ELT & Literary Studies Books
University of Chicago Press The Problem of American Realism Studies in the
Book SynopsisSince Dean Howells declared his realism war in the 1880s, literary historians have regarded the rise of realism and naturalism as the signal development in post-Civil War American fiction. Questioning this generalization, Michael Davitt Bell investigates the role that the terms played in the social and literary discourse of the 1880s and 1890s.Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction: American Realism Pt. 1: The First Generation: William Dean Howells, Mark Twain, Henry James 1: The Sin of Art: William Dean Howells The Problem of Howellsian Realism The Road to Realism A Portrait of the Artist as a "Real" Man The Problem of American Realism 2: Humor, Sentiment, Realism: Mark Twain Mark Twain as Critic Adventures of Huckleberry Finn A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court 3: Artist Fables: Henry James's Realist Phase A Different Road/A Different Realism Realism and Reform Naturalism, Impressionism, Revolution Pt. 2: The Problem of Naturalism: Frank Norris, Stephen Crane, Theodore Dreiser 4: The Revolt against Style: Frank Norris The Road to Naturalism Naturalism and Style 5: Irony, Parody, and "Transcendental Realism": Stephen Crane The Language of the Street Words of War 6: Fine Styles of Sympathy; Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie Dreiser and American Naturalism Condescension and Identification Pt. 3: A "Woman's Place" in American Realism: Sarah Orne Jewett 7: Local Color and Realism: Sarah Orne Jewett Jewett's Place in American Realism Maine Person and Boston Professional Realism, Feminism, and the World of Dunnet Landing Notes Index
£80.00
The University of Chicago Press The Benchley Roundup
Book SynopsisRobert C. Benchley's sketches and articles, published in periodicals like "Life", "Vanity Fair" and "The New Yorker", earned him a reputation as one of the sharpest humourists of his time. This is a collection of pieces, selected by his son Nathaniel.
£19.00
The University of Chicago Press Imagining the Penitentiary Fiction and the
Book SynopsisThis brilliant and insightful contribution to cultural studies investigates the role of literatureparticularly the noveland visual arts in the development of institutions. Arguing the attitudes expressed in narrative literature and art between 1719 and 1779 helped bring about the change from traditional prisons to penitentiaries, John Bender offers studies of Robinson Crusoe, Moll Flanders, The Beggar's Opera, Hogarth's Progresses, Jonathan Wild, and Amelia as well as illustrations from prison literature, art, and architecture in support of his thesis.
£34.20
The University of Chicago Press The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin 19101940
Book SynopsisCalled the most important critic of his time by Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin has only become more influential over the years. Suitable for any scholar wrestling with Benjamin's work, this title offers a look at the man behind much of the twentieth century's most significant criticism.Trade Review"There has been no more original, no more serious, critic and reader in our time." (George Steiner)"
£28.00
The University of Chicago Press Hurricane Lamp Phoenix Poets
Book SynopsisBarbara M. Benedict draws on the texts of the early modern period to discover the era's attitudes toward curiosity, a trait which was often depicted as an unsavoury form of transgression or cultural ambition.Trade Review"Robinson Crusoe told us that his head was always filled 'with rembling Thoughts.' That is how he got into such trouble, but it is also the way he survived. Rambling thoughts, as Benedict shows in this exuberant study, were at the center of English literary and cultural experience from the late seventeenth to the early nineteenth centuries. Transgressive, uncontrollable, hopelessly vulgar and at the same time exalted and ennobling, the passion of curiosity was the key that unlocked the sensibility of modernity in its great formative age." - Stephen Greenblatt, author of Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World "Benedict assembles her own gorgeous literary curiosity cabinet crammed with excerpts from novels, poems, journalism, travel narratives, trial transcripts and pornography.... The book is teeming with big questions and fine distinctions." - Ian Sansom, The Guardian "Pithy and wide-ranging.... This study provides a fresh new lens through which to reinvestigate the whole of early modern English literature." - Library Journal
£34.20
The University of Chicago Press Writings Through John Cages Music Poetry Art
Book SynopsisThis volume examines the creative work of the avant-gardist John Cage, from an interdisciplinary perspective. His activities as a composer, performer, thinker and artist are explored.
£38.75
The University of Chicago Press My Way Speeches and Poems
Book SynopsisExploring the place of poetry in American culture and in the university, this text addresses issues such as: the role of the public intellectual; the poetics of scholarly prose; vernacular modernism; idiosyncratic postmodernism; identity politics; aesthetics; and poetry as a performance art.
£28.50
The University of Chicago Press Attack of the Difficult Poems Essays and
Book SynopsisAddresses the state of contemporary humanities, the teaching of unconventional forms, fresh approaches to translation, the history of language media, and the connections between poetry and visual art.Trade Review"This is a superbly smart and invigorating book that triumphantly demonstrates Charles Bernstein's goals and values. Those who want satire, those who want earnest discussion, those who want information, those who want to get a sense of personality, those who want theory, those who want entertainment, even those who wish to be confirmed in their beliefs and those who wish to nurse their resentments, will all find something here." -Daisy Fried "Charles Bernstein writes both prose and poetry about poetry, sometimes brilliantly, in ways calculated to upset the middle-brow and thwart the bland. The more you like the poetic equivalent of a nice tune, easy to hum, the more Bernstein means to disrupt your complacency." -Robert Pinsky"
£21.85
The University of Chicago Press This Wide and Universal Theater Shakespeare in
Book SynopsisExplores how Shakespeare's plays were produced both in his own time and in succeeding centuries. This book explains how the Elizabethan playhouse conveyed a sense of place using minimal scenery, from the Forest of Arden in As You Like It to the tavern in Henry IV, Part I.Trade Review"An eminent Shakespeare scholar and author, Bevington offers a concise, lucid, and unique overview of the history of Shakespeare in various modes of performance, from stage to film to television." - Choice "Bevington makes interesting, nuanced and original points about staging and interpretation that reveal the dynamism and complexity of Shakespeare's canon." - Financial Times "Even veteran Shakespeareans will profit from the varied reminders of how important performance and staging have always been to the interpretation of the plays." - Renaissance Quarterly"
£22.80
The University of Chicago Press This Wide and Universal Theater Shakespeare in
Book SynopsisExplores how Shakespeare's plays were produced both in his own time and in succeeding centuries. This book explains how the Elizabethan playhouse conveyed a sense of place using minimal scenery, from the Forest of Arden in As You Like It to the tavern in Henry IV, Part I.Trade Review"An eminent Shakespeare scholar and author, Bevington offers a concise, lucid, and unique overview of the history of Shakespeare in various modes of performance, from stage to film to television." - Choice "Bevington makes interesting, nuanced and original points about staging and interpretation that reveal the dynamism and complexity of Shakespeare's canon." - Financial Times "Even veteran Shakespeareans will profit from the varied reminders of how important performance and staging have always been to the interpretation of the plays." - Renaissance Quarterly"
£21.85
The University of Chicago Press Doctors Ambassadors Secretaries Humanists
Book SynopsisIn this volume Douglas Biow traces the role that humanists played in the development of professions and professionalism in Renaissance Italy, and vice versa. Examining a wide range of treatises, poems and essays, Biow shows how interaction between humanists and professionals was conducted.Trade Review"Doctors, Ambassadors, Secretaries is a formidable accomplishment. Biow traces the interactions of humanist culture with distinct areas of professional expertise and practice. His readings of key historical figures and works are compelling, even brilliant at times. Persuasively written, this work will attract a wide range of readers interested in the intertwined histories of the humanistic Renaissance and early modernity." - Albert Russell Ascoli, University of California, Berkeley
£52.00
The University of Chicago Press Interpreting the Self Two Hundred Years of
Book SynopsisIn this study, Diane Bjorklund explores the historical nature of self-narrative. Examining over 100 American autobiographies, she discusses not only well-known ones such as Mark Twain, but obscure ones such as a minstrel and a hoopskirt wire manufacturer.
£24.70
The University of Chicago Press Tall Tale America A Legendary History of our
Book SynopsisJohnny Appleseed, Davy Crockett, Pecos Bill, Paul Bunyan and John Henry have all become heroes of American folklore. Some of them, like Crokett, were real, but all have become the subject of tall tales. This is a folksy history of the United States, told as if the characters were all real. This panoramic (if completely untrue) history begins with Columbus. . . . En route to its end in the 1940s (where traditional American heroes are enlisted to fight in World War II), it covers the great and small events of our national history, including the overlooked, but important ones, such as the invention of the prairie dog.Washington Post Book World
£27.76
The University of Chicago Press Madame Proust A Biography
Book SynopsisAims to acquaint Proust fans with Jeanne Weil Proust. This book captures the life and times of Proust's mother, from her German-Jewish background and her marriage to a Catholic grocer's son to her lifelong worries about her son's sexuality, health problems, and talent. It explores the culture of fin de siecle France.Trade Review"Evelyne Bloch-Dano's Madame Proust provides a wealth of new details about Marcel Proust's formative years and illustrates, as never before, the importance of his Jewish heritage. It does so by concentrating on the most important love relationship in Proust's life: the great affection he had for his mother. Carefully researched, richly documented, and skillfully translated by Alice Kaplan, Bloch-Dano's book deserves to be read by all who are interested in the life and works of Marcel Proust." - William C. Carter, author of Marcel Proust: A Life"
£22.80
The University of Chicago Press The Anonymous Marie de France
Book SynopsisOffers a reconception of the person generally assumed to be the first woman writer in French, the woman referred to as Marie de France in contemporary times. This book considers almost all of the writing ascribed to Marie, including her famous Lais, her 103 animal fables, and the earliest vernacular, Saint Patrick's Purgatory.Trade Review"After eight centuries of tenebrous obscurity, France's first woman poet once again emerges into the light." - Stephen Greenblatt, Harvard University"
£80.00
The University of Chicago Press Etymologies and Genealogies A Literary
Book Synopsis
£28.50
The University of Chicago Press Shakespeares Politics Emersion Emergent Village
Book SynopsisTaking the classical view that the political shapes man's consciousness, Allan Bloom considers Shakespeare as a profoundly political Renaissance dramatist. Shakespeare's work is once again seen as a recognized source for the serious study of moral and political problems.
£22.80
The University of Chicago Press Shakespeare on Love and Friendship
Book SynopsisThis volume includes essays on "Romeo and Juliet", "Anthony and Cleopatra", "Measure For Measure", "Troilus and Cressida" and "The Winter's Tale". It gives a synoptic treatment of eros - a philosophical reflection on Shakespeare's conception of love and friendship.
£19.00
The University of Chicago Press Protocols of Liberty Communication Innovation
Book SynopsisPutting the practices of communication at the center of this intellectual revolution, this title shows how American patriots - the Whigs - used new forms of communication to challenge British authority before any shots were fired at Lexington and Concord.Trade Review"William B. Warner's profoundly learned and well-timed Protocols of Liberty provides readers with a distant mirror for our own moment, returning us to the conditions of communication that determined the course of 'Whig' politics in the 1760s and 1770s and made the American Revolution possible." (Eric Slauter, University of Chicago)"
£49.38
The University of Chicago Press The Aesthetics of Visual Poetry 19141928
Book SynopsisA full-length study of the visual poetry of the early twentieth century. Bohn illuminates the works of Apollinaire, Josep-Maria Junow, Guillermo de Torre, and others.
£26.60
The University of Chicago Press Sade A Biographical Essay
Book SynopsisThe writings of the Marquis de Sade have attained notoriety in the canon of world literature. Sade himself is often celebrated as a heroic apostle of individual rights and a giant of philosophical thought. In this detailed work, Laurence Bongie tests these claims.
£21.85
The University of Chicago Press In the Shadows Light
Book SynopsisThis bilingual edition of the contemporary master's fifth work, Ce qui fut sans lumi, re, includes an extensive new interview with the poet in English translation.
£22.80
The University of Chicago Press The Art of Growing Older Writers on Living and
Book SynopsisWayne Booth has selected, and has been inspired by, the works of some prominent writers on the art of growing older. In this anthology he shows that the very making of art is in itself a victory over time.
£25.65
University of Chicago Press A Rhetoric of Irony
Book Synopsis
£28.50
The University of Chicago Press Modern Dogma and the Rhetoric of Assent
Book SynopsisWhen should I change my mind? What can I believe and what must I doubt? In this new philosophy of good reasons Wayne C. Booth exposes five dogmas of modernism that have too often inhibited efforts to answer these questions. Modern dogmas teach that you cannot reason about values and that the job of thought is to doubt whatever can be doubted, and they leave those who accept them crippled in their efforts to think and talk together about whatever concerns them most. They have willed upon us a befouled rhetorical climate in which people are driven to two self-destructive extremesdefenders of reason becoming confined to ever narrower notions of logical or experimental proof and defenders of values becoming more and more irresponsible in trying to defend the heart, the gut, or the gonads. Booth traces the consequences of modernist assumptions through a wide range of inquiry and action: in politics, art, music, literature, and in personal efforts to find identity or a self. In casting doubt on systematic doubt, the author finds that the dogmas are being questioned in almost every modern discipline. Suggesting that they be replaced with a rhetoric of systematic assent, Booth discovers a vast, neglected reservoir of good reasonsmany of them known to classical students of rhetoric, some still to be explored. These good reasons are here restored to intellectual respectability, suggesting the possibility of widespread new inquiry, in all fields, into the question, When should I change my mind?
£28.50
The University of Chicago Press Ezra Pound among the Poets
Book SynopsisBe influenced by as many great writers as you can, said Ezra Pound. Pound was an assimilative poet par excellence, as George Bornstein calls him, a writer who more often adhered to a. . . classical conception of influence as benign and strengthening than to an anxiety model of influence. To study Pound means to study also his precursorsHomer, Ovid, Li Po, Dante, Whitman, Browningas well as his contemporariesYeats, Williams, and Eliot. These poets, discussed here by ten distinguished critics, stimulated Pound's most important poetic encounters with the literature of Greece, Rome, China, Tuscany, England, and the United States. Fully half of these essays draw on previously unpublished manuscripts.
£88.37
University of Chicago Press Magical Criticism The Recourse of Savage
Book SynopsisDuring the Enlightenment, Western scholars racialized ideas, deeming knowledge based on reality superior to that based on ideality. This book brings the unacknowledged history of this racialization to light and shows how, even as we have rejected ethnocentric notions of the savage, they remain active.Trade Review"Bracken argues that, despite our denial, savage philosophy is very much with us today, and in an extraordinary whirl through many of today's canonized thinkers, he uncovers and explicates its strands. The depth and breadth of his purview are quite extraordinary: this book will appeal to scholars of literary criticism, anthropology, philosophy, and intellectual history. I was enchanted by it." - Vincent Crapanzano, author of Imaginative Horizons"
£80.00
The University of Chicago Press Magical Criticism The Recourse of Savage
Book SynopsisWestern scholars racialized ideas, deeming knowledge based on reality superior to that based on ideality. This book brings the unacknowledged history of this racialization to light and shows how, even as we have rejected ethnocentric notions of "the savage," they remain active.Trade Review"Bracken argues that, despite our denial, savage philosophy is very much with us today, and in an extraordinary whirl through many of today's canonized thinkers, he uncovers and explicates its strands. The depth and breadth of his purview are quite extraordinary: this book will appeal to scholars of literary criticism, anthropology, philosophy, and intellectual history. I was enchanted by it." - Vincent Crapanzano, author of Imaginative Horizons"
£24.70
The University of Chicago Press Dante and the Limits of the Law
Book SynopsisOffers the study of the legal structure crucial to Dante's Divine Comedy. This title makes the compelling case that Dante deliberately exploits this highly structured legal system to explore the phenomenon of exceptions to it, introducing Dante to crucial current debates about literature's relation to law, exceptionality, and sovereignty.Trade Review"Written with grit and polemical brio, Justin Steinberg's book takes readers into the technical world of medieval legal conventions as they appear and even shape the vast and detailed legal system of Dante's Divine Comedy. Filling a substantial lacuna in the critical bibliography of the Commedia, the cogent and absolutely persuasive Dante and the Limits of the Law makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the poem." (Giuseppe Mazzotta, Yale University)"
£80.00
The University of Chicago Press Trade and Romance Emersion Emergent Village
Book SynopsisExamines the complex relations between the expansion of trade in Asia and the production of heroic romance in Europe from the second half of the thirteenth century through the late seventeenth century.Trade Review"Both immensely erudite and fun to read, Michael Murrin's Trade and Romance chronicles three stages of Europe's premodern commercial engagements with Asia: the traversing of the Silk Route, the arrival of the Portuguese in the Indian Ocean, and the exploration by Englishmen and Russians of a northern land route to China. Trade and Romance can be enjoyed not only by historians and literary scholars, for whom it will be essential reading, but also by a broader educated public that shares Murrin's interest in historical geography." (David Quint, Yale University)"
£48.82
The University of Chicago Press Literary Imagination Ancient and Modern Essays in
Book SynopsisThese essays include discussions of the Odyssey and Ulysses, the Metamorphoses of Ovid and Apuleius, Mallarme's English and T.S. Eliot's religion, and the mutually antipathetic minds of Edmund Burke and Thomas Jefferson.
£30.40
The University of Chicago Press Nobodys Nation
Book SynopsisThis volume offers an illuminating look at the St Lucian, Nobel prize-winning writer, Derek Walcott, and grounds his work firmly in the context of West Indian history.
£30.40
The University of Chicago Press Hugo Von Hofmannsthal and His Time
Book Synopsis
£24.70
The University of Chicago Press Cultures of Letters
Book SynopsisUsing a variety of historical sources, Brodhead reconstructs the institutionalized literary worlds that coexisted in nineteenth-century America: the domestic culture of letters; mass-produced cheap reading; the culture of post-emancipation black education. He describes how these socially structured worlds shaped literary practice for writers.Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction: On the Idea of Cultures of Letters 1: Sparing the Rod: Discipline and Fiction in Antebellum America 2: Veiled Ladies: Toward a History of Antebellum Entertainment 3: Starting Out in the 1860s: Alcott, Authorship, and the Postbellum Literary Field 4: The Reading of Regions For a History of Literary Access The Reading of Regions: A Study in the Social Life of Forms 5: Jewett, Regionalism, and Writing as Women's Work 6: "Why Could Not a Colored Man?": Chesnutt and the Transaction of Authorship Notes Index
£25.65
The University of Chicago Press In Praise of Antiheroes Figures and Themes in
Book SynopsisThrough critical readings of key works of modern European literature, Victor Brombert shows how a new kind of hero - the antihero - has arisen to replace the toppled heroic model. The works of Buchner, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Flaubert, Svevo, Hasek, Frisch, Camus and Levi are examined.
£22.80
The University of Chicago Press In Praise of Antiheroes Figures Themes in
Book SynopsisThrough critical readings of key works of modern European literature, Victor Brombert shows how a new kind of hero - the antihero - has arisen to replace the toppled heroic model. The works of Buchner, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Flaubert, Svevo, Hasek, Frisch, Camus and Levi are examined.
£80.00
The University of Chicago Press By the Sweat of the Brow Literature and Labor in
Book SynopsisThe growth of industrialism, the rise of professionalism and the decline of slavery led to debates in 19th-century America about the concept of work. This book examines the literary view of this debate, arguing that many writers felt an affinity between the mental labour of writing and manual work.
£28.50
The University of Chicago Press Disowned by Memory
Book SynopsisThe author connects the accidents of the poet Wordsworth's life with the originality of his works, tracking the impulses that turned him to poetry after the death of his parents and during his years as an enthusiastic disciple of the French Revolution. Bromwich argues that his political idealism deeply motivated his writings of the 1790s.
£22.80
The University of Chicago Press Things A Critical Inquiry Book
Book SynopsisThis book is an invitation to think about why children chew pencils; why we talk to our cars, our refrigerators, our computers; rosary beads and worry beads; Cuban cigars; why we no longer wear hats that we can tip to one another and why we don't seem to long to; and what has been described as bourgcois longing.
£21.00
The University of Chicago Press Society as Text Paper Essays on Rhetoric Reason
Book SynopsisBrown makes elegant use of sociological theory and of insights from language philosophy, literary criticism, and rhetoric to articulate a new theory of the human sciences, using the powerful metaphor of society as text.
£26.60
The University of Chicago Press Boccaccio
Book SynopsisLong celebrated as one of "the Three Crowns" of Florence, Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-75) experimented widely with the forms of literature. This title offers a collection of essays that presents Boccaccio's life and creative output in its encyclopedic diversity.
£44.65
The University of Chicago Press On Symbols and Society Heritage of Sociology
Book Synopsis
£25.65
The University of Chicago Press Poetry and Its Others
Book SynopsisWhat is poetry? Often it is understood as a largely self-enclosed verbal system - "suspended from any mutual interaction with alien discourse," in the words of Mikhail Bakhtin. In this book, the author reveals modern and contemporary poetry's animated dialogue with other genres and discourses.Trade Review"It is delightful to watch Jahan Ramazani do what he does best: delve into poets such as Hopkins, Yeats, Heaney, and Muldoon and show us the nitty-gritty of how their verse works. Anyone who loves poetry is going to come away from this book revitalized, prepared to think complexly about the modes of address that poets employ, as well as the kinds of writing that they habitually echo, distort, take apart, and reassemble." (Brian M. Reed, University of Washington)"
£23.75
The University of Chicago Press The Future of Illusion
Book SynopsisDraws on theorists such as Carl Schmitt, Leo Strauss, Walter Benjamin, and Hannah Arendt and their readings of Shakespeare, Hobbes, Machiavelli, and Spinoza to illustrate that the dialogue between these modern and early modern figures can help us rethink the contemporary problem of political theology.Trade Review"As we, in late modernity, grapple with our own theological-political predicament, Victoria Kahn fearlessly interrogates early twentieth-century engagements with many of the early modern authors who gave the religion-politics dilemma its definitive form. Kahn's interpretive moves and conclusions are always enlightening and often exciting. The Future of Illusion is a timely, erudite, and well-argued book that will be an important intervention into contemporary debates over political theology." (John P. McCormick, University of Chicago)"
£76.00
The University of Chicago Press Until Choice Do Us Part
Book SynopsisFor centuries, people have been thinking and writing - and fiercely debating - about the meaning of marriage. This book offers a fresh account of marriage as it appeared in fiction, journalism, legal decisions, scholarly work, and private correspondence at the start of the twentieth century.Trade Review"In this fascinating and timely study, Clare Virginia Eby shines in her ability to bring us closer to the emotional and cultural aspects of the Progressive era, and her argument for marriage as a laboratory is extremely compelling. Until Choice Do Us Part will make a terrific addition to seminars on women and gender history, family history, and the history of sexuality-not to mention a number of other disciplines." (Jennifer Fronc, author of New York Undercover)"
£80.00
The University of Chicago Press Until Choice Do Us Part
Book SynopsisFor centuries, people have been thinking and writing - and fiercely debating - about the meaning of marriage. This book offers a new account of marriage as it appeared in fiction, journalism, legal decisions, scholarly work, and private correspondence at the start of the twentieth century.Trade Review"In this fascinating and timely study, Clare Virginia Eby shines in her ability to brings us closer to the emotional and cultural aspects of the Progressive era, and her argument for marriage as a laboratory is extremely compelling. Until Choice Do Us Part will make a terrific addition to seminars on women and gender history, family history, and the history of sexuality-not to mention a number of other disciplines." (Jennifer Fronc, author of New York Undercover)"
£24.70
The University of Chicago Press Impersonality
Book Synopsis
£30.40
The University of Chicago Press Writing Nature Henry Thoreaus Journal
Book SynopsisAt his death, Henry Thoreau left the majority of his writing unpublished. The bulk of this material is a journal that he kept for twenty-four years. Sharon Cameron's major claim is that this private work (the Journal) was Thoreau's primary work, taking precedence over the books that he published in his lifetime. Her controversial thesis views Thoreau's Journal as a composition that confounds the distinction between public and privatethe basis on which our conventional treatment of discourse depends.
£24.70
