ELT & Literary Studies Books

Book SynopsisAs early as the eighteenth century, white Americans and Europeans believed that people of African descent could not experience nostalgia. As a result, black lives have been predominately narrated through historical scenes of slavery and oppression. This phenomenon created a missing archive of romantic historical memories. Badia Ahad-Legardy mines literature, visual culture, performance, and culinary arts to form an archive of black historical joy for use by the African-descended. Her analysis reveals how contemporary black artists find more than trauma and subjugation within the historical past. Drawing on contemporary African American culture and recent psychological studies, she reveals nostalgia’s capacity to produce positive emotions. Afro-nostalgia emerges as an expression of black romantic recollection that creates and inspires good feelings even within our darkest moments. Original and provocative, Afro-Nostalgia offers black historical pleasure as a remTrade Review"Part Afrofuturistic, part academic, this book will make you rethink how you understand Black history and storytelling." --BookRiot"Essential." --Ms. Magazine"Author Badia Ahad-Legardy finds unique ways to explore the beauty, positivity, and triumph of people descended from Africa, creating an archival collection of visual art and culture, literature and performance to demonstrate how the Black experience is not just a depressing string of incidents that drives us through our lives. " --New York Amsterdam News"If you’ve been waiting for a book that steps out of trauma-time and the perpetual present of slavery clear-eyed and with its critical faculties alight, you’ve found it. Badia Ahad-Legardy breathes gentle and sweet smelling fresh air into stale corners in her book on Afro-Nostalgia, which cogently analyzes and affectively affirms Black cultural producers and chefs who treat the past less as an ongoing traumatic wound and more as a surrealistic space of black historical regenerative possibility and happiness. A gem."--Avery Gordon, author of Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination"An important dissection of looking beyond the traumas of the past to find the happiness that existed (and exists) within the Black community. " --Library Journal"This thoroughly researched book seeks and sheds light on the spaces where Black joy can live and flourish. Though its tone is academic, its insights reach far beyond the classroom.... a worthy addition to any multicultural studies library and to readers interested in American culture." --Museum of Americana"Afro-Nostalgia does an excellent job of making visible the operation of Afro-nostalgia in contemporary Black culture as a counter to the negative affect produced by Black history as trauma." --American Literary HistoryTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction. Ten Thousand Recollections: Afro-Nostalgia and Contemporary Black Aesthetics 1. (Nostalgic) RETRIBUTION: The Power of the Petty in Contemporary Narratives of Slavery 2. (Nostalgic) RESTORATION: Utopian Pasts and Political Futures in the Music of Black Lives Matter 3. (Nostalgic) REGENERATION: Absent Archives and Historical Pleasures in Contemporary Black Visual Culture 4. (Nostalgic) RECLAMATION: Recipes for Radicalism and the Politics of Soul (Food) Postscript: A Future of Black Nostalgia Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisThis book explores the intersections of Gothic, cultural, gender, queer, socio-economic and postcolonial theories in nineteenth-century British representations of sexuality, gender, class and race.Trade ReviewArdel Haefele-Thomas's 'Queer Others in Victorian Gothic' in Wales's series Gothic Literary Studies applies Queer and Postcolonial theory to the Gothic fiction of Collins, Gaskell, Haggard, Le Fanu, Marryat, and Vernon Lee - with surprising results. In richly historicized contexts, Haefele-Thomas reveals refined explorations of Otherness in Victorian literature, as well as complicated empathies and tolerances that unsettle our critical assumptions. Teaching on a daily basis in San Francisco's LGBT community, Haefele-Thomas has provided an accessible genealogy of our contemporary boundary crossings. It is a superb application of theory to literary history and to the present. Regenia Gagnier Professor of English, University of Exeter and President, British Association for Victorian StudiesTable of ContentsChapter One: Introduction Chapter Two: The Spinster and the Hijra: How Queers Save Heterosexual Marriage in Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White and The Moonstone Chapter Three: Escaping Heteronormativity: Queer Family Structures in Elizabeth Gaskell's Lois the Witch and 'The Grey Woman' Chapter Four: Disintegrating Binaries, Disintegrating Bodies: Queer Imperial Transmogrifications in H. Rider Haggard's She Chapter Five: '"One Does Things Abroad That One Would Not Dream Of Doing In England"': Miscegenation and Queer Female Vampirism in J. Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla and Florence Marryat's The Blood of the Vampire Chapter Six: In Defense of Her Queer Community: Vernon Lee's Coded Decadent Gothic

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Book SynopsisThis edition of a novel inspired by the Spanish Civil War, offers notes and an introduction, which have been compiled in the light of recent socio-political, topic-based syllabuses and communications studies courses.Table of Contents"Contraataque"; "Requiem per un campesino espanol"; the major novels of Sender; "Requiem por un Campesino Espanol".

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Book SynopsisJane Austen''s reputation rests on the six novels she wrote in her short life - enduringly popular novels which have become part of the fabric of English life, and which have reached new audiences through recent dramatisations on screen and stage. This book, which draws on her letters, describes Jane''s life in the vicarage at Steventon and later at Bath and Chawton, and her relationships with family and friends - especially her beloved sister, Cassandra, and the engaging Tom Lefroy (who it was rumoured was the love of her life). It also describes the parties and balls in country houses and assembly rooms which she attended and the detail of nineteenth-century life which she so sharply observed and which provided the background to her novels. This book is a pleasure for anyone wanting to understand the life of one of our great novelists.

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Book SynopsisA comprehensive and comparative examination of the concept of recognition across history and disciplines.Trade Review".11 papers are presented here on such topics as recognition and identity in Euripides' Ion, ethical epiphany in the story of Judah and Tamar, Thomas Aquinas on Christian recognition in the case of Mary Magdalene, the interruption of traumatic doubling in the interpolated tale of Dorotea, Spenser's bad romance, and Plato and the contemporary politics of recognition." Book News Inc., 2013

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Book SynopsisThis book is a translation of a revised version. edited by Anthony Faulkes. of Arm Bjornsson''s Wagner og Valsungar, published in Icelandic in 2000. In it the sources Wagner used in compiling the libretti of his great work. Der king des Nibelungen, are detailed scene by scene through all four operas of the cycle. Many will be surprised to learn that no more than 5% of his material is derived solely from medieval German hooks such as Das Nibelungenlied. while at least 80% is from Old Icelandic writings: the Prose Edda, Eddic poems. and various sagas. The concept of Gotterdämmerung, for example, in which the world is consumed by fire, as well as the flickering flame surrounding Brünnhilde''s mountain fastness, were known to Wagner from Icelandic sources alone, since they do not appear in any German text, and may well have been inspired originally by the volcanic eruptions that occur so frequently in Iceland. About 15% of Wagner''s literary motifs in the Ring are common to both German

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Book SynopsisFour plays which exemplify his interest in flawed, characters who defy the expectations of Greek society The four tragedies collected in this volume all focus on a central character, once powerful, brought down by betrayal, jealousy, guilt and hatred. The first playwright to depict suffering without reference to the gods, Euripides made his characters speak in human terms and face the consequences of their actions. In Medea, a woman rejected by her lover takes hideous revenge by murdering the children they both love, and Hecabe depicts the former queen of Troy, driven mad by the prospect of her daughter's sacrifice to Achilles. Electra portrays a young woman planning to avenge the brutal death of her father at the hands of her mother, while in Heracles the hero seeks vengeance against the evil king who has caused bloodshed in his family. Philip Vellacott's lucid translation is accompanied by an introduction, which discusses the literary background of Classical Athens aTable of ContentsMedea and Other PlaysIntroductionMedeaHecabeElectraHeraclesNotes

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Book SynopsisCentres on the critical events in the last year of the Trojan War, which lead to Achilleus' killing of Hektor and determine the fate of Troy. This book presents a universal and tragic view of the world, of human life lived under the shadow of suffering and death, set against a vast and largely unpitying divine background.Trade Review“Fitzgerald has solved virtually every problem that has plagued translators of Homer. The narrative runs, the dialogue speaks, the military action is clear, and the repetitive epithets become useful text rather than exotic relics.” –Atlantic Monthly “Fitzgerald’s swift rhythms, bright images, and superb English make Homer live as never before…This is for every reader in our time and possibly for all time.”–Library Journal “[Fitzgerald’s Odyssey and Iliad] open up once more the unique greatness of Homer’s art at the level above the formula; yet at the same time they do not neglect the brilliant texture of Homeric verse at the level of the line and the phrase.” –The Yale Review“What an age can read in Homer, what its translators can manage to say in his presence, is one gauge of its morale, one index to its system of exultations and reticences. The supple, the iridescent, the ironic, these modes are among our strengths, and among Mr. Fitzgerald’s.” –National ReviewWith an Introduction by Gregory Nagy

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Book SynopsisOne of the world''s greatest fantasy novels, Monkey King: Journey to the West is the inspiration for the new blockbuster game Black Myth: Wukong. Published in a sparkling modern translation and available in the Penguin Clothbound Classics series, this is the perfect introduction to the seminal Chinese classic. A shape-shifting trickster on a kung-fu quest for eternal life, Monkey King is one of the most memorable superheroes in world literature. High-spirited and omni-talented, he can transform himself into whatever he chooses and turn each of his body''s 84,000 hairs into an army of clones. But his penchant for mischief repeatedly gets him into trouble, and when he raids Heaven''s Orchard of Immortal Peaches, the Buddha pins him beneath a mountain. Five hundred years later, Monkey King is finally given a chance to redeem himself: he must protect the pious monk Tripitaka on his journey in search of precious Buddhist sutras that will bring enlightenment to the Chinese empire. Joined by two other fallen immortals - Pigsy, a rice-loving flying pig, and Sandy, a depressive river-sand monster - Monkey King does battle with Red Boy, Princess Jade-Face, the Monstress Dowager, and all manner of dragons, ogres, wizards and femmes fatales; navigates the perils of Fire-Cloud Cave, the River of Flowing Sand and the Water-Crystal Palace; and is serially captured, lacquered, sautéed, steamed and liquefied - but always hatches an ingenious plan to get himself and his fellow pilgrims out of their latest jam. Comparable to The Canterbury Tales or Don Quixote, Monkey King is at once a gripping adventure, a comic satire and a spring of spiritual insight. With this new translation by the award-winning Julia Lovell, the irrepressible rogue hero of one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature has the potential to vault, with his signature cloud-somersault, into the hearts of a whole new generation of readers.Trade ReviewA monument of world literature, Monkey King is also one of the funniest, most subversive satires ever written ... If you've not read Journey to the West, prepare yourself for the adventure of a lifetime and know that like Monkey himself, you are about to be transformed. Even if you have read it, Julia Lovell's magnificent new translation becomes its own cloud somersault, its own gold-hooped staff -- Junot DíazVisit one of the greatest countries in the world through the pages of this Chinese epic [and] Julia Lovell's new contemporary translation, with exquisite maps of 'somewhat mythical lands' by Laura Hartman Maestro -- Piers Torday * Guardian *I marvelled at the ingenuity, cheek and charm of Monkey King by Wu Cheng'en in Julia Lovell's lively new translation: what a book to return to! -- Daniel Medin * The White Review *A new translation of Monkey King is a cause for joy! Imaginative and mischievous, exhilarating and timeless, this sixteenth-century superhero saga is a delight to readers of all ages. -- Yiyun LiAn exhilarating new translation of my favourite of all the classic Chinese novels - a great, wild epic that expands and fires one's imagination -- Ha JinThe Monkey King, one of Chinese literature's great characters, should add many new disciples to his existing fans through this compelling new version of his adventures. Julia Lovell here conveys a vibrant sense of the richness and also the sheer fun of this Ming dynasty text, a classic of world fiction -- Craig Clunas, University of OxfordAn all-new translation of one of the greatest stories ever written . . . An out-and-out fantasy adventure that has captivated audiences and influenced creatives for centuries * Bustle *Jam-packed with outrageous danger and outlandish transformations . . . Lovell does an admirable job condensing the original text . . . while capturing the essence of Chinese fantastical storytelling and parody. Readers who enjoy nutty adventures and nonsensical plots will get a kick out of this madcap fable * Publishers Weekly *Uproarious and action-filled, this highly readable new translation captures the most beloved of Chinese characters in all his impossible charm. Irrepressible and irresistible, Monkey speaks to us across the centuries, and here makes us laugh anew -- Gish JenThis new translation . . . breathes fresh life, humour, wit and charm into the 16th-century classic. . . . If you did not know that this was an abridged version you never would. . . . [It] is exactly as long as it needs to be, with the fat cut and the story paced perfectly. . . . If you've ever wanted to read Journey to the West but have been put off by fears of it being too long, too dense, too dry, then put those fears aside. Julia Lovell's translation is nothing but fun, frantic fantasy writing. . . . I can't imagine having more fun than I did with Lovell's hilarious translation -- Will Heath * Books & Bao *Monkey King: Journey to the West is rich with imaginative world-building that evokes the best Pixar films... With this new readable version of 'Monkey King,' Western readers will also have plenty of fun * San Francisco Chronicle *A mirthful tale of endless mischief, deception, irony and combat . . . Impish and adventurous . . . Thanks to this fresh translation . . . the adventures of superhero simian Sun Wukong are newly accessible to English readers around the world. * Global Asia *

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Book SynopsisAn evocative blend of travel writing, politics and literature, offers a window into the contemporary Palestinian literary scene.Trade Review'A masterful work. Di Cintio weaves together history with a sense of place, character and dialogue infused with humour, to produce a contemporary portrait of a people who continue to resist both occupation and simple categorisation.' Selma Dabbagh; 'Di Cintio's lucid account of present-day Palestine is the inspired portrait of a nation in dialogue with its ghosts past and future affirming its right to be. This is a necessary book for our bewildered times.' Alberto Manguel; 'A powerful journey through Palestine's contemporary culture, where silenced authors defend themselves, female writers speak loudly and stolen private libraries are restored.' Atef Abu Saif; 'One of the best travel writers of his generation ... Marcello Di Cintio tells compelling and engrossing stories with his customary mix of vivid detail, a strong sense of history, a lovely sense of humour and, above all, a fascination with the human race in all its contradictions.' Margaret MacMillan, author of Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World; 'What [Di Cintio] does do, bravely and forcefully, and with impressive commitment, is to bear witness to the suffering of people.' The Guardian; '[Di Cintio] writes well, unpicking some of the world's trouble spots in spare and lucid prose.' Literary Review; `Di Cintio writes with clarity and grace, [and] portrays the writers with modesty and empathy ... Even for a reader familiar with Palestinian literature, Pay No Heed to the Rockets uncovers stories from the past with emotional vivacity and brings to life the lengths to which prisoners went in order to educate themselves and others, and to write ... Di Cintio weaves together history with a sense of place and infuses character with dialogue and humour to produce a contemporary portrait of a people who continue to resist both occupation and simple categorisation in this masterful work.' Electronic Intifada; 'With humility, respect, and great sensitivity, [Di Cintio] seeks out writers, people skilled at telling stories, and asks them to narrate their own situations. The result is a document that captures not only the manifold sorrows and injustices of Palestinian life but something of its beauty, its joys, and its yearning.' Ben Ehrenreich, author of The Way to the Spring: Life and Death in Palestine; `A compelling read ... forces awareness in the reader of a Palestine beyond our limited imagination.' Middle East Monitor; `Interweaving history and politics, the book introduces Western readers to the modern Palestinian literary scene while celebrating the rich diversity of voices that comprise it. Illuminating reading from a highly engaged author.' Kirkus Reviews; `Traveling through the West Bank, into Jerusalem, across Israel, and into Gaza, Di Cintio reveals life in contemporary Palestinian territories through the lens of its authors, books, and literature. He meets writer Maya Abu-Alhayyat at Cafe Ramallah, smoking a nargileh under a poster of Elvis. He finds the cultural hub of Gaza at the Gallery Cafe, where he chats with theater impresario Jamal Abu al-Qumsan. Throughout he finds "no life undarkened...by conflict" but also "no life wholly defined" by it either.' National Geographic

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Book SynopsisThe Elizabethan age was a tumultuous time, when long-cherished certainties were crumbling and life was exhilaratingly uncertain. Shakespeare''s Restless World uncovers the extraordinary stories behind twenty objects from the period to re-create an age at once distant and yet surprisingly familiar. From knife crime to belief in witches, religious battles to the horizons of the New World, Neil MacGregor brings the past to life in a fresh, unexpected portrait of a dangerous and dynamic era.''Fascinating ... filled with anecdotes and insights, eerie, funny, poignant and grotesque ... another brilliant vindication of MacGregor''s understanding of physical objects to enter deep into our forefathers'' mental and spiritual world'' Christopher Hart, Sunday Times''Enjoyable and intriguing, an absorbing evocation ... he draws us into the minds of the Elizabethan and Jacobean audience. Next time you see one of the plays reading this book will make th

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Book SynopsisThe acclaimed Pelican Shakespeare series, now repackaged in award-winning modern covers to inspire Shakespearians of all ages.

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Book SynopsisMore than 450 succinct entries from A to Z help readers make sense of the interdisciplinary knowledge of cultural criticism that includes film, psychoanalytic, deconstructive, poststructuralist, and postmodernist theory as well as philosophy, media studies, linguistics.

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Book SynopsisPresents a history of the English language from the age of Beowulf to the rap of Eminem. The author describes the differences between English and American usage and, the link between regional dialect and race, class, and gender. He discusses contact with foreign languages, the Internet, and e-mail continue to shape English for future generations.Trade ReviewThe book percolates with creative energy and will please anyone intrigued by how our richly variegated language came to be. Publishers Weekly Nonspecialists will join scholars in praising this remarkable linguistic investigation. -- Bryce Christensen Booklist An important and valuable source for anyone who loves the English language, and language in general. -- Gale Zoe Garnett Toronto Globe & Mail Written with real authority, enthusiasm, and love for our unruly and exquisite language. -- Michael Dirda The Washington Post A wonderful book. It's not hard to find well-informed books about the history of the English language, and it's not hard to find good critical accounts of English literature, but to have the two intertwined in one book is remarkable. Language Hat Interesting and informative. -- Tom Oleson Winnipeg Free Press A personal, selective and impassioned journey through the history of English. Times Higher Education Supplement Lerer not only navigates the shifting currents and boiling rapids of English, but also explores its secret coves. -- Rob Kyff Advocate [An] elegant book. -- Karenn Krangle Vancouver Sun A fresh look at the history of the English language. -- Cynthia Lee Katona Magill Book Reviews Inventing English is an invigorating read for the mind and the mouth. Bloomsbury Review Fun and illuminating. -- Carol White The Main Artery This absorbing book provides sufficient information about linguistics and early English language and literature for clarification... Essential. Choice Erudite and accessible. [Lerer] brings both love and rigour to his subject. -- Gale Zoe Garnett Globe & Mail An unusual linguistic and literary feast. -- Anne Curzan Michigan Quarterly Review The casual, witty, and sometimes provocative style in which the book is written provides a very apt vehicle for this very personal account. -- Tim William Machan Journal of English and Germanic PhilologyTable of ContentsA Note on Texts and Letter Forms Introduction: Finding English, Finding Us 1. Caedmon Learns to Sing: Old English and the Origins of Poetry 2. From Beowulf to Wulfstan: The Language of Old English Literature 3. In This Year: The Politics of Language and the End of Old English 4. From Kingdom to Realm: Middle English in a French World 5. Lord of This Langage: Chaucer's English 6. I Is as Ille a Millere as Are Ye: Middle English Dialects 7. The Great Vowel Shift and the Changing Character of English 8. Chancery, Caxton, and the Making of English Prose 9. I Do, I Will: Shakespeare's English 10. A Universal Hubbub Wild: New Words and Worlds in Early Modern English 11. Visible Speech: The Orthoepists and the Origins of Standard English 12. A Harmless Drudge: Samuel Johnson and the Making of the Dictionary 13. Horrid, Hooting Stanzas: Lexicography and Literature in American English 14. Antses in the Sugar: Dialect and Regionalism in American English 15. Hello, Dude: Mark Twain and the Making of the American Idiom 16. Ready for the Funk: African American English and Its Impact 17. Pioneers Through an Untrodden Forest: The Oxford English Dictionary and its Readers 18. Listening to Private Ryan: War and Language 19. He Speaks in Your Voice: Everybody's English Appendix. English Sounds and Their Representation Glossary References and Further Reading Acknowledgments

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewCarroll's outstanding study is both a scholarly and an engaging reading of this appealing French-Algerian thinker. Library Journal [A] timely study of Camus' writings. -- Lewis Jones Financial Times Weekend Magazine [Carroll's] re-reading of Camus is not only insightful and provocative, but also reminds us of the enduring relevance of Camus's voice. -- Susan Tarrow Modern & Contemporary France An exceptional book. -- Ralph Schoolcraft III South Central Review Carroll's study will surely become the definitive work on Camus for years to come. -- Janice Gross French ReviewTable of ContentsPreface. A Voice from the Past Acknowledgments Introduction. "The Algerian" in Camus 1. The Place of the Other 2. Colonial Borders 3. Exile 4. Justice or Death? 5. Terror 6. Anguish 7. Last Words Conclusion. Terrorism and Torture: From Algeria to Iraq Notes Index

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewJulia Kristeva's book is a memorable source of reflections on the temptation and quest of being... -- Kerrin A. Jacobs Metapsychology successful in carrying over to the English-speaking public the contemporary tonalities of Kristeva's voice. -- Marios Constantinou and Maria Margaroni Years Work in Critical and Cultural TheoryTable of ContentsForeword, by Pierre-Louis Fort I. Worlds 1. Thinking About Liberty in Dark Times 2. Secularism: "Values" at the Limits of Life 3. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity and ... Vulnerability II. Women 4. On Parity, Again; or, Women and the Sacred 5. From Madonnas to Nudes: A Representation of Female Beauty 6. The Passion According to Motherhood 7. The War of the Sexes Since Antiquity 8. Beauvoir, Presently 9. Fatigue in the Feminine III. Psychoanalyzing 10. The Sobbing Girl; or, On Hysterical Time 11. Healing, a Psychical Rebirth 12. From Object Love to Objectless Love 13. Desire for Law 14. Language, Sublimation, Women 15. Hatred and Forgiveness; or, From Abjection to Paranoia 16. Three Essays; or, the Victory of Polymorphous Perversion IV. Religion 17. Atheism 18. The Triple Uprooting of Israel 19. What Is Left of Our Loves? V. Portraits 20. The Inevitable Form 21. A Stranger 22. Writing as Strangeness and Jouissance VI. Writing 23. The "True-Lie," Our Unassailable Contemporary 24. Murder in Byzantium; or, Why I "ship myself on a voyage" in a Novel Notes Notes on the Origins of the Texts Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Helene Cixous: Blood and Language 1. Writing and Dreaming the Feminine 1. The Laugh of the Medusa (1975) 2. Coming to Writing (1976) 3. Tales of Sexual Difference (1990) 2. The Origins: Algeria and Germany 4. A Real Garden (1971) 5. Osnabruck (1999) 6. Letter-Beings and Time (2007) 3. Love (and) the Other 7. Lemonade Everything Was So Infinite (1982) 8. Love of the Wolf (1994) 9. On February 12, I committed an Error (2005) 4. The Animal 10. Dedication to the Ostrich (1988) 11. Messiah (1996) 12. My Three-Legged Dog (2000) 5. Derrida 13. Second Skin (2001) 14. On Style (A Question to H. Cixous and J. Derrida) (2004) 15. Today (2006) 6. The Theater of Helene Cixous: Re-memberings, Refashionings, and Revenants 16. The Name of Oedipus: Song of the Forbidden Body, Twelfth Movement (1979) 17. The Indiad or India of Their Dreams, Act 1, Scene 2 (1988) 18. Rouen, the Thirtieth Night of May '31, Vignette 4: The Trial (2001) 19. The Blindfolded Fiancee or Amelait, Scenes 5 and 6 (2004) Notes Select Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewThere is a grain of truth in almost everything [Logan] writes. -- Jordan Davis Times Literary Supplement Logan's prose is polished, witty, authoritative, and courageous... Highly recommended. Choice The latest installment in William Logan's prolonged and rambunctious assault on the state of American poetry. -- Mark Ford New York Times Book Review One of the wittiest and most astute poet-critics of our-or any-generation... A work of devilish wit, arrogance, insight, and intellect.The Dark Horse -- Rory Waterman The Dark Horse Who's the Best Poetry Critic in America? His name I can mention. William Logan. -- James Wolcott Arguably the most industrious and notorious poet-critic to brandish that hyphen like a knife between his teeth since his acknowledged master Randall Jarrell... He often comes off as nothing so much as the Dirty Harry of the poetry beat. -- David Barber, New York Times Book ReviewTable of ContentsAcknowledgments The Bowl of Diogenes; or, The End of Criticism Verse Chronicle: Out on the Lawn Verse Chronicle: Stouthearted Men The Most Contemptible Moth: Lowell in Letters Forward Into the Past: Reading the New Critics Verse Chronicle: One If by Land Verse Chronicle: The Great American Desert The State with the Prettiest Name Elizabeth Bishop Unfinished Elizabeth Bishop's Sullen Art Verse Chronicle: Jumping the Shark Verse Chronicle: Victoria's Secret Attack of the Anthologists The Lost World of Lawrence Durrell Hart Crane Overboard On Reviewing Hart Crane The Endless Ocean of Derek Walcott The Civil Power of Geoffrey Hill Verse Chronicle: God's Chatter Verse Chronicle: Let's Do It, Let's Fall in Luff Pynchon in the Poetic Back to the Future (Thomas Pynchon ) Verse Chronicle: The World Is Too Much with Us Verse Chronicle: Valentine's Day Massacre The Forgotten Masterpiece of John Townsend Trowbridge Frost at Midnight Interview by Garrick Davis Permissions Books Under Review Index of Authors Reviewed

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Book SynopsisA classical historian confronts our crises of time, radically calling into question our relations to the past, present, and future.Trade ReviewSince his classic Mirror of Herodotus, Francois Hartog has emerged as the most significant theorist of history and chronicler of our changing relationship to our own past that France has produced. In this series of meditative chapters, he takes us from the Greeks to the present once more, emphasizing how the theory of history must move from diagnosing the modern gap between expectation and experience to confronting the exigency of historical crisis today. Hartog's reflections are valuable for all humanists. -- Samuel Moyn, Columbia University In a book that should be required reading for anyone interested in history's role in contemporary society, Francois Hartog shows how unexamined assumptions about the past shape our understandings of ourselves and our place in history. -- Lynn Hunt, University of California, Los Angeles Francois Hartog's pioneering work on the concept of 'regimes of historicity' makes this book a must for scholars in both the social sciences and the humanities. A distinguished classical historian, Hartog uses specific, well-chosen examples to explain how understanding regimes of historicity will allow us to better understand the conditions of possibility for producing histories and, more generally, our own relationship to time. -- Robert Morrissey, University of Chicago Francois Hartog is perhaps the most important historian of historiography today... Regimes of Historicity should be required reading for anyone interested in the past, present, and future writing of history. American Historical Review Regimes of Historicity should be required reading for anyone interested in the past, present, and future writing of history. Time's BooksTable of ContentsPresentism: Stopgap or New State? Introduction: Orders of Time and Regimes of Historicity Orders of Time 1 1. Making History: Sahlins's Islands 2. From Odysseus's Tears to Augustine's Meditations 3. Chateaubriand, Between Old and New Regimes of Historicity Orders of Time 2 4. Memory, History, and the Present 5. Heritage and the Present Our Doubly Indebted Present: The Reign of Presentism Notes Index

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Book SynopsisPosthumous Life launches critical life studies: a mode of inquiry that neither endorses nor dismisses a wave of recent “turns” toward life, matter, vitality, inhumanity, animality, and the real. Essays examine the boundaries and significance of the human and the humanities in the wake of various redefinitions of what counts as life.Trade ReviewThis superb book haunts in all of the best and most disquieting ways: memories of a future already lost to ourselves, with writers who illuminate those registers of nonlife and postlife that arise when all of the living-on and living-through of humans has been exhausted or self-extinguished. The chapters serve as a chanting of rites to the nonhuman animal, to plants, to birds, to the inorganic, to the planet, to the ends of stories. -- Gregory Seigworth, Millersville University This splendid collection proposes a site of inquiry-critical life studies-that not only generates unexpected questions but offers invaluable perspectives on many obdurate philosophical topics that currently confront us regarding the posthuman, the inhuman, the inorganic, and the anthropocene. If, as the title of Isabelle Stenger's essay proposes, "Thinking Life: The Problem Has Changed," then these essays consider-in rigorous as well as ludic modes-what it may now mean to think life. -- Stacy Alaimo, author of Exposed: Environmental Politics and Pleasures in Posthuman Times This collection of insightful and comprehensive essays resists the celebratory tone on the question of the posthuman and provides much-needed critical depth and analytic vigor. A necessary and novel contribution to the studies of life and biopolitics. -- Donna V. Jones, author of The Racial Discourses of Life Philosophy: Negritude, Vitalism and ModernityTable of ContentsPreface: Postscript on the Posthuman Introduction: Critical Life Studies and the Problems of Inhuman Rites and Posthumous Life, by Jami Weinstein and Claire Colebrook Part I. Posthuman Vestiges 1. Pre- and Posthuman Animals: The Limits and Possibilities of Animal-Human Relations, by Nicole Anderson 2. Posthumanism and Narrativity: Beginning Again with Arendt, Derrida, and Deleuze, by Frida Beckman 3. Subject Matters, by Susan Hekman Part II. Organic Rites 4. Therefore, the Animal That Saw Derrida, by Akira Mizuta Lippit 5. The Plant and the Sovereign: Plant and Animal Life in Derrida, by Jeffrey T. Nealon 6. Of Ecology, Immunity, and Islands: The Lost Maples of Big Bend, by Cary Wolfe Part III. Inorganic Rites 7. After Nature: The Dynamic Automation of Technical Objects, by Luciana Parisi 8. Nonpersons, by Alastair Hunt 9. Supra- and Subpersonal Registers of Political Physiology, by John Protevi 10. Geophilosophy, Geocommunism: Is There Life After Man?, by Arun Saldanha Part IV. Posthumous Life 11. Proliferation, Extinction, and an Anthropocene Aesthetic, by Myra J. Hird 12. Spectral Life: The Uncanny Valley Is in Fact a Gigantic Plain, Stretching as Far as the Eye Can See in Every Direction, by Timothy Morton 13. Darklife: Negation, Nothingness, and the Will-to-Life in Schopenhauer, by Eugene Thacker 14. Thinking Life: The Problem Has Changed, by Isabelle Stengers Index

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Book SynopsisIn this strikingly original book, Barbara Carnevali offers a philosophical examination of the roles that appearances play in social life. While Western metaphysics and morals have predominantly disdained appearances and expelled them from their domain, Carnevali invites us to look at society, ancient to contemporary, as an aesthetic phenomenon.Trade ReviewThis is a powerful and paradigm-shifting aesthetics of society, by a great philosophical talent. -- Simon Critchley, author of Tragedy, the Greeks, and UsBarbara Carnevali's concept of 'social aesthetics' is tremendously powerful, and explains a lot of otherwise baffling phenomena. Carnevali makes me think that the rise of Orban and Trump and the Brexit movement is better understood as a matter of social 'taste' than in terms of ideology, or economics, or identity. -- Blake Gopnik, author of WarholOscar Wilde famously quipped that only shallow people do not judge by appearances. This elegant, profound, and erudite book explores the startling proposition that we may indeed be what we seem. The reader of this book will not fail to be convinced that 'appearances' are constitutive of society. -- Eva Illouz, author of The End of Love: A Sociology of Negative RelationsEvery sentence in this brilliant book is a unit of thought; it’s as epigrammatic as Nietzsche and as seamlessly developed as, say, Hume. And it helps that it’s new. Carnevali has restored aesthetics to its central role in philosophy. -- Edmund White, author of The Unpunished Vice: A Life of ReadingTable of ContentsAcknowledgmentsProloguePart I. Appearing: On the Aesthetic Foundations of Social Life1. Life as a Spectacle: Self-Display, Reflexivity, and Artifice2. Masks and Clothes: Medial Surfaces and the Dialectic of Appearing3. Aesthetic Mediation: A Theory of Representations4. Figures: Social Images5. Out of Control: The Alienated ImagePart II. Vanity and Lies: On the Hostility Toward Appearances6. “Vanity Fair”: The Frivolity of Worldliness7. Against the Mask: The Rise of Social Romanticism8. Against the Spectacle: The Crusade of Romantic Anticapitalism9. Against Aesthetic Values: Aestheticism, Aestheticization, and Staging10. Two Baptisms and a Divorce: Homo Economicus Versus Homo AestheticusPart III. Toward a Social Aesthetics: On the Sensible Logic of Society11. The Opening: Aesthetic Foundations of the Common World12. Aisthesis: Senses and Social Sensibility13. Social Taste and the Will to Please14. Aesthetic Labor and Social Design: The Value of Appearances15. Prestige and Other Magic SpellsConclusion: Social Immaterialism or the Philosophy of Andy WarholAfterwordAppendix: Illustrations Mentioned in the TextNotesIndex

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Book SynopsisMario Vargas Llosa''s A Fish in the Water is a twofold book: a memoir by one of Latin America''s most celebrated writers, beginning with his birth in 1936 in Arequipa, Peru; and the story of his organization of the reform movement which culminated in his bid for the Peruvian presidency in 1990.Llosa evokes the experiences which gave rise to his fiction, and describes the social, literary, and political influences that led him to enter the political arena as a crusader for a free-market economy.A deeply absorbing look at how fact becomes fiction and at the formation of a courageous writer with strong political commitments, A Fish in the Water reveals Mario Vargas Llosa as a world figure whose real story is just beginning.

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Book SynopsisSeamus Heaney''s poetic career has been one of constant development and expansion, and his place among the world''s greatest literary figures is universally acknowledged. When it first appeared in 1986, Neil Corcoran''s A Student''s Guide to Seamus Heaney was immediately recognized as the clearest and most thorough account of his work so far, and it has not been rivalled since. The new edition, which like the original has had the advantage of Seamus Heaney''s own cooperation and unstinted access to the poet''s papers, follows the same pattern, adding a chapter apiece on the major collections of poems published since 1986, as well as separate discussions of Heaney''s work as a translator and essayist. The published chapters have also been revised. In consequence, this not only remains the most useful introduction to a singularly varied and important body of work, but is the most up-to-date as well.

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Book SynopsisIn this acrobatic and virtuosic collection, Paul Auster traces the compulsion to make literature. In a selection of interviews, as well as in the essay ''The Red Notebook'' itself, Auster reflects upon his own work, on the need to break down the boundary between living and writing, and on the use of certain genre conventions to penetrate matters of memory and identity. The Red Notebook both illuminates and undermines our accepted notions about literature, and guides us towards a finer understanding of the dangerously high stakes involved in writing. It also includes Paul Auster''s impassioned essay ''A Prayer for Salman Rushdie'', as well as a set of striking and bittersweet reminiscences collected under the apposite title, ''Why Write?''Trade Review'Bears testimony to Auster's sense of the metaphysical elegance of life and art.' Literary Review

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Book SynopsisAttempts on her Life 17 scenarios for the theatre by Martin Crimp Attempts to describe her? Attempts to destroy her? Or attempts to destroy herself? Is Anne the object of violence? Or its terrifying practitioner? Martin Crimps 17 scenarios for the theatre, shocking and hilarious by turn, are a rollercoaster of late 20th-century obsessions. From pornography and ethnic violence, to terrorism and unprotected sex, its strange array of nameless characters attempt to invent the perfect story to encapsulate our time. Since its premiere 10 years ago, Attempts on her Life has been translated into more than 20 languages. This is its first major UK revival. Attempts on her Life 17 scenarios for the theatre by Martin Crimp

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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.

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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 *

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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.

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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.

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