Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000 Books

Book SynopsisEvgenii Zamiatin's seminal antiutopian satire "We" (written 1920-1) is one of the most celebrated works of twentieth century Russian literature. Set one thousand years in the future, it is a witty yet terrifying picture of a future society in which reason is all-conquering and mankind has been enslaved by a dictator called 'the benefactor'. This new study presents both a synthesis of existing criticism and a new reading of the novel. The first section deals with "We" in the context of the Russian Civil War, showing how Zamiatin's contemporaries interpreted it as a satire on life in Soviet Russia. The major trends in the diverse body of modern criticism are then surveyed. The longer second part of the study consists of a detailed reading of the novel based on close textual analysis of the forty 'entries' of its narrator's diary.

Read more less

Book SynopsisPart of the Bristol Classical Press series of Spanish texts, this is Buero Vallejo's play "El Tragaluz". The series is designed to meet the needs of the fast-growing A Level and undergraduate market for texts in the Spanish language. Each text comes with English notes and vocabulary, and with an introduction by an editor with an expert knowledge both of the work and of its literary and cultural context. Set in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, this play occupies an important place in Buero Vallejo's theatre incorporating earlier metaphysical preoccupations with a later historical and political dimension.

Read more less

Book SynopsisAlexander Solzhenitsyn was an unknown author until the publication of "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" in 1962, the book that was to win him the Nobel Prize in 1970. It is an account of a barely literate Russian peasant's surviving a single day in one of Stalin's labour camps. It depicted the intricacies and resilience of the human spirit in a style comparable with Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. This study gauges the political and literary impact that the book has made in Russia and abroad, and examines its more universal, intrinsic qualities.

Read more less

Book SynopsisGreat-granddaughter of Minerve, first woman of the Guadeloupean branch of the Lougandor family to be freed from slavery in 1848, the elderly Telumée tells the story of her own difficult life and that of her ancestors. It is a poor black woman’s tale of heroic survival, set in the early 20th century, harsh agrarian environment of a Caribbean island. Through the richly imaged narration of a constantly evolving, cultural significant and always entertaining saga, the author leads the reaer into her native West Indian realm of legends, magic, folkloric wisdom and traditional reverence for the elderly and the past. Her protagonist, Telumée, embodies the innate strength and nobility of women in general and of black Caribbean women in particular. Published in 1972, this book received Elle magazine’s literary prize. This edition reflects the editor’s personal acquaintance with the author, and her country. It provides a synthesis of the latest critical studies, and a thorough interpretation of Creole terms, symbolic imagery and a unique cultural background.Table of ContentsIntroduction Notes Bibliography CONTENTS Pluie et vent sur Telumee Miracle Textual Notes

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis is a fictional account of one woman's experience following the arrest of her son during the Yezhov purges. Drawing on the author's own experience, this novella paints an almost documentary-style picture of life in Leningrad during this period. The story of the publication of the book, written in 1939-40 but not published in the Soviet Union until 1988, is treated in the introduction, which also contains a brief biography of the author, a vocabulary and notes.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis Spanish text is useful for teaching Peruvian, Latin American literature and cultural history at university level. It could also be read at upper sixth-form level as the plot is uncomplicated and the emotional atmosphere is immediately graspable. It tells the story of a young man's experience of growing up in highland Peru in a deeply divided society and of his struggle to overcome conflicts of language and culture. He manages to elaborate an alternative vision of Peru, drawing above all on native Indian sensibility and traditions. In the process, the novel draws on key elements of Peruvian history and culture and above all on popular memory. The introduction outlines the main features of the plot and offers a clear interpretation of the major episodes, relating them to key features of modern Peru and explains the chief elements of native culture that figure in the text, such as the use of myth.

Read more less

Book SynopsisJorge Guillen belongs to a brilliant cluster of Spanish poets, a generation once defined by Salinas, one of its members, as "born under a lyrical star". Towards the end of his life Guillen's most famous work "Cantico" - the fruit of some 30 years of labour - was recognized as a masterpiece and stands alongside the poetical works of Lorca, Alberti and Cernuda. Most usefully translated as a hymn or song of praise, "Cantico" is an antidote to today's world of doubts, fears, conflicts and seductive philosophies of despair. The attitude to life it holds out to its readers is summed up in the epitaph on Guillen's tomb in the English cemetery in Malaga: "Aqui yace un enamorado de la vida" ("Here lies a lover of life").

Read more less

Book Synopsis- A student's guide to the 20th century Russian novelEight of Russia's most popular and significant novels are presented in this important new guide for students. Works include:- "We" by Evgenii Zamiatin- "Red Cavalry" by Isaak Babel- "Envy" by Iurii Olesha- "How the Steel Was Tempered" by Nikolai Ostrovskii- "The Master and Margarita" by Mikhail Bulgakov- "Doctor Zhivago" by Boris Pasternak- "Cancer Ward" by Alexander Solzhenitsyn- "Pushkin House" by Andrei BitovIn each chapter, David Gillespie examines one novel in detail and explores the career of the author and the critical reception of the work. Throughout, considerable reference is made to recently published scholarship and archival materials to provide students and scholars of Russian and Comparative Literature with a guide to these important Russian authors and their place in the world of literature. The book also includes an extensive bibliography of secondary literature and contains textual references in both the original Russian and in English translation.Trade Review'Gillespie has managed to pack in a disproportionately large amount of informative comment. Accessible and incisive, this example of critical analysis makes one want to re-read these works which have become modern classics.'British East-West Journal' ... informative, well balanced and presented very clearly. ... user-friendly.'The Slavonic Review'Every department involved in teaching a course on the Russian novel will be grateful to David Gillespie for this concise and admirably clear analysis...each textual analysis is presented in a soothingly succinct, sophisticated yet accessible way, with critical jargon kept to a minimum; points of style are well illustrated. ...This book will be invaluable to the student'Slavonica'This book will certainly go on the compulsory reading lists for next year.'Irish Slavonic ReviewTable of ContentsEight of Russia's most popular and significant novels are presented in this important new guide for students. Works include: - We by Evgenii Zamiatin - Red Cavalry by Isaak Babel - Envy by Iurii Olesha - How the Steel was Tempered by Nikolai Ostrovskii - The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov - Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak - Cancer Ward by Alexander Solzhenitsyn - Pushkin House by Andrei Bitov

Read more less

Book SynopsisAs a wave of open misogyny swept through French literature and society in the aftermath of the Great War, a new generation of professional women writers took up pen to redress the situation. They disputed the prescriptive social and cultural roles ascribed to women and proposed inspiring new definitions of womanhood. Many critics today are oblivious to women's literary achievements during this period, which remain subject to severe critical neglect. This book analyzes and challenges the way in which these important women writers have been marginalized in the annals of French literary history and offers fresh readings and reappraisals of their thematically and aesthetically innovative works.Trade Review'This very readable study not only opens up new paths for reading [...] and for research (the foonotes and bibliography are excellent), but also provides a carefully reseravhed analysis of theprocess of canon compilation, and a well contextualised discussion of the relationship between history, gender and genre.'Modern and Contemporary France'definitely a useful critical addition to women's studies and contemporary fictional studies, extending the corpus of primary material for both students and specialists, and full of fascinating details'MLR'By re-examining women's writing within both social and literary contexts, this study provides fruitful revalorisation of the period, of romance and autobiography, and will allow other researchers to build on well-considered foundations'Forum for Modern Language Studies

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis first systematic study of the controversial Austrian feminist writer, Elfriede Jelinek, offers an extensive survey and analysis of Jelinek's major texts and a discussion of the literary techniques which characterise her writing. Background contextual information on historical and literary developments is provided to help the reader gain a better understanding of Jelinek's writing and her place within current international debates on feminism and literary theory.Trade Review'This study is lucidly written and displays a convincing balance between a close textual analysis and the integration of Jelinik's writing into its socio-political and theoretical context.'Forum for Modern Language Studies'This is an important critical work that uses modern feminist approaches sensibly to reveal the texts of one of the most prominent contemporary writers in German as serious contributions to both literature and social awareness. As the first in a new series 'New Directions in European Writing' it sets a high standard.'MLR'...providing a valuable introduction to J.'s biography, her approach to feminism, the broad development of contemporary Austrian literature, and the critical reaction to her work.'The Year's Work in Modern Language Studies'This is the first monograph dedicated to Jelinek in English, and will doubtless prove an essential undergraduate introduction to this most outspoken and yet paradoxiclly elusive of writers ... This is the first inTable of ContentsJelinek in context; the culture industry as target for literary deconstruction; work, class and the everyday; nature and "Heimat" demystification of the Alpenrepublik; sexuality and subjectivity.

Read more less

Book SynopsisSadeq Hedayat is the most famous and the most enigmatic Iranian writer of the 20th century. He was born in 1903 and he lived a troubled life which ended in 1951 with his suicide in Paris. His most celebrated novel, "The Blind Owl" has made an impact far beyond Iranian literary circles and has drawn the attention of Western critics. But Hedayat's impact on the development of modern fiction and on the lives of generations of Iranian intellectuals derives also from his other works and from what was a unique approach to life and art in a rapidly changing society. This book is the first comprehensive study of Hedayat's life and works set against the background of literary and political developments in Iran over the first half of the 20th century. Katouzian discusses Hedayat's life and times and the literary and political circles with which he was associated. But he also emphasises the uniqueness and universality of those ideas that have set Hedayat apart from other Iranian writers of the period and that have given him a mystique that has been instrumental in his posthumous success.Table of ContentsHedayat and modern Persian literature; early years; Hedayat in Europe; life and labour in the golden era; Iranian culture and romantic nationalism; Iranian culture and critical realism; the blind owl - a critical exposition; the origins of the blind owl; hopes and despairs; Hajis and workers; satire and depression; the trial - the message of Hedayat; the execution - Hedayat's suicide; the legend and the man.

Read more less

Book SynopsisJANE GOLDMAN is Lecturer in English at the University of Dundee.

Read more less

Book SynopsisRobert Tressell described his famous book The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists as 'the story of twelve months in Hell, told by one of the damned'. This biography of Tressell, first published in 1973, tells the story of a man about whom virtually nothing - not even his real name - was known before Fred Ball began his research. Ball describes the family, educational and social background of Robert Tressell; his move from his early upbringing in Ireland to become a house-painter in Hastings (the Mugsborough of his novel); his becoming a socialist; his travels abroad; his other writings, and his creative work as a specialist sign-writer. Not least, it tells the story of the writing and the publication of his classic book, and of Ball's own role in ensuring the publication of the original unabridged version of the book in 1953. Ball was a researcher of skill and enthusiasm, and his book describes clues and leads, and the way the story fell into place, until he was finally able to do full justice to a man who had hitherto been a somewhat shadowy figure. F.C. Ball was the author of several novels, and of an earlier book on Robert Tressell, Tressell of Mugsborough (1951). He was born and worked throughout most of his life in Hastings.Table of Contents1. Who was Robert Tressell?; 2. Who was Robert Tressell?; 3. Emigration and marriage; 4. Sad South Africa and the Boer War; 5. Mugsborough, England; 6. The dignity of labour, as the man said; 7. Robert at home; 8. Work, boys, and be contented; 9. Artist and artisan; 10. Linguist and model-builder; 11. Bread and circuses, 1906; 12. The rise of the labour movement; 13. Robert joins in; 14. Democracy Ltd; 15. Raw material for a book; 16. A new home; 17. Work with the local societies; 18. Danger; men at work; 19. Political music-hall: the 1908 by-election; 20. Recreations; 21. The writer; 22. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists; 23. Give us this day; 24. A pauper's death; 25. Kathleen and the manuscript; 26. Publication and reactions; 27. 1914-18: the book dies and is born again; 28. Editions and abridgements; 29. 1946: Tressell's handwritten manuscript is found; 30. How the original manuscript was butchered; 31. The manuscript and the building trades unions; 32. Publication in full; 33. How the mutilated manuscript was reconstituted; 34. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists on stage; 35. A dramatic development and a new search; 36. The adventures of the manuscript; 37. Still alive?; 38. 1962: a return from the dead; 39. Family secrets; 40. The painter; 41. A grass plot, a jam jar and The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis book explores the formative role of mobilities in the production of our close relationships, proposing that the tracks—both literal and figurative— we lay down in the process play a crucial role in generating and sustaining intimacy. Working with diaries, journals and literary texts from the mid- to late-twentieth century, the book pursues this thesis through three phases of the lifecourse: courtship (broadly defined), the middle years of long-term relationships and bereavement. Building upon the author’s recent research on automobility, the text’s case studies reveal the crucial role played by many different types of transport—including walking—in defining our most enduring relationships. Conceptually, the book draws upon the writings of the philosopher, Henri Bergson, the anthropologist, Tim Ingold and the geographer, David Seamon, engaging with topical debates in cultural and emotional geography (especially work on landscape, memory and mourning), mobilities studies and critical love studies. Table of Contents1 Introduction - The Mobilities of Intimacy - Conceptual Framework - Conclusion2 Theorising Mobility, Movement, Memory—and Love- Mobile Lives: Approaches to Interpersonal Relationships in Mobilities Scholarship - The Mobilities of Love and Loss - Methodology: Mapping, Movement and Memory - Conclusion3 “Walking Out”: The Mobilities of Courtship - Being Transported: Movement, Autonomy, Love- Case Study: Walking Out in Wartime - Reflection - Conclusion4 Staying With/in: The Mobilities of Long-Term Relationships - Staying With/in: Moving around the House with May Sarton - Case Study: Nella Last’s Post-War Diaries - Reflection - Conclusion5 Pilgrimage: The Mobilities of Mourning - The Public Highways of Loss - The Im/mobilities of Grief- Case Study: Manchester Irish Writers’ Group Anthologies (1997–2004) - Conclusion6 Afterword: Twenty-First-Century Perspectives

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis collection of essays discusses genre fiction and film within the discursive framework of the environmental humanities and analyses the convergent themes of spatiality, climate change, and related anxieties concerning the future of human affairs, as crucial for any understanding of current forms of “weird” and “fantastic” literature and culture. Given their focus on the culturally marginal, unknown, and “other,” these genres figure as diagnostic modes of storytelling, outlining the latent anxieties and social dynamics that define a culture’s “structure of feeling” at a given historical moment. The contributions in this volume map the long and continuous tradition of weird and fantastic fiction as a seismograph for eco-geographical turmoil from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century, offering innovative and insightful ecocritical readings of H. P. Lovecraft, Harriet Prescott Spofford, China Miéville, N. K. Jemisin, Thomas Ligotti, and Jeff VanderMeer, among others. Table of ContentsForeword: Weird Geographies, Fantastic Maps Robert T. Tally, Jr. Acknowledgments 1 Introduction: Ecologies and Geographies of the Weird and the Fantastic Julius Greve and Florian Zappe 2 Naturhorror and the Weird Eugene Thacker 3 Uncanny New Worlds in Harriet Prescott Spofford’s “D’Outre Mort” and “The Black Bess” Michaela Keck 4 The Weird and the Wild: Media Ecologies of the Outré-Normative Julius Greve 5 Queering the Weird: Unnatural Participations and the Mucosal in H. P. Lovecraft and Occulture Patricia MacCormack 6 Geological Insurrections: Politics of Planetary Weirding from China Miéville to N. K. Jemisin Moritz Ingwersen 7 “Indifference would be such a relief”: Race and Weird Geography in Victor LaValle and Matt Ruff’s Dialogues with H. P. Lovecraft James Kneale 8 The Oceanic Weird, Wet Ontologies, and Hydro-Criticism in China Miéville’s The Scar Jolene Mathieson 9 “Through the eyes of Area X”: (Dis)locating Ecological Hope via New Weird Spatiality Gry Ulstein 10 Inexistent Ink: Michael Cisco and Quentin Meillassoux on Writing Worlds Ben Woodard 11 Notes on the Alluring Weirdness of (Materialist) Rumination and Regurgitation: Reading Ariana Reines and Jamie Stewart Marius Henderson 12 Spaces of Communal Misery: The Weird Post-Capitalism of Beasts of the Southern Wild Marlon Lieber Contributors

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis book examines the representation of empathy in contemporary poetry after crisis, specifically poetry after the Holocaust, the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, and Hurricane Katrina. The text argues that, recognizing both the possibilities and dangers of empathy, the poems under consideration variously invite and refuse empathy, thus displaying what Anna Veprinska terms empathetic dissonance. Veprinska proposes that empathetic dissonance reflects the texts’ struggle with the question of the value and possibility of empathy in the face of the crises to which these texts respond. Examining poems from Charlotte Delbo, Dionne Brand, Niyi Osundare, Charles Reznikoff, Robert Fitterman, Wisława Szymborska, Cynthia Hogue, Claudia Rankine, Paul Celan, Dan Pagis, Lucille Clifton, and Katie Ford, among others, Veprinska considers empathetic dissonance through language, witnessing, and theology. Merging comparative close readings with interdisciplinary theory from philosophy, psychology, cultural theory, history and literary theory, and trauma studies, this book juxtaposes a genocide, a terrorist act, and a natural disaster amplified by racial politics and human disregard in order to consider what happens to empathy in poetry after events at the limits of empathy. Table of Contents1. Chapter 1: Introduction 1.1 The Permeability of Terms 1.2 The Benefits and Dangers of Empathy 1.3 The Poetry of Empathetic Dissonance after Three Contemporary Crises 1.4 The Chapters 2. Chapter 2: The Unsaid 2.1 & the Holocaust 2.2 & 9/11 2.3 & Hurricane Katrina 3. Chapter 3: The Unhere 3.1 & the Holocaust 3.2 & 9/11 3.3 & Hurricane Katrina 4. Chapter 4: The Ungod 4.1 & the Holocaust 4.2 & 9/11 4.3 & Hurricane Katrina 5. Conclusion 5.1 Challenges and Limitations 5.2 Empathy: Thread and Needle 5.3 Alternative Avenues 5.4 Future Directions 5.5. To the Reader 5.6 Unconclusion 

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis book takes a fresh look at Tolkien’s literary artistry from the points of view of both linguistics and literary history, with the aim of shedding light on the literary techniques used in The Lord of the Rings. The authors study Tolkien’s use of words, style, narrative techniques, rhetoric and symbolism to highlight his status as literary artist. Dirk Siepmann uses a corpus stylistic approach to analyse Tolkien’s vocabulary and syntax, while Thomas Kullmann uses discourse theory, literary history and concepts of intertextuality to explore Tolkien’s literary techniques, relating them to the history of English fiction and poetry. Issues discussed include point of view, speeches, story-telling, landscape descriptions, the poems inserted into the body of the narrative, and the role of language in the characterization of the novel’s protagonists. This book will be of particular interest to students and scholars of literature, corpus linguistics and stylistics, as well as Tolkien fans and specialists. Trade Review“This work will serve as a valuable reference for the serious Tolkien scholar for many years to come, laying the groundwork for future studies into the artistry of Middle-earth.” (Sharon L. Bolding, Mythlore, Vol. 41 (1), October, 2022)Table of ContentsChapter 1: Introduction.- Chapter 2: Tolkien as a Stylist: Key Words and Key Collocations.- Chapter 3: The Narrative Syntax of The Lord of the Rings.- Chapter 4: Points of View.- Chapter 5: Landscape Descriptions.- Chapter 6: Speeches and Declarations.- Chapter 7: Storytelling.- Chapter 8: Poems and Songs.- Chapter 9: Language and Character.- Chapter 10: Tolkien’s Position in Literary History.

Read more less

Book SynopsisTrauma and Motherhood in Contemporary Literature and Culture repositions motherhood studies through the lens of trauma theory by exploring new challenges surrounding conception, pregnancy, and postpartum experiences. Chapters investigate nine case studies of motherhood trauma and recovery in literature and culture from the last twenty years by exploring their emotional consequences through the lens of trauma, resilience, and “working through” theories. Contributions engage with a transnational corpus drawn from the five continents and span topics as rarely discussed as pregnancy denial, surrogacy, voluntary or involuntary childlessness, racism and motherhood, carceral mothering practices, surrogacy, IVF, artificial wombs, and mothering through war, genocide, and migration. Accompanied by an online creative supplement, this volume deals with silenced aspects of embodied motherhood while enhancing a better understanding of the cathartic effects of storytelling.Table of Contents1. Trauma and Recovery New Challenges to Motherhood.- Part I: Pregnancy, Childbirth and Trauma.- 2. Understanding the Trauma of Pervasive Pregnancy Denial in L’enfant que je n’attendais pas.- 3. Salvaging the Bones Means Fighting for Reproductive Justice: Jesmyn Ward’s Literary Representations of the Trauma Produced by Attacks on Reproductive Rights, Comprehensive Sex Education, and Access to Maternal Health Care.- 4. Social Trauma and the Anti-Maternal Body in Diane a les épaule.- Part II: Trauma and Disrupted Mother-Child Bonds.- 5. Trauma Behind Bars: Maternal Dilemma in Rossella Schillaci’s Ninna nanna prigioniera.- 6. “Pour dire la souffrance des innocents?” Problematics of the Madonna-Son Trope in Representing Trauma in Philippe Aractingi’s Under the Bombs and Nadine Labaki’s Capernaum.- 7. Traumatic Memory and Narrative Healing in Contemporary Diasporic Chinese British Women’s Writing.- Part III. New Challenges with ART.- 8. Tragedy, In Vitro: The Function of Reproductive Science in Simon Stone’s Adaptation of Yerma.- 9. “I have an enterprise:” Transnational Surrogacy, Neoliberal Repropreneurship, and the Potential Trauma of Clinical Labor in Zippi Brand Frank’s Google Baby.- 10. No Trauma for Artificial Women: Monstrous, Cybernetics, and Anomalous Mothers in Current Latin American Science Fiction

Read more less

Book SynopsisIn October 1967, Pier Paolo Pasolini travelled to Venice to interview Ezra Pound for broadcast on national television. One a lifelong Marxist, the other a former propagandist for the Fascist regime, their encounter was billed as a clash of opposites. But what do these poets share? And what can they tell us about the poetics and politics of the twentieth century? This book reads one by way of the other, aligning their engagement with different temporalities and traditions, polities and geographies, languages and forms, evoked as utopian alternatives to the cultural and political crises of capitalist modernity. Part literary history, part comparative study, it offers a new and provocative perspective on these poets and the critical debates around them – in particular, on Pound’s Italian years and Pasolini’s use of Pound in his work. Their connection helps to understand the implications and legacies of their work today. Trade Review“Sean Mark’s in-depth study of Pound and Pasolini, subtitled Poetics of Crisis, is a remarkable piece of scholarship, beautifully written, masterfully organised, and which reads almost like the plot of a detective novel … .” (Jonathan Pollock, Transatlantica Issue 2, 2023)Table of ContentsIntroduction: Pound and/or Pasolini Chapter 1: Family Portraits Chapter 2: Creatures Facing Backwards Chapter 3: Exposition Chapter 4: An Economy of Signs Chapter 5: Failure Coda: Afterlives Appendix A. The Pasolini-Pound Interview B. The Ronsisvalle-Pound Interview

Read more less

Book SynopsisIn this comprehensive study of The Stars My Destination, D. Harlan Wilson makes a case for the continued significance of Alfred Bester’s SF masterwork, exploring its distinctive style, influences, intertextuality, affect, and innovation as well as its extensive metafictional properties. In Stars, Bester established himself as a son of the pulp-SF and high-modernist writers that preceded him and a forefather to the New Wave and cyberpunk movements that followed his lead. Wilson’s study depicts Bester as an SF insider as much as an outlier, writing in the spirit of the genre but breaking with the fixation on hard science in favor of psychological interiority, literary experimentation, and adult themes. The book combines close-readings of the novel with broader concerns about contemporary media, technoculture, and the current state of SF itself. In Wilson’s view, SF is a moribund artform, and Stars foresaw the inevitable science fictionalization of our benighted world. With scholarly lucidity and precision, Wilson shows us that Stars pointed the way to what we have (un)become. Table of Contents1. INTRODUCTION 2. SYNOPSIS 3. CHAPTER ONE: Cyberpunk Previsions and Literary Influences 4. CHAPTER TWO: The Frankenstein Riff 5. CHAPTER THREE: Architectures of Psyche, Power, and Patriarchy 6. CHAPTER FOUR: Speaking in Gutter Tongues 7. CODA

Read more less