Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000 Books

Book SynopsisJulie Armstrong is Senior Lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK, where she teaches Creative Writing in an interdisciplinary Contemporary Arts Dept. In addition to her scholarly publishing, she has also written, poetry, television scripts and two works of experimental fiction: Mirror (2010) Troubador and Dream Space (2012).Table of ContentsIntroduction: What is Experimental Fiction? 1. Modernism i. When was/what was modernism? ii. What was being explored in modernist fiction? iii. Who was writing modernist fiction? iv. What were the techniques and forms of modernist writing? Writing Exercises Further Reading 2. The Beats i. When were/what were the Beats ii. What was being explored in Beat literature? iii. Who was writing Beat literature? iv. What were the techniques and forms of Beat writing? Writing Exercises Further Reading 3. Moving Into Postmodernism i. What is/was postmodernism? ii. What is/was being explored in postmodern fiction? iii. Who is/was writing postmodern fiction? iv. What are/were the techniques and forms of postmodern fiction? Writing Exercises Further Reading 4. A New Era for Fiction i. What is being explored in experimental fiction of the new era? ii. Who is writing experimental fiction today? iii. What are the techniques and forms of contemporary experimental fiction? Writing Exercises Further Reading Conclusion Index

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Trade Review"Signs or symbols, satire or realism, closure or no closure, soluble or insoluble riddle? Responding to the challenge presented by this enigmatic short story, aware that Nabokov did not believe in what he called ‘the symbolism racket', the contributors to this excellent collection of articles have mobilized a wide spectrum of hermeneutics. Convinced, with John V. Hagopian, that ‘no legitimate artist produces randomness', they gamely attempted to quiz the author's elusive figure, developing a brand of creative paranoia, yet never claiming, except in one case (Dolinin), to play the part of the oracle. The result is a challenging exercise of ‘Practical Criticism' which touches upon the bone and structure of Nabokov's work." -- Maurice Couturier, Professor Emeritus, University of Nice, France, writer and translator, editor-in-chief of the Pléiade edtion of Nabokov's novels.The critical anthology is called “Anatomy of a Short Story” not accidentally. What we have here is not a marauding or exhuming of a senseless body, but a study of a living artistic organism. Collective dissection presupposes using various methods, diversified optics and descriptive procedures… Yuri Leving’s own array of scholarly interests turns “Anatomy” from a potentially dull registrar’s compendium into a collection of peculiar and often unexpected utterances about Nabokov’s text… This book will prove handy to anyone interested both in Nabokov as well as in studying literary texts in general. -- Mikhail Efimov * LiteraruS - Literaturnoe Slovo *Leving’s collection is a huge achievement, and its scope is impressive, with thirty articles in total, mostly previously published, spanning over thirty years of scholarship. This is the book’s foremost triumph and as such positions itself alongside the Garland Companion to Vladimir Nabokov, is a must for anyone interested in Nabokov’s story and, more generally, the historical progression of Nabokov studies. * Matthew Apperley, UCL SSEES, The Slavonic and East European Review (Vol. 92, No. 2, April 2014) *Following the success of his Keys to the Gift: A Guide to Vladimir Nabokov’s Novel (Boston, MA, 2011) Leving’s latest foray into Nabokov studies comes at a crucial moment in the field. Little has been published on Nabokov in recent years that matches the powerhouse of scholarship of the past; maybe the time is right to address where we are with Nabokov and, potentially, where we are going. In this regard Leving’s collection is a huge achievement, and its scope is impressive, with thirty articles in total, mostly previously published, spanning over thirty years of scholarship. This is the book’s foremost triumph and as such positions itself alongside the Garland Companion to Vladimir Nabokov (New York, 1995), is a must for anyone interested in Nabokov’s story and, more generally, the historical progression of Nabokov studies. -- Matthew Apperley, UCL SSEES, UK * Slavonic & East European Review *Table of ContentsContributors; Acknowledgments; INTRODUCTION; Breaking the Code: Nabokov and the Art of Short Fiction - Yuri Leving; A PRIMARY TEXT:; Heart; "Signs and Symbols" Vladimir Nabokov; FORUM: High pressure; Psychosis, Performance, Schizophrenia, Literature Hal Ackerman, Murray Biggs, John Crossley, Wayne Goodman, Yuri Leving, and Frederick White; CRITICISM; PART ONE: Bone Structure; Frameworks; Vladimir Nabokov's Correspondence with The New Yorker regarding "Signs and Symbols," 1946-1948 Olga Voronina; Lost in Revision: The Editing of "Signs and Symbols" for The New Yorker John Morris; Consulting the Oracle Michael Wood; PART TWO: Vascular System; Signs; Arbitrary Signs and Symbols Alexander N. Drescher; The Patterns of Doom Brian Quinn; Ways of Knowing in "Signs and Symbols"Terry J. Martin; A Funny Thing about "Signs and Symbols" John B. Lane; Names Yuri Leving; PART THREE: Muscles of the Story; Objects; Five Known Jars Carol M. Dole; Five Missing Jars Gennady Barabtarlo; The Last Jar Joanna Trzeciak; Trees and Birds Larry R. Andrews; Photographs Maria-Ruxanda Bontila; Cards Pekka Tammi; Telephone Andres Romero Jodar; PART FOUR: Nervous system; The Importance of Reader Response Paul J. Rosenzweig; The Jewish Quest Yuri Leving; Symbols; Signs of Reference, Symbols of Design Geoffrey Green; Sacred Dangers: Nabokov's Distorted Reflection David Field; Numbers; The Mysticism of Circle Mary Tookey; The Semiotics of Zero Meghan Vicks; PART FIVE: Dissection; Web of Contexts; "Signs and Symbols" in and out of Contexts Leona Toker; "Breaking the News" and "Signs and Symbols": Silentology Joanna Trzeciak; Pnin and "Signs and Symbols": Narrative Entrapment David H. Richter; Pnin and "Signs and Symbols": Narrative Strategies William Carroll; Pale Fire and "Signs and Symbols" Vladimir Mylnikov; PART SIX: DNA Testing; Cracking the Code; The Signs and Symbols in Nabokov's "Signs and Symbols" Alexander Dolinin; The Castling Problem in "Signs and Symbols" Yuri Leving; Reading Madly - Irving Malin; Deciphering "Signs and Symbols"Larry R. Andrews; Decoding "Signs and Symbols" John V. Hagopian; The Referential Mania: An Attempt of the Deconstructivist Reading Alvaro Garrido Moreno; A Referential Reading of Nabokov's "Signs and Symbols" Charles W. Mignon; An Afterword John Banville; Alternative Tables of Contents; Chronological Key; Alphabetical Key; Credits; Bibliography; Index.

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Book SynopsisAre we living in a post-temporal age? Has history come to an end? This book argues against the widespread perception of postmodern narrativity as atemporal and ahistorical, claiming that postmodernity is characterized by an explosion of heterogeneous narrative timeshapes or chronotopes. Chronological linearity is being challenged by quantum physics that implies temporal simultaneity; by evolutionary theory that charts multiple time-lines; and by religious and political millenarianism that espouses an apocalyptic finitude of both time and space. While science, religion, and politics have generated new narrative forms of apprehending temporality, literary incarnations can be found in the worlds of science fiction. By engaging classic science-fictional conventions, such as time travel, alternative history, and the end of the world, and by situating these conventions in their cultural context, this book offers a new and fresh perspective on the narratology and cultural significance of timeTrade Review"In this probing study we see how our sci-fi dreams remain haunted by inexorable Time and discover why postmodernist reports of the death of Time are mistaken." - Professor Penelope J. Corfield, University of London, UK.Table of Contents1. Introduction: World Enough and Time; 2. The Times Machines; 3. Strangled by a Time Loop: Paradoxes of Determinism; 4. The Garden of History: The Branching Paths of Contingency; 5. Everyday Apocalypse: The Ethics and Aesthetics of the End of Time; 6. Conclusion; Bibliography; Index.

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Book SynopsisThe first book to provide a detailed account of fragmentary writing in the work of the French novelist, critic, and thinker Maurice Blanchot (1907-2003).Trade Review"Maurice Blanchot and Fragmentary Writing is a remarkable study of the most extraordinary and enduring literary figure in twentieth-century France. An acknowledged authority on Blanchot and his peers, Leslie Hill guides the reader through some of the most difficult and exciting writing produced after the Second World War: his remarks on the imbrications of literature and philosophy are never less than illuminating. Any new book by Leslie Hill is an event in French Studies, and this one is no exception." -- Kevin Hart, Edwin B. Kyle Professor of Christian Studies in the Department of Religious Studies, University of Virginia, USA"What are fragments? Chips, flecks, scraps, orts, bits, grinds, clasts, shards, sherds, slivers, splinters, crumbs... a potentially infinite list, which is the point made by Leslie Hill's subtle and forceful meditation on Blanchot's practice of the literary fragment. Such pulverulence contaminates everything, every whole comes undone until we face a more open future since it, too, is fragmentary." -Jean-Michel Rabaté, Vartan Gregorian Professor in the Humanities at the University of PennsylvaniaSummarized. * Notre Dame Philosophical Review *In his recent book, Maurice Blanchot and Fragmentary Writing, Hill argues convincingly that the fragmentary indicates an ethico-political exigency in Blanchot’s writing that is all too often overlooked by his critics and neglected by historians of modern literature. Hill frames his readings of Blanchot around the view that the fragment does not simply designate a missing piece of the whole, which must be recovered or restored. On the contrary, it ruins the logic of completion that is elsewhere held to unify the work of literature. -- Michael Krimper * Make Mag *Table of ContentsChapter One: A Turning1. A spectre2. Writing the future3. From fragment to fragmentary4. The limits of nihilism5. Radical suspensionChapter Two: The Demand of the Fragmentary1. A gift2. A double voice3. Presence without presentChapter Three: An Interruption1. From threshold to threshold2. A step further3. The law of return4. Voice without voice5. A politics of the fragmentary6. Burying the dead Chapter Four: Writing — Disaster1. What is called disaster?2. Another epoch3. What happened4. The youngest dayChapter Five: A Change of Epoch Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisMads Rosendahl Thomsen is Professor with Special Responsibilities in Comparative Literature at Aarhus University, Denmark.Trade Review"Rosendahl Thomsen's book offers us, for the first time, a both comprehensive and systematic overview of the history, and of the different phenomena and the semantic layers of ‘World Literature' today. This would already make his work truly important. But Thomsen goes one decisive step further: he not only points to the traumatic conditions that, in addition to the process of 'globalization', have permeated and founded the experience of 'World Literature'; he also proposes a new concept of literary 'constellations' that has the capacity to trigger and to orient future empirical research. Altogether, this is an amazing début by a young Danish scholar within the English-speaking scene of Literary Criticism and Literary Theory."Professor Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, Albert Guérard Professor in Literature, Stanford University, USA"This wide-ranging, learned, and ambitious study makes an important contribution to current debates on the concept of world literature. Thomsen helps us better understand the formation and circulation of literature in a globalizing world, through his compelling concept of literary constellations that link works at a level between the individual and the national. Set within a comprehensive and nuanced view of existing scholarship, and illuminated with an impressive variety of literary examples, Thomsen's study is sure to have wide appeal both to students and teachers of comparative and world literature. It will be a necessary addition to every university library and to the personal library of everyone interested in world literature - and in the creation of contemporary literature generally."Professor David Damrosch, Department of English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University, USAMention -Chronicle of Higher Education, December 19, 2008Mention -Book News, February 2009"One urgent literary debate of the first decade of the 21st century has been that surrounding "world literature": How is it to be defined and constituted? What will be its inevitably changing canon? What modes of interpretation are most appropriate to it? Thomsen (Univ. of Aarhus, Denmark) discusses the "contested paradigms" that structure this debate within various literary disciplines. For example, scholars of comparative literature have been seeking to shed its Eurocentrism and rejuvenate it without turning their backs the achievements of Western writers; those interested in postcolonial literature have had to confront the dilemma of its status as a transnational migrant literature more dependent on the major languages of Europe than on the national literatures of former colonies. Drawing on the work of David Damrosch (What Is World Literature?, 2003), important essays and books by Franco Moretti and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, and Christopher Prendergast's edited volume Debating World Literature (2004) and informed by changes in media and culture, this volume ingeniously links national and transnational literatures and global culture while assembling a useful list of formal and thematic elements that will lead readers to engage with old and new texts in new constellations and ways. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty."K. Tölölyan, CHOICE, April 2009"One urgent literary debate of the first decade of the 21st century has been that surrounding "world literature": How is it to be defined and constituted? What will be its inevitably changing canon? What modes of interpretation are most appropriate to it? Thomsen (Univ. of Aarhus, Denmark) discusses the "contested paradigms" that structure this debate within various literary disciplines. For example, scholars of comparative literature have been seeking to shed its Eurocentrism and rejuvenate it without turning their backs the achievements of Western writers; those interested in postcolonial literature have had to confront the dilemma of its status as a transnational migrant literature more dependent on the major languages of Europe than on the national literatures of former colonies. Drawing on the work of David Damrosch (What Is World Literature?, 2003), important essays and books by Franco Moretti and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, and Christopher Prendergast's edited volume Debating World Literature (2004) and informed by changes in media and culture, this volume ingeniously links national and transnational literatures and global culture while assembling a useful list of formal and thematic elements that will lead readers to engage with old and new texts in new constellations and ways. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty." - K. Tölölyan, CHOICE, April 2009"Rosendahl Thomsen's Mapping World Literature is an important contribution to our process of remapping... Thomsen's map has room for "major" and "minor" literatures alike and develops new coordinates that other worldly mapmakers will want to employ." David Damrosch, Comparative Literature Studies'Mapping World Literature provides a particularly innovative approach to the field...[Thomsen's] concept of the ‘constellation' provides a model of reading that permits proximity to individual texts, whilst ensuring acknowledgement of the challenges of the potentially global scale of world literature...' -- Charles ForsdickReviewed in Routledge ABES... wide-ranging and readable, and will undoubtedly be of value as a starting point for scholars interested in the field. Thomsen's underlying thinking is progressive and pragmatic, leading to ideas which highlight the substantial potential of a reconfigured field of world literary studies. -- Forum for Modern Language Studies"Thomsen's value is to inspire thought about how literature is taught in relation to departments which owe an allegiance to a national literature, and to think about the status of 'world literature." Jeremy Tambling, MLR 104.3 2009"In this important book, Mads Rosendahl Thomsen innovatively applies the concept of literary constellations to trace revealing patterns within world literature, with special relevance to present-day cultural globalization. ... Overall, the book is thoroughly thought-provoking in its international perspective on literature, also reflected in the impressive range of its bibliography and index, while the author's emphasis on the construction of a methology opens up promising avenues for future research." Natasha Grigorian, Journal of European Studies"Thomsen's book methodically reviews the lineage of World Literature as both a concept and label and succeeds in being detailed without becoming hindered by the myriad dichotomies which typify the term. The scope of this undertaking is ambitious and the result is an opportunity for scholars of comparative literature to consider new types of literary and cultural constellations encompassing national, tranlational and global movements." Mark Sullivan, The Comparatist"Mads Rosendahl Thomsen's book is an impressive survey of the growth of a new field of study, known as world literature. He takes as his starting point the impossibility of ever comprehending the whole of world literature, and sets out instead to trace paths through the complex web of global writing. The book is divided intelligently into four chapters, each of which surveys the field from a particular perspective."Susan Bassnett, English StudiesReviewed in English Studies, Vol. 91, no. 5, (Netherlands) ‘A contribution to world literature'"This volume ingeniously links national and transnational literatures and global culture while assembling a useful list of formal and thematic elements that will lead readers to engage with old and new texts in new constellations and ways." - Choice * Choice *Table of ContentsAcknowledgements; Introduction; 1. World Literature: History, concept, paradigm; 2. Shifting focal points in the international canon; 3. Migrant writers and cosmopolitan culture; 4. Ethics and aesthetics in traumatic literature; Conclusion: Constellations as facts and experiments; Notes; References; Appendix: World Literature by Georg Brandes; Index.

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Trade ReviewPhilip Tew’s Reading Zadie Smith: the First Decade and Beyond is a provocative and sophisticated collection of essays that span Zadie Smith’s entire current canon from her four novels to her literary criticism to her short stories. It includes three essays with new approaches to White Teeth and also two stunning essays on Smith’s difficult new novel NW. * Christine W. Sizemore, Professor of English, Spelman College, Atlanta, USA *An absolute must for anyone looking to dig deeper into Smith's work. -- Maddi Howell, Books Editor * York Vision *Table of ContentsIntroduction, Philip Tew Part I: Individual Novels Section One: White Teeth (2000) 1. The Gift that Keeps on Giving: Zadie Smith's White Teeth and the Posthuman, Brad Buchanan 2. White Teeth Reconsidered: Narrative Deception and Uncomfortable Truths, Ulrike Tancke 3. Body Larceny: Somatic Seizure and Control in Zadie Smith's White Teeth, Joanna O'Leary Section Two: The Autograph Man (2002) 4. "I could have been somebody": Identity and Mediation in Zadie Smith's The Autograph Man, Tracey K. Parker 5. Celebrity, Suburban Identity & Transatlantic Philographic Traces of Meaning in The Autograph Man, Philip Tew Section Three: On Beauty (2005) 6. On Beauty and Being Right, Lynn Wells 7. History in Zadie Smith's On Beauty, Susan Alice Fischer Part II: Other Works, Broader Perspectives Section Four: Beyond the Novels and the Public Domain 8. An Alternative Zadie Smith: Reading the Short Stories, Lucienne Loh 9. "Hysterical Realism": Reflections on the Smith / Wood Debate, Joe Brooker 10. Negotiating Zadie Smith's Non-Fiction, Karen Zouaoui Section Five: Fakery and Belief 11. ‘A Breed of Lyrical Realism': Form and Fakery in the Novels of Zadie Smith, Christopher Holmes 12. On Religion: Postsecular Quests, Scriptural Borrowings and Irreducible Beauty in the Fiction of Zadie Smith, Magdalena Maczynska Conclusion Further Reading Index.

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Book SynopsisHernan Diaz is Managing Editor of Revista Hispánica Moderna and Associate Director of the Hispanic Institute at Columbia University, USA. Formerly he has been a professor at the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina, and the State University of New York (Albany), USA.Trade ReviewA splendid book. Intelligent, illuminating, original, worthy of its ambitious subject. I have read it with increasing pleasure, and finished it feeling I now had a better understanding of Borges's seemingly simple and apparent, but in fact deeply mysterious intelligence. -- Alberto ManguelThe arena of Borges criticism is a crowded firmament and some of its stars are very dim indeed; by mediating two hardline critical positions, Díaz's book adds to the luster and depth of the field. * Publishers Weekly *Just when all seemed lost, Borges, Between History and Eternity proves there's still life in the Borges studies galaxy. Life of the best kind, which in the world of literary criticism means precision, intellectual agility, microscopically close reading and, above all, the will to go against the grain of the most respected conventional wisdom. To dismantle the old dilemma of Borges studies—Borges, universal or local? Metaphysical or down-to-earth? Abstract or political?—Hernán Díaz exhumes a critical dagger that in his hands shines as though drawn for the first time: the chiasmus. Which is to say the swinging operation that requires crossing and interchanging the terms of an opposition that once seemed ironclad. Thus Díaz finds the Borges most engaged with history in his most conceptual texts, and the most conceptual Borges in those fictions most deeply rooted in national identity. History and eternity, as Díaz sees them in Borges, are no longer antithetical terms: they are poles linked by a healthy and diabolic reciprocal equivalence that can't help but disquiet us. To take a writer about whom we thought we knew everything and render him disquieting—what more can we ask from a book of criticism? -- Alan PaulsThis book explores two aspects of the work of Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges. The first part of the book examines the relationship between politics and metaphysics in some of Borges' works. The second part analyses how two American writers, Edgar Allan Poe and Walt Whitman, figure into Borges's oeuvre. Additionally, the book discusses Borges's influence on some North American writers - for example, Thomas Pynchon and John Barth. Diaz (Columbia Univ.) wants to show how Borges's metaphysical discussions have, to a large extent, political connotations, and conversely, how his historical and social concerns are informed and influenced by metaphysical ideas. The study aims to reveal that the most common ("framed") literary structure in Borges's fiction, one that encapsulates another fiction inside another one, and so on, has political connotations: power consists in imposing fictions as realities. Valuable for anyone interested in Borges, this book includes an excellent up-to-date bibliography and a detailed index. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates, graduate students, faculty. * Choice (J.S. Bottaro, Medgar Evers College of The City University of New York) *Borges, between History and Eternity is a meticulously argued, intelligent and expertly articulated reading of Borges. It offers an important addition to Borges criticism, and should be valued as such. * Bulletin of Spanish Studies *Table of ContentsForeword South, North, Beyond I. POLITICAL THEOLOGY Introduction 1. God and Country 2. When Fiction Lives in Fiction II. THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA Introduction 1. Edgar Allan Poe (On Murder Considered as Metaphysics) 2. Walt Whitman, an American, a Kosmos Afterword El vaivén Note on the Translations Abbreviation of Borges's Titles Works Cited Acknowledgements

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Book SynopsisFirst published in 1946, following on from Portrait of Elmbury, the second in the series shows an England which now seems almost foreign in its remoteness.Evoked with an unerringly accurate eye, Brensham Village contains a mixture of action and character, conveying the life of a country community in the halcyon period between the wars.Sentimental it is, but not so as to undermine the picture of a time when a life of landed gentry, squalid poverty and routine village intimacy co-existed within a familiar seasonal routine.

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Book SynopsisCollecting in full for the first time the correspondence between Ezra Pound and members of Leo Frobenius'' Forschungsinstitut für Kulturmorphologie in Frankfurt across a 30 year period, this book sheds new light on an important but previously unexplored influence on Pound''s controversial intellectual development in the Fascist era. Ezra Pound''s long-term interest in anthropology and ethnography exerted a profound influence on early 20th century literary Modernism. These letters reveal the extent of the influence of Frobenius'' concept of ''Paideuma'' on Pound''s poetic and political writings during this period and his growing engagement with the culture of Nazi Germany. Annotated throughout, the letters are supported by contextualising essays by leading Modernist scholars as well as relevant contemporary published articles by Pound himself and his leading correspondent at the Institute, the American Douglas C. Fox.

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Book SynopsisSusan Alice Fischer is Professor of English at Medgar Evers College of The City University of New York, USA. She is Editor of The Literary London Journal and Co-Editor of Changing English: Studies in Culture and Education.Trade ReviewThis collection will be valuable to researchers and students of contemporary British literature and British Asian cultural production. The new interview with Kureishi offers a blend of funny, laconic, unpretentious, and politically serious observations from the man himself, while many of the academic essays will interest Kureishi scholars because of their concern with the writer’s more recent and/or insufficiently discussed work. * Ariel: A Review of International English Literature *Table of ContentsForeword - Roger Michell Acknowledgements Contributors Timeline Introduction - Susan Alice Fischer, The City University of New York 1. ‘“I Believe My Eyes”: The Transformative Cinema of Hanif Kureishi’ - Deanna Kamiel, The New School 2. ‘Culture and Anarchy in Thatcher’s London: Hanif Kureishi’s Sammy and Rosie Get Laid - Peter Hitchcock, The City University of New York 3. ‘“The Suburbs That Did It’: Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia and Metropolitan Multicultural Fiction” - Ryan Trimm, University of Rhode Island 4. ‘Hanif Kureishi’s “Better Philosophy”: From The Black Album to My Son the Fanatic’ - Susan Alice Fischer, The City University of New York 5. ‘The Enigma of Abandonment: Re-thinking Hanif Kureishi’s Importance for Multiculturalism’ - Michael Perfect, Independent 6. ‘The Parallax of Ageing: Hanif Kureishi’s The Body’ - Jago Morrison, Brunel University 7. ‘The Other Kureishi: A Psychoanalytic Reading of Something to Tell You’ - Geoff Boucher, Deakin University 8. ‘The Last Word on Hanif Kureishi’ - Susie Thomas, Independent Interview: ‘A very serious business’: Hanif Kureishi in Conversation with Susan Alice Fischer Interview: ‘An extraordinary encounter’: Stephen Frears in Conversation with Susan Alice Fischer and Deanna Kamiel Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisKatherine Weiss is Associate Professor of English in the Department of Literature and Language, East Tennessee State University, USA.Stephen Bottoms is Professor of Contemporary Theatre and Performance at Manchester University, UK.Philip Kolin is University Distinguished Professor in the College of Arts and Letters and Professor of English at the University of Southern Mississippi, USA.Michael S. D. Hooper is the author of Sexual Politics in the Work of Tennessee Williams: Desire Over Protest, and teaches English and Drama at St Margaret's Bushey, UK.Trade ReviewWhat Weiss has done here is sculpt a text that … provides an in-depth primer to one of the United States’ most decorated playwrights. Ultimately, A Student Handbook to the Plays of Tennessee Williams will be useful for students and professors who are searching for an easily navigable and digestible analysis of Williams and his early work. * Journal of American Drama and Theatre *Working chronologically through his plays, Murphy provides critical commentary for each, her own as well as commentaries from other leading scholars in the field … From start to last, Murphy's summaries are generous without being overwritten; her explications insightful and accessible, the way in fact a really good teacher's are. -- Doug Phillips * Text and Presentation *Table of ContentsAcknowledgements A chronology of Williams' life and work Introduction 1. The Glass Menagerie 2. A Streetcar Named Desire 3. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof 4. Sweet Bird of Youth 5. Questions for study 6. Further reading

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Book SynopsisDavidTucker is a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Sussexand currently teaches at the University of Oxford, UK. He is the editorof British Social Realism in the Arts since 1940 (Palgrave, 2011).Trade Review‘Every now and again, rarely, a book comes along that offers a definitive account of a particularly vexing critical question - this study is one of them. Drawing on a range of published and unpublished materials, David Tucker offers a comprehensive and sensitive examination of the role Geulincx plays in Beckett's writing and aesthetics, and in doing so makes us think differently about Beckett's work.' -- Mark Nixon, Director, Beckett International Foundation, and Lecturer, University of Reading, UKSamuel Beckett's debt to Arnold Geulincx has been recognized on occasion, as it were, but this is the first detailed treatment of its lasting impact. David Tucker traces Beckett's early readings of the Belgian post-Cartesian philosopher from their manifest presence in Murphy (1938), through their more subtle intimations in the great writings of the 1940s, to their faint stirrings in the later prose, showing that Geulincx's Ethica and their central axiom, ubi nihil vales, ibi nihil velis, continued to define for Beckett a viable ethical principle in a worthless world. -- Professor Chris Ackerley, University of Otago, New ZealandThis book charts comprehensively the deep influence of Arnold Geulincx on Beckett. Underpinning lucid textual readings with detailed archival evidence, Tucker's impressive study offers new understandings of the significance of Beckett's career-long engagement with this seventeenth-century ultrarationalist thinker. It is of relevance not only to scholars of Beckett, but also to those interested in the intersections of philosophy and literature within modern European culture. * Dr Eoghan Smith, Lecturer, Carlow College, Ireland *One of the merit's of Tucker's study is that it bolsters a careful consideration of the historical and the archival evidence with a close attention to the texture of Beckett's texts. Just as important, it attempts an evenhanded appraisal of previous readers' under- and over-estimation of Geulincx's significance for Beckett...The most well-researched account of Beckett and Geulincx that we are likely to get...Tucker's study succeeds admirably in this regard, and in doing so performs a long-overdue service to Beckett studies. Accordingly, this book will also serve as a key reference point for the fast-growing body of scholarship on Beckett and philosophy more broadly. -- John Bolin, University of Exeter * College Literature *Table of ContentsSeries Editors' Preface A Chronology of Samuel Beckett & Arnold Geulincx Introduction 1. Beckett & Geulincx 2. Murphy: 'mechanical writing' 3. Watt: Ineffable Forces 4. Suite / La Fin / The End: Continuations and Conclusions 5. The Trilogy: Imagery and Axioms 6. Late Works Conclusion Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisHanns Eisler was an Austrian composer. A Schoenberg pupil and committed Marxist, he was one of the great distinctive musical personalities of the twentieth century. Hans Bunge was assistant director and dramaturg at the Berliner Ensemble in Germany in the 1950s and later became first director of the Brecht Archive. He published his conversations with Eisler in Germany under the title Gespräche mit Hans Bunge Fragen Sie mehr über Brecht.Sabine Berendse, the daughter of the late Hans Bunge, is a Librarian and Information Specialist in Berlin, Germany. Paul Clements was Principal of Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts in London, UK, for twelve years until his retirement in July 2008. He has taught, acted and directed in the UK, Canada and Scandinavia.Trade ReviewTh[is] edition is a labour of love. ... Together with Paul Clements, [Berendse] has crafted not only a readable but a highly engaging rendition of a series of conversations whose length makes them suitable for a sustained read or a more relaxed series of perusals ... [This] edition offers rich anecdotal accounts of Brecht, the German Democratic Republic, and disquisitions on the relationship between politics and music. * New Theatre Quarterly *Eisler’s conversations with Hans Bunge about Brecht focus on their time together in Hollywood as well as on the building of a ‘magnificent’ new social republic. For Eisler, the ‘be-all and end-all’ of their work was to ‘educate the teacher!’ … The most fascinating and perplexing aspect of the conversations turns on the effort to ‘study the effect of art on human beings.’ … The lesson of the great modernists was the lesson of socialism. In other words, ending capitalism was the precondition for making and understanding great art. -- Todd Cronan, Emory University, USA * Radical Philosophy 189 *The important achievement of the translators ... is to have made available to the English-speaking world a landmark volume published almost forty years ago -- Ian Wallace * Eisler-Mitteilungen *As Brecht’s essay on “gestic music” makes clear, the concept of gestic performance emerged from his close collaborations with composers. Bloomsbury’s companion volume, Brecht, Music and Culture, is thus doubly welcome, first for translating Eisler’s thoughtful conversations with Hans Bunge, Fragen Sie mehr über Brecht (1970), and second for explaining rather than mis-translating Verfremdung and so helping to consolidate a Brecht lexicon consistent with the new Brecht on Theatre. This publication also draws attention to the uneven transmission of Brecht’s musical collaborators’ critical commentary, as well as musical compositions. * Theatre Journal *Table of ContentsNotes to the German edition by Hans Bunge Translator’s note Conversation 1 14 Ways of Describing Rain – Meetings between Brecht and Arnold Schoenberg, Charlie Chaplin and Thomas Mann – Brecht and Music Conversation 2 Galileo – Hollywood Elegies – Brecht and Feuchtwanger – Brecht and Music for the Theatre – Schweyk in the Second World War Conversation 3 Brecht on Arnold Schoenberg – Gestic Music – The Caucasian Chalk Circle – Döblin’s 65th Birthday Party Conversation 4 Music for The Private Life of the Master Race – Prologue to Galileo – Eisler and the House Committee on Un-American Activities – The Mother in New York – Brecht and Stefan Zweig – Bajazzo Conversation 5 Brecht’s Hexameters for the Communist Manifesto – Was Brecht a Marxist? – Brecht’s Method of Verfremdung Conversation 6 ‘To Those Born Later’ – Boogie-Woogie – Eisler on Religion – Galileo Conversation 7 ‘Hotel Room 1942’ – Hölderlin Conversation 8 On Stupidity in Music I – Hölderlin Conversation 9 Hans Mayer’s book on Brecht – Brecht and Georg Lukács Conversation 10 The Music to Schweyk in the Second World War – On Stupidity in Music II Conversation 11 Hölderlin Poems – On Stupidity in Music III Conversation 12 Eisler on Classical Literature, on the Function of Art, on Cybernetics and on Napoleon Conversation 13 Serious Songs – Eisler’s Plans for a Symphony Conversation 14 Eisler and Bunge Compare Their Experiences as Soldiers Afterword: For the First Edition of the ‘Conversations’ by Stephan Hermlin Notes Appendix Index

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Book SynopsisLouise Joy is Fellow and Director of Studies in English at Homerton College, University of Cambridge, UK. She is co-editor of The Aesthetics of Children's Poetry (2015) and Poetry and Childhood (2010).Trade ReviewCritically robust enough for seasoned scholars yet easily understandable for those new to the subject, this volume will be indispensable for everyone who studies or teaches children's literature. * CHOICE *Table of ContentsIntroduction Part I: The Critical Child 1. Eighteenth-century poetry and the complexity of the child's mind 2. Laughter and the permission to critique Part II: The Art of Idealisation 3. On seeing: Kate Greenaway's Under the Window 4. On crying: E. Nesbit's The Railway Children 5. On being (bored): Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows 6. On talking: J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit 7. On loving: Malcolm Saville's Lone Pine Series Coda Works Cited Index

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Book SynopsisAfter the Modernist literary experiments of her earlier work, Virginia Woolf became increasingly concerned with overt social and political commentary in her later writings, which are preoccupied with dissecting the links between patriarchy, patriotism, imperialism and war. This book unravels the complex textual histories of The Years (1937), Three Guineas (1938) and Between the Acts (1941) to expose the genesis and evolution of Virginia Woolf's late cultural criticism. Fusing a feminist-historicist approach with the practices and principles of genetic criticism, this innovative study scrutinizes a range of holograph, typescript and proof documents within their historical context to uncover the writing and thinking processes that produced Woolf's cultural analysis during 1931-1941. By demonstrating that Woolf's late cultural criticism developed through her literary experimentalism as well as in response to contemporary social, political and economic upheavals, this Trade ReviewAlice Wood’s Virginia Woolf’s Late Cultural Criticism: The Genesis of ‘The Years’, ‘Three Guineas’ and ‘Between the Acts’ illuminates the formation of Virginia Woolf’s last three major works within larger literary and historical contexts. Wood’s approach to Woolf’s writings is refreshing, which integrates 'feminist-historicist' analysis with genetic criticism, a French school of textual studies that reconstructs the genesis of literary texts through published and pre-publication materials, or what geneticists have called 'avant-textes' (pre-texts) … Examining an extensive gathering of sources, ranging from Woolf’s reading notes, research scrapbooks, holograph and typescript drafts, manuscripts, and proofs to her diaries, essays, and correspondence, Wood deftly synthesizes critical interpretations of Woolf’s evolving aesthetic practices and political stance with detailed analysis of authorial considerations under the influence of contemporary writing and political climate in the last decade of Woolf’s life. * Journal of Modern Literature *Table of ContentsAcknowledgements 1. Introduction 2. Critiquing Patriarchy in the Years of The Years 3. The Evolution of Woolf's Feminist-Pacifism in Three Guineas 4. Writing Art in Times of Chaos in Between the Acts 5. Conclusion Notes Appendices Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisRobert Thacker is Charles A. Dana Professor of Canadian Studies and English at St. Lawrence University, New York, USA. His many previous publications include Alice Munro: Writing Her Lives - A Biography (2005, revised 2011).Trade ReviewThacker’s collection of essays on the work of Nobel Prize–winning author Alice Munro will be useful not only to students of Munro’s work but also to creative writing students who want to crawl around in the rafters of story making to understand how the architect drew the plans, and to know the builder who constructed them. Munro’s stories are inhabitable constructions, pieces of life recognizable as something that could so easily have been one's own. The story pulls the reader in, and on looking back one sees the deeper cord of meaning that was lying beneath the surface. Munro’s stories seem so simple, like a story anyone could tell, but they are well built, as this collection reveals. One finds in Munro's stories moral debts that must be paid. The essays in this collection offer ways to get into the stories, collect the things one came for, and get out surprised by the unknowable truths now lying in plain sight. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals; general readers. * CHOICE *A welcome opportunity to think about the concept of “late style” in relation to Munro … The complexities of volumes like Runaway, Dear Life, Too Much Happiness, and Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage offer opportunities aplenty for a close examination of a literary sensibility that prizes complexity over superficiality, inconclusiveness over pat conclusions. * Canadian Literature *This accessible book is a welcome treasure for readers and students of Munro’s fiction; its erudition ensures that it will be eagerly sought out by scholars working in the field. * Journal of American Studies *Table of ContentsSeries Editor’s Introduction Acknowledgements Introduction: Robert Thacker, ‘Durable and Freestanding: The Late Art of Munro’ Part I Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage 1 Charles E. May “The Key to the Treasure”: Sex and Storytelling in Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage, 2 Tracy Ware, ‘Teaching Conflict in Munro from “The Day of the Butterfly” to “Comfort”’ 3 Robert McGill, ‘Mistaken Identities in “The Bear Came Over the Mountain”’ Part II Runaway 4 Julie Rivkin, ‘Sibyl at the Kitchen Table, or Translating the Classics in “Hateship” and The Juliet Triptych’ 5 Eric Reeves, ‘The Lives of Women and Men: Narrative Inflection in Runaway’ 6 Lester Barber, “Old Confusions or Obligations”: Comic Vision in Runaway’ Part III Dear Life 7 J. R. (Tim) Struthers, ‘Traveling with Munro: Reading “To Reach Japan”’ 8 Ailsa Cox, ‘“Rage and Admiration”: Grotesque Humor in Dear Life’ 9 Linda M. Morra, ‘“It Was[n’t] All Inward”: The Dynamics of Intimacy in the “Finale” of Dear Life’ Notes on Chapters Works Cited Further Reading Notes on Contributors Index

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Book SynopsisVisions of post-apocalyptic worlds have proved to be irresistible for many 21st-century writers, from literary novelists to fantasy and young adult writers. Exploring a wide range of texts, from the works of Margaret Atwood, Cormac McCarthy, Tom Perrotta and Emily St. John Mandel to young adult novels such as Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games series, this is the first critical introduction to contemporary apocalyptic fiction. Exploring the cultural and political contexts of these writings and their echoes in popular media, Apocalyptic Fiction also examines how contemporary apocalyptic texts looks back to earlier writings by the likes of Mary Shelley, H.G. Wells and J.G. Ballard. Apocalyptic Fiction includes an annotated guide to secondary readings, making this an essential guide for students of contemporary fiction at all levels.Trade ReviewTate traces a diverse array of tropes as they surface in this century's most indelible doomsday fantasies ... Fluent and perceptive. * Times Literary Supplement *This is a consistently suggestive, scholarly and readable study of the literature of apocalypse both inside and outside science fiction. * Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction *A stimulating, lucid and compact study and guide to further research on twenty-first century British, US, and Canadian writing about the end times. * The Wellsian: The Journal of the H. G. Wells Society *Table of ContentsAcknowledgements 1. Introduction: Dreams of the 'Ruined' Future 2. 'God Rains Over Everything': Two Floods 3. 'Sudden Departure': Rapture Writing 4. 'In the Beginning, There Was Chaos': Atwood, Apocalypse, Art 5. Empty Roads: Walking After Catastrophe 6. Keep Watching: Spectacle, Rebellion and Apocalyptic Rites of Passage Conclusion: Survival is Inefficient Notes Primary Bibliography Annotated Secondary Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisMarlene hosts a dinner party in a London restaurant to celebrate her promotion to managing director of 'Top Girls' employment agency. Her guests are five women from the past: Isabella Bird (1831- 1904) - the adventurous traveller; Lady Nijo (b1258) - the mediaeval courtesan who became a Buddhist nun and travelled on foot through Japan; Dull Gret, who as Dulle Griet in a Bruegel painting, led a crowd of women on a charge through hell; Pope Joan - the transvestite early female pope and last but not least Patient Griselda, an obedient wife out of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. As the evening continues we are involved with the stories of all five women and the impending crisis in Marlene's own life. A classic of contemporary theatre, Churchill's play is seen as a landmark for a new generation of playwrights. It was premiered by the Royal Court in 1982."Top Girls has a combination of directness and complexity which keeps you both emotionally and intellectually alert. You can smell liTrade Review"Top Girls has a combination of directness and complexity which keeps you both emotionally and intellectually alert. You can smell life, and at the same time feel locked in an argument with an agile and passionate mind." * The Sunday Times, John Peter *

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Book SynopsisOffers a sustained, critical examination of Wilder's writings, including her Little House series, her posthumously published The First Four Years, her letters, journalism, and autobiography. The collection also draws on biographies of Wilder, letters to and from Wilder and her daughter, and other biographical materials.

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Book SynopsisWilliam Faulkner has been the topic of numerous biographies, papers, and international attention. Yet there are no collected resources providing a comprehensive scope of Faulkner’s life and work before now. William Faulkner Day by Day provides unique insight into the daily life of one of America’s favourite writers.

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Book SynopsisThe relationship of philosophy with Kafka's oeuvre is complex. It has been argued that Kafka's novels and stories defy philosophic extrapolation; conversely, it has also been suggested that precisely the tendency of Kafka's writings to elude discursive solution is itself a philosophical tendency, one that is somehow contributing to a wiser relationship of human beings with language. These matters are the focus of the proposed volume on Philosophy and Kafka. The proposed collection brings together essays that interrogate the relationship of philosophy and Kafka, and offer new and original interpretations. The volume obviously cannot claim completeness, but it partially does justice to the multiplicity of philosophical issues and philosophical interpretations at stake. This variety informs the composition of the volume itself. A number of essays focus on specific philosophical commentaries on Kafka's work, from Adorno's to Agamben's, from Arendt's to Benjamin's, from Deleuze and GuatTrade ReviewSeveral readings are illuminating. ... Philosophy and Kafka contains many valuable insights. ... The illuminating moments of Philosophy and Kafka will reward curious fans of Kafka's work. * Jewish Review of Books *These illuminating essays explore some of the ways in which the ideas of philosophers such as Socrates, Spinoza, Kierkegaard, and Kant are at play in Kafka's writing, and the ways in which more recent philosophers such as Adorno, Agamben, Arendt, and Benjamin have considered Kafka's work. What is more, many of the essays collected here shed light on the ways in which Kafka's own thinking can contribute to on-going philosophical debates about issues such as the conditions for identity, the nature of animality, the requirements of justice, and the moral implications and promise of certain forms of writing. Philosophy and Kafka is an important and long overdue contribution to Kafka scholarship as well as to philosophical reflection on a range of pressing issues. -- Marc LuchtThis essay collection – the first of its kind – explores a rich variety of ways in which Kafka’s writings are bound to philosophical concerns. It bridges the gap between the philosophical and the literary, highlighting how the two coexist and illuminate one another. From Socrates to Agamben, from Kierkegaard to Wittgenstein, ethics and aesthetics, logic and literature, Kafka’s prose resonates, reflects and provokes. By bringing together scholars from different disciplines, "Philosophy and Kafka" establishes fascinating new paths of enquiry into Kafka’s thinking and philosophers’ engagement with it. It allows us to understand why we continue to be captured by Kafka’s writing, standing as a testament to its relevance, and attesting to the vitality of the research it inspires. -- Uta Degner, University of SalzburgTable of ContentsIntroduction Part 1: Philosophical Investigations Chapter 1: I Don’t Want to Know that I Know: The Inversion of Socratic Ignorance in the Knowledge of the Dogs Chapter 2: Kafka’s Empty Law: Laughter and Freedom in The Trial Chapter 3: A Kafkan Sublime: Dark Poetics on the Kantian Philosophy Chapter 4: The Everyday’s Fabulous Beyond: Nonsense, Parable, and the Ethics of the Literary in Kafka and Wittgenstein Chapter 5: You’re nobody ‘til somebody loves you: Communication and the Social Destruction of Subjectivity in Kafka’s Metamorphosis Chapter 6: Kafka’s Insomnia Part 2: Philosophical Topics Chapter 7: Animal Bachelors and Animal Brides: Fabulous Metamorphosis in Kafka and Garnett Chapter 8: Kafka’s Political Animals Chapter 9: The Calamity of the Rightless: Hannah Arendt and Franz Kafka on Monsters and Members Chapter 10: Knowing Life Before the Law: Kafka, Kelsen, Derrida Part 3: Philosophical Readings Chapter 11: Anxiety and Attention: Benjamin and Others Chapter 12: On the Mimesis of Reification: Adorno’s Critical Theoretical Interpretation of Kafka Chapter 13: “In the Penal Colony” in the Philosophy of Gilles Deleuze Chapter 14: In a Messianic Gesture: Agamben’s Kafka Index About the Contributors

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Book SynopsisIn Dialogue with Godot: Waiting and Other Thoughts, Ranjan Ghosh puts together thirteen new essays on Beckett's most popular and widely read play, Waiting for Godot. Chapters are envisaged as dialogues with Godot, keeping in mind the event of waiting and other issues related to this Godot-Waiting phenomenon. The merit of this book lies in exploring this play from thirteen fresh perspectives introducing some important themes that have not been dealt previously. Contributors explore the play in reference to topics as varied as Hindu philosophy, Agamben, Kristeva, Derrida, the absence of women in the play, Aristotleanism in structural reading, and anti-existentialism. Essays ask, can we make claims to read this play outside the absurd tradition? Is it an anti-existential play? Can Beckett possibly be Indianized? How can the dialectic between waiting and delay be problematized? If Beckett was up to de-structure conventional modes of drama-writing, what connection could he possibly have witTrade ReviewGhosh has assembled 13 outstanding essays that review Beckett's most popular drama. The volume's contributors engage the play in meaningful contexts that have important implications for performance, production, and scholarship. Standout essays explore the political contexts of site-specific productions in Sarajevo and post-Katrina New Orleans; the affinities and contrasts of Godot to classical Greek tragedy; Beckett and allegory; and the psychodynamics of friendship and coupling. Beckett's attempt to redefine theater in postwar Europe is also explored, as are the ways in which Beckett's experiences in the French resistance suffuse this play and his other postwar writing. The essays contemplate the drama within a range of political and philosophical contexts, including issues of torture and human rights, Marxist and psychoanalytic thought, philosophical reflections on the eternal return, Aristotle's Poetics, poststructuralism, and Hindu philosophy. Taken together they shed contemporary light on this drama in ways that are suggestive for actors, directors, and scholars, and provide valuable insights into the criticism and practices of this most popular of Beckett's plays. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals. * CHOICE *Godot’s 'Underground Ancestry,' 'Vladimir’s Tragic Recognition,' 'The Feminine' in play, motifs of 'Speculation' and 'Infantile Politics,' editor’s Ghosh’s own placing the theme of work and play within what he has called elsewhere 'the wordling of the drama'—what a rich collection of approaches to Waiting for Godot! And as someone who works in the theatre, I also find this commentary wonderfully suggestive for both actors and directors. -- Sidney Homan, University of FloridaThis varied and provocative collection of essays on Beckett's most famous play animates new and productive dialogues with an extraordinary array of thinkers. Situating the writing and performance of Godot in a range of historical contexts, the essays involve Marx, Freud, Benjamin, Hindu philosophy, Adorno, Gramsci, Brecht, Derrida, Sontag, Foucauld, Aristotle and Agamben in intertextual engagement with this profoundly though perversely allusive drama. -- Robert Gordon, Goldsmith College, University of LondonTable of ContentsIntroduction: Dialogic-Godotic Ranjan Ghosh The Politics of Identification in Waiting for Godot Graley Herren “What have I said?” Vladimir’s Tragic Recognition Mark S. Byron Alone and Together: The Psychic Structure of the Couple in Waiting for Godot Mary Catanzaro Beckett contra Aristotle: A Choral Reading of Waiting for Godot Tom Cousineau Waiting upon each other: work and play in waiting for Godot Ranjan Ghosh Rien à faire: The Para-Messianics of Delay in Godot Stephen Barker Waiting For Nothing: Commitment, Resistance, and Godot’s Underground Ancestry Paul Sheehan Scrutinizing the feminine in Waiting for Godot: Vladimir and Estragon await their couples counsellor Art Horowitz Beckett’s Lucky Chance: Speculation in Waiting for Godot Eyal Amiran Samuel Beckett’s Playland: The Profane and Infantile Politics of Waiting for Godot Maria Margaroni ‘Who is Godot?’ Beckett and Allegory Shane Weller Culture, Politics and Human Rights in Waiting for Godot Wanda Balzano Index About the Authors

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Book SynopsisViktor Shklovsky (1893-1984) was one of the foremost literary critics and theorists of the 20th century. One of the founders of the Formalist movement in literary criticism, his seminal works include Art as Method (1917), Theory of Prose (1925), Third Factory (1926), classic studies of Tolstoy and Mayakovsky, and a memoir of the Russian civil-war era, A Sentimental Journey: Memoirs, 19171922 (1923).Alexandra Berlina is Postdoctoral Researcher in Literary Studies at the University of Erfurt, Germany. Her translations of Brodsky's poems Dido and Aeneas and You can't tell a gnat... have won awards from the 'Willis Barnstone Translation Prize' and the 'The Joseph Brodsky/Stephen Spender Prize'. She is the author of Brodsky Translating Brodsky (Bloomsbury, 2014).Trade ReviewAn extraordinary revelation of the unbelievable life and work of the man who invented formalism. Alexandra Berlina has done a great service to literature by rescuing these fragments of one of the most lively and irreverent minds of the last century. A book to return to, again and again. * David Bellos, Meredith Howland Pyne Professor of French Literature, Princeton University, USA, and author of Is That a Fish in Your Ear? Translation and the Meaning of Everything *This collection allows all readers to approach the life and opinions of Viktor Shklovsky, one of the most fascinating figures of Russian cultural life in the twentieth century. * Tzvetan Todorov, historian, essayist, and author of The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre *Viktor Shklovsky: A Reader, thoughtfully translated and edited by Alexandra Berlina, is a valiant reminder of the extraordinary versatility, humor, brilliance, and sensitivity the Formalist label has come to conceal. … With this exemplary new anthology, Alexandra Berlina has helped free Shklovsky from the clanging of -isms, allowing new readers to appreciate his thought in the fullness of its diversity and beauty. * The Los Angeles Review of Books *The reviewed omnibus, it must be added, challenges yet another well entrenched doxa concerning Shklovsky’s work. Traditionally, it was regarded as consisting of two unequal parts: the impishly appealing pre-1929 formalist output followed by the appalling potboilers written after the author reluctantly renounced his formalist stance … Berlina, though, managed to erase the perceived caesura between the early and late Shklovsky’s writings not just by telling but by showing. Her Reader, assembling texts from all periods of his long writerly career, clearly highlighted the motivic iterations binding them together as well as their overall thematic unity. * The Russian Review *Table of ContentsTranslator’s Introduction Viktor Shklovsky: Life and Work Ostranenie and Other Key Concepts Shklovsky in the West: Reception and Heritage The Poker of Russian Formalism: Shklovsky as Protagonist In Fiction In Diaries and Memoirs Shklovsky’s Shorts Shklovsky’s Style Selection, Translation and Formal Remarks Section I: OPOYAZ Publications Translator’s Introduction Resurrection of the Word (1914) Art as Device (1917/1919) Literature beyond “Plot” (1921/1925) Literature beyond Theme; Non-Linear Inheritance Literature beyond Genre; Digressions Literature beyond Categories; Seeing like a Child Section II: Autobiographic Hybrids Translator’s Introduction A Letter to Roman Jakobson (1922/1990) Zoo, or Letters Not About Love (1923/1965) Author’s Preface to the First Edition A Second Preface for an Old Book A Third Preface Letter Four Letter Six Letter Eight Letter Eleven Letter Seventeen Letter Twenty Two Letter Twenty Eight Letter Thirty A Sentimental Journey (1923) Revolution and the Front The Writing Desk Knight’s Move (1923) Preface One Driving Nails with a Samovar On “The Great Metalworker” A Thousand Herrings The Tsar’s Kitchen Teaser Stallions (1924/1990) The Third Factory (1926) The First Factory The Second Factory The Third Factory Section III: Early Soviet Criticism and Advice to Young Writers Translator’s Introduction The Technique of Writing Craft (1927) Introduction: Don’t Hurry to Become a Professional Writer Newspaper Work Narrative Prose Unfolding a Text A Few Words on Poetry Conclusion Hamburg Score (1928) Babel: A Critical Romance (1924) In Defense of the Sociological Method (1927) Ten Years (1927) Hamburg Score (1928) The Way I Write (1930/1990) Section IV: After the Freeze Translator’s Introduction Once Upon A Time (1964) Childhood Youth The Ending of Youth Tales about Prose (1966/1983) A Note From the Author On the Novella Some Empirical Remarks on the Methods of Connecting Novellas On the Different Meanings of “Character” when Applied to Literary Works of Different Epochs On the True Unity of Works of Art What Happened after the Plague of 1348? On the Sense of Wonder Scenes of Recognition in Dickens Concept Renewal Letters to Nikita Shklovsky (1965-1969/2002) 05.10.1965 05.10.1966 19.04.1968 02.04.1969 20.07.1969 Bowstring. On the Dissimilarity of the Similar. (1970) Energy of Delusion. A Book on Plot. (1981) Section V: On the Theory of Prose (1983) Translator’s Introduction Preface Words Free the Soul from Narrowness: About the OPOYAZ The Rhyme of Poetry. The Rhyme of Prose. Structuralism through the Looking Glass: A Farewell The First Unsuccessful Blueprint of a Whale: Chekhov’s “Darling” The Links of Art Do Not Repeat Each Other. Once Again, on the Dissimilarity of the Similar. Sterne In the Footsteps of Old Discoveries and Inventions The Problem of Time in Art The Lungs Are for Breathing. Thoughts Out Loud. Yet Another Foreword Ostranenie In Reply to a Questionnaire [More Thoughts Out Loud] Section VI: In 60 Years: Works on Cinema. (1985) Translator’s Introduction Introduction (1985) On Cinema (1919) The Plot in Cinema (1923) Chaplin as Policeman (1923) The Semantics of Cinema (1925) Poetry and Prose in Cinema (1927) On Re-Editing Films (1927) Five Feuilletons on Eisenstein (1926) Talking to Friends (1939) Happy Fable-land (1948) What the Character Knows and What the Audience Knows (1959) The Emergence of the Word (1963) Return the Ball into the Game (1970) Unread Dream (1984) Instead of an Afterword: A Letter to Evgeny Gabrilovich (1984)

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Book SynopsisMatthew L. Potts is Assistant Professor of Ministry Studies at the Divinity School of Harvard University, USA. His teaching and research focuses on Christianity and contemporary American literature.Trade ReviewIt might seem, at first glance, willfully counterintuitive to scour McCarthy’s resolutely horrific fiction for signs of grace. Yet this is precisely what makes McCarthy such a rewarding case study for a literature of sacrament … This book warrants careful reading and critical attention. Given the various ways Potts is alive to the subtleties of Christian theology—especially to the semiotics of sacrament—and given how dexterously he transposes that thought into the space of literature, this book will surely be of value in ongoing debates about the postsecularism of American letters. Moreover, the book’s value within the more specialist discourse of McCarthy criticism will be doubly pronounced. While Potts delivers new and significantly revised readings of well-known moments within McCarthy’s canon, the polemical edge given to some of his claims is certainly justified. Inattention to sacrament is ‘regrettable,’ we are told, because it ‘impoverishes interpretation’ (1). The truth of this claim is born out in its antipode: a newfound knowledge of the sacrament, made perfectly legible here, will certainly enrich our reading. * Modern Fiction Studies *Cormac McCarthy and the Signs of Sacrament is and will for a long time remain the best treatment we have of McCarthy as proto-postmodern theologian. Matthew Potts' readings recuperate the category of 'story' for postmodernity. * Richard A. Rosengarten, Associate Professor of Religion and Literature, The University of Chicago Divinity School, USA *Matthew Potts's book is sometimes as dark and haunting as McCarthy's novels themselves. It is a complex meditation through close readings of the books and their characters, contained within careful readings of Nietzsche, Arendt, Adorno, Auerbach, Judith Butler and others. Against the background of the failure of religious institutions in which deep and sacramental elements rise to the surface of life known often as mere violence, Potts offers a reading of these fictions which avow the profound vulnerability at the heart of God and make space for a sacramental understanding of the world in which nihilism and decay are never far away. * David Jasper, Professor of Literature and Theology, University of Glasgow, UK *Cormac McCarthy’s work is fraught with Christian imagery, but often Christianity becomes a dark, moral undertow in the works, seemingly designed to highlight a nihilistic, violent view of the world. Churches most often lie in ruin, talismans scattered. Prayers go unanswered. The morally ‘good’ often brutally die. Though Potts (ministry studies, Harvard Divinity School) acknowledges the validity of Gnostic, nihilistic, and existential readings of the novels, he systematically and deliberately guides readers through a theological approach, examining McCarthy’s frequent invocations of sacrament (the Eucharist in particular) in a nonreductive context and using postmodern theory as critical ballast. In doing so, Potts provides a revelatory bright stroke in the rapidly expanding field of McCarthy scholarship. Of particular interest is Potts's reading of The Road, as he casts, for example, new light on the baptismal images in the text. In places, Potts’s mode could be more integrative: he tends to use subheadings within chapters to ‘flip’ between direct textual analysis and contextual development (rather than intertwining these modes). For example, a discussion of the father and son in The Road stops dead in its tracks to develop subsequent sections on ‘divine dispossession’ and ‘narration and incarnation.’ Overall, however, Potts's immersion in McCarthy yields fresh insights and previously unexplored theological angles. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty. -- E. Hage, SUNY Cobleskill * CHOICE *McCarthy readers will find that Potts’ focused reading of the philosophical and Christian allusions in McCarthy helps him elucidate particular scenes and then weave his insights into a careful, broader argument about McCarthy’s worldview. This approach provides a clearer understanding of McCarthy’s persistent scenes of human kindness amidst violence and inhumanity. -- Mark Busby, Texas State University, USA * Southwestern American Literature *Potts offers a valuable contribution to McCarthy studies as well as scholarship in Christian theology, noting that scholarship on the novels, for all its attention to McCarthy’s treatment of religious themes, pays too little attention to this trope ... One of the most notable achievements of this text is its engagement with an impressive roster of postmodern theorists, including Theodor Adorno, Hannah Arendt, Adriana Cavaerero, Karl Barth, and Judith Butler, while also conducting careful, insightful readings of McCarthy and his critics ... [T]he question of how to locate value and meaning in these novels has remained one of the foremost concerns for McCarthy scholarship. Without retreating into a reductive, totalizing account, Potts manages to bring a fresh perspective on these enduring questions. -- Nicholas Lawrence * The Cormac McCarthy Journal *This meticulously thought-out and presented discussion of the sacramentality within the works of Cormac McCarthy is both engaging and convincing, leaving me to wonder how McCarthy scholars will respond to the insights and analysis Potts has taken such great care to lay out. Regardless of whether those scholars agree or disagree with Potts, they certainly must engage with him, as his reading of McCarthy suggests shortcoming in much of what has already been written. * Reviews in Religion and Theology *To those interested in the dynamic relationship between theology and literature, the work of novelist Cormac McCarthy has long been begging for a sustained critical treatment. With the recent release of Mathew Potts’s Cormac McCarthy and the Signs of Sacrament, we are treated to such a book—a study that is to be particularly commended for mining the theological content so prevalent in McCarthy’s work … Pott’s beautifully written text makes choice contributions not only to sacramental aesthetics, but to the fields of ethics and narrative theory as well. -- Michael Murphy * Reading Religion *Matthew L. Potts attempts in Cormac McCarthy and the Signs of Sacrament to treat a surprisingly understudied aspect of McCarthy’s fiction, namely, his use of sacramental imagery in his novels. … Potts deftly balances exposition of McCarthy’s novels and analysis of those narratives, and he brings a sophisticated set of hermeneutical tools to McCarthy’s texts. The result is an engaging study from which both the newcomer to McCarthy and the reader familiar with his fiction can learn a great deal. * Arts: The Arts in Religious and Theological Studies *Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Introduction 1. Knowledge 2. Fate 3. Action 4. Story 5. Sacrament Epilogue Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisNicholas Birns is Associate Professor at New York University, USA. His books include The Contemporary Spanish-American Novel (co-edited, 2013) and Theory After Theory (2010).Juan E. De Castro is an Associate Professor in Literary Studies at Eugene Lang College, The New School for Liberal Arts, New York, USA. He is the author of three books, the most recent of which is Mario Vargas Llosa: Public Intellectual in Neoliberal Latin America (2011). He is the co-editor of The Contemporary Spanish-American Novel (2013).Trade ReviewAfter a substantial introduction by Birns and De Castro, Roberto Bolaño as World Literature proceeds with eleven refreshing critical readings of Bolaño’s works in light of the notion of world literature. … [M]any of the engaged essays it contains offer innovative perspectives. Reading the articles together provides significant insights into both Bolaño’s works and the very concept of world literature. One of the common strengths of the articles lies in their critical approach to some of the most well-known theories of world literature (e.g. those elaborated by Franco Moretti, Pascale Casanova and David Damrosch) and their simultaneous exploration of new understandings of world literature construed as a literary category and a creative or critical practice. Thus, this book follows a chiastic pattern: it reads Bolaño through world literature and world literature through Bolaño. … Some of the best essays in this collection are ‘political,’ not in an ideological way but in the sense that they investigate the system underlying world literature. In this way, they strive to understand how an oeuvre like Roberto Bolaño’s both is world literature and constitutes a radical challenge to it. * Karen-Margrethe Simonsen, Aarhus University, Denmark, Recherche littéraire/Literary Research (Fall 2020) *Arguably, Roberto Bolaño as World Literature is the most significant book in the series up to now. ... The Introduction, ‘Fractured Masterpieces’ not only sets up the subject of the book in all its complexity, it could also be seen as a model for how to articulate the individual subjects and the wider, theoretical interests of World Literature. ... More than in any other volume so far, this one shows how in every single chapter a questioning of World Literature through a consideration, even close reading, of Bolaño’s works, was made into a key directive and focus. Throughout the volume questions of politics, ethics and aesthetics constantly intersect, and even though each essay on its own is worth reading, the collected volume is certainly more than just the sum of its various parts. * Journal of European Studies *Twelve chapters comprise the anthology, including the exemplary Introduction. It is the best Bolaño critical ensemble since Bolaño Salvaje (2006). * Comparative Literature Studies *Not and world literature, but as world literature, and here resides this volume's decisive and effective critical intervention. Not world literature (the tired substitute for a sociology of markets, prizes, and canonizing institutions), but rather literature as world, or rather, literature as non-world, the void that sits where the reassuring presence of the world used to be: Bolaño as the topological writer of the traumatic wound that splits totalizing imaginaries, unworlds a world turned against itself, and dislocates the very possibility of universal emancipation as the horizon for political and aesthetic agency. This urgent book is a crucial contribution to the collective process of redefining the critical and theoretical scope of world literature as a concept and a practice in need to be rescued from itself. * Mariano Siskind, Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures and Comparative Literature, Harvard University, USA *This timely collection of essays on the place of Bolaño’s oeuvre in world literature explores the Chilean author’s vision of history, his literary worlds, and the reception he has had worldwide. Essays by renowned experts analyze, through the analysis of some of Bolaño’s main works, his cosmopolitanism, the global framework in which his plots take place, and the reasons behind his impressive success as a writer that embodies Latin American literature after the Boom. Ultimately, the author emerges as a figure beyond one particular nation, political inclination, or cause. * Ignacio López-Calvo, Professor of Latin American Literature, University of California, Merced, USA *Expertly assembled and introduced by the editors, this collection offers incisive explorations of Roberto Bolaño’s politics and of his place on the complex map of world literature. Indispensable reading for anyone interested in the great Chilean author’s work, and in the cosmopolitan dimension of Latin American literature. * Maarten van Delden, Professor of Latin American Literature, University of California, Los Angeles, USA *Birns (NYU) and De Castro (Eugene Lang College, New School) present the 11 essays in this collection in three parts: "Bolan~o and World History," "Bolan~o's Literary Worlds," and "Bolan~o's Global Readers." The contributors are from the US, Ireland, Germany, China, and Chile, a geographic range that reflects the title. In the introduction, "Fractured Masterpieces," the editors write that they find Bolan~o (1953–2003) difficult to characterize politically and artistically but not canonically—that is, as globally significant. In her essay, Oswaldo Zavala describes Bolan~o's work as taking "a subversive approach to Western literary modernity as it intersects the Latin American intellectual difference." Birns notes that Bolan~o shares affinities with Melville and, even more strikingly, Twain. Noting the irony of a writer whose posthumously commodified works explore "geometries of power and economy that shape capitalist modernity," Sharae Deckard explicates Bolan~o's "paradoxical relation to world literature." Bolan~o's distaste for marketing practices did not prevent the writer from becoming profitable for the marketers. These essays will encourage readers to visit Bolan~o again or for the first time. Summing Up: Recommended. * CHOICE *Some of the best essays in this collection are “political,” not in an ideological way but in the sense that they investigate the system underlying world literature. * Recherche Littéraire *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Fractured Masterpieces Nicholas Birns (College of New Rochelle, USA) and Juan E De Castro (Eugene Lang College, The New School for Liberal Arts, USA) I. Bolaño and World History 1. On Fascism, history and evil in Roberto Bolaño Federico Finchelstein (The New School, USA) 2. “More Culture!”: The Rules of Art in Roberto Bolaño’s By Night in Chile Thomas Beebee (Pennsylvania State University, USA) 3. Politics and Ethics in Latin America: On Roberto Bolaño Juan E. De Castro (The New School,USA) 4. The Repolitization of the Latin American Shore: Roberto Bolaño and the Dispersion of “World Literature” Oswaldo Zavala (City University of New York, USA) II. Bolaño’s Literary Worlds 5. Bolaño, Ethics, and the Experts Will H. Corral (Independent Scholar) 6. Considerations on the Real and Reality in Juan Luis Martínez’s La nueva novela and in Roberto Bolaño’s The Savage Detectives Patricia Espinosa H. (Instituto de Estética, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile) 7. Global Bolaño: Reading, Writing and Publishing in a Neoliberal World José Enrique Navarro (Wichita State University, USA) III. Bolaño’s Global Readers 8. Mocking World Literature and Canon Parodies in Roberto Bolaño’s Fiction Benjamin Loy (University of Köln, Germany) 9. On Depoliticized Politics: Roberto Bolaño’s Reception in China Teng Wei (South China Normal University, China) 10. Black Dawn: Roberto Bolaño as (North) American Writer Nicholas Birns (College of New Rochelle, USA) 11. Roberto Bolaño and the Remapping of World-Literature Sharae Deckard (University College Dublin,UK) Index

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Book SynopsisIn his prose fiction, memoirs, poetry, and drama, Thomas Bernhard (1931-1989)--one of the 20th century's most uniquely gifted writers--created a new and radical style, seemingly out of thin air. His books never tell a story in the received sense. Instead, he rages on the page, he rants and spews vitriol about the moral failures of his homeland, Austria, in the long amnesiac aftermath of the Second World War. Yet this furious prose, seemingly shapeless but composed with unparalleled musicality, and taxing by conventional standards, has been powerfully echoed in many writers since Bernhard's death in 1989. These explorers have found in Bernhard's singular accomplishment new paths for the expression of life and truth.Thomas Bernhard''s Afterlives examines the international mobilization of Bernhard's style. Writers in Italian, German, Spanish, Hungarian, English, and French have succeeded in making Bernhard's Austrian vision an international vision. This book tells that story.Trade ReviewA masterful set of essays on Bernhard’s oeuvre .... Taken together, the eleven chapters of this book represent some of the best scholarship in English to date on Bernhard’s remarkable impact on the world of postwar. ... There is too little space in a review like this to do justice to the breadth and quality of each of the other contributions. They represent literary scholars from across the major Western languages and have given us an essay collection that’s truly useful: a sophisticated introduction to Bernhard’s echo in Euro-American prose. * Journal of Austrian Studies *More than three decades after his death, Thomas Bernhard has become an author of world literature. The resonance of Bernhard’s voice in the works of numerous contemporaries far beyond the borders of Austria provides powerful testimony of this fact. In its exploration of this resonance, this remarkable volume makes a significant contribution to Bernhard criticism. Through their forays into Bernhard’s international reception, the essays collected here open up new and extended vistas into the œuvre of one of the foremost German-language writers of the 20th century. * Manfred Mittermayer, Director, Literaturarchiv Salzburg, University of Salzburg, Austria *In this insightful volume, we learn about the many ways in which authors across the globe have sought to emulate the great Thomas Bernhard (1931-1989), from 'anticipatory plagiarism' to 'coinhabiting palimpsests.' Writers like Susan Sontag, W.G. Sebald, Geoff Dyer, Imre Kertész, Italo Calvino, and Horacio Castellanos Moya have turned to the brilliantly querulous Austrian to pursue their own political or aesthetic projects. Their takings have been devious, inclusive, maddening, profound, liberating. There are numerous avenues still to pursue with Bernhard, and this volume explores one fruitful possibility. * Fatima Naqvi, Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures, Yale University, USA *Table of ContentsIntroduction: The Master of Understatement, or Remembering Schermaier Stephen Dowden (Brandeis University, USA) 1. The Afterlife of Thomas Bernhard in Contemporary Austrian Literature Katya Krylova (University of Aberdeen, UK) 2. How Not to Begin: Wrestling with Thomas Bernhard Kata Gellen (Duke University, USA) 3. Bernhard, Sebald, and Photography in Holocaust Memory Agnes Mueller (University of South Carolina, USA) 4. Radical Style: Bernhard, Sontag, Kertész Stephen Dowden (Brandeis University, USA) 5. The Stains of Cultural Inheritance: Thomas Bernhard and Philip Roth Byron Spring (Lincoln College, University of Oxford, UK) 6. Gaddis before Bernhard before Gaddis Martin Klebes (University of Oregon, USA) 7. Thomas Bernhard, a Writer for Spain Heike Scharm (University of South Florida, USA) 8. Immersions into Bernhard’s Works in Recent Francophone Literature Olaf Berwald (Kennesaw State University, USA) 9. Thomas Bernhard's Influence on Gabriel Josipovici's Monologue Novels Gregor Thuswaldner (Whitworth University, USA) 10. Thomas Bernhard, Italo Calvino, Elena Ferrante, and Claudio Magris: From Postmodernism to Anti-Semitism Saskia Elizabeth Ziolkowski (Duke University, USA) 11. Thomas Bernhard's Extinction: Variations/Variazioni/Variaciones Juliane Werner (University of Vienna, Austria) Notes on Contributors Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisA model of academic praxis. - Public BooksElena Ferrante as World Literature is the first English-language monograph on Italian writer Elena Ferrante, whose four Neapolitan Novels (2011-2014) became a global phenomenon. The book proposes that Ferrante constructs a theory of feminine experience which serves as the scaffolding for her own literary practice. Drawing on the writer's entire textual corpus to date, Stiliana Milkova examines the linguistic, psychical, and corporeal-spatial realities that constitute the female subjects Ferrante has theorized. At stake in Ferrante's theory/practice is the articulation of a feminine subjectivity that emerges from the structures of patriarchal oppression and that resists, bypasses, or subverts these very structures. Milkova's inquiry proceeds from Ferrante's theory of frantumaglia and smarginatura to explore mechanisms for controlling and containing the female body and mind, forms of female authorship andTrade ReviewStiliana Milkova has written a compelling and highly readable study of Ferrante’s fiction [that] is interested more than anything about what the text itself reveals about Ferrante’s poetics and politics, explaining as a result, what makes Ferrante’s texts so addictive to read and such a pleasure to analyze. This one is for the academics and casual fans alike. * EuropeNow *Written with remarkable competence and flair, and accompanied by a rich bibliography, Elena Ferrante as World Literature constitutes an essential reference for Ferrante scholars and an ideal textbook for any university course on Elena Ferrante in the anglophone world. * Italian Studies *Stiliana Milkova leads us on a tour through Ferrante’s world of women and female subjectivity, exploring the themes of mothers and daughters, friendships between women, women and their bodies, girls and their dolls, women reading and writing--and their connections from novel to novel--in a fascinating and thought-provoking way that makes us want to go back to the books with a new understanding. * Ann Goldstein, English Translator of Elena Ferrante’s novels *A very rich and original perspective. * Leggendaria (trans. by Bloomsbury Academic) *Milkova stands as a rightful successor to the Ferrantean exegetic legacy. She does not read against Ferrante, but alongside her, turning what others might perceive as an intrusive presence into a stamp of approval. * Public Books *Essential for exploring the urban and topographical plan of Ferrante's work. * Bollettino '900 (trans. by Bloomsbury Academic) *Elena Ferrante as World Literature makes a compelling argument for the exceptionality of Elena Ferrante's work as a site of entanglement of multiple cultural traditions, interdisciplinary lines of enquiry, and trans-linguistic negotiation. While engaging in productive dialogue with existing scholarship, this book proposes its own profoundly original reading of the entire Ferrante corpus. Subverting traditional discourses of motherhood and femininity by de-constructing and de-framing women's bodies, Ferrante's new subjects emerge, in Stiliana Milkova's powerful account, from the 'male cage' of patriarchal structures to build new genealogies of women as creators, authors, translators. This is a milestone in Ferrante scholarship and an essential tool for teachers and students of Ferrante's oeuvre. * Enrica Maria Ferrara, Teaching Fellow of Italian, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, and editor of Posthumanism in Italian Literature and Film: Boundaries and Identity (2019) *Stiliana Milkova masterfully leads her readers through the 'feminine labyrinth-polis' that Elena Ferrante has created. Like the figure of Ariadne that she examines, Milkova meticulously traces the rich web of motifs that generate Ferrante's 'universal feminine imaginary,' deftly accounting for the power of these novels. * Maria Truglio, Professor of Italian and Women's, Gender & Sexuality Studies, Pennsylvania State University, USA, and author of Italian Children’s Literature and National Identity: Childhood, Melancholy, Modernity (2017) *Elena Ferrante as World Literature descends into the depths of Ferrante's novels to trace hitherto unexplored continuities between them and their dialogue with texts of other nations on themes and issues of transnational significance. Milkova's brilliant analysis sanctions Ferrante's socially, culturally, and spatially profoundly Italian stories as World Literature, thus providing scholarly foundations for an understanding of their high capacity for circulation across national borders and their resounding global success. This book will not only be an indispensable tool for scholars and students of Italian, comparative, and world literature worldwide; it will also appeal to the common readers and enthusiasts of Ferrante's fiction. * Adalgisa Giorgio, Senior Lecturer in Italian Studies, University of Bath, UK, and co-editor of Motherhood in Literature and Culture: Interdisciplinary Perspectives from Europe (2017) *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Chronology of Elena Ferrante’s Works and Abbreviations 1. Introduction: Elena Ferrante, World Literature, and the Work of Literary Translation World Literature and the Creation of Elena Ferrante Ferrante’s Feminine Imaginary Ferrante’s Female Genealogies The Translator as Seamstress: Figures of Translation from the Periphery to the Center Elena Ferrante as World Literature: An Overview 2. Frantumaglia and Smarginatura: The Borders of a Universal Feminine Imaginary Incisions and Inscriptions of the Body The Parameters of Frantumaglia Smarginatura in the Neapolitan Novels The “Mothers” of Smarginatura Women Who Write 3. Binding and Unbinding the Maternal Body and Voice Desire and Disgust for the Mother Conflations and Inversions: Mothers, Daughters, Dolls Enclosing the Maternal Body: Cellars, Locked Apartments, Clothes Laughing Bodies and Grotesque Gestures Dead Mothers and Corporeal Flows 4. Outside the Frame: The Aesthetics of Female Creativity and Authorship Inside the Frame: The (Nude) Female Body-as-Parts Inside the Frame: Mirrors, Collages, Still Lifes Outside the Frame: Creating a Female Artistic Legacy The Neapolitan Novels and Female Friendship, Writing, Authorship 5. Mapping Urban Feminine Topographies Walking the Streets of Topographic Memory in Troubling Love Symbolic and Literal Labyrinth in the Neapolitan Novels From Naples to Turin: Urban Itineraries of Abandonment Epilogue: Reverse Maps, Familial Objects, and Open Frames in The Lying Life of Adults Notes Works Cited Index

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Trade ReviewAuthorship’s Wake animates a new path for exploring the enduring legacy of the “authorship debates.” This lively and original book not only brilliantly elucidates the political stakes of proclaiming the “death of the author,” but also uses these insights to form novel and compelling arguments regarding a range of contemporary phenomena from campus speech debates to man-splaining. What the sole author leaves in his wake, we come to learn, are nothing less than the seeds for cultivating vital new practices of affect, agency, and collectivity. * Jennifer Friedlander, Edgar E. and Elizabeth S. Pankey Professor of Media Studies, Pomona College, USA *Inventive. Inspiring. Important. A passionate defense of the emancipatory post-war writing daring to stretch beyond authorship and the fiction/theory binary; a celebration, in the wake of Roland Barthes, of the wildly critical visions of such writers as Teju Cole, Chris Kraus, Maggie Nelson, Zadie Smith, and David Foster Wallace; and an invitation to form a new kind of study group with them all as we take on this startlingly strange and yet terrifyingly familiar 21st century. * Alice Jardine, Professor, Harvard University, USA, and author of At the Risk of Thinking: An Intellectual Biography of Julia Kristeva (Bloomsbury, 2020) *Table of ContentsIntroduction: “Words Streaming in Your Wake” 1. Communication: Maggie Nelson and the Literary Text as Letter 2. Intention: The Inconsistent Anti-Intentionalism of Zadie Smith and Judith Butler 3. Agency: Roland Barthes and the Men Who Hold Forth 4. Labor: David Foster Wallace, Cowboy of Information Conclusion: Study Groups Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisAs a cultural critic, biographer, essayist, and novelist, Albert Murray has had a wide-ranging and profound influence on American art in the decades since the Second World War. Artists as diverse as Walker Percy, Romare Bearden, and Wynton Marsalis have drawn from Murray and his ideas on jazz and the blues, modern consciousness, and the role of race in the American identity. His own works include The Hero and the Blues, Train Whistle Guitar, Good Morning Blues: The Autobiography of Count Basie as Told to Albert Murray, The Spyglass Tree, The Blue Devils of Nada, and The Seven League Boots. Yet this is the first book devoted to Murray himself, and fittingly it is based on the kind of conversations that have proven indispensable to his friends in the arts. It brings together twenty interviews with Murray conducted over the last twenty-four years, beginning with an interview that took place shortly after his second book, South to a Very Old Place, was published, and ending with a previously unpublished interview with the editor. In these conversations Murray discusses those who influenced him - Thomas Mann, Ernest Hemingway, Louis Armstrong, and Duke Ellington - and tells how they helped him develop a philosophy of art based on the blues as well as a new archetype of the American hero, the blues hero. The collection reveals a man who enjoys a good time and a good conversation and whose intellectual improvisations move over such subjects as his reminiscences about the South he grew up in, his insights about regional culture, and commentaries about the contemporary American scene. He is quick to laugh, to conspire, to correct misperceptions, to mimic the sounds a great jazz musician makes, or to recite lines from favorite poems or novels. Taken together, these interviews reveal Murray to be the composite American he describes in his first book, The Omni-Americans, which, when published in 1970, announced a new and important literary voice. Roberta S. Maguire is an assistant professor of English at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh.

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Book SynopsisTrevor Cribben Merrill offers a bold reassessment of Milan Kundera’s place in the contemporary canon. Harold Bloom and others have dismissed the Franco-Czech author as a maker of “period pieces” that lost currency once the Berlin Wall fell. Merrill refutes this view, revealing a previously unexplored dimension of Kundera’s fiction. Building on theorist René Girard’s notion of “triangular desire,” he shows that modern classics such as The Unbearable Lightness of Being and The Book of Laughter and Forgetting display a counterintuitive—and bitterly funny—understanding of human attraction. Most works of fiction (and most movies, too) depict passionate feelings as deeply authentic and spontaneous. Kundera’s novels and short stories overturn this romantic dogma. A pounding heart and sweaty palms could mean that we have found “the One” at last—or they could attest to the influence of a model whose desires we are unconsciously borrowing: our amorous predilections may owe less to personal taste or physical chemistry than they do to imitative desire. At once a comprehensive survey of Kundera’s novels and a witty introduction to Girard’s mimetic theory, The Book of Imitation and Desire challenges our assumptions about human motive and renews our understanding of a major contemporary author.Trade ReviewThe contribution that Trevor Merrill’s book makes is at least threefold: it sheds new light on the work of one of our era’s strongest novelists; it extends and confirms the literary reach of René Girard’s main hypotheses; and it helps us to better understand our own existence. And it does all of this in a style that’s clear, precise, and elegant. What more could be asked of a major work of literary criticism? -- François Ricard, McGill University, USAIn the same way that according to Galileo "Nature's great book is written in mathematical language", Trevor Merrill argues brilliantly that Milan Kundera’s oeuvre is written in terms of René Girard’s theory of mimetic, triangular desire. What is remarkable is that Kundera himself was unaware of the existence of the theory when he wrote his first novels. Had he been, he would by his own admission have found himself unable to write them. What is even more remarkable is that this structural kinship once revealed does add to the beauty of Kundera’s works in the same way that Newton’s or Einstein’s equations make Nature even more astounding. This is a great book about a great writer and a great theory, in which the three vertices of the triangle enhance one another. -- Jean-Pierre Dupuy, Professor of Philosophy, Ecole Polytechnique, Paris, FranceWith clear and persuasive style Trevor Cribben Merrill’s The Book of Imitation and Desire successfully rescues Milan Kundera from the unjust expulsion he suffered, at the hand of Harold Bloom, from the pantheon of the 20th century canonic authors. By compellingly arguing about the infinite perceptiveness of Kundera’s novels in relation to the Quixotesque adventures of our eternally mediated desires, Merrill offers an illuminating and enriching new perspective on the opus of the Czech writer. The Girardian lens, rather than straitjacketing the psychological complexity of Kundera’s works, as many have argued, opens up new critical perspectives and a new understanding of the author of The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. Pace Bloom, in the pantheon of the novelistic geniuses set by Girard’s seminal Deceit, Desire and the Novel, Merrill’s excellent book suggests, a place should now be reserved for Milan Kundera. -- Pierpaolo Antonello, University Senior Lecturer, Department of Italian, University of Cambridge, UKTable of ContentsForeword by Andrew McKenna Author’s Preface I. “WOMEN LOOK FOR MEN WHO HAVE HAD BEAUTIFUL WOMEN” II. INTO THE LABYRINTH OF VALUES 1. The Transfiguration of the Object 2. Metamorphoses of Kristyna 3. “An Imitation of Feeling” III. FROM IMITATION TO RIVALRY 1. The Shift from Admiration to Envy 2. Deceit, Desire, and the Plight of the Aging Don Juan 3. Rivalry and the Transfiguration of the Object 4. “The Younger Sister Imitated the Elder” 5. Publish or Perish IV. THE MODEL AS OBSTACLE 1. Strategies of Revelation 2. The Art of Polyphonic Comparison 3. A Little Theory of Resentment 4. Litost in the Underground V. JEALOUSY AND ITS METAPHORS 1. The Game Gone Awry 2. The Metaphors of Jealousy 3. “A Test That Gauged Her Susceptibility To Seduction” VI. THE QUADRILLE OF DESIRE 1. Sex as Theater 2. Acute Rivalry and Homosexual Attraction 3. The Geometry of Sadomasochism VII. AT THE HEART OF THE LABYRINTH 1. “The Thousand-Headed Dragon” 2. “The Cement of their Brotherhood” 3. The Two Temptations 4. “The Absolute Denial of Shit” 5. First Time As Tragedy, Second Time As Farce VIII. REPUDIATING THE MODEL 1. Eduard’s Smile 2. From Hatred to Compassion 3. Karenin’s Smile 4. The Birth of a Novelist 5. Liberating Exiles IX. TOMAS IN COLONUS, OR THE WISDOM OF THE NOVEL Postscript: A Response to Elif Batuman Appendix: A Brief Overview of Kundera’s Life and Works Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisIn 1989, Steven Moore published the first scholarly study of all three of William Gaddis's novels and since then it has been generally regarded as the best book on this difficult but major writer's work. This revised and expanded edition includes new chapters on the novels Gaddis published after 1989, the National Book Award-winning A Frolic of His Own and the posthumous novella Agape Agape, along with updated introductory and concluding chapters. This introduction offers a clear discussion of all five of Gaddis's novels, providing essential biographical information, two chapters each on his most significant novels, The Recognitions and J R, and a chapter each devoted to his later three novels. A concluding chapter locates his place in American literature and notes his influence on younger writers. Each chapter focuses on the main themes of each novel and discusses the literary techniques Gaddis deployed to dramatize those themes. Since Gaddis is an erudite, allusive novelist, Moore clarifies his references and explains how they enhance his themes.Trade ReviewIn 1982, Steven Moore invented Gaddis Studies when he published his comprehensive Reader’s Guide to The Recognitions. Thirty years, and three books later, he’s returned to his landmark 1989 monograph on Gaddis’s work, bringing it up-to-date with new chapters on Gaddis’s late work. This is the definitive study of both how Gaddis’s novels work and why they matter. In each authoritative chapter Moore maps their large intellectual investments and intricate architecture, in lucid and well-informed readings that underline the fact that Moore has a deeper insight into this important body of fiction than anyone else. * Stephen J. Burn, Reader in American Literature, University of Glasgow, UK *Steven Moore is one of our most important Gaddis scholars and, with the recent revival of interest in William Gaddis’s powerful literary legacy, this revised guidebook will become an invaluable resource for undergraduates, graduate students, scholars starting work on Gaddis, and lay readers who might be interested in learning more about his art. * Lee Konstantinou, Assistant Professor of English, University of Maryland, College Park, USA *Where would Gaddis studies be without Steven Moore? His indispensable guide, for many years the only monographic introduction to Gaddis’s fiction, is back again in a new, expanded and updated edition, and more indispensable than ever. Moore unravels the often tortuous situations and storylines of the novels, highlighting their satire and comedy, which can sometimes elude readers. These are not solemn books, but 'frolics,' and Moore is not a solemn explicator but a knowledgeable enthusiast–the ideal traveling companion for any voyager in Gaddisland. * Brian McHale, Arts & Humanities Distinguished Professor of English, The Ohio State University, USA *There are a handful of William Gaddis specialists in the world. One of them, Stephen Burn (also a respected David Foster Wallace critic), in a quotation on the back of the expanded edition of Moore’s critical study of Gaddis’ works—suitably updated and released in February of this year, a handful of months ahead of Tabbi’s biography—states that its author 'invented Gaddis Studies when he published his comprehensive guide to The Recognitions' (in 1982; now available online). Anyone writing after that, and after his original Twayne edition of William Gaddis (1989), owes much to Moore’s analysis. -- Jeff Bursey * Numéro Cinq *Table of ContentsPreface to the Expanded Edition Preface to the 1989 Edition 1. A Vision of Order 2. The Recognitions: Magic, Myth, and Metaphor 3. The Recognitions: The Self Who Can Do More 4. J R: What America Is All About 5. J R: Empedocles on Valhalla 6. Carpenter's Gothic; or, The Ambiguities 7. A Frolic of His Own: Ideas of Order 8. Agape Agape: The Self Who Cannot Do More Bibliography Index

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