Literary studies: fiction Books

Book SynopsisMany leading American writers have begun as journalists. This book looks in particular at Twain, Whitman, Dreiser, Hemingway, and Dos Passos, to show how journalism has given a distinctive cast to American literature.Trade Review"I anticipate great value from this text--its scholarship, lucid prose, and particularly the vast gap of ignorance it seeks to fill, will make it a most useful and versatile choice for my course."--Raymond I. Rundus, Pembroke State University "From Whitman and Twain to Dreiser and Dos Passos, [Fishkin] tracks American literature back to unexpected beginnings in journalism. Her sophisticated search turns a new illumination on these writers' lives."--Eugene Patterson, St. Petersburg Times "A valuable and readable study, well worth the attention of any student of American writing."--San Francisco Chronicle "An original, illuminating, and timely work. It reaches back to explore in vivid detail the journalistic origins of some of the greatest American writers, from Whitman to Dos Passos, then reaches forward to reflect with subtlety and sophistication on the current journalistic tendency towards fiction-making."--R.W.B. Lewis, Yale University "No critic before Fishkin has explored at length the phenomenon of the reporter turned artist. From Fact to Fiction is a welcome initial exploration, an incisive and well-written discussion...[a] groundbreaking book."--American Quarterly "I anticipate great value from this text--its scholarship, lucid prose, and particularly the vast gap of ignorance it seeks to fill, will make it a most useful and versatile choice for my course."--Raymond I. Rundus, Pembroke State University "From Whitman and Twain to Dreiser and Dos Passos, [Fishkin] tracks American literature back to unexpected beginnings in journalism. Her sophisticated search turns a new illumination on these writers' lives."--Eugene Patterson, St. Petersburg Times "A valuable and readable study, well worth the attention of any student of American writing."--San Francisco Chronicle "An original, illuminating, and timely work. It reaches back to explore in vivid detail the journalistic origins of some of the greatest American writers, from Whitman to Dos Passos, then reaches forward to reflect with subtlety and sophistication on the current journalistic tendency towards fiction-making."--R.W.B. Lewis, Yale University "No critic before Fishkin has explored at length the phenomenon of the reporter turned artist. From Fact to Fiction is a welcome initial exploration, an incisive and well-written discussion...[a] groundbreaking book."--American Quarterly "It is rare for books as innovative, groundbreaking and important as From Fact to Fiction to be as well-written, and I applaud it."--Norman Mailer "Graceful writing, fresh insights and excitement combine to make this work...a valuable asset to the field of journalism history, one that makes a strong contribution to the understanding of the craft of reporting and its relationship to American literary realism."--Journalism History "An original, illuminating, and timely work."--R.W.B. Lewis, Yale University "Fishkin's study forms an important part of the accumulating case for the tradition of American realism, of a literature of fact and detail."--Times Literary Supplement "Very readable....I endorse this without reservation and with enthusiasm."--Ed Rooney, Loyola University "Excellent scholarship; at a level students can grasp--I love it!"--Fred L. Gardaphe, Columbia College "A much-needed approach....Gives journalistic writing a much-deserved accolade."--Herb Blisard, Yakima Valley College "Each of us writers who started out as journalists or hwo are cursed by also being journalists should thank Shelley Fisher Fishkin for this impressive work."--Oriana Fallaci "A fascinating blend of biography, social history, criticism, and close textual analysis."--William A. Henry III, media critic for Time "Intriguing."--Philadelphia Inquirer "An informative study."--Los Angeles Times "The persuasive point of this finely researched and even-handed volume is that we have dismissed too readily (and perhaps even disdainfully) the important apprenticeship in journalism of an inordinate number of American writers."--American Studies

Read more less

Book SynopsisAncient Greek Scholarship is the only introduction to this important and fast-growing field, with information on all aspects of using and reading ancient scholarship. Includes discussions of all major works, explanation of grammarians'' Greek, over 200 passages with commentary, glossary of 1500 grammatical terms, and annotated bibliography with more than 1200 works.Trade ReviewAncient Greek Scholarship comprises both a finding aid (a through survey of the material, with explanations of the sources and their transmission, and guidance on editions and secondary literature) and a tutorial (an introduction to scholarly Greek, with an anthology of texts and a glossary of technical usages). Every research student should have this invaluable resource thrust upon them * Malcolm Heath, Greece and Rome *A practical, down-to-earth approach to problems is the hallmark of Dickey's style, and a genuine love for Classics and its students permeates every page of this book. After reading it, I both feel more knowledgeable about ancient scholarship and glad that such an intricate subject could be presented in such an interesting way. The book is not just an indespensible tool: it is, above all, a great pleasure to read. I warmly recommend it to both students and experts. * Olga Tribulato, Journal of Hellenic Studies *This book fills a deep need...grateful that a competent and knowledgable scholar has compiled such a useful guide to such an important yet intractable body of material. * Kathleen McNamee, The Classical Review *Dickey has received much praise, from linguists as well as classicists, for her monographs on Greek and Latin forms of address. How she has published a handbook to ancient Greek scholarship, which manifests the erudition, precision, and uncommon good sense known to her earlier readers. * Malcom D. Hyman, Historiographica Linguistica 35:3 *Dickey has truly done an excellent job * Malcom D. Hyman, Historiographica Linguistica 35:3 *Dickey's book is carefully written, scrupulously edited, and well-produced * Malcom D. Hyman, Historiographica Linguistica 35:3 *Any serious student of Greek will want to possess it. * William Slater, Bryn Mawr Classical Review *Table of ContentsPreface 1: Introduction to Ancient Scholarship 2: Scholia, Commentaries, and Lexica on Specific Literary Works 2.1: Archaic and Classical Poetry 2.2: Classical Prose 2.3: Hellenistic Literature 2.4: Literature of the Roman Period 3: Other Scholarly Works 3.1: Grammatical Treatises 3.2: Lexica 3.3: Other Types of Work 4: Introduction to Scholarly Greek 5: Reader 5.1: Texts with Key 5.2: Key to 5.1 5.3: Texts without Key 6: Glossary 7: Annotated Bibliography 7.1: List of Abbreviations 7.2: List of References Appendices A: Hints for Finding Works on Ancient Scholarship in Library Catalogs B: Hints for Using Facsimiles Indices

Read more less

Book SynopsisAt the Violet Hour argues that the literature of the early twentieth-century in England and Ireland was deeply organized around a reckoning with grievous violence, imagined as intimate, direct, and often transformative. The book aims to excavate and amplify a consistent feature of this literature, which is that its central operations (formal as well as thematic) emerge specifically in reference to violence. At the Violet Hour offers a variety of new terms and paradigms for reading violence in literary works, most centrally the concepts it names enchanted and disenchanted violence. In addition to defining key aspects of literary violence in the period, including the notion of violet hour, the book explores three major historical episodes: dynamite violence and anarchism in the nineteenth century, which provided a vibrant, new consciousness about explosion, sensationalism, and the limits of political meaning in the act of violence; the turbulent events consuming Ireland in the first thirTrade ReviewCole's close readings of violence in the work of some of the major modernists are superb. * Lauren Arrington, The Times Literary Supplement *At the Violet Hour is also striking in terms of what it leaves out: a full-scale exploration of the Great War, arguably the defining event in the concatenation of modernism and violence. * Paul Sheehan, Review of English Studies *Cole's well-written, formidably researched book is a treasure trove of incisive readings that will surely become a classic ... Highly recommended. * D. Stuber, CHOICE *Table of ContentsIntroduction ; Chapter 1 ; Enchanted and Disenchanted Violence ; Chapter 2 ; Dynamite Violence: From Melodrama to Menace ; Chapter 3 ; Cyclical Violence: The Irish Insurrection and the Limits of Enchantment ; Chapter 4 ; Patterns of Violence: Virginia Woolf in the 1930s ; Conclusion ; Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisInterest in Jane Austen has never been greater, but it is revitalized by the advent of feminist literary history. In a substantial new introduction Marilyn Butler places this book, which was first published in 1975, within the larger tradition of post-war criticism, from the generation of Edmund Wilson, Lionel Trilling, and F.R. Leavis to that of the now-dominant feminist critics. Professor Butler argues that Austen herself lived in contentious times. Like Wordsworth and Coleridge, she served her literary apprenticeship in the 1790s, the decade of the Terror and the Napoleonic Wars, an era in England of polemic and hysteria. Political partisanship shaped the novel of her youth, in content, form, and style. In this book, she now examines the very different schools of writing about Austen, and finds in them some unexpected continuities, such as a willingness to recruit her to modern aims, but a reluctance to engage with her own history.When the book first came out it attracted attention Trade Review`There can be no doubt of the immense value for the critical reader of this impressive exposition of conflicting views concerning the individual and society at the end of the 18th century.' The Review of English Studies.'the most accomplished 'close reading' to date of Jane Austen's dialogue, and the most stylish book written on Austen since Mary Lascelles's Jane Austen and her Art.' Marilyn Butler The London Review of Books'Readers of Jane Austen will welcome the return of Marilyn Butler's learned and controversial book on Jane Austen, reprinted with a new and extensive survey of recent scholarship. ... this book will be a valuable addition to a scholar's library. Butler's thesis casts light on Austen's fiction and her style emulates Austen'sw crisp clarity. ... Butler writes informatively about her subject, rather than about the need for the method. ' Eighteenth Century Fiction

Read more less

Book SynopsisThese are the first two of a three-volume commentary on the Odyssey, compiled by an international team of scholars, making the most up-to-date and authoritative scholarship available in paperback. Questions of text, dialect, the poems relation to the Iliad, and the epic tradition in general are discussed by acknowledged experts in the field.Trade Review` the sheer range, penetration, authority, and readability of the notes to this volume make one's ears flap in purest gratitude; and the introductory essays to each book are models of incisive scholarship' The TimesFrom the reviews of the Italian edition: `The commentary is eminently clear and controlled.... For clear exegesis of the text and discussion of problems both [West and Hainsworth] are admirable. We have the first fruits of the new edition of the Odyssey, based on up-to-date linguistic, papyrological, and formulaic scholarship.' M. M. Willcock, Journal of Hellenic Studies `The main part of the new book is without doubt the commentary. Here we have a work the richness, independence, and judiciousness of which cannot be sufficiently admired. It is not a replacement for ... other existing commentaries, but a continuation on a higher level. On page after page we meet sensible interpretations and an authoritative presentation of current scholarship with comprehensive bibliography covering all aspects of research.... We have reason to rejoice and be grateful and await the forthcoming volumes with impatience.' H. van Thiel, Classical Review`What is so admirable about Oxford's new commentary on the Odyssey is that it provides pure protein in highly edible form: high scholarship has become haute cuisine.' Peter Jones, The Times'models of clarity ... fascinating reading ... it presents a bracing challenge and you have to work to get at the genuine riches it contains' Martin Thorpe, Shrewsbury Sixth Form College, JACT Review'The authors have made excellent use of the chance to improve what was already a first-class monument of useful scholarship, especially in adding cross-references, bibliography and indices ... this superb achievement will do much to stimulate Homeric scholarship.' Richard Janko, University of California, Los Angeles, Journal of Hellenic Studies, CX, 1990

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis is the third and final volume of a presentation in English of a commentary on Homer's Odyssey compiled by an international team of scholars and published in Italian under the auspices of the Fondazione Lorenzo Valla. This volume contains commentaries by J. A. Russo (books xvii-xx), M. Fernandez-Galiano (xxi-xxii), and A. Heubeck (xxiii-xxiv)Trade ReviewPraise for Volumes I and II: `The sheer range, penetration, authority, and readability ... make one's ears flap in purest gratitude.' The Times`What is so admirable about Oxford's new commentary on the Odyssey is that it provides pure protein in a highly edible form: high scholarship has become haute cuisine.' The Times

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis is the first study of all the extant remains of the important Hellenistic poet and mythographer, Parthenius of Nicaea, reputed to have been Virgil's tutor in Greek and a major literary figure in his own right, and it provides a newly edited text, translation, commentary and contextual study of the whole of Parthenius' extant works, including the poetic fragments and his love stories.Trade ReviewA scholar would have to be preternaturally learnèd to gain little from this book. In subjects as diverse as Greek literary history, Roman elegy, Greek vocabulary and syntax, motifs in story telling, textual criticism and local antiquities - and in other topics too, attentive readers will be amply rewarded. * Hermathena: A Trinity College Dublin Review *Lightfoot's thorough work of scholarship deserves a warm welcome. * Hermathena: A Trinity College Dublin Review *The good idea in Lightfoot's huge book is to reunite textual evidence that is usually treated separately, that is, the tantalizing scraps of (predominately) elegiac poetry and the extant prose work, Erotika Pathemata. * Classical World *A splendid and most welcome tome ... We have a valuable edition of a neglected author, worth attention. * Religious Studies Review *

Read more less

Book SynopsisKatherine Mansfield's letters are as finely written as her stories and prized by ordinary readers as much as by literary critics and feminists. The fifth and final volume of this celebrated edition reveals Mansfield's courage, wit, independence, and honesty in the final year of her life.Trade ReviewThis fifth volume of the Collected Letters brings a satisfying completeness * Stephen Barkway, Virginia Woolf Bulletin *Its completion is a triumphant achievement... The editors' labours throughout have been meticulous yet unobtrusive * Trev Broughton, Times Literary Supplement *Top of my wishlist... plangent, wishful and determined even at the end with O'Sullivan's learned and sensitive introduction. * Kirsty Gunn, The Scotsman Books of the Year *...her last year has never appeared as vibrant as in this elegantly produced and unobtrusively edited volume, filled with previously unknown material. * Christopher Hawtree, Telegraph on Saturday *The editors deserve our gratitude for publishing these letters * A. Banerjee, English Studies *Table of ContentsTHE LETTERS

Read more less

Book SynopsisBrian Hamnett examines key historical novels by Scott, Balzac, Manzoni, Dickens, Eliot, Flaubert, Fontane, Galdós, and Tolstoy, revealing the contradictions inherent in this form of fiction and exploring the challenges writers encountered in attempting to represent a reality that linked past and present.Table of ContentsPART ONE THE HISTORICAL NOVEL AS GENRE AND PROBLEM: AN ANALYTICAL AND CRITICAL EXAMINATION; PART TWO INTERNAL CONTRADICTIONS AND UNSTABLE FORM: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THE HISTORICAL NOVEL'S DILEMMA; FICTITIOUS HISTORIES; SOURCES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY

Read more less

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

Read more less

Book SynopsisA 4th-century BCE mock-epic poem, probably entitled the "Hedupatheia" or "Life of Luxury", offering a gastronomic tour of the Mediterranean. This work is aimed at researchers and students in Greek poetry, social history, and cuisine of the late classical and early Hellenistic period.Trade ReviewOlson and Sens have produced a text and translation equipped with exhaustive introduction and commentary. Theirs is likely to remain the standard edition of Archestratos for many years ... the commentary is a useful tool for students of food and literature alike. * Gnomon *Scholars and teachers interested in ancient food and dining will welcome this collection of the fragments of the fourth-century BC gastronomical poem, Hedupatheia, by Archestratos, usually accessible only in references scattered throughout the eipnosophistae of Athenaeus * The Classical Outlook *

Read more less

Book Synopsis''Middlebrow'' has always been a dirty word, used disparagingly since its coinage in the mid-1920s for the sort of literature thought to be too easy, insular and smug. Yet it was middlebrow fiction - largely written and read by women - that absolutely dominated the publishing market in the four decades from the 1920s to the 1950s. Neglected by subsequent critical fashion in favour of the work of literary elites, this literature has only recently begun to be reassessed. Aiming to rehabilitate the feminine middlebrow, Nicola Humble argues that the novels of writers such as Rosamund Lehmann, Elizabeth Taylor, Stella Gibbons, Nancy Mitford, and a host of others less well known, played a powerful role in establishing and consolidating, but also in resisting, new class and gender identities in this period of volatile change for both women and the middle classes. The work of over thirty novelists is covered, read alongside other discourses as diverse as cookery books, child-care manuals, and Trade ReviewReview from previous edition Accessible, informative and entertainingly written. * Laura Jane Macbeth, The Independent Weekend Review *A fascinating study of literary culture, which offers many intriguing tasters of the novels themselves. The bizarre characters and scenarios, and the conscious ironies of some of these "good bad books" leave one curious to read more. * Clare Griffiths, Times Literary Supplement *Table of Contents1. 'Books Do Furnish a Room': Readers and Reading ; 2. 'Not Our Sort': The Re-Formation of Middle-Class Identities ; 3. Imagining the Home ; 4. The Eccentric Family ; 5. A Crisis of Gender? ; BIBLIOGRAPHY ; INDEX

Read more less

Book SynopsisA new translation of, and commentary on, Cicero's defence of Publius Sestius against a charge of public violence. The speech provides any student of Rome with a fascinating way into the period and is also among the best introductions we have to traditional Republican values and ethics in action.Trade Review...constantly enlightening and extremely broad in its scope... * Bryn Mawr Reviews *Table of ContentsINTRODUCTION; TRANSLATION: THE SPEECH ON BEHALF OF PUBLIUS SESTIUS; COMMENTARY

Read more less

Book SynopsisUnseasonable Youth examines a range of modernist-era fictions that cast doubt on the ideology of progress through the figure of stunted or endless adolescence. Novels of youth by Oscar Wilde, Olive Schreiner, Rudyard Kipling, Joseph Conrad, H.G. Wells, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Jean Rhys, and Elizabeth Bowen disrupt the inherited conventions of the bildungsroman in order to criticize bourgeois values and to reinvent the biographical plot, but also to explore the contradictions inherent in mainstream developmental discourses of self, nation, and empire. The intertwined tropes of frozen youth and uneven development, as motifs of failed progress, play a crucial role in the emergence of dilatory modernist style and in the reimagination of colonial space at the fin-de-siècle. The genre-bending logic of uneven development - never wholly absent from the coming-of-age novel -- takes on a new and more intense form in modernism as it fixes its broken allegory to the problem of colonial develoTrade ReviewThe power of Esty's text to rewire one's thinking is most evident in the fact that such quibbles arise only once one has accepted his ambitious reframing of the late nineteenth-and early twentieth-century novelistic tradition. ... This is a major rereading of the modernist novel. Its analysis will be unavoidable for future critics of the period. * Modern Language Quarterly: A Journal of Literary History Esty's extensive secondary references, awareness of critical trends, and what the series editors right call his 'admirable stylistic panache' are all impressive. Recommended.?CHOICE *Table of ContentsContents ; Series Editors' Foreword ; Chapter one: Introduction ; Scattered Souls: The Bildungsroman and Colonial Modernity ; After the Novel of Progress ; Kipling's Imperial Time ; Genre, History, and the Trope of Youth ; Modernist Subjectivity and the World-System ; Chapter two ; "National-Historical Time" from Goethe to George Eliot ; Infinite Development vs. National Form ; Nationhood and Adulthood in The Mill on the Floss ; After Eliot: Aging Forms and Globalized Provinces ; Chapter three ; Youth/Death: Schreiner and Conrad in the Contact Zone ; Outpost Without Progress: Schreiner's Story of An African Farm ; "A free and wandering tale": Conrad's Lord Jim ; Chapter four ; Souls of Men under Capitalism: Wilde, Wells, and the Anti-Novel ; "Unripe Time": Dorian Gray and Metropolitan Youth ; Commerce and Decay in Tono-Bungay ; Chapter five ; Tropics of Youth in Woolf and Joyce ; The "weight of the world": Woolf's Colonial Adolescence ; "Elfin Preludes": Joyce's Adolescent Colony ; Chapter six ; Virgins of Empire: The Antidevelopmental Plot in Rhys and Bowen ; Gender and Colonialism in the Modernist Semi-Periphery ; Endlessly Devolving: Jean Rhys's Voyage in the Dark ; Querying Innocence: Elizabeth Bowen's The Last September ; Chapter seven: Conclusion ; Alternative Modernity and Autonomous Youth After 1945 ; Works Cited ; Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisNovel Craft explores an intriguing and under-studied aspect of cultural life in Victorian England: domestic handicrafts, the decorative pursuit that predated the Arts and Crafts movement. Talia Schaffer argues that the handicraft movement served as a way to critique the modern mass-produced commodity and the rapidly emerging industrial capitalism of the nineteenth century. Her argument is illustrated with the four pivotal novels that form her study''s core-Gaskell''s Cranford, Yonge''s The Daisy Chain, Dickens''s Our Mutual Friend, and Oliphant''s Phoebe Junior. Each features various handicrafts that subtly aim to subvert the socioeconomic changes being wrought by industrialization. Schaffer goes beyond straightforward textual analysis by shaping each chapter around the individual craft at the center of each novel (paper for Cranford, flowers and related arts in The Daisy Chain, rubbish and salvage in Our Mutual Friend, and the contrasting ethos of arts and crafts connoisseurship in PhTrade ReviewSchaffer has revolutionized the study of Victorian aesthetics. * Choice *Table of ContentsTable of Contents ; Introduction: "How to Read Wax Coral, and Why" ; Chapter 1. "Women's Work: The History of the Victorian Domestic Handicraft" ; Chapter 2. "Ephemerality: The Cranford Papers" ; Chapter 3. "Preservation: The Daisy and the Chain" ; Chapter 4. "Salvage: Betty as the Mutual Friend" ; Chapter 5: "Connoisseurship: Giving Credit to Phoebe Junior" ; Postscript ; Bibliography

Read more less

Book SynopsisMaking History New explores how several British modernists applied the experimental methods of literary modernism to the writing of narrative history and historical novels. The historical novel is usually assumed to be only a concern of either nineteenth century realism or postmodernism, but the historical works of Joseph Conrad, Ford Madox Ford and Rebecca West evidence a modernist obsession with historical narrative. Works like Nostromo, Parade''s End and Black Lamb and Grey Falcon utilized literary techniques we have come to associate with modernism-fragmentation, subjectivity, nonlinearity-in their effort to narrate the past, but unlike many of their contemporaries they never jettisoned narrative as the primary means for textual engagements with the historical past. Such a divisioning between narrative and non-narrative modes of writing history also mark the field of historiography in the wake of the Holocaust, with poststructural challenges to narrative history compelling many hisTrade ReviewMaking History New is entirely successful in challenging the claim that modernism is anti-historical ... [and] opens up an original - and potentially significant - field of research in modernist studies. * Kate Symondson, Times Literary Supplement *Making History New challenges the claim that literary modernism abandoned history. With close attention to historical narratives by Joseph Conrad, Ford Madox Ford, and Rebecca West, Seamus O'Malley rediscovers the historiographical significance of modernist experimentation. Reading the three authors as an exemplary constellation of modernists, Making History New illuminates a deeply historical turn at the heart of high modernism and invites a re-evaluation of the field of modernist studies. O'Malley simultaneously brings historiography to bear on literary modernism and makes modernist narrative newly relevant to debates about how history is made, written, and read. * Christopher GoGwilt, author of The Passage of Literature: Genealogies of Modernism in Conrad, Rhys, and Pramoedya *Seamus O'Malley's discovery of a modernist historiography complicates and clarifies the relationship between modernism and history; leads to convincing new readings of well-known and more obscure works of fiction; and suggests ways in which historians today can learn from modernist innovations to create new historical forms. Making History New is a refreshingly innovative reassessment of literary modernism. * Louise Blakeney Williams, author of Modernism and the Ideology of History: Literature, Politics, and the Past *Making History New is a compelling and erudite contribution to modernist studies that advances our knowledge of the field and the three canonical authors * Conrad, Ford, Westat its heart. O'Malley's command of his sources is magisterial; he presents a truly interdisciplinary approach to this complex and sophisticated topic.Bernard Schweitzer, author of Hating God: The Untold Story of Misotheism *Making History New offers a bold and original challenge to the received idea of modernism as anti-historical. O'Malley makes a powerful case for an engagement with the experience and representation of history as being constitutive of modernism, from the early modernist historiographic fictions of Conrad and Ford, through the novels of the First World War, to West's reflections on the Holocaust and the Nuremberg Trials. His subtle readings illuminate the richness of modernism's meditations on the nature and the problematics of the historical. * Max Saunders, author of Self Impression: Life-Writing, Autobiografiction, and the Forms of Modern Literature *Table of ContentsIntroduction ; Chapter One: Joseph Conrad and the Necessity of History in Nostromo ; Chapter Two: Rewriting and Repetition in The Good Soldier ; Chapter Three: Returning, Remembering, and Forgetting in The Return of the Soldier ; Chapter Four: The Rememoration of Some Do Not... (Parade's End, Vol. 1) ; Chapter Five: The Impossible Necessity of Black Lamb and Grey Falcon ; Conclusion: History after the Holocaust ; Works Cited ; Notes

Read more less

Book SynopsisBy tracing the afterlives of Mignon, an apparently minor character in Goethe''s novel Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, Terence Cave explores a phenomenal success story in the history of literature and music, and more broadly of cultural history. Mignon steps out of the shadow of its protagonist Wilhelm and fashions a destiny of her own: she becomes the object of an obsessive interest that reached its peak in the later nineteenth century but continues to reverberate into the twenty-first century. Mignon reappears - often as a character bearing a different name but sharing an unmistakable family resemblance with her - in a wide range of different literary works from Goethe himself via the German Romantic Novel, Mme de Staël, George Sand, Nerval and Baudelaire, Walter Scott and George Eliot to Gerhart Hauptmann and Angela Carter. Her songs, set by dozens of composers from Reichardt and Beethoven to Wolf, reverberated through the drawing-rooms and concert-halls of nineteenth-century Europe. She is the heroine of the most popular French opera of the late nineteenth century, and she has featured in a number of films. She is fascinating because she is poised on the threshold between childhood and adolescence, aphasia and expressive power, words and music; she is a wanderer who has lost her home, an exile who has been abducted and abused; and the many stories in which her life is reenacted provide a litmus test for key cultural values of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.Trade Reviewdelightfully informative, leisurely, and sophisticated ... the scope of the investigation is impressively broad * David Baguley, French Studies *Table of ContentsLIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS; PREFACE; INTRODUCTION

Read more less

Book SynopsisI am aware that, once my pen intervenes, I can make whatever I like out of what I was.'' Paul Valéry, Moi.Modernism is often characterized as a movement of impersonality; a rejection of auto/biography. But most of the major works of European modernism and postmodernism engage in very profound and central ways with questions about life-writing. Max Saunders explores the ways in which modern writers from the 1870s to the 1930s experimented with forms of life-writing - biography, autobiography, memoir, diary, journal - increasingly for the purposes of fiction. He identifies a wave of new hybrid forms from the late nineteenth century and uses the term ''autobiografiction'' - discovered in a surprisingly early essay of 1906 - to provide a fresh perspective on turn-of-the-century literature, and to propose a radically new literary history of Modernism. Saunders offers a taxonomy of the extraordinary variety of experiments with life-writing, demonstrating how they arose in the nineteenth centTrade ReviewReview from previous edition Saunders's account ... is the most important recent contribution to the genealogy of modern literature ... The paradoxy of autobiografiction never disorients him; rather, it inspires plentiful pithy wisdom in a book that seems to end every paragraph aphoristically. Theory and history, history and form get their due recognition, and the book as a whole is an apt and exciting tribute to its subject, capable of everything necessary to prove that life-writing has meant everything to literary modernity. * Jesse Matz, Modern Language Quarterly *Review from previous edition It is likely to become a major critical resource, not just for research on early twentieth-century life-writing, but also as part of the ongoing revision of the whole century's literary history. * Bharat Tandon, Times Literary Supplement *very wide-ranging and intellectually stimulating ... Conspicuous in its originality ... an outstanding contribution * The Pater Newsletter *a remarkable book, in its length, its historical range (Pater to Byatt) and its fluid genre crossings... Saunders explores the relationship of autobiography to fiction in general, the relationship of the synthetic category 'autobiografiction' to modernism, and by so doing gives us an unusually unified account of modernism... The sheer weight of research and knowledge is astonishing and lightly, even conversationally, worn; Saunders seems to have read every fiction, auto-fiction and pseudo-fiction from the last 150 years... Too many excellent features of this magisterial book can be mentioned only in passing * Review of English Studies *Saunders can rearrange the familiar landmarks of modernist prehistory to fit an entire tradition of imaginary autobiography that has been occluded or marginalised by the grand narrative of modernisms impersonality... its new readings of well-known authors and works are dazzling; its new scholarship on unknown or little-known authors and works is fascinating. It revitalises the old literary-historical category of the transition (that is, from Victorian to modern, 1880-1920) * Australian Book Review *Saunders' mode of presentation is very precise and sharp... a very important book for the discussion of the relationship between Modernism and Life-Writing. * Yata Keiji, Virginia Woolf Review *A breathtakingly comprehensive study... Self Impression is an important book that will inspire further work on life-writing in the modern period... Recent publications provide other examples of books that call out for the application of Saunders's approach. The first volume of the complete and authoritative edition of the Autobiography of Mark Twain has just been published... Once again, we are in the realm of autobiografiction that Saunders has so brilliantly mapped out. * English Literature in Transition *compendious in the best sense of the term... Saunders's knowledge of, and ability to critique with extraordinary critical sensitivity, the wide swathes of European literature is remarkable. Even more impressive is his handling of the intricate filaments which bind these texts together, which make them constantly mutually allusive. This makes for a constant fascination... It is a measure of the depth of thinking in this book that the complexities of autobiographical modes and the relevance of the category of impressionism, while compelling in themselves, tend to recede and to be replaced by larger questions. Who am I when I write? Who am I when I read? What is it like to be 'carried away' by a book?... These are questions which, as Saunders delicately puts it, have been raised in one form or another by de Man, Hartman, Derrida; but here they receive a rare depth and range of articulation which puts flesh on the bones of abstract argument * David Punter, Modern *wide-ranging and consequential new account of British literature from 1870 to 1930 ... In modernism, as Saunders demonstrates in impressive detail, we may find an astonishing variety of experimental interactions between biography, autobiography, fiction, and criticism ... With this vast body of evidence, quoted generously and treated expertly, Saunders makes a compelling case for reading modernism as a discourse of im/personality. [One of] two exceedingly good books - stimulating in their arguments, rich in attention to literary and scholarly detail, and engagingly written. * Adam Parkes, Modern Fiction Studies *Table of ContentsPART I: MODERN IRONISATIONS OF AUTO/BIOGRAPHY AND THE EMERGENCE OF AUTOBIOGRAFICTION: VICTORIAN AND FIN-DE-SIECLE PRECURSORS; PART II: MODERNIST AUTO/BIOGRAFICTION; CONCLUSION

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis book is a critical introduction to Finnegans Wake and its genesis. As well as offering a survey of critical, scholarly and theoretical approaches to Joyce''s masterpiece, it analyses in detail the compositional development of certain key passages which describe the artist (Shem) and his project; the river-mother (ALP) and her ''first kiss''; the Oedipal shooting of the universal father (HCE) by the priestly son (Shaun); and the bewitching and curious daughter (Issy). The analyses demonstrate ''genetic'' ways of reading the text which illustrate its immense range and playfulness and how these qualities were generated in composition. As well as opening up the densely detailed textuality of the Wake in all its multiplicity, Fordham argues for a relation between the way the text was formed and key aspects of its thematic content: an uprising of particularity and detail against universality, absolutes and generality. The proliferation of individuated textual details overwhelm any unitaTrade ReviewReview from previous edition Sophisticated, erudite, and elegant... it is clear that we have here one of those landmark works on Joyce's Finnegans Wake. Among its many accomplishments Fordham's book demonstrates to a wide audience the procedure and potential productivity of genetic criticism and shows how this approach both stimulates and authorizes new ways of reading the Wake. The readings themselves are a marvelously layered consideration of words, sentences, and passages that illuminate how meaning becomes enlarged, complicated, shifted by revision. At the same time Fordham tracks a complex and fascinating thesis with theoretical implications. A brilliant job and lots of fun to boot. * Margot Norris, The James Joyce Literary Supplement *Fordham's book is one of the most engaging and original studies of Finnegans Wake to appear in a very long time...Fordham has done Joyce's readers a great service by opening up this Pandora's box of inquiry. * Jed Deppman, Review of English Studies *Fordham provides readings of Joyce's language with an improvisational air that belies the sheer erudition informing his writing. Like the Wake itself, there are flashes of insight and brilliance. * Forum for Modern Language Studies *Wonderful. It does the most difficult thing - it renders the book more interesting without making it (or Joyce) sound too coherent. It has been really illuminating for me, a great pleasure to read. * Adam Phillips, General Editor of the Penguin Freud *Certainly one of the best books on the Wake yet published, Lots of Fun is no heavy-handed guidebook or querimonious, would-be summary, but something far more enjoyable and useful: an attempt to experience the Wake on and with its own terms. * Tim Conley, James Joyce Quarterly *A brilliant study of Joyce's drafting of Finnegans Wake, interesting for its own sake and offering an illuminating approach to reading the text. One of the best books on the Wake to have appeared in the last decade or two, it will appeal to all students of Joyce's work. The introduction will be valuable for those who are new to the Wake, but those who know it well will also find Finn Fordham's able survey extremely useful. * Derek Attridge *excellent introduction...a commendably open and fluid approach...organically amenable to Joyce's own theory and practice of composition...the principles of genetic criticism are ably demonstrated here, and the value of this method is vouchsafed by Fordham's energetic and scholarly analysis...Fordham [proposes] the idea of character function...a subtle and supple approach, which stays faithful to the linguistic ebb and flow of Joyce's tragicomic heteroglossia. Thanks to the sterling work of Finn Fordham...Finnegans Wake is a garden in which a few more of us may play. * Keith Hopper, Notes and Queries, vol.56, no. 2, 303-6. *Finn Fordham has given us an important and major new study of Finnegans Wake, one that investigates the book with unparalleld intensity and in a brilliantly unique way. Among its many other accomplishments, Fordham's work contributes powerfully to the renewed upsurge of interest in what Helen Vendler has called "the art of close reading", offering its reader both a compelling defence of the practice and a brilliant exemplification of its exercise. Finn Fordham is a great and electrifying reader. No one else reads the Wake with quite the same kind of depth or intensity...This is a book that should appeal to and reward both the seasoned reader of the Wake and the novice... Its genetic exegeses are mind-widening and fun... [It] is a powerful and thought-provoking new study, one that will stimulate and reward any interested reader of the book. This is first-rate and important work. * John Bishop, James Joyce Broadsheet *Table of ContentsPART I; PART II; PART III; PART IV

Read more less

Book SynopsisDoes empathy felt while reading fiction actually cultivate a sense of connection, leading to altruistic actions on behalf of real others? Empathy and the Novel presents a comprehensive account of the relationships among novel reading, empathy, and altruism. Drawing on psychology, narrative theory, neuroscience, literary history, philosophy, and recent scholarship in discourse processing, Keen brings together resources and challenges for the literary study of empathy and the psychological study of fiction reading. Empathy robustly enters into affective responses to fiction, yet its role in shaping the behavior of emotional readers has been debated for three centuries. Keen surveys these debates and illustrates the techniques that invite empathetic response. She argues that the perception of fictiveness increases the likelihood of readers'' empathy in part by releasing them from the guarded responses necessitated by the demands of real others. Narrative empathy is a strategy and subject Trade ReviewEmpathy and the Novel belongs in the company of Peter Brooks' Reading for the Plot as an exciting and lucid reflection on empathy in the novel and on the empathetic effects of narrative on readers. Working at the cross-section of literature, neuroscience, and psychology, the book is a stunningly original, broad-ranging contribution to narrative ethics and to the meanings of emotion in literature, life, and human society. * Susan Stanford Friedman, Virginia Woolf Professor of English and Women's Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison *Table of ContentsCONTENTS; ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS; PREFACE; APPENDIX: A COLLECTION OF HYPOTHESES ABOUT NARRATIVE EMPATHY; WORK CITED; INDEX

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe Oxford Handbook of Science Fiction attempts to descry the historical and cultural contours of SF in the wake of technoculture studies. Rather than treating the genre as an isolated aesthetic formation, it examines SF''s many lines of cross-pollination with technocultural realities since its inception in the nineteenth century, showing how SF''s unique history and subcultural identity has been constructed in ongoing dialogue with popular discourses of science and technology. The volume consists of four broadly themed sections, each divided into eleven chapters. Section I, Science Fiction as Genre, considers the internal history of SF literature, examining its characteristic aesthetic and ideological modalities, its animating social and commercial institutions, and its relationship to other fantastic genres. Section II, Science Fiction as Medium, presents a more diverse and ramified understanding of what constitutes the field as a mode of artistic and pop-cultural expression, canvassTable of ContentsContributors ; Introduction ; Part I. Science Fiction as Genre ; 1. "Extrapolation and Speculation" ; Brooks Landon ; 2. "Aesthetics" ; Peter Stockwell ; 3. "Histories" ; Arthur B. Evans ; 4. "Literary Movements" ; Gary K. Wolfe ; 5. "Fandom" ; Farah Mendlesohn ; 6. "The Marketplace" ; Gary Westfahl ; 7. "Pulp Science Fiction" ; Jess Nevins ; 8. "Literary Science Fiction" ; Joan Gordon ; 9. "Slipstream" ; Victoria de Zwaan ; 10. "The Fantastic" ; Brian Attebery ; 11. "Genre vs. Mode" ; Veronica Hollinger ; Part II. Science Fiction as Medium ; 12. "Film" ; Mark Bould ; 13. "Radio and Television" ; J.P. Telotte ; 14. "Animation" ; Paul Wells ; 15. "Art and Illustration" ; Jerome Winter ; 16. "Comics" ; Corey Creekmur ; 17. "Video Games" ; Pawe? Frelik ; 18. "Digital Arts and Hypertext" ; James Tobias ; 19. "Music" ; John Cline ; 20. "Performance Art" ; Steve Dixon ; 21. "Architecture" ; Nic Clear ; 22. "Theme Parks" ; Leonie Cooper ; Part III. Science Fiction as Culture ; 23. "The Culture of Science" ; Sherryl Vint ; 24. "Automation" ; Roger Luckhurst ; 25. "Military Culture" ; Steffen Hantke ; 26. "Atomic Culture and the Space Race" ; David Seed ; 27. "UFOs, Scientology, and Other SF Religions" ; Gregory L. Reece ; 28. "Advertising and Design" ; Jonathan M. Woodham ; 29. "Countercultures" ; Rob Latham ; 30. "Sexuality" ; Patricia Melzer ; 31. "Body Modification" ; Ross Farnell ; 32. "Cyberculture" ; Thomas Foster ; 33. "Retrofuturism and Steampunk" ; Elizabeth Guffey and Kate C. Lemay ; Part IV. Science Fiction as Worldview ; 34. "The Enlightenment" ; Adam Roberts ; 35. "The Gothic" ; William Hughes ; 36. "Darwinism" ; Patrick B. Sharp ; 37. "Colonialism and Postcolonialism" ; John Rieder ; 38. "Pseudoscience" ; Anthony Enns ; 39. "Futurology" ; Andrew M. Butler ; 40. "Posthumanism" ; Colin Milburn ; 41. "Feminism" ; Lisa Yaszek ; 42. "Libertarianism and Anarchism" ; Neil Easterbrook ; 43. "Afrofuturism" ; De Witt Douglas Kilgore ; 44. "Utopianism" ; Phillip E. Wegner

Read more less

Book SynopsisLeo Bersani is an eminent literary critic whose influential work spans half a century. His vast, in many ways unclassifiable, oeuvre has traversed and blurred the boundaries of the disciplines of modern French literature, literary criticism, psychoanalysis, art history, film theory, philosophical aesthetics, and masculinity studies and sexuality studies. Oxford University Press published Bersani''s first book, on Proust, in 1965, but the work has long been out of print. This new edition comes in response to a recent renewal of interest among philosophers of literature, among others, and features a new preface from the author.Table of ContentsPreface ; Introduction ; Chapter One ; Fantasies of the Self and the World ; I. "Je n'etais plus qu'un coeur qui battait" ; II. Self-effacement and self-projection ; III. The vulnerable self and its many deaths ; Chapter Two ; The Anguish and Inspiration of Jealousy ; I. The mystery of other people's desires ; II. Jealousy and the tortured imagination ; III. Strategies to immobilize the "etres de fuite," and "les joies de la solitude" ; IV. From the lover's anguish to the novelist's possessions ; Chapter Three ; The Language of Love ; I. The loved one's absence from the lover's desires ; II. The self as an "appareil vide": a critique of psychological analysis ; III. The "notes fondamentales" from the perspective of memory: psychological analysis reinstated ; IV. The monologue of love as a dialogue ; V. The merging of fantasy and realism ; Chapter Four ; Social Contexts: Observation and Invention ; I. The aristocracy's glamor ; II. Society as a work of art: the poetry of the past ; III. Reflections of Marcel's psychology in the social world ; IV. "Le royaume du neant" ; V. Variety of characterization and the general laws ; VI. Marcel the character and Proust the author ; Chapter Five ; Marcel's Vocation ; I. The artist and the "residu reel" of personality ; II. Involuntary memory and the work of art ; III. The "accent" of individuality in literary style ; IV. Metaphor: "les surfaces sont devenues reflechissantes" ; Conclusion ; Notes ; Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisConceived as a literary form to aggressively publicize the abolitionist cause in the United States, the African American slave narrative remains a powerful and illuminating demonstration of America''s dark history. Yet the genre''s impact extended far beyond the borders of the U.S. The American Slave Narrative and the Victorian Novel investigates the shaping influence of writings by Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, and other former slaves on British fiction in the years between the Abolition Act and the Emancipation Proclamation. Julia Sun-Joo Lee argues that novelists such as Charlotte Bronte, Elizabeth Gaskell, and Charles Dickens integrated into their works generic elements of the slave narrative-from the emphasis on literacy as a tool of liberation, to the teleological journey from slavery to freedom, to the ethics of resistance over submission. It contends that Victorian novelists used these tropes in an attempt to access the slave narrative''s paradigm of resistance, illuminatTrade ReviewLee's book is valuable not only for demonstrating how much Victorian novels have in common with American slave narratives, but for beginning to address the questions this kinship raises...This book breaks new ground, and later critics will build upon it to deepen our understanding of the relationship between the slave narrative and the Victorian novel. * Victorian Studies *Table of ContentsIntroduction. The American Slave Narrative and the Victorian Novel ; Chapter One. The Slave Narrative of Jane Eyre ; Chapter Two. Slaves and Brothers in Pendennis ; Chapter Three. Female Slave Narratives: "The Grey Woman" and My Lady Ludlow ; Chapter Four. The Return of the "Unnative": North and South ; Chapter Five. Fugitive Plots in Great Expectations ; Epilogue. The Plot Against England: The Dynamiter ; Works Cited

Read more less

Book SynopsisCicero''s speech on behalf of L. Lucinius Murena, newly elected to the consulship of 62 BCE but immediately prosecuted for electoral bribery, is especially famous for its digressions and valuable for its insights into the complex political wrangles of the late 60s. It is, however, a speech more commonly excerpted and cited than read in its entirety, though whether the absence of an English-language commentary is a cause or effect of that situation remains uncertain. In short, a pedagogical commentary on this important and strange speech is long overdue. Distinguished Latinist Elaine Fantham''s commentary is noteworthy for its ability to elucidate not only the rhetorical structure of this speech but the rationale behind Cicero''s strategic decisions in creating that structure. It also calls attention to the stylistic features like word choice, rhetorical figures, and rhythmic effects that make the speech so effective, and explains with care and precision the political, social, and histoTrade Review[I]t contains much that will be of use and interest to advanced students and scholars * Katherine A. Liong, Exemplaria Classica *Table of ContentsMap ; Introduction ; Commentary ; Appendix: Related Texts ; Bibliography ; Index of Names and Places

Read more less

Book SynopsisColligan argues that Nineteenth-century obscenity was caught up in the global cultural traffic of print technology, international trade and exoticism. She reveals that obscenity intersected majority and minority culture, searched out new print and visual media, and built commercial and fantasmatic global networks for its continuation and survival.Trade Review'Colette Colligan's fascinating book...draws on material from all these collections, and is itself an important contribution to the historical understanding of obscenity, as well as, more locally, to the famously vexed subject of the sexual mores of the Victorians.' - Gowan Dawson, Archives (British Records Association) 'A book with great value for helping us to understand obscenity's complex role in modernizing and globalizing nineteenth-century Britain.' - Allyson Pease, Victorian StudiesTable of ContentsList of Figures List of Plates Acknowledgements PART I: THE TRAFFIC IN OBSCENITY Introduction An "Extensive Traffic": The Print Trade in Nineteenth-Century British Obscenity PART II: HAREMS AND LONDON'S UNDERGROUND PRINT CULTURE The Unruly Copies of Byron's Don Juan : Harems, Popular Print Culture, and The Age of Mechanical Reproduction Harem Novels: The Lustful Turk to Moslem Erotism PART III: SIR RICHARD BURTON, THE ARABIAN NIGHTS, AND ARAB SEX MANUALS "Esoteric Pornography": Sir Richard Burton's Translation of the Arabian Nights "A Race of Born Pederasts": Pederasty, The Perfumed Garden , and The Scented Garden Collecting English Obscenity: Marriage-Love and Women amongst the Arabs and Old Man Young Again PART IV: THE ENGLISH VICE AND TRANSATLANTIC SLAVERY The Prurient Gaze: The Flogged Slave Woman among British Abolitionists Slavery Obscenity in the 1880s: The Pearl and The Cremorne Slavery Obscenity at the Turn-of-the-Century: Dolly Morton to White Women Slaves Whipping in the Twentieth Century: The Fugitive Image PART V: JAPANESE EROTIC PRINTS AND OBSCENITY OF THE FIN-DE-SIÈCLE The Traffic in Japanese Erotic Prints Aubrey Beardsley's Libidinal Line: Japonisme, Art Nouveau, and Obscenity Japanese Prostitution: Amorous Adventures of a Japanese Gentleman to Yoshiwara: The Nightless City Coda: The Obscenity of the Real Notes Bibliography Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisDrawing on a broad concept of desire, informed by poststructuralist theorists this book examines the range of Hardy's work. It demonstrates the sustained nature of his thinking about desire, its relationship to the social and symbolic network in which human subjectivity is constituted and art's potential to offer fulfilment to the desiring subject.Trade Review"Jane Thomas has provided us with the most thoroughgoing study of Hardy and desire since J. Hillis Miller's four decades ago, and offers a wonderfully panoramic approach to the subject. Thomas uses Lacan, Butler and other thinkers, always in an approachable manner, to meditate on the fleeting, obscure and unstable nature of desire in Hardy's texts, extracting a surprising range of reference - from the impossibility of nostalgia to the sharpness of desire across class divisions; from the pleasures of cross-dressing to Sapphic desire seen as a kind of utopian space. The study ranges with assurance across Hardy's corpus, and is illuminating on both the major and minor novels and the poetry." Professor Tim Armstrong, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK ''Thomas's finely articulated chapters serves to take the argument forward, with exemplary attention to textual evidence and an impressive grasp of ideas . . . this is a book which makes a notable contribution to Hardy studies and one whose argument will doubtless generate further fruitful debate.'' Hardy Journal "In offering a persuasive analysis of Hardy's art as an exercise and expression of (often frustrated or foiled) desire, Jane Thomas has made an outstanding contribution to Hardy studies." J. B. Bullen, Victorian StudiesTable of ContentsPreface Acknowledgements Abbreviations Introduction: Hardy and Desire House and Home: Nostalgic Desire and the Locus of the Self Desire, Female Amity and 'Sapphic Space' Sexual Desire and the Lure' of the Erotic Poor Men and Ladies: Aspirational Desire As You Like It: Cross-Dressing and the Gendered Expression of Desire Art, Aesthetics and Masculine Desire 'Scanned Across the Dark Space':Poetry, Desire and Aesthetic Fulfilment Notes Bibliography Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis lively translation accurately captures the wit and uncensored bawdiness of the epigrams of Martial, who satirized Roman society, both high and low, in the first century CE. His pithy little poems amuse, but also offer vivid insight into the world of patrons and clients, doctors and lawyers, prostitutes, slaves, and social climbers in ancient Rome.

Read more less

Book SynopsisA study of ekphrasis - a self-contained aside that generates a pause in the narrative to describe a work of art or other object - in Virgil's final masterpiece, the "Aeneid". The author shows how the descriptions provide metaphors for the entire poem and reinforce its ambiguities.

Read more less

Book SynopsisA poet, writer and painter, Dante Gabriel Rossetti was seen as a dominating cultural presence in the second half of the 19th century. Jerome McGann, scholar of the 19th and 20th century, presents this selection of Rossetti's poetry, prose and original translations, with commentaries and notes.Trade Review"This is the most coherent and intelligible selection of Rossetti's work available in print, and it has the most interpretatively suggestive notes. Its inclusion of important writings not available elsewhere will expand the current understanding of Rossetti." Elizabeth Helsinger, University of Chicgo

Read more less

Book SynopsisCharts some of Modernism's key stages, from Durer, Rabelais, and Cervantes to the present, bringing together an array of artists, musicians, and writers - including Beckett, Borges, Friedrich, Cezanne, Stevens, Robbe-Grillet, Beethoven, and Wordsworth.Trade Review"'This short, fierce book is clearly very personal... Nevertheless, I enjoyed the sinuousness and vigour of Josipovici's arguments.' (Sam Leith, Sunday Times) 'What can't be faulted is the plaintive logic running through this book. In cultural terms, we live in deeply conservative times... Yet can anyone, now, name the successful middlebrow writer of 1922 or 1915? Of course not. That alone should give Josipovici comfort.' (Tom McCarthy, The Guardian) 'Josipovici's erudite and intelligent polemic raises more questions than it answers - always a good thing.' (Tom McCarthy, Daily Telegraph) 'Now in his seventies, he is formidably cultivated... Not that he condescends. Josipovici carries his learning lightly and the meditations on Modernism which make up the body of the book are instructive and accessible... This is a book... one can't help rather enjoying.' (John Sutherland, Literary Review) '... a welcome intervention in the long debate about the difference between art and entertainment.' (James Purdon, The Observer) 'His book is similarly eloquent, besides being, in its task of charting modernism's uniqueness, ingenious, unexpected, astute and insightful. It's also - because of its passion and intelligence - readable, in a way a modernist would approve of...' (Amit Chaudhuri, The Independent) 'Entertaining as his assault is, this is a more challenging and ambitious book than simply a jeremiad on the contemporary cultural climate.' (Ronan McDonald, The London Magazine)"

Read more less

Book SynopsisSuggests seven walking tours, and describes points of interest along each route related to Hemingway's life in Paris.

Read more less

Book SynopsisIn Hermann Hesse''s Beneath the Wheel, Hans Giebernath lives among the dull and respectable townsfolk of a sleepy Black Forest village. When he is discovered to be an exceptionally gifted student, the entire community presses him onto a path of serious scholarship. Hans dutifully follows the regimen of study and endless examinations, his success rewarded only with more crushing assignments. When Hans befriends a rebellious young poet, he begins to imagine other possibilities outside the narrowly circumscribed world of the academy. Finally sent home after a nervous breakdown, Hans is revived by nature and romance, and vows never to return to the gray conformity of the academic system.

Read more less

Book SynopsisMiner takes the first critical look at this development and offers a serious reading of five of the most famous twentieth-century women's bestsellers--Gone with the Wind, Forever Amber, Peyton Place, Valley of the Dolls, and Scruples.

Read more less

Table of ContentsThe Welsh Influence Expanding Interweaving Inventing Aesthetic Uses of Celtic Myth and Legend Thematic Uses of Celtic Myth and Legend Conclusions Appendix A: The Mabinogi Appendix B: The Four Branches: A Brief Précis Bibliography Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisA pioneering scholarly examination of the rich and fascinating fields of science fiction and fantasy art, this book stimulates scholarly interest in these areas by offering both surveys of the entire history of these traditions and focused examinations of particular genres and artists.Table of ContentsIntroduction: The Iconology of Science Fiction and Fantasy Art by George Slusser Approaches to Science Fiction Art Artists in Wonderland: Toward a True History of Science Fiction Art by Gary Westfahl The Northrop Continuum: Science Fiction Illustration and the Flying Wing Aircraft by Howard V. Hendrix Less is More: Empty Space, Invisibility, and Modern Design by Kathleen Church Plummer "Getting It Right": A Reflection on Titans and Technologies by Gregory Benford The Vision of Space: The Artist's View by Samuel Vasbinder Shapes from the Edge of Time: The Science Fiction Artwork of Richard M. Powers by Kirk Hampton and Carol MacKay Approaches to Fantasy Art Notes on the Geography of Bad--and Good--Fantasy Art by John Clute Archaeological Fieldwork in the Paper Tiger Stacks Report #43: A Short Happy History of Fantasy Art by John Grant Wisdom and Clemency: The Collaborations of Margaret Wise Brown and Clement Hurd by Lynne Lundquist and Gary Westfahl "And What Happened After": How J.R.R. Tolkien Visualized, and Other Artists Re-Visualized, the Denizens of Middle-earth by Beatrix Karthaus-Hunt Conan the Oxymoron: The Civilized Savage of Robert E. Howard and Frank Frazetta by David Hinckley Bibliography Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisAcknowledgements Abbreviations Between the Lines: Re-reading Stevie Smith and Literary Modernism 'The Times are the Times of the Black Split Heart': Stevie Smith's Life and Work in Context The Trilogy's Take-Off in the Thirties: A Close-Cultural Reading of Novel on Yellow Paper Framing the War: The Second Two Novels of the Trilogy Between Waving and Drowning: Stevie Smith's Poems and Stories Works Cited IndexTrade Review'...[a] dazzlingly intelligent reading of Stevie Smith's work.' - Will May, The Oxonian ReviewTable of ContentsAcknowledgements Abbreviations Between the Lines: Re-reading Stevie Smith and Literary Modernism 'The Times are the Times of the Black Split Heart': Stevie Smith's Life and Work in Context The Trilogy's Take-Off in the Thirties: A Close-Cultural Reading of Novel on Yellow Paper Framing the War: The Second Two Novels of the Trilogy Between Waving and Drowning: Stevie Smith's Poems and Stories Works Cited Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisAlfred is the only English King honoured with this name and is credited with various successes (the foundation of a navy, English education system and religious revival). The medieval 'Life' of King Alfred of Wessex purports to be written by Asser, a monk in the King's service.Trade Review'Alfred Smyth's The Medieval Life of King Alfred the Great is a pathbreaking work...a sophisticated introduction and study of the entire field of Alfredian biography, ancient and modern...The Medieval Life of King Alfred the Great also serves as an excellent introduction to the text of the Life itself and to the controversies surrounding its creation and history.' - Professor Daniel Melia, University of California, Berkeley 'Alfred Smyth's new translation and commentary challenges consensus opinion at every level...an extensive commentary relates the Life to the new and still-developing awareness of historical writing in the late Anglo-Saxon period...Smyth's text asks new questions and provides new answers, offering a more complex account of the origins of England, and of English History, than has been possible to date.' - Tom Shippey, Saint Louis University, Missouri '...this translation...is useful for presenting a version without many of the previous editorial emendations...' - J.L. Leland, Choice Reviews from previous book: 'Smyth's book, then, must stand as the definitive account of the reign.' - Peter Ackroyd, The Times 'This is a glorious book. It rescues a great English ruler from some of the more obtuse concepts and prejudices of our own time, and builds more carefully on ninth-century foundations than any other biography yet published.' - Eric Christiansen, The SpectatorTable of ContentsAbbreviations Introduction [A]Translation of the Life of King Alfred [B] Commentary A Tour Around the Manuscripts The Author of the Life The Author's Latin Style The Author's Use of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle Why Was the Life of King Alfred Written at Ramsay in C.A.D. 1000? Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisHighlighting popular works by P.D. James, Colin Dexter, Ian Pears and Umberto Eco, among others, this subtle and intelligently written monograph examines the treatment of religion in the genre of contemporary murder mystery novels, and the implications of this phenomenon for understanding Christian thought in a post-Christian society.

Read more less

Book SynopsisIs horror an antiestablishment force an argument for social revolution? Is it a liberating expose of human nature and a peek at the dark side of the unconscious? Or is it pure evil, designed to corrupt and deprave? Starting from such questions about the nature of horror, this book is an accessibly written history of the genre.Table of ContentsHating other - religion, nationhood and identity; mad science - Frankenstein and his monsters; children of the night - vampires and the undead; monsters from the id - horror, madness and the mind; forbidden knowledge - textuality, metafiction and books; them! - narratives of pestilence and invasion; hail Satan! - diabolism, the occult and demonic possession; transformations - body horror.

Read more less

Book SynopsisDiscover who’s who and what’s what in the Star Wars universe with this beautifully illustrated guide-now in full color for the first time.When it comes to extraterrestrial life-forms, there’s more to science fiction’s most famous galaxy than just Jawas, Wookiees, Ewoks, and Hutts. From the skylanes of Coruscant to the worlds of the Outer Rim, an untold number of species populate those planets far, far away. And if you confuse Gungans with Gamorreans, or don’t know a bantha from a tauntaun, you definitely need the in-depth data that only this revised, expanded, and updated guide can deliver.This comprehensive overview includes beings from all six of the classic movies-plus the novels, cartoon series, comics, and video games. It’s an even bigger cross section of species than what you’ll find in the Mos Eisley cantina. And each entry, from acklay to Zabrak, from amphibians to vacuum-breathers, features everything you need to know, including• complete physical description and official designation, so you can tell your sentients from your non-sentients, and your humanoids from your insectoids• homeworld: from dry and dusty Tatooine, stormy and waterlogged Kamino, to arctic Hoth, and countless other strange and varied worlds• phonetic pronunciation: Askajian, H’nemthe, Iktotchi, Ssi-ruu, and Xexto/Quermian aren’t as easy to say as they are to, er, spell• notable appearance: a listing of one of the more significant appearances of each species in the teeming Star Wars storylinePlus, this brand-new edition includes a glossary of crucial descriptive terms and a completely original, full color illustration for each of more than one hundred individual species. It’s a big galaxy, and someone has to organize it. Count on Star Wars®: The New Essential Guide to Alien Species-and don’t leave your homeworld without it.

Read more less

Book SynopsisCompilation of intense, spirited verse which explores the realms of religion, politics, nature, violence, and old age.

Read more less

Book SynopsisProbably de Beauvoir's strangest and most compelling novel, this is the captivating story of a beautiful young actress who revives a downcast stranger at a French resort.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis highly acclaimed biography looks beyond the insistent image of the modest Victorian lady, the slave to duty in the shadow of tombstones. Instead we see a strong, fiery woman who shaped her own life and transformed it into art. Lyndall Gordon looks at the shared gifts and class ambitions of the Bronte family, and also at significant people-the active feminist Mary Taylor, the demanding mentor Constantin Heger, the rising publisher George Smith-whom Charlotte strove to possess in life and fiction. Drawing on unpublished letters, the Roe Head Journal, early stories, the manuscript of Villette, and her last, unfinished novel, Lyndall Gordon explores the gaps in Charlotte Bronte's life. How did she arrive at her understanding of passion from a woman's point of view? Could she resolve the testing conflict between a writer's life and a seemingly incongruous marriage to the devoted curate Arthur Bell Nicholls? Looking into the shadow between the facts, Gordon takes biography into that uns

Read more less

Book Synopsis[R]eads like a novel, filled with strongly drawn characters and a wealth of lively detail.... The book offers as much insight into the creative process as it does into this crucial period of our history.Lee SmithTrade Review"Brilliant. . . . Carefully researched and masterfully constructed." -- Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinal

Read more less

Book SynopsisIn personal essays that read like short stories, writers describe their life-altering encounters with books.Trade Review"This is a wonderful book - a must for anyone who reads, who writes or who aspires to either. It is such a joyous celebration of the intimate relationship between reader and writer, it makes you want to run to the bookshelf, to the library, to the bookstore and read, read, read. These essays remind us of why we read and why we write - they remind us of the power of stories to inspire, entertain, and alter the course of our lives." A. M Homes "Remarkable Reads and remarkable delights! This is no literary seminar, it's a carnival of unintended consequences." Tom Wolfe

Read more less

Book SynopsisWith the passing of each year, Ulysses receives wider recognition and greater acclaim as a modern literary classic. To comprehend Joyce's masterpiece fully, to gain insight into its significance and structure, the serious reader will find this analytical and systematic guide invaluable. In this exegesis, written under Joyce's supervision, Stuart Gilbert presents a work that is at once scholarly, authoritative and stimulating.

Read more less

Book SynopsisHarry Potter. The name conjures up J.K. Rowling's wondrous world of magic that has captured the imaginations of millions on both the printed page and the silver screen with bestselling novels and blockbuster films. The true magic found in this children's fantasy series lies not only in its appeal to people of all ages but in its connection to the greater world of classic literature. Harry Potter's Bookshelf: The Great Books Behind the Hogwarts Adventures explores the literary landscape of themes and genres J.K. Rowling artfully wove throughout her novels-and the influential authors and stories that inspired her. From Jane Austen's Emma and Charles Dickens's class struggles, through the gothic romances of Dracula and Frankenstein and the detective mysteries of Dorothy L. Sayers, to the dramatic alchemy of C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and William Shakespeare, Rowling cast a powerful spell with the great books of English literature that transform

Read more less