Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000 Books

Book SynopsisA Cultural History of the Avant-Garde in the Nordic Countries 1925-1950 is the first publication to deal with the avant-garde in the Nordic countries in this period. The essays cover a wide range of avant-garde manifestations: literature, visual arts, theatre, architecture and design, film, radio, body culture and magazines. It is the first major historical work to consider the Nordic avant-garde in a transnational perspective that includes all the arts and to discuss the role of the avant-garde not only within the aesthetic field but in a broader cultural and political context: the pre-war and wartime responses to international developments, the new cultural institutions, sexual politics, the impact of refugees and the new start after the war.

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Book SynopsisThis book is the first to deal with documentary aesthetic practices of the post-war period in Eastern Europe in a comparative perspective. The contributions examine the specific forms and modes of documentary representations and the role they played in the formation of new aesthetic trends during the cultural-political transition of the long 1960s. This documentary first-hand approach to the world aimed to break up unquestioned ideological structures and expose tabooed truths in order to engender much-needed social changes. New ways of depicting daily life, writing testimony or subjective reportage emerged that still shape cultural debates today.Table of ContentsContents Acknowledgements List of Figures Notes on Contributors Introduction Firsthand Time  Clemens Günther and Matthias Schwartz Part 1: Exposing a Painful Past: Modes of Testimony 1 “Document of the Soul:” Varlam Shalamov’s Documentary Writing in a Contemporary Context  Franziska Thun-Hohenstein 2 A Dreyfus Affair for Soviet Children: on the Encoded Poetics of Aleksandra Brushtein’s Documentary Prose  Natasha Gordinsky 3 Supplementing Evidence: Danilo Kiš’s Poet(h)ics in the Context of Yugoslav Documentarism of the 1960s  Tatjana Petzer 4 Hands of Time and Large Numbers in Alexander Kluge’s (Post-)Documentary Literature  Gunther Martens Part 2: Discovering the Self and the Other: Modes of Expressing Individuality 5 Celebration and Abstraction: the Documentary Mode of Jonas Mekas’s Diary Films  Christian Zehnder 6 Documentary and Poetics Interwoven: Mikhail Kalik’s Cinema  Elena Nekrasova 7 The Technique of Documenting: on the Early Reportages of Ryszard Kapuściński and Hanna Krall  Matthias Schwartz Part 3: Refining the Senses: Modes of Self-Reflective Artistic Practices 8 “Dramas of the Fact:” Soviet Conceptualisations of Documentary Theatre in the 1960s  Anna Hodel 9 “Instead of Approximate Precision—Precise Approximation:” Ian Satunovskii’s Poor Poetry  Georg Witte 10 Reproductions without an Original: the Self-Published Aesthetics of Cold War-Era Copies  Sarah A. Burgos Part 4: Exploring the Everyday: Modes of Perceiving Social Issues 11 The Trials of Documenting: Frida Vigdorova’s Notes of the Brodsky Court Proceedings  Anja Tippner 12 The Poetry of Mikhail Sokovnin: an Aesthetic Opposition to the “Literature of Fact”  Ilya Kukulin 13 “Discourses of Sobriety:” Documentary Aesthetics in Conceptual Art in the United States  Renate Wöhrer Index

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Book SynopsisClassical-style poetry in modern China and other Sinitic-speaking localities is attracting greater attention with the recent upsurge in academic revision of modern Chinese literary history. Using the concept of cultural transplantation, this monograph attempts to illustrate the uniqueness, compatibility, and adaptability of classical Chinese poetry in colonial Singapore as well as its sustained connections with literary tradition and homeland. It demonstrates how the reading of classical Chinese poetry can better our understanding of Singapore’s political, social, and cultural history, deepen knowledge of the transregional relationship between China and Nanyang, and fine-tune, redress, and enrich our perception of Singapore Chinese literature, Sinophone literature, the Chinese diaspora, and global Chinese identity.Table of ContentsAcknowledgments List of Illustrations Note on Romanization Introduction 1 Founding Fathers: Qing Consul-Poets Zuo Binglong and Huang Zunxian 2 Naming and Local Colour: Qiu Shuyuan and His “Star Island” Poetry 3 Building Cultural Space: Qiu Shuyuan and Singapore’s Literary Community 4 Reinventing the Blue Tower Tradition: Poetry on Prostitution 5 Versifying Religious Belief: Sinitic Buddhism and Buddhist Poets 6 Lyrical Records of Social Mores: Bamboo Branch Verse and Singapore Society 7 The Uprooted Orchid: Lanhua ji Poets in the Occupation Period Epilogue: What Then? Selected Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisAvant-Garde Translation is a playful ensemble that celebrates creativity in all things translation by taking you on a journey to the cutting edge of translation practice and theory. Through a refreshing mix of essay forms, from scholarly study to practical translation toolkits, Avant-Garde Translation explores territories as diverse as children’s picturebooks, multilingual poems, and visual artworks, and proposes various translation strategies such as audio-visual collages, ninja invisibility, and collaboration with invented translators. The spirited and provocative contributions intervene in the field of translation studies to shake up the status quo: by highlighting the critical and creative connections between thought and practice, the book shows how literary translation can be an exploratory playground for radical transformation.Trade Review“The Approaches-series follows the developments of contemporary translation studies from its real beginnings in the 1970s up to the present day. It does so in a completely open and free manner, with full attention to the many aspects of a phenomenon that is a barometer both for the contacts in our own society and those with other societies – as well as for how people think, talk and act interculturally, in good times and in bad times.” -Ton Naaijkens, Utrecht University, the NetherlandsTable of ContentsList of Figures Notes on Contributors 1 Introduction: Translation Needs an Avant-Garde  Alexandra Lukes 2 The Avant-Garde of Translating and Blaise Cendrars’s “Académie Médrano”: A Set of Reflections and Translations  Clive Scott 3 Say It in Splayn Words, Splain It in Sane Worse  Erik Bindervoet and Robbert-Jan Henkes 4 The Non-existent Translators of Fernando Pessoa  Matías Battistón, Ana Laura Paolini, Gerardo Supino and Norberto Magenta 5 Outranspo in Conversation with Contemporary Art: From Haroldo de Campos to a Curatorial Practice of Intersemiotic Translation  Pablo Martín Ruiz 6 To Erre Is Calque: The Uses and Abuses of Calque in Avant-Garde Translation  Lily Robert-Foley 7 Prismatic Translation 2.0: A (Potential) Future for Avant-Garde Translation  Conor Brendan Dunne 8 “Now Open the Box”: Translating Avant-Garde Picturebooks  Audrey Coussy 9 Reading a Multilingual Poem: A Practice in Avant-Garde Translation?  Alexandra Lukes 10 An Alphabet of Avant-Garde Perspectives on World Literature and the Translator’s (In)visibility  With an Avant-Garde Translation of Walter Benjamin’s “Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers”  Douglas Robinson Index of Names

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Book SynopsisThe book studies utopian fiction as a knowledge apparatus by connecting three aspects of late Qing culture: the rise of modern press, the emergence of new genre, and the epistemology of modernity, while reflecting on the ability of utopian imagination to develop the three-way relationship between new people, new China, and new genre via the Chinese public sphere.Trade Review"In this meticulously researched and carefully argued new study, Shuk Man Leung guides her readers towards a coherent and complex understanding of Chinese “New Fiction” from the first decade of the twentieth century. Building on and moving beyond existing studies of the genre’s literary characteristics, Leung demonstrates its significance in sparking a “utopian imagination” that came to pervade all aspects of Chinese modernity, shaping the ways of knowing China’s future that circulated among participants in the period’s flourishing print culture, intellectual debate, and political activism." – Michel Hockx, University of Notre Dame "Shuk Man Leung’s monograph offers an in-depth and original investigation into Utopian fiction in Chinese in the final years of the Qing dynasty at the beginning of the twentieth century. Her work explores how this genre, imported through translation first of Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward, played a vital role in the reimagining of the political arena and the nation-state at this critical juncture in modern Chinese history. Leung also demonstrates how utopian visions of China’s future underpinned the entire project of modern Chinese literature. A must read for researchers in modern Chinese intellectual history, modern Chinese literature, and translation studies." – James St Andre, The Chinese University of Hong Kong "Literature does not merely represent reality/history; it creates “reality”/history that leads to a coming future through imagination at a critical historical turning point. Leung’s book precisely tells us how the Chinese literary modernity of utopian fiction in the early twentieth century contributed to modern Chinese nation-building. From a global perspective and fresh way, she demonstrates how modern Chinese utopian fiction functioned as an influential and unique mass medium and contributed to people’s identity formatting at the outset of Chinese nation-building. This book tells us how language, particularly utopian fiction, mediates and bridges between the past, reality and the coming future and how literary imagination can create history." – LIN Shaoyang, Distinguished Professor, History Department, University of MacauTable of ContentsAcknowledgements List of Figures Introduction  1 Historicizing Chinese Modernity and New Fiction’s Utopian Imagination  2 New Fiction as a New Genre  3 Utopian Fiction in China  4 The Position of the Authors: Liang Qichao and His Contemporaries  5 Chapter Summaries 1 Establishment: New Fiction, Utopian Imagination, and the Generic System  1 The Order of Things: Legitimization of Fiction in the Chinese Bibliography  2 The Emergence of New Fiction and Its Generic Norms  3 The Generic Features of New Fiction: The Future of New China  4 Conclusion 2 Dissemination: the Generic Features of the Utopian Imagination  1 Generic Classification of New Fiction  2 Conclusion: the Intergeneric Element of the Utopian Imagination 3 Channels: the Political Function of Utopian Fiction and the Chinese Public Sphere  1 Utopian Fiction as a Form of Public Opinion  2 Utopia or Dystopia? China’s Partition and Revolutionary Journals  3 Utopia(s) Realized? The Constitutional Campaign and Fiction Magazines  4 Utopia beyond Constitutionalism: the Chinese Revolution of 1911 and Shanghai News  5 Conclusion 4 Origins: Liang Qichao and Chinese, Japanese, and Western Epistemology  1 The Discourse of the Future  2 The Discourse of the Nation  3 Conclusion: Utopian Temporality and Spatiality 5 Borderless Nations? Cosmopolitan Utopias with Anarchist and Socialist Faces  1 A Cosmopolitan Utopia with an Anarchist Face  2 The Third Road: Socialist Cosmopolitanism as a Moral Solution  3 Conclusion: a Moral Order for Building a Nation/Society 6 Crossing the Border: Chinese Settler Colonialism and a Borderless National Imagination  1 The Discovery of Colonization and Chinese Nationalism  2 Lü Sheng’s a Madman’s Dream: Deterritorialized China  3 Yunnan Journal and Its Utopian Novels: Transnational Autonomy  4 Conclusion Conclusion: the Dual Community of New Fiction’s Utopian Imagination: Writing, Reading and Imagining  1 The Way “We” Imagine  2 The Way “We” Write and Read  3 The Power of Utopia: History, Imagination and Knowledge Formation Appendix: Figures Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisThis is a study of the early writings of Virginio Gayda (1885-1944), a talented but amoral Italian journalist whose career spanned two world wars. A keen observer, prolific writer and propagandist during his stint as the newspaper La Stampa’s special correspondent in Habsburg Vienna, Gayda lent his considerable skills to promote an aggressive foreign policy. No one did more than he to poison relations between the Italian and Yugoslav peoples. His is the story of a respected journalist who chose an ultranationalist path to fascism and international fame. Not uninfluenced by rank careerism and material reward he forsook his roots to embrace the antisemitic “race” laws of 1938 and Italy’s disastrous partnership with Nazi Germany.

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Book SynopsisPatrick Modiano (1945-) has published seventeen novels over the past twenty-seven years and is considered one of France's foremost writers. His first three works, dealing principally with the German occupation of France during World War II, are generally considered to have led to a reconsideration of the Gaullist myth which endured for twenty-five years after the war. Along with Marcel Ophuls's film, The Sorrow and the Pity, Modiano's novels opened French eyes to the more ambiguous role played during the occupation by the average French citizen. His subsequent novels have continued to probe the relationship between history, memory and fiction. This study will be of interest to readers of French fiction and history as it looks at their relation-ship to memory and shows that the three are inextricably linked in a way that enriches our understanding of our past, whether it be collective or personal. Modiano, while seemingly obsessed with his own past, in fact indicates an opening toward the future by attempting to put the past to rest in his fiction.Table of ContentsINTRODUCTION. Memory and Narration. CHAPTER 1: THE ECHOES OF MEMORY. Precarious Memories (Remise de peine). Memory Through the Generations. The Labyrinth of Memory in Modiano's Paris (Fleurs de ruine). Discrete Objects of Desire (Remise de peine). CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGIES. The Play of the Visual: The Role of the Cinema and Modiano's Neo-Realism (Quartier perdu). Repetition as an Agent of Forgetting (Quartier perdu). Remembering to Forget (Rue des boutiques obscures). Modiano's Historical Methodology (Rue des boutiques obscures and Fleurs de ruine). Why Novels? (De si braves garçons). CHAPTER 3: SHEDDING THE PAST. Who is this Man? The Question of the Narrator (Un Cirque passe). L'Entrecroisement de l'Histoire et de la Fiction (Introduction). Historical Ironies (La Place de l'étoile). Historical Ambiguities (La Ronde de nuit and Lacombe Lucien). A la recherche du père (Les Boulevards de ceinture). Rewriting History: The Gaullist Myth. CONCLUSION. Flight toward the Future (Du plus loin de l'oubli). WORKS CITED.

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Book SynopsisThis lively and fascinating new collection of European essays on contemporary Anglophone fiction has arisen out of the ESSE/3 Conference, which was held in Glasgow in September 1995. The contributors live and work in University English Departments in Bulgaria, Croatia, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, The Netherlands, Portugal and Spain, as well as in the United Kingdom itself. Essays on general theoretical aspects of the subject head and conclude the collection, and there are also essays on individual writers or groups of writers, such as John Fowles, A.S. Byatt, Charles Palliser, Peter Ackroyd, William Golding, Doris Lessing, Daphne du Maurier, Angela Carter and Christina Stead. The performative aspect of the subject-matter of these essays is balanced by a locational aspect, including utopian and dystopian writing in authors as diverse as Michael Crichton, Jenny Diski and Salman Rushdie, and the travel literature of Bruce Chatwin. These essays show theoretical alertness, but no single theoretical position is privileged. The aim of the collection is to provide an indication of the range of work being carried out throughout European academe on Anglophone (mainly British) writing today.Trade Review”…this fascinating polyvocal collection […] a lively picture of how contemporary Anglophone […] fiction is being read in the European Academe …” in: Merope, 2001 No. 27Table of ContentsForeword. Daniela CARPI: Twentieth-Century Revision of Myth: the Myths of Writing. Pedro GALLARDO-TORRANO: Rediscovering the Island as Utopian Locus: Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park. Silvia CAPORALE BIZZINI: Language and Power in Jenny Diski's Rainforest. Andreas HÖFELE: Wasteland Sprouting: Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses and the Cityscapes of Modernism. Hartmut HIRSCH: 'A Novel of a Future': Textual Strategies and Political Discourse in Recent Utopian Fiction in English. Catherine BERNARD: Bruce Chatwin: fiction on the frontier. Tatjana JUKI_: From worlds to words and the other way around: the Victorian inheritance in the postmodern British novel. Margarita CHOUROVA: 'The Death of the Author' and the tragicomic allegory of William Golding's The Paper Men. Peter CONRADI: Angus Wilson: Impersonations. Isabel C. ANIEVAS GAMALLO: Motherhood and the fear of the Other: Magic, fable and the gothic in Doris Lessing's The Fifth Child. John MEPHAM: Conversation and Friendship in Doris Lessing's Novels. Sarah SCEATS: Flesh and Bones: Eating, not eating and the social vision of Doring Lessing. Susana ONEGA: Mirror Games and Hidden Narratives in The Quincunx. Agnes SURÁNYI: A Comparison of Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus and Christina Stead's Little Hotel. Avril HORNER and Sue ZLOSNIK: Daphne du Maurier: The French Connection. Chris WALSH: Postmodernist Reflections: A.S. Byatt's Possession. Christien FRANKEN: The Turtle and its Adversaries: Gender Disruption in A.S. Byatt's Critical and Academic Work. Marta Sofía LÓPEZ: Historiographic metafiction and resistance postmodernism. Index.

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Book SynopsisFor all the disciplined artifice of Elizabeth Bishop and John Ashbery, the essays in this collection show that panic plays a crucial role in their work, giving substance to Bishop's claim that “an element of mortal panic and fear” underlines all art. Panic emerges as a condition of creative anxiety and the self-imposed demands of originality in response to the poetic traditions Bishop and Ashbery inherited. These concerns are explored in essays addressed to Bishop and Ashbery's engagement with European Surrealism as an alternative to the dominant poetics of Modernism and its aftermath in the middle years of the twentieth century. Other essays debate the philosophical, religious, and political orientation of their work in relation to Romantic orthodoxies and Postmodern ironies in terms of cultural history, ideology and poetic practice. This collection provides original commentaries on the work of two poets widely regarded as amongst the most significant American poets of the second half of the twentieth century with essays by notable scholars from the United States and Britain known for their special interests in modern poetry including Joanne Feit Diehl, Mark Ford, Edward Larissy, Peter Nicholls, Peter Robinson, Thomas Travisano, Cheryl Walker and Geoff Ward.Trade Review"…high quality of the individual contributions." - in: MLR, 97,4 (2002), pp. 949-950 "…excellent criticism …" - in: Years Work in English Studies, Vol. 81, No. 16 (2002)Table of ContentsLionel KELLY: Introduction: Poetry and the Sense of Panic. Mark FORD: Mont d'Espoir or Mount Despair: Early Bishop, Early Ashbery, and the French. Joanne FEIT DIEHL: Aggression and Reparation: Bishop and the Matter-Of-Fact. Benjamin COLBERT: Romantic Entanglements: Ashbery and the Fragment. Helen M. DENNIS: “Questions of Travel”: Elizabeth Bishop and the Negative Sublime. Dennis BROWN: John Ashbery's “A Wave” (1983): Time and Western Man. Edward LARRISSY: “Is Anything Central?”: Ashbery and the Idea of a Centre. Thomas TRAVISANO: Elizabeth Bishop and the Origins of Narrative Postmodernism. Krystyna MAZUR: The “Unfamiliar Stereotype”: Repetition in the Poetry of John Ashbery. John PILLING: The “Hybrid Mix” of Ashbery's Three Poems, or, How Not to Be French. Peter ROBINSON: “The Bliss of What?” Cheryl WALKER: Metaphysical Surrealism in Bishop. Peter NICHOLLS: John Ashbery and Language Poetry. Geoff WARD: Before and After Language: The New American Poetry. Notes on Contributors. Index.

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Book SynopsisInterest in Johannes Bobrowski (1917-1965) has suffered from an impression of the complexity of his works and of the narrowness of his focus: on 'The Germans and their Eastern European neighbours'. The current study re-examines aspects of Bobrowski's 'Sarmatian' works, especially their chronological development, but places them within the wider context of the whole of his oeuvre. It looks at the long period of development before he discovered his 'theme' in the early 1950s and examines his development after Sarmatische Zeit and Schattenland Ströme, seeing the volume Wetterzeichen as moving increasingly away from the past and towards more contemporary issues. His short stories and novels are related to the issues confronting him in East Germany and develop increasingly into responses to immediate poetic and social problems. Far from being a remote and backward orientated 'Sarmatian', Bobrowski emerges as a writer attempting to communicate with a society which, he felt, threatened to ignore basic human needs and aspirations. The study makes use of material from Bobrowski's Nachlaß to present a figure looking for and offering patterns for orientation in his East German society, but with renewed relevance for post-unification Germany.Trade Review"The volume is essential reading for those seeking to understand Bobrowski’s work in the context of its time." - in: MLR, 96.4 (2001) "Between Sarmatia and Socialism is an informative and useful study, and I highly recommend it." – David Scrase, University of Vermont, in: Seminar, A Journal of Germanic Studies, Vol. XXXVIII, No 3 (Sept. 2002)Table of ContentsPreface. 1. Biography. 2. The Path to Sarmatia. 3. Sarmatia. 4.Orientations: Hamann, Klopstock, Celan. 5. Beyond Sarmatia: Wetterzeichen. 6. The Turn to Prose: The Short Stories. 7. Levins Mühle. 8. Litauische Claviere. 9. Conclusion. Select Bibliography. Index.

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Book SynopsisIn 1923, the twenty-seven-year-old Paul Hindemith published a composition for voice and piano, entitled Das Marienleben, based on Rainer Maria Rilke's poetic cycle of 1912. Twenty-five years later, the composer presented a thoroughly revised, partially rewritten version. The outcome of this revision has been highly controversial. Ever since its first publication, musicologists have argued for or against the value of such a decisive rewriting. They do so both by comparing the two compositions on purely musical grounds, and by attempting to assess whether the more strictly organized tonal layout and dynamic structuring of Marienleben II is more or less appropriate for the topic of a poetic cycle on the Life of Mary. This study is the first to analyze the messages conveyed in the two versions with an emphasis on their implicit aesthetic, philosophical, and spiritual significance. Acknowledging the compositions as examples of musical ekphrasis (“a representation in one artistic medium of a message originally composed in another medium”), the author argues in exhaustive detail that the young Hindemith of 1922-23 and the mature composer of 1941-48 can be seen as setting two somewhat different poetic cycles. This volume is of interest for musicologists and music lovers, scholars of German literature and lovers of Rilke’s poetry, as well as for readers interested in the interartistic relationships of music and literature.Table of ContentsIntroduction. The “Life of Mary”. Rilke and Christian Devotion. Ekphrasis in Rilke's Work: Poems on Depictions of Mary and Jesus. Hindemith: From Expressionism to the Ethos of Art. Outline of the Poetic and Musical Cycles on the “Life of Mary”. Geburt Mariä (no. 1). Die Darstellung Mariä im Tempel (no. 2). Mariä Verkündigung (no. 3). Mariä Heimsuchung (no. 4). Geburt Christi (no. 7). Vor der Passion (no. 10). Pietà (no. 11). Stillung Mariä mit dem Auferstandenen (no. 12). Vom Tode Mariä I (no. 13). Vom Tode Mariä II (no. 14). The Five “Picturesque” Songs. Conclusion: Hindemith's Ekphrastic Response to Rilke's Marien-Leben. Bibliography. List of Illustrations. Indes of Names. Index of Literary and Musical Works Cited. About the Author.

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Book SynopsisAlthough internationally renowned as a novelist, journalist, and essayist, Nobel Prize-winning author François Mauriac (1885-1970) never established a reputation as a poet. Yet it was Maurice Barrès’s favourable review of his first collection of verse, Les Mains jointes, that launched Mauriac’s career in 1910. He went on to publish three further collections of poems and insisted to the end of his life that, despite critical neglect of his verse, he remained first and foremost a poet. This book offers the first ever in-depth exploration of the whole of Mauriac’s verse output. After a chapter tracing his general conception of poetry and comparing his ideas to those of other poets and theorists, each of Mauriac’s verse collections is analysed in turn, as are many of his poems that were published exclusively in literary journals. A final chapter explores the significant relationship between Mauriac’s verse and his novels, revealing the multiple connections between these two series of texts. This volume will appeal to those with an interest in twentieth-century French poetry and, more generally, to those interested in the relationship between verse and prose.Table of ContentsAbbreviations and references Introduction 1. Mauriac and Poetry 2. The Birth of a Poet: Les Mains jointes 3. Goodbye to All That? L’Adieu à l’adolescence 4. Transitional Verse (1): ‘Nocturne’ and ‘Elégie’ 5. Transitional Verse (2): The War Years 6. Storms of Passion: Orages 7. Christianized Myth: Le Sang d’Atys 8. The End of the Affair: ‘Ebauche d’Endymion’ 9. A Poetic Novelist Conclusion Appendix Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisKafka's three novels, to be understood as an ever more intricate portrayal of the inner life of one central character (Henry James's 'centre of consciousness'), each reflecting the problems of their self-critical creator, are tantamount to dreams. The hieroglyphic, pictorial language in which they are written is the symbolic language in which dreams and thoughts on the edge of sleep are visualized. Not for nothing did Kafka define his writing as a matter of fantasizing with whole orchestras of [free] associations. Written in a deliberately enhanced hypnagogic state, these novels embody the alternative logic of dreams, with the emphasis on chains of association and verbal bridges between words and word-complexes. The product of many years' preoccupation with its subject, Patrick Bridgwater's new book is an original, chapter-by-chapter study of three extraordinarily detailed novels, of each of which it offers a radically new reading that makes more, and different, sense than any previous reading. In Barthes' terms these fascinating novels are 'unreadable', but the present book shows that, properly read, they are entirely, if ambiguously, readable. Rooted in Kafka's use of language, it consistently explores, in detail, (i) the linguistic implications of the dreamlike nature of his work, (ii) the metaphors he takes literally, and (iii) the ambiguities of so many of the words he chooses to use. In doing so it takes account not only of the secondary meanings of German words and the sometimes dated metaphors of which Kafka, taking them literally, spins his text, but also, where relevant, of Czech and Italian etymology. Split, for ease of reference, into chapters corresponding to the chapters of the novels in the new Originalfassung, the book is aimed at all readers of Kafka with a knowledge of German, for the author shows that Kafka's texts can be understood only in the language in which they were written: because Kafka's meaning is often hidden beneath the surface of the text, conveyed via secondary meanings that are specific to German, any translation is necessarily an Oberflächenübersetzung.Trade Review”…obviously both a labour of love and the result of many years of painstaking research…” in: Seminar, Vol. xli, No. 2, May 2005, pp. 79-182Table of ContentsPreface Abbreviations and Signs Introduction 1. DER VERSCHOLLENE 2. DER PROCESS 3. DAS SCHLOSS Bibliography

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Book SynopsisJoseph Conrad: The Short Fiction offers a wide range of perspectives on Conrad’s short stories. Nine essays, by established and emerging scholars, deal with early and classic stories as well as the relatively neglected works of Conrad’s later career. The essays explore in depth the historical and publishing contexts of individual stories and provide insights into Conrad’s practice as a writer of short fiction. These new readings, based on contemporary theoretical and interpretive perspectives, will appeal not only to specialists of literary Modernism but also to the advanced student and the general reader.Trade Review”…a first-rate collection of essays…” in: Studies in English Literature, Vol. 46, 2005Table of ContentsForeword Contributors Jürgen KRAMER: What the Country Doctor did not see: The Limits of the Imagination in Amy Foster Cedric WATTS: Fraudulent Signifiers: Saussure and the Sixpence in Karain Sema POSTACIOGLU-BANON: Gaspar Ruiz: A Vitagraph of Desire P.A. MARCH-RUSSELL: The Anarchy of Love: The Informer Michael LUCAS: Rehabilitating The Brute Stephen DONOVAN: Magic Letters and Mental Degradation: Advertising in An Anarchist and The Partner Mark D. LARABEE: Territorial Vision and Revision in Freya of the Seven Isles Jeremy HAWTHORN: Conrad and the Erotic: A Smile of Fortune and The Planter of Malata Jennifer TURNER: Petticoats and Sea Business: Women Characters in Conrad’s Edwardian Short Stories

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Book SynopsisThis volume represents the first in-depth English-language study of the French combat novel of the Great War, an immensely popular genre at the time which includes influential texts such as Henri Barbusse’s Le Feu and Roland Dorgelès’s Les Croix de bois. It explores through these works, and less well-known but equally popular patriotic novels of the period, the effect that experiencing war has upon the writer’s understanding of the world, arguing that, in their depiction of conflict, these writers demonstrate a decidedly complex and modernist understanding of humanity’s place in the world. In particular, the author examines the French combat novel’s evocation of a world where a sense of the Absurd vies with the novelist’s desire to re-impose order through a particular political understanding of the Great War itself, be it in the form of revolutionary socialism, French nationalism, or humanism. In this way, this volume contends, ideology becomes a force for responding to and countering the sense of contingency that characterises the human experience of combat. It will be of interest to scholars of twentieth-century French fiction and thought.Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Introduction Part I. A World at War 1. Continuity and Change 2. The Horizon of War 3. The Time of War Part II: Revolt 4. The Warrior’s Apprenticeship 5. The Dialogic Community: The Nationalist Model 6. The Dialogic Community: The Anti-War Model Part III: Convincing Fictions 7. Commitment, Ideology, and Authority 8. the Mythical Dimension of the Combat Novel Conclusion Appendices Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisAndré Malraux’s output, spanning some 55 years, ranges from novels to philosophical essays, studies on the plastic arts and memorialist essays. The present volume is significantly innovative in that it sets out to elucidate this diversity by focusing, for the first time and from a variety of perspectives, on the erosion of boundaries which characterises Malraux’s work. This erosion is multi-faceted and includes the crossing of genre boundaries; the appropriation of the literary text as political vehicle; the exploitation of the literary text as historical document; contemporary history as a source of literary texts; the slippage between autobiography and the novel, autobiography and the memorialist essay and between fiction and the memorialist essay. Contributors to this volume explore the complex relationship between fact and fiction underpinning Malraux’s writing, and also his life. An understanding of Malraux’s determination to ignore boundaries is crucial to the understanding of his life and work. In this respect the present study will interest academics and students, both undergraduate and postgraduate, of French literary and cultural studies.Table of ContentsGeoffrey T. HARRIS: Introduction 1. Robert S. THORNBERRY: “Malraux, Stevenson and Rivière: La Voie royale and the Novel of Adventure” 2. Christopher SHORLEY: “Crossing Boundaries in the Early Fiction: Malraux’s ‘Art of the Novel’ 1928-33” 3. Walter G. LANGLOIS: “Politics and the ‘Farfelu’: the Historical Setting of Malraux’s 1934 Saba Expedition” 4. Jean-Claude LARRAT: “Malraux and the Crisis of Narrative Form” 5. Gino G. RAYMOND: André Malraux: Through the Looking Glass of Politics” 6.John B. ROMEISER: “His Master’s Voice: Leadership Lessons in L’Espoir” 7.Peter TAME: “Fiction and History in Les Noyers de l’Altenburg” 8. Karen D. LEVY: “Unforeseeable Epiphanies: Re-Encountering Malraux in Proximity with Levinas” 9. Jacqueline MACHABEIS: “From East to West and Beyond: Itinerary of the Eternal Pilgrim” 10. Christiane MOATTI: “From Models and Anti-Models to Anti-Memoirs” 11.Edson ROSA DA SILVA : “La Tête d’obsidienne: Malraux beyond Forms” 12. Geoffrey T. HARRIS: “From Death to Dying: The Final Boundary”

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Book SynopsisFrench Prose in 2000 stems in some important measure from work presented in September 1998 at the International Colloquium on French and Francophone Literature in the 1990’s held at Dalhousie University. A good number of papers given at that time, and since revisited in the light of exchanges, join here certain others specifically written for the purposes of this book. Together they constitute a wide-ranging and modally varied interrogation of the current state of French and francophone prose writing, its multifaceted manners, its richly divergent fascinations, its many theoretical or philosophical groundings. The book thus ceaselessly moves its attention from fictional biography to the roman noir, from the writing of Glissant and Chamoiseau to that of the étonnants voyageurs, from the powerful discourse of women such as Chawaf or Condé, Ernaux or Germain, Sallenave or Kristeva, to that of writers as diverse in their modes as Le Clézio and Quignard, Duras and Renaud Camus. All chapters focus, however, in near-exclusive measure, on the prose production of the last ten or twelve years.Table of ContentsJean-Pol Madou: Edouard Glissant: Tout-Monde, une poétique de l’archipel (Par-delà Faulkner et Saint-John Perse) Dominique Viart: L’imagination biographique dans la littérature française des années 1980-90 Elise Noetinger: Gestes de femmes dans Diego et Frida et Poisson d’or de J.M.G. Le Clézio Charles Forsdick: Fin de siècle, fin des voyages? Michel Le Bris and the search for une littérature voyageuse Sjef Houppermans: “P.A.” ou le livre selon Camus Leah D. Hewitt: Transmigrations in Maryse Condé’s true tales Monique Saigal: La récupération de la mère chez Jeanne Hyvrard et Chantal Chawaf Edmund Smyth: The fiction of Jean Rouaud: perception, memory and identity Nicole Trèves: Chère madame ma fille cadette de Raphaële Billetdoux: biographie, autobiographie ou livre inclassable? Bruno Thibault: “A l’écoute de ceux qui sont à la traîne”: le récit dialogué dans Adieu et dans Viol de Danièle Sallenave Claire-Lise Tondeur: Ecrire la honte (Annie Ernaux) H. Adlai Murdoch: Postcolonial peripheries revisited: Chamoiseau’s rewriting of Francophone culture Sanda Golopentia: Sylvie Germain: un rappel au mystère de l’être humain David Platten: The impact of the contemporary Roman Noir: Pennac, Daeninckx, and the question of a cultural evolution Ieme van der Poel: Possessions: la Sainte Trinité revue par Julia Kristeva Jean-Louis Pautrot: La voix narrative chez Pascal Quignard: de l’oracle à la fraternité Roland Bonnel: Le surcroît de responsabilité dans l’oeuvre de Volkoff Metka Zupancic: L’au-delà irrésistible: Chantal Chawaf, Le Manteau noir Susan Jordan Myers: Sébastien Japrisot: it’s a crazy game, the search for truth Jacques La Mothe: “L’autre extrémité du temps”, une lecture de La Quarantaine de J.M.G. Le Clézio Lisa McNee: Ourika en famille: mémoire collective et altérité Lylian Bourgois: La Mer écrite de Duras ou la fin d’une Marguerite Isabelle Décarie: Le Protocole compassionnel d’Hervé Guibert: une écriture-transfusion – Sarah Cant: The writer and the representation of experience in Annie Ernaux’s La Honte Cheryl Toman: A day in the life of Belleville: the new face of contemporary France in a Paris neighborhood Maïr Verthuy: Peinture et polar à l’aube d’un nouveau siècle: Tonino Benacquista et Daniel Picouly

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Book SynopsisAllegories of Telling: Self-Referential Narrative in Contemporary British Fiction has as its founding premise Ross Chambers’s notion that “one of the important powers of fiction is its power to theorize the act of storytelling in and through the act of storytelling.” In this critical study, Lynn Wells presents detailed readings of novels by five prominent British authors – John Fowles, Angela Carter, Graham Swift, A.S. Byatt and Salman Rushdie – with an emphasis on how the texts' self-referential aspects illuminate the acts of reading and writing fiction in contemporary Britain and, by extension, around the world. The book begins by situating contemporary British fiction historically as the product of an “aesthetics of compromise” arising from the “realism versus experimentalism” debate that consumed the English literary establishment during the 1960s. In her discussion of the texts, Lynn Wells then draws on a wide range of theoretical approaches, from narrative and psychoanalytic theory to existentialist philosophy and the historiographic ideas of thinkers such as Walter Benjamin, Michel Foucault and Giambattista Vico. These original readings challenge superficial “postmodern” interpretations of contemporary British fiction as pessimistically anti-historical, and reassert the value of readerly engagement and narrative reconstruction of the past.Table of ContentsIntroduction Chapter One: Narrative as Seduction: John Fowles’s The French Lieutenant’s Woman Chapter Two: A Postmodern Allegory of Reading: Angela Carter’s The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman Chapter Three: The Whole Story: Graham Swift’s Waterland Chapter Four: Corso, Ricorso: Historical Repetition and Cultural Reflection in A.S. Byatt’s Possession: A Romance Chapter Five: Unfinished Business: Intertextuality and Historiography in Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses and Midnight’s Children Conclusion Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisIn Misreading England: Poetry and Nationhood Since the Second World War, Raphaël Ingelbien examines how issues of nationhood have affected the works and the reception of several English and Irish poets – Philip Larkin, Ted Hughes, Geoffrey Hill and Seamus Heaney. This study explores the interactions between post-war English poets and the ways in which they transformed or misread earlier poetic visions of England – Romantic, Georgian, Modernist. It also traces often neglected but crucial links between their troubled poetics of Englishness and Seamus Heaney’s poetry of Irish nationhood. This radically intertextual approach takes issue with influential accounts of post-war poetry that have drawn on postcolonialism. Instead of being made to reflect contemporary agendas, the poetics of nationhood are here considered in all their textual and ideological complexity, and restored to the historical, intellectual and literary contexts which postcolonial emphases on identity often play down or simplify. Whereas critics in post-devolution Britain increasingly use texts to debunk or promote specific versions of national identity, this study interrogates the very terms in which the debate has been conducted. Its metacritical analyses expose the contradictions of identity politics, and its intertextual readings help re-draw the map of post-war poetry in Britain and Ireland.Trade Review"…alert textual analyses…" - in: PN Review, Vol. 29, No. 5 (May-June 2003) "illuminating emphasis upon philology…" - in: Symbiosis - A Journal of Anglo-American Literary Relations (April 2004) "…most notable about his study is his alertness tot eh ways in which poetry plays a role in deconstructing, […] rather than simple registering national identity." - in: Year’s Work in English Studies, Vol. 82.5 (2003)

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Book SynopsisAnne Duden’s reputation as one of the most innovative writers of her generation, established in 1982 with the experimental stories in Übergang, was confirmed in 1985 by Das Judasschaf, a novel interweaving an individual’s anguish with the cultural trauma of the German past. In her acclaimed poem cycles Steinschlag (1993) and Hingegend (1999) Duden pushes the limits of language in densely metaphoric evocations of landscapes and places of political and personal remembrance, mixing lament for ruined nature with grotesque comedy, mystic vision with horror. Duden is a distinguished practitioner of short forms. Her essays display the same intense engagement with the visual arts as informs her narrative texts. Her deep interest in music is echoed in the musicality of short prose poems. This volume presents for the first time a comprehensive collection of approaches to Duden's fiction, poetry and essays by international scholars. Topics include: the ethics and aesthetics of Duden’s engagement with German history; her constructions of female subjectivity; her criticism of western dualistic thinking with its devaluation of the body and exploitation of nature; her position within a modernist tradition with roots in the Romantic Age; the visual arts and poetic influences such as Hölderlin and Celan; the dilemmas of translating Duden’s highly individual style. Three essays on Steinschlag constitute the first systematic reading of this difficult, much praised cycle.Trade ReviewAnne Duden has been awarded the Heinrich Böll Literaturpreis 2003. "[The essays] attest to a very fruitful collaboration across two cultural backdrops." - in: Jahrbuch für Internationale Germanistik, XXXVIII, Heft 1 (2006) "…excellent contributions on the complex work of Anne Duden. […] the stimulating essays contribute in thought-provoking ways to the on-going discussion of Anne Duden’s challenging work." - in: German Studies Review, Vol. 28, No. 1 (Feb. 2005), pp. 234-5 "…excellent introduction […] by Elizabeth Boa." - in: “important” in: Modern Language Review, 99.4 (2004)Table of ContentsAnne DUDEN: ‘Herzgänge’. List of Abbreviations. Elizabeth BOA: Introduction: notes from a symposium; notes towards Hingegend. Dirk GÖTTSCHE: ‘Gestalt aus Bewegung’. Beobachtungen zu Anne Dudens Kurzprosa und Essayistik. Margaret LITTLER: Trauma und Terrorism: the problem of violence in the work of Anne Duden. Stephanie BIRD: Considering Ethics in the Short Prose of Anne Duden. Teresa LUDDEN: Material Movements in Texts by Anne Duden. Juliet WIGMORE: Visions of Nature in Texts by Anne Duden. Metaphor, Metonym, Morphology. Wiebke SIEVERS: Grenzen der Übersetzung. Anne Dudens Übergang in englischer und französischer Sprache. Georgina PAUL: An Easter of words. Steps towards a reading of Anne Duden’s Steinschlag. Claudia ROTH: ‘Bilder […] / aus einem Deutschland / das nie existiert hat’. Ein Lektürevorschlag zum Anfang von Anne Dudens Steinschlag. Heike BARTEL: ‘Steinatem’. Zur Metaphorik des Atmens in Anne Dudens ‘Steinschlag’. Bibliography. Index. Notes on Contributors.

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Book SynopsisChristoph Hein is one of the best-known authors of the former GDR, and his works of fiction have been widely interpreted as responses to and critiques of socialist society. In this study, David Clarke undertakes a detailed analysis of all of Christoph Hein’s major works of fiction from Der fremde Freund (1928) to Willenbrock (2000) in order to explore Hein’s critique of the GDR regime, whilst also demonstrating how aspects of that critique provided a starting point for Hein’s rejection of capitalism both before and after German unification. For Hein, socialism had failed to make good its promise to create a community bound together by common values and goals, preferring instead to impose conformity upon its citizens. Capitalism, he believed, was equally unable to meet the need for community, and Hein sought to demonstrate the consequences of this state of affairs in the figure of Wörle in his first post-unification novel, Das Napoleon-Spiel (1993). After this point, Clarke argues, Hein was nevertheless forced to re-examine his criticism of capitalism, a process which ultimately led to the more differentiated and convincing portrayal to be found in Willenbrock.Trade Review"…a significant contribution to Hein scholarship…" - in: The German Quarterly, Vol. 77, No. 3 (Summer 2004) "Clarke’s thorough scholarship, clear writing style, and careful editing make this a book worthy of a spot on our crowded bookshelves." - in: Monatshefte, Vol. 97, No. 2 (2005) "…this is a useful work for anyone interested in Christoph Hein and his writing." - in: MLR, 99.2 (2004), pp. 548-9 "…a valuable addition to collections supporting undergraduate and graduate programs in German Studies or literature." - in: German Studies Review, Vol. 28, No. 1 (Feb. 2005), pp. 233-4Table of ContentsAbbreviations. Introduction. Chapter 1. ‘Mit Kunst der Welt beikommen’. Hein on the Role of the Writer and the Uses of Literature. Chapter 2. ‘Über die Möglichkeiten und Unmöglichkeiten, sich miteinander zu verständigen. Chapter 3. Rethinking the Past. Horns Ende. Chapter 4. Getting Back on Track. The Triumph of Conformity in Der Tangospieler. Chapter 5. Facing West. Christoph Hein and the ‘Wende’. Chapter 6. ‘Spiele aus Notwehr’. Hein’s Critique of the West in Das Napoleon-Spiel. Chapter 7. ‘Schicksal’, ‘Gelassenheit’ und Laughter. Von allem Anfang an. Chapter 8. Materialism and Violence in Willenbrock. Conclusion. Bibliography.

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Book SynopsisKafka, Gothic and Fairytale is an original comparative study of the novels and some of the related shorter punishment fantasies in terms of their relationship to the Gothic and fairytale conventions. It is an absorbing subject and one which, while keeping to the basic facts of his life, mind-set and literary method, shows Kafka’s work in a genuinely new light. The contradiction between his persona with its love of fairytale and his shadow with its affinity with Gothic is reflected in his work, which is both Gothic and other than Gothic, both fairytale-like and the every denial of fairytale. Important subtexts of the book are the close connexion between Gothic and fairytale and between both of these and the dream. German text is quoted in translation unless the emphasis is on the meaning of individual words or phrases, in which case the words in question are quoted and their English meanings discussed. This means that readers without German can, for the first time, begin to understand the underlying ambiguity of Kafka’s major fictions. The book is addressed to all who are interested in the meaning of his work and its place in literary history, but also to the many readers in the English and German-speaking worlds who share the author’s enthusiasm for Gothic and fairytale.Table of ContentsPreface Abbreviations and Signs 1. Introduction 2. Landmarks 3. The Gothic Circle 4. Novel and Dream 5. Fairytale 6. Der verschollene 7. Der Proceß 8. Das Schloß 9. Fairytale and Gothic Tale 10. Postscript Bibliography

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Book SynopsisThis study of contemporary German poetry represents the first attempt to examine comprehensively and at some length the lyric response to the unification period. It sets out to investigate, by means of close textual analysis, whether the German ‘Wende’ was also a turning-point for poetry, exploring how GDR poets responded both to the revolutionary events of 1989 and subsequently to the new, united Germany. An introductory chapter considers what is distinct about poetry as a genre, especially under censorship or amid historic change, as well as outlining the post-unification ‘Literaturstreit’. The following chapter offers a survey of the poet’s role in the GDR from 1949 until 1989. Two central chapters then gather the poetry of the ‘Wende’ and unification as a corpus of work and characterize it, through the elucidation of recurring themes, motifs and techniques. The volume strikes a balance between giving a general overview of poetry written in 1989-1996 and focusing on individual poets whose work is particularly compelling. After identifying broad trends across a wide range of individual poems, collections and anthologies, single chapters therefore examine in greater depth the work of Volker Braun and Durs Grünbein. The concluding chapter addresses the issue of a separate GDR literature. Finally, an extensive, structured bibliography is provided, covering the poetry, literary criticism and cultural history of the period.Trade Review"…it is important that Rodopi have now published Owen’s extremely detailed and meticulously researched thesis…." - in: Modern Language Review, 98.1 (2003), pp. 248-249 "Owen has performed an outstanding service in tracing the manner in which these figures recorded the deep social, psychological and emotional issues raised by events, and although more specific analyses of individual poets will certainly follow, it seems unlikely her general analysis can be superseded." - in: Journal of European Studies, Vol. XXXIII (2003)Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Abbreviations 1: Introduction 2: The Poet’s Role in the GDR 1949-1989 3: History and Poetry: ‘Wende-Zeitgedichte’ 4: ‘Die Stimmen der Verlierer’: Post-Unification Poetry by ex-GDR Poets 5: The End of a Role: Volker Braun’s Post-‘Wende’ Poetry 6: The Beginning of a Role: Durs Grünbein’s Post-‘Wende’ Poetry 7: Conclusion Bibliography Index of Names Index of Subjects

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Book SynopsisDrawing on personal interviews, manuscript collections, and the author's unpublished writings, Judie Newman offers a comprehensive study of the work of Alison Lurie from her early involvement in the Poets' Theatre to the AIDS comedy of her most recent novel, The Last Resort (1988). In her profound social and intellectual engagement with American Utopianism, from its historical origins through such contemporary manifestations as Walter Benjamin's Hollywood, the American University, feminist theorisations, the religious cult and the gay heterotopia, and in her intertextual reworkings of folk and fairy tale, biography, diary novel, the ‘International Theme’ and the classic ghost story, Lurie maintains an uncanny ability to serve critical aesthetic purposes within a popular fictional form. Semiotic comedies - comedies of the sign - rather than novels of manners, Lurie's fictions place her squarely within a radical American tradition.Table of ContentsPreface. Acknowledgements. Chapter One. Biographical Introduction. Chapter Two. Hell Week with Emerson and Thoreau: Love and Friendship. Chapter Three. Walter Benjamin Goes to Hollywood: The Nowhere City. Chapter Four. The Revenge of the Trance Maiden: Imaginary Friends. Chapter Five. The Ghost-Writer: Real People and Women and Ghosts. Chapter Six. Vietnam Domestic: The War Between The Tates. Chapter Seven. The Uses of Enchantment: Only Children. Chapter Eight. Paleface into Redskin: Foreign Affairs. Chapter Nine. Truth, Secrets and Lies: The Truth About Lorin Jones. Chapter Ten. The Gay Imaginary: The Last Resort. Bibliography. Index.

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Trade Review"…dynamic and engaging." - in: African Theatre, pp. 158-9 "This volume of diverse works … is a treasure for all who are genuinely interested in African studies, especially the complex process of cultural production in Africa." - in: Jouvert, Vol. 6, Issue 3 (2002)Table of ContentsILLUSTRATIONS. INTRODUCTION. Kofi ANYIDOHO: National Identity and the Language of Metaphor. ARTICLES. Kwadwo OPOKU-AGYEMANG: Cape Coast Castle: The Edifice and the Metaphor. Ebow DANIEL: In Celebration of a Harvest of Contemporary Ghanaian Writing. John K. DJISENU: The Art of Narrative Drama in Ghana. Efua T. SUTHERLAND: The Second Phase of the National Theatre Movement in Ghana. Kofi ANYIDOHO: Dr Efua Sutherland: A Biographical Sketch. Kofi ANYIDOHO: Mother Courage (A Tribute to Auntie Efua From All Her Children in the Arts). Anne V. ADAMS: Revis(it)ing Ritual: The Challenge to the Virility of Tradition in Works by Efua Sutherland and Other African Writers. James GIBBS: Efua Theodora Sutherland: A Bibliography of Primary Materials, with a Checklist of Secondary Sources. F. NII-YARTEY: Development and Promotion of Contemporary Choreographic Expression in Ghana. W. OFOTSU ADINKU: The Early Years of the Ghana Dance Ensemble. Kwesi YANKAH: Nana Kwame Ampadu and the Sung Tale as Metaphor for Protest Discourse. Jane BRYCE and Kari DAKO: Textual Deviancy and Cultural Syncretism: Romantic Fiction as a Subversive Strain in Black Women's Writing. Irene M. DANYSH: Ama Ata Aidoo's Changes: The Woman's Voice. Francis NGABOH-SMART: Narrative as Tactics in Armah's Two Thousand Seasons. Philip WHYTE: The Thematic and Formal Importance of the Cinema in Ayi Kwei Armah's Writing. Vincent OKPOTI ODAMTTEN: “For Her Own (Work's) Quality”: The Poetry of Ama Ata Aidoo. A.N. MENSAH; Counting the Ways: The Love Poetry of Kofi Anyidoho. Leif LORENTZON: “Aftermath”: The First (Two?) Poems by Ayi Kwei Armah. M.E. KROPP-DAKUBU: Kojo Laing's Poetry and the Struggle for God. E. SUTHERLAND-ADDY: The Ghanaian Feature Video Phenomenon: Thematic Concerns and Aesthetic Resources. A List of Ghanaian Feature Video Films, 1987-1993. Africanus AVEH: Ghanaian Video Films of the 1990s: An Annotated Selected Filmography. Kofi ANYIDOHO: The Struggle for Liberation is Not Yet Won: Kwaw Ansah's Heritage Africa. James GIBBS: Matters of the Heart. MARKETPLACE: THE MEDIA. Woeli A. DEKUTSEY: Book Publishing and Creative Writing in Ghana. Chris KWAME AWUYAH: The Role of Print and Non-Print Media and Promotional Associations in the Development of Ghanaian Written Literature. W. OFOTSU ADINKU: The Protection of Choreographic Works in Ghana. INTERVIEWS. CREATIVE WRITING. BOOK REVIEWS. ADDRESSES. NOTES FOR CONTRIBUTORS.

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Book SynopsisIn this study of D.H.Lawrence and critical theory, Robert Burden pays particular attention to the critical formations that underpin the reception history of the main novels, including the much maligned “leadership” novels, because strong readings have always contested the meaning and significance of Lawrence, and because there has been a persistent reluctance to approach his writing through post-structuralist theory. This study demonstrates in some detail that once Lawrence’s texts are the objects of the newer critical paradigms, their principles of coherence are understood differently; and that older notions of textual unity are displaced by aesthetic structures of degrees of generic and linguistic destabilization. This enables a radicalizing of Lawrence’s fiction by drawing out its deconstructive effects on his myth-making and essentialist notions of the self. The sexual identities represented in the fiction are read as experiments, or “thought adventures”, as Lawrence himself characterized his work. The different approaches to Lawrence’s writing in this study lead to a radical reassessment of his relationship to Modernism, especially in the light of the more elastic concept of Modernism in recent discussion, and one which traditional Lawrence scholars have ignored. What emerges is a more self-deconstructive Lawrence, with some surprising results.Trade Review"…diligent and extensively researched…" - in: English, Vol. 53, No. 207 (Autumn 2004) "…Robert Burden’s impressive and scholarly book… [..] …a convenient, reliable and stimulating repository of information and ideas." - in: Years Work in English Studies, Vol. 81, No. 14 (2002)Table of ContentsIntroduction: The Critical Formations of Lawrence Studies. 1. Sons and Lovers and the Possibility of a Psychoanalytic Criticism. 2. The Rainbow the Discursive Formations of History: Towards a Foucauldian Reading. 3. The Carnivalizing Novel: Bakhtinian Readings of Women in Love, The Lost Girl, and Mr Noon. 4. Deconstructing Masculinity 1: The Crisis of Post-War Masculinity and the Modernism of Aaron's Rod. 5. Deconstructing Masculinity 2: Male Bonding, Mythic Resolution and Textual Instabilities in Kangaroo and The Plumed Serpent. 6. Lady Chatterley's Lover: Sexual Politics and Class Politics. Conclusions: Modernism, Modernity, and Critical Theory. Bibliography. Index.

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Book SynopsisThis collection of papers from an international conference held at the Institut français, London, in 1999 focuses on Marguerite Duras’s place within the major literary, political and cultural events that helped define the 20th century. Covering the broad areas of Duras’s public persona and paraliterary writings, her engagement with the image and with theatre, the implications of her politico-cultural trajectory, and her representations of the body, sexuality and transgression, the diversity of critical approaches deployed in this volume reflects the scope and rich texture of the author’s oeuvre and the enduring fascination of the Duras phenomenon.

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Book SynopsisThis is the first major study in English of the work of the French novelist, essayist, journalist, poet and ‘chansonnier’ Pierre Mac Orlan (1882-1970). It assesses Mac Orlan's contribution to the post-1918 phenomenon of intellectual disillusionment and disorientation which was termed the ‘nouveau mal du siècle’, or ‘inquiétude’. Although he has largely been ignored by critics thus far, Mac Orlan was part of mainstream French literary production and a major exponent of ‘inquiétude’. Where he differs from his contemporaries is in his subject matter, in his use of sociological, rather than abstract, intellectual material. His expression of ‘inquiétude’ encompasses: ‘le fantastique social’; adventure; marginality; ‘le cafard’; and sadistic sexuality. His originality lies in his invention of ‘le fantastique social’, in his constant use of certain techniques, as well as the subject matter, of German Expressionism via the depiction of the disturbing landscape of the modern city, post-1918 inflation and decadence, prostitutes and criminals, doomed adventurers, the mystery of modern technology, and in the expression of a morbid interest in sexual violence. This volume will be of particular interest to students of inter-war French literature and thought.Table of ContentsAcknowledgements. Introduction. Chapter 1 - ‘Inquiétude' and Germany. Chapter 2 - ‘Inquiétude' and the city: London and Paris. Chapter 3 - ‘Inquiétude' and ports. Chapter 4 - ‘Inquiétude' and adventure i): theory and piracy. Chapter 5 - ‘Inquiétude' and adventure ii): the colonial army and the inter-war years. Chapter 6 - ‘Inquiétude' and sex and eroticism. Conclusion. Bibliography. Index.

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Book SynopsisWomen’s Movement critically explores the transgressive potential of feminist escape narratives and argues that they are, almost by definition, radically different from paradigmatic male escape narratives. While definitions of escape are necessarily broad, they have too often excluded the ambiguous escape – the escape most closely associated with the female. Indeed, feminist escape narratives often resist a happy ending, and Women’s Movement argues that these narrative closures reflect the changing face of feminism, as it sheds its old certainties, is faced with a monumental “backlash” and is refigured as the potentially less threatening “postfeminism”. Resisting the automatic association of “escape” with “escapist,” Women’s Movement analyzes male adventure and quest narratives, including Moby-Dick, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Blood Meridian, and Deliverance, before turning to a range of feminist texts. While being the first book to give critical attention to some postfeminist novels, Women’s Movement more often acts as a channel for offering different ways of approaching familiar feminist texts, including, among others, Marian Engel’s Bear, Atwood’s Surfacing and The Handmaid’s Tale, Joan Barfoot’s Gaining Ground and Dancing in the Dark, Anne Tyler’s Earthly Possessions and Ladder of Years, Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping, Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying and Margaret Laurence’s The Diviners.Trade Review"Women’s Movement is a talented work, a real contribution that proves its point incontestably…" - in: Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies 8.2.2002 "Women’s Movement is a valuable contribution to the on-going debates surrounding contemporary North American feminist fiction." - in: Atlantis 26.1 (2001) "stimulating text […]" - in: American Studies, Vol. 36 (2002), pp. 538-539 "… a remarkably insightful analysis of escape in literature. […] … an invaluable addition to the study of Canadian and American culture." - in: British Journal of Canadian Studies, 14.2Table of ContentsIntroduction: Transiency and Transgression: Feminist Literary Escape. Part One: (En)Gendering Escape. Chapter One: Escapist Literature and the Literature of Escape. Chapter Two: The Literature of Adventure. Chapter Three: The Literature of Quest Part Two: Charting the Disappeared. Chapter Four: Breaking the Ties that Bind: Escaping the 1970s. Chapter Five: From Hoboes to Handmaids: Divergent Impulses in the 1980s. Chapter Six: Patriarchy and Postfeminism: Refiguring the Ties that Bind.

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Book SynopsisDarling of the Jazz Age, the globe-trotting diplomat and acclaimed writer Paul Morand and his literary and political careers underwent a radical shift following his collaboration with the Vichy government during the Occupation of France. Abandoning the terse, glittering portraits of the contemporary era that had garnered him early fame, he turned to the past and to historical fiction, biography and autobiography.Paul Morand: The Politics and Practice of Writing in Post-War France, the first full-length study of Morand in English and the first ever of his post-war works, traces Morand’s politically charged explorations of history as he obsessively rewrites the Occupation in historical guise. From Napoleonic Spain to the court of Louis XIV, nineteenth-century California, Revolutionary France and Venice across the ages, Morand probes the limits of historiography and genre as he constructs a curiously Benjaminian model of redemption for his collaborationist heroes. This book analyses Morand’s post-war project, placing it within the highly-politicized context of writing during the de Gaullian era. Many issues are at stake in Morand’s late oeuvre, from the genres of historical fiction, biography and autobiography, to the very act of historicization itself in the context of the post-war era. Morand’s handling of these issues suggests that literature furnishes perhaps the best space within which the complex and highly political question of our ties to the past may be most tellingly examined.Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Introduction: L’Affaire Morand I. Lacerating Time: History, Penance, and Redemption in Le Flagellant de Séville II. Reading the Past: Parfaite de Saligny and La Folle amoureuse III. Filming the Event: Fouquet ou le soleil offusqué IV. Postcards from Venice V. Morand retro. Bibliography of Works by Paul Morand Annotated Bibliography of Works Devoted To Paul Morand Works Consulted Index

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Book SynopsisIn this study, Geoffrey Westgate offers a new understanding of Irmtraud Morgner by reading her as a specifically East German writer. Through close analysis of her works – the early journalism and socialist realism, the ‘socialist modernism’ of the banned Rumba auf einen Herbst, the largely neglected, but key, texts of the late 1960s, the major novels, Beatriz and Amanda, and the final, uncompleted work, Das heroische Testament – the book examines the literary strategies Morgner adopted with respect to pivotal cultural-political developments in the GDR. The first to consider the trajectory of Morgner’s career as a whole, the study uncovers texts which have not appeared in bibliographies of her writings and draws on new biographical material, including the writer’s Nachlaß. In addition, the author uses archival material from the GDR Ministerium für Kultur and Ministerium für Staatssicherheit to illustrate how Morgner’s texts were censored and how the writer was monitored by the secret police. The book therefore provides a case study of official GDR Autorenpolitik and also shows that Morgner’s oeuvre cannot be fully understood unless it is viewed in the context of this state control and surveillance. Morgner’s writings bear complex but eloquent testimony to the possibilities for literature in a dictatorship.Trade Review"…well-written and solidly researched…" - in: Monatshefte, Vol. 97, No. 2 (2005) "…Es ist Westgate gelungen eine Lücke innerhalb der Forschung zu schliessen." - in: Weimarer Beiträge, Vol. 51, Heft 4 (2005) "…this significantly increases our understanding of Morgner’s literature and GDR culture…." - in: German Studies Review, 26/3 (2003), pp.706-7 "…a ‘must’ for those working on East German literature and society, as well as those interested in Irmtraud Morgner." - in: The German Quarterly (Winter 2003), pp.96-7 "This is a very well-written, immaculately produced, and thoroughly researched contribution to Morgner scholarship which should lead to new discussions …." - in: The Modern Language Review, 98.4 (2003)Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Abbreviations Introduction 1. Engagement: From Socialist Realism to Socialist Modernism 2. The Apparatus of Control 3. Experiments Under Control 1965-1974 4. Censorship and Surveillance 5. Reckoning: Amanda The Surveyed Subject Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisUnlike many writers from the former GDR, Christoph Hein's reputation and standing - and his creativity - have remained intact despite the demise of the GDR in 1989-90. Christoph Hein in Perspective brings together essays by both established and younger scholars from Britain, Germany and the USA which together cover a wide spectrum of his work, from the early writings of the 1970s to the play In Acht und Bann of 1999 and including his speeches and essays as well as all his major prose works. There is a marked emphasis in the volume on Hein's post-Wende output, with about half the contributions focusing primarily on this period. Another feature is the diversity of perspectives from which the works are examined: historical and political viewpoints are complemented by formal and comparative studies as well as by gender-based perspectives. The volume includes additionally the first published English translation of what is for many Hein's most successful work for the stage, Die wahre Geschichte des Ah Q of 1983 (‘The True Story of Ah Q'). The volume as a whole should be of interest to scholars concerned with the GDR and with contemporary German culture, to undergraduate and postgraduate students, and also the others interested in the history and culture of Germany since 1945. Six of the essays are in English and six in German.Trade Review"…Christoph Hein in perspective […] presents a balanced treatment of Hein’s œuvre…" - in: Monatshefte, Vol. 94, No. 4 (2002), pp 574-575 "…informative and thought-provoking." - in: Deutsch Lehren und Lernen, No 27 (Spring 2003)Table of ContentsGraham JACKMAN: Introduction. Detlef GWOSC: ‘...unstrittig ist die Schädlichkeit der Literatur und des Lesens'. Der Publizist und Redner Christoph Hein. David CLARKE: ‘Himmel auf Erden'? Christoph Hein, Capitalism and the ‘Wende'. Phil McKNIGHT: History and GDR Literature. Reflections on the Mid-1950s: Mankurt, Horn and Horns Ende. Owen EVANS: Hope for the Future? Günter de Bruyn's Neue Herrlichkeit and Christoph Hein's Der Tangospieler. Hilary MIMPRISS: ‘Ohne Hoffnung können wir nicht leben' Christoph Hein's Use of Religious Motifs as an Expression of Resignation and Hope. Ursula ELSNER: Stark, sinnlich, gut - Frauengestalten bei Christoph Hein. Helen L. JONES: ‘Real Existing Socialism' and its Misogynistic Consequences. The Male Protagonist in Literary Works by Christoph Hein, Milan Kundera and Richard Wagner. Terry ALBRECHT: Der kalkulierte Zufall als Provokation gegen Recht und Erinnerung in Christoph Heins Roman Das Napoleon-Spiel. Bernd FISCHER: Christoph Heins kleine Prosa. Von Allem Anfang an und Exekution eines Kalbes. Graham JACKMAN: Von Allem Anfang an A ‘Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man'? Silke FLEGEL: Vor der Tafelrunde. Christoph Hein als Theaterdichter. Bill NIVEN: Christoph Heins In Acht und Bann oder Die Unverbesserlichen. Christoph HEIN: The True Story of Ah Q. After Lu Xun. Introduction: Seán Allan. Translation: Seán Allan and Ralph Manheim. Notes on Contributors.

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Book SynopsisThis collection of twenty essays investigates a series of different aspects of poetic influence in relation to the major modernist poet, Ezra Pound. The volume commences with five essays on matters to do with translation and poetic influence, which situate Ezra Pound as an important transitional figure between 19th-century and 20th-century translation strategies. The next five essays consider different influences on Pound’s poetry, and introduce the reader to new research in a variety of areas, including how specific Chinese cultural artefacts inform his poetry. The following five essays explore Pound’s influence on some of his major contemporaries, such as Eugenio Montale and Charles Olson, and also (through the reading he gave her as a girl) on his daughter, Mary de Rachewiltz. The concluding five essays exemplify different approaches to the thorny issue of Pound and politics, and end with two diametrically opposed interpretations of Pound’s political / poetic thought. The collection will be of great interest to scholars of Ezra Pound and of modern to postmodern poetry; but it will also serve as a useful and lively introduction to some of the debates within Pound scholarship to students coming to his work for the first time.Trade Review"Of a consistently high quality across their considerable diversity, together they [the essays] make for a volume that will be an invaluable tool or guide for Poundian specialist and reader alike." - in: American Studies, Vol. 36 (2002), pp. 344-346 "…significant contribution to Pound Studies this year…" - in: Years Work in English Studies, Vol. 81, No. 16 (2002) "…a representative cross-section of the variousness within ‘Influence’ … [a] rich banquet." - in: MLR, 98.3 (2003)Table of ContentsIntroduction 1. William PRATT, “To Have Gathered from the Air a Live Tradition”: Pound’s Poetic Legacy 2. David GORDON, “The River-Merchant’s Wife”: after 80 years an update 3. Milne HOLTON, Poets and Gaol-Birds: Pound, Lowell, and Villon 4. Helen M. DENNIS, The Translation Strategies of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Ezra Pound and Paul Blackburn 5. Roxana PREDA, The Broken Pieces of the Vessel: Pound and Cavalcanti 6. Diana COLLECOTT, “This pother about the Greeks”: Hellenism and Anti-Hellenism in 1914 7. Stefano M. CASELLA, Ezra Pound and Cunizza da Romano: Fragments of an Unfinished Epic Poem 8. Leon SURETTE, Ezra Pound and Richard Hovey 9. Zhaoming QIAN, Pound and Chinese Art in the British Museum Era_ 10. Naikan TAO, Canto IV and the “Peach-Blossom-Fountain” Poetic 11. Burton Hatlen, Pound’s Pisan Cantos and the Origins of Projective Verse 12. Hélène AJI, Jerome Rothenberg Reading Ezra Pound 13. Massimo BACIGALUPO, Pound and Montale 14. Tony LOPEZ, Pound and Postmodern British Poets 15. Evelyn HALLER, Willa Cather’s Shadows on the Rock and Ezra Pound’s Daughter, Mary 16. Richard TAYLOR, Towards a Reading Text of The Cantos 17. Michael FAHERTY, Defeated But Not Destroyed: the Prison Poems of Ezra Pound and Wilfred Scawen Blunt 18. Ted BLAKE, America’s Lord Haw-Haw: The Trial of Ezra Pound in the Popular Press 19. Scott EASTHAM, Modernism contra Modernity: the ‘case’ of Ezra Pound 20. William McNAUGHTON, The Secret History of St. Elizabeths Notes on contributors Select Bibliography

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Book SynopsisBritish fictions of the early twentieth century appear obsessed with Europe. Various texts from E.M. Forster and D.H. Lawrence to Bram Stoker and the period's travel writing explore European spaces, constructing the European as an Other threatening the position of the English. What they constantly repeat is England's difference and the secondary role of European spaces, whose representation resembles that of colonial lands. By reading selected texts, both canonized and popular, published between 1894 and 1916, this study argues that this xenophobic construction is a sign of the pervading presence of concerns related to the maintenance of English national identity, Englishness, allegedly threatened by the European Other. By drawing on current postcolonial theory, the case studies in the volume show that the discourse on the Other produced in British writings on Europe contributes more than has been understood to the making and promoting of Englishness. The authors studied include D.H. Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield, Anthony Hope, Arnold Bennett, Mrs Alec Tweedie, Erskine Childers, and Joseph Conrad. The study will renew our understanding of the role of Europe in the period's cultural imagination, showing that the identities of the English are formed in encounters with different internal and external Others.Table of ContentsAcknowledgements. 1 Introduction: Writing England and/or Europe. 2 The Prisoner of Zenda and the Borders of Empire. 3 Othering “Eastern” Europe: Mrs Alec Tweedie's Finnish Tour of 1896. 4 Spying for England: Erskine Childer's Nation. 5 D.H. Lawrence's English Exports. 6 Home and Nation in Arnold Bennett's The Old Wives' Tale. 7 Katherine Mansfield's German (M)Others. 8 Remapping Europe: ”Universal” Unhomeliness in Joseph Conrad's Under Western Eyes. 9 Epilogue. Bibliography. Index.

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Book SynopsisThis study offers new perspectives on Wolfgang Koeppen, a writer too often consigned to the margins of post-1945 literary history. Examining the interaction of the personal and the social in Koeppen's writings, this book demonstrates that the politics of his works are inherent to their form. Through a series of close readings, the book explores the positive and negative aspects of liminality, a dominant trope in Koeppen’s works. Stressing the thematic and formal continuities of his oeuvre, the first section illustrates how his protagonists perpetually establish a space for themselves 'in between' states. The second section examines how Koeppen negotiates with the discourse of 'nation' during two central periods of his career. It shows how his experiences in the Third Reich and his reappraisal of the years prior to 1933 determine his perspective on modernity, modernism and Germany after 1945. Having defined the location of culture in his works, the book concludes by resituating Koeppen's writings within post-war West German literary culture.Trade Review"Negotiating Positions offers an insightful, fresh look at a much-debated issue…" - in: German Studies Review, Vol. 28, Nr. 2 (May 2005) "…a helpful contribution to Koeppen exegesis. …well produced…" - in: The Modern Language Review, 98.4 (2003), pp. 1059-1060 "…a very valuable book…" - in: Colloquia Germanica, pp. 193-4Table of ContentsPREFACE; CHAPTER ONE: STATES OF LIMINALITY SECTION ONE: LOCATING THE LIMINAL SUBJECT: CHAPTER TWO: PLAYING ROLES; CHAPTER THREE: WRITING A HOME BETWEEN HOMES; SECTION TWO: COMPROMISE AND CRITIQUE: CHAPTER FOUR: THE LIMITS OF NEGOTIATION; CHAPTER FIVE: THE UNHOMELY RUINS: THE POLITICS OF NATION; CHAPTER SIX: LIMINALITY IN THE FICTION OF THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC; SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY CLASSIFICATION BY SUBJECT LIST: LITERATURE AND CULTURE, GERMAN, 20TH CENTURY

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Book Synopsis2002 will mark the 50th anniversary of the publication of Saint Genet. Ever since that date, Jean Genet’s work has largely been read and interpreted through Sartre’s analysis of the author. In this study, the author seeks to liberate Genet’s fiction from the philosopher’s stranglehold and reopen the work to new venues of interpretation. After challenging the accuracy and pertinence of Sartre’s project and describing the problematic influence it has had, the author begins his own investigation of Genet by examining the notion of precarious identity which informs the Genetian text. Through a dense weft of textual maneuvers arises an aesthetically playful approach to sexual identity. From the beginnings of work in the field of sexology, homosexual desire has defied certain types of rigid schematization such as Freud’s Oedipus complex. Indeed, it can be better viewed through the alternative interpretive lenses of Deleuze and Guattari who challenge patriarchal order in the study of sexuality. Such an approach eventually leads to a discovery of the body’s centrality in Genet’s fiction, especially in his last novel Querelle. It is precisely this ludic body that has escaped Sartre’s critical eye and many subsequent studies of Genet’s literature.Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Introduction Taking the Text away from Sartre “Truth or Dare” Libidinal Anarchy Strategies of the Body Epilogue Selected Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisBerryman’s Henry: Living at the Intersection of Need and Art offers scholars and students the first thorough and well-researched vehicle into John Berryman’s epic poem The Dream Songs. Through a close reading of the text, an examination of the history of its criticism and some of Berryman’s letters, notes, and pertinent manuscripts, Sam Dodson offers the reader a solid starting point to appreciate the presiding structure and thematic focus of this American classic. This structure, resulting from the poet’s crafting and the poem’s internal growth, is illustrated in the text by more than thirty reproductions of some of the Dream Song drafts in progress. No existing critical work examines anywhere near the number of individual Dream Songs as this reader’s guide, which will enable students and teachers to enter Berryman’s difficult poem with confidence and a proper sense of direction. Its purpose is to provide the beginning reader and the scholar with a map for approaching this large work and finding their way through its elegiac structure and appreciating its unity. A close look at the poem's language and stylistic innovations, epic qualities and author’s poetics, and most especially the elegiac movement of the poem, will allow even the novice reader to enter Henry’s world. The elegies as a whole provide the note of mourning that is at the core of Berryman’s epic.Trade Review”Berryman’s Henry is a work of impressive scholarship and valuable insights. Sam Dodson’s treatment of ‘The Dream Songs’ as a modern, personal epic convincingly places it within the context of other works in the genre. Readers will also find new light shed on the text’s elegiac underpinnings.” – Richard J. KellyTable of ContentsPreface Prologue: Elegy as Theology: Henry’s Search for Death’s Answers Chapter 1: Henry’s Other Method: The Epic’s Freedom of Language in an Experimental Age Chapter 2: The Paternal Elegies: The Dream Songs’ Shroud Chapter 3: Henry “pale & ill”: Berryman’s Elegies of Praise and the Last Word Chapter 4: Posthumous Musings from an Active Coffin Chapter 5: Henry’s Uneasy Rest Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisMervyn Peake has been acclaimed as an author of fantasy and as an illustrator, but as yet has received little attention from literary critics. This book is the first to analyse all of Peake’s works of fiction, including his two picture story books and novella as well as the Gormenghast series and Mr Pye. Alice Mills pinpoints the fictional quirks that render Mervyn Peake such a memorable fantasy writer, examining his literary works from Jungian, Freudian, Kristevan and post-Jungian perspectives. Stuckness in the Fiction of Mervyn Peake will be of interest to fantasy lovers and students of fantasy as a genre, as well as those exploring the psychoanalysis of literary texts.Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Prefatory Note Introduction 1 Psychoanalytic Perspectives 2 Aspects of Stuckness in “Mr Slaughterboard” and Captain Slaughterboard Drops Anchor 3 Stuckness, Adherence and Slippage in the Gormenghast Novels 4 Nonsense, Stuckness and the Abject in Titus Groan 5 Surviving Stuckness in Titus Groan and Gormenghast 6 Compulsive Repetition as a Form of Stuckness in Letters from a Lost Uncle 7 Stuckness, Inflation and Literalized Metaphor in Mr Pye 8 Topographies of Love and Stuckness in Titus Alone 9 The Coherence of Titus Alone 10 Stuck Boy in Darkness 11 Titus Alone and the Production of Moral Sludge Conclusion Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisDespite all the assertions towards the end of the twentieth century that the literary subject had expired along with the author, the wave of autobiographies published in German after the Wende was a clear indication that, on the contrary, life stories were very much alive. In this study, Owen Evans examines the work of eight authors – Ludwig Harig, Uwe Saeger, Ruth Klüger, Günter de Bruyn, Günter Kunert, Christoph Hein, Grete Weil and Monika Maron – who all published personal texts after 1989 dealing either with life in Nazi Germany or the GDR, and in some cases both. By means of close textual analysis, Evans explores the impact these regimes had on the individuals concerned and the contrasting ways in which the authors handle the autobiographical project. They adopt varying textual strategies to render the self on the page, with some employing overt fiction, and yet in each case, the project was clearly motivated by the need to treat psychological wounds inflicted on the self by totalitarianism. In their mapping of the contours of oppression, the texts at the heart of this study combine to offer a powerful defence of literary autobiography, in Germany at least, as a valuable means of tackling the legacy of totalitarianism.Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Abbreviations Introduction 1 ‘Auch ich hatte die Finger im Spiel’: Ludwig Harig, Weh dem, der aus der Reihe tanzt (1990) 2 ‘Das Ich liegt immer jenseits der Worte’: Uwe Saeger, Die Nacht danach und der Morgen (1991) 3 ‘Für jeden war es einmalig’: Ruth Klüger, weiter leben: Eine Jugend (1992) 4 ‘Taktieren mit der Macht’: Günter de Bruyn, Zwischenbilanz: Eine Jugend in Berlin (1992) and Vierzig Jahre: Ein Lebensbericht (1996) 5 ‘Die Katalyse des Schreibens’: Günter Kunert, Erwachsenenspiele: Erinnerungen (1997) 6 ‘“Man soll nie lügen. Oder nur, wenn es nicht anders geht”’: Christoph Hein, Von allem Anfang an (1997) 7 ‘Es gab nur noch die eine Aufgabe: Gegen das Vergessen anzuschreiben’: Grete Weil, Leb ich denn, wenn andere leben (1998) 8 ‘Mutmaßungen über Pawel’: Monika Maron, Pawels Briefe: Eine Familiengeschichte (1999) Conclusion Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisThis volume is the first in-depth study of the French novelist Marguerite Yourcenar’s fiction to contend that the author’s texts exhibit in unexpected ways numerous characteristics of the neobaroque. This subversive, postmodern aesthetic privileges extravagant artistic play, flux, and heterogeneity. In demonstrating the affinity of Yourcenar’s texts with the neobaroque, the author of this study casts doubt on their presumed transparency and stability, qualities associated with the French neoclassical tradition of the past century, where the Yourcenarian œuvre is most often placed. Yourcenar’s election to the prestigious, tradition-bound French Academy in 1981 as its first female “immortal” cemented her already well-established niche in the twentieth-century French literary pantheon. A self-taught classicist, historian, and modern-day French moralist, Yourcenar has been praised for her polished, “classical” style and analyzed for her use of myth and universal themes. While those factors at first seem to justify amply the neoclassical label by which Yourcenar is most widely recognized, this study’s close reading of four of her fictions reveals instead the texts’ opacity and subversive resistance to closure, their rejection of stable interpretations, and their deconstruction of postmodern Grand Narratives. Theirs is a neobaroque “logic,” which stresses the absence of theoretical assurances and the limitations of reason. The coincidence of the new millennium — which in so many ways reflects Yourcenar’s disquieting vision — and her centenary in 2003 affords not so much an excuse to reject the author’s neoclassical label, but rather the obligation to reassess it in light of contemporary discourses. This study will be of interest to students of twentieth-century French fiction and comparative literature, especially that of the latter half of the twentieth century.Table of ContentsI. A Frontispiece II. Introduction Marguerite Yourcenar and the Writing of Fiction: An Aesthetic Imperative III. Chapter 1 Anna,Soror...: Neobaroque Sacralizes the Abject IV. Chapter 2 Denier du rêve : Baroque Discourses,Fascist Practices V. Chapter 3 Neobaroque Humanism: “Sounding the Abyss ” in L ’Œuvre au Noir VI. Chapter 4 Neobaroque Confessions: Un homme obscur and the Oppressive Superficiality of Words VII. Conclusion An Author for the New Millennium VIII. Selected Works Cited and Consulted IX. Index of Proper Names

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Book SynopsisMuch has been written on Simone de Beauvoir, one of France’s leading intellectual figures of the 20th century. The sheer volume of her autobiographical writings testifies to her indefatigable questioning of the nature of existence and her personal and public engagement in the world over the best part of a century. This study aims to re-evaluate her extensive autobiographical œuvre, exploring its place in relation to the French autobiographical canon, and in the light of recent theorisations of autobiography. It presents readings which engage critically with existentialism, feminist theory, and autobiography studies generally, in particular focusing on the question of ‘autothanatography’, a term developed by theorists such as Jacques Derrida and Louis Marin. A new reading of the autobiographies via the lens of thanatos is presented with questions of gender in mind, and the nature of autobiography as genre is also explored more fully with particular attention paid to narrative voice. Close readings of the autobiographical œuvre combine with contextual details, critical overviews and links to recent developments in critiques of Beauvoir’s fiction and philosophy. The study would be of particular interest to scholars in the following areas: 20th century French literature and culture; Autobiography studies; Literary theory; existentialism; Women’s studies.Table of ContentsList of Abbreviations Acknowledgements Introduction AUTOBIOGRAPHY CHAPTER I Mémoires d’une jeune fille rangée CHAPTER II La Force de l’âge CHAPTER III La Force des choses CHAPTER IV Tout compte fait CHAPTER V Une mort très douce CHAPTER VI La Cérémonie des adieux Conclusion Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisCe volume se propose d’envisager un large panorama de la poésie du XXe siècle, du surréalisme à nos jours, à travers une interrogation fondamentale sur la question du lieu. Le lieu n’est pas un thème, mais une notion philosophique, tout droit venue de Heidegger mais aussi de Kant et de Platon. Comme nous sommes au XXe siècle, ère de la modernité et de l’incertitude, il se présente sous forme de question. La variété des lieux (ville / campagne) et de la position face à cette question permet de mieux comprendre l’évolution de la poésie au XXe siècle, fortement pensante (le dialogue philosophie/poésie s’impose), et la réflexion sur la notion de lieu ouvre sur une meilleure compréhension de ce qu’est la poésie en général.Table of ContentsMichel COLLOT, préface INTRODUCTION CHAPITRE I : LE LIEU COMME QUESTION 1 – L’étonnement d’être 2 - Où est mon pays ? 3 - Parler – se taire : une question de vie ou de mort 4 - Portrait du poète en balayeur 5 - L’enjeu identitaire : l’interrogation surréaliste CHAPITRE II : LIEU ET ESPACE 1- Le lieu n’est pas l’espace 2 - Profondeur élémentaire, nombril du monde 3 - Enfanter le monde 4 - Vers le lieu – sous le ciel CHAPITRE III : TEMPS ET LIEU (LA MÉMOIRE) 1- Interdépendance de l’espace et du temps 2 - Donner le temps, accorder le lieu 3 - Le temps a-t-il jamais eu lieu ? 4 - La tentation de l’immémorial 5 - Dialectique de l’amont et de l’aval CHAPITRE IV : LE LIEU COMME SACR E 1 - Le lieu à la lumière du sacré 2 - La tentation païenne 3 -Vers l’abstraction métaphysique CHAPITRE V : LIEU ET POLITIQUE 1 - Le lieu est-il réactionnaire ? 2 - La question de l’engagement CHAPITRE VI : ENTRE REGARD ET CHANT 1 - Le regard : formes brèves et haïku 2 - Les mots, le chant CHAPITRE VII : LES PROBLÈMES DE L’IMAGE 1 - Rappels historiques 2 - Reverdy et Breton 3 - L’ambiguïté de la modernité face à l’image CHAPITRE VIII : ENTRE PROSE ET POÈME 1 - Le va-et-vient entre prose et vers 2 - Vers un renouvellement dans la tradition CONCLUSION BIBLIOGRAPHIE INDEX DES PERSONNES, REVUES, ET PRINCIPAUX MOUVEMENTS LITTERAIRES TABLE DES MATIERES

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Book SynopsisThis collection of critical essays explores new approaches to the study of avant-garde literature and art, film and architecture. It offers a theoretical framework that avoids narrowly defined notions of the avant-garde. It takes into account the diversity of artistic aims and directions of the various avant-garde movements and encourages a wide and open exploration of the multifaceted and often contradictory nature of the great variety of avant-gardist innovations. Individual essays concentrate on cubist collage and dadaist photomontage, on abstract painting by members of the Dutch group De Stijl, on verbal chemistry and dadaist poetry and on body art from futurism to surrealism. In addition, the collection wishes to open up the discussion of the avant-garde to a thorough investigation of neo-avant-garde activities in the 1950s and 1960s. For decades the appreciation of neo-avant-garde art and literature, film and architecture suffered from a general and all-inclusive rebuke. This volume is designed to contribute to a breakthrough towards a more competent and more precise investigation of this research field. Contributions include a discussion of Warhol’s multiples as well as Duchamp’s editioned readymades, forms of concrete and digital poetry as well as the architectural “Non-Plan”. The main body of the volume is based on presentations and discussions of a three-day research seminar held at the University of Edinburgh in September 2002. The research group formed around the Avant-Garde Project at Edinburgh will continue with its efforts to elaborate a new theory of the avant-garde in the coming years.Table of ContentsPreface I. Theorising the Avant-Garde Dietrich SCHEUNEMANN: From Collage to the Multiple. On the Genealogy of Avant-Garde and Neo-Avant-Garde Rhys WILLIAMS: Wilhelm Worringer and the Historical Avant-Garde Hubert van den BERG: On the Historiographic Distinction between Historical and Neo-Avant-Garde II. Reviewing the Autonomy of Art Michael WHITE: Abstraction, Sublation and the Avant-Garde: The Case of De Stijl David HOPKINS: Sameness and Difference: Duchamp’s Editioned Readymades and the Neo-Avant-Garde Ben HIGHMORE: Paint it Black: Ad Reinhardt’s Paradoxical Avant-Gardism III. On the Alchemy of the Word Keith ASPLEY: Verbal Chemistry and Concrete Poetry Anna SCHAFFNER: How the Letters Learnt to Dance: On Language Dissection in Dadaist, Concrete and Digital Poetry Jacob EDMOND: American Language Poetry and the Definition of the Avant-Garde IV. Body Arts Günter BERGHAUS: From Futurism to Neo-Futurism: Continuities and New Departures in Twentieth-Century Avant-Garde Performance Olga TAXIDOU: Actor or Puppet: The Body in the Theatres of the Avant-Garde Uta FELTEN: Fragmentation of the Body in Spanish Surrealism V. The Vanguard in Cinema and Architecture David MACRAE: The Surface of Illusion: Avant-Garde Apperception and Antecedence in Structural/Materialist Film Gérard LEBLANC: What Avant-Garde? Richard WILLIAMS: The Limits of “Non-Plan”: Architecture and the Avant-Garde VI. Crossing the Genres Jennifer VALCKE: Montage in the Arts: A Reassessment Tania ØRUM: Means and Metaphors of Change: Technology and the Danish Avant-Garde of the 1960s Klaus BEEKMAN: Literature under the Impact of Film: On Dutch Author-Critics of the Avant-Garde and Neo-Avant-Garde List of Illustrations Index

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Book SynopsisTwenty-five years after his death, critics and academics, film-makers and journalists continue to argue over Sartre's legacy. But certain interpretations have congealed around his iconic text Nausea, tending to confine it within the framework provided by the later philosophical work, Being and Nothingness. This volume opens up the text to a range of new approaches within the fields of English and Comparative Literature, as well as Philosophy and French Studies, under the headings: ‘Text’, ‘Context’, and ‘Intertext’: the textual strategies at work within the novel; the literary, cultural and philosophical context of its production; and the intertextual web within which it is situated. This volume will interest a wide public of teachers, students and all those who want to reconsider Sartre’s legacy in the twenty–first century.Table of ContentsEditors’ Foreword Alistair ROLLS, Elizabeth RECHNIEWSKI: Uprooting the Chestnut Tree: Nausea Today Text Lawrence R. SCHEHR: Sartre’s Autodidacticism George WOODS: Sounds, ‘Sounds, Smells, Degrees of Light’: Art and Illumination in Nausea Thomas MARTIN: The Role of Others in Roquentin’s Nausea Peter POIANA: The Subject as Symptom in Nausea Context Elizabeth RECHNIEWSKI: Avatars of Contingency: Suarès and Sartre Chris FALZON: Sartre and Meaningful Existence Amanda CRAWLEY-JACKSON : La Nausée des Fins de Voyage ? Intertext Keryn STEWART: ‘I Have Finished Travelling’: Travel, Displacement and Intertextuality in Jean-Paul Sartre’s Nausea Debra HELY: Fact or Fiction? Reading Through the Nothingness behind Nausea Alistair ROLLS: Seduction, Pleasure and a Laying on of Hands: A Hands-on Reading of Sartre’s Nausea Notes on Contributors Bibliography

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Book SynopsisMuch poetic writing in France in the post-1945 period is set in an elemental landscape and expressed through an impersonal poetic voice. It is therefore often seen as primarily spatial and cut off from human concerns. This study of three poets, André du Bouchet, Philippe Jaccottet and Bernard Noël, who have not been compared before, argues that space is inseparable from time in their work, which is always in transition. The different ways in which the provisional operates in their writing show the wide range of forms that modern poetry can take: an insistence on the figure of the interval, hesitant movement, or exuberant impulse. As well as examining the imaginative universes of the poets through close attention to the texts, this book considers the important contribution they have made in their prose writing to our understanding of the visual arts and poetry translation, in themselves transitional activities. It argues that these writers have, in different ways, succeeded in creating poetic worlds that attest to close and constantly changing contact with the real.Table of ContentsAcknowledgements List of Illustrations Introduction 1. Poetry in Time 2. Words in the Air 3. Art and the Book: Du Bouchet, Noël and the Visual Arts 4. The Foreign Language: Jaccottet, du Bouchet and Translation 5. Silence: Noël, Jaccottet and the Limits of Language Conclusion Illustrations Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisFiction after the Fatwa: Salman Rushdie and the Charm of Catastrophe proposes for the first time an examination of what Rushdie has achieved as a writer since the fourteenth of February 1989, the date of the fatwa. This study argues that his constant questioning of fictional form and the language used to articulate it have opened up new opportunities and further possibilities for writing in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Through close readings and intensive textual analysis, arranged chronologically, Fiction after the Fatwa provides a thought-provoking reflection on the writer’s achievements over the last thirteen years. Aimed principally at academics and students, but also of interest to the general reader, it engages with the specific nature of the post-fatwa fiction as it moves from the fairy-tale world of Haroun and the Sea of Stories to the heartbreaking post-realism of Fury.Trade Review”…challenging, provocative and uncompromisingly argued […] hugely enjoyable…” – Claire Pégon-DavisonTable of Contents1. Fiction after the Fatwa 2. Haroun and the Sea of Stories: “The Uses of Enchantment” 3. East, West: The Dislocation of Culture 4. The Moor’s Last Sigh: Escaping Identity, Marginal Alternatives, The Inferno of Language 5. The Ground Beneath Her Feet: Postmodern Baroque, Reflections on Truth 6. Fury: Devoured by Pop 7. Afterword: The Charm of Catastrophe 8. Appendix: Plot Summaries 9. Select Bibliography 10. Index

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Book SynopsisAlors que le théâtre d’Albert Camus reçoit de plus en plus de considération de la part des universitaires, cet ouvrage se consacre à la meilleure pièce camusienne, Caligula. Il en propose une analyse structurelle, pour en faire ressortir toute la métathéâtralité, et définit les rapports complexes que celle-ci entretient avec la folie et le politique : il cerne ainsi dans leur interaction les motifs qui sont au cœur de l’œuvre. De plus, il établit des liens aussi riches que variés avec des textes historiographiques et des œuvres-phares de la littérature occidentale, qui préfigurent le personnage si puissant qu’est Caligula. En somme, il situe la pièce sur le triple plan d’une tradition philosophique et littéraire qui remonte à l’Antiquité, du renouveau théâtral qui marque le milieu du XXe siècle, et de la production de Camus dans son ensemble. Il intéressera étudiants et professeurs qui se penchent sur la littérature française du XXe siècle, aussi bien que sur d’autres littératures, puisque par le biais camusien, il traite de la tragédie grecque, de Shakespeare, de Melville, de Pirandello… Il s’adresse plus spécialement à ceux qui étudient le théâtre, que ce soit dans une perspective historique, thématique ou esthétique.Table of ContentsListe des sigles et des abréviations Introduction Chapitre premier : Caligula dans l’histoire Chapitre deuxième : Les ancêtres de Caligula dans la littérature occidentale Chapitre troisième : Caligula, le texte Chapitre quatrième : Caligula dans l’œuvre de Camus Conclusion Sources documentaires Index

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Book SynopsisÉcrite en dépit de radicales réticences vis-à-vis du genre romanesque, la trilogie d’Hortense conte avec une légèreté feinte les aventures romanesques d’une héroïne un peu « fleur(s) bleue(s) », entremêlées d’énigmes policières conduites par les inspecteurs Blognard et Arapède. Ce mélange des genres, mâtiné d’un art ludique de l’allusion collective et personnelle permet un grand nombre d’hommages appuyés, tant l’univers de ces romans se développe sur un vaste substrat : celui du large spectre des lectures de Roubaud. Pour la première fois, dans cet essai, on se propose de faire l’examen approfondi de cette incursion en pays romanesque menée par notre poète mathématicien et, de surcroît, oulipien qui mime et mine les conventions inhérentes au roman – genre sans règle – pour les troquer contre une écriture contrainte, intertextuelle, rimante. Ce texte n’a pas d’autre ambition que de guider le lecteur dans les mondes textuels, à la fois savoureusement labyrinthiques et formellement ordonnés de Jacques Roubaud.Table of ContentsPremière partie : Mimer : à l’eau de prose Chapitre 1 : Romancier malgré lui ? Chapitre 2 : Aencrages Deuxième partie : Miner : Jeux et enquêtes textuelles Chapitre 3 : «Manières de faire des mondes» Chapitre 4 : Du roman policier au roman policé Troisième partie : Rimer : Énigmes formelles, règles, contraintes Chapitre 5 : Formules Chapitre 6 : Hors du labyrinthe ? – Contraintes d’écritures et contraintes de lectures Conclusion Bibliographie Index des noms propres Table

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