Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000 Books

Book SynopsisThis book investigates the complex role space and movement play in the representation of South Asian diasporic communities in contemporary diaspora literature and films, the question of female empowerment in neoliberal Western cities, and the impact of trauma on female identities. It highlights the literary and cinematic portrayal of South Asian peopleâs migration to the UK and the US after the Second World War and discusses how the identities of the female characters are transformed in neoliberal cities. Focusing on South Asian women writers and directors, who are first- and second-generation immigrants in the West, the volume analyses how their works depict female empowerment in both British and American settings.The book will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of literature, film studies, diaspora studies, gender studies and South Asian studies.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis book argues that the history of literary modernism is inextricably connected with naturalism. Simon Joyce traces a complex response among aesthetes to the work of Ãmile Zola at the turn of the century, recovering naturalism's assumed compatibility with impressionism as a central cause of their ambivalence. Highlighting a little-studied strain of reflexive naturalism in which Zola's mode of analytical observation is turned upon the authors themselves, Joyce suggests that the confluence of naturalism and impressionism formed the precondition for so-called stream-of-consciousness writing. This style served to influence not only the work of canonical modernists such as Joyce and Woolf, but also that of lesser-known writers such as George Moore, Sarah Grand, and George Egerton.Table of Contents1. How Zola crossed (and didn't cross) the English Channel; 2. Portraits and artists: impressionism and naturalism; 3. A naturalism for Ireland; 4. Proto-sensitivity: naturalism, aestheticism, and the New Woman novel; 5. The voice of witlessness: Virginia Woolf and the poor.

Read more less

Book SynopsisFor students of Henry James, this book offers new critical perspectives on both established and forgotten texts. More broadly, it is for anyone interested in the enormous changes in transport that occurred throughout the nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries, and their impact upon social life, reading habits, and literary genre--

Read more less

Book SynopsisExploring the unsteady foundations of American literary history, Race in American Literature and Culture examines the hardening of racial fault lines throughout the nineteenth century and into the twentieth while considering aspects of the literary and interrelated traditions that emerged from this fractured cultural landscape. A multicultural study of the influential and complex presence of race in the American imagination, the book pushes debate in exciting new directions. Offering expert explorations of how the history of race has been represented and written about, it shows in what ways those representations and writings have influenced wider American culture. Distinguished scholars from African American, Latinx, Asian American, Native American, and white American studies foreground the conflicts in question across different traditions and different modes of interpretation, and are thus able comprehensively and creatively to address in the volume how and why race has been so centraTable of ContentsPart I. Fractured Foundations: 1. American empire Edward Larkin; 2. Synchronic and diachronic: Race in early American literatures Katy Chiles; 3. Protean oceans: Racial uncertainty in Arthur Gordon Pym and Emmanuel Appadocca Gesa Mackenthun; Part II. Racial Citizenship: 4. 'Faithful Reflection' and the work of African American literary history Derrick Spires; 5. Beyond protest Koritha Mitchell; 6. Affiliated races Edlie L. Wong; Part III. Contending Forces: 7. Reconstructing race Sarah Gardner; 8. Out of the silent South: White Southerners writing race during the long reconstruction John Grammer; 9. Neighborliness, race, and nineteenth-century regional fiction Stephanie Foote; Part IV. Reconfigurations: 10. Passing M. Giulia Fabi; 11. Beyond assimilation John Alba Cutler; 12. Native reconfigurations Kiara M. Vigil; 13. Dispossessions and repositionings: Sarah Winnemucca's school as anti-colonialist lesson Cari Carpenter; 14. 'White by Law,' White by literature: Naturalization and the constructedness of race in the literature of American naturalism Mita Banerjee; Part V. Envisioning Race: 15. Picturing race: African Americans in US visual culture before the Civil War Martha J. Cutter; 16. 'The Man That Was a Thing': Uncle Tom's Cabin, photographic vision, and the portrayal of race in the nineteenth century Maurice Wallace; 17. Locating race Melanie B. Taylor; 18. De-forming and re-making: Bernardine Evaristo's Girl, Woman, Other and the multifocal decolonial novel Paula M. L. Moya and Luz M. Jiménez Ruvalcaba; Part VI. Case Studies: 19. Collective biographies and African American history: Men of Mark (1887) and Progress of a Race (1897) Claire Parfait; 20. Aztlan for the middle class: Chicano literary activism José Antonio Arellano; 21. The racial underground Kinohi Nishikawa; 22. Literature in Hawaiian pidgin and the critique of Asian settler colonialism Jeehyun Lim; 23. Celeste Ng's Little Fires Everywhere and the burning house of American literature Anna Brickhouse; Part VII. Reflections and Prospects: 24. What is missing? Black history, Black loss and Black resurrectionary poetics P. Gabrielle Foreman; 24. Traditions, communities, literature Siobhan Senier; 26. Children of the future Min Hyoung Song; 27 Presidential race Stephanie Li.

Read more less

Book SynopsisWhether watching Studio Ghibli adaptations of British children's books, visiting Harry Potter sites in Britain or eating at Alice in Wonderland-themed restaurants in Tokyo, the Japanese have a close and multifaceted relationship with British children's literature. In this, the first comprehensive study to explore this engagement, Catherine Butler considers its many manifestations in print, on the screen, in tourist locations and throughout Japanese popular culture. Taking stock of the influence of literary works such as Gulliver's Travels, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, The Tale of Peter Rabbit, Tom's Midnight Garden, and the Harry Potter series, this lively account draws on literary criticism, translation, film and tourist studies to explore how British children's books have been selected, translated, understood, adapted and reworked into Japanese commercial, touristic and imaginative culture. Using theoretically informed case studies this book will consider both individual texts a

Read more less

Book SynopsisUncovers how historical novels rewrite the history of the Korean War

Read more less

Book SynopsisFull of analysis and interpretation, historical background, discussions and commentaries, York Notes will help you get right to the heart of the text you’re studying, whether it’s poetry, a play or a novel.

Read more less

Book SynopsisTable of Contents Part 1: Introduction Part 2: The Text Part 3: Critical Approaches Part 4: Critical History Part 5: Background Further Reading Literacy Terms

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe first book-length study of Heaney's dialogue with Virgil, one of Seamus Heaney's major literary exemplars.Trade Review"Falconer's powerful and probing study of Seamus Heaney's career-long relationship with Virgil reveals the Latin poet to be Heaney's inner interlocutor". Her sensitive close analysis of the wide-ranging intertextualities of Heaney's poetry brilliantly uncovers his complex identifications with Virgil as a poet with strong attachment to his rural roots."" -Susanna Braund, University of British Columbia

Read more less

Book SynopsisExamines how D. H. Lawrence established a professional writing career.

Read more less

Book SynopsisPresents the first extended account of asbestos in literature, film and visual culture.

Read more less

Book SynopsisRe-reading intra-war modernist poetics through war poetryTrade Review"This book is literary scholarship at its very best. The research is immaculate, the thinking profound and the style masterly. It magnificently illustrates developing poetic thought in relation to the First World War, experience and the imagination, guiding the reader authoritatively through the months of 1914 to 1920 to produce a brilliant micro-literary history." -Kate McLoughlin, University of Oxford

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis is the first work of criticism to reappraise all of this leading transnational author’s film, television, short fiction and novel writing following his award of the Nobel Prize in 2017. Comprising contributions from world-leading Ishiguro scholars as well as new voices, the collection offers chapters devoted to each of the major works, each of which draws out thematic and stylistic connections with his body of work, both literary and filmic. This timely study, following the critical and popular success of his most recent fiction and his recognition by the Nobel committee, is the only comprehensive study of an author at the forefront of world literature.Table of ContentsIntroduction: ‘This is the way it feels to me’: the writings of Kazuo Ishiguro – Kristian Shaw and Peter Sloane1 Diaspora, trauma, spectrality and world literary writing in A Pale View of Hills – Emily Horton2 Eloquence and empathy in A Pale View of Hills and An Artist of the Floating World – Cynthia F. Wong3 Ishiguro's tempered presentational realism and practice – Rebecca Karni4 ‘An inevitable course’: political responsibility in The Remains of the Day – Sara Upstone5 Klara in the junkyard: on loneliness in The Unconsoled – Bruce Robbins6 Novel dysfunction in When We Were Orphans – Andrew Bennett7 Empathy and the ethics of posthuman reading in Never Let Me Go – Peter Sloane8 Nocturnes, hope, and ‘that croony nostalgia music’ – Yugin Teo9 Disinterring the English sublime: haunted atmospherics in The Buried Giant – Kristian Shaw10 Klara and the humans: agency, Hannah Arendt and forgiveness – Robert Eaglestone11 Kazuo Ishiguro’s film and TV scriptwriting – Anni ShenAfterword – Sebastian GroesIndex

Read more less

Book SynopsisFirst published in 1974, this novel is a semi-autobiographical reflection on the author’s experience of having been the subject of Stanley Kubrick’s film adaptation of A Clockwork Orange in 1971. This is the end of Enderby, Anthony Burgess’s finest comic creation. Dyspeptic and obese, this is the account of his last day as a visiting professor in New York, and his last day on Earth. The Irwell Edition of The Clockwork Testament will provide new information about the genesis of the novel, gleaned from a series of drafts and typescripts recently discovered in the archive of the International Anthony Burgess Foundation (IABF) in Manchester, as well as printing a deleted chapter for the first time in English.Table of ContentsGeneral Editors’ foreword Acknowledgements Introduction THE CLOCKWORK TESTAMENT Appendices 1. French Overture 2. ‘American Policies in Vietnam’ 3. Outlines of three novels 4. Reader’s report on The Clockwork Testament 5. ‘The Nature of Violence’ Notes

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis new edition of ""Notable American Novelists"" presents biographical sketches and analytical overviews of 145 of the best-known American and Canadian writers of long fiction from the 19th and 20th centuries, arranged alphabetically by name. The set's three volumes survey the novelists, whose works are included in core curricula of high school and undergraduate literature studies. Essays on living authors and all the bibliographies in the articles are updated. About two-thirds of the essays are illustrated with portraits of the writers. ""Notable American Novelists"" features often-studied writers ranging from Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, and Jack London to Joan Didion and J. D. Salinger. Other important nineteenth century figures include Herman Melville, James Fenimore Cooper, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and George Washington Cable. Among the other major twentieth century writers featured are Sinclair Lewis, Norman Mailer, Joyce Carol Oates, John Irving, E. L. Doctorow, Joseph Heller, Toni Morrison, Vladimir Nabokov, Thomas Pynchon, John Steinbeck, Kurt Vonnegut, and John Updike. One can also find essays on such widely read and popular authors as Stephen King, James Michener, Louisa May Alcott, Larry McMurtry, and Anne Rice. A major addition to this new edition is the inclusion of Canadian novelists: Margaret Atwood, Robertson Davies, Frederick Philip Grove, Margaret Laurence, Mordecai Richler, and Sinclair Ross. Each essay begins with a presentation of reference information: the novelist's birth and death dates and a list of the writer's principal works of long fiction, with publication dates. ""Other literary forms"" then briefly describes genres other than long fiction in which the writer has worked, and an ""Achievements"" section encapsulates the author's central contribution and notes major honors and awards. The major sections of the text follow: ""Biography"" provides a sketch of the author's life, and ""Analysis"" looks at the novelist's work in detail; this section examines central and well-known works in the author's canon and illuminates the themes and techniques of primary interest to the novelist. The longest section in the article, ""Analysis"" is divided into subsections on the writer's major individual works. Following ""Analysis"" is a categorized list, ""Other major works,"" that provides titles and dates of works the author has written in genres other than long fiction, including plays, poetry, short fiction, and nonfiction. Each essay concludes with an updated, annotated bibliography. All articles are signed by the principal writer and, where applicable, by the updating contributor. Three helpful reference features are included at the end of volume 3: a glossary entitled ""Terms and Techniques,"" a time line of the writers' birthdates, and an index.

Read more less

Book SynopsisKnown for the wit of her writing, Catherine Cookson was the UK’s most widely read novelist during her lifetime. When her Estate discovered this never-before-published memoir in the attic of her home, it was an astonishing find. Before I Go is the definitive story of her life, in the author’s own candid words. While Cookson had authored previous autobiographies, none have truly touched upon the tragedy and personal anguish she experienced until now. For the first time, she reveals the worst years of her life—her constant battles with illness and a series of devastating miscarriages, the damaging jealousy of her friend and her struggle to be taken seriously as a writer. But what shines through most is her strength in the face of adversity, her deep love for her husband, Tom, the solace she found in her art and her unmistakable character. Before I Go is an inspiring story of resilience and a must for any Cookson fan.

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisReconsidering the German tendency to define itself vis-à-vis an eastern "Other" in light of fresh debate regarding the Second World War, this volume and the cultural products it considers expose and question Germany's relationship with its imagined East. Germany has long defined itself in opposition to its eastern neighbors: its ideas around cultural prestige and its expressions of xenophobia seem inevitably to return to an imagined eastern "Other." Central to the consideration of such projections is the legacy of the Second World War, the subject of fresh debate since 1989: after four decades of political antagonism and cultural disjuncture, the events of the war on the Eastern Front have been rediscovered by Western audiences and have come to occupy complex, shifting positions in the memory culture of the postsocialist states. However, German ignorance of Eastern European experiences of war and genocide, enduring stereotypes, and prescriptive ideas about remembrance have been major stumbling blocks to the emergence of a transnational memory culture considered just by all parties. Despite mass immigration to Germany from the east and intensive contact between German speakers and its cultures, German-language cultural production continues largely to represent Eastern Europe as unknown, wild, and inaccessible. By contrast, the writers and filmmakers under discussion in the present volume have worked with and against such tropes to put forward alternative perspectives. Like their works, the contributions to this volume place the conflicts and prejudices of the twentieth century into a wider historical perspective, exposing and questioning the nature of Germany's relationship with its imagined East. Contributors: Deirdre Byrnes, Raluca Cernahoschi, Shivani Chauhan, Enikő Dácz, Olha Flachs, Daniel Harvey, Jakub Kazecki, Amy Leech, Paul Peters, Ernest Schonfield, Karolina Watroba.Table of ContentsBetween Estrangement and Entanglement: An Introduction to German Visions of Eastern Europe in the Twentieth (and Twenty-First) Century - Jenny Watson Colonizing a Central European City: Transnational Perspectives on Kronstadt/Brașov/Brassó in the First Half of the Twentieth Century - Enikő Dácz Exile as a Literary-Political Mission: Leo Katz's Antifascist Bukovina Novel Totenjäger (1944) - Olha Flachs Brunnenland: The Image of the Bukovina in Paul Celan - Paul Peters "Auch bei uns im fernen Transsilvanien": The Transylvanian Saxons and the Long Shadow of the Third Reich in the Work of Bettina Schuller - Raluca Cernahoschi Through an Orientalist Lens: Colonial Renderings of Poland in German Cinema after 1989 - Jakub Kazecki The Nazi Ghost and the Sinti Woman in Kerstin Hensel's Bell Vedere (1982) - Ernest Schonfield The Haunted Landscape of Babi Yar: Memory, Language, and the Exploration of Holocaust Spaces in Katja Petrowskaja's Vielleicht Esther (2014) - Deirdre Byrnes "dann hüpfe ich auch, komisch und ungeschickt, wie eine Nadel auf einer abgespielten Platte...": The Ethics and Affects of Translation in Katja Petrowskaja's Vielleicht Esther (2014) - Daniel Harvey Expanding the Nationalgeschichte: Entangled European Memory in Nino Haratischwili and Saša Stanišić - Amy Leech Reading Photographic Images and Identifying Mnemonic Threads of the Post-Memorial Project in Sie kam aus Mariupol (2017) by Natascha Wodin - Shivani Chauhan Navid Kermani's Entlang den Gräben (2018) and Its Readers: Remapping Europe's East - Karolina Watroba

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis collection of Russian short stories from the 21st century includes works by famous writers and young talents alike, representing a diversity of generational, gender, ethnic and national identities. Their authors live not only in Russia, but also in Europe and the US. Short stories in this volume display a vast spectrum of subgenres, from grotesque absurdist stories to lyrical essays, from realistic narratives to fantastic parables. Taken together, they display rich and complex cultural and intellectual reality of contemporary Russia, in which political, social, and ethnic conflicts of today coexist with themes and characters resonating with classical literature, albeit invariably twisted and transformed in an unpredictable way. Most of texts in this volume appear in English for the first time. 21 may be useful for college courses but will also provide exciting reading for anyone interested in contemporary Russia.Table of Contents Nikolai Baitov. Solovyov’s Trick; Silentium. Translated by Maya Vinokour. Evgeny Shklovsky. The Street. Translated by Jason Cieply. Vladimir Sorokin. Smirnov. Translated by Maya Vinokour. Nikolai Kononov. Evgenia’s Genius. Translated by Simon Schuchat. Leonid Kostyukov. Verkhovsky and Son. Translated by Maya Vinokour. Sergei Soloukh. A Search. Translated by Margarita Vaysman and Angus Balkham. Margarita Khemlin. Shady Business. Translated by Maya Vinokour. Elena Dolgopyat. The Victim. Translated by Jason Cieply. Kirill Kobrin. Amadeus. Translated by Veronika Lakotová. Pavel Pepperstein. Tongue. Translated by Bradley Gorski. Aleksandr Ilichevsky. The Sparrow. Translated by Bradley Gorski. Stanislav Lvovsky. Roaming. Translated by Bradley Gorski. Valery Votrin. Alkonost. Translated by Maya Vinokour. Linor Goralik. A Little Stick; 1:38 A.M.; No Such Thing; Come On, It’s Funny; The Foundling; We Can’t Even Imagine Heights Like That; Cyst. Translated by Maya Vinokour. Aleksey Tsvetkov Jr. Priceart. Translated by Sofya Khagi. Lara Vapnyar. Salad Olivier. Polina Barskova. Reaper of Leaves. Translated by Catherine Ciepiela. Arkady Babchenko. Argun. Translated by Nicholas Allen. Denis Osokin. Ludo Logar, or Duck Throat; The New Shoes. Translated by Simon Schuchat. Maria Boteva. Where the Truth Is. Translated by Jason Cieply. Marianna Geide. Ivan Grigoriev. Translated by Simon Schuchat.

Read more less

Book SynopsisDrawing on historical, literary and cultural studies perspectives, this book examines the phenomenon of the “Returned Yank” in the cultural imagination, taking as its point of departure the most exhaustively discussed Returned Yank narrative, The Quiet Man (dir. John Ford, 1952). Often dismissed as a figure that embodies the sentimentality and nostalgia of Irish America writ large, this study argues that the Returned Yank’s role in the Irish cultural imagination is much more varied and complex than this simplistic construction allows. Throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, s/he has been widely discussed in broadcast and print media, and depicted in plays, novels, short stories and films. The imagined figure of the Returned Yank has been the driving impetus behind some of Ireland's most well-known touristic endeavours and festivals. In the form of U.S. Presidential visits, s/he has repeatedly been the catalyst for questions surrounding Irish identity. Most significantly, s/he has been mobilised as an arbiter in one of the most important debates in post-Independence Ireland: should Ireland remain a "traditional" society or should it seek to modernise? His/her repeated appearances in Irish literature and culture after 1952 – in remarkably heterogeneous, often very sophisticated ways – refute claims of the “aesthetic caution” of Irish writers, dramatists and filmmakers responding to the tradition/modernity debate.Trade Review'An incisive and impressively contextualized study of the trope of "the Returned Yank" in Irish culture. This fascinating and outstanding book will make an invaluable and timely contribution to Irish and American Studies, as well as to diaspora studies more widely.'Dr Tony Murray, Director of the Irish Studies Centre at London Metropolitan University'Extremely commendable in its scope and ambition, this book offers a valuable contribution to Irish cultural studies, in particular to research on the complex relationship between "tradition" and "modernity" in Irish culture. It fills a genuine gap in existing scholarship, and its sustained analysis across several decades and multiple forms of representation is especially impressive, as it allows the reader to track a complex and historically-informed narrative arc for the "Returned Yank" figure.'Dr Stephanie Rains, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Media Studies, Maynooth UniversityReviews 'Sinéad Moynihan’s Ireland, Migration and Return Migration is an impressively wide-ranging and insightful study of migration to and from the United States in Irish literature, film, and culture. This book pushes beyond simplistic models of deracination, exile or the émigré, to think about the recurring nature of migration and return migration, and raises questions about decolonization, neo-colonialism, and the nature of “modern” Ireland both before and after the Celtic Tiger. Moynihan's work interrogates gendered mythologies about maternity and return, and similarly reworks notions of return in relation to literary forebears and genres. She combines an impressive range of cultural sources with nuanced close readings in an important and timely contribution to Irish Studies.' 2019 ACIS Michael J. Durkan PrizeTable of ContentsAcknowledgementsIntroduction - “The Meanest Form of Animal”?: The Returned Yank in the Cultural ImaginationChapter 1. “Quiet Men”: Film and Filmmaking in Returned Yank Fictions of the TroublesChapter 2. “Mother Macree ad nauseam”: Maternity, Modernity and the Female Returned Yank Chapter 3. Erin’s Acres: The Returned Yank, Property Disputes and the Rise and Fall of the Irish EconomyChapter 4. “The Secret Dotted Line”: Return, Roots Journeys and Irish Literary GenealogiesCoda - “We are where we are”: Mythologies of Return and the Post-Celtic Tiger MomentWorks CitedIndex

Read more less

Book SynopsisGentle chaos sets in when the absent-minded Mr Pim calls in to see George Marden, bearing some innocent news... George is a fine upstanding citizen and a stickler for doing the right thing. He has a devoted wife, Olivia, and is guardian to his somewhat flighty niece, Dinah.But his careful peace is broken when Mr Pim casually announces that he’s recently seen an ex-convict from Australia, Telworthy. The only thing is that the character sounds awfully like Olivia’s first, and supposedly deceased, husband… and if he’s eally still alive, then Olivia is a bigamist.

Read more less

Book SynopsisDjuna Barnes (1892-1982) once described herself as the most famous unknown writer, and although her novel "Nightwood" is celebrated, her poetry has been a well-kept secret. This selection contains work written between 1914 and the 1970s. Many of the poems in "The Book of Repulsive Women" first appeared in pamphlets and literary journals in New York and Paris. Published together for the first time, they throw new light on Barnes' development as a writer. The book reveals her as a poet of unique power, at once compelling and disorientating. Marianne Moore observed, "reading Djuna Barnes is like reading a foreign language, which you understand". "The Book of Repulsive Women" includes previously unpublished and uncollected poems, and five illustrations by Barnes herself. Rebecca Loncraine provides an introduction to Barnes' poetry.

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisI try to write something every day even though I am not writing poetry, just to get myself in touch with language.Edwin MorganEdwin Morgan (19202010) is one of the giants of modern literature. Scotland's national poet from 2004 to his death, throughout his long life he produced an astonishing variety of work, from the playful to the profound.Edwin Morgan: In Touch With Language presents previously uncollected prose journalism, book and theatre reviews, scholarly essays and lectures, drama and radio scripts, forewords and afterwords all carefully moulded to the needs of differing audiences. Morgan's writing fizzes with clarity and verve: the topics range from Gilgamesh to Ginsberg, from cybernetics to sexualities, from international literatures to the changing face of his home city of Glasgow. Everyone will find surprises and delights in this new collection.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis volume of fourteen essays offers fresh insight into the life and work of Muriel Spark (19182006), one of Scotland's most internationally celebrated writers. Known for her cultural cosmopolitanism and sharp wit, Spark was prolific as a novelist, poet, short story writer, dramatist, and literary critic. The Crooked Dividend provides a thorough overview of Spark's multifaceted work and examines the cultural, literary, and personal frameworks that shaped her writing. These essays contextualise Spark within post-war British culture, analyse the influence of longstanding Scottish literary traditions on her work, and explore the full range of her literary output through topics such as gender, religion, and politics. In a comprehensive examination of her publications, archive material, and colourful career, this volume celebrates and reaffirms Spark's international legacy.

Read more less

Book SynopsisA hundred years ago Edward Thomas was killed in the Battle of Arras (April 1917). The reputation of his poetry has never been higher. Edna Longley has already edited Thomas's poems and prose. She now marks his centenary, and adds to the growing field of Thomas studies, with this close reading of his poetry. Longley places the lyric poem at the centre of Thomas's poetry and of his thinking about poetry. Drawing on Thomas's own remarkable critical writings, she argues that his importance to emergent 'modern poetry' has yet to be fully appreciated. Thomas, as a leading reviewer of poetry in the early 1900s, was deeply engaged with the traditions of poetry in the English language, as well as with contemporary poetry. Under the Same Moon takes a fresh look at Thomas's relation to the Romantic poets, to Great War poetry, to Robert Frost, to W.B. Yeats. By making detailed comparisons between their poems, Longley shows how the aesthetics of Thomas and Frost complement one another across the Atlantic. She argues, perhaps controversially, that we should think about Great War poetry from the perspective of Thomas as 'war poet' and critic of war poetry. And she suggests that to focus on Thomas is to open up poetic relations in the 'Anglo-Celtic' archipelago. Under the Same Moon is also a study of lyric poetry: its sources, structures and forms; the kinds of meaning it creates. Longley asks what exactly happened when, in December 1914, Thomas morphed from a prose-writer into a poet; and she approaches the lyric from a psychological angle by comparing Thomas with Philip Larkin.

Read more less

Book SynopsisA lost and now found memoir of J.B. Priestleywritten by someone who knew him better than most others: his own personal secretary. Written in the 1980s, though never published, the manuscript has only recently resurfaced. It provides a unique, warm and intimate portrait of the private, hidden life, of one of the twentieth century's most widely read authors and great public figures. The book reveals Priestley's daily routines, his writing habits, hobbies, weaknesses, eccentricities and his correspondence with a variety of organisations and people, including family, and other renowned authors and figures of the twentieth century; a warts and all portrait, truthful, revealing, moving. A book which in the end, displays great love for its subject. It is a memoir that also reveals the somewhat old-fashioned role of a live-in personal secretary / assistant to an author and the close relationship that develops with such a job. KISSING TREE HOUSE Kissing Tree House is the name of the house where Priestley and his wife, the archaeologist Jacquetta Hawkes, lived from December 1959 until his death in 1984. The house is in the small village of Alveston about four miles from Stratford. Of historical interest, the house has been a listed property since 1972. Listing NGR: SP2344156412 Priestley had many guests and held many dinner parties at Kissing Tree; he was visited there by many famous figures. "One day I very much hope that Mrs. Batten will write a book about me because, as I have pointed out to her, she knows me better than anyone else who might want to write such a book" J.B. Priestley, 26th June, 1979

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis book demonstrates a new, interdisciplinary approach to life writing about torture that situates torture firmly within its socio-political context, as opposed to extending the long line of representations written in the idiom of the proverbial dark chamber. By dismantling the rhetorical divide that typically separates survivors’ suffering from human rights workers’ expertise, contributors engage with the personal, professional, and institutional dimensions of torture and redress. Essays in this volume consider torture from diverse locations – the Philippines, Argentina, Sudan, and Guantánamo, among others. From across the globe, contributors witness both individual pain and institutional complicity; the challenges of building communities of healing across linguistic and national divides; and the role of the law, art, writing, and teaching in representing and responding to torture.Trade Review“I would strongly recommend this book to anyone working in the field of life narrative. … I am very glad that I did, because it forced me to shift my understanding of the work that I do—for the better, I hope.” (Annie Pohlman, Biography, Vol. 42 (4), 2019)Table of ContentsPart I Torture in Context and Translation 1 Torture: The Catastrophe of a Bond Carlos Alberto Arestivo2 Torture in an Historical Context: Notes from Sudan Mohamed Elgadi3 The Unspeakable Agony of Inflicted Pain: Torture,Betrayal, Redress Robert Francis Garcia4 Translating Trauma, Witnessing Survival Laurie Ball CooperPart II Witnessing Torture and Recovery: Survivors, HealthProfessionals, Institutions 5 The Role of Health Professionals in Torture TreatmentLinda A. Piwowarczyk6 Assessing the Treatment of Torture: BalancingQuantifiable with Intangible Metrics Orlando P. Tizon7 The Little Red Cabinet of Tears: The Impact uponTreatment Providers of Bearing Witness to Torture Judy B. Okawa8 Beyond Institutional Betrayal: When the Professional IsPersonal 111Ellen GerrityPart III Disappearance and Torture, Redress andRepresentation 9 Everardo and the CIA’s Long-Term Torture Practices Jennifer Harbury10 Survivors and the Origin of the Conventionfor the Protection of All Persons from EnforcedDisappearance Patricio Rice11 The Tenacity of Memory: Art in the Aftermathof Atrocity Claudia Bernardi12 Teaching about Torture, or, Reading between the Linesin the Humanities Madelaine Hron13 Legal Appeal: Habeas Lawyers Narrate Guantánamo LifeTerri Tomsky14 Did We Survive Torture? Mansoor AdayfiEpilogue: From Solitude to Solidarity Index

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisAn homage to the childhood genius of Black science fiction writer Octavia E. Butler. Bringing to view a selection of Butler''s unpublished writings and drawings, this book traces her fascination with human-alien symbiosis to her early empathy with horses and other marginalized creatures. The figure of the horse, at once earthly and transcendent, represented the contradictions of freedom and captivity that enabled young Octavia to develop her nuanced sense of voice and place. Drawing on previously unknown archival research, this volume illustrates how Butler''s development as a writer was tied to her extraordinary resourcefulness and self-awareness growing up as an awkward, bookish Black girl in segregated, Cold War Pasadena. She persistently re-visited and revised her early writings on teenage angst, Martians, Westerns, and racial politics. In one way or another her supernatural characters defied the constraints of gender, race, and class with equine-inflected resilience.In the spirit of Butler''s passion for library research, this book is comprised of twenty-six short A-Z chapters, on vocabulary, images, and themes central to her authorial formation. It is part childhood biography, art and literary analysis, and memoir. It interweaves the author''s personal recollections with scholarly musings on poetry, film, and literature inspired by Butler''s encyclopedic reading habits and experiments with genre. Just as cross-species kinships are at the heart of her Afro-futurist, eco-feminist storytelling, Butler demonstrates that coming-of-age is an ongoing process and key to healing our damaged planet.

Read more less

Book Synopsis"At once erudite and colloquial" (New Yorker), this book provides an accessible introduction to the joys and challenges of poetry In Don't Read Poetry, poet and literary critic Stephanie Burt offers an accessible introduction to the seemingly daunting task of reading, understanding, and appreciating poetry. Burt dispels preconceptions about poetry and explains how poems speak to one another-and how they can speak to our lives. She shows readers how to find more poems once they have some poems they like, and how to connect the poetry of the past to the poetry of the present. Burt moves seamlessly from Shakespeare and other classics to the contemporary poetry circulated on Tumblr and Twitter. She challenges the assumptions that many of us make about "poetry," whether we think we like it or think we don't, in order to help us cherish-and distinguish among-individual poems.A masterful guide to a sometimes confounding genre, Don't Read Poetry will instruct and delight ingénues and cognoscenti alike.

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisExplores the Harlem Renaissance as a literary phenomenon fundamentally shaped by same-sex-interested men. This work focuses on Countze Cullen, Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, and Richard Bruce Nugent and explores these writers' sexually dissident or gay literary voices.Trade Review"Heretofore scholars have not been willing perhaps, even been unable for many reasons both academic and personal to identify much of the Harlem Renaissance work as same-sex oriented... An important book." Jim ElledgeTable of ContentsPreliminary Table of Contents: AcknowledgmentsList of AbbreviationsIntroduction1. Gay Harlem and the Harlem Renaissance2. Writing in the Harlem Renaissance: The Burden of Representation and Sexual Dissidence3. Countée Cullen: "His Virtues Are Many; His Vices Unheard Of"4. Langston Hughes: A "True 'People's Poet'"5. Claude McKay: "Enfant Terrible of the Negro Renaissance"6. Richard Bruce Nugent: The Quest for BeautyConclusionNotesBibliographyIndex

Read more less

Book SynopsisTrade Review"A Seminary Co-Op Notable Book of the Year""This marvellous short book. . .is unsettling and relevant to our own times. Essential reading."---Mark Glanville, Jewish Chronicle"Hoffman’s short book ought to be . . . one of the most perceptive and sympathetic introductions to Miłosz’s life and work available. She manages not only to bring vividly alive one of the greatest Europeans of the century, but also to raise once again all the hauntingly insistent questions about art, politics, power and suffering that the century generated – and that we are constantly in danger of forgetting."---Rowan Williams, Literary Review

Read more less

a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis volume ranges from studies of Baudelaire, Brecht, and the historian Carl Jochmann to appraisals of photography, film, and poetry. At their core is the question of how art adapts to survive and thrive in an age of violence and repression.Trade ReviewThe variety of subjects and the grace of a style that shines though even in translation help explain Benjamin's reputation as one of our... shrewdest commentators on literature and culture. -- Frank Day * South Caroline Review *Harvard's systematic presentation of the work of German cultural critic Benjamin has proved a revelation...This is another splendid volume. * Publishers Weekly *Readers new to Benjamin will find this a welcome introduction to a challenging but rewarding writer. Those already familiar with his work will be grateful to be reminded, once again, of the wisdom of his maxim, "all the decisive blows are struck left-handed." -- Graham McCann * Financial Times *The edition at hand...represents the first serious attempt to present his works with systematic chronology, judicious but inclusive selection, and sensitively accurate translation. The effect is nothing less than electric. -- Peter Brier * Macgrill's Literary Annual *The latest volume of Havard's majestic annoted edition [is] exhilarating...You feel smarter just holding this book in your hand. -- Michael Dirda * Washington Post Book World *Whenever [Benjamin] turned his incisive gaze...the clarity of morning's first light shines forth. -- Haim Chertok * Jerusalem Post *A glance at the table of contents...shows us at once Benjamin's provocativeness and his infinite variety. -- Marshall Berman * The Nation *There is nothing like Benjamin, and I can hardly imagine a more rewarding book being published this year. -- David Wheatley * Irish Times (Dublin) *The final volume in this collection of the German philosopher's writing, this title covers the last three years of Benjamin's life and is masterfully translated, edited, and annotated. Presented here are Benjamin's grandest themes: the arcades of Paris, Baudelaire, the concept of remembrance, and materialist theology. Also included is the third version of Benjamin's most famous essay, "The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility," which was unpublished in the author's lifetime. This essay alone makes the volume indispensable for any scholar of interwar literature, philosophy, or modern European thought. Together with the first three volumes in the set (1996-2002), this is one of the most remarkable editorial achievements in contemporary thought and politics. -- M. Uebel * Choice *Walter Benjamin's Selected Writings, Volume 4, 1938-40 brings to a conclusion the magisterial series published by the Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. -- Ciaran Carson * The Guardian *First things first: this is a magnificent volume. Translating the work of a gifted translator is undoubtedly a somewhat daunting task...Benjamin’s Selected Writings is probably the most outstanding editorial achievement in modern cultural history and political thought that has been published in the last few years. Especially intellectual and social historians of early-twentieth-century Europe, who have traditionally not always paid much attention to Benjamin because of the latter’s appropriation by literary theory, now have every reason to take Benjamin’s writings more seriously. -- Christian J. Emden * H-Net *First things first: this is a magnificent volume. Translating the work of a gifted translator is undoubtedly a somewhat daunting task...Benjamin’s Selected Writings is probably the most outstanding editorial achievement in modern cultural history and political thought that has been published in the last few years. Especially intellectual and social historians of early-twentieth-century Europe, who have traditionally not always paid much attention to Benjamin because of the latter’s appropriation by literary theory, now have every reason to take Benjamin’s writings more seriously. -- Christian J. Emden * H-Net *Table of ContentsFRUITS OF EXILE, 1938 (PART 2) 1. The Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire 2. Blanqui 3. The Study Begins with Some Reflections on the Influence of Les Fleurs du mal 4. Exchange with Theodor W. Adorno on "The Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire" 5. Review of Reneville's Experience poetique 6. Review of Freund's Photographie en France au dix-neuvieme siecle 7. Reviw of Francesco's Macht des Charlatans 8. A chronicle of Germany's Unemployed 9. A Novel of German Jews THEORY OF REMEMBRANCE, 1939 1. Review of Honigswald's Philosophie und Sprache 2. Review of Sternberger's Panorama 3. Review of Beguin's Ame romantique et le reve 4. Note on Brecht 5. Central Park 6. Exchange with Theodor W. Adorno on "The Flaneur" Section of "The Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire" 7. Commentary on Poems by Brecht 8. The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility: Third Version 9. Germans of 1789 10. What is the Epic Theater? (II) MATERIALIST THEOLOGY, 1940 1. On Some Motifs in Baudelaire 2. "The Regression of Poetry," by Carl Gustav Jochmann 3. Curriculum Vitae (VI): Dr. Walter Benjamin 4. On Scheerbart 5. On the Concept of History 6. Paralipomena to "On the Concept of History" 7. Letter to Theodor W. Adorno on Baudelaire, Goerge and Hofmannsthal A Note on the Texts Chronology List of writings in Volumes 1-4 Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisArtaud remains one of the significant and influential theorists of modern theatre.--Gerald Rabkin, Rutgers University

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis book captures the intensity of the relationship between writers and their typewriters from the 1880s, when the machine was first commercialized, to the 1980s, when word-processing superseded it. Drawing on examples from the United States, Britain, Europe, and Australia, The Typewriter Century focuses on celebrity writers, including Henry James, Jack Kerouac, Agatha Christie, Georges Simenon, and Erle Stanley Gardner, who wrote prolifically and mechanically, developing routines in which typing, handwriting, and dictation were each allotted important functions. The typewriter de-personalized the text; the office typewriter bureaucratized it. At the same time, some authors found a new and disturbing distance between themselves and their compositions while others believed the typewriter facilitated spontaneous and automatic typing. The Typewriter Century provides a cultural history of the typewriter, outlining the ways in which it can be considered an agent of Trade Review"Well written and really entertaining, with numerous interesting individual findings, Martyn Lyons' book provides a useful introduction to a complex field of research." -- Kim Christian Priemal, University of Oslo * H-Soz-Kult *"This is a useful study of the complex impacts of the typewriter on the practices of different writers in the twentieth century. It contextualizes existing research approaches to this set of questions effectively and offers original insights into the history of the typewriter as a technology and its interactions with the social position of writers and the market for published literary works." -- Morag Shiach, Queen Mary University of London * Journal of British Studies *"With so many technological changes in our lives, the typewriter has become a clear symbol of the transformation from manual to digital technology. In The Typewriter Century, Martyn Lyons plays homage to this once cherished tool of authors, tracing its history from an eighteenth-century ‘writing machine’ to the post-digital age. Along the way, he recounts how famous authors felt about their typewriters, and how changes in the typewriter also changed the writing process itself, not always for the better." -- Gretchen Webster * Publishing Research Quarterly *"The Typewriter Century is clearly the result of extensive research but that does not inhibit the prose, which is very engaging. This book will interest scholars concerned with the means of production, and it will also appeal to general readers who are curious about the history of technology and writing." -- Alice Grundy, Australian National University * SHARP News *“This book will be of interest to historians of typewriters and office work and a wider audience curious about the writing practices of some of the most legendary authors since the 1880s.” -- James Inglis * Technology and Culture *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgments 1. Introduction: The Typewriter as an Agent of Change? 2. The Birth of the Typosphere 3. Modernity and the Typewriter Girl 4. The Modernist Typewriter 5. The Distancing Effect: The Hand, the Eye, the Voice 6. The Romantic Typewriter 7. Manuscript and Typescript 8. Georges Simenon: The Man in the Glass Cage 9. Erle Stanley Gardner: The Fiction Factory 10. Domesticating the Typewriter 11. The End of the Typewriter Century and Post-Digital Nostalgia Bibliography Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisFour popular novelists of the same generation each wrote a novel inspired by a holiday that the author spent in France. In the nineteen-fifties, Rumer Godden based The Greengage Summer on her recollections of her family’s 1923 battlefield-tour manqué in the Champagne region. Margery Sharp’s 1936 holiday in Southern France led to ‘Still Waters’ and The Nutmeg Tree: both the short story and the novel are set in and around the region of Aix-les-Bains. In 1955, Daphne Du Maurier first visited the department of Sarthe to research French family history; the novel The Scapegoat was the immediate result of the holiday. And in 1966, Stella Gibbons’ last trip to the continent took the form of a visit to an old friend in her summer home near Grenoble. The stay is obliquely reflected in The Snow-Woman, in which a similar holiday leads a never-married septuagenarian to experience a renaissance of sorts.Trade Review"This is a very original literary study of the work of four British writers who, though still remembered today, are not as celebrated or read as much as they deserve to be. Through the prism of visits to France in the novels and stories of these writers, Anne Hall explores the delicate and subtle interplay of relations between those two nations in fiction. It is elegantly written, illuminating and informative. There is some fascinating original scholarship here, but, above all, Four French Holidays is highly entertaining and tempts you to go and read for yourself (if you haven’t already) or re-read the works under consideration." Reggie Oliver, nephew and biographer of Stella Gibbons

Read more less

Book SynopsisMoroccan Other-Archives investigates how histories of exclusion and silencing are written and rewritten in a postcolonial context that lacks organized and accessible archives. The book draws on cultural production concerning the “years of lead”—a period of authoritarianism and political violence between Morocco’s independence in 1956 and the death of King Hassan II in 1999—to examine the transformative roles memory and trauma play in reconstructing stories of three historically marginalized groups in Moroccan history: Berbers/Imazighen, Jews, and political prisoners. The book shows how Moroccan cultural production has become an other-archive: a set of textual, sonic, embodied, and visual sites that recover real or reimagined voices of these formerly suppressed and silenced constituencies of Moroccan society. Combining theoretical discussions with close reading of literary works, the book reenvisions both archives and the nation in postcolonial Morocco. By producing other-archives, Moroccan cultural creators transform the losses state violence inflicted on society during the years of lead into a source of civic engagement and historiographical agency, enabling the writing of histories about those Moroccans who have been excluded from official documentation and state-sanctioned histories. The book is multilingual and interdisciplinary, examining primary sources in Amazigh/Berber, Arabic, Darija, and French, and drawing on memory studies, literary theory, archival studies, anthropology, and historiography. In addition to showing how other-archives are created and operate, El Guabli elaborates how language, gender, class, race, and geographical distribution are co-constitutive of a historical and archival unsilencing that is foundational to citizenship in Morocco today.Table of ContentsPreface | ix Note on Transliteration | xiii List of Abbreviations | xv Introduction | 1 1. (Re)Invented Tradition and the Performance of Amazigh Other- Archives in Public Life | 26 2. Emplaced Memories of Jewish- Muslim Morocco | 63 3. Jewish- Muslim Intimacy and the History of a Lost Citizenship | 89 4. Making Tazmamart a Transnational Other- Archive | 115 5. Other- Archives Transform Moroccan Historiography | 150 Conclusion | 177 Acknowledgments | 189 Notes | 193 Bibliography | 253 Index | 281

Read more less

Book SynopsisTolkien's concern with time - past and present, real and ""faerie"" - captures the wonder of travel into other worlds and other times. This work shows that he was not just a mythmaker and writer of escapist fantasy but a man whose relationship to his own century was troubled and critical.

Read more less

Book SynopsisMary Wesley published her first novel at seventy and went on to write a further nine bestsellers, including the legendary The Camomile Lawn, in a style best described as arsenic without the old lace. Many of her stories were inspired by her experiences during the Blitz, and by her marriages: the first to an aristocrat, a brief and conventional affair, and the second to a penniless writer she adored.A remarkable book about a remarkable woman, Patrick Marnham''s brilliantly researched and wonderfully impartial book disentangles truth from rumour, highlighting the links between Wesley''s real life and her fiction.Trade ReviewMuch of the fascination of Marnham's well-researched and admirably impartial book is that it reveals just how autobiographical Wesley's fiction was -- Miranda Seymour * Sunday Times *[A] fast-paced riveting biography -- Valerie Grove * The Times *A striking portrait not only of an amazing, if strange, woman but of an entire social class -- Rachel Cooke * Evening Standard *Unpicks the complicated web of deceits and half-truths that surrounded much of her life with wit, patience and skill, providing just the sort of compelling read that Wesley did in her novel * Independent *This biography is pure pleasure, a riveting, hilarious tragicomedy of manners... Marnham has disentangled truth from rumour, clarified the many connections between Wild Mary's rackety life and Mary Wesley's fiction, and produced a generous, unsentimental and intelligent portrait of a woman's life and times * Spectator *

Read more less

Book SynopsisA landmark anthology that will introduce many extraordinary, unknown Russian writers to an English-language readership for the first time       Fleeing Russia amid the chaos of the Russian Revolution and subsequent Civil War, many writers went on to settle in Paris, Berlin and elsewhere and forged new lives in exile. Much of their subsequent work, published in Russian language magazines and books, is entirely unknown in the West and has only been recently discovered in Russia itself. As well as including stories by the most famous émigré writers, Vladimir Nabokov and Ivan Bunin, this collection introduces many lesser known voices: Yuri Felzen, known as the Russian Proust, Nadezhda Teffi, the hugely popular and funny story writer, and Georgy Ivanov, whose work of poetic prose The Atom Explodes is a brilliant, haunting response to the upheaval and trauma of emigration. Exploring themes of displacement, nostalgia, loss and new beginninTrade ReviewA brilliant, poignant anthology -- Alexis Levitin * Los Angeles Review of Books *A rich anthology ... Editor and lead translator Bryan Karetnyk has done a marvellous job ... The translations maintain a high standard of literary quality and precision. Admirably equipped with biographical and explanatory notes, this anthology presents to the Anglophone reader, for the first time, a unified representation of the authors and disparate, yet interlinked cultural contexts of first-wave Russian emigration -- Judges, Read Russia Prize 2018Compelling ... Karetnyk's anthology transports the reader into the motley lives and imaginations of Russian émigrés in Paris, Berlin and beyond. Highly recommended reading for anyone fascinated by prerevolutionary Russian culture as preserved among the ranks of the two million-odd Whites that formed the first wave of emigration from Bolshevik Russia. -- Anna Gunin * The Riveter *Ably translated ... Bryan Karetnyk has produced that most welcome artefact in this age of the floating text: an 'enhanced' paperback whose fictive stories are fully equipped with their histories. Writers' biographies, historical chronology, a list of Russian émigré venues, and well-researched footnotes serve to anchor each narrative in its own peripatetic time and space -- Caryl Emerson * Times Literary Supplement *A powerful reminder of the trauma of civil war and hardships of displacement ... The stories evoke a lost world with attendant nostalgia, sorrow, fear and anger ... Rarely has the term 'unjustly neglected' rung more true * Country Life *Brilliantly translated by Bryan Karetnyk ... A truly wonderful selection * Los Angeles Review of Books Radio Hour *

Read more less

Book SynopsisMorrison brings her genius to this personal inquiry into the significance of African-Americans in the American literary imagination. Through her investigation of black characters, narrative strategies, and idiom in the fiction of white American writers, Morrison provides a perspective sure to alter conventional notions about American literature.Trade ReviewThis is a major work by a major American author… It is an exuberant exercise, conducted by a writer in her prime who knows that her own work makes steady inroads on the unspeakable. -- Diane Middlebrook * Los Angeles Times *In Playing in the Dark, Morrison explores how the temptation to enslave others instead of embracing freedom has shaded our national literature, and how an acceptance of this truth will enable us to see that literature’s struggles and fears, and so better understand its exuberance… Her wisdom is to locate strength in what appears to be weakness. -- Jane Mendelsohn * Voice Literary Supplement *In this beautifully written, immensely quotable study, Morrison attempts to overturn pervasive critical agendas that ignore racial representations in white texts and thus impoverish literary studies… Morrison’s interest is not to designate texts as ‘racist’ but to read the ways that the ‘racial’ operates. -- Linda Krumholz * Signs *Morrison’s delivery of the distinguished Massey lectures at Harvard in 1990 showed off her prowess as critic, for she brings the indomitable spirit of her fiction to her feelings about literature. In Playing in the Dark, the published lectures, Morrison argues that a black, or Africanist, presence exists throughout the history of American literature, and its understanding is essential to any body of criticism. Identifying what she calls ‘the rhetoric of dread and desire,’ then tracing its manifestations through works by Poe, Cather and Hemingway, Morrison believes that to ignore the presence of race in literature is to rob fiction of its power… But the most telling test of any critical argument, at least for those of us who prefer passion to theory, is whether such speculation will send you back to primary sources. By the time I’d finished Playing in the Dark, the floor around me was littered with Huck Finn and James Baldwin and Faulkner. -- Gail Caldwell * Boston Globe *In three compact and skillful essays, Morrison explores and illumines the gaggle of literary devices—conceits, tropes, metaphors—that have been mostly unconsciously deployed by white writers to refract the rays of blackness through the prism of literary silence, repression or avoidance. Morrison ably applies her therapeutic textual intervention to make these rays visible and to imaginatively envision how an Africanist presence was essential in forming and extending an American national literature… [This is her] impressive debut as a critical intellectual. -- Michael Eric Dyson * Chicago Tribune *A brief and compelling dissection of U.S. fiction. -- Paul Skenazy * San Francisco Chronicle *[Her] thesis is an engaging one, and it becomes more so in a sequence of a few compressed but inspired readings of American works, Cather’s Sapphira and the Slave Girl, Poe’s Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, Hemingway’s To Have and Have Not, and Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. -- Mark Edmundson * Washington Post Book World *Table of Contents1. black matters 2. romancing the shadow 3. disturbing nurses and the kindness of sharks

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis work brings together the three volumes of Olson's long poem (originally published in 1960, 1968 and 1975 respectively) in one book.

Read more less