ELT & Literary Studies Books

Book SynopsisOrdering Customs explores how Renaissance Venetians sought to make sense of human difference in a period characterized by increasing global contact and a rapid acceleration of the circulation of information. Venice was at the center of both these developments. The book traces the emergence of a distinctive tradition of ethnographic writing that served as the basis for defining religious and cultural difference in new ways. Taylor draws on a trove of unpublished sources—diplomatic correspondence, court records, diaries, and inventories—to show that the study of customs, rituals, and ways of life not only became central in how Venetians sought to apprehend other peoples, but also had a very real impact at the level of policy, shaping how the Venetian state governed minority populations in the city and its empire. In contrast with the familiar image of ethnography as the product of overseas imperial and missionary encounters, the book points to a more complicated set of origins. Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Abbreviations Introduction 1 The Study of Customs 2 Ambassadors as Ethnographers 3 Ethnography and the Venetian State 4 Reading Ethnography in Early Modern Venice 5 Ethnography, the City, and the Place of Religious Minorities Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisShows how L. Frank Baum exploited the freedoms of children's literature, in its carnivalesque celebration of a world turned upside-down, to reimagine the meanings of gender and sexuality in early twentieth-century America and to re-envision them for the future.

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Book SynopsisGayatri Chakravorty Spivak declares the death of comparative literature as we know it and sounds an urgent call for a new comparative literature, in which the discipline is reborn.Table of ContentsPreface to the Twentieth Anniversary EditionAcknowledgments1. Crossing Borders2. Collectivities3. PlanetarityNotesIndex

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Book SynopsisEnlightening, moving' SIR IAN MCKELLEN From the acclaimed and bestselling biographer Jonathan Bate, a luminous new exploration of Shakespeare and how his themes can untangle comedy and tragedy, learning and loving in our modern lives.Trade Review‘Many of us are mad about Shakespeare, whether as audience, actor or scholar. Jonathan Bate represents us all in his enlightening, moving report of his own personal “madness”. Reading it is an education’Sir Ian McKellen ‘A startlingly original journey into the soul of Shakespeare by one of his greatest living interpreters’Sir Anthony Seldon ‘Jonathan Bate’s Mad About Shakespeare offers a series of moving lessons in the complex grammar of life. Speaking as student and teacher, son, husband, father and dramaturge, Bate produces a work of significant cultural and familial history that runs through the language and scenery of Shakespeare. Tying and untying knots, Bate asks how we might live alongside literature as a source of knowledge, comfort and hope.Shakespeare’s expansive plots and wise conceits offer extra space and time in which to live and breathe in the face of emergency; a literary bloodline offering wisdom, insight and consolation’Sally Bayley ‘An encouraging and welcome reminder of the importance of reading and talking about reading with young people … I hope lots of English teachers will read it and take heart’Dr Katy Ricks, Chief Master of King Edwards School ‘Ranges elegantly over a range of literary figures … A very readable account of the thrill of discovering literature … It is a touchingly reticent and romantic book’Literary Review

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Book SynopsisFrom the bustling bazaars of Tabriz to the mysterious island of Caldihe, Anthony Bale brings history alive, inviting the reader to travel across a medieval world.A joyful, erudite book . . . A global Middle Ages for our times' Jerry Brotton_____________________A Travel Guide to the Middle Ages is no ordinary travel guide.Journey alongside scholars, spies and saints. From western Europe to the Far East, the Antipodes, and the ends of the world. This is a living atlas that blurs the distinction between real and imagined places, containing everything from profane pilgrim badges, Venetian laxatives to encounters with bandits and trysts with princesses.Using previously untranslated contemporary accounts from as far and wide as Turkey, Iceland, Armenia, north Africa, and Russia, it offers the reader a vivid and unforgettable insight into how medieval people understood their world - a world of stories, desire and fantasies, of cherished pasts and longed-for futures._____________________Rich and wonderful . . . This is the world as you've never seen it before' Ian Mortimer''Wisdom fills the pages of this immensely entertaining history'' The New Yorker''Serious scholarship and a sightseer's unbridled enthusiasm make for fascinating armchair time travel'' ObserverMasterful, panoramic, beautifully written and vividly imagined . . . a book to be savoured' Dr Helen Castor, author of Blood and RosesAn enthralling journey into the past and across the world . . . this book takes us to barely imaginable places' Seb Falk, author of The Light Ages

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Book SynopsisPhilosophically analyzing the work of one of the twentieth century’s most popular, and peculiar, science fiction authors Despite his enduring popularity, Philip K. Dick (1928–1982)—whose short stories and novels were adapted into or influenced many major films and television shows, including Blade Runner, Total Recall, The Truman Show, and The Man in the High Castle—has long been a marginal figure in American literature, even in the science fiction genre he helped revolutionize. Here, an influential French philosopher offers a major new perspective on an author who was known as much for his eccentricities and excesses as for his writing. For David Lapoujade, it is precisely the many ways in which Dick’s works seem to hover on the brink of losing all touch with reality that make him such a singular figure, both as a sci-fi author and as a thinker of contemporary life. In Worlds Built to Fall Apart, Lapo

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Book Synopsis1000-PIECE PUZZLE featuring the women of Greek mythology as you've never seen them before. Finished puzzle measures 680 x 485mmSPOT FAMOUS FIGURES AND MYTHICAL MOMENTS, as you build the puzzle – can you find Pandora and her jar, or Medusa with snakes for hair?INCLUDES A FOLD-OUT POSTER featuring the stories of the real women of Greek myth from best-selling author and classicist Natalie HaynesSTURDY & ATTRACTIVE BOX perfect for gifting and storage! Completed puzzle is 680x485mm (26.75x19 in.) when complete Think you know the women of Greek Mythology? Put the pieces together and you will start to think again!  In this beautifully illustrated 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle, rediscover the lives and stories of the women of Greek myth, portrayed by author, broadcaster and classicist Natalie Haynes with illustrator Natalie Foss. A large fold-out poster of the artwork accompanies

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Book SynopsisFormed in a time of great unrest in ancient China, The Analects is vital to an understanding of Chinese history and thought, and, 2,500 years on, it remains startlingly relevant to contemporary life.Complete and unabridged. Part of the Macmillan Collector’s Library; a series of stunning, cloth-bound, pocket-sized classics with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. Highly regarded for the poetic fluency he brings to his award–winning work, David Hinton's translation is inviting and immensely readable.Confucius, the ‘great sage’ of China, believed that an ideal society is based on humanity, benevolence and goodness. His profoundly influential philosophy is encapsulated in The Analects, a collection of sayings which were written down by his followers. Confucius advocates an ethical social order, woven together by selfless and supportive relationships between friends, families and communities. He taught that living by a moral code based on education, ritual, respect and integrity will bring peace to human society.

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Book SynopsisADAPTED INTO A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE, STARRING JIM BROADBENT "A painful, funny, frightening, moving, marvellous book ... everybody should read it" - Nick Hornby And when did you last see your father? Was it when they burnt the coffin? Put the lid on it? When he exhaled his last breath? When he last sat up and said something? When he last recognized me? When he last smiled? Blake Morrison's memoir is a candid, profoundly moving reflection on his relationship with his father, Arthur. Following Arthur's cancer diagnosis, Blake witnesses the slow erosion of the man he once knew. As his father's battle with the disease unfurls, Blake reflects on growing up with Arthur in Yorkshire and their relationship in the years since he left home. From Arthur's penchant for saving money - and the lengths he'd go to do so - to his wayward behavior on family holidays, Blake's fearless account resists an unwavering celebration of his father, showing him to be outlandish and recalcitrant, as well as capturing his humorous and caring qualities. The result is a rich, nuanced portrait of their relationship, capturing the accommodations and resentments that lie cloistered within familial love. And When Did You Last See Your Father? is a classic of the confessional memoir genre; a raw and shimmering interrogation of father-son relationships, masculinity, selfhood and pride. "This luminous tribute to a beloved dad made me laugh until I cried and cry till my nostrils were raw. A masterpiece - one of those books that you treasure forever" - Val HennessyTrade ReviewA painful, funny, frightening, moving, marvellous book ... everybody should read it -- Nick HornbyTender, honest, angry, loyal, this extraordinary book balances the life, illness and death of a forceful father with the feelings of his independent son * The Times *This luminous tribute to a beloved dad made me laugh until I cried and cry till my nostrils were raw. A masterpiece - one of those books that you treasure forever -- Val HennessyA marvellous piece of family literature. He says much about death and dying and more about life and living. Sometimes harrowing, sometimes funny, above all, unforgettably humane * Sydney Morning Herald *A splendid book ... it leaps with life * Irish Times *More than any novel could be, And when did you last see your father? is the once-only, all-or-nothing book of a poet: the life held up so close to one's face that one can smell it, touch it, marvel at the power of words to unlock and unravel, then pour helter-skelter over our heads this magical brainstorm of memories * Spectator *Joy and pain are both imminent and distant as the book rocks back and forth between life and death and, while it lasts, it is visceral and real * Observer *Wonderful, eternally moving... I don't think anyone has ever written better about the relationship between fathers and sons -- Tony Parsons * Mail on Sunday *

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Book SynopsisOnce again, we encounter Notley as one the great interlocutors of the world, a dedicated advocate for what is between and beyond definition. Tess Michaelson, Full StopAlice Notley, the author of more than 40 books of poetry, has delivered an expert array of discussions over the last three decades. Telling the Truth as It Comes Up: Selected Talks & Essays 1991-2018 offers a significant contribution to literature, reimagining the possibilities of writing in our time and the complicated business of how and why writers devote their lives to their craft. Whether she is writing about other poetsEd Dorn, Allen Ginsberg, Homer, bpNichol, Douglas Oliver or William Carlos Williamsnoir fiction, the First Gulf War, dreams or giving us insight into her own work, Notley''s observations are original, sobering and always memorable. This collection often eschews the typical style of essay or lecture, resisting any categorization, and is consciously disobedient to academic structures in form. The results are thrilling new modes of thinking that may change the ways we read and write.Alice Notley was born in Bisbee, Arizona, in 1945, and grew up in Needles, California. During the late 60s and early 70s she lived a traveling poet's life before settling on New York's Lower East Side. For 16 years there, she was an important force in the eclectic second generation of the so-called New York School. Notley is the author of more than 40 books of poetry, including At Night the States, the double volume Close to Me and Closer . . . (The Language of Heaven) and Désamère and How Spring Comes, which was a co-winner of the San Francisco Poetry Award. In 1998, Penguin published Mysteries of Small Houses, which was one of three finalists for the Pulitzer Prize and the winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Poetry. In 2015 she was awarded the Ruth Lilly Prize for lifetime achievement in poetry.

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Book SynopsisThis book offers the first in-depth account of the relationship between English and Scottish poets and the international concrete poetry movement of the 1950s to the 1970s. Concrete poetry was a literary and artistic style which reactivated early twentieth-century modernist impulses towards the merging of artistic media, while simultaneously speaking to a gamut of contemporary contexts, from post-1945 reconstruction to cybernetics, mass media and the sixties counter-culture. The terms of its development in England and Scotland suggest new ways of mapping ongoing complexities in the relationship between the two national cultures, and of tracing broader sociological and cultural trends in Britain during the 1960s and 1970s. Focusing especially on the work of Ian Hamilton Finlay, Edwin Morgan, Dom Sylvester Houédard and Bob Cobbing, Border Blurs is based on new and extensive archival and primary research, and will fill a vital gap in contemporary understandings of an important but much misunderstood genre: concrete poetry. It will also serve as a vital document for scholars and students of twentieth-century British literature, modern intermedia art and modernism, especially those interested in understanding modernism’s wide geographical spread and late twentieth-century legacies.Trade Review‘This is an excellent, well-researched and up-to-date account of the development of concrete poetry in England and Scotland from the 1950s onwards. It will make an outstanding contribution to knowledge in the related fields of concrete poetry, late modernism, the history of the 1960s counter-culture and the British Poetry Revival.’ Dr Steve Willey, Birkbeck, University of LondonReviews 'Greg Thomas here gives us the first full treatment of English and Scottish concrete poetry. His survey is detailed and comprehensive, and he is especially acute in his treatment of both the interaction of two distinct literary cultures – nationalism and internationalism – and the reciprocity of literature and other media. He thus argues that “classical concrete” was followed by another concrete “more concerned with complicating or undermining linguistic sense, and with instating in language’s place various forms of multi-media communication and expression ...”. A genuinely inventive and valuable book for students and scholars of modernism, intermedia art, and British literature.'Dr Nancy Perloff, Curator, Modern & Contemporary Collections, Getty Research Institute‘Border Blurs is a welcome and long overdue study of what is a key component of the general turn of British poetry towards what we might loosely describe as modernism and experiment that began in the 1960s and continues to this day. Thomas writes well and clearly… and has done anyone interested in poetry in all its variety an enormous favour. I highly recommend this book.’ Billy Mills, Elliptical MovementsTable of Contents1. Introduction2. Concrete Poetry/ Konkrete Poesie/ Poesia Concreta: The International Scene3. Order and Doubt: Ian Hamilton Finlay4. Off-Concrete: Edwin Morgan5. Apophasis: Dom Sylvester Houédard6. Abstract Concrete: Bob Cobbing7. Concrete Poetry and After: Conclusion

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Book SynopsisIn this electrifying and raw debut anthology, Maggie Nelson unpicks the everyday with the quick alchemy and precision of her later modern classics The Argonauts and Bluets. The poems of Shiner experiment with a variety of stylessyllabic verse, sonnets, macaronic translation, Zen poems, walking poemsto express love, bewilderment, grief, and beauty. This book, Nelson's first, heralded the arrival of a fully formed, virtuoso voice.

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Book SynopsisAncient Greek literature begins with the epic verses of Homer. Epic then continued as a fundamental literary form throughout antiquity and the influence of the poems produced extends beyond antiquity and down to the present. This Companion presents a fresh and boundary-breaking account of the ancient Greek epic tradition. It includes wide-ranging close readings of epics from Homer to Nonnus, traces their dialogues with other modes such as ancient Mesopotamian poetry, Greek lyric and didactic writing, and explores their afterlives in Byzantium, early Christianity, modern fiction and cinema, and the identity politics of Greece and Turkey. Plot summaries are provided for those unfamiliar with individual poems. Drawing on cutting-edge new research in a number of fields, such as racecraft, geopolitics and the theory of emotions, the volume demonstrates the sustained and often surprising power of this renowned ancient genre, and sheds new light on its continued impact and relevance today.

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Book SynopsisIn Preface to Paradise Lost, C. S. Lewis presents an illuminating reflection on John Milton''s Paradise Lost, the seminal classic that profoundly influenced Christian thought as well as Lewis''s own work.Lewis a revered scholar and professor of literature closely examines the style, content, structure, and themes of Milton''s masterpiece, a retelling of the biblical story from the Fall of Humankind, Satan''s temptation, and the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. Considering this story within the context of the Western literary tradition, Lewis offers invaluable insights into Paradise Lost and the nature of literature itself, unveiling the poem''s beauty and its wisdom.With a clarity of thought and a style that are the trademarks of Lewis's writing, he provides answers with a lucidity and lightness that deepens our understanding of Milton's immortal work. Also inspiring new readers to revisit Paradise Lost, Lewis reminds us of why elements including ritual, splendour andTrade Review‘Lewis, more than any other critic now writing, adds wit, learning and enthusiasm to that ability to discuss rather than destroy, which is the prerequisite of the critic's true function.’ The Dublin Review

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Book SynopsisUnderstands Nietzsche in the light of his activity as a creative writer from his juvenilia through the publication of The Birth of Tragedy, providing the first extensive study in English of his early literary works. The name Friedrich Nietzsche resonates around the world. Although known primarily as a philosopher, Nietzsche began his writing career while still a boy with literary texts: poetry, prose, and dramas. The present book is the first extensive study in English of these early literary works. It understands Nietzsche in the light of his activity as a creative writer from his juvenilia through his first two years as professor of classical philology at the University of Basel, that is, through the 1872 publication of his first major work, The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music. Knowledge of Nietzsche's early literary writings further underscores the value of The Birth of Tragedy as a work of world literature. The present study makes available almost all of Nietzsche's early poetry and extensive excerpts from his early prose works and dramas - much of it in English for the first time - along with commentary. A final, extensive chapter on The Birth of Tragedy treats it as the culmination of the early literary works. The book contains many new insights into Nietzsche and his work and essential source material for future research. All quotations from Nietzsche are given in both the original German and in English.Table of ContentsPreface Acknowledgments Abbreviations Introduction: Early Nietzsche 1: The Early Poetry 2: The Early Prose Works 3: The Dramas and Drama Fragments 4: The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music 5: Conclusion Bibliography Index

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Book Synopsis“Every page brings forth the elegiac tone of JRR Tolkien’s work... It is a beautiful book, including many wonderful pictures by Tolkien himself… Garth’s book made me realise the impact that Tolkien has had on my life.”The Times A lavishly illustrated exploration of the places that inspired and shaped the work of J.R.R. Tolkien, creator of Middle-earth. This new book from renowned expert John Garth takes us to the places that inspired J.R.R. Tolkien to create his fictional locations in The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit and other classic works. Featuring more than 100 images, it includes Tolkien’s own illustrations, contributions from other artists, archive images, maps and spectacular present-day photographs. Inspirational locations range across Great Britain – particularly Tolkien’s beloved West Midlands and Oxford – but also oveTrade Review“Not only a wonderfully rich & learned book but beautiful as well. I’m sure Tolkien would have loved it.” -- Tom Holland * Award-winning historian, author and broadcaster *Table of ContentsIntroduction 1. England to the Shire 2. Four Winds 3. The Land of Lúthien 4. Shore and the Sea 5. Roots of the Mountains 6. Rivers, Lakes and Waterlands 7. Tree-woven Lands 8. Ancient Imprints 9. Watch and Ward 10. Places of War 11. Craft and Industry Appendix Endnotes Select Bibliography Index Acknowledgements

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Book SynopsisOPEN ACCESSTo read the PDF of Globalising Welsh Studies: Decolonising history, heritage, society and culture for free, follow the link belowGlobalising Welsh Studies:Decolonising history, heritage, society and cultureThis book is freely available on a Creative Commons licence thanks to the kind sponsorship of the libraries participating in the Jisc Open Access Community Framework OpenUP initiative. Interest in race and ethnicity research in Wales has grown apace in the last decade, opening up wider debates about the nature, focus and content of what collectively is called Welsh Studies. Across a range of disciplines, we are witnessing not only a global turn' placing Wales more substantively within a plethora of global interconnections, but also a decolonial turn' that involves the questioning of disciplinary traditions and knowledge production, and highlighting the colonial legacy that shapes academic pursuits. In the present text, we explore the development of Welsh Studies through the lens of race/ethnicity. Contributors from history, heritage studies, literature, film, policy, social and cultural studies offer case analyses adopting new perspectives, theoretical routes and methodological innovations, with the aim of illustrating aspects of the decolonising of knowledge production.

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Book SynopsisThis first book in a three-volume collection of Georges Bataille’s essays introduces English readers to his philosophical and critical writings. In the aftermath of the Second World War, French thinker and writer Georges Bataille forged a singular path through the moral and political impasses of his age. In 1946, animated by “a need to live events in an increasingly conscious way,” and to reject any compartmentalization of intellectual life, Bataille founded the journal Critique. Adopting the format of the review essay, he surveyed the post-war cultural landscape while advancing his reflections on excess, non-knowledge, and the general economy. Focusing on literature as a mode of sovereign uselessness, he tackled prominent and divisive figures such as Henry Miller and Albert Camus. In keeping with Critique’s mission to explore the totality of human knowledge, Bataille’s articles did not just focus on the literary but featured important reflections on the science of sexuality, the Chinese Revolution, and historical accounts of drunkenness, among other matters. Throughout, he was attuned to how humanity would deal with the excessive forces of production and destruction it had unleashed, his aim being a way of thinking and living that would inhabit that excess. This is the first of three volumes collecting Bataille’s post-war essays. Beginning with an article on Nietzsche and fascism written shortly after the liberation of Paris and running to the end of 1948, these texts make available for the first time in English the systematic diversity of Bataille’s post-war thought. Trade Review"In this erudite volume, scholars Toscano and Noys collect the critical works of French thinker and novelist Georges Bataille (1897–1962), touching on topics including philosophy, literature, religion, geopolitics, art, and psychoanalysis." * Publishers Weekly *"Sixty years after his death, Georges Bataille remains a vexing figure in French literature and philosophy. A creator or member of endless literary and philosophical movements, from the short-lived Acéphale to surrealism, he belonged fully to none of them, not even his own, and his apparent will to destruction often risks carrying over to those who enter into dialogue with him, even today. . . . These essays invite the reader in, in a way that many of Bataille’s works do not; they also give us a glimpse of a thinker working out his position. . ." * Times Literary Supplement *Table of Contents1.Is Nietzsche Fascist?2.Is Literature Useful?3.The Will to the Impossible4.Picasso’s Political Paintings5.Miller’s Morality6.Dionysos Redivivus7.Mystical Experience and Literature8.The Indictment of Henry Miller9.Notes: Gide – Baranger – Gillet10.The Last Moment11.Gide—Nietzsche—Claudel12.Take It or Leave It13.The War in China14.Cossery – Robert Aron15.Marcel Proust and the Profaned Mother16.Adamov17.The Friendship between Man and Beast18.Giraud – Pastoureau – Benda – Du Moulin de Laplante – Govy19.On the Relationship between the Divine and Evil20.Pierre Gordon21.What Is Sex?22.A New American Novelist23.Sartre24.A Morality based on Misfortune [Malheur]: The Plague25.Letter to Merleau-Ponty26.Is Lasting Peace Inevitable?27.Joseph Conrad28.Preface to the Gaston-Louis Roux Exhibition29.Goya30.Psychoanalysis31.Tavern Drunkenness and Religion32.Political Lying33.The Sexual Revolution and the Kinsey Report 34.Jean Paulhan – Marc Bloch35.On the Meaning of Moral Neutrality in the Russo-American War36.The Divinity of Isou37.The Mischievousness of Language38.Marcel Proust

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Book SynopsisRanging from early medieval times to the present, this diverse collection explores the myriad ways in which literary texts are informed by their historical contexts. The thirty-one chapters draw on varied themes and perspectives to present stimulating new readings of both canonical and non-canonical texts and authors. Written in a lively and engaging style, by an international team of experts, these specially commissioned essays collectively represent an incisive contribution to literary studies; they will appeal to scholars, teachers and graduate and undergraduate students. The book is designed to complement Paul Poplawski's previous volume, English Literature in Context, and incorporates additional study elements designed specifically with undergraduates in mind. With an extensive chronology, a glossary of critical terms, and a study guide suggesting how students might learn from the essays in their own writing practices, this volume provides a rich and flexible resource for teachingTrade Review'An impeccable selection of wide-ranging but sharply focused texts in their historical and cultural contexts by seasoned scholars with a keen sense of the past as well as a sharp eye for essential contemporary issues such as feminism, environmentalism, immigration, and politics. The crisp and succinct essays are packed with engaging questions that suggest lively classroom discussion as well as thoughtful critical examination.' Stephen Kern, Ohio State University'Studying English Literature in Context helps ease students' transition from second- to third-level study by offering scholarly essays that are written specifically for students. This makes academic writing and argument more accessible to students coming to such material for the first time, with the further resources offering the additional benefit of helping students think more critically about what they are reading. This book offers new university students much needed support as they work towards the broader and deeper critical inquiry in which they will engage at later stages of their programme. It is likely to be widely assigned in undergraduate survey courses and much used.' Naomi McAreavey, University College Dublin'Driven by the conviction that texts are fruitfully understood within the context of their time, this enormously hospitable and adaptable book manages, without strain, to appeal both to scholars and students, to bookworms and neophytes. It covers the entire history of English literature and drama with a ease and dexterity matched only by ambition and range. The collection deploys an innovative hinged structure in which each of the thirty-one essays is supplemented by a critical reflection that allows the author to reflect upon the preceding essay he or she has just written, while also mapping the scholarly field. Pedagogically, that will afford students a critical example of how to position their own work while also informing them, without dryness, of the scholarly tradition to which they contribute. This collection is suffused with the balm of utility, clear-sightedness and practical good sense and deserves a place on reading lists wherever English literature is nurtured and cherished.' Ronan McDonald, The University of Melbourne, Australia'Studying English Literature in Context will undoubtedly advance the theory and practice of cultural materialist pedagogy in higher education. I recommend this lively and enjoyable volume as a valuable resource for teachers and students of English Literature and as an excellent anthology of scholarly essays in its own right.' Caroline Franklin, Swansea University'Studying English Literature in Context is a superb collection of essays by leading scholars that will foster stimulating response, reignite debate, and demand intellectual engagement by readers of representative texts from the long history of English. The authors recognise that from The Dream of the Rood's multivalence to Aphra Behn's colonial novel Oroonoko and Grace Nichols' feminist poetry, literature both contributes to, as well as reflects socio-cultural critique, linking past modes of creative expression with current conversations about form, textual ambiguity, literary resistance, and periodisation. In addition to this impressive set of critical interpretations, generous resources are provided to situate the student in the long chronology and complex range of generic, stylistic, material, and performative possibilities offered by literature. The whole volume works to ensure enhanced understanding of the significance of poetry, prose, and drama both to authors and creators and to audiences globally; as Poplawski anticipates, this book offers contextured readings, encouraging connections between eras, affect, and modalities to amplify the power of the written and spoken word.' Elaine Treharne, Stanford UniversityTable of ContentsIntroduction Paul Poplawski; Section I. Medieval English, 500–1500: 1. Finding the dream of the rood in old English literature Emily V. Thornbury; 2. The translator as author: The case of Geoffrey Chaucer's the Parliament of Fowls Filip Krajnik; 3. Arthurian romance as a window onto medieval life: The Case of Ywayne and Gawayne and The Awntyrs off Arthure K. S. Whetter; Section II: The renaissance, 1485–1660: 4. The renaissance in England: A meeting point Alessandra Petrina; 5. 'Mr Spencer's moral invention': The global horizons of early modern epic Jane Grogan; 6. Arden of Faversham Christa Jansohn; 7. 'A little touch of Harry in the night' – mysteries of kingship and the stage in Shakespeare's the life of king Henry the fifth Ina Habermann; 8. Poems and contexts: The case of Henry Vaughan Robert Wilcher; Section III: The restoration and eighteenth century, 1660–1780: 9. Periodising in context: The case of the restoration and eighteenth Century Lee Morrissey; 10. Truth-telling and the representation of the Surinam 'Indians' in Aphra Behn's Oroonoko Oddvar Holmesland; 11. 'The pamphlet on the table': The life and adventures of sir Launcelot Greaves Richard J. Jones; Section IV: The romantic period, 1780–1832: 12. 'Transported into asiatic scenes': Romanticism and the orient Daniel Sanjiv Roberts; 13. Historical fiction in the romantic period: Jane Porter, Walter Scott and the sublime hero Fiona Price; 14. Jane Austen and her publishers: Northanger Abbey and the publishing context of the early nineteenth century Katie Halsey; 15. 'O for a life of sensations' or 'the internal and external parts': Keats and medical materialism Paul Wright; Section V: The victorian age, 1832–1901: 16. Poetry and science in the victorian period Jordan Kistler; 17. 'In characters of tint indelible': Life writing and legacy in Charlotte Brontë's Villette Maria Frawley; 18. Money, narrative and representation from Dickens to Gissing Ben Moore; 19. Reading and remediating nineteenth-century serial fiction: Closing down and opening up Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla Fionnuala Dillane; 20. Public places, private spaces in Fin de Siècle British women's writing Sue Asbee; Section VI: The Twentieth Century, 1901–1939: 21. D. H. Lawrence's women in Love: An anthropological reading Stefania Michelucci; 22. The epigraph for T. S. Eliot's Marina: Classical tradition and the modern era Anna Budziak; 23. Passing as a male critic: Mary Beton's coming of age in Virginia Woolf's a room of one's own Judith Paltin; Section VII: The twentieth and twenty-first centuries, 1939–2020: 24. An ecocritical reading of the poetry of Ted Hughes Terry Gifford; 25. Women publishers in the twenty-first century: Assessing their impact on new writing – and writers Catherine Riley; 26. Crisis and community in contemporary British theatre Clare Wallace; Section VIII: Postcolonial literature in english: 27. Complexities and concealments of eros in the African novel: Chinua Achebe's things fall apart F. Fiona Moolla; 28. Bessie Head's feminism of everyday life Loretta Stec; 29. The gender politics of Grace Nichols: Joy and resistance Izabel F. O. Brandao; 30. 'The all-purpose quote': Salman Rushdie's meta-contextuality Joel Kuortti; 31. Postcolonial literature and the world, 2017–2019: Contemporary complexities Ulla Rahbek; Appendices; Appendix A: Glossary of critical terms; Appendix B: Study guide: Learning from the essays; Appendix C: Essays listed by genre and theme; Index.

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Book SynopsisDuring the middle years of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, the number of books published with titles that described themselves as flowers, gardens, or forests more than tripled. During those same years, English printers turned out scores of instructional manuals on gardening and husbandry, retailing useful knowledge to a growing class of literate landowners and pleasure gardeners. Both trends, Jessica Rosenberg shows, reflected a distinctive style of early modern plant-thinking, one that understood both plants and poems as composites of small pieces—slips or seeds to be recirculated by readers and planters. Botanical Poetics brings together studies of ecology, science, literary form, and the material text to explore how these developments transformed early modern conceptions of nature, poetic language, and the printed book. Drawing on little-studied titles in horticulture and popular print alongside poetry by Shakespeare, Spenser, and others, Rosenberg reveals how early modern print used a botanical idiom to anticipate histories of its own reading and reception, whether through replanting, uprooting, or fantasies of common property and proliferation. While our conventional narratives of English literary culture in this period see reading as an increasingly private practice, and literary production as more and more of an authorial domain, Botanical Poetics uncovers an alternate tradition: of commonplaces and common ground, of slips of herbs and poetry circulated, shared, and multiplied.

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Book SynopsisA meditation on the meaning of text–image collaboration, from the author of Sprawl and Margaret the First Author Danielle Dutton's A Picture Held Us Captive asks what it means for a writer to work "with" someone or something else—to make art in dialogue with an energy not one's own. Dutton (born 1975) explores ekphrastic fiction, looking at a wide range of writers and artists including John Keene and Edgar Degas; Eley Williams and Bridget Riley; Ben Lerner and Anna Ostoya; Amina Cain and Bill Viola; Lydia Davis and Joseph Cornell; as well as her own textual responses to visual artists Richard Kraft and Laura Letinsky. A Picture Held Us Captive—which includes a series of images at once illustrative and refusing simple illustration—considers the ways in which ekphrasis operates as a diptych. A work of both commentary and self-reflection, Dutton considers a dialectic between art’s ability to make strange what has grown familiar and the writer’s desire to make recognizable the experience of one artwork in the space of another. Danielle Dutton is an American writer and the cofounder of the feminist press Dorothy. Born in California in 1975, Dutton now resides in Missouri where she teaches creative writing at Washington University in St Louis. She has authored four books, including Sprawl and Margaret the First. She contributed the text to Here Comes Kitty: A Comic Opera, a book of collages by Richard Kraft. Her fiction has appeared in major publications such as the Paris Review, Harper's and Guernica.

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Book SynopsisA provocative, highly accessible journey to the heart of Sophocles’ Antigone elucidating why it keeps resurfacing as a central text of Western thought and Western culture. There is probably no classical text that has inspired more interpretation, critical attention, and creative response than Sophocles’ Antigone. The general perspective from which the book is written could be summarized with this simple question: What is it about the figure of Antigone that keeps haunting us? Why do all these readings and rewritings keep emerging? To what kind of always contemporary contradiction does the need, the urge to reread and reimagine Antigone—in all kinds of contexts and languages—correspond? As key anchor points of this general interrogation, three particular “obsessions” have driven the author’s thinking and writing about Antigone. First is the issue of violence. The violence in Antigone is the opposite of “graphic” as we have come to know it in movies and in the media; rather, it is sharp and piercing, it goes straight to the bone. It is the violence of language, the violence of principles, the violence of desire, the violence of subjectivity. Then there is the issue of funerary rites and their role in appeasing the specific “undeadness” that seems to be the other side of human life, its irreducible undercurrent that death alone cannot end and put to rest. This issue prompted the author to look at the relationship between language, sexuality, death, and “second death.” The third issue, which constitutes the focal point of the book, is Antigone’s statement that if it were her children or husband lying unburied out there, she would let them rot and not take it upon herself to defy the decree of the state. The author asks, how does this exclusivist, singularizing claim (she would do it only for Polyneices), which she uses to describe the “unwritten law” she follows, tally with Antigone’s universal appeal and compelling power? Attempting to answer this leads to the question of what this particular (Oedipal) family’s misfortune, of which Antigone chooses to be the guardian, shares with the general condition of humanity. Which in turn forces us to confront the seemingly self-evident question: “What is incest?” Let Them Rot is Alenka Zupančič’s absorbing and succinct guided tour of the philosophical and psychoanalytic issues arising from the Theban trilogy. Her original and surprising intervention into the broad and prominent field of study related to Sophocles’ Antigone illuminates the classical text’s ongoing relevance and invites a wide readership to become captivated by its themes.Table of ContentsPreface | vii Prologue | 1 1. Violence, Terror, and Unwritten Laws | 9 2. Death, Undeadness, and Funeral Rites | 21 3. “I’d Let Them Rot” | 50 Works Cited | 83 Index | 85

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Book SynopsisThis collection honours the scholarship of Professor David F. Johnson, exploring the wider view of medieval England and its cultural contracts with the Low Countries, and highlighting common texts, motifs, and themes across the textual traditions of Old English and later medieval romances in both English and Middle Dutch. Few scholars have contributed as much to the wider view of medieval England and its cultural contacts with the Low Countries than Professor David F. Johnson. His wide-ranging scholarship embraces both the textual traditions of Old English, especially in manuscript production, and later medieval romances in both English and Middle Dutch, highlighting their common texts, motifs, and themes. Taking Johnson's work as its starting point and model, the essays collected here investigate early English manuscript production and preservation, illuminating the complexities of reinterpreting Old English poetry, particularly Beowulf, and then go on to pursue those nuances through later English and Middle Dutch Arthurian romances and drama, including Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, The Canterbury Tales, and the Roman van Walewein. They explore a plethora of material, including early medieval textual traditions and stone sculpture, and draw on a range of approaches, such as Body and Disability Theories. Overall, the aim is to bring multiple disciplines into dialogue with each other, in order to present a richer and more nuanced view of the medieval literary past and cross-cultural contact between England and the Low Countries, from the pre-Conquest period to the late-Middle Ages, thus forming a most appropriate tribute to Professor Johnson's pioneering work.Table of ContentsList of Illustrations List of Contributors Preface Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations Introduction: Medieval English and Dutch Literature in its European Context and the Work of David F. Johnson Larissa Tracy and Geert H. M. Claassens 1. Reconstructing a Lost Manuscript of the Old English Gospels Roy M. Liuzza 2. The Reception of the Old English Version of Gregory the Great's Dialogues between the Conquest and the Close of the Nineteenth Century Rolf H. Bremmer Jr 3. An Unrecorded Copy of Heinrich Krebs's An Anglo-Saxon Version of Gregory's Dialogues, Printer's Proofs Thomas A. Bredehoft and Rachel C. S. Duke 4. The Body as Media in Early Medieval England Martin Foys 5. Who Snatched Grendel in Beowulf 852b? Stephen Harris 6. 'Mobile as Wishes': Anchoritism, Intersubjectivity, and Disability in the Liber confortatorius Danielle Allor and Stacy S. Klein 7. The Presence of the Hands: Sculpture and Script in the Eighth to Twelfth Centuries Catherine Karkov and Elaine Treharne 8. Perceval's Name and the Gifts of the Mother Thomas D. Hill 9. A Relaxed Knight and an Impatient Heroine: Ironizing the Love Quest in the Second Part of the Middle Dutch Ferguut Marjolein Hogenbirk 10. Multilingualism in Van den vos Reynaerde and its Reception in Reynardus Vulpes Bart Besamusca 11. Three Characters as Narrator in the Roman van Walewein Roel Zemel 12. As the Chess-Set Flies: Arthurian Marvels in Chaucer's Squire's Tale and the Roman van Walewein Jamie C. Fumo 13. For a Performer's Personal Use: The Corrector's Lines in the Lower Margin of the Middle Dutch Lanceloet Manuscript Frank Brandsma 14. 'Oft leudlez alone': The Isolation of the Hero and Its Consequences in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight K. S. Whetter 15. Shifting Skin: Passing as Human, Passing as Fay in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight Larissa Tracy 16. The Lover Caught Between his Mother and his Maiden in Lanseloet van Denemerken Geert H. M. Claassens 17. Afterlives: The Abbey at Amesbury and the 'Rehabilitation' of Guinevere in Malory and the Stanzaic Morte Arthur Christopher Jensen 18. The Importance of Being an Arthurian Mother Elizabeth Archibald Select Bibliography Bibliography of David F. Johnson's Works Index Tabula Gratulatoria

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Book SynopsisCrime and Punishment: A Reader’s Guide focuses on narrative strategy, psychology, and ideology. Martinsen demonstrates how Dostoevsky first plunges the reader into Raskolnikov’s fevered brain, creating sympathy for him, and she explains why most readers root for him to get away from the scene of the crime. Dostoevsky subsequently provides outsider perspectives on Raskolnikov’s thinking, effecting a conversion in reader sympathy. By examining the multiple justifications for murder Raskolnikov gives as he confesses to Sonya, Dostoevsky debunks rationality-based theories. Finally, the question of why Raskolnikov and others, including the reader, focus on the murder of the pawnbroker and forget the unintended murder of Lizaveta reveals a narrative strategy based on shame and guilt.Trade Review“In this extraordinary book, distinguished scholar Deborah Martinsen draws upon a lifetime of scholarship in Dostoevsky studies, narrative theory, and ethics, as well as decades of classroom teaching, to craft a riveting, efficient introduction to Dostoevsky’s great novel. Accessible, insightful, deceptively slight in size, A Reader’s Guide will offer something new to readers at all stages of their Dostoevsky journey: seasoned experts, teachers, students, and curious newcomers. … A great teacher and scholar lives on in the ideas [Martinsen] shares, the conversations she inspires, and the example she sets. From this book we learn fresh, bracing new ways of reading a text that we may have mistakenly thought that we fully understood. More importantly, we are inspired by this communication from an intellectual at the top of her game and by the guidance it offers as we seek to live ethical lives in our own thinking, writing and teaching.”— Carol Apollonio, Dostoevsky Studies (2022: Vol. 25)“Deborah Martinsen’s Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment: A Reader’s Guide is a slim but erudite volume for readers and teachers of the 1866 novel. Martinsen synthesizes here the wisdom and experience of decades reading, discussing, analyzing, and teaching the novel… Her insights on characterization, emotion, and the subconscious are carefully and thoughtfully embedded in her analysis of Crime and Punishment. Rather than allowing that analysis to provide all the answers, however, she focuses on the questions that it raises. This gives Dostoevsky’s reader, using the Guide, agency in their path through the text. … Martinsen, a brilliant editor and interlocutor who brought Dostoevsky scholars together in conversation, has brought these connections to bear throughout the Guide, in mentions of others’ work in the text, the work’s careful footnotes, her overview of contemporary scholarship, and, finally, its considered bibliography. Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment: A Reader’s Guide is a project Martinsen saw to completion during the final months of her life and it is truly a gift for all teachers and readers of Dostoevsky’s novel.”— Katherine Bowers, University of British Columbia, Russian Review (October 2022: Vol. 81, No. 4)“The complexity of Dostoevsky’s writing is… explored in a readable and rigorous manner in Deborah Martinsen’s Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment: A Reader’s Guide. Martinsen’s book follows the plot of Crime and Punishment, revealing the themes and issues explored, the multiple echoes throughout the novel and the various perspectives open to the characters. … Martinsen’s precise analysis deftly avoids any suggestion of a simplistic resolution to the novel’s complexity.”— Llewellyn Brown, Forum for Modern Language Studies“A posthumous release by one of this generation’s foremost experts on Fedor Dostoevskii, Dostoevsky’s ‘Crime and Punishment’: A Reader’s Guide by Deborah Martinsen is every bit as erudite as its author…Surprisingly, before this volume, there had been no comprehensive reader’s guide to Crime and Punishment, save for readings and analyses that appear as parts of larger works. An exquisite resource and teaching aid, every page of this guide is packed with detailed analysis, citing major research to date. It is written for general readers but also provides tips and suggestions for teaching the novel. The information presented is for the most part known to researchers, yet even the most seasoned reader of Dostoevskii will find the guide useful, whether as a refresher course or convenient reference tool.”— Lonny Harrison, Slavic ReviewTable of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. Historical Introduction2. Overview3. Parts One and Two: Getting Away with Murder4. Parts Three to Five: In and Out of Raskolnikov’s Mind5. Part Six: Last Meetings and EpilogueAppendix 1: Illustrations and MapsAppendix 2: Crime and Punishment ChronologyAppendix 3: Contemporary Critical ReactionsAppendix 4: Chronology of Dostoevsky’s Life Bibliography

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Book SynopsisWomen and Music in the Age of Austen highlights the central role women played in musical performance, composition, reception, and representation, and analyzes its formative and lasting effect on Georgian culture. This interdisciplinary collection of essays from musicology, literary studies, and gender studies challenges the conventional historical categories that marginalize women’s experience from Austen’s time. Contesting the distinctions between professional and amateur musicians, public and domestic sites of musical production, and performers and composers of music, the contributors reveal how women’s widespread involvement in the Georgian musical scene allowed for self-expression, artistic influence, and access to communities that transcended the boundaries of gender, class, and nationality. This volume’s breadth of focus advances our understanding of a period that witnessed a musical flourishing, much of it animated by female hands and voices. Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press. Trade Review“Women and Music in the Age of Austen offers an expansive, lively, colourful view of the gendered musical practices of the eighteenth century and the Romantic period. These essays enrich our knowledge of the musical world of Jane Austen and Frances Burney while shining a spotlight on little-known female performers, critics, composers, consumers, collectors, fans, and musical entrepreneurs of the preceding decades.” -- Angela Esterhammer * author of Print and Performance in the 1820s: Improvisation, Speculation, Identity *“Finding inspiration in a broad range of sources, the volume reflects on women and their musical activities in Georgian England. A focus on Jane Austen and her novels moves in and out of the picture, amplified and receding against historical figures known and unknown. Through these essays by musically-informed literary scholars and musicologists, readers get a sense of the possibilities and desires of women engaged with music over a historical period that brackets the life of our beloved Jane.” -- Maribeth Clark * coeditor of Musicology and Dance: Historical and Critical Perspectives *“Music was important to Jane Austen, as her novels and letters attest, and women played a hitherto undervalued part in the musical world of her time. This sparkling and substantial collection of interdisciplinary essays illuminates Austen’s fiction and her age in many original and surprising ways.” -- Peter Sabor * coeditor of Jane Austen's Manuscript Works *Table of ContentsIllustrations Table Acknowledgements Abbreviations Introduction: “It was all in harmony”: Musical Women in Austen’s Culture Linda Zionkowski with Miriam F. Hart Part I: Representing the Female Performer Chapter 1: A Musical Room of Her Own: Musical Spaces in Jane Austen’s Novels Pierre Dubois Chapter 2: “Prima la musica”: Gentry Daughters at Play in Town, Country, and Continent, 1815-1825 Kelly M. McDonald Chapter 3: Stage Fright: Female Musicians Crossing Musical Borders in Thicknesse’s The School for Fashion and Burney’s The Wanderer Danielle Grover Part II: Women and the Market in Music Chapter 4: Women on the Title Page: Celebrity Endorsement of Musical Scores Penelope Cave Chapter 5: The Lady’s Choice: Women and the Purchase of Music through Subscription Simon D. I. Fleming Chapter 6: Female Musical Entrepreneurship in the Eighteenth Century Alison C. DeSimone Part III: Women as Critics and Fans Chapter 7: Women as Quiet Critics Jane Girdham Chapter 8: Femininity and Foreignness in George Colman’s Farce, The Musical Lady Leslie Ritchie Chapter 9: Georgian Fangirls: Women and Castrati in Eighteenth-Century London Jeffrey A. Nigro Part IV: Women and the Bardic Tradition Chapter 10: Anna Gordon and the Ballad Collectors Ruth Perry Chapter 11: Antiquaries, Female Harpists, and the Survival of the Bardic Tradition Devon R. Nelson Part V: Revisiting the Age of Austen Chapter 12: “That Ecstatic Delight”: Gender and Performance in Adaptations of Sense and Sensibility Gayle Magee Chapter 13: “Here’s harmony!”: Music and Gender in Kirke Mechem’s Pride & Prejudice (2019) and Jonathan Dove’s Mansfield Park (2011) Juliette Wells Bibliography Notes on Contributors Index

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Book SynopsisWithin the library of the world''s classics, the book of Psalms occupies a unique place. Few books were composed over a longer period of time and have exercised more cultural and religious influence than the Psalms, the longest and most complex collection in the Hebrew Bible. Nearly 1,000 years in the making with dozens of contributors, this ancient anthology includes 150 prayers and poems for a host of public occasions and private exigencies, ranging from the comforting passage Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, Ps 23:4 to some of the most violent imprecations, such as Break their teeth, O God, in their mouth, Ps 58:6). The Psalms is an introduction to the world of the Psalms that focuses on the content and the poetic forms in the collection, guiding the reader toward an appreciation of the purposes of the Psalms and their contribution to the Scriptures of Israel. Rather than abstract theorizing, Keith Bodner offers close readings of numerous psalms, exploring th

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Book SynopsisAcclaimed critic Sianne Ngai theorizes the gimmick as an aesthetic category reflecting the fundamental laws of capitalism. Gimmicks make promises of saving labor and increasing value that we distrust but also find attractive. Exploring the use of this form, Ngai shows how its aesthetic dissatisfactions reflect deeper anxieties about capitalism.Trade ReviewA culmination of Ngai’s work as a critic…Ngai makes the case that the gimmick, whose value we regularly disparage, is of tremendous critical value. The gimmick, she contends, is the capitalist form par excellence…Ngai’s study lies somewhere between critical theory and Sontag’s best work. -- Andrew Koenig * Los Angeles Review of Books *One of the most creative humanities scholars working today…Ngai sets off on another mind-blowing exploration, this time drawing a line between our own judgements of productivity, as well as considering what entertainment is worth to us. My god, it’s so good. -- Olivia Rutigliano * Literary Hub *Theory of the Gimmick is a masterpiece—a culmination of the dazzling project begun in Sianne Ngai’s Ugly Feelings and elaborated in Our Aesthetic Categories, both celebrated books that have anchored affect theory to a strong account of tone and form. It is a major advance in aesthetic theory, and Marxist theory in particular, one that could help us all get over our Frankfurt melancholy and down to the garrulous work of actually naming the dynamics that produce art and artistic judgment under capitalism. -- Christopher Nealon, author of The Matter of CapitalThe gimmick draws out our unease about capitalism’s seductions, deflating their lofty appeals with the suddenness of a punch line. It is an aesthetic category that dunks on capitalism’s too-good-to-be-true promises by dunking on itself…It is undeniable that part of what makes Ngai’s analyses of aesthetic categories so appealing—so appealing as to even appear to raise the esteem of the object under analysis—is simply her capacity to speak about them brilliantly. -- Jane Hu * Bookforum *In its extraordinary analysis of the gimmick as a compromised expression of what Walter Benjamin or Fredric Jameson have labeled the age of “late capitalism,” Ngai’s book—much like her previous book publications—is a stellar critique and rethinking of Continental aesthetic theory. …Ngai’s work will not and must not be bypassed by future theories of aesthetics and consumer capitalism, not least in American studies. -- Dustin Breitenwischer * Amerikastudien *Ngai exposes capitalism’s tricks in her mind-blowing study of the time- and labor-saving devices we call gimmicks. -- Katrina Forrester * New Statesman *Ngai tracks the gimmick through a number of guises: stage props, wigs, stainless-steel banana slicers, temp agencies, fraudulent photographs, subprime loans, technological doodads, the novel of ideas…[She] has slowly been building a reputation as one of America’s most original and penetrating cultural theorists. -- Charlie Tyson * Chronicle of Higher Education *Ngai is a keen analyst of overlooked or denigrated categories in art and life…Moves quickly from the fantastical contraptions of Rube Goldberg to the philosophical machinery in Kant or Marx that might explain their appeal…Highly original in theme and suggestive in approach. -- Brian Dillon * 4Columns *Ngai has done so much to illuminate. -- David Trotter * London Review of Books *Ngai’s penetrating and at times humorous work feels uncommonly generous at a deeply polarized moment when emotions run high and much theory and criticism has taken on an increasingly grave, moralizing tone…Explores across a remarkably broad range of works of art, film, and literature the ‘gimmick,’ a simultaneously attractive and repulsive form that links the aesthetic to the economic. -- Matthew Rana * Kunstkritikk *It is the simplicity and vernacular quality of Sianne Ngai’s central concept that elevates this book to a classic in the making. Ngai’s most important contribution to Marxist cultural and economic theory comes from her insight that—like the judgment of the beautiful for Kant—the gimmick is a subjective category, neither cognitive nor ethical, but historical through and through. The gimmick is a way to bring together the theory of the commodity with Kant’s category of judgment. Through Ngai, we are able to vernacularize Marx and to understand the most basic but enigmatic proposition: that truth and appearance are identical in the commodity. -- Timothy Bewes, author of Reification: Or, The Anxiety of Late CapitalismBooks of this ambition and accomplishment are rare! Theory of the Gimmick continues the work of Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, and others in seriously putting together aesthetic theory and Marxist theories of capital. In an impossibly erudite, wide-ranging, and theoretically sophisticated argument, Ngai gives us a unique insight into the relationship between labor, time, and value in a capitalist economy. This book is a major event in American intellectual life. -- Jonathan Flatley, author of Affective Mapping: Melancholia and the Politics of ModernismThe whole book suggests that critique is an occasion for delight, as the explication of how the gimmicks Ngai finds everywhere from Henry James to a toy box reveal the inner workings of capital is accomplished with a joyful relentlessness. The book is a page turner. -- Theo Davis * American Literary History *[A] groundbreaking argument. * Choice *[Theory of the Gimmick] firstly offers an eminently usable theory of the gimmick, and secondly offers a series of masterful extensions of that theory in practically unrepeatable analyses of texts…where we witness, in addition to Ngai the theorist, Ngai the virtually peerless reader. -- Astrid Lorange * Sydney Review of Books *

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Book SynopsisNigel of Canterbury's Miracles of the Virgin, the oldest Latin poem about miracles performed by Mary, features lively tales illustrating her boundless mercy. Tract on Abuses rails against ecclesiastical corruption. Alongside authoritative editions of the Latin texts, this volume offers the first translations of both works into English.Trade ReviewOffer[s] a fascinating amalgam of devotion, imagination, and wonder…Ziolkowski is to be congratulated for his skillful and meticulous work in bringing these little-known works to a contemporary readership. There is no doubt that many of today’s monastic readers will find these Marian miracles as fascinating and enchanting as did their medieval counterparts. -- Robert Nixon, O.S.B. * American Benedictine Review *

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Book SynopsisSpectacles and Specters draws on theories of performativity to conceptualize the entanglements of law and political violence, offering a radical departure from accounts that consider political trials as instrumental in exercising or containing political violence. Legal scholar Başak Ertür argues instead that making sense of the often incalculable interpenetrations of law, politics, and violence in trials requires shifting the focus away from law’s instrumentality to its performativity. Ertür develops a theory of political trials by reconstructing and building on a legacy of critical thought on Nuremberg in close engagement with theories of performativity. She then offers original case studies that introduce a new perspective by looking beyond the Holocaust trials, to the Armenian genocide and its fragmentary legal aftermaths. These cases include the 1921 trial of Soghomon Tehlirian, the 2007-21 Hrant Dink Murder Trial, and the 2015 case before the European Court of Human Rights concerning the denial of the Armenian genocide. Enabling us to capture the various modalities in which the political emerges in, through and in relation to legal forms on the stage of the trial, this focus on law’s performativity also allows us to account for how sovereign schemes can misfire and how trials can come to have unintended political lives and afterlives. Further, it reveals how law is entangled with and perpetuates certain histories of violence, rather than simply ever mastering these histories or providing closure.Table of ContentsPreface | ix Introduction | 1 Performativity and Performance • Performativity and Errancy • Rethinking the Politics of Trials • Law and Violence: An Oblique Address PART I: A PERFORMATIVE THEORY OF POLITICAL TRIALS 1 Theorizing Political Trials | 21 Kirchheimer: Setting the Parameters • Judgment on Nuremberg • Arendt: A Trial of One’s Own? • The Breach That Speaks the Bind • Shklar: “There’s Politics and Politics” • Between Atrocity and Legal Violence 2 The Form and Substance of Doing Justice: Law, Performativity, Performance | 52 Not a Profound Word • Law and Performativity • Masquerade and Fate • The Trial: Performativity and Performance 3 Sovereign Infelicities | 76 Three Scenes • Sovereign Spectacles • Sovereign Performatives? • (Mis)Reading the Performative as Performance • Derrida’s Austin: Sovereign Pretensions • Performing the (Structural) Unconscious • Undoing Sovereignty PART II: TRACING THE SPECTERS IN THE SPECTACLES 4 Ghosts in the Courtroom: The Trial of Soghomon Tehlirian | 103 Talat • Tehlirian • Enter Ghost • The Telegrams • The Haunted Hunter • The Many Lives of Tehlirian • The Politics of Haunting 5 Spectral Legacies: Legal Aftermaths of the Armenian Genocide | 131 Legal Returns • Atemporal Histories of Terror • Process unto Oblivion • “Genocide” as Counter-Memory 6 Law of Denial: The Armenian Genocide before the European Court of Human Rights | 156 The Envoy • The Judge, The Historian, and the Politician • Judging the Presence of the Past Conclusion | 175 Acknowledgments | 187 Notes | 191 Index | 223

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Book SynopsisTrade Review“In this bravura study of Dante’s material culture, social inclusion and exclusion, philosophical heterodoxy, and problematic thinking, one size does not fit all. Barolini’s painstaking philological analyses show that Dante’s competing claims disrupt the tyranny of extreme conclusions. Their lesson is at once nonnormative and supportive of productive difference.” —William J. Kennedy, author of Petrarchism at Work"Teodolinda Barolini’s Dante’s Multitudes is a must-read for any student of literary criticism who is learning to apply historicist ideology to the literary pillars of our civilization." —VoegelinViewTable of ContentsNote on Editions and Translations Preface Part I. Social and Cultural Difference 1. “Only Historicize”: History, Material Culture (Food, Clothes, Books), and the Future of Dante Studies 2. Dante’s Sympathy for the Other, or the Non-Stereotyping Imagination: Sexual and Racialized Others in the Commedia 3. Contemporaries Who Found Heterodoxy in Dante: Cecco d’Ascoli, Boccaccio, and Benvenuto da Imola on Fortuna and Inferno 7.89 4. Dante’s Limbo and Equity of Access: Non-Christians, Children, and Criteria of Inclusion and Exclusion, from Inferno 4 to Paradiso 32 Part II. Metaphysical Difference 5. Toward a Dantean Theology of Eros: From Dante’s Lyrics to the Paradiso 6. Amicus eius: Dante and the Semantics of Friendship 7. Paradiso and the Mimesis of Ideas: Realism versus Reality 8. Dante Squares the Circle: Textual and Philosophical Affinities of Monarchia and Paradiso (Solutio Distinctiva in Mon. 3.4.17 and Par. 4.94–114) 9. Difference as Punishment or Difference as Pleasure: From the Tower of Babel in De vulgari eloquentia to the Death of Babel in Paradiso 26 Part III. Aristotelian Disruptions 1: Wealth and Society 10. Aristotle’s Mezzo, Courtly Misura, and Dante’s Canzone Le dolci rime: Humanism, Ethics, and Social Anxiety 11. Dante and Wealth, Between Aristotle and Cortesia: From the Moral Canzoni Le dolci rime and Poscia ch’Amor through Convivio to Inferno 6 and 7 Part IV. Aristotelian Disruptions 2: Love and Compulsion 12. Archeology of the Donna Gentile: The Importance of Disconversion in Conversion Narratives 13. Dante and Cecco d’Ascoli on Love and Compulsion: The Epistle to Cino, Io sono stato, the Third Heaven 14. Voi che ’ntendendo il terzo ciel movete, A Dramatization of “utrum de passione in passionem possit anima transformari”: Conflict, Compulsion, Consent, Conversion Part V. Critical Philology and Italian Cultural History 15. The Case of the Lost Original Ending of Dante’s Vita Nuova: More Notes Toward a Critical Philology 16. Critical Philology and Dante’s Rime

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