Literary studies: fiction Books
Fordham University Press Beyond Hostile Islands: The Pacific War in
Book SynopsisOffers a fascinating window into how the fraught politics of apology in the East Asian region have been figured in anglophone literary fiction. The Pacific War, 1941-1945, was fought across the world’s largest ocean and left a lasting imprint on anglophone literary history. However, studies of that imprint or of individual authors have focused on American literature without drawing connections to parallel traditions elsewhere. Beyond Hostile Islands contributes to ongoing efforts by Australasian scholars to place their national cultures in conversation with those of the United States, particularly regarding studies of the ideologies that legitimize warfare. Consecutively, the book examines five of the most significant historical and thematic areas associated with the war: island combat, economic competition, internment, imprisonment, and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Throughout, the central issue pivots around the question of how or whether at all New Zealand fiction writing differs from that of the United States. Can a sense of islandness, the ‘tyranny of distance,’ Māori cultural heritage, or the political legacies of the nuclear-free movement provide grounds for distinctive authorial insights? As an opening gambit, Beyond Hostile Islands puts forward the term ‘ideological coproduction’ to describe how a territorially and demographically more minor national culture may accede to the essentials of a given ideology while differing in aspects that reflect historical and provincial dimensions that are important to it. Appropriately, the literary texts under examination are set in various locales, including Japan, the Solomon Islands, New Zealand, New Mexico, Ontario, and the Marshall Islands. The book concludes in a deliberately open-ended pose, with the full expectation that literary writing on the Pacific War will grow in range and richness, aided by the growth of Pacific Studies as a research area.Table of ContentsForeword by Patrick Porter | vii Introduction 1 1 Revelations and Comedy: The Combat Novel | 25 2 Camera Men: Postwar Japan-Bashing | 55 3 Captive Memories: Internment North and South | 81 4 The Poetics of Apology: FEPOW Narratives | 106 5 Scientists and Hibakusha: Project Novels | 132 Coda | 163 Acknowledgments | 173 Notes | 177 Bibliography | 217 Index | 243
£79.90
Fordham University Press Beyond Hostile Islands: The Pacific War in
Book SynopsisOffers a fascinating window into how the fraught politics of apology in the East Asian region have been figured in anglophone literary fiction. The Pacific War, 1941-1945, was fought across the world’s largest ocean and left a lasting imprint on anglophone literary history. However, studies of that imprint or of individual authors have focused on American literature without drawing connections to parallel traditions elsewhere. Beyond Hostile Islands contributes to ongoing efforts by Australasian scholars to place their national cultures in conversation with those of the United States, particularly regarding studies of the ideologies that legitimize warfare. Consecutively, the book examines five of the most significant historical and thematic areas associated with the war: island combat, economic competition, internment, imprisonment, and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Throughout, the central issue pivots around the question of how or whether at all New Zealand fiction writing differs from that of the United States. Can a sense of islandness, the ‘tyranny of distance,’ Māori cultural heritage, or the political legacies of the nuclear-free movement provide grounds for distinctive authorial insights? As an opening gambit, Beyond Hostile Islands puts forward the term ‘ideological coproduction’ to describe how a territorially and demographically more minor national culture may accede to the essentials of a given ideology while differing in aspects that reflect historical and provincial dimensions that are important to it. Appropriately, the literary texts under examination are set in various locales, including Japan, the Solomon Islands, New Zealand, New Mexico, Ontario, and the Marshall Islands. The book concludes in a deliberately open-ended pose, with the full expectation that literary writing on the Pacific War will grow in range and richness, aided by the growth of Pacific Studies as a research area.Table of ContentsForeword by Patrick Porter | vii Introduction 1 1 Revelations and Comedy: The Combat Novel | 25 2 Camera Men: Postwar Japan-Bashing | 55 3 Captive Memories: Internment North and South | 81 4 The Poetics of Apology: FEPOW Narratives | 106 5 Scientists and Hibakusha: Project Novels | 132 Coda | 163 Acknowledgments | 173 Notes | 177 Bibliography | 217 Index | 243
£23.39
Fordham University Press Humanitarian Fictions: Africa, Altruism, and the
Book SynopsisHumanitarianism has a narrative problem. Far too often, aid to Africa is envisioned through a tale of Western heroes saving African sufferers. While labeling white savior narratives has become a familiar gesture, it doesn’t tell us much about the story as story. Humanitarian Fictions aims to understand the workings of humanitarian literature, as they engage with and critique narratives of Africa. Overlapping with but distinct from human rights, humanitarianism centers on a relationship of assistance, focusing less on rights than on needs, less on legal frameworks than moral ones, less on the problem than on the nonstate solution. Tracing the white savior narrative back to religious missionaries of the nineteenth century, Humanitarian Fiction reveals the influence of religious thought on seemingly secular institutions and uncovers a spiritual, collectivist streak in the discourse of humanity. Because the humanitarian model of care transcends the boundaries of the state, and its networks touch much of the globe, Humanitarian Fictions redraws the boundaries of literary classification based on a shared problem space rather than a shared national space. The book maps a transnational vein of Anglophone literature about Africa that features missionaries, humanitarians, and their so-called beneficiaries. Putting humanitarian thought in conversation with postcolonial critique, this book brings together African, British, and U.S. writers typically read within separate traditions. Paustian shows how the novel—with its profound sensitivity to narrative—can enrich the critique of white saviorism while also imagining alternatives that give African agency its due.Table of ContentsIntroduction: The White Savior Narrative and the Third Sector Novel | 1 1. The Moral Cause | 33 2. The Emancipated African | 67 3. The Universal Human | 101 4. The Benevolent Gift | 134 5. The Nongovernmental Organization | 169 Epilogue: Rearticulating the Humanitarian Atlantic | 207 Acknowledgments | 215 Notes | 219 Works Cited | 251 Index | 267
£95.20
Wilfrid Laurier University Press Detecting Canada: Essays on Canadian Crime
Book SynopsisThe first serious book-length study of crime writing in Canada, Detecting Canada contains thirteen essays on many of Canada's most popular crime writers, including Peter Robinson, Giles Blunt, Gail Bowen, Thomas King, Michael Slade, Margaret Atwood, and Anthony Bidulka. Genres examined range from the well-loved police procedural and the amateur sleuth to those less well known, such as anti-detection and contemporary noir novels. The book looks critically at the esteemed sixties' television show Wojeck, as well as the more recent series Da Vinci's Inquest, Da Vinci's City Hall, and Intelligence, and the controversial Durham County, a critically acclaimed but violent television series that ran successfully in both Canada and the United States. The essays in Detecting Canada look at texts from a variety of perspectives, including postcolonial studies, gender and queer studies, feminist studies, Indigenous studies, and critical race and class studies. Crime fiction, enjoyed by so many around the world, speaks to all of us about justice, citizenship, and important social issues in an uncertain world.Trade Review"Writers of Canadian crime fiction have learned to gird our loins when we are asked a question that is as irritating as it is inevitable: When are you going to write a real novel? By offering not simply an overview of the history of crime fiction in Canada but thoughtful essays on the themes Canadian crime writers explore and on the roles played by landscape, gender, class, race, and community in our works, 'Detecting Canada' answers that question decisively. Canadian crime writers are writing real novels, and 'Detecting Canada' offers solid evidence to prove the point." -- Gail Bowen, author of 'The Gifted', the latest in the Joanne Kilbourn mystery series"'Detecting Canada' is an indispensable landmark in the study of Canadian crime narratives. Its range is remarkable, with the essays covering not only the major practitioners of Canadian crime fiction but also television crime shows and films. This collection will remain a standard resource for many years to come." -- David Schmid, Department of English, University at Buffalo, author of 'Natural Born Celebrities: Serial Killers in American Culture'Table of Contents Detecting Canada: Essays on Canadian Crime Fiction, Television, and Film, edited by Jeannette Sloniowski and Marilyn Rose Introduction Jeannette Sloniowski and Marilyn Rose History and Theory 1. Coca-Colonialists Write Back: Localizing the Global in Canadian Crime Fiction Beryl Langer 2. Canadian Crime Writing in English David Skene-Melvin Essays on Fiction 3. Canadian Psycho: Genre, Nation, and Colonial Violence in Michael Slade's Gothic RCMP Procedurals Brian Johnson 4. Northern Procedures: Policing the Nation in Giles Blunt's The Delicate Storm Manina Jones 5. Revisioning the Dick: Reading Thomas King's Thumps DreadfulWater Mysteries Jennifer Andrews and Priscilla L. Walton 6. Generic Play and Gender Trouble in Peter Robinson's In a Dry Season Jeannette Sloniowski 7. A Colder Kind of Gender Politics: Intersections of Feminism and Detection in Gail Bowen's Joanne Kilbourn Series Pamela Bedore 8. Queer Eye for the Private Eye: Homonationalism and the Regulation of Queer Difference in Anthony Bidulka's Russell Quant Mystery Series Péter Balogh 9. Under/Cover: Strategies of Detection and Evasion in Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace Marilyn Rose Essays on Television 10. Televising Toronto in the 1960s: Wojeck and the Urban Crime Genre Sarah A. Matheson 11. North of Quality? ""Quality"" Television and the Suburban Crimeworld of Durham County Lindsay Steenberg and Yvonne Tasker 12. Mounties and Metaphysics in Canadian Film and Television Patricia Gruben Contributors Index
£32.36
Purdue University Press Naciones Intelectuales: Las Fundaciones De La
Book SynopsisIn Naciones intelectuales, Ignacio M. Sanchez Prado explores the processes and works that laid the foundations of a new literary modernity in the wake of the Mexican Revolution. Focusing on a period that goes from the signing of the Constitution in 1917 to the death of Alfonso Reyes in 1959, Sanchez Prado centers his analysis on the way in which four elements of Mexican cultural practice - the notion of literature, the figure of the intellectual, the creation of academic institutions and the definition of national identity - emerged through the various debates held by leading figures of the period. Through an appropriation of Pierre Bourdieu's notion of 'literary field', the book analyzes different key moments, controversies, and cultural interventions, which ultimately led the diverse aesthetic spectrum created by the Revolution into becoming a highly institutional system of literature. Sanchez Prado's work deals with a wide range of writers, including Alfonso Reyes, Jorge Cuesta, Manuel Maples Arce, Ramon Lopez Velarde, Francisco Monterde, Jose Gaos, the Hiperion philosophers, and Octavio Paz. As a result, this books offers a cartography of Mexican literary institutions unprecedented in scope, which will allow readers, students, and scholars to understand the construction of modern Mexican literature in a clear, rigorous, and systematic way.
£32.26
Purdue University Press Genero, nacion y literatura: Emilia Pardo Bazan
Book SynopsisEmilia Pardo Bazan’s place in Spanish and Galician literatures has been hard won, and she has yet to receive the recognition she deserves. In Género, nación y literatura: Emilia Pardo Bazán en la literatura gallega y española, Carmen Pereira-Muro studies the work and persona of this fascinating author in the context of Spanish and Galician competing nationalisms. She re-reads the literary histories and national canons of Spain and Galicia as patriarchal master narratives that struggle to assimilate or silence Pardo Bazán’s alternative national project. Pereira-Muro argues that Pardo Bazán posited the inclusion of women in the national culture as a key step in circumventing the representational logic behind Realism and Liberalism in the modern nation-state. By insisting that women should be equal partners, Pardo Bazán problematically adopted the patriarchal binarism that assigns women to Nature and men to Culture, but she also subverted it by denying its supplemental relationship. Her astute choice and manipulation of masculine cultural models (Realism, not Romanticism; prose, not poetry; Castilian language, not Galician) ultimately won her—despite fierce opposition—inclusion in the Spanish national canon. Furthermore, the study of her thorny relations with emerging Galician nationalism shows that her exclusion from “Galician literature” was due largely to her transgressive gender performance. Finally Pereira-Muro contends that in the author’s last novel, Pardo Bazán experimented with creating a feminine writing and a feminine canon for Spain. Nevertheless, the prevailing gender politics ensured that only her realist (masculine) production made it into the Spanish canon, and not this last, modernist (feminine) writing. In conclusion, this book questions the naturalisation of national canons by uncovering the gender politics behind what is cast as naturally determined by language and geography. Doing this also exposes the parallel gender strictures at work behind seemingly opposed central (Spanish) and peripheral (Galician) national projects.
£999.99
University of Massachusetts Press Constructing the Little House: Gender, Culture and Laura Ingalls Wilder
Book SynopsisWriting from a feminist perspective, the author examines what is it about the ""Little House Series"" that accounts for its enduring commercial success. It examines both the content of the novels, the process of their creation, and what it demonstrates about the current trends of American culture.
£24.65
University of Massachusetts Press In the Master's Eye: Representations of Women,
Book Synopsis
£26.06
University of Massachusetts Press Ralph Ellison and the Genius of America
Book SynopsisRalph Ellison has long been admired as the author of one of the most important American novels of the twentieth century, Invisible Man. Yet he has also been dismissed by some critics as a writer who only published one major work of fiction and a black intellectual out of touch with his times. In this book, Timothy Parrish offers a fundamentally different assessment of Ellison’s legacy, describing him as the most important American writer since William Faulkner and someone whose political and cultural achievements have not been fully recognised. Embracing jazz artist Wynton Marsalis’s characterisation of Ellison as the unacknowledged “political theorist” of the civil rights movement, Parrish argues that the defining event of Ellison’s career was not Invisible Man but the 1954 Supreme Court decision that set his country on the road to racial integration. In Parrish’s view, no other American intellectual, black or white, better grasped the cultural implications of the new era than Ellison did; no other major American writer has been so misunderstood. Drawing on Ellison’s recently published “unfinished” novel, newly released archival materials, and unpublished correspondence, Parrish provides a sustained reconsideration of the writer’s crucial friendships with Richard Wright, Robert Penn Warren, and C. Vann Woodward to show how his life was dedicated to creating an American society in which all could participate equally. By resituating Ellison’s career in the historical context of its making, Parrish challenges the premises that distorted the writer’s reception in his own lifetime to make the case for Ellison as the essential visionary of post–Civil War America.
£21.80
University of South Carolina Press Reader's Companion to F.Scott Fitzgerald's
Book SynopsisTender is the Night, the novel F. Scott Fitzgerald worked longest and hardest on, has not achieved its proper recognition because the text is peppered with errors and chronological inconsistencies. Moreover, the novel has a concentration of references to people, places and events that most readers no longer recognize. In this guide to the novel, Matthew J. Bruccoli corrects those errors and explains the factual details. He also offers maps, photos, correspondence and notes that demystify the writing of one of literature's most misunderstood - and underrated - masterpieces.
£17.95
University of South Carolina Press Understanding Jill McCorkle
Book SynopsisUnderstanding Jill McCorkle introduces readers to the novels and short story collections of Jill McCorkle's growing canon. Since 1984 McCorkle has written five novels and two books of short stories, entering the publishing world, as one reviewer noted, ""with the literary equivalent of a rebel yell"". Filling the gap of critical study on McCorkle, Barbara Bennett analyzes the widely read and admired output of this prolific southern woman writer. Bennett identifies and discusses the diverse characters, thematic concerns and keen sense of language that distinguish McCorkle's work. Bennett offers a brief overview of McCorkle's life, traces the influence on her work, and places her decisively in the ""third generation"" of 20th-century southern writers. While noting McCorkle's links to such prominent southern women writers as Eudora Welty and Flannery O'Connor, Bennett explains how McCorkle's characterizations, attitude of affirmation and references to popular culture distance her from her predecessors. Bennett devotes individual chapters to each of McCorkle's novels and story collections. She discusses the themes that unify these diverse works, including the tension between independence and dependence, the imbuing presence of strength in femininity, the direct conflict between the nurturing of others and the preservation of self, and the opposition of purity and virginity to sexual freedom and expression. Bennett explores McCorkle's development of characters ranging from a young white girl approaching womanhood to a troubled middle-aged man reviewing his life's choices, from an elderly black woman on the verge of retirement to a yound minister struggling with his career path. She finds that in such rich and varied voices, McCorkle crafts stories of a region no longer burdened by the past but now grappling with ordinary family problems.
£32.36
University of South Carolina Press Understanding Ian McEwan
Book SynopsisThis is a discussion of the work of one of Britain's most highly regarded novelists and the winner of the 1998 Booker Prize. David Malcolm places Ian McEwan's work in the context of British literature's particular dynamism in the last decades of the 20th century. He also examines McEwan's relationship to feminism, concern with rationalism and science, use of moral perspective, and proclivity toward fragmentation. Malcolm offers close readings of McEwan's early short stories, which he recognizes as traditional and conservative in technique despite their shocking subject matter, and all of McEwan's novels. Employing the third novel, ""The Child in Time"", as the fulcrum for his discussion, Malcolm explores the themes of incest, espionage, moral self-flagellation, sexual fixation, political dysfunction, and personal antipathy evident in the other fiction. He illuminates the continuities obscured by the conventional approach to McEwan's fiction and raises the question whether McEwan is a novelist of brilliant fragments or of overall coherence.
£32.36
University of South Carolina Press Some Sort of Epic Grandeur: The Life of F.Scott
Book SynopsisThe standard work on Fitzgerald, revised, enlarged, and updated; Since its first publication in 1981, Some Sort of Epic Grandeur has stood apart from other biographies of F. Scott Fitzgerald for its thoroughness and volume of information. It is regarded today as the basic work on Fitzgerald and the preeminent source for the study of the novelist. In this second revised edition, Matthew J. Bruccoli provides new evidence discovered since its original edition. This new edition of Some Sort of Epic Grandeur improves, augments, and updates the standard biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald.Trade ReviewMatthew J. Bruccoli is always able to look through the events themselves to the essential fact about Fitzgerald: his existence as an artist, and not only to how it came about, but what it came to. Some sort of epic grandeur is exactly what Fitzgerald had. It is a perfect title for this book, for the grandeur is there, in the struggle to create memorable work. I fully expect that this will be the indispensable biography of a very great American writer, for the spirit of the man is in the facts, and these, as gathered and marshaled by Bruccoli over thirty years, are all we will ever need. But more important, they are what we need. - James Dickey; ""Impeccably researched...both comprehensive and judicious... Bruccoli brings Fitzgerald vividly alive."" - Newsweek; ""This masterpiece contains exactly what we need to know about this dazzling figure."" - Publishers Weekly; ""It is difficult to imagine any work on Fitzgerald and his literary product that will supplant this one."" - The New Yorker; ""Indispensable and definitive."" - The Times Literary Supplement
£27.16
University of South Carolina Press Understanding W.G.Sebald
Book SynopsisThis volume provides a dissection of W.G. Sebald's fiction and his acclaim. A German writer who taught in England for 30 years, he published four novels, first in German and then in English. His work gained even greater acclaim after his death in 2001, just months after the publication of his title ""Austerlitz"". This companion to his fiction investigates the secret behind his universal appeal and explores themes, issues, and influences that dominate the writer's oeuvre. It suggests that Sebald essentially had two literary careers - as his works appeared in German-speaking Europe and then in the English speaking world. It outlines the writer's reception in his homeland and in translation. It illuminates the vast knowledge of European literatures that Sebald drew upon in composing his narratives and also sheds light on the interconnections that lurk beneath the surface of the writer's landscapes and memoirs.
£32.36
University of South Carolina Press Understanding Martin Amis
Book SynopsisUnderstanding Martin Amis is a comprehensive guide to the novels, short stories and non-fiction by one of Britain's most highly acclaimed and controversial authors. Building on the first edition, of 1995, James Diedrick draws on personal interviews, reviews and criticism to map the distinctive features of Martin Amis's imaginative landscape - the sociosexual satire of ""Money"" and ""Yellow Dog"", the bold experimentation of ""Time's Arrow"" and ""Night Train"", and the provocative blend of autobiography and cultural analysis in ""Experience"" and ""Koba the Dread"". Diedrick illustrates how Amis has reshaped the British literary landscape, expanding its stylistic and thematic range while creating forms adequate to the experience of postmodernity. Diedrick analyzes an increasing cultural conservatism in Amis's work, rooted in Amis's relationship with his father, the novelist Kingsley Amis. During his early career, the younger Amis opposed his father's political and aesthetic conservatism. But his opposition has given way to frequent expressions of political and literary solidarity. Diedrick shows how this filial relationship continues to shape the son's outlook and writing. Diedrick also identifies two complementary impulses in Amis's work. The first is journalistic and satirical, expressed in an incisive wit aimed at contemporary social realities. The second is aesthetic, manifesting a Nabokovian love of verbal play and formal experimentation. Besides analyzing the ways Amis's fiction forges the topical into the literary, Diedrick argues for the importance of Amis's considerable journalistic oeuvre and provides close readings of his non-fiction collection and his uncollected essays and reviews.
£18.86
University of South Carolina Press Understanding Thomas Mann
Book SynopsisUnderstanding Thomas Mann offers a comprehensive guide to the novels, short stories, novellas, and nonfiction of one of the most renowned and prolific German writers. In addition to analyzing Mann's most famous works, including Buddenbrooks, Death in Venice, The Magic Mountain, and Doctor Faustus, Hannelore Mundt introduces readers to lesser-known works, among them Joseph and His Brothers, Lotte in Weimar, and The Black Swan. In close readings, Mundt illustrates how Mann's masterly prose captures both his time and the complexities of human existence with a unique blend of humor, compassion, irony, and ambiguity. Mundt takes readers chronologically from Mann's literary beginnings in 1894 to his last novel, Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man. She considers the influence of Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche on the emergence of Mann's literary voice, his conflicted feelings about his bourgeois background, and his life as Germany's representative writer in the Weimar Republic and in exile. Mundt places Mann's works in the realistic and modern traditions and discusses his recurring thematic concerns - the individual's rebellion against oppressive bourgeois conventions and antihumanistic principles, the need for an unremitting questioning of authority and ostensibly absolute truths, and the antagonism between individualistic freedom and social responsibility. In light of the recent publication of Mann's diaries, disclosing his homosexual inclinations, Mundt also identifies the textual strategies he adopted for revealing and simultaneously masking his secret sexuality. Mann emerges from Mundt's analysis as a writer who plays with opposing perspectives in his fictional renderings of both the alienated individual and Germany's cultural and political history. Mundt suggests that the openness of his works, paired with his deep insights into human existence, explains his stature as a literary figure whose importance extends worldwide.
£32.36
University of South Carolina Press The Matthew J. and Arlyn Bruccoli Collection of
Book SynopsisThis book provides a descriptive inventory of the major components in the Matthew J. and Arlyn Bruccoli Collection of F. Scott Fitzgerald in the Thomas Cooper Library at the University of South Carolina in Columbia. The collection documents the literary career and thought of one of America's greatest novelists. The catalogue includes a listing of editions of all English-language printings of books by Fitzgerald including proof and review copies and the collection's many books inscribed by the author. Fitzgerald manuscripts, revised typescripts, correspondence, and business documents are also cited, as well as Fitzgerald screenplays and Princetoniana. There is a separate section on Zelda Fitzgerald. Highlights of the collection include the only set of unrevised galleys for The Great Gatsby, titled Trimalchio; one of the two existing acting scripts for Fie! Fie! Fi-Fi!; Fitzgerald's annotated copy of James Joyce's Ulysses; a copy of Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls inscribed to Fitzgerald; and Fitzgerald memorabilia such as his engraved whiskey flask, a briefcase, and other family materials. Each item is described in detail - including title, publication information, and call number, where relevant, and explanatory notes. Many items in the collection, including all Fitzgerald inscriptions, are illustrated. The Matthew J. and Arlyn Bruccoli Collection of F. Scott Fitzgerald at the University of South Carolina provides a valuable resource not only for Fitzgerald scholars, but also for those interested in Fitzgerald's friends and literary associates (including Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Ring Lardner, John Dos Passos, and Maxwell Perkins) and in American culture between the world wars.
£42.70
University of South Carolina Press Understanding Penelope Fitzgerald
Book SynopsisPeter Wolfe's study of Penelope Fitzgerald's canon illuminates writings he characterizes as possessing unerring dramatic judgment, a friendly and fluid style, and lyrical and precise descriptive passages. In this survey of Fitzgerald's life and career, Wolfe explains how the British novelist brings resources of talent and craft, thought and feeling, courage and vulnerability, to the biographies and novels that have earned her renown. With readings of a broad range of her published works, including her final novel, The Blue Flower, Wolfe describes the unfolding of Fitzgerald's writing as a subtle, ongoing process. He maintains that the novels, though plain and rambling at first glance, grow fuller, stranger, and more stirring the more we invest in them. He details Fitzgerald's skill at sequencing events so as to unsettle readers and her ability to enhance motifs by not leaning too hard on them. Wolfe suggests that Fitzgerald's refusal to overplay effects and emotions, while at first puzzling in its disdain for drama, turns out to be one of her chief virtues, for she enables larger associations to emerge as she keeps big dramatic scenes from interfering with wider patterns. While enumerating Fitzgerald's many talents, Wolfe ultimately attributes much of her success to her style. He concludes that her exceptionally disciplined prose, which gives voice to her candor and compassion, imbues her work with a sense of mood, place, and character.
£32.36
University of South Carolina Press Understanding Contemporary American Science
Book SynopsisUnderstanding Contemporary American Science Fiction: The Age of Maturity, 1970-2000 explores the major trends and developments during three decades that witnessed science fiction's most dramatic progression from subliterary escapist entertainment to a more sophisticated literature of ideas. Darren Harris-Fain suggests that to understand American science fiction fully, it is essential to realize that the current field with all its variety results from the proceeding decades of writings. In addition, he contends that although much science fiction of merit was written in America prior to 1970, the latter decades of the twentieth century witnessed a dramatic improvement in quality, even as the field fragmented into a variety of subgenres and as writers sought to transcend earlier critical dismissals. Harris-Fain discusses significant and representative works, most of which mainstream literary scholars and critics ignore, as he charts the historical and literary development of contemporary American science fiction. He identifies influences and events central to the genre's growth, including the internal divisions along both literary and political lines experienced during the Vietnam era; the influence of the feminist movement and other contemporary concerns; the increasing contributions of female, African American, and gay and lesbian writers; and the emergence of such significant trends as hard science fiction, cyberpunk, alternate history, and shared-world stories. Harris-Fain also considers literary science fiction's relationship to the mass media, the effects the popularity of fantasy has on the field, and academia's continued misprizing of the genre.
£32.25
University of South Carolina Press Beyond Grief and Nothing: A Reading of Don
Book SynopsisIn the closing decade of the twentieth century, Don DeLillo emerged from the privileged status of a writer's writer to become by any measure - productivity, influence, scope, gravitas - the dominant novelist of fin-de-millennium America. Beginning in 1982 with ""The Names and continuing with White Noise and Underworld"", DeLillo defined himself as a provocative, articulate anatomist of American culture. Dewey offers an astute assessment of this daunting yet important writer's four-decade cultural critique. Dewey finds DeLillo's concerns to be organized around three rubrics that mark the writer's own creative evolution: the love of the street, the embrace of the word, and the celebration of the soul. Dewey takes the reader through the novelist's hip avant-garde satires of the mid-1960s, his dense interrogations of the power of language and the spell of narrative in the 1980s and 1990s, and his recent efforts to transcend the immediate. Dewey explores DeLillo's fascination with Eastern philosophies, interest in Native American traditions, passion for jazz, and deep roots in Catholicism.
£28.76
University of South Carolina Press Understanding Jamaica Kincaid
Book SynopsisUnderstanding Jamaica Kincaid introduces readers to the prizewinning author best known for the novels ""Annie John"", ""Lucy"", and ""The Autobiography of My Mother"". Justin D. Edwards surveys Jamaica Kincaid's life, career, and major works of fiction and nonfiction to identify and discuss her recurring interests in familial relations, Caribbean culture, and the aftermath of colonialism and exploitation. In addition to examining the haunting prose, rich detail, and personal insight that have brought Kincaid widespread praise, Edwards also identifies and analyzes the novelist's primary thematic concerns - the flow of power and the injustices faced by people undergoing social, economic, and political change. Edwards chronicles Kincaid's childhood in ""Antigua"", her development as a writer, and her early journalistic work as published in the ""New Yorker"" and other magazines. In separate chapters he provides critical appraisals of Kincaid's early novels; her works of nonfiction, including ""My Brother"" and ""A Small Place""; and her more recent novels, including ""Mr. Potter"". Edwards discusses the way in which Kincaid both exposes the problems of colonization and neocolonization and warns her readers about the dire consequences of inequality in the era of globalization.
£999.99
University of South Carolina Press The Way We Read James Dickey: Critical Approaches
Book SynopsisThis book offers original inroads to understanding the life and works of the celebrated novelist and poet. In ""The Way We Read James Dickey"" editors William B. Thesing and Theda Wrede have assembled an outstanding collection of current critical responses to the works of the acclaimed novelist, poet, and teacher, including essays by Dickey's former colleagues at the University of South Carolina and a piece by his most famous student, novelist Pat Conroy. The volume breaks new ground in the application of innovative critical approaches and restores Dickey to his rightful place in the literary canon as a remarkable writer who crafted some of the best poetry and fiction of the twentieth century. A decade after Dickey's death and thirty-five years after the release of the film version of his famous novel Deliverance, Dickey remains a controversial figure in the American literary landscape. He was an intellectual maverick who was often ahead of his time, and yet he responded intensely, almost obsessively, to his own changing times. Thesing and Wrede argue that, although he appeared to conform to poetic conventions, his writing was a visionary reinterpretation and extension of preexisting traditions. This tension between a poet's intellectual precursors and the radical innovation of his work is the inspiration behind the fresh approaches taken by the contributors in this volume, just as it energized Dickey's own endeavors. The essays offer original insights through emerging scholarly perspectives as well as through established methods of critique. The contributors address a range of themes in Dickey's works, including gender, religion, humanity's relationship to nature, and the writer's cultural context. This landmark reappraisal of Dickey's legacy offers readers a coherent forum that addresses why his writings remain relevant today, thus restoring and revaluing the rising significance of Dickey's literary achievement for twenty-first-century audiences.
£35.96
University of South Carolina Press Understanding Joseph Heller
Book SynopsisThis is a critical survey of the complete body of work by the author of ""Catch-22"". In this revised edition, Sanford Pinsker explores the idiosyncratic vision that permeates Heller's writings, as he maps the dark terrain Heller carved out, novel by novel, with considerable verbal dazzle and the uncompromising outrage of the classical satirist. This updated edition includes new chapters on Closing Time, the sequel to ""Catch-22""; ""Now and Then"", Heller's memoir of growing up in Brooklyn; Portrait of an Artist, as an Old Man, his posthumously published novel; and ""Catch as Catch Can"", a collection of assorted short stories and sketches.Trade ReviewNicely balancing description with discovery, Pinsker's lively and wide-ranging study not only examines the themes and rhetorical strategies through which Heller projects his satiric vision but also locates them within the cultural context that both shapes our literature and determines, in part, what it is capable of. - Modern Fiction Studies
£20.66
University of South Carolina Press Understanding Tim Gautreaux
Book SynopsisThis book offers an introduction to the works of a Cajun writer who finds optimism in his blue-collar tales. Margaret Donovan Bauer presents the first book-length study of the Louisiana storyteller, who injects a seldom heard Cajun voice into Southern literature and offers a rare optimistic vision among other contemporary writers of the hardscrabble American South. Bauer surveys Tim Gautreaux's three novels - ""The Next Step in the Dance"", ""The Clearing, and ""The Missing"" - and two collections of short fiction - ""Same Place, Same Things"" and ""Welding with Children"" - to identify his major themes, character types, and structures. She views his chief contribution to Southern letters to be an authentic insider's view of Cajun culture, one resulting in a skillful, realistic, and sympathetic vision of historical and contemporary Acadiana in flux. Bauer addresses how Gautreaux's hopeful vision distinguishes him from other contemporary writers of the blue-collar South. She views Gautreaux's poor white protagonists as action-oriented characters who, while trapped by circumstances, still strive to affect positive change in their lives.
£999.99
University of South Carolina Press Flannery O'Connor, Hermit Novelist
Book SynopsisThis is a 2001 Choice Outstanding Academic Title. It is a compelling study of O'Connor's fiction as illuminated by the teaching of the desert monastics. 'Lord, I'm glad I'm a hermit novelist', Flannery O'Connor wrote to a friend in 1957. Sequestered by ill health, O'Connor spent the final thirteen years of her life on her isolated family farm in rural Georgia. During this productive time she developed a fascination with fourth-century Christians who retreated to the desert for spiritual replenishment and whose isolation, suffering, and faith mirrored her own. In ""Flannery O'Connor"", Hermit Novelist, Richard Giannone explores O'Connor's identification with these early Christian monastics and the ways in which she infused her fiction with their teachings. Surveying the influences of the desert fathers on O'Connor's protagonists, Giannone shows how her characters are moved toward a radical simplicity of ascetic discipline as a means of confronting both internal and worldly evils while being drawn closer to God. Artfully bridging literary analysis, O'Connor's biography, and monastic writings, Giannone's study explores O'Connor's advocacy of self-denial and self-scrutiny as vital spiritual weapons that might be brought to bear against the antagonistic forces she found rampant in modern American life.
£26.55
University of South Carolina Press Understanding Iris Murdoch
Book SynopsisA dominant figure of postwar British literature, Iris Murdoch (1919-1999) wrote more than twenty-five novels, a collection of poems, and a half-dozen philosophical studies..In Understanding Iris Murdoch, Cheryl Bove divides Murdoch's work into two broad categories--the ironic tragedy and the bittersweet comedy--to examine the reasons why her work continues to attract such a large following. A writer of consistently readable novels who fashions gripping narratives and vivid characters, Murdoch presents readers with moral problems upon which she allows her audience to pass judgment. Bove summarizes Murdoch's work not as an effort to advance a cause, expand a philosophy, or portray a society, but to present human relationships and solve fictional problems of plot and theme.
£18.86
University of South Carolina Press Reading the World: Cormac McCarthy's Tennessee
Book SynopsisExplores the historical and philosophical contexts of Cormac McCarthy's early works to demonstrate he integrates literary realism with the imagery and myths of Platonic, gnostic, and existentialist philosophies to create a unique vision of the world.
£19.76
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Modernism and Tradition in Ernest Hemingway's In
Book SynopsisA handbook to Hemingway's famous collection of short stories that emphasizes its status as a modernist masterwork. The volume of collected short stories and vignettes In Our Time was Ernest Hemingway's first commercial publication. Its appearance in 1925 launched the full-fledged literary career of this century's most famous American fiction writer. And while other later works of Hemingway have eclipsed In Our Time's fame, none of Hemingway's subsequent works would again carry the degree of experimentation found in this distinctly modernist masterwork. Modernism and Tradition in Ernest Hemingway's In Our Time: A Guide for Students and Readers is a well-paced, lucidly written handbook intended to guide university students and teaching faculty towards a better understanding of this complex work. It provides a reading of each story and vignette, while simultaneously stressing the status of In Our Time as a discrete volume. Included are discussions of the book's biographical and historical background, and considerations of Hemingway's prose style, theories of writing, formal achievements, his literary mentors and influences, and the relation between In Our Time and his later works. Matthew C. Stewart isAssociate Professor of Humanities and Rhetoric at Boston University.
£23.74
Boydell & Brewer Ltd The Canadian Short Story: Interpretations
Book SynopsisThe first anthology of critical interpretations of major Canadian short stories. Beginning in the 1890s, reaching its first full realization by modernist writers in the 1920s, and brought to its heyday during the Canadian Renaissance starting in the 1960s, the short story has become Canada's flagship genre. Itcontinues to attract the country's most accomplished and innovative writers today, among them Margaret Atwood, Mavis Gallant, Alice Munro, Clark Blaise, and many others. Yet in contrast to the stature and popularity of the genreand the writers who partake in it, surprisingly little literary criticism has been devoted to the Canadian short story. This book redresses that imbalance by providing the first collection of critical interpretations of thirty well-known and often-anthologized Canadian short stories from the genre's beginnings through the twentieth century. A historical survey of the genre introduces the volume and a timeline comparing the genre's development in Canada, the US, and Great Britain completes it. Geared both to specialists in and students of Canadian literature, the volume is of particular benefit to the latter because it provides not only a collection of interpretations, but a comprehensive introduction to the history of the Canadian short story. Contributors: Reingard M. Nischik, Martina Seifert, Heinz Antor, Julia Breitbach, Konrad Gross, Paul Goetsch, Dieter Meindl, Nina Kück, Stefan Ferguson, Rudolf Bader, Fabienne C. Quennet, Martin Kuester, Jutta Zimmermann, Sylvia Mergenthal, Caroline Rosenthal, Wolfgang Klooss, Lothar Hönnighausen, Heinz Ickstadt, Heinz Ickstadt, Gordon Bölling, Christina Strobel, Waldemar Zacharasiewicz, Nadja Gernalzick, Eva Gruber, Brigitte Glaser, Georgiana Banita. Reingard M. Nischik is Professor of American Literature at the University of Konstanz, Germany.Trade ReviewRemarkably accessible, ... generally shies away from unnecessary verbosity or jargon.... ideal for scholars interested in introductory overviews ... and for undergraduate courses... though it also extends beyond introductions....Shows the breadth and depth of the Canadian short story from a wide range of perspectives, theories, and approaches. * H-NET REVIEWS *Canadian critics ... should welcome ... a big, handsomely produced book, [evidence of the international appreciation of the Canadian short story, appreciation that has often been touted but never demonstrated].... Impressive throughout is each contributor's knowledge of the writer and the amount of research done in secondary criticism.... * AMERICAN REVIEW OF CANADIAN STUDIES *The interpretations ... are careful, compelling, accessible, and attentive to previous critics. * CHOICE *A welcome addition to any library and a good point-of-departure for any student interested in one of the authors it includes. * ANGLISTIK *With this thoughtfully designed and researched collection, Reingard M. Nischik and her CanLit team from the European German-speaking countries make a major contribution to the undeservedly small canon of literary criticism on Canadian short fiction. * DALHOUSIE REVIEW *A magisterial, formidable volume . . . a milestone in Canadian Studies worldwide. * ZEITSCHRIFT FUER KANADA-STUDIEN *[W]ill help students and scholars to refresh and complete their knowledge of the stories as well as discover their originality. Offers a panoramic view . . . highly welcome as a reference book. . . Very useful as a truly informative overview gifted with extremely perceptive approaches to the stories which make us 'feel the road' as we read on. * CANADIAN LITERATURE *Table of ContentsThe Canadian Short Story: Status, Criticism, Historical Survey - Reingard M. Nischik Canadian Animal Stories: Charles G.D. Roberts, "Do Seek Their Meat from God" (1892) - Martina Seifert Tory Humanism, Ironic Humor, and Satire: Stephen Leacock, "The Marine Excursion of the Knights of Pythias" (1912) - Heinz Antor The Beginnings of Canadian Modernism: Raymond Knister, "The First Day of Spring" (written 1924/25) - Julia Breitbach From Old World Aestheticist Immoralist to Prairie Moral Realist: Frederick Philip Grove, "Snow" (1926/32) - Konrad Gross Psychological Realism, Immigration, and City Fiction: Morley Callaghan, "Last Spring They Came Over" (1927) - Paul Goetsch Modernism, Prairie Fiction, and Gender: Sinclair Ross, "The Lamp at Noon" (1938) - Dieter Meindl "An Artful Artlessness": Ethel Wilson, "We Have to Sit Opposite" (1945) - Nina Kuck Social Realism and Compassion for the Underdog: Hugh Garner, "One-Two-Three Little Indians" (1950) - Stefan Ferguson The Perils of Human Relationships: Joyce Marshall, "The Old Woman" (1952) - Rudolf Bader The Social Critic at Work: Mordecai Richler, "Benny, the War in Europe, and Myerson's Daughter Bella" (1956) - Fabienne C. Quennet Myth and the Postmodernist Turn in Canadian Short Fiction: Sheila Watson, "Antigone" (1959) - Martin Kuester The Modernist Aesthetic: Hugh Hood, "Flying a Red Kite" (1962) - Jutta Zimmermann Doing Well in the International Thing?: Mavis Gallant, "The Ice Wagon Going Down the Street" (1963) - Silvia Mergenthal (Un-) Doing Gender: Alice Munro, "Boys and Girls" (1964) - Reingard M. Nischik Collective Memory and Personal Identity in the Prairie Town of Manawaka: Margaret Laurence, "The Loons" (1966) - Caroline Rosenthal "Out of Place": Clark Blaise, "A Class of New Canadians" (1970) - Wolfgang Klooss Realsim and Parodic Postmodernism: Audrey Thomas, "Aquarius" (1971) - Lothar Honnighausen "The Problem Is to Make the Story": Rudy Wiebe, "Where Is the Voice Coming From?" (1971) - Heinz Ickstadt The Canadian Writer as Expatriate: Norman Levine, "We All Begin in a Little Magazine" (1972) - Gordon Bolling Canadian Artist Stories: John Metcalf, "The Strange Aberration of Mr. Ken Smythe" (1973) - Reingard M. Nischik "A Literature of a Whole World and of a Real World": Jane Rule, "Lilian" (1977) - Christina Strobel Failure as Liberation: Jack Hodgins, "The Concert Stages of Europe" (1978) - Waldemar Zacharasiewicz Figures in a Landscape: William Dempsey Valgardson, "A Matter of Balance" (1982) - Maria Loschnigg Figures in a Landscape: William Dempsey Valgardson, "A Matter of Balance" (1982) - Martin Loschnigg "The Translation of the World into Words" and the Female Tradition: Margaret Atwood, "Significant Moments in the Life of My Mother" (1983) - Reingard M. Nischik "Southern Preacher": Leon Rooke, "The Woman Who Talked to Horses" (1984) - Nadja Gernalzick Nativeness as Third Space: Thomas King, "Borders" (1991) - Eva Gruber Digressing to Inner Worlds: Carol Shields, "Our Men and Women" (1999) - Brigitte Glaser A Sentimental Journey: Janice Kulyk Keefer, "Dreams:Storms:Dogs" (1999) - Georgiana Banita Further Reading on the Canadian Short Story Time Chart: The Short Story in the USA, Canada, and Great Britain Notes on the Contributors Index
£36.00
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Popular Revenants: The German Gothic and Its
Book SynopsisThe first book in English on the German Gothic in over thirty years, consisting of new essays investigating the internationality of the Gothic mode. The literary mode of the Gothic is well established in English Studies, and there is growing interest in its internationality. Gothic fiction is seen as transgressive, especially in the way it crosses borders, often illicitly -- for instance, in the form of plagiarized texts or pseudo-translations of nonexistent sources. In the 1790s, when the English Gothic novel was emerging, the real or ostensible source of many of these uncanny texts was Germany. Thisfirst book in English dedicated to the German Gothic in over thirty years is aimed at students and researchers in German Studies and English Studies, and redresses deficiencies in existing sources, which are outdated, piecemeal, or not sufficiently grounded in German Studies. The book examines the international reception of German Gothic since the 1790s heyday of the Gothic novel in Britain and Germany; traces a line of Gothic writing in German to thepresent day; and inquires into the extraliterary impact of German Gothic. Thus the essays do full justice to the Gothic as a site of conflict and exchange -- both between cultures and between discourses. Contributors:Peter Arnds, Silke Arnold-de Simine, Jürgen Barkhoff, Matthias Bickenbach, Andrew Cusack, Mario Grizelj, Jörg Kreienbrock, Barry Murnane, Victor Sage, Monika Schmitz-Emans, Catherine Smale, Andrew Webber Andrew Cusack is Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow at the Institut für Kulturwissenschaft of the Humboldt-Universität Berlin. Barry Murnane is Assistant Professor of German and Comparative Literature at the Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, Germany.Trade ReviewThe collection as a whole points to the demand for a broader critical discourse on the Gothic within Germanistik and to some of the main questions that derive from here: how to trace the 'birth' of the German Gothic from the affect-based spirit of the late Enlightenment; how to chart its strategies of production and dissemination against terminological confusions, gaps, and silences in its international reception; and how to construct its diverse cultural genealogies beyond the framework of literary romanticism. * SEMINAR *[A] splendid collection of critical essays in the field of reception theory. . . . [A]n impressive assembly of critical voices, whose first-rate scholarly contribution is meant to last. * BRITISH ASSOCIATION FOR ROMANTIC STUDIES BULLETIN AND REVIEW *[T]he volume shows in a convincing and highly interesting way the legacy of the German Schauerroman, not only in other literatures but also in German from the early nineteenth century to the present. * YEAR'S WORK IN MODERN LANGUAGE STUDIES *[P]rovides concrete evidence of Slavoj Zizek's claim, in Paul A. Taylor's words, that 'a full understanding of what it is to experience reality as a human being requires acknowledgment that the spectral has a very real effect. -- Michael Minden * MODERN LANGUAGE REVIEW *[A] polished, cohesive body of work . . . . Overall Cusack and Murnane have succeeded in assembling an important volume that addresses a significant lack in German Studies scholarship. . . . With its useful methodology and rich body of research, Popular Revenants will hopefully pave the way for future studies into the influence of German gothic 'revenants' . . . . * JOURNAL OF EUROPEAN STUDIES *[The editors] gather 13 essays that plumb the production of writers like Schiller, Heine, Schumann, Poe, Walter Scott, Hoffmann, and Raabe. . . . A worthy reentry into a forgotten field, this study with its fine index, footnotes, and comprehensive bibliography fills an egregious lacuna. . . . Recommended. * CHOICE *[A]n indispensable, highly relevant guide that clearly shows the strong influence of the Germanic strain of horror on the genre we know today. * RUE MORGUE MAGAZINE *Table of ContentsIntroduction - Andrew Cusack Haunting (Literary) History: An Introduction toGerman Gothic - Barry Murnane "The echo of the question, as if it had merely resoundedin a tomb": The Dark Anthropology of the Schauerroman in Schiller's Der Geisterseher - Jürgen Barkhoff Blaming the Other: English Translations of Benedikte Naubert's Hermann von Unna (1788/1794) - Silke Arnold-de Simine Scott, Hoffmann, and the Persistence of the Gothic - Victor Sage Cultural Transfer in the Dublin University Magazine: James Clarence Mangan and the German Gothic - Andrew Cusack In the Maelstrom of Interpretation: Reshaping Terror and Horror between 1798 and 1838 - Gleich, Hoffmann, Poe - Mario Grizelj Popular Ghosts: Heinrich Heine on German Geistesgeschichteas Gothic Novel - Jorg Kreienbrock The Spirit World of Art and Robert Schumann's Gothic Novel Project: The Impact of Gothic Literature onSchumann's Writings - Monika Schmitz-Emans About Face: E. T. A. Hoffmann, Weimar Film, and theTechnological Afterlife of Gothic Physiognomy - Andrew J. Webber Of Rats, Wolves, and Men: The Pied Piper as Gothic Revenantand Provenant in Wilhelm Raabe's Die Hämelschen Kinder - Peter Arnds The Lady in White or the Laws of the Ghost in Theodor Fontane's Vor dem Sturm - Matthias Bickenbach On Golems and Ghosts: Prague as a Site of Gothic Modernism - Barry Murnane "Ein Gespenst geht um": Christa Wolf, Irina Liebmann, and the Post-Wall Gothic - Catherine Smale Works Cited Notes on Contributors Index
£89.10
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Metamorphoses of the Vampire in Literature and
Book SynopsisThe first study to propose a unifying logic underlying the many and varied representations of the vampire in literature and culture. For the last three hundred years, fictions of the vampire have fed off anxieties about cultural continuity. Though commonly represented as a parasitic aggressor from without, the vampire is in fact a native of Europe, and its "metamorphoses," to quote Baudelaire, a distorted image of social transformation. Because the vampire grows strong whenever and wherever traditions weaken, its representations have multiplied with every political, economic, and technological revolution from the eighteenth century on. Today, in the age of globalization, vampire fictions are more virulent than ever, and the monster enjoys hunting grounds as vast as the international market. Metamorphoses of the Vampire explains why representations of vampirism began in the eighteenth century, flourished in the nineteenth, and came to eclipse nearly all other forms of monstrosity in the early twentieth century. Many of the works by French and German authors discussed here have never been presented to students and scholars in the English-speaking world. While there are many excellent studies that examine Victorian vampires, the undead in cinema, contemporary vampire fictions, and the vampire in folklore, until now no work has attempted to account for the unifying logic that underlies the vampire's many and often apparently contradictory forms. Erik Butler holds a PhDfrom Yale University and has taught at Emory University and Swarthmore College. His publications include The Bellum Gramaticale and the Rise of European Literature (2010) and a translation with commentary of Regrowth (Vidervuks) by the Soviet Jewish author Der Nister (2011).Trade Review[S]ucceeds in bringing a wealth of new voices from French and German scholarship to a field mostly dominated by English-language research. . . . [B]rings together a wealth of exciting literary, biographical, and filmic material . . . . [S]cholars and students interested in the monster will no doubt enjoy reading this book, and its individual chapters on the likes of Dracula and Nosferatu are a highly recommended read for courses on the subject. * MODERN LANGUAGE REVIEW *[C]overs a lot of ground. . . . [E]specially informative for classroom use. * MONATSHEFTE *Butler brings to the feast . . . a rare cross-cultural perspective. . . . He also, and very convincingly, calls attention to the instability of genre that haunts vampire narratives . . . . Not merely a contribution to the cultural explication of the vampire, [this book] also touches on . . . broader . . . social transformations of both eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe . . . with elegance and intelligence. * VICTORIAN STUDIES *Butler's analyses of the development of vampire literature in the European tradition - most notably in France and Germany - are the most distinctive. . . A valuable contribution. * CHOICE *Butler's study shows conclusively that the term 'vampire' represents a construct that has been exposed over the centuries to semantic and medial processes of change while mirroring and intensifying them in a cultural sense. . . . [T]he work [also] shows that vampires as a popular export of the Hollywood film industry are returning above all to the place from which they emerged in the eighteenth century to conquer the world: to Europe. * LITERATURKRITIK.DE *Butler, one of the most promising American comparatists of the last generation, has written an extremely enjoyable book. . . . [He] uses the tools of history and geography to read the figure of the vampire. His study might also be called: 'The Vampire: A Political History. * ILSOLE24ORE.COM *Provides interesting analyses of the . . . discourses shaping the vampire, and uncovers fascinating cross currents. * GERMAN QUARTERLY *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Cultural Teratology Vampire Country: Borders of Culture and Power in Central Europe Vampires and Satire in the Enlightenment and Romanticism The Bourgeois Vampire and Nineteenth-Century Identity Theft Dracula: Vampiric Contagion in the Late Nineteenth Century Vampirism, the Writing Cure, and Realpolitik: Daniel Paul Schreber's Memoirs of My Nervous Illness Vampires in Weimar: Shades of History Conclusion: The Vampire in the Americas and Beyond Works Cited Filmography Index
£26.09
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Suicide in East German Literature: Fiction,
Book SynopsisThis first book-length study of fictional suicides in East German literature provides insight into the complex and dynamic rhetoric of the GDR and the literariness of its literature. The many fictional suicides in the literature of the German Democratic Republic have been greatly misunderstood. The common assumption is that authoritarian oppression in East Germany led to an anomalous abundance of real suicides, so that fictional suicides in GDR literature constitute a simple, realistic reflection of East German society. Robert Blankenship challenges this assumption by providing both a history of suicide in GDR literature and close readings of individual texts, revealing that suicides in GDR literature, rather than simply reflecting historical suicides, contain rich literary attributes such as intertextuality, haunting, epistolarity, and unorthodox narrative strategies. Such literariness offered subversive potential beyond suggesting that real people killed themselves in a communist country. This first book-length study of fictional suicides in East German literature provides insight into the complex and dynamic rhetoric of the GDR. Blankenship's underlying claim is that GDR literature ought to be read as literature, with literary methodology, not despite the country's politically and rhetorically charged nature,but precisely because of it. Suicide in East German Literature will be of interest to scholars of GDR literature, humanities-oriented scholars of suicide, and those who are interested in the complex relationship between literature and history. Robert Blankenship is Assistant Professor of German at California State University, Long Beach.Trade Review[An] intriguing and thought-provoking study . . . -- Stephen Brockmann * MONATSHEFTE *From the starting-point of Honecker's Taboo speech in December 1971, Blankenship demonstrates how Plenzdorf, Heiduczek, Wolf, Müller, Muthesius, and Hein use the subversive potential of intertextual references to portrayals of suicide by authors who belong, according to culture-political doctrine, to the 'classical heritage' (Goethe, Thomas Mann, Shakespeare) or are excluded from it (Günderrode, Kleist). . . . Indicates the potential that the topic 'suicide' still holds in GDR literature. -- Paul Onasch * GERMANISTIK *Blankenship's exclusive focus on the literariness of GDR fiction and his dedication to appreciating this literature for its aesthetic value not only offer new insights into the texts he examines, but foster a better understanding of GDR literary history more generally. * GERMAN STUDIES REVIEW *Blankenship's thesis that fictional suicides enable the transmission of a cultural counter-memory in East German literature is suggestive and produces some provocative insights . . . . * GERMAN QUARTERLY *The outcomes of Blankenship's sequence of analyses are, for the most part, very impressive. * JOURNAL OF EUROPEAN STUDIES *[A] valuable book. Blankenship is extremely knowledgeable, both on modern and older literature, as well as in the area of literary theory. His major aim to point to the literary qualities of GDR literature, or at least of selected works, is laudable as a counter to the tendency to dismiss every aspect of that now vanished country. * JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY EUROPEAN STUDIES] *[I]ntellectually stimulating . . . . This study serves as a welcome complement to the understanding of fictional suicides as a realistic response to the dilemmas of everyday life under a Communist dictatorship. * SLAVONIC AND EASTERN EUROPEAN REVIEW *Table of ContentsIntroduction: The Rhetoric of Suicide in East Germany Suicide as an Anti-Fascist Literary Trope: 1945-71 Suicide and the Fluidity of Literary Heritage: Ulrich Plenzdorf's Die neuen Leiden des jungen W. Remembering to Death: Werner Heiduczek's Tod am Meer Suicide and the Reevaluation of Classicism: Christa Wolf's Kein Ort. Nirgends Suicidal Voices: Heiner Müller's Hamletmaschine and Sibylle Muthesius's Flucht in die Wolken Specters of Suicide: Christoph Hein's Horns Ende Conclusion: The Reality of Fictional Suicides Epilogue: The Literariness of East German Literature Notes Bibliography Index
£76.50
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Detectives, Dystopias, and Poplit: Studies in
Book SynopsisThe first broad treatment of German genre fiction, containing innovative new essays on a variety of genres and foregrounding concerns of gender, environmentalism, and memory. Some of the most exciting research and teaching in the field of German Studies is being done on "genre fiction," including detective fiction, science fiction, and what is often called "poplit," to name but a few. Such non-canonical literature has long been marginalized by the German tradition of Bildung and the disciplinary practice of German literary studies (Germanistik). Even today, when the examination of non-canonical texts is well established and uncontroversial in other academic contexts, such texts remain understudied in German. And yet, the trend toward "German Studies" and "cultural studies" approaches within the field has raised considerable interest in theanalysis of genre fiction, resulting in both a great deal of new scholarship and a range of new courses. This first broad treatment of German genre fiction brings together innovative new scholarship, foregrounding themes of gender, environmentalism, and memory. It is an ideal companion to research and teaching. Written in accessible English, it speaks to a wide variety of disciplines beyond German Studies. Contributors: Bruce B. Campbell, Ray Canoy, Kerry Dunne, Sonja Fritzsche, Maureen O. Gallagher, Adam R. King, Molly Knight, Vibeke Rützou Petersen, Evan Torner, and Ailsa Wallace. Bruce B. Campbell is Associate Professor of German Studies at the College ofWilliam and Mary. Alison Guenther-Pal is Assistant Professor of German and Film Studies at Lawrence University. Vibeke Rützou Petersen is Professor Emerita of Women's Studies at Drake University.Trade Review[T]his anthology capably argues for the inclusion of non-canonical texts in contemporary German Studies scholarship. [It] open[s] the door for future scholarly investigation of these primary texts and many others that have traditionally belonged to categories of Trivialliteratur or pulp ?ction. The editors and contributors succeeded in their aim to break with that tradition and to inaugurate a new one. * MONATSHEFT *[R]ich and diverse . . . highly recommended for researchers of genre ?ction, whether working in German Studies or beyond: quotations are provided in German and English, and [an] extensive bibliography[y] direct[s] readers to resources in both languages. Detectives, Dystopias and Poplit invites researchers in one area of genre ?ction to enrich their understanding of the ?eld by learning about others. Seeing how the di?erent genres of crime, science ?ction, and poplit have addressed shared themes such as history, identity, and politics proves to be highly illuminating. -- Katharina Hall * MODERN LANGUAGE REVIEW *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Closing a Bildungslücke - Genre Fiction and Why It Is Important German Science Fiction: Its Formative Works and Its Postwar Uses of the Holocaust A Future History Out of Time: The Historical Context of Döblin's Expressionist Dystopian Experiment, Berge Meere und Giganten Eco-Eschbach: Sustainability in the Science Fiction of Andreas Eschbach Murder in the Weimar Republic: Prejudice, Politics, and the Popular in the Socialist Crime Fiction of Hermynia Zur Mühlen The Imaginary FBI: Jerry Cotton, the Nazi Roots of the Bundeskriminalamt, and the Cultural Politics of Detective Fiction in West Germany Justice and Genre: The Krimi as a Site of Memory in Contemporary Germany Detecting Identity: Reading the Clues in German-Language Crime Fiction by Klüpfel and Kobr and Steinfest The Pedagogy of Pulp: Liberated Sexuality and Its Consequences Through the Eyes of Vicki Baum's stud. chem. Helene Willfüer The Kränzchen Library and the Creation of Teenage Identity Close the Border, Mind the Gap: Pop Misogyny and Social Critique in Christian Kracht's Faserland Bibliography Notes on the Contributors Index
£89.10
Boydell & Brewer Ltd European Perspectives on John Updike
Book SynopsisA collection of essays that perceive Updike's America through the eyes of Western and Eastern European readers and scholars, contributing to Updike scholarship while demonstrating his resonance across the Atlantic. From the publication in 1958 of his first book, The Carpentered Hen and Other Tame Creatures, the American writer John Updike attracted an international readership. His books have been translated into twenty-three languages. He had a strong following in the United Kingdom, where his books were routinely reviewed in all the leading national newspapers. In Germany, France, Italy, and other countries too, his books were discussed in major publications. Although Updike died in 2009, interest in his writing remains strong among European scholars. They are active in the John Updike Society and on the John Updike Review (which began publishing in 2011). During the past four decades, several Europeans have influenced the study of Updike worldwide. No recent volume, however, collects diverse European views on his oeuvre. The current book fills that void, presenting essays that perceive Updike's renditions of America through the eyes of scholar-readers from both Western and Eastern Europe. Contributors: Kasia Boddy, Teresa Botelho, Biljana Dojcinovic, Brian Duffy, Karin Ikas, Ulla Kriebernegg, Sylvie Mathé, Judie Newman, Sue Norton, Andrew Tate, Aristi Trendel, Eva-Sabine Zehelein. Laurence W. Mazzeno is President Emeritus of Alvernia University. Sue Norton is a Lecturer in English at the Dublin Institute of Technology.Trade ReviewThis book doesn't just cover new critical ground - it's an eye-opening take on an author whose fiction has been associated with American pop culture as much as anyone's. Especially in this new climate of nationalism it's an important reminder that opinions can and do vary according to culture and geography, and that we can learn much about ourselves and our treasured authors through volumes such as this.- -- James Plath, Illinois Wesleyan UniversityThis is a timely and smart collection that wonderfully illuminates the diverse critical response that Updike's fiction has generated outside of the United States. The twelve essays in the book fruitfully revisit the themes (sex, mortality, aging, religion) that were most central to Updike's immense body of work while also shedding light on new avenues of inquiry that future scholars might pursue. Indeed, the volume offers a revealing overview of what made Updike one of the most important writers of his generation. A thoughtful and important collection for those interested in Updike and post-1945 American fiction. - -- Matthew Shipe, Washington University in St. Louis[This] well-edited collection provides further evidence of Updike's enduring popularity outside the US. * CHOICE *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Updike as Europeans See Him - Laurence W. Mazzeno and Sue Norton Under His Skin: Reconstructing the Adolescent Longings of a Would-Be Terrorist - Teresa Botelho "At the other end of life's rainbow": Rabbit's Journey from Adolescence to Old Age and Other Transcendental Trajectories - Eva-Sabine Zehelein Intimations of Mortality: Death's Shadow in Updike's Oeuvre - Sylvie Mathé Back to the Garden: American Longing in John Updike's Couples - Sue Norton Women in John Updike's Villages: Back to the Madonna and Whore - Brian Duffy The Art of Love: Pierre Bourdieu, Cultural Production, and Seek My Face - Karin Ikas Psalmist of the Everyday: Late Updike, Aesthetics, and the Language of Praise - Andrew Tate Guilt, Shame, and Hope in Updike's Short Fiction: "The Music School," "Guilt-Gems," and "Deaths of Distant Friends" - Aristi Trendel Signs of Omission?: Socialist Erasure of Religion in John Updike's Work - Biljana Dojcinovic "Hey, Come on, We're All Americans Here": The Representation of Muslim-American Identity in John Updike's Terrorist - Ulla Kriebernegg Intertextual Updike: Gertrude and Claudius - Judie Newman Rabbit and the News - Kasia Boddy
£81.00
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Business Rhetoric in German Novels: From
Book SynopsisArgues on the evidence of nine major German novels that literature and business have in common a reliance on language, understood in a creative, performative, and rhetorical sense. Throughout the twentieth century and well into the twenty-first, Germany has maintained its position as one of the world's largest economies. In the literature of this period, business is often depicted as a performance that requires great linguistic skill. This book is a study of the representation of business practices in nine German-language novels - published during the period from 1901 to 2013 - that explore how language is used rhetorically in pursuit of economic and political agendas. Taken up as case studies, in chronological order, the novels are by Thomas Mann, Heinrich Mann, Gabriele Tergit, Bertolt Brecht, Ingeborg Bachmann, Hermann Kant, Friedrich Christian Delius, Kathrin Röggla, and Philipp Schönthaler, all of whom articulate cultural imaginaries and political ideologies at key moments in recent German history. In doing so, they challenge readers to refine their own interpretive skills. By considering business rhetoric in the novels, Ernest Schonfield shows how the formulation of language remains inseparable from the exercise of economic and political power. The central message of this book is that literature and business have something essential in common: they both rely on the persuasive use of language. Ernest Schonfield is Lecturer in German at the University of Glasgow.Table of ContentsIntroduction Managing Appearances in Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks, 1901 Oratory and Publicity in Heinrich Mann's Der Untertan, 1914/18 Organizing Speech in Gabriele Tergit's Käsebier erobert den Kurfürstendamm, 1931 Seeing through the Rhetoric in Bertolt Brecht's Dreigroschenroman, 1934 Giving an Account of the Self in Ingeborg Bachmann's Malina, 1971 Managing Bureaucracy in Hermann Kant's Das Impressum, 1972 Corporate Discourse in Friedrich Christian Delius's Unsere Siemens-Welt, 1972 Producing Ethos in Kathrin Röggla's wir schlafen nicht, 2004 Communicative Contests in Philipp Schönthaler's Das Schiff das singend zieht auf seiner Bahn, 2013 Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index
£85.50
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Willa Cather: The Critical Conversation
Book SynopsisA contextualizing overview of the polarized critical reception of Willa Cather, one of the pre-eminent US authors of the twentieth-century. The ever-growing body of criticism on Willa Cather and her fiction is indicative of her enduring position as a pre-eminent figure of twentieth-century American literature. It has been spurred by the challenge of situating Cather in relation to established critical approaches. Since the 1920s, Cather's work has been praised by critics for its realism, innovative form, and diversity; simultaneously, it has been derided as nostalgic, anti-modern, and narrow. Drawing on monographs, edited collections, journal articles, and society publications, Willa Cather: The Critical Conversation provides Cather scholars and students at the graduate and undergraduate levels with an accessible overview of Cather's critical reception through the first two decades of the twenty-first century. In addition to providing a valuable resource for research and teaching on Cather, the book also speaks to broader issues such as canon formation and historical trends in literary criticism that are relevant to American literature and culture as a whole. This book provides a solid understanding of the major issues in Cather criticism over time, with an eye toward how the conversation may continue for decades to come.Trade Review[T]his readable book will prove valuable for anyone interested in Cather and her work. * CHOICE *Table of ContentsIntroduction Willa Cather's Mercurial Position Among the Critics, 1918-1949 The Author and the Archetype: Biographical and Thematic Approaches to Cather Critical Conversations on Gender and Sexuality The Sociohistorical Cather: Approaches to Race, War, and the Environment Cather in the Literary Marketplace: Authorial Criticism, Archival Studies, and Book-Historical Criticism Afterword: "Having It Out," or Continuing the Critical Conversation
£76.00
Centre for the Study of Language & Information Conversations with John L'Heureux
Book SynopsisThis book presents a sequence of interviews between Dikran Karagueuzian and prolific fiction writer John L'Heureux that investigate the nature of writing fiction and the writer's need to write. This conversation includes a discussion of contemporary fiction, its virtues and vices, and its distinguished practitioners, along with a personal perspective on writing novels as opposed to short stories. "Karagueuzian and L'Heureux" also explore L'Heureux's years as director of 'The Stanford Writing Program', detailing his relationship with some of his better-known students, and offering insight into what can and can't be taught in a creative writing program.
£22.00
University Press of Mississippi Katherine Anne Porter: The Life of an Artist
Book SynopsisFrom the moment Katherine Anne Porter arrived on the American literary scene in 1922, the public was intrigued with her life. Yet she herself revealed only scant facts of her background and often gave conflicting accounts. She maintained, though, that a germ of her own experience lay at the core of everything she wrote. In Katherine Anne Porter: The Life of an Artist, Darlene Harbour Unrue finds that Porter's deceptions were a screen for deep personal turmoil. With unprecedented access to archival and personal papers, Unrue brings much new information to light. Porter's maternal grandmother was institutionalized; Porter had more marriages than she acknowledged; she lost babies to miscarriage, abortion, and stillbirth, and she grieved over her failed motherhood. Ever present were her fears of exile and insanity. Despite these constant fears, Porter (1890-1980) lived an extraordinary life that vaulted her from poverty and obscurity to wealth and the fame of being a best-selling author. She experienced or observed many of the major events of the twentieth century. So often on the move, she lived in Greenwich Village during its heyday as a hotbed of radical politics and experimental art, in Mexico during the cultural revolution of the 1920s, in Europe during the rise of Nazism, and in America during the Cold War. Thirteen years old when she first rode in an automobile and saw an airplane, she was invited in her last decade to observe and write about the launching of the final Apollo space ship. Asked to summarize her own life, Porter was fond of quoting Madame Du Barry: ""My life has been incredible. I don't believe a word of it!"" Darlene Harbour Unrue is a professor of English at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas. She has written several books on Katherine Anne Porter, including Understanding Katherine Anne Porter and Truth and Vision in Katherine Anne Porter's Fiction.
£31.46
University of Iowa Press Soldiers Once and Still: Ernest Hemingway, James Salter, and Tim O'Brien
Book SynopsisLooks back through the twentieth century in order to confront issues of self and community in veterans' literature, exploring how war and the military have shaped the identities of Ernest Hemingway, James Salter, and Tim O'Brien, three of the twentieth century's most respected authors.Trade ReviewFrom time out of mind, war and art have reflected one another, and it is this intersection of war and art that Alex Vernon raptly illuminates. In Soldiers Once and Still, he has penned a probing and savvy book about three of our most haunting soldier-writers. - Donald Anderson, editor, War, Literature and the Arts
£18.00
University of Iowa Press After the End of History: American Fiction in the
Book SynopsisIn this bold book, Samuel Cohen asserts the literary and historical importance of the period between the fall of the Berlin wall and that of the Twin Towers in New York. With refreshing clarity, he examines six 1990s novels and two post-9/11 novels that explore the impact of the end of the Cold War: Pynchon's ""Mason & Dixon"", Roth's ""American Pastoral"", Morrison's ""Paradise"", O'Brien's ""In the Lake of the Woods"", Didion's ""The Last Thing He Wanted"", Eugenides' ""Middlesex"", Lethem's ""Fortress of Solitude"", and DeLillo's ""Underworld"". Cohen emphasizes how these works reconnect the past to a present that is ironically keen on denying that connection. Exploring the ways ideas about paradise and pastoral, difference and exclusion, innocence and righteousness, triumph and trauma deform the stories Americans tell themselves about their nation's past, ""After the End of History"" challenges us to reconsider these works in a new light, offering fresh, insightful readings of what are destined to be classic works of literature. At the same time, Cohen enters into the theoretical discussion about postmodern historical understanding. Throwing his hat in the ring with force and style, he confronts not only Francis Fukuyama's triumphalist response to the fall of the Soviet Union but also the other literary and political 'end of history' claims put forth by such theorists as Fredric Jameson and Walter Benn Michaels. In a straightforward, affecting style, ""After the End of History"" offers us a new vision for the capabilities and confines of contemporary fiction.
£35.10
University of Iowa Press Reading as Therapy: What Contemporary Fiction
Book SynopsisWhy do Americans read contemporary fiction? This question seems simple, but is it? Do Americans read for the purpose of aesthetic appreciation? To satisfy their own insatiable intellectual curiosities? While other forms of media have come to monopolize consumers’ leisure time, in the past two decades book clubs have proliferated, Amazon has sponsored thriving online discussions, Oprah Winfrey has inspired millions of viewers to read both contemporary works and classics, and novels have retained their devoted following within middlebrow communities.In Reading as Therapy, Timothy Aubry argues that contemporary fiction serves primarily as a therapeutic tool for lonely, dissatisfied middle-class American readers, one that validates their own private dysfunctions while supporting elusive communities of strangers unified by shared feelings. Aubry persuasively makes the case that contemporary literature’s persistent appeal depends upon its capacity to perform a therapeutic function.Aubry traces the growth and proliferation of psychological concepts focused on the subjective interior within mainstream, middle-class society and the impact this has had on contemporary fiction. The prevailing tendency among academic critics has been to decry the personal emphasis of contemporary fiction as complicit with the rise of a narcissistic culture, the ascendency of liberal individualism, and the breakdown of public life. Reading as Therapy, by contrast, underscores the varied ideological effects that therapeutic culture can foster.To uncover the many unpredictable ways in which contemporary literature answers the psychological needs of its readers, Aubry considers several different venues of reader-response—including Oprah’s Book Club and Amazon customer reviews—the promotional strategies of publishing houses, and a variety of contemporary texts, ranging from Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner to Anita Shreve’s The Pilot’s Wife to David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. He concludes that, in the face of an atomistic social landscape, contemporary fiction gives readers a therapeutic vocabulary that both reinforces the private sphere and creates surprising forms of sympathy and solidarity among strangers.Trade Review“Is literature a form of therapy? Should it be? Tim Aubry takes the familiar complaint about literature’s therapeutic uses and patiently unfolds their hidden complexities in this lucid and eloquent book. Combining intellectual generosity with critical acumen, his argument offers fresh insight into contemporary fiction, middlebrow culture, and larger questions of how and why we read.”—Rita Felski, author, Uses of Literature“Therapy and the therapeutic: as soon as one has laid these loaded terms alongside recent literary history, their explanatory value becomes self-evident, and Tim Aubry deserves credit simply for staging this encounter. And yet, such is the force of his readings of some of the exemplary texts of our therapeutic postmodernity, this initial insight keeps on giving, yielding surprise after surprise. As I approached the end of this highly readable, unpretentiously learned text, I was asking myself if the author hadn’t in fact ‘broken the code’ of contemporary American literature, or at least one of them.” —Mark McGurl, author, The Program Era“This lively and intelligent study makes a timely contribution to a well-worn subfield of American studies: the intellectual defense of middlebrow culture. With a sharp sense of irony, Tim Aubry asks how fiction is used for therapeutic or self-help purposes by contemporary American readers. The paradox is that part of what distinguishes middlebrow audiences from academics like himself is their respect for literature, but Aubry’s own close readings of the works of contemporary writers are always sensitive and nuanced.” —Leah Price, author, The Anthology and the Rise of the Novel
£32.25
University of Iowa Press Hemingway's Second War: Bearing Witness to the Spanish Civil War
Book SynopsisIn 1937 and 1938, Ernest Hemingway made four trips to Spain to cover its civil war for the North American News Alliance wire service and to help create the pro-Republican documentary film The Spanish Earth. Hemingway’s Second War is the first book-length scholarly work devoted to this subject.Drawing on primary sources, Alex Vernon provides a thorough account of Hemingway’s involvement in the Spanish Civil War, a messy, complicated, brutal precursor to World War II that inspired Hemingway’s great novel For Whom the Bell Tolls. Vernon also offers the most sustained history and consideration to date of The Spanish Earth. Directed by Joris Ivens, this film was a landmark work in the development of war documentaries, for which Hemingway served as screenwriter and narrator.Contributing factual, textual, and contextual information to Hemingway studies in general and his participation in the war specifically, Vernon has written a critical biography for Hemingway’s experiences during the Spanish Civil War that includes discussion of the left-wing politics of the era and the execution of José Robles Pazos. Finally, the book provides readings of For Whom the Bell Tolls both in historical context and on its own terms.Marked by both impressive breadth and accessibility, Hemingway’s Second War will be an indispensible resource for students of literature, film, journalism, and European history and a landmark work for readers of Ernest Hemingway.
£24.65
St Augustine's Press Symposium Of Plato – Shelley Translation
Book SynopsisIn the summer of 1818, Percy Bysshe Shelley pulled himself away from a flurry of other projects to devote himself to translating Plato's Symposium. Besides being one of the very great lyric poets of Romanticism, Shelley was an accomplished Hellenist, and had a natural sympathy for Plato's way of seeing the world. The result of his labor was a translation of Plato's principal work on love that is, in both clarity and felicity of expression, unmatched by any contemporary translation. Much of what the dialogue offers to today's reader - namely, its invitation to see erotic experience as the privileged locus of our contact with the sacred and the divine - is lost in translation by failures of tone more than by inaccuracies or simple infelicities. The elevation and sophistication of Shelley's prose makes his translation a much better English vehicle for Plato's writing than the rather chatty and colloquial translations current today. Plato's speeches on love need an English idiom in which myth is at home, and in which humour rises to urbanity rather than descending to mere wit and joke. With Shelley, we get a translation of a great literary masterpiece by a writer who is himself a literary master, and his mastery is of exactly the type required by Plato's text. This translation came at the height of Shelley's powers, mirroring in language and conception some of his finest works, and so is itself a precious document in the history of Romanticism, for which the re-appropriation of Plato is second in importance only to the massive influence of Shakespeare. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, her husband's literary executor, upon publication of (a somewhat expurgated version of) the dialogue, boasted that "Shelley resembled Plato; both taking more delight in the abstract and the ideal than in the special and the tangible. This did not result from imitation; for it was not till Shelley resided in Italy that he made Plato his study. He then translated his Symposium and Ion; and the English language boasts of no more brilliant composition than Plato's Praise of Love translated by Shelley." If this goes too far, it goes at least in the right direction. David K. O'Connor, in his introduction and footnotes, provides the historical and philosophic framework to appreciate best the importance of the dialogue and translation.Table of Contentsintroduction, notes, Stephanus numbers, index
£14.87
Salem Press Inc The Tales of Edgar Allan Poe
Book SynopsisThis title includes in-depth critical discussions of Edgar Allan Poe's work. This is a collection of sixteen essays by leading scholars examining the short stories and life of the 19th century American writer Edgar Allan Poe. Representing the best of a broad range of critical perspectives from the psychoanalytical to the postcolonial, the volume serves as an excellent introduction to Poe's tales and the critical conversation surrounding them. The volume is introduced by Steven Frye, Professor of English at California State University, Bakersfield, the author of ""Historiography and the American Romance: A Study of Four Authors"" (2001) and the editor of ""Poe Studies/Dark Romanticism: History, Theory, Interpretation"" (2008). Original essays illuminate the influences that shaped Poe, contextualize his work, and assess his enduring impact on American and Continental poetry and fiction. A sketch of the historical and cultural forces surrounding Poe illuminates their influence on his aesthetic; a reception history examines Poe's enduring contributions to the short story genre, the French Symbolist movement, and modernist aesthetics; a comparison of Poe's and Baudelaire's works reveals how the two authors exploited the duplicitous possibilities within the writer-reader relationship; and a critical reading of ""The Fall of the House of Usher,"" ""The Black Cat,"" ""The Tell-Tale Heart,"" ""Ligeia,"" and ""Bernice"" seeks to expose the stories' unifying aesthetic principles. Further, a varied selection of critical views offers detailed analyses of Poe's most essential tales like ""The Murders in the Rue Morgue"", ""The Fall of the House of Usher"", ""The Cask of Amontillado"", ""The Gold Bug"", and ""Ligeia"". Uniquely, the collection also contains an original essay by Nathaniel Rich, senior editor of ""The Paris Review"". Reflecting on Poe's insight into and fascination with the perverse instincts of humanity, Rich offers a writer's perspective on one of America's most enigmatic writers. Finally, a wealth of reference material, including a complete list of Poe's publications and a full biography, rounds out the volume by giving readers ample sources for continuing their studies. Edited and with an introduction by Steven Frye, the collection is a gateway into the best of Poe and his critics. Each essay is 5,000 words in length, and all essays conclude with a list of 'Works Cited', along with endnotes.
£83.20
Salem Press Inc The Handmaid's Tale
Book SynopsisThis title includes in-depth discussions of Margaret Atwood's ""The Handmaid's Tale"". ""The Handmaid's Tale"" won international acclaim when it was first published in 1985; with it, Margaret Atwood won Canada's Governor General's Award as well as the Arthur C. Clarke Award and was nominated for the Booker Prize. Written in the midst of the anti-feminist backlash and the culture wars of the 1980s, readers recognized it as a timely and chilling dystopian novel depicting a future in which the American government has been overthrown by religious fundamentalists who have, in turn, erected a patriarchal theocracy. Though Atwood had doubts about the novel when she was writing it, and though both conservative and liberal critics have found fault with it, the years following ""The Handmaid's Tale""'s publication have been rich with critical discussion. Edited and with an introduction by J. Brooks Bouson, a widely recognized Atwood scholar, this volume in the ""Critical Insights"" series collects some the novel's best critics to introduce high school students and undergraduates to one of Atwood's most widely read novels. Original essays by Lisa Jadwin and Dominick Grace lend context to the novel by surveying the political and cultural events out of which the novel grew as well as how Atwood's critics have responded to the novel. Two other original essays by Matthew Bolton and Jennifer E. Dunn explore the novel in light the dystopian literary tradition and feminist literary theory. This collection of republished essays continues the conversation as Coral Ann Howells considers the novel's narrative structure and Madonne Miner and Shirley Neuman examine the role of love in the novel. Chinmoy Banerjee addresses the topic of criticism as commodity in the novel, Elisabeth Hansot and Hilde Staels investigate hegemonic and subversive discourses, and Danita J. Dodson reads the story in light of America's Puritanistic past. Finally, Eleonora Rao offers a psychoanalytic reading that focuses on narrative gaps and ambiguities, and Karen F. Stein and Joseph Andriano consider the novel's metafictional elements. Each essay is 5,000 words in length, and all essays conclude with a list of 'Works Cited', along with endnotes. Finally, the volume's appendixes offer a section of useful reference resources: a chronology of the author's life; a complete list of the author's works and their original dates of publication; a general bibliography; a detailed paragraph on the volume's editor; notes on the individual chapter authors; and, a subject index.
£83.20
Salem Press Inc Absalom, Absalom!
Book SynopsisThe purpose of this collection of sixteen essays on William Faulkner's multi-faceted novel is to provide the reader who has read or is about to read Absalom, Absalom! with as much of a multi-faceted perspective as possible.Faulkner created a novel so complex that every interpretation of his "little postage stamp of native soil" is as valid as a single postage stamp in a postal system. Each essay is limited by its premise, but that very limitation enables the critic to focus the reader's attention upon an aspect of this multifaceted novel. The value of each of these pieces is not only what it reveals but what it does not reveal, enabling the reader to participate in the critical process by questioning, disagreeing, conjuring his or her own insights along the way.The opening six original essays offer basic, clearly stated perspectives: a brief view of Faulkner's life and works; and two close readings of Absalom, Absalom! that apply specific critical methods. The novel in a cultural-historical context is also discussed, as is the novel's critical reception. Many more narrowly-focused essays discuss the novel from a feminist standpoint, its relationship to The Great Gatsby and All the King's Men.The narrative perspective and the storytelling themes that pervade the novel are discussed at length as is the interwoven web of facts that enriches Absalom, Absalom! with countless dimensions. Tensions between the old south and the modern era are explored. Faulkner's structure and prose style are meticulously investigated. In sum, this reference provides a remarkably rich, deeply varied number of perspectives on a novel that continues to offer new insight into its complex design and execution.Each essay is 5,000 words in length, and all essays conclude with a list of "Works Cited," along with endnotes. Finally, the volume's appendixes offer a section of useful reference resources:
£83.20
Modern Language Association of America Approaches to Teaching Coetzee's 'Disgrace' and
Book SynopsisThe novels of the South African writer J. M. Coetzee won him global recognition and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2003. His work offers substantial pedagogical richness and challenges. Coetzee treats such themes as race, aging, gender, animal rights, power, violence, colonial history and accountability, the silent or silenced other, sympathy, and forgiveness in an allusive and detached prose that avoids obvious answers or easy ethical reassurance.Part 1 of this volume, "Materials," identifies secondary materials, including multimedia and Internet resources, that will help instructors guide their students through the contextual and formal complexities of Coetzee's fiction. In part 2, "Approaches," essays discuss how to teach works that are sometimes suspicious of teachers and teaching. The essays aim to help instructors negotiate Coetzee's ironies and allegories in his treatment of human relationships in a changing South Africa and of the shifting connections between human beings and the biosphere.
£33.11
Modern Language Association of America Approaches to Teaching the Works of Amitav Ghosh
Book SynopsisThe prizewinning author of novels, nonfiction, and hybrid texts, Amitav Ghosh grew up in India and trained as an anthropologist. His works have been translated in over thirty languages. They cross and mix a number of genres, from science fiction to the historical novel, incorporating ethnohistory and travelogue and even recuperating dead languages. His subjects include climate change, postcolonial identities, translocation, migration, oceanic spaces, and the human interface with the environment.Part 1 of this volume discusses editions of Ghosh's works and major works of scholarship. The essays in part 2, ""Approaches,"" present ideas for teaching Ghosh's works through considerations of postcolonial feminism, historicity in the novels, environmentalism, language, sociopolitical conflict, genre, intersectional reading, and the ethics of colonized subjecthood. Guidance for teaching Ghosh in different contexts, such as general education, world literature, or single-author classes, is provided.Trade ReviewI enjoyed reading [this volume] tremendously and enthusiastically recommend it"" - Pallavi Rastogi, Louisiana State University
£33.11
