Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000 Books

Book SynopsisThis is an exhibition catalogue at the Grolier Club, September 16 - November 22, 2008. The theme of loss is expressed or implied in much of Virginia Woolf's fiction and non-fiction, and one that resonates with the story of her own life, from her childhood, through her loss of family, and of friends, and of security in two World Wars, to her struggles with mental illness and her eventual suicide. And yet Virginia Woolf was, by all accounts, a lively and engaging woman, full of warmth, humor, maternal feeling (for her sister's children, as she had none of her own), passion, and exultation. She had a prodigiously active career, and she stood at the center of a large group of notable, engaged figures, many of them public intellectuals at the forefront of their generation, who were connected to her (and to each other) by bonds of family, affinity, shared artistic and social enterprise and, above all, affection. This group, and their friends, produced mountains of books, hundreds of square feet of paintings, and reams of press. The selection of material in this recent Grolier Club exhibition and its accompanyning catalogue documents the mutual enrichment of their life and work, and the resonance of Virginia Woolf's greatest literary work with the story of her life and the lives of those who were dear to her. Much of the material is reproduced here for the first time. Items from William Beekman's collection of Virginia Woolf and Bloomsbury span her life and career, and include photographs, letters, association copies, artwork, and ephemera. From Barbara Dobkin's collection of feminist history are a number of items from Virginia's adolescent library as well as material documenting her relationship with Vita Sackville-West. The Mortimer Rare Book Room at Smith College provided many early images - drawn from Leslie Stephen's photo albums - as well as copiously annotated proof material and samples from Virginia's important correspondence with Lytton Strachey. It is designed by Jerry Kelly, and printed in an edition of 1500 copies.

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Book SynopsisHow to Live, What to Do is an indispensable introduction to and guide through the work of a poet equal in power and sensibility to Shakespeare and Milton. Like them, Stevens shaped a new language, fashioning an instrument adequate to describing a completely changed environment of fact, extending perception through his poems to align what Emerson called our “axis of vision” with the universe as it came to be understood during his lifetime, 1879–1955, a span shared with Albert Einstein. Projecting his own imagination into spacetime as “a priest of the invisible,” persistently cultivating his cosmic consciousness through reading, keeping abreast of the latest discoveries of Einstein, Max Planck, Niels Bohr, Louis de Broglie, and others, Stevens pushed the boundaries of language into the exotic territories of relativity and quantum mechanics while at the same time honoring the continuing human need for belief in some larger order. His work records how to live, what to do in this strange new world of experience, seeing what was always seen but never seen before. Joan Richardson, author of the standard two-volume critical biography of Stevens and coeditor with Frank Kermode of the Library of America edition of the Collected Poetry and Prose, offers concise, lucid captures of Stevens’s development and achievement. Over the ten years of researching her Stevens biography, Richardson read all that he read, as well as his complete correspondence, journals, and notebooks. She weaves the details drawn from this deep involvement into the background of American cultural history of the period. This fabric is further enlivened by her preparation in philosophy and the sciences, creating in these thirteen panels a contemporary version of a medieval tapestry sequence, with Stevens in the place of the unicorn, as it were, holding our attention and eliciting, as necessary angel, individual solutions to the riddles of our existence on this planet spinning and hissing around its cooling star at 18.5 miles per second.

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Book SynopsisA comprehensive assessment of Holocaust literature, from World War II to the present day

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Book SynopsisHow can traditions be subversive? The kinship between African traditions and novels has been under debate for the better part of a century, but the conversation has stagnated because of a slowness to question the terms on which it is based: orality vs. writing, tradition vs. modernity, epic vs. novel. These rigid binaries were, in fact, invented by colonialism and cemented by postcolonial identity politics. Thanks to this entrenched paradigm, far too much ink has been poured into the so-called Great Divide between oral and writing societies, and to the long-lamented decline of the ways of old.Given advances in social science and humanities research - studies in folklore, performance, invented traditions, colonial and postcolonial ethnography, history, and pop culture - the moment is right to rewrite this calcified literary history. This book is not another story of subverted traditions, but of subversive ones.West African epics like Sunjata, Samori, and Lat-Dior offer a space from which to think about, and criticize, the issues of today, just as novels in European languages do.Through readings of documented performances and major writers like Yambo Ouologuem and Amadou Hampâté Bâ of Mali, Ahmadou Kourouma of Ivory Coast, and Aminata Sow Fall and Boubacar Boris Diop of Senegal, this book conducts an entirely new analysis of West African oral epic and its relevance to contemporary world literature.

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Book SynopsisWhile the later work of the great Modernist poet Marianne Moore was hugely popular during her final two decades, since her death critics have condemned it as trivial. This book challenges that assessment: with fresh readings of many of the late poems and of the iconic, cross-dressing public persona Moore developed to deliver them, Apparition of Splendor demonstrates that Moore used her late-life celebrity in daring and innovative ways to activate egalitarian principles that had long animated her poetry. Dressed as George Washington in cape and tricorn and writing about accessible topics like sports, TV shows, holidays, love, activism, mortality and celebrity itself, she reached a wide cross-section of Americans, encouraging them to consider what democracy means in their daily lives, particularly around issues of gender, sexuality, racial integration, class, age, and immigration. Moore actively sought out publication in popular venues (like Vogue, The New Yorker, and the Saturday Evening Post, etc.) and wrote on material chosen to directly appeal to the audiences there, influencing younger contemporaries, including poets like Ashbery, O’Hara, and Bishop, and artists like Warhol, Yoko Ono, and Ray Johnson."Apparition of Splendor is brilliant and necessary. It provides an extended look at Marianne Moore’s late poetry that no other book-length study has taken on…. Gregory’s deep expertise is evident throughout. Her discussions make visible startling networks of connections between poems, and – while maintaining keen focus on the late poems – briskly but sensitively draw upon the earlier poems to clarify continuities and suggest transformations. Her archival and extra-literary research, in Moore’s papers and in regard to general cultural contexts, is wonderfully on display with every page.The subject of Moore’s late poetry is woefully understudied, and this book will conduct an important intervention in critical tendencies to dismiss this body of work. Apparition of Splendor is a major contribution to Moore studies and to studies of 20th-century American poetry.” - Linda Kinnahan, Duquesne University, author of Feminist Modernism, Poetics, and the New Economy: Mina Loy, Lola Ridge, and Marianne Moore Published by the University of Delaware Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.Table of Contents Acknowledgments Abbreviations Illustrations Introduction—Democracy, Celebrity, Poetry Chapter One—“Apparition of Splendor”: Poet as Performance Chapter Two—Sports Poetry: Populism, Race, and the Ethics of Celebration Chapter Three—Occasional Work: Culture, Spirit, Community Chapter Four—Embracing Affect: Love, Interest, and the Personal Chapter Five—“Still Leafing”: Age, Activism, Immortality Epilogue—“Correspondances”: Ma–Ray–Andy Appendix—The Retrospect, Moore’s Shifting Texts, and Her Archive About the Author Endnotes Bibliography

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Book SynopsisLatin American Literature at the Millennium: Local Lives, Global Spaces analyzes literary constructions of locality from the early 1990s to the mid 2010s. In this astute study, Raynor reads work by Roberto Bolaño, Valeria Luiselli, Luiz Ruffato, Bernardo Carvalho, João Gilberto Noll, and Wilson Bueno to reveal representations of the human experience that unsettle conventionally understood links between locality and geographical place. The book raises vital considerations for understanding the region’s transition into the twenty-first century, and for evaluating Latin American authors’ representations of everyday place and modes of belonging.Trade Review“A major contribution to the study of the aesthetics and material practices of literature in Latin America today. Engaging with the Hispanophone and the Lusophone world, Raynor provides a useful account of questions of space, mobility and globalization. Compelling in its new readings of Latin American authors that have redefined literary writing in Spanish and Portuguese: Bolaño, Luiselli, Ruffato, Noll, among others.” -- Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado * author of Strategic Occidentalism: On Mexican Fiction, the Neoliberal Book Market, and the Question of World Literature *"Uneven experiences of globalization in Spanish America and Brazil—as captured in turn-of-the-twenty-first-century cultural production—are the focus of Latin American Literature at the Millennium. With rich documentation and textured close readings, Raynor breathes new life into discussions on migration, acceleration, spaciality and the multitude. Through its chapters, the travails of local spaces in an integrated world come to bear on the literary historiography of the region." -- Héctor Hoyos * author of Beyond Bolaño: The Global Latin American Novel *"Local Lives, Global Spaces outlines the relationship between globalization and literature in Latin America, offering a key contribution to an exciting, emerging field. Critics and scholars working in the fields of Spanish American and Brazilian literature, narrative theory, and contemporary fiction will also benefit from this book." -- Catalina Quesada-Gómez * co-editor of Cámara de eco. Homenaje a Severo Sarduy *"Dr. Raynor’s book approaches globalization from an unexpected and little explored angle. Through detailed textual analysis, careful contextualization of literary works, and perspicacious dialogue with critical works, Dr. Raynor shows how Latin American literature questions entrenched (though not immutable) dynamics of power and, thereby proposes other ways of understanding not only the region’s cultural production, but also how we understand the role that world literature plays in interrogating relations of political and cultural power." -- Leila Lehnen * author of Citizenship and Crises in Contemporary Brazilian Literature *"Specialists on the Latin American novel and those with an interest in Brazilian literature constitute the primary audience for this book." * Hispania *"This book will be a valuable resource to students and scholars of Latin American fiction." * Luso-Brazilian Review *“A major contribution to the study of the aesthetics and material practices of literature in Latin America today. Engaging with the Hispanophone and the Lusophone world, Raynor provides a useful account of questions of space, mobility and globalization. Compelling in its new readings of Latin American authors that have redefined literary writing in Spanish and Portuguese: Bolaño, Luiselli, Ruffato, Noll, among others.” -- Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado * author of Strategic Occidentalism: On Mexican Fiction, the Neoliberal Book Market, and the Question *"Uneven experiences of globalization in Spanish America and Brazil—as captured in turn-of-the-twenty-first-century cultural production—are the focus of Latin American Literature at the Millennium. With rich documentation and textured close readings, Raynor breathes new life into discussions on migration, acceleration, spaciality and the multitude. Through its chapters, the travails of local spaces in an integrated world come to bear on the literary historiography of the region." -- Héctor Hoyos * author of Beyond Bolaño: The Global Latin American Novel *"Local Lives, Global Spaces outlines the relationship between globalization and literature in Latin America, offering a key contribution to an exciting, emerging field. Critics and scholars working in the fields of Spanish American and Brazilian literature, narrative theory, and contemporary fiction will also benefit from this book." -- Catalina Quesada-Gómez * co-editor of Cámara de eco. Homenaje a Severo Sarduy *"Dr. Raynor’s book approaches globalization from an unexpected and little explored angle. Through detailed textual analysis, careful contextualization of literary works, and perspicacious dialogue with critical works, Dr. Raynor shows how Latin American literature questions entrenched (though not immutable) dynamics of power and, thereby proposes other ways of understanding not only the region’s cultural production, but also how we understand the role that world literature plays in interrogating relations of political and cultural power." -- Leila Lehnen * author of Citizenship and Crises in Contemporary Brazilian Literature *"Specialists on the Latin American novel and those with an interest in Brazilian literature constitute the primary audience for this book." * Hispania *"This book will be a valuable resource to students and scholars of Latin American fiction." * Luso-Brazilian Review *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Patterning the Local within the Global 1 Migration Chronotopes: Imagining Time and Space in Two Brazilian Novels 2 Speed Control: The Politics of Mobility in Roberto Bolaño’s 2666 and Its Theatrical Adaptation by Àlex Rigola 3 Ambivalent Spaces: Allegories of Ruin in Bernardo Carvalho’s Teatro and Gilberto Noll’s Harmada 4 Another City and Another Life: Writing Multitudes in Valeria Luiselli’s Los ingrávidos Conclusion: Ser de un interval Appendix: Testing Regionalism, Migrant Narratives, and the Construction of Brazil: An Interview with Luiz Ruffato Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisThere is no shortage of explanations for the longevity of Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, which has been interpreted as both religious allegory and frontier myth, with Crusoe seen as an example of the self-sufficient adventurer and the archetypal colonizer and capitalist. Defoe’s original has been reimagined multiple times in legions of Robinsonade or castaway stories, but the Crusoe myth is far from spent. This wideranging collection brings together eleven scholars who suggest new and unfamiliar ways of thinking about this most familiar of works, and who ask us to consider the enduring appeal of “Crusoe,” more recognizable today than ever before.Trade Review"The editors have gathered a collection of excellent essays by eminent scholars on the continuing relevance and power after three hundred years of Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. Informative and provocative, these essays provide an essential testimonial to the cultural and philosophical implications of Defoe’s classic novel through those centuries into our own." -- John Richetti * editor of The Cambridge Companion to Robinson Crusoe *"This rich, wide-ranging volume brings into view the kinds of concerns and contexts that have informed the reception of Robinson Crusoe itself as well as countless remediations: gender, individualism, imperialism; pantomime, cinema, animal stories for children; more variously, Newton, tobacco, the sequel, and Crusoeian iconicity. This collection is valuable both for its deepening contribution to Defoe studies and its broadening relevance to a larger conversation about the genres of the Robinsonade." -- Rivka Swenson * author of Essential Scots and the Idea of Unionism in Anglo-Scottish Literature, 1603-1832 *"[An]outstanding collection of essays that demonstrates the enduring significance of literature’s most famous castaway." * Restoration Journal *"A highly entertaining and enlightening collection of contemporary essays." * The Eighteenth-Century Intelligencer *Table of ContentsA Note on the Text Introduction Andreas K. E. Mueller and Glynis Ridley PART ONE: Generic Revisions 1 The Martian: Crusoe at the Final Frontier Glynis Ridley 2 Robinson’s Transgender Voyage: or, Burlesquing Crusoe Geoffrey Sill 3 Animal Crusoes: Anthropomorphism and Identification in Children’s Robinsonades Amy Hicks and Scott Pyrz PART TWO: Mind and Matter 4 Defoe and Newton: Modern Matter Laura Brown 5 Crusoe’s Ecstasies: Passivity, Resignation, and Tobacco Rites Daniel Yu 6 Taken by Storm: Robinson Crusoe and Aqueous Violence Jeremy Chow 7 Life Gets Tedious: Crusoe and the Threat of Boredom Pat Rogers PART THREE: Character and Form 8 Crusoe’s Rambling Benjamin F. Pauley 9 Crusoe’s Encounters with the World and the Problem of Justice in The Farther Adventures Maximillian E. Novak 10 “To Us the Mere Name Is Enough”: Robinson Crusoe, Myth, and Iconicity Andreas K. E. Mueller Acknowledgments Bibliography Notes on Contributors Index

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Book SynopsisSince the appearance of her first novel, The Country Girls, in 1960—a book that undermined the nation’s ideal of innocent and pious Irish girlhood­—Edna O’Brien has provoked controversy in her native Ireland and abroad. Indeed, several of her early novels were condemned by church authorities and banned by the Irish government for their frank portrayals of sexual matters and the inner lives of women. Now an internationally acclaimed writer, O’Brien must be critically reassessed for a twenty-first century audience. Edna O’Brien and the Art of Fiction provides an urgent retrospective consideration of one of the English-speaking world’s best-selling and most prolific contemporary authors. Drawing on O’Brien’s fiction as well as archival material, and applying new theoretical approaches—including ecocritical and feminist new materialist readings—this study considers the pioneering and enduring ways O’Brien represents women’s experience, family relationships, the natural world, sex, creativity, and death, and her work’s long anticipation of contemporary movements such as #metoo.Trade Review"In this meticulous, forensic, and illuminating work of scholarship, Dr. O'Connor sets the benchmark for all future studies of one of Ireland's greatest writers. In what amounts to a powerful work of restorative justice, she establishes once and for all the high and deliberate guiding intelligence that animates O'Brien's work." -- Theo Dorgan * author of Orpheus *"This is a scholarly, sensitive, balanced exploration of the work of a great writer. It is beautifully written and very accessible. Maureen O’Connor has left no stone unturned in her painstaking research and the result is a wonderful book, indispensable for anyone with an interest in Edna O’Brien or contemporary Irish literature. Thank you, Maureen O’Connor!" -- Éilís Ní Dhuibhne * author of Little Red and Other Stories *"Readable yet theoretically sophisticated, this welcome new study offers an authoritative look at one of Ireland’s greatest—and historically most underappreciated—writers. O’Connor ranges comprehensively through O’Brien’s canon to trace her career-long feminist critique of Irish society's patriarchal mores. Both a history of O’Brien criticism and an examination of her work, O’Connor’s exciting study offers a forceful defense of O’Brien’s craft and an unapologetic critique of the social forces hampering the reception and interpretation of her canon. This study is destined to become required reading in O’Brien studies." -- Kathleen Costello-Sullivan * author of Trauma and Recovery in the Twenty-First-Century Irish Novel *“Maureen O’Connor nails once and (one hopes) for all the myth of Edna O’Brien as wailing Irish banshee. Instead O’Connor makes a scholarly and at the same time impassioned case for O’Brien as a serious, creative artist thoroughly cognizant of what she is about and decades ahead of her fellow Irish in her analysis of political, social, and environmental ills.” -- Heather Ingman * author of Irish Women's Fiction: From Edgeworth to Enright *“O’Connor’s close readings, coupled with a deft use of theory, nimbly move between texts in O’Brien’s oeuvre, highlighting recurring images and preoccupations, resulting in a valuable critical account that firmly illustrates O’Brien’s mastery as a writer; and asserts her as a figure in Irish literary culture deserving of continued attention.” * Irish University Review *"This is a scholarly, sensitive, balanced exploration of the work of a great writer. It is beautifully written and very accessible. Maureen O’Connor has left no stone unturned in her painstaking research and the result is a wonderful book, indispensable for anyone with an interest in Edna O’Brien or contemporary Irish literature. Thank you, Maureen O’Connor!" -- Éilís Ní Dhuibhne * author of Little Red and Other Stories *"Readable yet theoretically sophisticated, this welcome new study offers an authoritative look at one of Ireland’s greatest—and historically most underappreciated—writers. O’Connor ranges comprehensively through O’Brien’s canon to trace her career-long feminist critique of Irish society's patriarchal mores. Both a history of O’Brien criticism and an examination of her work, O’Connor’s exciting study offers a forceful defense of O’Brien’s craft and an unapologetic critique of the social forces hampering the reception and interpretation of her canon. This study is destined to become required reading in O’Brien studies." -- Kathleen Costello-Sullivan * author of Trauma and Recovery in the Twenty-First-Century Irish Novel *“Maureen O’Connor nails once and (one hopes) for all the myth of Edna O’Brien as wailing Irish banshee. Instead O’Connor makes a scholarly and at the same time impassioned case for O’Brien as a serious, creative artist thoroughly cognizant of what she is about and decades ahead of her fellow Irish in her analysis of political, social, and environmental ills.” -- Heather Ingman * author of Irish Women's Fiction: From Edgeworth to Enright *"In this meticulous, forensic, and illuminating work of scholarship, Dr. O'Connor sets the benchmark for all future studies of one of Ireland's greatest writers. In what amounts to a powerful work of restorative justice, she establishes once and for all the high and deliberate guiding intelligence that animates O'Brien's work." -- Theo Dorgan * author of Orpheus *Table of ContentsPreface and Acknowledgments Introduction: Edna O’Brien, Leader of the Banned 1 Anti-Oedipal Desires 2 The Liberating Sadomasochism of Things 3 The Ungrammatical Sublime 4 Otherworldly Possessions 5 Myth and Mutation 6 Disorder, Dirt, and Death Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisThis groundbreaking study examines how modern Colombian literature—from Gabriel García Márquez to Juan Gabriel Vásquez—reflects one of the world’s most tumultuous entrances into globalization. While these literary icons, one canonical, the other emergent, bookend Colombia’s fall and rise on the world stage, the period between the two was inordinately violent, spanning the Colombian urban novel’s evolution into narco-literature. Marking Colombia’s cultural and literary manifestations as threefold, this book explores García Márquez’s retreat to a rural romanticism that paradoxically made him a global literary icon; the country’s violent end to the twentieth century when its largest economic export was narcotics; and the contemporary period in which a new major author has emerged to create a “literature of national reconstitution.” Harkening back to the Regeneration movement and extending through the early twenty-first century, this book analyzes the cultural implications of Colombia’s relationship to the wider world.Trade Review"Aesthetics/politics. Culture/economics. Poetics plus coffee-bananas-drugs. Local/global. Onto this complex backdrop, Nicholson ably unfolds a capacious account of Colombian writing—from before, during, and after the 'Gabo' phenomenon on through J. G. Vásquez’s fiction. A solidly researched, broad-ranging look at a troubled nation’s struggles for artistic expression and literary viability." -- Gene Bell-Villada * editor of Conversations with Gabriel García Márquez *"The Aesthetic Border follows critics working from a national tradition outwards to globalization and world literature, as opposed to others working on Latin America vis-à-vis the world. Engaging the works of representative authors, Nicholson brilliantly maps out the convergence and divergence of global and national discourses present in the Colombian literary canon." -- Camilo Malagón * assistant professor of Spanish, Ithaca College *"Aesthetics/politics. Culture/economics. Poetics plus coffee-bananas-drugs. Local/global. Onto this complex backdrop, Nicholson ably unfolds a capacious account of Colombian writing—from before, during, and after the 'Gabo' phenomenon on through J. G. Vásquez’s fiction. A solidly researched, broad-ranging look at a troubled nation’s struggles for artistic expression and literary viability." -- Gene Bell-Villada * editor of Conversations with Gabriel García Márquez *"The Aesthetic Border follows critics working from a national tradition outwards to globalization and world literature, as opposed to others working on Latin America vis-à-vis the world. Engaging the works of representative authors, Nicholson brilliantly maps out the convergence and divergence of global and national discourses present in the Colombian literary canon." -- Camilo Malagón * assistant professor of Spanish, Ithaca College *Table of ContentsPreface & Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Gabo Against the World: Gabriel García Márquez and the Poetics of Early Globalization 2. Literary Shipwrecks: Colombian Aesthetic Citizenship after García Márquez 3. Narrating Disruption: From the Novela de la Violencia to the Narco-novela 4. Recasting the Colombian National Story after the Inrush of the World Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisKing of the Hill is A. E. Hotchner's memoir of his impoverished childhood in St. Louis, originally published in 1972. Hotchner's story is one of ingenuity and spirit in the face of economic hardship during the Great Depression. Left to live alone in a rundown hotel while his traveling salesman father is on the road, his mother is hospitalized, and his younger brother is sent to live with relatives, young Hotchner's determination to survive overcomes the challenge of keeping his situation secret. ""Looking for Miracles"" is a sequel to ""King of the Hill"", originally published in 1975. The story takes place in 1936, three years after ""King of the Hill"", when Hotchner bluffs his way into a job as a summer counselor at a camp in the Ozarks. The story is poignant and uplifting, as well as hilariously entertaining. Bound together for the first time, these two boyhood memoirs of Hotchner's will touch readers with their truth, innocence, and joy. Hotchner's ability to convey times of intense hardship in warm and witty language attests to his stature as one of America's great storytellers.

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Book SynopsisFrench philosopher and literary theorist Roland Barthes was one of the leading influences on the post-structuralist movement in twentieth-century literary thought, and some of his best-known works, like "S/Z", speak directly to the essential and individual relationship between a reader and a literary text. Here, in "Incidents", readers have the privilege of going inside the life and thought of Barthes, through a work that is a testament to Barthes' belief that a literary work should invite the full, active participation of the reader. The essays collected in "Incidents", originally published in French shortly after Barthes' death, provide unique insight into the author's life, his personal struggles, and his delights. Though Barthes questioned the act of keeping a journal with the aim of having it published, he decided to undertake a diary-like experiment in four parts. The first, which gives the collection its title, is a revealing personal account of his time living in Morocco. The second, "The Light of the Southwest", is an ode to Barthes' favorite region in France, while in "At Le Palace Tonight", Barthes describes a vibrant Paris entertainment spot. Finally, the journal entries of "Evenings in Paris" reveal Barthes as an older gay man, struggling with his desire for young lovers. Rendered here in a fresh and lyrical translation, "Incidents" will delight fans of Barthes' other works, as well as anyone curious for a look inside the mind of one of the twentieth century's foremost intellectuals.Trade Review"For Barthes, as for Nietzsche, the point is to make us bold, agile, subtle, intelligent, detached. And to give pleasure." - Susan Sontag"

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Book SynopsisEdward Thomas and Wales offers a fascinating re-evaluation of Thomas's writing. Bringing together for the first time the prose and poetry centred in Thomas's ancestral land of Wales, it explores the `Welshness' of Thomas's work and of Thomas himself.

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Book SynopsisWinner of the Best Book Award in Comics History from the Grand Comics Database Honorable Mention, 2019-2020 Research Society for American Periodicals Book Prize The term “graphic novel” was first coined in 1964, but it wouldn’t be broadly used until the 1980s, when graphic novels such as Watchmen and Maus achieved commercial success and critical acclaim. What happened in the intervening years, after the graphic novel was conceptualized yet before it was widely recognized? Dreaming the Graphic Novel examines how notions of the graphic novel began to coalesce in the 1970s, a time of great change for American comics, with declining sales of mainstream periodicals, the arrival of specialty comics stores, and (at least initially) a thriving underground comix scene. Surveying the eclectic array of long comics narratives that emerged from this fertile period, Paul Williams investigates many texts that have fallen out of graphic novel history. As he demonstrates, the question of what makes a text a ‘graphic novel’ was the subject of fierce debate among fans, creators, and publishers, inspiring arguments about the literariness of comics that are still taking place among scholars today. Unearthing a treasure trove of fanzines, adverts, and unpublished letters, Dreaming the Graphic Novel gives readers an exciting inside look at a pivotal moment in the art form’s development. Trade Review"A thoughtful and engaging exploration of the complex disagreements and debates over the term, form and temporality of the 'graphic novel.'" -- Mel Gibson * editor of Superheroes and Identities *"The 1970s are one of the most under-appreciated periods in the history of comic books. As sales collapsed, comic book publishers grasped at any innovation that offered a potential road forward. Paul Williams’s masterful study focuses on this chaotic period as it traces the complex ways that catastrophic change spurred a fundamental reconsideration of what comic books were and could be. Drawing on a vast array of historical documents, Williams shows how the graphic novel became the cultural format of our time." -- Bart Beaty * author of The Greatest Comic Book of All Time *"Accessible and detailed, Williams’s study expands on previous scholarship on the evolution of comics into graphic narratives. Highly recommended." * Choice *"As Williams’ detailed scholarship shows, efforts by major creators like Corben, Will Eisner, and Art Spiegelman secured academic and cultural legitimacy for the graphic novel while ensuring, through their newly integrative approach, a differential art recognized for its aesthetic seriousness yet independent of institutional strictures." * Technical Communication Journal *"There is much to recommend in Williams’ examples of, and conversation around, long-form comics of the period provided throughout the book....An excellent corrective to the scatter-shot references one usually encounters [that] succeeds in correcting some long-standing misconceptions about the development of the graphic novel." * Inks * Review of Dreaming the Graphic Novel in Medienwissenschaft 01/2021 * Medienwissenschaft *"Dreaming the Graphic Novel is a methodological wonder for scholars interested in American popular culture, digital humanities, text mining, and the history of comics and graphic novels. His mixed methodological approach allows him to successfully participate in 'the ongoing recovery of comics studies’ prehistory' as well as establish 'a new way of doing graphic novel history.' Williams’ book should be a required reading...for courses offering an introduction to graphic novels in the U.S. Comics fans, comics scholars, and those interested in the history of graphic novel might also find this a stimulating read." * ImageTexT *"Dreaming the Graphic Novel undertakes the very important task of deepening our understanding of the origins of book format comics and giving a historical context to the anxieties around comics and graphic novels in the 2000s." * European Journal of American Culture *Table of ContentsContents Preface Abbreviations Introduction 1) The Death of the Comic Book 2) Eastern Promise 3) Making Novels 4) The ‘Graphic Novel’ Triumphant 5) Putting the ‘Novel’ into ‘Graphic Novel’ 6) Comics as Literature? Conclusion Appendix Acknowledgments Bibliography

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