopsisA literary critical and historical chronicle of womens culture in the United States from 1830 to the present, by a leading Americanist.Trade Review“The Female Complaint advances and refines the relationship between intimacy and publicity in ways that suggestively rethink the category of individuality in late capitalism. . . . The Female Complaint is an uncannily hopeful book, finding value and possibility in a wholly nonredemptive account of convention.” - Jordan Alexander Stein, GLQ“Berlant sounds like your smartest and bitchiest friend—and the insights just keep coming.” - Heather Love, Women’s Review of Books“Some of the most important essays on U.S. culture produced during the past decade appear in The Female Complaint.” - Shirley Samuels, Novel“The Female Complaint is a tour de force, a bracing read for feministand postmodernist students of popular culture, as well as for genretheorists.” - Linda Seidel, Journal of Popular Culture“The affective pleasure of reading The Female Complaint emerges from its unwillingness to sacrifice either incisive political critique that challenges the limits of women’s culture or textured formal accounts of the powerful emotional experience its texts provide for its consumers. . . . Theoretically ambitious and cogently argued, funny and invigorating, Berlant’s text promises to profoundly reshape how we think about sentimentality, gender, and affect in American culture.” - Margaret Ronda, American Book Review“Guiding us through a ‘women’s culture’ animated by scenes of longing for a fantasmatic commonality, an ever-elusive normativity, Lauren Berlant illuminates, in readings unfailingly subtle and wise, the psychic negotiations and emotional bargaining that women in U.S. culture conduct to be part of an ‘intimate public.’ More dazzlingly still, she addresses what the business of sentimentality works to obscure: the possibility of political agency in the face of a cultural machinery that makes us feel helpless to do anything more than affirm our ability to feel. To read The Female Complaint is to realize how long and how much it’s been needed.”—Lee Edelman, author of No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive“Lauren Berlant’s voice is as unmistakable as Ella Fitzgerald singing scat. By turns seductive and bracing, gentle and wise, reassuring and disorienting, The Female Complaint asks readers to take mass-mediated women’s culture seriously. By the end of this absorbing book, you will understand the importance of living better clichés, why love requires amnesia, and how banality can be therapeutic. You will also have an irresistible craving to watch Now, Voyager one more time, in whatever setting enables you to thrive, and to give this fascinating book to someone who deserves to love better, or to forgive herself for just getting by.”—Mary Poovey, New York University“Of all the feminist cultural theorists whom I admire, Lauren Berlant is the one I consider to be the most theoretically innovative and politically inspiring. Yet this book exceeded even my highest hopes and expectations. Refusing to dodge the really searching political questions for contemporary American culture, Berlant maps the tricky terrain of the intimate public sphere. She has written a phenomenal study of breathtaking scope. I have no doubt that scholars and students will continue to debate the issues it raises for many years to come.”—Jackie Stacey, University of Manchester"The essays take as a beginning the 'women's culture' of the eighteen-thirties, which, Berlant argues, was the U.S.’s first 'intimate public,' a mass-market culture premised upon a shared emotional world among its consumers. They go on to consider novels, films, musicals, and cultural moments whose emotional excesses reinforce an attachment to the suffocating conditions of an all-American fantasy: Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Show Boat, John Stahl’s film Imitation of Life, the memorialized deaths of Princess Diana and J.F.K., Jr. . . . Sentimentality isn’t finished with us yet, though may its fantasies be met not with finger-wagging—a favored sentimental mode!—but sustained analysis. Now is the summer of our female complaint! Which, if you have the fortune of being a woman, is every summer." -- Lauren Michele Jackson * The New Yorker *“The Female Complaint advances and refines the relationship between intimacy and publicity in ways that suggestively rethink the category of individuality in late capitalism. . . . The Female Complaint is an uncannily hopeful book, finding value and possibility in a wholly nonredemptive account of convention.” -- Jordan Alexander Stein * GLQ *“The Female Complaint is a tour de force, a bracing read for feminist and postmodernist students of popular culture, as well as for genre theorists.” -- Linda Seidel * Journal of Popular Culture *“Some of the most important essays on U.S. culture produced during the past decade appear in The Female Complaint.” -- Shirley Samuels * Novel *“The affective pleasure of reading The Female Complaint emerges from its unwillingness to sacrifice either incisive political critique that challenges the limits of women’s culture or textured formal accounts of the powerful emotional experience its texts provide for its consumers. . . . Theoretically ambitious and cogently argued, funny and invigorating, Berlant’s text promises to profoundly reshape how we think about sentimentality, gender, and affect in American culture.” -- Margaret Ronda * American Book Review *Table of ContentsPreface vii Introduction: Intimacy, Publicity, and Femininity 1 1. Poor Eliza 33 2. Pax Americana: The Case of Show Boat 69 3. National Brands, National Body: Imitation of Life 107 4. Uncle Sam Needs a Wife: Citizenship and Denegation 145 5. Remembering Love, Forgetting Everything Else: Now, Voyager 169 6. "It's Not the Tragedies That Kill Us, It's the Messes": Femininity, Formalism, and Dorothy Parker 207 7. The Compulsion to Repeat Femininity: Landscape for a Good Woman and The Life and Loves of a She-Devil 233 Overture/Aperture: Showboat 1988—The Remake 265 Notes 281 Bibliography 319 Index 347
£21.59
Fordham University Press Last Steps Maurice Blanchots Exilic Writing
Book SynopsisOffers a sustained reading of Blanchot's The Step Not Beyond that is prepared by interpretive presentations of a number of his important writings of the post-war periodTrade Review"The itinerary of Last Steps is unique and initially surprising: the ethico-political import of Blanchot's postwar writings, and particularly The Step Not Beyond. But in the course of this brilliant and compelling reading, Christopher Fynsk demonstrates that Blanchot's political engagement is central not just to his thinking about resistance or community or the events of 1968 but to everything from his views on freedom, justice, and messianic hope, to his practices of reading, critical vigilance, and fragmentary writing. No one is more capable than Fynsk of taking on these difficult subjects, and no one writes on Blanchot with this degree of erudition, rigor, patience, and sensitivity to the complexity and nuances of Blanchot's writing as well as to everything that resists interpretation and must remain unspoken within it. This is a remarkable work of criticism about one of the twentieth century's most remarkable writers." -- -Michael Naas, DePaul Univesity DePaul University "Christopher Fynsk in Last Steps offers a strikingly original and subtly captivating account of some of Maurice Blanchot's most challenging work and demonstrates with acute sympathy and incisive intelligence its far-reaching significance for philosophy and literature today." -- -Leslie Hill University of Warwick
£25.19
Fordham University Press Giorgio Agamben
Book SynopsisTraces Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben’s engagement with deconstructive thought from his early work in the 1960s to the present, examining his key concepts – infancy, Voice, potentiality, sovereignty, bare life, messianism – in relation to key texts and concepts in Jacques Derrida’s work.Trade Review"In this impressive book, Kevin Attell changes our understanding of Giorgio Agamben. From now on we will have to see Agamben's work, from the very beginning, as in dialogue with Derrida. As a result an important thinker becomes still more significant to the shape of contemporary European theory." -- -Simon During University of Queensland "Giorgio Agamben: Beyond the Threshold of Deconstruction is an enormously ambitious book covering the breadth of Giorgio Agamben's writings, from his earliest work on potentiality and discourse up through his later political and theological writings. Attell's interpretations, informed by vast philosophical erudition, presenting independent interpretations of all the texts that he treats, are paradigms for work on theory. This is one of the highest caliber works of theory or continental philosophy to appear in a long time." -- -Joshua Kates Indiana University "This remarkably rigorous, lucid, and open-minded study details the important differences between Agamben and Derrida, something many would regard as minor variants in a similarly deconstructive model, but which Derrida's late seminars on The Beast and the Sovereign affirm to be profound. Attell meticulously traces the trajectories of Derrida's and Agamben's careers, demonstrating in an elegant and textually based fashion the incisive nature of Agamben's engagement with Derrida, how so many of Agamben's major themes-potentiality, sovereignty, ban, messianic time, play and profanation, and the animal-could be considered as critical, indeed polemical, responses to Derrida's philosophical project. The strong distinction between Agamben's and Derrida's (and Benjamin's and Schmitt's) notions of messianic time is particularly dazzling." -- -Eleanor Kaufman University of California, Los AngelesTable of ContentsIntroduction: An Esoteric Dossier Part One: First Principles 1. Agamben and Derrida Read Saussure Overture: "Before the Law" Semiology and Saussure Semiology and the Sphinx 2. "The Human Voice" Introduction to Origin of Geometry Speech and Phenomena Infancy and History Excursus: Agamben and Derrida Read Benveniste Language and Death 3. Potenza and Differance Dunamis and Energeia Dunamis and Adunamia Writing and Potentiality Part Two: Strategy without Finality or Means without End 4. Sovereignty, Law, and Violence Abandoning the Logic of the Ban Means and Ends: Reading the "Critique of Violence" 5. Ticks and Cats Machines Bios and Zoe Heidegger and the Animal 6. A Matter of Time Prophet or Apostle Nun, jetzt Aufhebung Messianic Nun, jetzt Aufhebung Messianic
£19.79
Seagull Books London Ltd The Suspended Passion
Book Synopsis
£17.58
Seagull Books London Ltd A Skeleton Plays Violin
Book SynopsisThe work of poet Georg Trakl, a leading Austrian-German expressionist, has been praised by many, including his contemporaries Rainer Maria Rilke and Else Lasker-Schuler, as well as his patron Ludwig Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein famously wrote that while he did not truly understand Trakl's poems, they had the tone of a truly ingenious person, which pleased him.A Skeleton Plays Violin comprises the final volume in a trilogy of works by Trakl published by Seagull Books. This selection gathers Trakl's early, middle, and late work, none of it published in book form during his lifetime. The work here ranges widely, from his haunting prose pieces to his darkly beautiful poems documenting the first bloody weeks of World War I on the Eastern Front. Book Three of Our Trakl the series that began with Trakl's first book Poems and his posthumously published Sebastian Dreaming also includes translations of unpublished poems and significant variants. Interpolated throughout this comprehensive and chronological selection is a biographical essay that provides more information about Trakl's gifted and troubled life, especially as it relates to his poetry, as well as the necessary context of his relationship with his favorite sibling, his sister Grete, whose role as a muse to her brother is still highly controversial. Trakl's life was mysterious and fascinating, a fact reflected in his work. A Skeleton Plays Violin should not be missed.
£18.04
Arizona Center for Medieval & Renaissance Studies,US Hamlet
Book SynopsisTo thine own text be trueLisa Peterson's translation ofHamletinto contemporary American English makes the play accessible to new audiences while keeping the soul of Shakespeare's writing intact. Lovers of Shakespeare's language take heart: Lisa Peterson's translation ofHamletinto contemporary American English was guided by the principle of First, do no harm. Leaving the most famous parts ofHamletuntouched, Peterson untied the language knots that can make the rest of the play difficult to understand in a single theatrical viewing. Peterson's translation makesHamletaccessible to new audiences, drawing out its timeless themes while helping to contextualize To be, or not tobe:that is the question, and Something is rotten in the state of Denmark, so that contemporary audiences can feel their full weight. This translation ofHamletwas written as part of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival's Play On! project, which commissioned new translations of thirty-nine Shakespeare plays. These translati
£9.46
Eland Publishing Ltd The Village in the Jungle
Book SynopsisWritten by a prominent member of the Bloomsbury group, this novel of colonial Ceylon (Sri Lanka) includes a biographical afterword by Sir Christopher Ondaatje, author of Woolf in Ceylon, and a short story, Pearls before Swine, which vividly draws on Woolf's experience as a young District Commissioner.Trade Review"'a superbly dispassionate observation and a great novel' Quentin Bell 'as relevant today as when it first appeared' E F C Ludowyk"
£11.69
Scottish Text Society Andrew Crawfurds Collection of Ballads and Songs
Book Synopsis
£28.50
John Wiley and Sons Ltd A Companion to AngloSaxon Literature
Book SynopsisThis acclaimed volume explores and unravels the contexts, readings, genres, intertextualities and debates within Anglo-Saxon studies. Brings together specially-commissioned contributions from a team of leading European and American scholars. Embraces both the literature and the cultural background of the period. Combines the discussion of primary material and manuscript sources with critical analysis and readings. Considers the past, present and future of Anglo-Saxon studies Trade Review"The latest addition to Blackwell's comprehensive surveys of literature and culture, this volume offers an impressive array of essays by reputable scholars ... This Companion will be a valuable introduction for upper-level undergraduate and graduate students and useful resource for faculty." Choice "A Companion to Anglo-Saxon Literature is an impressive anthology of erudite essays written by scholars around the world on the topic of Anglo-Saxon literature, particularly that of the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries. Prose, poetry, religious, and secular literature are all discussed at length in this college-level analysis and presentation, which is very highly recommended for academic literary studies in general, and medieval studies in reference collections in particular." The Midwest Book Review "Many of the world's leading Anglo-Saxonists have contributed to this volume which provides a very useful overview of current preoccupations of those who study and teach Old English literature." Literature and History "Stimulating introductions that bring out the wider potential of their topics for understanding the Anglo-Saxon past ... much to offer the more experienced reader as well as the novice." Literature and HistoryTable of ContentsContributors x Preface xv Acknowledgements xvi Abbreviations xvii Map 1 Late Anglo-Saxon England xviii Part I Contexts and Perspectives 1 1 An Introduction to the Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Vernacular Literature 3Elaine Treharne and Phillip Pulsiano 2 An Introduction to the Corpus of Anglo-Latin Literature 11Joseph P. McGowan 3 Transmission of Literature and Learning: Anglo-Saxon Scribal Culture 50Jonathan Wilcox 4 Authorship and Anonymity 71Mary Swan 5 Audience(s), Reception, Literacy 84Hugh Magennis 6 Anglo-Saxon Manuscript Production: Issues of Making and Using 102Michelle P. Brown Part II Readings: Cultural Framework and Heritage 119 7 The Germanic Background 121Patrizia Lendinara 8 Religious Context: Pre-Benedictine Reform Period 135Susan Irvine 9 The Benedictine Reform and Beyond 151Joyce Hill 10 Legal and Documentary Writings 170Carole Hough 11 Scientific and Medical Writings 188Stephanie Hollis 12 Prayers, Glosses and Glossaries 209Phillip Pulsiano Part III Genres and Modes 231 13 Religious Prose 233Roy M. Liuzza 14 Religious Poetry 251Patrick W. Conner 15 Secular Prose 268Donald G. Scragg 16 Secular Poetry 281Fred C. Robinson 17 Anglo-Latin Prose 296Joseph P. McGowan Part IV Intertextualities: Sources and Influences 325 18 Biblical and Patristic Learning 327Thomas Hall 19 The Irish Tradition 345Charles D. Wright 20 Continental Germanic Influences 375Rolf Bremmer 21 Scandinavian Relations 388Robert E. Bjork Part V Debates and Issues 401 22 English in the Post-Conquest Period 403Elaine Treharne 23 Anglo-Saxon Studies: Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries 415Timothy Graham 24 Anglo-Saxon Studies in the Nineteenth Century: England, Denmark, America 434J. R. Hall 25 Anglo-Saxon Studies in the Nineteenth Century: Germany, Austria, Switzerland 455Hans Sauer 26 By the Numbers: Anglo-Saxon Scholarship at the Century’s End 472Allen Frantzen 27 The New Millennium 496Nicholas Howe Selected Further Reading 506 Index 511
£45.55
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Christopher Marlowe Four Plays
Book SynopsisChristopher Marlowe (1564-93) was an English playwright and poet, who through his establishment of blank verse as a medium for drama did much to free the Elizabethan theatre from the constraints of the medieval and Tudor dramatic tradition. His first play Tamburlaine the Great, was performed that same year, probably by the Admiral's Men with Edward Alleyn in the lead. With its swaggering power-hungry title character and gorgeous verse the play proved to be enormously popular; Marlowe quickly wrote a second part, which may have been produced later that year. Marlowe's most famous play, The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, based on the medieval German legend of the scholar who sold his soul to the devil, was probably written and produced by 1590, although it was not published until 1604. Historically the play is important for utilizing the soliloquy as an aid to character analysis and development. The Jew of Malta (c. 1590) has another unscrupulous aspiring
£9.99
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Springboard Shakespeare A Midsummer Nights Dream
Book Synopsis A Midsummer Night''s Dream is one of Shakespeare''s most popular comedies. This accessible introduction offers a springboard into the play, taking a hands-on, performance-based approach, exploring the challenges and the rewards it presents to actors, audiences and students. Springboard Shakespeare: A Midsummer Night''s Dream has a three-part structure: whether you''re watching or reading, Ben Crystal takes you through exactly what you need to know Before, During and After the play. He combines a genuine passion and understanding of Shakespeare with his experience as an actor, giving the reader a clear route to thinking about, understanding and enjoying A Midsummer Night''s Dream.Trade ReviewHaving Crystal as a companion through the stickier parts of Hamlet and Macbeth is like going to the theatre with an intelligent friend. * The Independent *How different it might have been if we’d had Ben Crystal’s sparky little books to introduce us. My Shakespearean epiphany would have come much sooner...[the books] lead newcomers into the play in question in a gentle, upbeat, unpretentious way. Fresh and slim, they’re about as far as could be from dusty, dry study guides relating to school exams...much better than the average theatre programme...I’d like to see them on sale in theatre bookshops, and/or wherever there’s a production of one of these plays...I’d also recommend them for classroom use. -- Susan Elkin * The Independent on Sunday *A highly worthwhile series, which should prove to be valuable for directors, actors and students…This formula really works. As an experiment, your dedicated reviewer tried out Macbeth in preparation for and following on from the Eve Best production of the Globe. The experience was definitely improved, with some of the tips on words and language proving especially helpful and enlightening… These really are excellent little guides that will prove informative to almost anybody with an interest in the subject. -- Philip Fisher * British Theatre Guide *
£10.44
Spark No Fear Shakespeare A Companion
Book SynopsisNo Fear Shakespeare: A Companion gives you the straight scoop on everything you really need to know about Shakespeare, including:
£7.59
Johns Hopkins University Press Metahistory
Book SynopsisThis book will be of interest to anyone-in any discipline-who takes the past as a serious object of study.Trade Review. . . seminal . . .—Dublin Review of BooksTable of ContentsForeword, "All You've Got Is History," by Michael S. RothPreface to the Fortieth-Anniversary EditionPrefaceIntroduction. The Poetics of HistoryPart One: The Received Tradition1. The Historical Imagination between Metaphor and Irony2. HegelPart Two: Four Kinds of "Realism" in Nineteenth-Century Historical Writing3. Michelet4. Ranke5. Tocqueville6. BurckhardtPart Three: The Repudiation of "Realism" in Late Nineteenth-Century Philosophy of History7. Historical Consciousness and the Rebirth of Philosophy of History8. Marx9. Nietzsche10. CroceConclusionBibliographyIndex
£23.85
Johns Hopkins University Press Leibniz Discovers Asia
Book SynopsisHow did early modern scholarsas exemplified by Leibnizsearch for their origins in the study of language?Who are the nations of Europe, and where did they come from? Early modern people were as curious about their origins as we are today. Lacking twenty-first-century DNA research, seventeenth-century scholars turned to languageetymology, vocabulary, and even grammatical structurefor evidence. The hope was that, in puzzling out the relationships between languages, the relationships between nations themselves would emerge, and on that basis one could determine the ancestral homeland of the nations that presently occupied Europe. In Leibniz Discovers Asia, Michael C. Carhart explores this early modern practice by focusing on philosopher, scientist, and mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, who developed a vast network of scholars and missionaries throughout Europe to acquire the linguistic data he needed. The success of his project was tied to the Jesuit search for an overland route tTable of ContentsList of IllustrationsConventions1. Grimaldi at the Gates of Muscovy (Fall 1689)2. Making the Worst of a Bad Assignment: Origines Guelficae and the Linguistic Project (Autumn 1690-Summer 1692)3. Building the Network (Winter 1691-Summer 1692)4. The Jesuit Search for an Overland Route to China (1685-1689)5. Seeking the Languages of Grand Tartary (August 1693-December 1694)6. Assembling Novissima Sinica (February-September 1695)7. Johan Gabriel Sparwenfeld and Gothic Origins (November 1695-December 1697)8. The Grand Embassy of Peter the Great (Summer-Fall 1697)9. The Jesuits of Paris and China (1689, November 1697-March 1698)10. The Foundations of Modern Historical Linguistics (1697-1716)AcknowledgmentsAppendix I. "Desiderata circa linguas quorundam populorum"Appendix II. Plan for a Moscow Academy of Sciences and ArtsNotesBibliographyIndex of LettersGeneral Index
£49.95
Edinburgh University Press TwentiethCentury Victorian
Book SynopsisTells of the relationship between Arthur Conan Doyle and the Strand Magazine, the aftermath of the success of Sherlock Holmes and the impact of that on both author and publication as they moved into the early twentieth century.
£27.54
Edinburgh University Press DickensS Clowns
Book SynopsisThis book reappraises Dickens's Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi and his imaginative engagement with its principal protagonist.
£20.89
Stanford University Press Whither Fanon?: Studies in the Blackness of Being
Book SynopsisFrantz Fanon may be most known for his more obviously political writings, but in the first instance, he was a clinician, a black Caribbean psychiatrist who had the improbable task of treating disturbed and traumatized North African patients during the wars of decolonization. Investigating and foregrounding the clinical system that Fanon devised in an attempt to intervene against negrophobia and anti-blackness, this book rereads his clinical and political work together, arguing that the two are mutually imbricated. For the first time, Fanon's therapeutic innovations are considered along with his more overtly political and cultural writings to ask how the crises of war affected his practice, informed his politics, and shaped his subsequent ideas. As David Marriott suggests, this combination of the clinical and political involves a psychopolitics that is, by definition, complex, difficult, and perpetually challenging. He details this psychopolitics from two points of view, focusing first on Fanon's sociotherapy, its diagnostic methods and concepts, and second, on Fanon's cultural theory more generally. In our present climate of fear and terror over black presence and the violence to which it gives rise, Whither Fanon? reminds us of Fanon's scandalous actuality and of the continued urgency of his message.Trade Review"This book is a clarifying event amid recent readings of Fanon and a radical intervention in the conventional ones. Writing with an intensity and momentum unparalleled by other scholars in the field, David Marriott is Frantz Fanon's first reader." -- Frank B. Wilderson III * University of California, Irvine *"Whither Fanon? is one of the most original and significant works of theory of this generation. Drawing deeply from Fanon's clinical psychoanalytic work, David Marriott shows in labyrinthine precision how Fanon's colonial racial interiority is both far more unfree than has been imagined and open to an ungrounded revolution without reserve. Perhaps alone among Fanon's readers, Marriott keeps up with Fanon's own complexity, radical negativity, and creative criticality." -- Rei Terada * University of California, Irvine *Table of ContentsContents and AbstractsIntroduction chapter abstractThis introduction considers recent responses to what has become known as "critical Fanonism." Is Fanonism reducible to a narrative of liberation in which national and human liberation remains both telos and eschatology? Or does his work offer a different way of thinking about the relationship between time and event, law and violence, sovereignty and subject? Taking its cue from Fanon's meditation on the revolutionary moment as a tabula rasa, this introduction considers two broad ways of dealing with critical Fanonism: as a dialectical phenomenology and as a politics of redemption and/or liberation. Along the way, it asks why "narrative" and "experience" continue to be more or less the principal terms for engaging with Fanon's thought and attempts to show how Fanon escapes the teleological and phenomenological hold of both terms in a way that suggests differing theoretical possibilities. 1Psychodramas chapter abstractThis chapter presents an overview of the development and genealogy of Fanon's socialthérapie, showing how this innovation in clinical method followed from a radically new approach to the colony as both group idea and praxis. Drawing on Fanon's clinical papers, it pursues the following questions: how does politics inform Fanon's therapeutics? And what of psychoanalysis in the colony? What is the relation between Fanonian socialthérapie and François Tosquelles's thérapeutiques institutionnelles? And why did Fanon describe group therapy as a "transvaluation"? In the course of the discussion, Fanon's notions of madness and alienation are presented—including his view of the clinic itself as a form of psychodrama and psychic life as a form of occupation. 2The Clinic as Praxis chapter abstractThis chapter compares Fanon's critiques of colonial neuropsychiatry and, in particular, its diagnostic use of racial heredity to the institutional innovations of his own therapeutic practices, including his use of psychoanalytic therapies. The chapter charts the complex evolution of that usage from 1952 to 1958, a period in which the notion of therapy changes from that of a mirror of disalienation to that of a more unnameable n'est pas in which resolution is no longer seen as a move towards egoic reintegration. It becomes clear that identification is conceived no longer in specular terms as an imaginary misrecognition but more in terms of something foreclosed, lost, or missing; in other words, the experience of colonial racism is compared to that of an unconscious content that is irreversible, nontransferable, and inexplicable and yet is coextensive with the feeling of an uncanny wretchedness. 3Negrophobogenesis chapter abstractThis brief chapter outlines the main diagnostic terms of Fanon's socialthérapie—epidermalization, petrification, and sociogeny. The question of how racism comes to be embodied, or how the body comes to acquire a racial signifiance, for example, is shown to be a key element of Fanon's conception of le vécu noir, or black lived experience. What that conception shows is the dilemma of becoming black when becoming is established via a certain historicity of hatred that fails to go beyond the level of affect, which remains tied to the various episodes of its racialization. 4Historicity and Guilt chapter abstractThe chapter begins with a reconsideration of the relation between institutional therapy and the entire problem of the semblable, then moving on to discuss Fanon's struggle, in his clinical writings, to understand the resistance to treatment by the colonisé. The starting point for this discussion is Mannoni's Psychologie de la colonisation and Fanon's critique of its oedipalization of cultural conflict. It is here, in this critique, that Fanon begins his alternative investigations of guilt, truth, historicity, and reason—defined and elaborated via Jaspers's notion of Grenzsituationen, language and cultural translation in the colony, and the cultural conflict over signs, signification, and media. In the course of the discussion, Fanon's alternative ideology of the sign—which indicates a new psycho-political message—is elaborated. 5Racial Fetishism chapter abstractThis chapter presents Fanon's work on anxiety in relation to fetishism. The aim here is to show how negrophobia—as stereotype, fantasy, idea, and affect—functions as a source of traumatic energy in the psychic life of the colonized. The chapter begins with a detailed survey of one of the longest case histories in Black Skin, White Masks in order to elicit Fanon's explanation of racial anxiety, before moving on to consider the stereotype as a type of fetishistic thinking and practice in the libidinal and political economies of the colony (and postcolony). The stereotype-as-fetish is integral to Fanon's discussion of disguised or repressed representations and what he calls the overdetermination of blackness as phobic object. What is also clear is that representation itself does not allow us to accurately recognize the differences between Vorstellung and Darstellung in Fanon's analyses, nor the question of racial capitalism more generally. 6Desire and Law chapter abstractThough the initial hypothesis of this chapter—that Oedipus as colonus must be distinguished from its classical version—has met with little if any discussion, it is nonetheless fundamental for understanding the way in which the colonisé experiences both its desire and its inhibition as a form of guilty indebtedness. The chapter explores this guilt as arising from a flaw that is both de facto and de jure subject to a command that can neither be forsworn nor borne. The chapter also discusses Fanon's analyses of dispossession together with his clinical study of subjects who have succumbed to an absolute depersonalization during total war. Accordingly, the following questions are discussed: how is this flaw experienced as Erlebnis? How can blackness appear to itself other than as guilt and expiation? What is the role of this anti-Oedipus in colonial war, torture, and state violence? 7The Condemned chapter abstractThis chapter discusses Fanon's refusal, in contrast to the supporters of cultural nationalism, to advocate a black conception of the world, ethics, and politics, alongside his rejection of any teleological view of time, emancipation, or freedom. The chapter looks at Fanon's call for a blackness that is n'est pas and that cannot be put to work either dialectically, speculatively, progressively, or fugitively. Only the n'est pas is capable of expressing the temporal sensibility of Fanonism and its struggle to make known the pathologies of blackness and its reactionary culture of ressentiment. The chapter charts this struggle via afro-pessimism, which it uses to illustrate the central antinomies of what are, by definition, the blackest characteristics of Fanon's thought. 8Invention chapter abstractThis chapter discusses the various notions of invention in Fanon's work. Fanon invokes invention as a descent that is also a surpassing, a leap, that allows the colonisé to grasp the non-permanent nature of colonial historic truth. This is why, politically, Fanon's thinking of invention criticizes traditional notions of political organization, or sovereign will, and argues overtly for a revolutionary violence that is separated from the institutions of politics. In this chapter, Fanon's notion of invention is compared to that of Georges Sorel and C. L. R. James—two thinkers who make invention synonymous with class struggle and who thereby oppose spontaneity to certain forms of bureaucracy and the values of the bourgeois order as such. While James situates invention in a Marxist milieu, the chapter argues that the form in which Fanonian invention manifests itself cannot be plotted according to the preestablished forms of Marxist philosophy or dialectics. 9Existence chapter abstractThis chapter examines invention not as a figure of history, scientific method, anthropology, or politics but as a question of existence. It shows how invention cannot be limited to knowledge, narrative, or even the political command for a greater awareness of illusion or reality. These paths—which continue to dominate readings of Fanonism—are shown to be simplifications of what Fanon expresses as the sociogenic truths of colonialism. In a reading of sociogeny that engages with the psychoanalytic genealogy of the term, the chapter argues that modern readings of sociogeny need remedying in order to link sociogeny to trauma, repetition, and neurosis. 10The Abyssal chapter abstractThis chapter revisits Fanon's complex relationship to negritude and, in particular, to the poetry of Aimé Césaire. On the one hand, it establishes a clear link between Césaire's abyssal theory of negritude and Fanon's no less poetic attempt to rethink the relation between the universal and the particular at the point where either becomes the abyssal mediation of the other in the conjoined sphere of an enriching saturation. The abyssal, for its part, indicates a profoundly original approach to black writing and thought and designates a perpetual opening that is, by definition, oblique and singular. This opening is pursued via the interrelated figures of corpsing, social death, and orphic descent.
£26.99
Bucknell University Press,U.S. Rewriting Crusoe: The Robinsonade across
Book SynopsisPublished in 1719, Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe is one of those extraordinary literary works whose importance lies not only in the text itself but in its persistently lively afterlife. German author Johann Gottfried Schnabel—who in 1731 penned his own island narrative—coined the term “Robinsonade” to characterize the genre bred by this classic, and today hundreds of examples can be identified worldwide. This celebratory collection of tercentenary essays testifies to the Robinsonade’s endurance, analyzing its various literary, aesthetic, philosophical, and cultural implications in historical context. Contributors trace the Robinsonade’s roots from the eighteenth century to generic affinities in later traditions, including juvenile fiction, science fiction, and apocalyptic fiction, and finally to contemporary adaptations in film, television, theater, and popular culture. Taken together, these essays convince us that the genre’s adapt- ability to changing social and cultural circumstances explains its relevance to this day. Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press. Trade Review"Rewriting Crusoe offers invigorating re-examinations of a timeless and timely genre. The broad scope of texts examined and the international profile of its authors makes this book an important contribution to studies of the Robinsonade and testament that this genre still holds power."— Rebecca Weaver-Hightower, author of Empire Islands: Castaways, Cannibals, and Fantasies of Conquest in Post/Colonial Island N "Rewriting Crusoe: The Robinsonade across Languages, Cultures, and Media assembles an international group of scholars who present exciting new approaches to the cultural afterlives of Daniel Defoe’s 1719 novel. Robinson Crusoe is one of the most successful books of all time, ubiquitous first in Europe and then around the world. Novel historians credit it with transforming prose fiction with psychological realism. It has been translated into dozens of languages and it has directly and indirectly inspired a plenitude of adaptations and appropriations in that time. The essays in Rewriting Crusoe follow the Robinsonades themselves across genres and media—fiction, film, plays, and TV—and they respond to a range of works, from immediate, direct responses in Britain to more distant and looser echoes across the globe. What is original and distinctive about the volume is its demonstration of how Robinsonades not only challenge key aspects of the archetypal castaway narrative—masculine individualism, literary realism, and ecological and colonial domination—but that these ideologies have always been in a process of contestation. Together the essays illuminate what editor Jakub Lipski calls 'the potential of the Robinsonade to adapt to changing circumstances, in terms of content and genre, and … its continuous relevance in new contexts.' The book provides a model for the potential of collaborative approaches to diffuse literary afterlives, and it is essential reading for those interested in the impact of eighteenth-century ideas through the ages."— Nicholas Seager, Co-editor of The Afterlives of Eighteenth-Century Fiction "An impressively ambitious and comprehensive collection of essays on Robinsonades."— John Richetti, editor of the Cambridge Companion to Robinson Crusoe “Rewriting Crusoe collects a wide range of international scholars to look at the Robinsonade tradition in various media across three centuries. The collection exhibits the range of responses to Robinson Crusoe and considers how they reflect various cultural and literary concerns.”— Leah Orr, author of Novel Ventures: Fiction and Print Culture in England, 1690-1730Table of ContentsNote on the Edition Used Foreword by Robert Mayer Introduction Jakub Lipski Part I: Exploring and Transcending the GenreMushrooms, Capers, and other sorts of Pickles”: Remaking Genre in Peter Longueville’s The Hermit (1727)Rivka Swenson“If I had …”: Counterfactuals, Imaginary Realities and the Poetics of the Postmodern RobinsonadePatrick Gill Part II: National ContextsCastaways and Colonialism: Dislocating Cultural Encounter in The Female American (1767)Przemysław UścińskiSetting the Scene for the Polish Robinsonade: The Adventures of Mr. Nicholas Wisdom (1776) by Ignacy Krasicki and the Early Reception of Robinson Crusoe in Poland, 1769-1775Jakub LipskiThe Rise and Fall of Robinson Crusoe on the London StageFrederick BurwickIslands in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped (1886): A Counter-RobinsonadeMárta Pellérdi Part III: Ecocritical ReadingsStormy Weather and the Gentle Isle: Apprehending the Environment of Three RobinsonadesLora E. GeriguisRobinson’s Becoming-Earth in Michel Tournier’s Vendredi ou les Limbes du Pacifique (1967)Krzysztof Skonieczny Part IV: The Robinsonade and the Present Condition“The True State of Our Condition”: The Twenty-First-Century Worker as CastawayJennifer Preston Wilson Gilligan’s Wake, Gilligan’s Island, and Historiographizing American Popular CultureIan Kinane Coda: Rewriting the Robinsonade Daniel Cook Acknowledgements Bibliography About the Contributors Index
£28.90
Peninsula Press Ltd Exposure
Book SynopsisA personal essay on exposure, auto-fiction, internet feminism and the anxiety epidemic. Last year Olivia Sudjic published Sympathy, a novel about surveillance and connection in the internet age. If a debut novel is written by a woman, it is often read and discussed as if it were a memoir. Suddenly Sudjic found herself shoved under the microscope, subject to same surveillance apparatus she had dissected in her novel. In this incisive personal essay, Olivia Sudjic draws on her experience to examine the damaging expectations that attend any young female artist, as well the strategies by which they might be evaded.
£6.00
Random House USA Inc The Prince
Book SynopsisHere is the world''s most famous master plan for seizing and holding power. Astonishing in its candor The Prince even today remains a disturbingly realistic and prophetic work on what it takes to be a prince . . . a king . . . a president. When, in 1512, Machiavelli was removed from his post in his beloved Florence, he resolved to set down a treatise on leadership that was practical, not idealistic. In The Prince he envisioned would be unencumbered by ordinary ethical and moral values; his prince would be man and beast, fox and lion. Today, this small sixteenth-century masterpiece has become essential reading for every student of government, and is the ultimate book on power politics.
£6.29
Random House USA Inc Sons and Lovers Everymans Library Contemporary
Book SynopsisOne of the world's most original works of fiction from one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. • No one ever wrote better about the power struggles of sex and love. —Doris Lessing, Nobel Prize-winning Author of The Golden Notebook Gertrude Morel is a refined woman who married beneath her and has come to loathe her brutal, working-class husband. She focuses her passion instead on her two sons, who return her love and despise their father. Trouble begins when Paul Morel, a budding artist, falls in love with a young woman who seems capable of rivaling his mother for possession of his soul. In the ensuing battle, he finds his path to adulthood tragically impeded by the enduring power of his mother’s grasp. SONS AND LOVERS confirmed Lawrence’s genius and inaugurated the controversy over his explicit writing about sexuality and human relationships that would follow him to the end of his career.
£22.40
Random House USA Inc Silas Marner Everymans Library Classics
Book SynopsisWhen Silas Marner is wrongly accused of crime and expelled from his community, he vows to turn his back upon the world. He moves to the village of Raveloe, where he remains an outsider and an object of suspicion until an extraordinary sequence of events, including the theft of his gold and the appearance of a tiny, golden-haired child in his cottage, transforms his life. Part beautifully realized rural portraiture and part fairy tale, the story of Marner’s redemption and restoration to humanity has long been George Eliot’s most beloved and widely read work.The isolated, misanthropic, miserly weaver Silas Marner is one of George Eliot’s greatest creations, and his presence casts a strange, otherworldly glow over the moral dramas, both large and small, that take place in the pastoral landscape that surrounds him.Introduction by Rosemary Ashton
£19.50
