Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000 Books

Book SynopsisThis study breaks new ground by examining the profoundly submissive and masochistic posture toward women exhibited by many of Hemingway's heroes, from Jake Barnes in The Sun Also Rises to David Bourne in The Garden of Eden. The discussion draws on the ideas of diverse authors revealing that 'masochistic aesthetic' informs many of the texts.Trade Review"This is a daring and fascinating book, which adds yet another chapter to the recent revisionist work that has altered forever the way we read Hemingway and his writings. Arguing that Hemingway and his male protagonists are consumed by a need to be dominated sexually by women, Fantina alters our understanding of the heterosexuality of Hemingway and his heroes. Sorting carefully through theories of masochism, Fantina cleverly explains the contradictory impulses of Hemingway and his men: their attraction to forbidden desires and acts which seem to stand in such stark contrast to their dominating bravado when in the public eye. Ultimately, this book makes a compelling case for the queer heterosexuality of Hemingway and the male characters he created in his own image. Ernest Hemingway: Machismo and Masochism fills an important gap in recent work on the transgressive sexuality of Hemingway and his characters, and as such will be a welcome contribution by many Hemingway scholars." - Debra A. Moddelmog, author of Reading Desire: In Pursuit of Ernest Hemingway "Considerations of gender and sexuality have been central to Hemingway studies for the past decade. This book s great virtue is that it has something new to tell us about Ernest Hemingway. It has outstanding insights into Hemingway s work." - Carl P. Eby, author of Hemingway s Fetishism: Psychoanalysis and the Mirror of ManhoodTable of ContentsIntroduction: Ernest Hemingway: Machismo and Masochism Hemingway and Theories of Masochism Elements of Hemingway's Masochism Hemingway and the Feminine Complex Defying the Code: Masochism in the Major Texts Hemingway, Race, and Colonialism Reaffirming the Code: Reinscribing Patriarchy

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Book SynopsisUses recent thought in continental philosophy and postmodern theology to interpret hidden and contradictory 'god-ideas' in texts of modernism such as Henry James's The Golden Bowl , Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time , James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man , and Arnold Schoenberg's opera Moses und Aron .Trade Review'The quite amazing stretch of this beautifully written book reaches out effortlessly to the far shores of negative theology and its attendant philosophies. Hegel, Levinas, Derrida, and Kristeva mingle with Proust, Joyce, and HenryJames,until we plunge into Schoenberg and the complexities of Moses und Aron. Erickson knows his philosophical, literary, andmusical stuff - and is neverdull about any of it.' - Mary Ann Caws, DistinguishedProfessor of English, French, and Comparative Literature,The Graduate Center, The City University of New York; Author of Glorious Eccentrics: Modernist Women Painting and Writing (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006) 'This book is very impressive in many respects, offering a comprehensive overview of postmodern theology, detailed discussions of the modern novelby authors such as Henry James and Marcel Proust, and twentieth-century music, focusing onthe work of Arnold Schoenberg. Each chapter is well informed, and demonstrates mastery of available criticism.' - William D. Melaney, Chair, Dept. of English and Comparative Literature, American University in Cairo 'Erickson makes deep and broad connections between the high modernists (most fully late James, Proust, Arnold Schoenberg) and postmodern theological speculation according to which disjunction and rupture are inherent in their veryquest for an ultimate coherence and unity. His book is ambitious, very wellwritten, and brilliant from start to finish.' - David Gordon, Emeritus Professor of English, The Graduate Center, The City University of New YorkTable of ContentsLiterature After the Death of God Reading God/God Writing: The Irrational and Difficult Name The Golden Bowl, Atheology, and Nothing À La Recherche and Proust's Unstable Metaphors of Divinity Proust's Theology of Musical Aesthetics Godless Silences: Modernist Poetry, Musical Atonality, and the Challenge of Coherence Schoenberg's Impossible God: Moses und Aron The Other Side of God: Reading in the Dark

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Book SynopsisGlynn provides a new reading of Vladimir Nabokov s work by seeking to challenge the notion that he was a Symbolist writer concerned with a transcendent reality.Trade Review"This is a striking and original book. Glynn attacks the trend in criticism of Nabokov that reads his work as a Symbolist and instead suggests that a large part of the novelist s work is founded on a dynamic interaction with the theories of Viktor Shklovsky and Henri Bergson. This study explores how Nabokov s project has been transformed by the philosophy of Shklovsky and Bergson into a fictional universe which is at once playful and serious, experimental yet rooted in the everyday, both engaged and moral, a convincing answer to the demeaning arguments that the writer is nothing more than a pure stylist." - Robert Lawson-Peebles, University of ExeterTable of ContentsNabokov as Anti Symbolist Nabokov and Russian Formalism Nabokov and Bergson Pale Fire Lolita Despair Deluded Worlds: King, Queen, Knave, Invitation to a Beheading, and Bend Sinister Afterword

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Book SynopsisFictions of British Decadence is a fresh account of the emergence, development and legacy of fiction written in the era of Oscar Wilde. It examines a broad range of texts by a diverse array of Decadent writers, from familiar figures such as Ernest Dowson and John Davidson to lesser-known innovators such as Arthur Machen and M.P. Shiel.Table of ContentsPreface and Acknowlegements Introduction: British Decadence à rebours The Mystified Class Origins of Decadence Decadent Positionings: Decadence and the Literary Field The Birth of the Decadent in Fiction, 1884-89 Writing Against Decadence, 1890-97 Decadent Fiction Before the Keynote Series 'Keynotes' of Decadence, 1894-95 Decadence in the Shadow of the Wilde Trials and Beyond The Afterlife of the Decadents or, Life After Decadence Notes References Index

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Book SynopsisDr Aleks Sierz is the theatre critic of Tribune and a freelance theatre reviewer. He is a Reader in Drama at Rose Bruford College and author of The Theatre of Martin Crimp and seminal study of British playwriting of the 1990s, In Yer Face Theatre.Trade ReviewSierz's fluent, up-to-date new study is further proof that he is one of British theater's leading critics. * André Naffis-Sahely, Times Literary Supplement *As a theatre studies teacher, this book is a relative breath of fresh air and may make you exclaim: 'Yes at last, someone is writing about contemporary plays, playwrights and performances!'...The beauty of this book is that it gives some of the theory behind the shift in the writing: giving us a social, cultural and political context...In order to understand the context behind new writing, this book is a must read! * Teaching Drama *

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Book SynopsisPatrick Lonergan is Professor of Drama and Theatre Studies at the National University of Ireland, Galway. He writes about theatre for The Irish Times and Irish Theatre Magazine. His first book, Theatre and Globalization, was awarded the 2008 Theatre Book Prize. He has authored two Student Editions of plays by Martin McDonagh, is editor of The Methuen Drama Anthology of Irish Plays and series editor of the Critical Companions series. Trade ReviewPatrick Lonergan - as enthusiastic as a true film buff ought to be, yet as defensive as a proud father - seeks to soothe the hostilities, and to show that the sheer force of the reactions to McDonagh's work has provoked only prove his momentous talent... [the book provides] a wealth of information and resources. -- Ruth Gilligan * Times Literary Supplement *As Patrick Lonergan's entertaining and enjoyable study of the playwright and film-maker points out, academics have frequently been more hostile [than critics]. Lonergan attempts to re-address this...By shifting the focus of his debate away from perennial debates surrounding the authenticity of Irish representation, Lonergan is able to pose much more interesting questions about the relationship between the author and his work...each section includes a very useful section of production analysis. The book also includes an extremely detailed glossary offering readers explanations of all the terms and major historical events dis cussed in McDonagh’s plays...Lonergan’s easy conversational tone and knowledgeable discussion of the plays will, though, be of interest to a general readership interested in McDonagh’s work, and this book offers a comprehensive account of his varied and occasionally controversial career to date. -- Catherine Rees * New Theatre Quarterly *Table of ContentsINTRODUCTION: ‘MARTIN MCDONAGH: FACTS AND FICTIONS' 1 THE LEENANE TRILOGY Introduction: The Murder Capital of Europe? The Beauty Queen of Leenane A Skull in Connemara The Lonesome West Druid Theatre and The Leenane Trilogy in production 2 THE ARAN ISLANDS PLAYS Introduction The Cripple of Inishmaan The Lieutenant of Inishmore The Aran Islands Plays Staging The Lieutenant and The Cripple 3 WORLD PLAYS The Pillowman A Behanding in SpokaneThe Plays in production 4 THE FILMS Six Shooter In Bruges McDonagh and cinema 5 CRITICAL AND PERFORMANCE PERSPECTIVESGarry Hynes in conversation: Monstrous Children‘Like Tottenham': Martin McDonagh's Postmodern Morality Tales (José Lanters)A Symbiotic Relationship: The Works of Martin McDonagh and Ecocriticism (Karen O'Brien)McDonagh and Postcolonial Theory: Practices, Perpetuations, Divisions, and Legacies (Eamonn Jordan)McDonagh's Gender Troubles (Joan Dean) 6 CONCLUSION 7 RESOURCESChronology of the life and work of Martin McDonaghA note on languageGlossary of Irish words and slangCultural, Political, Literary and Historical References Further Reading

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Book SynopsisAward-winning writer Joe Penhall was described by the Financial Times as 'one of the finest playwrights of his generation.' His debut at the Royal Court, Some Voices, won the John Whiting Award for best new play. His National Theatre play Blue/Orange won an Olivier Award, an Evening Standard Award and the Critics Circle Award for Best Play. Joe wrote and produced the BAFTA winning BBC serial Moses Jones and his feature film of Some Voices starred Daniel Craig and premiered in competition at the Cannes Film festival . This was followed by Enduring Love, also starring Daniel Craig, based on Ian McEwan's novel; and his adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's novel, The Road, starring Charlize Theron and Viggo Mortensen, which premiered in competition at the Venice Film Festival in 2009.Trade Review'Besides interrogating the very idea of madness, Blue/Orange explores the connection between ethnicity and perceptions of mental health....With a real deftness of touch, the play probes notions of authority. It illuminates the way psychiatry can be strategic - and anatomises the politics of medical care.' * Henry Hitchings, Evening Standard (London), 5.11.10 *'In the way of great comedy, Blue/Orange touches on great themes: self-advancement at the expense of others, perceptions of sanity' * Claudia Pritchard, Independent on Sunday, 7.11.10 *

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Book SynopsisBrenda Murphy is the Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Connecticut, USA. Besides her many books and articles on American theatre, she is the editor of the Student Edition of After the Fall by Arthur Miller (Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2011).Trade Review[Murphy] brings together ... useful information from Williams' work, writings and correspondence to make this a valuable academic work for anyone studying the playwright or American theatre ... A useful and well-written work -- David Chadderton * British Theatre Guide *Brenda Murphy’s The Theatre of Tennessee Williams is a thoroughly enjoyable read. The book describes the genesis and major themes of all of Williams’s best-known plays and many of those that are less familiar; it provides, as well, an illuminating account of the plays’ first productions and the ways in which they were inflected by their cultural contexts. Murphy writes with lucidity and an eye for the engaging detail, the telling quotation that will appeal to a broad audience. Her book serves as both a useful guide to Williams’s work and an important contribution to the ongoing re-evaluation of that work -- Verna A. Foster, Loyola University * Modern Drama *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Abbreviations Introduction 1 The 1930s Plays: The Magic Tower, Candles to the Sun, Fugitive Kind, Not About Nightingales, Spring Storm, Stairs to the Roof 2 Battle of Angels and Orpheus Descending 3 The Glass Menagerie 4 Summer and Smoke and Eccentricities of a Nightingale 5 A Streetcar Named Desire 6 Camino Real 7 Cat on Hot Tin Roof 8 Suddenly Last Summer and Sweet Bird of Youth 9 The Night of the Iguana 10 The Later Plays, 1961-1983: The Two-Character Play/Outcry, The Gnädiges Fräulein, Clothes for a Summer Hotel, The Mutilated, Small Craft Warnings, Vieux Carré, Something Cloudy, Something Clear 11. Critical Perspectives All in the timing: the meanings of Streetcar in 1947 and 1951 by Bruce McConachie (University of Pittsburgh, USA) A broken romance: Tennessee Williams and America’s mid-century theatre culture by John S. Bak (Université de Lorraine, France) ‘A vast traumatic eye’: culture absorbed and refigured in Tennessee Williams’s transitional plays by Felicia Hardison Londré (University of Missouri, Kansas City, USA) ‘There’s something not natural here’: grotesque ambiguities in Kingdom of Earth, A Cavalier for Milady, and A House Not Meant to Stand by Annette Saddik (City University of New York, USA) Chronology Further reading Index Notes on contributors

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Book SynopsisMark Taylor-Batty is Senior Lecturer in Theatre Studies at the Workshop Theatre, School of English, University of Leeds, UK. He is co-author with Juliette Taylor-Batty, of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot (Continuum, 2009), has authored two further books on Harold Pinter's writings, and is co-series editor with Enoch Brater of Methuen Drama's Engage series.Trade Review[The Theatre of Harold Pinter] offers some valuable original insights and its close analysis of the development of Pinter's dramatic themes and aesthetics will be informative to students and general readers alike. -- D. Keith Peacock * Studies in Theatre and Performance *Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Introduction 1. Invasion and Oppression 2. The Company of Men and the Place of Women 3. Present Continuous, Past Perfect 4. The Impossible Family 5. Politics and the Artist as Citizen 6. Critical Perspectives: The Curse of Pinter, by Harry Burton Revisting Pinter's Women, by Ann Hall Pinter's Memory Plays of the 1970s, by Chris Megson Pinter’s Political Dramas: Staging Neoliberal Discourse and Authoritarianism, by Basil Chiasson Notes Index Notes on Contributors

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Book SynopsisEnoch Brater is Kenneth T. Rowe Collegiate Professor of Dramatic Literature & Professor of English and Theater University of Michigan, USA.Toby Zinman is Professor of English, University of the Arts, Philadelphia, USA.Susan C. W. Abbotson is Assistant Professor of Dramatic Literature at Rhode Island College, USA. Stephen Marino is the founding editor of the Arthur Miller Journal and is adjunct professor of English at St Francis College, New York, USA. He is a former president of the Arthur Miller Society.Alan Ackerman is Professor of English at the University of Toronto, Canada.Table of ContentsAcknowledgements A chronology of Miller's life and work Introduction 1. All My Sons 2. Death of Salesman 3. The Crucible 4. A View from the Bridge 5. Broken Glass 6. Questions for study 7. Further reading

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Book SynopsisThe first holistic reappraisal of the significance of the decadent movement, from the 1900s through the 1930s. Decadence in the Age of Modernism begins where the history of the decadent movement all too often ends: in 1895. It argues that the decadent principles and aesthetics of Oscar Wilde, Walter Pater, Algernon Swinburne, and others continued to exert a compelling legacy on the next generation of writers, from high modernists and late decadents to writers of the Harlem Renaissance. Writers associated with this decadent counterculture were consciously celebrated but more often blushingly denied, even as they exerted a compelling influence on the early twentieth century. Offering a multifaceted critical revision of how modernism evolved out of, and coexisted with, the decadent movement, the essays in this collection reveal how decadent principles infused twentieth-century prose, poetry, drama, and newspapers. In particular, this book demonstrates the potent impact of decadence on tTrade ReviewDecadence in the Age of Modernism will be of great import for scholars concerned with Decadent art and literature and would work well as a required text for graduate seminars on Decadent literature and visual and material culture.—Julia Skelly, McGill University, Victorian StudiesDecadence in the Age of Modernism provides essential reading for decadence studies, continues a necessary intervention in modernist studies, and suggests important changes to twentieth-century literature surveys.—Robert Stiling, Florida State University, Nineteenth-Century ContextsThis book vividly demonstrates the value of bridging the fields of Victorian, Modernist, and Harlem Renaissance studies.—Mimi Winick, The Journal of Pre-Raphaelite StudiesOn the whole, Decadence in the Age of Modernism is a considerable accomplishment that offers much to discover.—The Modernist ReviewThis collection of essays offers a series of fascinating examples that illuminate the nuances of this relationship and, crucially, collectively draw attention to the plurality of both traditions in a period too often dominated by the high modernist canon.—Natasha Ryan, University of Oxford, Decadence and CinemaDecadence in the Age of Modernism is an illuminating and ground-breaking consideration of an under-examined subject, one that ably demonstrates that the fin not only outlived the siècle, it thrived in a new century.—Richard A. Kaye, Modernism/Modernity...distinguished and exceptional.—Robert Finnigan, Nottingham Trent University, VictoriographiesTable of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroductionKate Hext and Alex Murray1. Dainty Malice: Ada Leverson and Post-Victorian Decadent FeminismKristin Mahoney2. The Ugly Things of SalomeEllen Crowell3. Decadent Paths and Percolations after 1895Nick Freeman4. "A Poetess of No Mean Order": Margaret Sackville, Women's Poetry, and the Legacy of AestheticismJoseph Bristow5. The Queer Drift of FirbankEllis Hanson6. Burning the Candle at Both Ends: Edna St. Vincent Millay's DecadenceSarah Parker7. Woolf and Joyce, Barnes and Beckett: The Legacy of Decadence in Major Modernist NovelsVincent Sherry 8. "The Woodland Whose Depths and Whose Heights Were Pan's": Swinburne and Lawrence, Decadence and ModernismHoward J. Booth9. The Naughtiness of the Avant-Garde: Donald Evans, Claire Marie, and Tender ButtonsDouglas Mao10. The Queerness of Being 1890 in 1922: Carl Van Vechten and the New DecadenceKirsten MacLeod11. A Decadent Dream Deferred: Bruce Nugent and the Harlem Renaissance's Queer ModernityMichèle MendelssohnContributors Index

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Trade Review[This book] is a timely and interesting guide to Smith’s contribution to contemporary literature ... a useful guide for students ... It paves the way for further exploration of Smith as one of the foremost contemporary women writers of the twenty-first century. -- Emma Young, University of Lincoln * Contemporary Women's Writing *The first major critical book on Ali Smith ... [An] important volume. * The Year's Work in English Studies *Table of ContentsForeword: Marina Warner Series Editors’ Preface Acknowledgements Contributors Chronology of Ali Smith’s Life INTRODUCTION Monica Germanà (University of Westminster) and Emily Horton (Brunel University) CHAPTER ONE Contemporary Space and Affective Ethics in Ali Smith’s Short Stories Emily Horton (Brunel University) CHAPTER TWO Simile and Similarity in Ali Smith’s Like Ian Blyth (University of St Andrews) CHAPTER THREE Narrating Remainders: Spectral Presences in Ali Smith’s Fictions Stephen M. Levin (Clarke University) CHAPTER FOUR Ali Smith and the Philosophy of Grammar Mark Currie (Queen Mary’s University of London) CHAPTER FIVE Queer Metamorphoses: Girl Meets Boy and the Futures of Queer Fiction Kaye Mitchell (University of Manchester) CHAPTER SIX Narrating Intrusion: Deceptive Storytelling and Frustrated Desires in The Accidental and There but for the Ulrike Tancke (Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz) CHAPTER SEVEN “The Space That Wrecks Our Abode”: The Stranger in Ali Smith’s Hotel World and The Accidental Patrick O’Donnell (Michigan State University) CHAPTER EIGHT Idiosyncrasy and Currency: Ali Smith and the Contemporary Canon Dominic Head (University of Nottingham) CHAPTER NINE ‘The Uncanny can happen’: Desire and Belief in The Seer Monica Germanà (University of Westminster) AFTERWORD ‘Sidekick playing the same tune’: Writing Ali Smith in Norwegian Merete Alfsen INTERVIEW Gillian Beer interviews Ali Smith References Works Cited by Contributors Further Reading Works by Ali Smith Critical Material Index

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Book SynopsisThis book provides a concise and highly readable reassessment of Iris Murdoch's engagement with philosophy throughout her life and proposes that she was, most importantly, a philosophical novelist. By investigating her use of philosophical argument in her fictional writing, it becomes clear that her narratives always depend upon a strong metaphysical underpinning. Leeson proceeds thematically through the philosophical phases of Murdoch's life and develops a clear argument that Murdoch reacts against the philosophies of Sartre, Plato, Nietzsche and Heidegger not only in her philosophical writings but also in her fiction. Indeed, it is in her fiction that her philosophical argument is most persuasive and accessible. This timely study provides new information regarding Murdoch's engagement with Martin Heidegger and also provides a detailed critique of critics who have overlooked Murdoch's engagement with philosophy within her fiction.Trade Review"It is a sign of health in a scholarly community when books arise that challenge its orthodoxies. Such challenge requires bravery of the scholar and meticulous care in arguing for new approaches. Leeson's book is brave and healthy in this way, aiming to open new lines of research and inquiry into Iris Murdoch 's novels as, precisely, philosophical novels. Not novels in which philosophy is a motif (the orthodoxy), but in which philosophy is, in fact, done. Recent gestures by other scholars in Murdoch Studies indicate that such a line of counter-criticism has been opened, notably by the work of Bran Nicols and Guy Backus, though not settled. Leeson's book extends that line to firmly establish that Murdoch's novels do philosophy, and to open space for explorations of the depth to which her philosophy is woven into her aesthetic fabric... There is much inspiration to be found here, and Leeson has established himself as young scholar of both depth and promise." -M. F. Simone Roberts, author of Irish Murdoch and the Moral Imagination: Essays (McFarland & Co Inc, 2010)Table of ContentsAcknowledgements; 1. Introduction; 2. Murdoch's earliest work and the Existential; 3. A Severed Head: The Impact of Freud and Nietzsche; 4. Heidegger and The Time of the Angels; 5. The Bell and Platonism; 6. The Philosopher's Pupil A Revision of Ideas?; 7. A Wittgensteinian Neo-Platonist: The Green Knight ;8. Conclusion; Bibliography; Index.

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