Literary companions, book reviews and guides Books
The University of Michigan Press Strange Science
Book Synopsis
£40.95
The University of Michigan Press The Very Thought of Herbert Blau
Book SynopsisDistinguished artists and scholars offer reflections on what made Herbert Blau's contributions so visionary, transformative, and unforgettable, and why his ideas endure in both seminar rooms and studios. Contributors respond to Blau's fierce and polymorphous intellect, his relentless drive and determination, and his audacity.Trade ReviewHerbert Blau was a High Modernist to the core, a position from which he was able to critique the unruliness of the Postmodern, challenge those whose work failed to dig deeply enough into the understanding of theatre, and most importantly, to open doors into understanding Beckett, Brecht, Artaud, and others . . .These essays elucidate and further challenge Blau's body of work and will be of immense value: new generations of theatre/performance scholars will find avenues for engaging with Blau's work, while those familiar with Blau's ideas will welcome the opportunity to re-engage with them."" - John Lutterbie, Stony Brook University
£60.95
LUP - University of Michigan Press Ruins
Book SynopsisTheorizing the effects of memory, absence, and disappearance in classical theatre - the aesthetics of ruins.Trade ReviewIt has been a long time since I read a work of great and serious scholarship with such enjoyment. Impressive in expression, content, and imbued by an encompassing imaginative 'presence' unusual in academic writing . . . As a scholar who has spent his life researching within the realms (sometimes arcane) of ancient theatre, I repeatedly encountered both facts previously unknown to me, or interpretations of familiar subjects cast in a manner that displayed and illuminated them in such an entirely new light, that they seemed freshly fashioned and novel. I admire this book greatly."" - Richard C. Beacham, King's College, London""A gripping study of classical theatre's preservation of its own goneness. This is a learned, innovative, and wonderfully readable book that overthrows the methodological constraints of archeo-historicism to elaborate (from rich evidence) the self-forgetting that conditions the theatre at its roots . . . a powerful, marvelous book."" - Ellen MacKay, University of Chicago
£65.50
LUP - University of Michigan Press Goatfoot Milktongue Twinbird
Book SynopsisThese essays and interviews from 1970-76 are lively, pointed, often polemical. They derive from a unified point of view about creativity and about the function of poetry. For the interested reader they can provide a key to the universe of the contemporary poet.
£18.95
LUP - University of Michigan Press Walking Down the Stairs
Book SynopsisCollects Kinnell’s thoughts about poetry.
£22.75
Cambridge University Press The Cambridge Companion to Popular Fiction Cambridge Companions to Literature
Book SynopsisPopular commercial fiction emerged in the nineteenth century, with serialised novels and sensational penny dreadfuls. Today it remains a multi-million dollar industry giving pleasure to many, but it is also a field of growing interest for scholars and students of literature. This Companion covers the major developments in the history of popular fiction, with specially commissioned chapters on pulp fiction, bestsellers, and comics and graphic narratives. The volume also examines the public and personal everyday contexts within which popular texts are read, highlighting the ways in which such narratives have circulated across a variety of constantly changing media, including theatre, television, cinema and new computer-based digital forms. Case studies from key genres - crime fiction, romance and Gothic horror - as well as a full chronology and guide to further reading make this collection indispensable to all those interested in this complex and vibrant cultural field.Trade Review'It is a subject which stretches back (and forward) in time, across cultures, media, readers or consumers and is constantly shifting, especially now in the light of rapidly developing technology. This is a thorough survey of the current state of academic study of this area … for academics and students it is an invaluable source and guide to a subject, or subjects, of wide social, cultural and academic application.' Stuart James, Reference ReviewsTable of ContentsIntroduction David Glover and Scott McCracken; 1. Publishing, history, genre David Glover; 2. Fiction, theatre, and early cinema Nicholas Daly; 3. Television and serial fictions John Caughie; 4. The public sphere, popular culture and the true meaning of the Zombie Apocalypse Roger Luckhurst; 5. The reader of popular fiction Nicola Humble; 6. Reading time: popular fiction and the everyday Scott McCracken; 7. Gender and sexuality in popular fiction Kaye Mitchell; 8. Pulp sensations Erin A. Smith; 9. Bestselling fiction: machinery, economy, excess Fred Botting; 10. Comic books and graphic novels Hilary Chute and Marianne Dekoven; 11. Popular fictions in the digital age Brenda Silver; Further reading; Index.
£22.79
Taylor & Francis Ltd (Sales) The Theory of Criticsm From Plato to the Present A Reader
Book SynopsisThis book is divided into five parts and covers: representation; subjectivity; form, structure and system; history and society; morality, class and ideology. Each part contains several thematic sections in which extracts from different writers and periods are juxtaposed. The study of literary theory has tended to concentrate on very recent developments. This volume, however, establishes both a sense of the continuities from Plato to the present day as well as the discontinuities. These are presented through comparisons and contrasts across the entire field of critical history.Trade Review "If you seek a reader for the history of ideas...then Professor Selden's book is perfect." Modern Language Review "...an impressive feat of scholarship." Times Literary SupplementTable of ContentsPreface Acknowledgements Introduction Part 1 - Representation 1. Imaginative Representation 2. Mimesis and Realism 3. Nature and Truth 4. Language and Representation Part II - Subjectivity 1. Wit Judgement, Fancy and Imagination 2. Genius, Nature vs Art 3. Emotive Theories 4 Subjective criticism and the reader's reponse 5. Unconscious Processes Part III - Form, System and Structure 1. The Aesthetic Dimension 2. Unity and Literariness 3. Ambiguity and Polysemy 4. Impersonality and the 'death' of the author 5. Rhetoric - Style and point of view 6. Structuree and system 7. Structure and Indeterminacy Part IV - History and Society 1. Tradition and Intertextuality 2. History 3. Literature and 'life' 4. Class and Gender Index
£39.99
British Library Publishing Yesterdays Tomorrows
Book SynopsisJoin Mike Ashley on a characterful tour of the most ingenious and often forgotten books from the rich history of classic British science fiction.
£17.00
Octopus Publishing Group The Heroes of Tolkien
Book SynopsisIn J. R. R Tolkien''s Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit and The Silmarillion, Middle-earth endured cataclysmic wars and critical battles, causing great men, women and mystical creatures to arise, influence and shape the course of its history. Here in this book, Tolkien expert David Day examines the complexities surrounding Tolkien''s portrayal of good and evil, and analyses Middle-earth''s most celebrated heroes and the literary, historical and mythological sources that inspired their creation.This work is unofficial and is not authorized by the Tolkien Estate or HarperCollins Publishers.
£14.24
McFarland & Company George Stevens
Book SynopsisWinner of two Best Director Oscars, George Stevens excelled in a range of genres, gave lustre to some of Hollywood's brightest stars and was revered by his peers. Yet his work has been largely neglected by critics and scholars. This career retrospective highlights Stevens' achievements, particularly in his sweeping "American Dream" trilogy.
£30.39
MY - University of Toronto Press Biblical Epics in Late Antiquity and AngloSaxon
Book SynopsisBiblical Epics in Late Antiquity and Anglo-Saxon England provides an accessible introduction to biblical epic poetry.Trade Review"This ground-breaking study draws long-overdue attention to a magnificent body of Latin epics from late antiquity, including Sedulius's Carmen Paschale and Arator's Historia Apostolica. McBrine traces the promulgation of these poems in Anglo-Saxon England, where scholars like Aldhelm and Bede treasured the depth of learning and pleasure in them, and their influence extends even to vernacular epics like the Old English Genesis and Exodus. Biblical Epics in Late Antiquity and Anglo-Saxon England does more than fill a gap; it fundamentally reconfigures our understanding of literary production in Anglo-Saxon England." -- Daniel Donoghue, John P. Marquand Professor of English, Harvard University "Biblical Epics in Late Antiquity and Anglo-Saxon England is a very accessible introduction to the Latin biblical poets and the major poetic features of their biblical epics. This book is a major contribution to Anglo-Saxon studies and provides new context for the development and reception of Anglo-Latin poetry." -- Miranda Wilcox, Department of English, Brigham Young University "This elegantly written and meticulously researched book may well prove a milestone in Anglo-Saxon studies, combining as it does a magisterial overview of some of the most important Latin texts taught in Anglo-Saxon schools with an intricate and intriguing assessment of their impact on Old English texts that evidently echoed in the vernacular their range and purpose. Brilliant close readings sit alongside sweeping vistas, in a book that should both surprise and stimulate all serious scholars and students of Anglo-Saxon England." -- Andy Orchard, FBA FRSC , Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon in the University of OxfordTable of ContentsPreface Chapter 1 Introduction Chapter 2 Juvencus' Euangeliorum libri quattuor (c. 330 CE) Chapter 3 Cyprianus' Heptateuch (c. 400-425 CE) Chapter 4 Sedulius' Carmen paschale (c. 425-450 CE) Chapter 5 Avitus' Historia spiritalis (c. 500 CE) Chapter 6 Arator's Historia apostolica (c. 544 CE) Chapter 7 Reading Biblical Epics in Early England: Aldhelm, Bede, Alcuin Chapter 8 Old English Biblical Verse: Genesis A, Genesis B, Exodus Chapter 9 Conclusion Appendices Bibliography
£57.80
MP-OKL Uni of Oklahoma Art as Performance Story as Criticism
Book Synopsis
£12.95
LSU Press William Faulkner Toward Yoknapatawpha and Beyond
Book Synopsis
£21.95
LSU Press Freedoms Lawmakers
Book SynopsisProvides the first comprehensive directory of the over 1,500 African Americans who held political office in the South during the Reconstruction era. The book presents an impressive amount of information about the antebellum status, occupations, property ownership, and military service of these officials.
£20.66
LSU Press The Contemporary American ShortStory Cycle The Ethnic Resonance of Genre
Book SynopsisOffers the first systematic history and definition of the short-story cycle as exemplified in contemporary American fiction, bringing attention to the format's wide appeal among various ethnic groups. James Nagel examines in detail eight recent manifestations of the genre, all praised by critics while uniformly misidentified as novels.Trade Review"Whether one reads the book in its entirety or goes to a particular chapter to gain an understanding of a specific writer, the reader is rewarded with a plenitude of original and astute local insights. Nagel's study is to be recommended for students and instructors alike." - Contemporary Literature"
£37.30
Louisiana State University Press Two Covenants
Book SynopsisTwo Covenants serves to expand the definition of the American South by focusing on the contributions of Jews to the culture. While concerned with established concepts such as ethnicity and region, McGraw raises many questions that illustrate the complexity of southern Jewishness and also considers literary representations.
£30.56
Louisiana State University Press Navigating the Fiction of Ernest J. Gaines
Book SynopsisOne of the South's most revered writers, Ernest J. Gaines attracts both popular and academic audiences. In this welcome guide to Gaines's fiction, Keith Clark offers insightful analyses of his novels and short stories.
£32.40
Louisiana State University Press Warren Jarrell and Lowell
Book SynopsisRobert Penn Warren, Randall Jarrell, and Robert Lowell maintained lifelong friendships with one another, often discussing each other's work in private correspondence and published reviews. This book traces the artistic and personal connections between the three writers, uncovering the significance of their parallel literary development.
£45.00
Louisiana State University Press Approximate Gestures
Book SynopsisArgues that the writing of Percival Everett compels readers to retrain their thinking habits and to value uncertainty. Stewart maintains that Everett's fiction challenges its interpreters to question their assumptions, consider the spaces in between categories, and embrace the potential of a larger, more uncertain world.
£37.50
Louisiana State University Press Women Witchcraft and the Inquisition in Spain and
Book SynopsisInvestigates the mystery and unease surrounding the issue of women called before the Inquisition in Spain and its colonial territories in the Americas. The collection gathers scholarship that considers how the Holy Office of the Inquisition functioned as a closed, secret world defined by patriarchal hierarchy and grounded in misogynistic standards.
£36.51
Louisiana State University Press Frank Lloyd Wright and Ralph Waldo Emerson
Book SynopsisAn interdisciplinary volume of literary and cultural scholarship that examines the link between two pivotal intellectual and artistic figures. The book probes the degree to which the transcendentalist author influenced the architect’s campaign against dominant strains of American thought.Trade ReviewPart intellectual biography and part history of American architecture, Ayad Rahmani's book is a rich and engaging exploration of Frank Lloyd Wright's philosophical scaffolding. Rahmani demonstrates, in particular, the centrality of Ralph Waldo Emerson's contributions to Wright's worldview and his architectural theories and craft." - Scott Slovic, University Distinguished Professor of Environmental Humanities, University of Idaho
£36.51
Louisiana State University Press How to Reread a Novel
Book SynopsisA novel is among the most intricate of human creations, the result of thousands of choices and decisions. In How to Reread a Novel, Matthew Clark explicates the intricacies of fiction writing through practical analysis of the resources of narration, demystifying some of the tools novelists use to build worlds.Trade Review“In this refreshingly down-to-earth and approachable book, Matthew Clark focuses on the handling of rhetorical figures and narrative situations in a wide range of authors from Homer to Toni Morrison, revealing in detail the mechanisms by which literary effects are created. Lucidly written, patiently argued, and deeply grounded in a lifetime of literary experience, How to Reread a Novel can change the way we read, amplifying both our understanding and our pleasure.” - Peter J. Rabinowitz, author of Before Reading: Narrative Conventions and the Politics of Interpretation
£38.66
Louisiana State University Press How to Reread a Novel
Book SynopsisA novel is among the most intricate of human creations, the result of thousands of choices and decisions. In How to Reread a Novel, Matthew Clark explicates the intricacies of fiction writing through practical analysis of the resources of narration, demystifying some of the tools novelists use to build worlds.Trade Review“In this refreshingly down-to-earth and approachable book, Matthew Clark focuses on the handling of rhetorical figures and narrative situations in a wide range of authors from Homer to Toni Morrison, revealing in detail the mechanisms by which literary effects are created. Lucidly written, patiently argued, and deeply grounded in a lifetime of literary experience, How to Reread a Novel can change the way we read, amplifying both our understanding and our pleasure.” - Peter J. Rabinowitz, author of Before Reading: Narrative Conventions and the Politics of Interpretation
£25.60
Louisiana State University Press Seamus Heaneys Gifts
Book Synopsis
£30.56
MP-NCA Uni of North Carolina The Land Before Her Fantasy and Experience of
Book SynopsisTo discover how women constructed their own mythology of the West, Kolodny examines the evidence of three generations of women's writing about the frontier. She finds that, although the American frontiersman imagined the wilderness as virgin land, an unspoiled Eve to be taken, the pioneer woman at his side dreamed more modestly of a garden to be cultivated.
£32.21
MP-NCA Uni of North Carolina Unnatural Selections Eugenics in American
Book SynopsisChallenging conventional constructions of the Harlem Renaissance and American modernism, Daylanne English links writers from both movements to debates about eugenics in the Progressive Era.Trade Review"English's most significant contribution is the unusual juxtaposition and sustained connection of literary lives across the matrix of color, class, and gender. Her refusal to isolate 'black' from 'white' and 'male' from 'female' leads her to some rather remarkable readings, giving this book a formidable intellectual heft." - Matthew Pratt Guterl, Indiana University"
£30.56
MP-NCA Uni of North Carolina My Southern Home The South and Its People
Book SynopsisThe culmination of William Wells Brown's long writing career, My Southern Home is the story of Brown's search for a home in a land of slavery and racism. Brown (1814-84), a prolific and celebrated abolitionist and writer often recognised as the first African American novelist for Clotel (1853), was born enslaved in Kentucky and escaped to Ohio in 1834.
£40.80
MP-NCA Uni of North Carolina This Violent Empire The Birth of an American
Book SynopsisTrade ReviewIn this much anticipated work, Carroll Smith-Rosenberg takes up Crevecoeur's challenge 'What then is the American, this new man?' and boldly answers: A deeply divided subject of This Violent Empire, this United States. In exposing republican citizens' desires and fears, she not only opens up new realms of thought and inquiry--she makes clear that no genuine understanding of the new nation can overlook the profoundly confounded and contested cultural construction of 'the American, this new man.'--Michael Meranze, University of California, Los Angeles|""Smith-Rosenberg maps the genesis of a historical dilemma, how the United States' vaunted diversity and emphasis on unity often function in bitter opposition. Historically rich and theoretically sophisticated, This Violent Empire studies the social, material, urban, intercultural, and international contexts through which an impossibly unified American identity was imagined in the magazines, literature, and art of the early United States.""--Dana D. Nelson, Vanderbilt University|""Scholars of the new nation and its culture have been waiting twenty years for this book--and it is well worth the wait. We will no longer hear that the most powerful actors of the 'founding' did not think or talk creatively about Indians, or slaves, or women. This Violent Empire reaches deep into the national psyche and broadly into the cultural practices that defined Americans and their 'Others' in a formative period; it is a tour de force of political and cultural analysis that informs us all.""--David Waldstreicher, Temple University
£33.71
MP-NCA Uni of North Carolina A Bibliography of Italian Dialect Dictionaries
Book SynopsisUsing W. Von Wartburg's critical bibliography of dialect and patois as a key reference, this work is a complete bibliography of Italian dialect dictionaries that had appeared at the time of its publication.
£22.80
MP-NCA Uni of North Carolina Other Voices A Study of the Late Poetry of Luis
Book SynopsisThrough careful reading of Luis Cernuda's later poetry, written after 1936, Alexander Coleman argues that Luis Cernuda was a poet whose primary impulse in his art was the suppression of the subjective and the consequent objectivization of poetry.
£23.96
MP-NCA Uni of North Carolina Lope de Vega El Peregrino en Su Patria
Book SynopsisThis critical, annotated edition and study of a long-neglected work by Lope de Vega reveals the philosophical seriousness that the author in his early maturity, anticipating Cervantes' Persiles y Segismunda by more than a decade, brought to his treatment of the Byzantine novel or novel-of-adventures.
£37.95
MP-NCA Uni of North Carolina HalfTold Tales Dilemmas of Meaning in Three French Novels
Book SynopsisPhilip Stewart demonstrates that in each of three novels - Marivaux's La Vie de Marianne, Diderot's La Religieuse, and Rousseau's Julie ou la Nouvelle Heloise - the characters' sincerity disguises how incompletely the meaning of their own experience is resolved.
£23.96
Northwestern University Press Romanticism
Book SynopsisThe renowned scholar Rüdiger Safranski's Romanticism: A German Affair both offers an accessible overview of Romanticism and, more critically, traces its lasting influence, for better and for ill, on German culture. This is essential reading for anyone interested in the power of art, culture, and ideas in the life of a nation.
£29.96
Northwestern University Press The Art of Distances
Book SynopsisIdentifies an insistent preoccupation with interpersonal distance in a strand of twentieth-century European and Anglophone literature that includes the work of George Orwell, Elias Canetti, Iris Murdoch, Walter Benjamin, Günter Grass, and Damon Galgut. Corina Stan demonstrates that these authors reimagined how people can live together and provided alternative ways of thinking about community.Trade ReviewThe Art of Distances is an excellent book that uniquely demonstrates Stan’s amazing talent both as a reader of fictional texts and as a philosophical synthesizer. She delivers compelling arguments and elegant readings of the texts, making her thesis bold and original in its scope."" - Jean-Michel Rabaté, fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and author of The Pathos of Distance""This book is a veritable tour de force of writers and critics spanning across the entire twentieth century. The chapters are meticulously researched and presented, each containing a wealth of information that presents the authors in a new light. Stan has done an impressive, even extraordinary amount of work in her labors to assemble so many disparate authors, philosophers, and critics."" - Verena Andermatt Conley, author of Spatial Ecologies: Urban Sites, State and World-Space in French Cultural Theory
£33.20
Northwestern University Press The Sublime South
Book SynopsisPresents the first systematic study of cultural images of Andalusia as Spain's Orient and the impact they have had on nation-building and modernization. José Luis Venegas deftly explores Spain's shifting engagements with oriental identity and otherness by looking at a territory that is institutionally embedded in the nation-state while symbolically placed between inclusion and abjection.
£27.96
Northwestern University Press Strategic Occidentalism
Book SynopsisExamines the transformation, in both aesthetics and infrastructure, of Mexican fiction since the late 1970s. During this time a framework has emerged characterized by the corporatization of publishing, a frictional relationship between Mexican literature and global book markets, and the desire of Mexican writers to break from dominant models of national culture.Trade ReviewStrategic Occidentalism is a landmark study in contemporary Mexican literature that combines exhaustive, original research with clear thinking and stylish prose. Sanchez Prado establishes critical dialogues with major theorists in world, Latin American, and Mexican literary studies, but does so in constructively critical ways. "" - Brian Price, author of Cult of Defeat in Mexico's Historical Fiction: Failure, Trauma, and Loss
£27.96
Northwestern University Press Karl Kraus and the Discourse of Modernity
Book SynopsisReconsiders the literary works of the Viennese satirist, journalist, and playwright Karl Kraus (1874-1936). Ari Linden reads Kraus's work both on its own terms and alongside philosophy and critical theory, yielding a portrait of Kraus as an irrepressible figure in the modernist tradition.Trade ReviewAri Linden's Karl Kraus and the Discourse of Modernity offers an illuminating view onto Kraus's three major creative works, The Last Days of Mankind, Cloudcuckooland, and The Third Walpurgisnacht. Linden's principal contribution is an original analysis of Kraus's use of language in its relation to his contemporary reality-and in particular World War I, the creation of the Austrian Republic in the 1920s, and the era of National Socialism." - Michael W. Jennings, coauthor of Walter Benjamin: A Critical Life "Ari Linden's Karl Kraus and the Discourse of Modernity offers a compelling portrait of Kraus as a cultural critic in dark times, whose work runs parallel to other major figures of modernism. Linden offers measured assessments of Kraus's successes and limitations, his power and powerlessness, and what they offered, and continue to offer, to later generations of readers and critics." - Kirk Wetters, author of The Opinion System: Impasses of the Public Sphere from Hobbes to Habermas "Enormously erudite and enviably conversant with critical theory, Ari Linden convincingly argues that modernism cannot be fully understood without taking account of the towering - but still often neglected - figure of Karl Kraus." - William Collins Donahue, author of Holocaust as Fiction: Bernhard Schlink's "Nazi Novels" and Their FilmsTable of Contents Acknowledgements Abbreviations Introduction: Toward a Krausian Theory of Modernity 1. Reciting War: The Last Days of Mankind (1915-22) 2. On Birds, Wars, and Fragile Republics: Cloudcuckooland (1923) 3. "Where Illegality Becomes the Law": The Third Walpurgis Night (1933/52) 4. "A Monstrous Non-Entity": Kierkegaard, Kraus, and Benjamin 5. "Origin is the Goal": Adorno and Kraus Coda: "Shadows Cast Bodies": Kraus and Posterity Bibliography Notes Index
£89.10
Northwestern University Press The Saving Line Benjamin Adorno and the Caesuras
Book SynopsisThrows fresh light on the intellectual exchange and disagreements between Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adorno, the problematic conjunction of secular reason and negative theology in their thinking, and their appropriations of ancient and modern legacies.Trade ReviewTrenchant, lucid, and compelling. This book is a rare achievement: a study by an extraordinarily gifted literary and philosophical thinker who patiently and carefully elucidates notoriously obscure and challenging texts, fully cognizant of the larger intellectual claims informing them and his readings of them. The book alters and deepens our understanding of Adorno and Benjamin, reveals new depths to their implicit dialogue with each other within their writings, and demonstrates how their work continues to provide insights and inspiration for the study of literary narrative." - Henry W. Pickford, author of Thinking with Tolstoy and Wittgenstein: Expression, Emotion, and Art (Northwestern University Press, 2016)Table of Contents Frequently Cited Texts Introduction 1. Benjamin's Hard Caesura: The Hopeful Narrator of Elective Affinities 2. Adorno's Hard Caesura: The Impassive Homeric Narrator 3. Adorno's Soft Caesura: The Immanent Utopia of Penelope's Remark 4. Benjamin's Soft Caesura: The Immanent Utopia of the Embedded Novella Conclusion Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index
£27.96
Northwestern University Press New World Maker Volume 40
Book SynopsisIn an ambitious reappraisal of Langston Hughes's work and legacy, Ryan James Kernan reads Hughes's political poetry in the context of his practice of translation to reveal an important meditation on diaspora.Trade Review“By arguing that translation is central to the origins and reception of Langston Hughes’s poetry, Ryan Kernan’s monumental study travels where no one has gone before—not only across national boundaries but also into geopolitical movements. Examined as both translator and translated, Hughes emerges as the focal point of a Black left internationalism encompassing Europe and Latin America, as well as the US. Kernan’s incisive reliance on translation studies shows quite clearly that the cost of neglecting translation is at once scholarly and ideological.” —Lawrence Venuti, author of Contra Instrumentalism: A Translation Polemic“In this tour de force, Kernan demonstrates the crucial role that international translation networks played in Hughes’s career as well as in the emergence of African diasporic modernist literature more broadly. New World Maker not only gives us the most comprehensive analysis available of translations of Hughes’s work into Spanish, French, and Russian, but also demonstrates through a series of dazzling close readings that Hughes’s work as a translator (of poems by Nicolás Guillén, Regino Pedroso, Vladimir Mayakovsky, and Federico García Lorca, among others) was instrumental in the development of his own poetics.” —Brent Hayes Edwards, author of The Practice of Diaspora: Literature, Translation, and the Rise of Black Internationalism“New World Maker is a brilliant account of Langston Hughes’s complex transnational literary engagements and the significance of translation in understanding his poetry. Based on extensive and original archival research, situating Hughes in a variety of international literary and political conversations moving from Havana to the Soviet Union to Spain to Haiti, it constitutes a major rethinking of Hughes’s poetic career. By the end of Kernan’s study, one comes to realize that Langston Hughes may very well be the most widely translated American poet of the twentieth century. New World Maker offers a fascinating reevaluation of this major figure, the history of African American literature and radicalism, and the importance of translation in Black diaspora aesthetics.” —Michelle Stephens, author of Skin Acts: Race, Psychoanalysis, and the Black Male Performer
£32.96
Northwestern University Press Wages of Evil
Book SynopsisIncorporates sources from philosophy, criminology, psychology, and history to argue that Dostoevsky's thinking about punishment was shaped not only by his Christian ethics but also by the debates on penal theory and practice unfolding during his lifetime.Table of Contents Introduction Chapter 1: The Scaffold and the Rod: Dostoevsky on the Death Penalty and Corporal Punishment Chapter 2 : "Squaring the Circle": The Justice of Punishment Chapter 3: Foregoing Punishment: Dostoevsky’s Third Category and the Case of Ekaterina Kornilova Chapter 4: "A Mummy" or a "Resurrected" Self? Chapter 5: "India Rubber," the "Living Soul," and the Process of Moral Change Chapter 6: Approximations of Justice: The Novel in the CourtroomAfterwordNotesBibliography
£29.96
Northwestern University Press Literary Conclusions
Book SynopsisPresents a new theory of textual endings in eighteenth-century literature and thought. Analysing works by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and Heinrich von Kleist, Oliver Simons shows how the emergence of new kinds of literary endings around 1800 is inextricably linked to the history of philosophical and scientific concepts.Trade Review“This is a well written and forcefully argued study that succeeds in bringing out an important and heretofore unrecognized curve of literary-historical development across what must be regarded as the most significant phase of German cultural history. Simons’s command of the scholarship is exemplary, combining close textual analysis with a broad view of literary and intellectual history. The book’s contribution to current discussions in the scholarship—about the historical study of form and the place of the history of knowledge in literary historical study—is substantial.” —David E. Wellbery, editor-in-chief of A New History of German Literature“Simons operates on an elaborate and cutting-edge theoretical level. The readings in the book can be described as combining new formalist thinking with historical epistemology in the tradition of Foucault and the New Historicism. Simons’s book is innovative and exemplary at the same time, and this, in my view, is an enormous accomplishment.” —Rüdiger Campe, author of The Game of Probability: Literature and Calculation from Pascal to Kleist""This thought-provoking book greatly enriches our understanding of a key juncture in literary history by drawing attention to the ways in which literary genres, patterns of emplotment, and syntactical structures follow, critique, and complicate forms of reasoning in an age that glorifies reason and despairs of it in turn."" —Márton Dornbach, author of The Saving Line: Benjamin, Adorno, and the Caesuras of Hope (Northwestern University Press, 2021)Table of Contents Acknowledgements Introduction: Thinking Through Conclusions 1. Lessing’s Form of Reason 2. Goethe and the Powers of Conclusion 3. Kleist’s Genres Literary Conclusions: From Urteilskraft to Schlusskraft Notes Bibliography Index
£27.96
Northwestern University Press Literary Conclusions
Book SynopsisPresents a new theory of textual endings in eighteenth-century literature and thought. Analysing works by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and Heinrich von Kleist, Oliver Simons shows how the emergence of new kinds of literary endings around 1800 is inextricably linked to the history of philosophical and scientific concepts.Trade Review“This is a well written and forcefully argued study that succeeds in bringing out an important and heretofore unrecognized curve of literary-historical development across what must be regarded as the most significant phase of German cultural history. Simons’s command of the scholarship is exemplary, combining close textual analysis with a broad view of literary and intellectual history. The book’s contribution to current discussions in the scholarship—about the historical study of form and the place of the history of knowledge in literary historical study—is substantial.” —David E. Wellbery, editor-in-chief of A New History of German Literature“Simons operates on an elaborate and cutting-edge theoretical level. The readings in the book can be described as combining new formalist thinking with historical epistemology in the tradition of Foucault and the New Historicism. Simons’s book is innovative and exemplary at the same time, and this, in my view, is an enormous accomplishment.” —Rüdiger Campe, author of The Game of Probability: Literature and Calculation from Pascal to Kleist""This thought-provoking book greatly enriches our understanding of a key juncture in literary history by drawing attention to the ways in which literary genres, patterns of emplotment, and syntactical structures follow, critique, and complicate forms of reasoning in an age that glorifies reason and despairs of it in turn."" —Márton Dornbach, author of The Saving Line: Benjamin, Adorno, and the Caesuras of Hope (Northwestern University Press, 2021)Table of Contents Acknowledgements Introduction: Thinking Through Conclusions 1. Lessing’s Form of Reason 2. Goethe and the Powers of Conclusion 3. Kleist’s Genres Literary Conclusions: From Urteilskraft to Schlusskraft Notes Bibliography Index
£84.15
Northwestern University Press The Origins of Russian Literary Theory
Book SynopsisReconstructs lost Formalist theories of authorship, of the psychology of narrative structure, and of the social spread of poetic innovations. By recontextualising Russian Formalism within this philological paradigm, the book highlights the aspects of Formalism's legacy that speak to the priorities of twenty-first-century literary studies.Trade Review“Merrill's book is a major reinterpretation of the early stages of literary theory in Russia and their wider impact. Her narrative is attentive to detail, while remaining sure-footed when capturing the bigger picture. A rewarding piece of research that makes a strong contribution to the field.” —Galin Tihanov, author of The Birth and Death of Literary Theory: Regimes of Relevance in Russia and Beyond“With impressive erudition and admirable lucidity, Jessica Merrill offers a strikingly novel reconstruction of Russian Formalism, placing it in a rich and largely neglected historical context. Her extended discussions of folklore and folkloristics, of the emphasis on the spoken as well as the written word, of the relevance of psychological theories and of contemporary politics, force us to reconsider the movement, its achievements, and its legacy. The book is a major contribution to the study of Western literary theory, and more generally, to twentieth-century intellectual history.” —Michael Wachtel, author of The Cambridge Introduction to Russian Poetry“The Origins of Russian Literary Theory is remarkable for the lucidity of its composition. This clear and wide-ranging book makes an original and significant contribution to the study of Russian Formalism and Czech Structuralism, and thereby also to our understanding of the history of literary theory in the twentieth century—and perhaps its future in the twenty-first.” —Ilya Kliger, author of The Narrative Shape of Truth: Veridiction in Modern European Literature“Merrill’s book attests to the inspiring vitality of Russian Formalism for contemporary literary studies. It approaches this subject from a new and insightful perspective and provides provocative vistas on this seminal school of criticism.” —Peter Steiner, author of Russian Formalism: A Metapoetics“The Origins of Russian Literary Theory focuses on the role of comparative philology in the formation of Formalist concepts. The author efficiently considers both branches of the Formalist School—OPOIAZ and the Moscow Linguistic Circle—and explores why they favored folklore studies and sociolinguistic disciplines, such as dialectology (a fact largely disregarded in previous scholarship). As it is quite a departure from the traditional narrow view of Russian Formalism, Merrill’s book is a fascinating read for both literary theorists and intellectual historians.” —Igor Pilshchikov, coeditor of Epokha “ostraneniia” (The Age of “Estrangement”: Russian Formalism and Contemporary Humanities)Table of Contents Acknowledgements Note on the Text Introduction: The Philological Paradigm 1.Comparative Philology 2.The Author as Performer 3.The Psychology of Poetic Form 4.Inside the Moscow Linguistic Circle: Poetic Dialectology 5.Structuralisms Conclusion: Formalism and Philology in the Twenty-First Century Appendix Notes Bibliography Index
£29.96
Northwestern University Press Pierre Macherey and the Case of Literary
Book SynopsisRevisits A Theory of Literary Production (1966) to show how Pierre Machereyâs remarkable - and still provocative - early work can contribute to contemporary discussions about the act of reading and the politics of formal analysis.Trade Review“With its exquisitely written preface and stimulating contributions by Macherey and other scholars, this collection brings long-overdue attention to the neglected and misunderstood elements of Macherey’s work, making that work a timely rejoinder to debates on a range of vital issues: reading and discursivity, the relationship between literature and philosophy, the politics of form and formalism, and the legacy of the Althusserian project. At a time when anti-intellectualism holds thought in its sway, in academe as elsewhere, the interventionist import of this volume cannot be overstated.” —Rey Chow, author of A Face Drawn in Sand: Humanistic Inquiry and Foucault in the Present“Bringing together a stellar cast of writers and scholars, this collection offers a most eloquent testimony to the lasting enigma of Pierre Macherey’s brilliant if also frequently misread first book, A Theory of Literary Production. Audrey Wasser and Warren Montag prove the continued relevance of Macherey’s proposal in the context of French Marxism and its creative dialogue with psychoanalysis, the history of the sciences, and the critique of ideology.” —Bruno Bosteels, author of The Actuality of CommunismTable of Contents Preface - Warren Montag and Audrey Wasser Postface to Pour une thÉorie de la production littÉraire (2014) - Pierre Macherey 1. Why Read, Macherey? - Audrey Wasser 2. Spoken and Unspoken - Ellen Rooney 3. Baudelaire’s Shadow: On Poetic Determination - Nathan Brown 4. What is Materialist Analysis? Pierre Macherey’s Spinozist Epistemology - Nick Nesbitt 5. Blackness: N’est Pas? - David Marriott 6. What Do We Mean When We Speak of the Surface of a Text? - Warren Montag 7. Reading Althusser - Pierre Macherey 8. Between Literature and Philosophy: An Interview with Pierre Macherey - Pierre Macherey and Joseph Serrano Bibliography of Works by Pierre Macherey Notes Index
£27.71
Northwestern University Press Traces of the Unseen Volume 43
Book SynopsisProvides a richly illustrated examination of photography as a technology for documenting, creating, and understanding the processes of modernization in turn-of-the-century Brazil and the Amazon.Trade Review“Traces of the Unseen is an innovative study on the role of photography in revealing the violent underside of modernization in Brazil. Through a careful analysis of visual records about key events in the country’s history—the Canudos massacre, the Amazonian rubber boom and its aftermath—the author shows how photographers including Claude Lévi-Strauss, Roger Casement, and Mário de Andrade drew attention to forgotten communities, victims of Brazil’s stride toward progress. A must-read for those interested in the iconography of Brazilian modernity.” —Patricia Vieira, author of States of Grace: Utopia in Brazilian CultureTable of Contents Introduction Acknowledgments Chapter 1 - Corpse: The Nation in a Decomposing Portrait Chapter 2 - Scars: Humanitarianism and the Colonial Point of View Chapter 3 - Debris: The Indigenous Past in an Ethnographer’s Dream Chapter 4 - Shadows: The Amazonian Worker and the Modernist Traveler Epilogue: Fire Bibliography Notes Index
£28.76
Northwestern University Press Dostoevskys Provocateurs
Book SynopsisLike so many other elements of his work, Fyodor Dostoevsky’s deliberate deployment of provocation was both prescient and precocious. In this book, Lynn Ellen Patyk singles out these forms of incitement as a communicative strategy that drives his paradoxical art.Table of Contents Introduction. “Why don’t we reduce all this reasonableness to dust”: An Introduction to Dostoevskian Provocation Chapter 1. “Or I am not I”: Ontological Provocation in The Double Chapter 2. “I’ll say it in the whole world’s face”: Provoking Confession and Provoking Comedy in Notes from Underground Chapter 3. “That a girl!” Dostoevsky’s Feminist Provocation in The Idiot Chapter 4. “No one is pleased and everyone is angry”: The Diary of a Right-Wing Provocateur Chapter 5. “But the Devil was overcome”: The End of Provocation in The Brothers Karamazov Conclusion. “I came not to send peace”: Problems in Dostoevsky’s Provocative Authorship
£25.56
University Press of Florida Irish Cosmopolitanism Location and Dislocation
Book SynopsisTrade ReviewClearly written, convincingly argued, and transformative.”—Nicholas Allen, author of Modernism, Ireland and Civil War “Goes beyond ‘statism’ and postnationalism toward a cosmopolitics of Irish transnationalism in which national belonging and national identity are permanently in transition.”—Gregory Castle, author of The Literary Theory Handbook “Shows how three important Irish writers crafted forms of cosmopolitan thinking that spring from, and illuminate, the painful realities of colonialism and anti-colonial struggle.”—Marjorie Howes, author of Colonial Crossings: Figures in Irish Literary History “Asserting the simultaneity of national and global frames of reference, this illuminating book is a fascinating and timely contribution to Irish Modernist Studies.”—Geraldine Higgins, author of Heroic Revivals from Carlyle to Yeats
£15.26
MP-FLO Uni Press of Florida Empire and Pilgrimage in Conrad and Joyce
Book SynopsisTrade ReviewOriginal and significant. This book shows us how Conrad and Joyce manipulate representations of imperialist belief in the sacred to indict Western culture for its racist colonization. This striking reading of modernism emphasizes Conrad's and Joyce's use of chaos in general and pilgrimage in particular in terms of mapmaking, racial denigration, and strategies of power. Szczeszak-Brewer makes spectacular connections between sacred language, nation building, and literary representation." - Georgia Johnston, author of The Formation of Twentieth-Century Queer Autobiography
£15.26
