Literary studies: fiction Books

Book SynopsisThis first book in English on Meisel-Hess, an early feminist voice in modernist discourse, illustrates the dynamic interplay between gender, sexuality, and race/ethnicity in Austrian and German modernism. Grete Meisel-Hess (1879-1922), a contemporary of Freud, Schnitzler, and Klimt, was a feminist voice in early-twentieth-century modernist discourse. Born in Prague to Jewish parents and raised in Vienna, she became a literary presence with her 1902 novel Fanny Roth. Influenced by many of her contemporaries, she also criticized their notions of gender and sexuality. Relocating to Berlin, she continued to write fiction and began publishing on sexology and the women's movement. Helga Thorson's book combines a literary-cultural exploration of modernism in Vienna and Berlin with a biography of Meisel-Hess and a critical analysis of her works. Focusing on Meisel-Hess's negotiations of feminism, modernism, and Jewishness, it illustrates the dynamic interplay between gender, sexuality, and race/ethnicity in Austrian and German modernism. Analyzing Meisel-Hess's fiction as well as her sexological studies, Thorson argues that Meisel-Hess posited herself as both a "New Woman" and the writer of the "New Woman." The book draws on extensive archival research that uncovered a large number of new sources, including an unpublished drama and a variety of documents and letters scattered in collections across Europe. Until now there have been only limited secondary sources about Meisel-Hess, most containing errors and omissions regarding her biography. This is the first book on Meisel-Hess in English.Trade ReviewWhile Thorson's book is grounded in long-gestating research and writing, it takes inspiration from current research on gender and modernism as well as relatively recent critical notions such as "geo-modernism" and discussions surrounding intersectionality. It hence offers several layers of analysis: deep textual work; the very rich reconstruction of intellectual, social, and life contexts situating these ideas and texts; and, finally, the theoretical concerns of current scholarship. * JOURNAL OF AUSTRIAN STUDIES *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments List of Illustrations List of Abbreviations Introduction: Breaking with the Past, Forging the Future 1: The New Woman of the Early Twentieth Century 2: Feminism and Jewishness in Viennese Literary Modernism 3: Theorizing the Sexual Crisis through Journalism and Sexology 4: Effecting Change through Literature: Die Intellektuellen (1911) 5: Sexual Sociology during the First World War Conclusion: Living the Sexual Crisis Bibliography Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisAn alternative genealogy of abstract art, featuring the crucial role of 19th-century German literature in shaping it aesthetically, culturally, and socially. Once upon a time (or more specifically, in 1911!) there was an artist named Wassily Kandinsky who created the world's first abstract artwork and forever altered the course of art history - or so the traditional story goes. A good story, but not the full story. The Myth of Abstraction reveals that abstract art was envisioned long before Kandinsky, in the pages of nineteenth-century German literature. It originated from the written word, described by German writers who portrayed in language what did not yet exist as art. Yet if writers were already writing about abstract art, why were painters not painting it? To solve the riddle, this book features the work of three canonical nineteenth-century authors - Heinrich von Kleist, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and Gottfried Keller - who imagine, theorize, and describe abstract art in their literary writing, sometimes warning about the revolution it will cause not just in art, but in all aspects of social life. Through close readings of their textual images and visual analyses of actual paintings, Andrea Meyertholen shows how these writers anticipated the twentieth-century birth of abstract art by establishing the necessary conditions for its production, reception, and consumption. The first study to bring these early descriptions of abstraction together and investigate their significance, The Myth of Abstraction writes an alternative genealogy featuring the crucial role of literature in shaping abstract art in aesthetic, cultural, and social terms.Table of ContentsIntroduction: The Many Origins of Abstract Art Apocalypse Now: Heinrich Von Kleist's Sublime De-Framing of Caspar David Friedrich's Der Mönch Am Meer (1810) The Kleistian Sublime Is Now: Kazimir Malevich, Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman The Clouding of Perception: Seeing The (Un)Real Potential for Abstraction in the Poetry and Science of Goethe's Clouds (1821) In the Service of Clouds or Optical Illusion?: Romanticism, Pointillism, and Impressionism Driven to Distraction and from Abstraction: The Birth and Death of Abstract Art in Gottfried Keller's Der Grüne Heinrich (1854/55, 1879/80) Inside the Mind and Outside the Margins: The Unruly Lines of Paul Klee, André Masson, and Cy Twombly Epilogue: Laocoön and His Sisters: The Future of Literature and Art

Read more less

Book SynopsisInvestigates the field of German life writing, from Rahel Levin Varnhagen around 1800 to Carmen Sylva a century later, from Döblin, Becher, women's WWII diaries, German-Jewish memoirs, and East German women's interview literatureto the autofiction of Lena Gorelik. In recent decades, life writing has exploded in popularity: memoirs that focus on traumatic experiences now constitute the largest growth sector in book publishing worldwide. But life writing is not only highly marketable; it also does important emotional, cultural, and political work. It is more available to amateurs and those without the cultural capital or the self-confidence to embrace more traditional literary forms, and thus gives voice to marginalized populations. Contested Selves investigates various forms of German-language life writing, including memoirs, interviews, letters, diaries, and graphic novels, shedding light on its democratic potential, on its ability to personalize history and historicize the personal. The contributors ask how the various authors construct and negotiate notions of the self relative to sociopolitical contexts, cultural traditions, genre expectations, and narrative norms. They also investigate the nexus of writing, memory, and experience, including the genre's truth claims vis-à-vis the pliability and unreliability of human memories. Finally, they explore ethical questions that arise from intimate life writing and from the representation of "vulnerable subjects" as well as from the interrelation of material body, embodied self, and narrative. All forms of life writing discussed in this volume are invested in a process of making meaning and in an exchange of experience that allows us to relate our lives to the lives of others.Trade ReviewThe contributions to Contested Selves demonstrate most impressively that there is a strong nexus between life writing and politics. Neither politics nor life writing nor the nexus between the two will vanish any time soon; it is to be hoped that books such as Contested Selves will continue to shed light on them. -- MONATSHEFTETable of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction Katja Herges and Elisabeth Krimmer Part I. Women's Life Writing, Female Subjectivity and Agency 1: "A Portrait of the Moment": Rahel Levin Varnhagen's Letters at the Boundary of Life Writing Laura Deiulio 2: A Force of Nature: Narrative Strategies of Autobiography in the Work of Poet-Queen Carmen Sylva Beth Ann Muellner 3: Writing the Cultural Memory of East Germany through Women's Interviewliteratur Julie Shoults Part II. Modern Life Writing and Aesthetics 4: A Life of Its Own: Alfred Döblin on Autobiography and the Novel Matthias Müller 5: A Man of the Century in His Poems: Johannes R. Becher and the Creation of the Twentieth-Century Life Narrative Kristin Eichhorn Part III. Trauma and Vergangenheitsbewältigung 6: Writing Two Selves: A Woman's Struggle to Cope with War Erika Quinn 7: "Confrontation with My Complicity": Paratextual Self-Encounters in Diaries of the Second World War Kathryn Sederberg 8: Voices from an "Extinct Species": Narrative Responses to Trauma in German-Jewish Memoirs Jennifer Hansen-Glucklich Part IV. Transnational and Transgenerational Life Writing in Contemporary Germany9: The Case of the Disappearing Son: Gender, Genre, and German Postwar Cultural Memory in Niklas Frank's Meine deutsche Mutter and F. C. Delius's Bildnis der Mutter als junge Frau Katra Byram 10: Lena Gorelik's Autofictional Letter Lieber Mischa: A Guide to Being Jewish in Contemporary Germany Lydia H. Heiss 11: Shapeshifters: Metamorphosing Transgenerational Trauma through Comics Maureen Burdock 12: Homeland, Nation, and Gender in the Life Writing of German and Jewish Émigrés Aylin Bademsoy Bibliography Notes on the Contributors Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe first English-language study devoted to Hölderlin's novel in three decades, this book reveals Hyperion's literary and philosophical richness and its complex ties with politics, choreography, and economics. While few would question the importance of Friedrich Hölderlin (1770-1843) for the development of German idealism and twentieth-century literature, philosophy, and critical theory, Hölderlin scholarship remains largely inaccessible to those working in English. This is especially true for his novel Hyperion - otherwise his most accessible work - which has not had a book-length study in English devoted to it in more than three decades. Anthony Curtis Adler opens Hölderlin's novel up to the reader by stressing its literary uniqueness, philosophical riches, complex ties with contemporaneous discourses, and relevance to contemporary Continental political theory. Neither merely a stepping-stone to his later and more esoteric poetry, nor a novelistic presentation of an idealist dialectics, Hyperion offers a powerful new vision of the relation between poetry, political economy, and philosophical truth. Poetry, for Hölderlin, anticipates forms of political life that have only been obscurely glimpsed; rather than imitating a luminously given idea of the Good, it patiently guides toward a dimly sensed better world. Thus it replaces the Platonic philosopher-king with the poetic leader of the dance. Yet in just this way, Adler shows, Hyperion's project converges with a constellation of quintessentially "modern" discourses and practices, including the codification of dance in early modernity and the rise of political economy in the 18th century. Readers will discover the "choreographic" logic underlying both of these - and, with this, a new way to think about the relations between literature, politics, economics, and dance.Trade ReviewAdler allows several Hölderlins to appear: a ploughman cutting through the conceptual foundations of the West; a deeper thinker than any Plato or Marx of the nature and consistency of political renewal; a gardener. A poet, too. But poetry's modes-giving, measuring, streaming, interrupting-must first find their essence, shared with politics, in dance. To grasp this we must deform our thinking, even practice a slash-and-burn agriculture of the mind. Adler guides us through wide fields, fields of rock and ossification, to ripe banks of open receptivity. . . . Truth is not a stable correspondence but an echo in gesture, a hyperbolic fit, a flare of reconnaissance. This is what Adler gives us to think on the deepest level-a gift that, like a river, overflows itself. -- Simon Horn * German Quarterly *Original, wide-ranging, and challenging. -- E.G. Wickersham * CHOICE *Table of ContentsIntroduction Hyperbole, Measure, Dance The Athens Letter - Choreographic Writings Political Personae The Politics of Life The Choreographic Project of Modernity Bibliography Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisDetails Lawrence's reception of Melville and reveals his underacknowledged role in the Melville Revival, while contributing to the history of the book and the study of the creative process. How Lawrence Read Melville is a highly focused account of D. H. Lawrence's discovery and reception of Herman Melville, from when he first read Moby-Dick as a young man to his final references to Melville in his late works. It shows Lawrence's initial reaction to Moby-Dick; how it led him to other works by Melville, namely Typee and Omoo; and how Melville affected Lawrence's critical and creative writing and shaped his philosophy. This book is a study of the creative process that shows how one great writer inspired another, but it also makes a major contribution to the history of the book and two of its subfields: the history of reading, and reception studies. By his death in 1891, Melville had been forgotten except by a small circle of English enthusiasts. That group put Lawrence onto Melville, whereupon he became a - until now largely unacknowledged - leader of the Melville Revival that rescued the great writer from obscurity. This Swiss army knife of a book will appeal to scholars and booklovers alike.Trade ReviewThe tightly focused premise of this volume - to examine the influence of Herman Melville on the life and work of D. H. Lawrence - initially seems better suited to an academic article than a full-length book study. How much can there be to say on this topic? As it transpires, there's a good deal, and Kevin J. Hayes's engaging, conversational style makes the journey a pleasurable and captivating one. * TLS *Table of ContentsIntroduction 1: An English Midlands Bookshelf 2: An Archway into the Future 3: Everyman and the Dead Narrator 4: How Moby-Dick Shaped Women in Love 5: A Little Hesperides of the Soul and Body 6: The Symbolistic All-Knowledge 7: The Melville Centenary 8: Typee under Etna 9: Two Days in Tahiti 10: The Voyage Home Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisExamines portrayals of plants and landscapes in recent German novels and films, addressing the contemporary forms of racism, nationalism, and social and ecological injustice that they expose. Plants, Places, and Power is a study of plants and landscapes in and beyond contemporary German-language literature and film. Stories and images of plants and landscapes in cultural productions are key sites for exposing the violent legacies of German colonialism and Nazism and for addressing contemporary forms of racism, nationalism, social and ecological injustice, and gender inequity. The novels and films discussed in this book address these key political issues in contemporary Europe and propose alternative ways for people to live together on this planet by formulating more inclusive and sustainable concepts of belonging. The book has two main objectives: to offer new approaches to contemporary literature and film from an intersectional, ecological perspective, and to form a canon. All of the works focused on, from Mo Asumang's documentary film Roots Germania (2007) through Faraz Shariat's Futur Drei (2020) and from Yōko Tawada's novel Das nackte Auge (2004) to Saša Stanišić's Herkunft (2019), are by female artists, artists of color, artists who have experienced forced displacement, and/or queer artists. In five chapters, Maria Stehle reads artworks in reference to ecological systems, develops forms of eco- and social criticism based on art, and intertwines ecological and critical thinking with questions of form, affect, and aesthetics.Table of ContentsPreface and Acknowledgments: People and Places Introduction: Living in Relation: Plants, Place-Making, and Social Justice 1: Landscapes: Infrastructures, Power Topographies, and Feral Gardens in Juli Zeh's Unterleuten (2016), Valeska Grisebach's Western (2017), and Anna Sofie Hartmann's Giraffe (2019) 2: Uncanny Gardens: Migration and Belonging in Dörte Hansen's Altes Land (2015) and Saša Stanišić's Herkunft (2019) 3: Trees, Roots, and Anti-Racism in Ilija Trojanow's Nach der Flucht (2017), Mo Asumang's Roots Germania (2007) and Die Arier (2014), and Elliot Blue's Home? (2018) 4: Defiant Flowers and Manufactured Happiness in Vera Chytilová's Daisies (1966), Pipilotti Rist's Pepperminta (2009), and Jessica Hausner's Little Joe: Glück ist ein Geschäft (2019) 5: Senses, Queer Interrelations, and Decolonial Geographies in Yōko Tawada's Das nackte Auge (2004), Shari Hagen's Auf den zweiten Blick (2012), and Faraz Shariat's Futur Drei (2020) Epilogue: Erasures and Different Stories Bibliography Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisBreaks new ground by both analyzing the literary qualities of four recent rewritings of the Noah myth and contextualizing their concern with climate change within the wider crises of the Anthropocene. With the rise of concern about global warming in recent years, climate-change fiction, or cli-fi, has become increasingly important both as a publishing phenomenon and as an area of academic study and research. Flood narratives have become a subsection of cli-fi in their own right. This book proposes new readings of four recent rewritings of the Noah myth, Odds Against Tomorrow by Nathaniel Rich, Margaret Atwood's Maddaddam trilogy, When the Floods Came by Clare Morrall, and The Flood by Maggie Gee. Helen E. Mundler's book takes into account the wealth of criticism that has appeared on these texts in recent years, acknowledging important contributions from critics including Adam Trexler, Adeline Johns-Putra, and Astrid Bracke. However, her book's strength is that it takes a new approach, going beyond the topicality of the texts and treating them not just as ideological statements but giving them their due as literary artifacts. While the importance of climate change is beyond debate, this book takes a more balanced approach that places it within a wider context of the multiple crises of the Anthropocene.Table of ContentsAcknowledgments List of Abbreviations Introduction 1: An Odd Sort of Cli-Fi? Nathaniel Rich's Odds Against Tomorrow 2: "Hadn't mankind done it before-started from scratch?" Reinterpreting Visions of Past and Future in Margaret Atwood's Maddaddam trilogy 3: Watering Down? Clare Morrall's When the Floods Came 4: The Archive and After: A Kaleidoscopic Reading of Maggie Gee's The Flood Conclusion Works Cited Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisTakes the recent wave of German autobiographical writing on illness and disability seriously as literature, demonstrating the value of a literary disability studies approach. In the German-speaking world there has been a new wave - intensifying since 2007 - of autobiographically inspired writing on illness and disability, death and dying. Nina Schmidt's book takes this writing seriously as literature,examining how the authors of such personal narratives come to write of their experiences between the poles of cliché and exceptionality. Identifying shortcomings in the approaches taken thus far to such texts, she makes suggestions as to how to better read their narratives from the stance of literary scholarship, then demonstrates the value of a literary disability studies approach to such writing with close readings of Charlotte Roche's Schoßgebete(2011), Kathrin Schmidt's Du stirbst nicht (2009), Verena Stefan's Fremdschläfer (2007), and - in the final, comparative chapter - Christoph Schlingensief's So schön wie hier kanns im Himmel gar nicht sein! Tagebuch einer Krebserkrankung (2009) and Wolfgang Herrndorf's blog-cum-book Arbeit und Struktur (2010-13). Schmidt shows that authors dealing with illness and disability do so with an awareness of their precarious subject position in the public eye, a position they negotiate creatively. Writing the liminal experience of serious illness along the borders of genre, moving between fictional and autobiographical modes, they carve out spaces from which they speak up and share their personal stories in the realm of literature, to political ends. Nina Schmidt is a postdoctoral researcher in the Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School of Literary Studies at the Freie Universität Berlin.Trade ReviewThe author shows how the texts under discussion break down borders in the literary and societal realms by way of their deep and multifaceted analyses...The way she proceeds does justice to texts that met a negative reception, offers a basis for the interpretation of future texts, and could represent an enrichment of German Studies. -- Malcolm Pender * GERMANISTIK *[B]reaks new ground . . . . Schmidt . . . ask[s] why so little scholarly attention has been paid to autobiographical writing about the universal experience of illness. [Her] impeccable scholarship explains why we haven't analyzed illness narratives more deeply, convinces us why we should, and shows us how we can. -- Elizabeth Hamilton * GEGENWARTSLITERATUR *Schmidt's exceptionally rich book makes a strong case for the need not only to include but better integrate the field of disability studies [and German Studies] . . . . [C]ontributes meaningfully to how we read and understand innovative narrative strategies, structures, and experiences of illness and disability . . . . [I]ts critical perspective would also be of great value to those interested in the fields of literature, narratology, and narrative medicine. * STUDIES IN 20TH- and 21ST-CENTURY LITERATURE *Nina Schmidt's study of illness writing in contemporary German-language literature not only fills notable gaps in scholarship on the primary texts she analyzes, but also knits together a wide range of scholarship on autofiction, disability studies, and (not only German) illness writing into an engaging study of great importance. -- Alexandra M. Hill * GERMAN STUDIES REVIEW *Taken as a whole, The Wounded Self is an excellent scholarly book that should significantly influence future debates on the topics of autobiography, autofiction, disability studies, and illness writing. In addition to German studies and cultural studies, it will be of great interest to the medical humanities. -- Ina Linge * WEIMARER BEITRÄGE *[C]omprehensive and excellently argued . . . . With its demanding objectives and carefully developed theoretical framework, The Wounded Self presents innovative and insightful readings of diverse twenty-first century illness narratives. This exemplary study is a valuable contribution to the field of illness narratives and to the ongoing complex theorization of autobiographical authorship that deals with illness. -- Franziska Gygax * BIOGRAPHY *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Contemporary German-Language Illness Writing as Literature; Analyzing Narrative Strategies, Aesthetic Forms, and Experimentations with Genre through the Lens of Disability Theory Autofiction, Disgust, and Trauma: Negotiating Vulnerable Subject Positions in Charlotte Roche's Schoßgebete (2011) Looking Beyond the Self - Reflecting the Other: Staring as a Narrative Device in Kathrin Schmidt's Du stirbst nicht (2009) Intertextuality and the Transnational in Verena Stefan's Fremdschläfer (2007): Writing Breast Cancer from beyond the Border Confronting Cancer Publicly: Diary Writing in Extremis by Christoph Schlingensief and Wolfgang Herrndorf Conclusion: "Und was dann"; Recent Developments and Research Desiderata Notes Bibliography Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisShows how Adler, Wander, Hilsenrath, and Klüger intertwine transgressive political criticism with the shadow of trauma, revealing new perspectives on canon formation and exclusion in postwar German literature. How did German-speaking Holocaust survivors pursue literary careers in an often-indifferent postwar society? How did their literary life writings reflect their postwar struggles? This monograph focuses on four authors who bore literary witness to the Shoah - H. G. Adler, Fred Wander, Edgar Hilsenrath, and Ruth Klüger. It analyzes their autofictional, critical, and autobiographical works written between the early 1950s and 2015, which depict their postwar experiences of writing, publishing, and publicizing Holocaust testimony. These case studies shed light on the devastating aftermaths of the Holocaust in different contexts. Adler depicts his attempts to overcome marginalization as a writer in Britain in the 1950s. Wander reflects on his failure to find a home either in postwar Austria or in the GDR. Hilsenrath satirizes his struggles as an emigrant to the US in the 1960s and after returning to Berlin in the 1980s. Finally, in her 2008 memoir, Ruth Klüger follows up her earlier, highly impactful memoir of the concentration camps by narrating the misogyny and antisemitism she experienced in US and German academia. Helen Finch analyzes how these under-researched texts intertwine transgressive political criticism with the shadow of trauma. Drawing on scholarship on Holocaust testimony, transnational memory, and affect theory, her book reveals new perspectives on canon formation and exclusion in postwar German literature.Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Abbreviations Introduction 1: Modernist Marginalization in Exile: H. G. Adler in the 1950s and 1960s 2: Solidarity and Trauma between Austria and the GDR: Fred Wander from the 1960s to 2006 3: Transnational Transgression: Edgar Hilsenrath from 1980 to 2018 4: Feminist Rage: Ruth Klüger in the New Millennium Conclusion Bibliography Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisOffers a European view of racial attitudes in the US during the era of the Harlem Renaissance and Jim Crow, with relevance to today's Black Lives Matter and #MeToo movements. Marylin, a novel by the Austrian writer Arthur Rundt about a mixed-race woman passing as white, moves from Chicago to New York City and concludes tragically on a Caribbean island. First published in 1928 and now translated into English, it offers a European view of racial attitudes in the US during the era of the Harlem Renaissance and Jim Crow. Rundt's short but powerful novel touches several vital issues in society today, engaging each in a way that prompts further examination and cross-fertilization. First, it sheds historical light on what has become painfully obvious in the Black Lives Matter era (if it wasn't before): the continued injustice experienced by Blacks in America as an effect of structural racism. Second, it confronts issues of migration and hybrid identities. Third, it has relevance for Women's Studies through the title character's interaction with the patriarchy. Through these connections, it responds to a growing current in German Studies concerned with diversity and inclusion and integrating the discipline into the broader humanities. An introduction and an afterword, both of them extensive and scholarly, contextualize the novel in its time and as it relates to ours.Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction - Peter Hoeyng and Chauncey J. Mellor Marylin Afterword - Priscilla D. Layne

Read more less

Book SynopsisAn in-depth investigation of the Romanian secret police's file on Müller, winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize for Literature, re-creating a "file story" of her surveillance. "Herta Müller should share her Nobel with the Securitate." This comment by a former officer in the Romanian secret police, or Securitate, was in reaction to hearing that Müller, a German writer originally from Romania, had won the 2009 Nobel Prize for Literature. Communist Romania's infamous secret police was indeed a protagonist in Müller's work, though an undesired and dreaded one: most of her writings are deeply and explicitly anchored in Ceaușescu's Romania and her own traumatic experiences with the Securitate. Müller's file traces her surveillance from 1983 until after she emigrated to West Germany in 1987. She has written extensively in reaction to reading her file, but primarily addresses its gaps, begging the question what information the file does in fact contain. This book is an in-depth investigation of Müller's file, and engages with other related files, including that of her then-husband, the writer Richard Wagner. Valentina Glajar treats the files as primary sources in order to re-create the story of Müller's surveillance by the Securitate. In such an intrusive culture of surveillance, surviving the system often meant a certain degree of entanglement: for victims, collaborators, and implicated subjects alike. Veiled in secrecy for decades, these compelling and complex documents shed light on a boundary between victims and perpetrators as porous as the Iron Curtain itself.Table of ContentsPreface List of Terms and Abbreviations Introduction Chapter 1: The Filed Story of Niederungen Chapter 2: Contact Stories: The Author and the Officer Chapter 3: Conspiratorial Stories: The Securitate Sources MAYER, SORIN, and EVA Chapter 4: Captured Stories: Remote Audio Surveillance Chapter 5: Migrating Stories Epilogue Bibliography Appendix I: Müller's Surveillance Timeline (1974-1993) Appendix II: Author's Accreditation by CNSAS Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe first English translation of a presciently modern portrayal of emerging feminist sensibilities in a nineteenth-century family, by one of Germany's leading pre-First World War writers. Best known now for her involvement with Nietzsche, Rilke, and Freud, Lou Andreas-Salomé (1861-1937) first became famous for fiction and criticism that engaged provocatively with "the woman question." In recent years, the author's literary treatment of the challenges facing women in a patriarchal society has awakened renewed interest. Anneliese's House is the first English translation of her last and most masterful work of fiction, the 1921 Das Haus: Familiengeschichte vom Ende vorigen Jahrhunderts (The House: A Family Story from the End of the Nineteenth Century). Anneliese Branhardt, the book's protagonist, long ago renounced a career as a pianist to raise a family with her physician husband, Frank. She worries about her son Balduin - an aspiring poet modeled on Rilke - and about her equally free-spirited daughter Gitta. She is haunted by memories of a daughter who died in childhood and anxious about a risky, late pregnancy. With her domestic harmony threatened by her own stirrings of autonomy and her children's growing independence, Anneliese finds the future both frightening and promising. The edition is fully annotated, with a critical introduction and bibliography.Trade ReviewThis translation makes Andreas-Salomé's last novel accessible to English speakers and offers an important addition to the growing body of critical work on the author. [...] With Anneliese's House, Beck and Whitinger pave the way for broadening insight into the emancipatory significance of her fiction. * FEMINIST GERMAN STUDIES *This intricate psychological novel . . . is about the house of happiness we can build for ourselves and how that deeply human vision sits with nature. [It is] surely the best of her fiction and deserves to be read widely. -- Lesley Chamberlain * TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT *Frank Beck and Raleigh Whitinger deserve praise both for rendering precise, intricate sentences from German into English, and for deciding that this novel deserves attention. -- Declan O'Driscoll * IRISH TIMES *Unfolding largely within the titular house, Lou Andreas-Salomé's last novel delicately probes a German bourgeois family on the cusp of a new era. As it renders the inner turmoil of parents and young adult children who sometimes remain opaque even to themselves, the text gently insists on the sustaining goodwill of love in the face of inevitable social change, disappointment, passing time, and mortality. As a subtly complex response to modern times, Anneliese's House-in this finely worded translation-proves the capacities, nuance, and significance of literary evocations of marriage and family. * Lynne Tatlock, Hortense and Tobias Lewin Distinguished Professor in the Humanities, Washington University in St. Louis *Anneliese's House gives invaluable insight into Lou Salomé's thoughts on the complicated process of relationship between the sexes. This makes it an important book in considering her own relationships with Nietzsche, Rilke, and Freud. It is translated with subtlety and sensitivity. * Sue Prideaux, author of I am Dynamite! A Life of Friedrich Nietzsche *A wonderfully lucid and elegant translation and a must-read not only for literary scholars but also for social historians for its evocative treatment of the "woman question" and family relationships in the early twentieth century. * Erika Rummel, Professor Emerita of History, Wilfrid Laurier University *A Nietzschean ode to love, marriage, and motherhood, Lou Andreas-Salomé's last novel is finally available in English. Accompanied by an informative introduction and extensive notes, this well-wrought translation captures the psychological nuance and exuberance of the original's bourgeois critique of turn-of-the-century German patriarchy and its incipient anti-Semitism. * Susan Ingram, York University *Salomé's final novel is shot through with a critical eye for the fractured realities of the time and can be read alongside her famously insightful work on Ibsen or Freud. The sharp dialogue, brilliant characterisation and architectural acuity are lovingly translated by Beck and Whitinger to make this essential reading for those interested in twentieth-century German literature and the vital recovery of major women writers. * Karen Leeder, Professor of Modern German Literature, New College, Oxford *This first translation into English should reach a wide, international readership. [It] is readable, thoroughly considered and researched, and could serve as a model for those interested in translation studies. Beck and Whitinger's erudite introduction presents their translation philosophy, which includes bringing their readers to the foreign text by preserving elements of German language and culture (lviii-lix). Their extensive endnotes contribute an impressive amount of context and clarification to Salomé's narrative. -- Susan C. Anderson * GERMAN STUDIES REVIEW *Table of ContentsIntroduction Biographical Sketch The Critical Fortunes of Andreas-Salomé and Das Haus Grasping the Novel: Interpretive Trends and Points to Ponder Works Cited Translators' Note and Acknowledgments Anneliese's House Part One Chapter I Chapter II Chapter III Chapter IV Chapter V Chapter VI Chapter VII Chapter VIII Chapter IX Chapter X Part Two Chapter XI Chapter XII Chapter XIII Chapter XIV Chapter XV Chapter XVI Chapter XVII Chapter XVIII Chapter XIX

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe first English translation of Fontane's late, posthumously published novel, featuring the eponymous, complex heroine and confronting issues regarding gender roles and marriage that still resonate today. Theodor Fontane hesitated to publish his late novel Mathilde Möhring because he believed it was too subtle and spare for the popular taste of the day. Published posthumously in 1906, its themes - corrosive economic precarity, the ambivalence of marriage for women, and the burden of work expectations for men - resonate uncannily with readers today. The heroine Mathilde and her mother cling to the underside of the lower middle class by renting out a room in their small Berlin apartment. Their new tenant seems to offer a path to middle-class security, so although marriage is not her first choice, Mathilde applies her shrewd understanding of class mores to pursue it - with results both triumphant and catastrophic. The last among Fontane's powerfully drawn female protagonists, Mathilde is unlike any previous heroine of a German novel: intelligent and energetic but plain and deeply pragmatic. We follow the fearless but flawed Mathilde from the bustling metropolis of Berlin to Woldenstein, a sleepy backwater town she single-handedly transforms, and back. Unknown in the English-speaking world, this compact work has the humor and pathos familiar to readers of Fontane, and is powerfully evocative of the politics of class, gender, and religion in late 19th-century Germany. An introduction, afterword, and extensive endnotes richly contextualize the work for both general readers and students of literature, history, gender studies, and German studies.Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction - Rachael Huener Mathilde Möhring Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Notes Afterword - Helen Chambers

Read more less

Book SynopsisOscar Wilde was popular in his own lifetime, especially as an author of comic plays. But he is also now seen as one of the most important figures in the development of modern gay literature and modern gay liberation, not only because of works such as The Picture of Dorian Gray but also because of the notorious trials that sent him to prison (and an early death) for behavior considered unacceptable in his own era. The present volume examines the whole range of Wilde’s work, from the light-hearted to the tragically serious, and explores Wilde and his writings in their biographical, historical, cultural, and literary contexts.

Read more less

Book SynopsisJohn Steinbeck’s The Pearl is one of the most popular and most frequently taught of all American novellas. Although it began its life as a brief parable, an allegorical novella about a poor fisherman finding a pearl, becoming greedy, and subsequently suffering a job-like loss, it has remained in the literary conversation for nearly three-quarters of a century for reasons that seem to exceed its original goals. Its Mexican setting, in a location not far from California, gives it a particular interest today as the United States becomes increasingly multicultural. The present volume examines the book from numerous perspectives – historical, cultural, social, economic, ethnic, and literary. This book in the Critical Insights series explores the many factors that have made Steinbeck’s short novel so enduringly appealing, examining the history of the work’s critical reception while also contributing new insights that have not been pursued before.For all these reasons and more, this latest contribution to the Critical Insights series may be of special interest to many readers. A collection of four critical context essays are intended to treat Steinbeck's novella:-From a historical vantage point-In terms of its critical reception-Using a specific critical lens-By comparing and contrasting it with other important worksThe Critical Insights Series distills the best of both classic and current literary criticism of the world's most studied literature. Edited and written by some of academia's most distinguished literary scholars, Critical Insights: The Pearl provides authoritative, in-depth scholarship that students and researchers will rely on for years. This volume is destined to become a valuable purchase for all.

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis volume discusses some of Tan's key themes: communication across generations of a family when those generations have grown up in different cultures, the immigrant experience, mother/daughter relationships, the intersection of gender roles and an Asian or Asian American experience, and depression and the artist, among others.Amy Tan has called writing "an extreme privilege, but it's also a gift. It's a gift to yourself and it's a gift of giving a story to someone." It seems Amy Tan will always be most associated with her highly successful debut novel, The Joy Luck Club. Yet she has also published five other bestselling novels, two memoirs, two children's books, and has participated in adapting her writing into many other forms of media, including film, television, and opera. This volume offers insights into the full range of her creative work.

Read more less

Book SynopsisSince its publication in 2003, Understanding David Foster Wallace has served as an accessible introduction to the rich array of themes and formal innovations that have made Wallace's fiction so popular and influential. A seminal text in the burgeoning field of David Foster Wallace studies, the original edition of Understanding David Foster Wallace was nevertheless incomplete as it addressed only his first four works of fiction--namely the novels The Broom of the System and Infinite Jest and the story collections Girl with Curious Hair and Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. This revised edition adds two new chapters covering his final story collection, Oblivion, and his posthumous novel, The Pale King. Tracing Wallace's relationship to modernism and postmodernism, this volume provides close readings of all his major works of fiction. Although critics sometimes label Wallace a postmodern writer, Boswell argues that he should be regarded as the nervous leader of some still-unnamed (and perhaps unnamable) third wave of modernism. In charting a new direction for literary practice, Wallace does not seek to overturn postmodernism, nor does he call for a return to modernism. Rather his work moves resolutely forward while hoisting the baggage of modernism and postmodernism heavily, but respectfully, on its back. Like the books that serve as its primary subject, Boswell's study directly confronts such arcane issues as postmodernism, information theory, semiotics, the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein, and poststructuralism, yet it does so in a way that is comprehensible to a wide and general readership--the very same readership that has enthusiastically embraced Wallace's challenging yet entertaining and redemptive fiction.Trade ReviewUnderstanding David Foster Wallace places incisive close readings in a rich context that Wallace's fiction emerged from and shaped—including literary postmodernism, popular culture, philosophies of language, politics, and ethics—to create an overview that is as accessible as it is illuminating. An excellent place to start and return to for scholars, teachers, students, and all readers of Wallace's challenging work." —Mary K. Holland, State University of New York, New Paltz

Read more less

Book SynopsisSince its publication in 2003, Understanding David Foster Wallace has served as an accessible introduction to the rich array of themes and formal innovations that have made Wallace's fiction so popular and influential. A seminal text in the burgeoning field of David Foster Wallace studies, the original edition of Understanding David Foster Wallace was nevertheless incomplete as it addressed only his first four works of fiction--namely the novels The Broom of the System and Infinite Jest and the story collections Girl with Curious Hair and Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. This revised edition adds two new chapters covering his final story collection, Oblivion, and his posthumous novel, The Pale King.Tracing Wallace's relationship to modernism and postmodernism, this volume provides close readings of all his major works of fiction. Although critics sometimes label Wallace a postmodern writer, Boswell argues that he should be regarded as the nervous leader of some still-unnamed (and perhaps unnamable) third wave of modernism. In charting a new direction for literary practice, Wallace does not seek to overturn postmodernism, nor does he call for a return to modernism. Rather his work moves resolutely forward while hoisting the baggage of modernism and postmodernism heavily, but respectfully, on its back.Like the books that serve as its primary subject, Boswell's study directly confronts such arcane issues as postmodernism, information theory, semiotics, the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein, and poststructuralism, yet it does so in a way that is comprehensible to a wide and general readership- the very same readership that has enthusiastically embraced Wallace's challenging yet entertaining and redemptive fiction.Trade ReviewUnderstanding David Foster Wallace places incisive close readings in a rich context that Wallace's fiction emerged from and shaped?including literary postmodernism, popular culture, philosophies of language, politics, and ethics?to create an overview that is as accessible as it is illuminating. An excellent place to start and return to for scholars, teachers, students, and all readers of Wallace's challenging work.- Mary K. Holland, State University of New York, New Paltz;""Understanding David Foster Wallace is the first critical study of Wallace that I ever got my hands on and it remains a wonderful introduction to his work. Boswell writes on Wallace with clarity, precision, and a graceful authority. Readers will come away with a firm grasp of Wallace's major themes and aesthetic concerns.""- Ralph Clare, Boise State University;""Boswell reads like a novelist and a critic, with a sensitivity to craft and narrative design married to a lucid and eclectic grasp of Wallace's myriad theoretical and intellectual contexts. If you read just one book about Wallace's fiction, this is the study to read.""- Stephen Burn, University of Glasgow;""This welcome edition builds impressively on Boswell's seminal work in its previous incarnations. The volume is rounded out by two chapters on Oblivion and The Pale King, making it a complete and cohesive guide to Wallace's oeuvre. Managing to balance astute observation and accessible style, Understanding David Foster Wallace is indispensable for seasoned scholars and new readers alike.""- Clare Hayes-Brady, University College Dublin

Read more less

Book SynopsisHarry Potter and Beyond explores J. K. Rowling's beloved best-selling series and its virtuoso reimagining of British literary traditions. Weaving together elements of fantasy, the school-story novel, detective fiction, allegory, and bildungsroman, the Harry Potter novels evade simplistic categorization as children's or fantasy literature. Because the Potter series both breaks new ground and adheres to longstanding narrative formulas, readers can enhance their enjoyment of these epic adventures by better understanding their place in literary history.Along with the seven foundational novels of the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and Beyond assesses the extraordinary range of supplementary material concerning the young wizard and his allies, including the films of the books, the subsequent film series of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, the theatrical spectacle Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, and a range of other Potter-inspired narratives. Beyond the world of Potter, Pugh surveys Rowling's literary fiction The Casual Vacancy and her detective series featuring Cormoran Strike, written under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith. Through this comprehensive overview of Rowling's body of work, Pugh reveals the vast web of connections between yesteryear's stories and Rowling's vivid creations.Trade ReviewContextualizing Rowling's works within and beyond the Harry Potter franchise in terms of genre, ideology, critical response, and artistic achievement, Tison Pugh's new book offers an informed, appreciative, and approachable assessment."—Claudia Nelson, Texas A&M University"In his eminently readable Harry Potter and Beyond, Tison Pugh offers keen insights into race, gender, queerness, and especially genre as he illuminates Rowling's fantasy fiction and also her mystery novels."—Beverly Clark, Wheaton College"This engaging and well-researched book explains how J. K. Rowling builds on five key literary genres and does a brilliant job illuminating those genres, such that the book is both an overview of Harry Potter as literature and an introduction to literature by way of Harry Potter. Highly recommended."—Kenneth Kidd, University of Florida

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe winner of every major American literary prize, John Updike (1932-2009) was one of the most popular and prolific novelists of his time and a major cultural figure who traced the high point and fall of midcentury American self-confidence and energy. A superb stylist with sixty books to his credit, he brilliantly rendered the physical surfaces of the nation's life even as he revealed the intense longings beneath those surfaces. In Understanding John Updike, Frederic Svoboda elucidates the author's deep insights into the second half of the twentieth century as seen through the lives of ordinary men and women. He offers extended close readings of Updike's most significant works of fiction, templates through which his entire oeuvre may be understood.A small-town Pennsylvanian whose prodigious talent took him to Harvard, a staff position at the New Yorker, and ultimately a life in suburban Massachusetts, where the pace of his literary output never slowed, Updike was very much in the American cultural tradition. His series of Rabbit Angstrom novels strongly echo Sinclair Lewis's earlier explorations of middle America, while The Witches of Eastwick and related novels are variations on Nathaniel Hawthorne's nineteenth-century classic The Scarlet Letter. His number-one best seller Couples examines what Time magazine called "the adulterous society" in the last year of the Kennedy administration, following the nation's fall from idealism into self-centeredness. Understanding John Updike will give both new readers and those already familiar with the author a firm grasp of his literary achievement. This outline of Updike's professional career highlights his importance in the life of the nation--not only as a novelist but also as a gifted essayist, reviewer, cultural critic, and poet.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe first African American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, Toni Morrison is one of the most celebrated women writers in the world. In Bodily Evidence: Racism, Slavery, and Maternal Power in the Novels of Toni Morrison, Geneva Cobb Moore explores how Morrison captures and mirrors the tragedy experienced by and transformation of African Americans, using parody and pastiche, semiotics and metaphors, and allegory to portray black life in the United States, teaching untaught history to liberate Americans.In this short and accessible book, originally published as part of Moore's Maternal Metaphors of Power in African American Women's Literature, she covers each of Morrison's novels, from The Bluest Eye to Beloved to God Help the Child. With a new introduction and added coverage of Morrison's final book, The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations, Bodily Evidence will be essential reading for scholars, students, and readers of Morrison's novels.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis first book-length study of Stewart O'Nan's work offers a comprehensive introduction to his writings and carefully examines recurring thematic concerns and stylistic characteristics of his novels. The author of eighteen novels, several works of nonfiction, and two short-story collections, O'Nan received the Pirate's Alley Faulkner Society's Gold Medal for best novel for Snow Angels and the Drew Heinz Prize for In the Walled City. In 1996 Granta magazine named him one of the Twenty Best Young American Novelists.In Understanding Stewart O'Nan, Heike Paul appraises O'Nan's oeuvre to date, including his popular multigenerational trilogy of novels--Wish You Were Here; Emily, Alone; and Henry, Himself--that received enthusiastic reviews in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Publisher's Weekly, and the Guardian.Paul argues that O'Nan is not only a writer of popular fiction but also has developed into a major literary voice worthy of canonical status and of having a firm place in school, college, and university curricula. To this end Paul analyzes his use of formulas of long-standing popular American genres, such as the Western and the gothic tale, as he re-invents them in innovative and complex ways creating a style that Paul describes as ""everyday gothic."" She also offers a critical examination of O'Nan's treatment of American myths and vivid descriptions of struggling middle class settings and individuals who lead precarious lives. Paul believes this first critical study of O'Nan's collected works will be instrumental in building a critical archive and analysis of his oeuvre.Trade ReviewThe Atlantic Economy during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries will have an immediate and important impact on the rapidly developing field of Atlantic history. Peter Coclanis and the volume's contributors have assembled a collection of first-rate scholarship, well written and nicely executed."" - Russell R. Menard, University of Minnesota""Should any doubt the richness of 'Atlantic History' as an approach to our understanding of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, let them turn to this perceptive collection. Herein a host of respected scholars engage fully in a breadth of topics encompassing the Dutch, French, Portuguese, Spanish, and British Empires, Africa, Europe, and the Americas to illuminate the interconnected nature of the Atlantic economy during the two hundred years prior to the Age of Revolutions. This work is essential for anyone interested in the early modern Atlantic World."" - John J. McCusker, Trinity University

Read more less

Book SynopsisIn 2020 Colson Whitehead became the youngest recipient of the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction. Although Whitehead's widely divergent books complicate overarching categorization, Derek C. Maus argues that they are linked by their skepticism toward the ostensible wisdom inherited from past generations and the various forms of "stories" that transmit it. Whitehead, best known for his Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Underground Railroad, bids readers to accompany him on challenging, often open-ended literary excursions designed to reexamine and frequently defy accepted notions of truth.Understanding Colson Whitehead unravels the parallel structures found within Whitehead's books from his 1999 debut The Intuitionist through 2019's The Nickel Boys, for which he won his second Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. By first imitating and then violating their conventions, Whitehead attempts to transcend the limits of the formulas of the genres in which he seems to write. Whitehead similarly tests subject matter, again imitating and then satirizing various forms of conventional wisdom as a means of calling out unexamined, ignored, or malevolent aspects of American culture.Although it is only one of many subjects that Whitehead addresses, race is often central to his work. It serves as a prime example of Whitehead's attempt to prompt his readers into revisiting their assumptions about meanings and values. By upending the literary formulas of the detective novel, the heroic folktale, the coming-of-age story, the zombie apocalypse, the slave narrative, and historical fiction, Whitehead reveals the flaws and shortcomings by which Americans have defined themselves. In addition to evoking such explicitly literary storytelling traditions, Whitehead also directs attention toward other interrelated historical and cultural processes that influence how race, class, gender, education, social status, and other categories of identity determine what an individual supposedly can and cannot do.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe first comprehensive study to address Franzen's work to date, including his latest novel, Crossroads. Jonathan Franzen—novelist and essayist—is a critical darling, commercial success, and magnet for controversy. His third novel, The Corrections (2000), was selected for Oprah's book club, nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, and won the National Book Award. Franzen has been featured on the cover of Time and in an episode of The Simpsons. Love him or hate him, the publication of each new novel is a literary event. In Understanding Jonathan Franzen, Timothy Galow studies Franzen's first five novels plus his most recent, Crossroads, which was published to much fanfare in 2021. He opens with the Oprah controversy—Franzen, it seems, did not want his books to be popular—and goes on to unpack the author's ambivalent relationship to his status within the "Theory Generation" of 1980s college graduates turned writers and the postmodern threads that run throughout his work. For Franzen, the social and individual are inseparable. Galow examines why Franzen's stories of (white, bourgeois) American life have inspired and provoked readers for over two decades.

Read more less

Book SynopsisExplores seven startling paradoxes behind the bestselling novelist's lasting popularity Agatha Christie stands as the bestselling novelist of all time and, in terms of total sales in all genres, places only behind the Christian Bible and Shakespeare. Since the publication of The Mysterious Affair at Styles in 1920, Christie's fiction has withstood the envy of her peers and the snipes of critics, while garnering the admiration of countless readers. From her puzzling persona (notably in her eleven-day disappearance in 1926) and status as "Queen of the Cozies" to her tragicomic themes and critiques of Englishness, Christie built a lasting literary legacy that perplexes and pleases her hordes of readers. In Understanding Agatha Christie, Tison Pugh takes a fresh look at the contemporary world's most popular author, investigating seven notable paradoxes behind her lasting success, thereby illuminating the literary innovations that have contributed to her uncannily timeless appeal.

Read more less

Book SynopsisExplores seven startling paradoxes behind the bestselling novelist's lasting popularity Agatha Christie stands as the bestselling novelist of all time and, in terms of total sales in all genres, places only behind the Christian Bible and Shakespeare. Since the publication of The Mysterious Affair at Styles in 1920, Christie's fiction has withstood the envy of her peers and the snipes of critics, while garnering the admiration of countless readers. From her puzzling persona (notably in her eleven-day disappearance in 1926) and status as "Queen of the Cozies" to her tragicomic themes and critiques of Englishness, Christie built a lasting literary legacy that perplexes and pleases her hordes of readers. In Understanding Agatha Christie, Tison Pugh takes a fresh look at the contemporary world's most popular author, investigating seven notable paradoxes behind her lasting success, thereby illuminating the literary innovations that have contributed to her uncannily timeless appeal.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis captivating biography traces the life of Eliza Fenwick, an extraordinary woman who paved her own unique path throughout the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as she made her way from country to country as writer, teacher, and school owner. Lissa Paul brings to light Fenwick’s letters for the first time to reveal the relationships she developed with many key figures of her era, and to tell Fenwick’s story as depicted by the woman herself. Fenwick began as a writer in the radical London of the 1790s, a member of Mary Wollstonecraft’s circle, and when her marriage crumbled, she became a prolific author of children’s literature to support her family. Eventually Fenwick moved to Barbados, becoming the owner of a school while confronting the reality of slavery in the British colonies. She would go on to establish schools in numerous cities in the United States and Canada, all the while taking care of her daughter and grandchildren and maintaining her friendships through letters that, as presented here, tell the story of her life. Published by the University of Delaware Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.Table of ContentsCover PageTitle PageCopyright PageContentsIllustrationsAcknowledgmentsNotes on the TextAbbreviationsPreludeChapter 1. Daughter of MethodismChapter 2. Mother and AuthorChapter 3. Children’s Book Writer and FriendChapter 4. Governess and NetworkerChapter 5. Colonist and SlaveholderChapter 6. School Owner and MournerChapter 7. North American GrandmotherCodaNotesReferencesIndex

Read more less

Book SynopsisCharles E. Robinson, Professor Emeritus of English at The University of Delaware, definitively transformed study of the novel Frankenstein with his foundational volume The Frankenstein Notebooks and, in nineteenth century studies more broadly, brought heightened attention to the nuances of writing and editing. Frankenstein and STEAM consolidates the generative legacy of his later work on the novel's broad relation to topics in science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics (STEAM). Seven chapters written by leading and emerging scholars pay homage to Robinson's later perspectives of the novel and a concluding postscript contains remembrances by his colleagues and students. This volume not only makes explicit the question of what it means to be human, a question Robinson invited students and colleagues to examine throughout his career, but it also illustrates the depth of the field and diversity of those who have been inspired by Robinson's work. Frankenstein and STEAM offers direction for continuing scholarship on the intersections of literature, science, and technology.Published by the University of Delaware Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.Table of ContentsIntroduction 1 Robin Hammerman 1 Frankenstein, Frankenstein, and the Dream of Science Susan J. Wolfson 2 Frankenstein Meets the FAANG Five: Figures of Monstrous Technology in Digital Media Discourse Mark A. McCutcheon 3 “the history of gods”: Singularity and Gender in Ex Machina Lisa Crafton 4 “My food is not that of man”: Food as Posthuman Phenomenon Siobhan Watters 5 Reading Frankenstein’s Ecological Legacy Lisbeth Chapin 6 Playing Devil’s Advocate: Defending the Criminal Justice System in Frankenstein L. Adam Mekler 7 Teaching Frankenstein as Pastiche, Parody, and Adaptation in the General Education Classroom Brian Bates Postscript: Remembrances of Charles E. Robinson Robin Hammerman Notes on Contributors Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisAs author of the “Wilderness Letter” and major award-winning novels, histories, essays, and biographies, Wallace Stegner worked throughout his life to protect western lands, places, and peoples. His writing was and remains an inspiration and guide for countless people attempting to cultivate a sense of place in the American West while tacking their way through uncertain times. This book tells the story of Stegner and his family as they made a home just outside of Palo Alto, California, dur­ing its transition from the Valley of Heart’s Delight (known for its rolling hills and orchards) to Silicon Valley. In this thoughtful study of the novels Stegner wrote in Califor­nia—including his Pulitzer Prize–winning Angle of Repose—readers are invited to consider with Stegner what the practice of place requires in the American West. Specialists in the literature and history of the American West will find new analyses of Stegner and his influential work. Other readers will be guided through Stegner’s work in concrete and accessible prose, and anyone who has longed for home and a sense of place will encounter a powerful, beautiful, and at times tragic attempt to build and preserve it.

Read more less

Book SynopsisCombining a breadth of scholarship, insightful critical thinking, and an engaging personal interaction with Mary Hallock Foote's substantial collection of illustrations and writings, Megan Riley McGilchrist provides a significant contribution to western literature and the lives of western writers. Exile, Nature, and Transformation in the Life of Mary Hallock Foote opens a window into the remarkable, little-known nineteenth-century personal history of accomplished American author and illustrator, Mary Hallock Foote, a woman both of her time, and ahead of it. When Mary gave up a successful career as an illustrator in New York to follow her husband, a mining engineer, to the West, she found herself in a new, unfamiliar, and often challenging world—sometimes feeling like an exile. The thousands of pages of her unpublished letters, which form the foundation of this book, give rare insight into the process of acculturation and eventually the transformation that she experienced. This wide-ranging analysis also examines the role that nature and Mary's lifelong connection with the natural world played in her adaptation to the western mining towns where she spent much of the rest of her life. In many ways, Mary's life mirrored that of author Megan Riley McGilchrist, whose parallel exile began in 1977 when she left America for England. Drawing equivalences with Mary's life as an exile and her own life as an expatriate American woman, Megan provides a meditation on her own transformation, as much as on Mary's. Megan demonstrates what it has been like to be a twenty-first-century American expatriate, Californian-turned-Londoner—to find common ground in the life of a nineteenth-century woman.Comprising elements of biography, literary analysis, history, and personal history, and containing many unpublished excerpts from Mary's voluminous correspondence, Exile, Nature, and Transformation in the Life of Mary Hallock Foote offers insight into the ways Mary perceived the world around her. It also provides insight into the experiences of exiles of any time—people who have left a familiar environment to embark on a new life in a new and not necessarily comfortable setting.Trade ReviewThis is the kind of book more literary and cultural critics should be writing: A book that offers rich and deep analysis but in a novelistic way, a book that fully demonstrates how reading-whether novels, letters, illustrations-fully enriches our understanding of our own lives." - Melody Graulich, professor of English and American studies, Utah State UniversityTable of Contents The Backstory Correspondences Transformation CHAPTER ONEIn Exile Seeing Landscape: a personal view Reflection Nature in Exile The Nostalgia of the Exile: A personal view Understanding Exile Reflections on Transformation: An interpretation Transformation Interpretation of Landscape What If? CHAPTER TWONew Almaden Echoes of Ancient Greece Parallels CHAPTER THREELeadville CHAPTER FOURMexico Mary in Mexico CHAPTER FIVEIdaho Mary and Helena: a retrospective view Reflection Living in a New Landscape Mirror Images CHAPTER SIXGrass Valley Mary and Angle of Repose Resolution EPILOGUE WORKS CITED ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Read more less

Book SynopsisWorlding the Westerntakes the fiction of the Western United States as a focal point for a re-examination of the consequences of exceptionalism and closed borders in the Trump Era. At a time of bounded individualism, new nativism, climate emergency, and migration crises, author Neil Campbell argues that fiction offers opportunities to put the world back in ways that challenge the dark side of globalization and proposes worlding as a different and more open form of politics. A driving force in the book is a comment from the philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy, who wrote "the unity of the world is not one: it is made of a diversity, including disparity and opposition. It is made of it, which is to say that it is not added to it and does not reduce it. The unity of the world is nothing other than its diversity, and its diversity is, in turn, a diversity of worlds" (The Creation of the World or Globalization, 2007, p. 109). Diversity, disparity, and opposition are central to the dynamic frictional fiction I consider in this book. The American West provides a powerful test case (a laboratory of the future in Charles Bowden's term), in which these features - diversity, disparity, and opposition - are present and yet historically have often been so masked or denied in the rush towards unanimity and nation-building. In this book, the past is never lost or irrelevant, but rather circles around, re-emerging in lives as echoes and hauntings. Worlding is, therefore, a positive, critical concept through which to put the notion of a single world under pressure.Table of Contents Contents Acknowledgments Introduction. Enter West Chapter 1. On Worlding Chapter 2. "What West?": Hernan Diaz's In the Distance Chapter 3. "What World We Making?": Sebastian Barry's Days Without End Chapter 4. "The World in All Its Workings": Téa Obreht's Inland Chapter 5. "A Land of Missing Things": C Pam Zhang's How Much of These Hills Is Gold Chapter 6. To Remember Otherwise and Against — Tribalography, Robin Wall Kimmerer, LeAnne Howe, and Tommy Orange Chapter 7. "The Story and the Archive of the Story": Valeria Luiselli's Lost Children Archive Chapter 8. Exit West — Conclusions Perhaps Notes References Index About the Author

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe first of its kind, this collection brings together writers from diverse academic and nonacademic worlds to explore how Austen's readers experience and process her novels' erotic power. Are Jane Austen's novels sexy? For many Austen lovers, the answer is a resounding "Yes!" From the moment Colin Firth stripped down to his breeches and shirt in the 1995 BBC Pride and Prejudice, screen adaptations inspired by Austen's novels have banked on their ability to depict sexual tension and romantic desire. Meanwhile, the success of spin-offs, sequels, and elaborations confirms that Austen's novels have become a potent aphrodisiac for everyday readers. Clearly, the fourteen million viewers who watched Firth's unveiling were onto something: Austen's novels turn people on. Jane Austen, Sex, and Romance: Engaging with Desire in the Novels and Beyond brings together a range of voices-from literary scholars to video game designers-to explore how different types of readers experience the realm of desire and the erotic in all things Austen. In this timely collection, writers, critics, journalists, and authors of internet content weigh in on sex and romance in Austen's works and in the conversations and creations the novels inspire-from sequels to critical analyses to online role-playing games. Contributors examine what is at stake for each set of Austen enthusiasts when Eros is added to the equation, in so doing building on the long tradition of Austen criticism and enriching our appreciation of the novels.Trade ReviewWhat makes this collection of essays unique, necessary, fun, and flat-out inspiring is how it brings together [...] an expansive range of perspectives and experiences. I've never read a collection quite like this one, and the editors' introductory essay on why scholars and fans need each other itself makes an important intervention. * JASNA News *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction - Nora Nachumi and Stephanie Oppenheim Part I: The Novels 1. Austen's Teasing, or What the Wit Wants - Mary Ann O'Farrell 2. Performing (Dis)comfort: Queer Possibilities in Jane Austen's Mansfield Park - Jade Higa 3. Taking Hands: The Fisting Phantasmic in Sense and Sensibility - Christien Garcia Part II: Austen Fan Culture and Austenesque Fiction 4. Always Wanting More: Desire and Austen Fan Fiction - Marilyn Francus 5. Unconquerable Attraction: Darcy and Elizabeth's Falling in Love in Austenesque Novels - Maria Clara Pivato Biajoli 6. What's Hidden in Highbury? - Stephanie Oppenheim 7. Passion and Pastiche - Diana Birchall Part III: Austen on Stage, on Screen, and Online 8. In Search of Colin Firth's Bum - Nora Nachumi 9. Jane Again - Rachel Brownstein 10. Touching Scenes: Austen, Intimacy and Staging Lovers' Vows - Elaine McGirr 11. Jane's Player's: Sex and Romance in the Virtual World of Jane Austen - Judy Tyrer 12. To YouTube from Gretna Green: Updating Lydia Bennet for the Digital Age - Margaret Dunlap Part IV: Austen in Conversations and Contexts 13. Erotic Austen - Devoney Looser 14. The Shadow Jane - Laura Engel 15. In Bed with Mr. Knightly: How Austen and Her Readers Understand Sexual Compatibility - Deborah Knuth Klenck and Ted Scheinman Afterword: Sex, Romance, and Representation in Uzma Jalaluddin's Ayesha at Last - Juliette Wells Notes on Contributors Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisExplores the dimensions of the coming-of-age novel in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean and Brazil, focusing on works by eight major Afro-Latin American writers The centuries-old European genre of the coming-of-age story has been transformed by contemporary Afro-Latin American novelists to address key aspects of the diaspora in various nations of the Caribbean and Latin America. While attention to Afro-Hispanic and Afro-Brazilian literature has increased in recent decades, few critics have focused specifically on the Afro-Latin American Bildungsroman, and fewer still have addressed novels from both Spanish- and Brazilian-speaking regions, as author Bonnie Wasserman does in this study. The memory and continuing impact of slavery especially shape these coming-of-age stories. Often interwoven with race is a focus on religion, particularly the importance of African folk religions and traditions in the lives of young people. Immigration-and the return journey-is another important theme in the novels. Coming of Age in the Afro-Latin American Novel discusses works&emdash;all published around the turn of the 21st century&emdash;by such important writers as Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa and Mayra Santos-Febres (from Puerto Rico), Conceição Evaristo and Paulo Lins (from Brazil); Teresa Cardenas and Pedro Pérez Sarduy (from Cuba); and Junot Diaz and Rita Indiana (from the Dominican Republic). Wasserman's far-reaching analysis is both rigorous and compassionate, shedding a clear light on ways in which descendants of Africans have experienced life in the New World.Table of ContentsIntroduction 1. The Intergenerational Bildungsroman in Daughters of the Stone and Ponciá Vicencio 2. The Epistolary Afro-Cuban Bildungsroman 3. Boys to Men: Masculinity in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and City of God 4. Reinventing the Afro-Latin American Bildungsroman Conclusion Bibliography Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisIn writing about Adventures of Huckleberry Finn on the 100th anniversary of its 1885 publication, Henry Nash Smith remarked that the novel ""made vernacular language, with its new sources of pleasure and new energy, available for American prose and poetry in the twentieth century."" This volume of essays examines what made this vernacular so groundbreaking, as well as the controversy that still surrounds one of the first Great American novels.Each essay is 2,500 to 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: About This Volume Critical Context: Original Introductory Essays Critical Readings: Original In-Depth Essays Further Readings Detailed Bibliography Detailed Bio of the Editor General Subject Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisCritical Insights: Richard Wright explores the work of this groundbreaking author of Black Boy and Native Son, to place the author’s body of work in the canon of American literature, the literature of identity and literature of protest.

Read more less

Book SynopsisSamuel Johnson’s life was situated within a rich social and intellectual community of friendships—and antagonisms. Community and Solitude is a collection of ten essays that explore relationships between Johnson and several of his main contemporaries—including James Boswell, Edmund Burke, Frances Burney, Robert Chambers, Oliver Goldsmith, Bennet Langton, Arthur Murphy, Richard Savage, Anna Seward, and Thomas Warton—and analyzes some of the literary productions emanating from the pressures within those relationships. In their detailed and careful examination of particular works situated within complex social and personal contexts, the essays in this volume offer a “thick” and illuminating description of Johnson’s world that also engages with larger cultural and aesthetic issues, such as intertextuality, literary celebrity, narrative, the nature of criticism, race, slavery, and sensibility.Contributors: Christopher Catanese, James Caudle, Marilyn Francus, Christine Jackson-Holzberg, Claudia Thomas Kairoff, Elizabeth Lambert, Anthony W. Lee, James E. May, John Radner, and Lance Wilcox. Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.Trade Review"This volume of essays advances the field not only because it focuses on a new topic but also because of the patient and imaginative analysis in the various essays. The audience here extends beyond Johnsonians because so many other figures of interest are included, from Frances Burney, Burke, Warton, Seward, and Arthur Murphy to Goldsmith and of course Boswell." -- Steven Lynn * University of South Carolina *"An invaluable, erudite, thoughtful and thought-provoking contribution to the study of Samuel Johnson's life, philosophy, and literary work, Community and Solitude: New Essays on Johnson's Circle is an extraordinary body of informative and deftly scripted scholarship." * Midwest Book Review *"The scholarship is of a consistently high level, and the prose is clear and well edited. Community and Solitude provides a salutary reminder that authorship is not always the solitary activity that many people assume. Recommend." * Choice *"This collection of ten essays begins with three solid essays, all making good use of correspondence." * Eighteenth-Century Intelligencer *"Lee, as editor, sets out to counterbalance Johnson’s need for solitude to accomplish his literary works with his at times almost desperate search for company to alleviate his periods of despair and disillusion. How could someone with such a sociable character and love of conversation succeed in creating such a corpus of work that within its pages we can find epithets suitable for most occasions in life?" * The New Rambler *"These essays, well presented in this volume by Bucknell University Press, bring context, color, and an array of information that should prove of value to students and scholars of Johnson’s expansive circle." * Eighteenth-Century Studies *"The book uses...discussions to provide an engaging illustration of time, place, and character for a wide audience. For scholars who know Boswell’s biography and eighteenth-century London well, the book offers primarily a useful synthesis of biographies and cultural history." * Eighteenth-Century Fiction *"As a monograph designed for considering the historical interconnectedness in readings of literature, history, and culture, Community and Solitude, part of Bucknell University Press's Transits series, accomplishes its goal with welcome fidelity." * The Scriblerian and the Kit-Cats *"This volume of essays advances the field not only because it focuses on a new topic but also because of the patient and imaginative analysis in the various essays. The audience here extends beyond Johnsonians because so many other figures of interest are included, from Frances Burney, Burke, Warton, Seward, and Arthur Murphy to Goldsmith and of course Boswell." -- Steven Lynn * University of South Carolina *"An invaluable, erudite, thoughtful and thought-provoking contribution to the study of Samuel Johnson's life, philosophy, and literary work, Community and Solitude: New Essays on Johnson's Circle is an extraordinary body of informative and deftly scripted scholarship." * Midwest Book Review *"The scholarship is of a consistently high level, and the prose is clear and well edited. Community and Solitude provides a salutary reminder that authorship is not always the solitary activity that many people assume. Recommend." * Choice *"This collection of ten essays begins with three solid essays, all making good use of correspondence." * Eighteenth-Century Intelligencer *"Lee, as editor, sets out to counterbalance Johnson’s need for solitude to accomplish his literary works with his at times almost desperate search for company to alleviate his periods of despair and disillusion. How could someone with such a sociable character and love of conversation succeed in creating such a corpus of work that within its pages we can find epithets suitable for most occasions in life?" * The New Rambler *"These essays, well presented in this volume by Bucknell University Press, bring context, color, and an array of information that should prove of value to students and scholars of Johnson’s expansive circle." * Eighteenth-Century Studies *"The book uses...discussions to provide an engaging illustration of time, place, and character for a wide audience. For scholars who know Boswell’s biography and eighteenth-century London well, the book offers primarily a useful synthesis of biographies and cultural history." * Eighteenth-Century Fiction *"As a monograph designed for considering the historical interconnectedness in readings of literature, history, and culture, Community and Solitude, part of Bucknell University Press's Transits series, accomplishes its goal with welcome fidelity." * The Scriblerian and the Kit-Cats *Table of Contents List of Tables… vAbbreviations … vi Introduction ... 1Part I. Personal Relationships: Letters and Conversation ... 11 One Connecting with Three “Young Dogs”: Johnson’s Early Letters to Robert Chambers, Bennet Langton, and James Boswell ... 12John Radner Two James Elphinston and Samuel Johnson: Contact, Irritations, and an “Argonautic” Letter ... 44Christine Jackson-Holzberg Three The Case of the Missing Hottentot: John Dun’s Conversation with Samuel Johnson in Tour to the Hebrides as Reported by Boswell and Dun ... 79James CaudlePart II. Literary Relationships: Major Texts and Topics ... 118 Four Oliver Goldsmith’s Revisions to The Traveller ... 119James E. May Five “Down with her, Burney!”: Johnson, Burney, and the Politics of Literary Celebrity ... 165Marilyn Francus Six In the First Circle: The Four Narrators of the Life of Savage ... 205Lance Wilcox Seven “Under the shade of exalted merit”: Arthur Murphy’s A Poetical Epistle to Mr. Samuel Johnson, A.M. ... 236Anthony W. Lee Eight Johnson, Burke, Boswell, and the Slavery Debate ... 258Elizabeth Lambert Nine Samuel Johnson and Anna Seward: Solitude and Sensibility ... 295Claudia Thomas Kairoff Ten Johnson, Warton, and the Popular Reader ... 331Christopher CataneseAcknowledgments... 358Bibliography ... 360Index ... 389About the Contributors ... 390

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis book makes the argument that Machado de Assis, hailed as one of Latin American literature’s greatest writers, was also a major theoretician of the modern novel form. Steeped in the works of Western literature and an imaginative reader of French Symbolist poetry, Machado creates, between 1880 and 1908, a “new narrative,” one that will presage the groundbreaking theories of Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure by showing how even the language of narrative cannot escape being elusive and ambiguous in terms of meaning. It is from this discovery about the nature of language as a self-referential semiotic system that Machado crafts his “new narrative.” Long celebrated in Brazil as a dazzlingly original writer, Machado has struggled to gain respect and attention outside the Luso-Brazilian ken. He is the epitome of the “outsider” or “marginal,” the iconoclastic and wildly innovative genius who hails from a culture rarely studied in the Western literary hierarchy and so consigned to the status of “eccentric.” Had the Brazilian master written not in Portuguese but English, French, or German, he would today be regarded as one of the true exemplars of the modern novel, in expression as well as in theory. Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.Trade Review"Earl E. Fitz advances the question of language as key to innovation and modernity in the mature works of Machado de Assis. Fitz attributes his departure from realism to a new awareness of the mutability, instability, self-referentiality and inescapable ambiguity of language in relation to meaning. What the novels are really about is not what they seem." -- K. David Jackson * Yale University *Is Machado de Assis a theoretician of the novel? Earl Fitz’s book is a fascinating response to such a question. In this exciting journey through the writer’s late novels, we learn that Machado didn’t tell us what he was thinking; differently, he showed us the very act of thinking through language. It’s worth reading: Fitz’s passion for Machado is contagious. -- Pedro Meira Monteiro, Arthur W. Marks ’19 Professor of Spanish and Portuguese * Princeton University *"A masterwork of original and seminal scholarship that rescues a critically important Latin American writer from an undeserved obscurity." * Midwest Book Review *"Earl Fitz’s book should be appreciated as a complement to the many other excellent studies of Machado’s relation to a plentiful external landscape. Lest we become overly confident about our ability to know these realities, we should pause and, considering perspectives like those of this book, clean our glasses." * Journal of Lusophone Studies *"Fitz’s study provides a strong argument for why scholars interested in narrative theory and form should give, if not renewed, then new attention to the work of Machado de Assis." * Bulletin of Spanish Studies *"[A] passionate and convincingly argued monograph...Fitz’s study makes a vital contribution to Machadoan criticism in that it highlights, perhaps more clearly, more forcefully, and in more detail than previously offered, the holistic view Machado came to embrace of narrative as a dynamic confluence of unstable signs capable of creating seemingly stable realities." * Hispania *"Along with the translation of more works by Brazilian writers and scholars alike, books like Machado de Assis and Narrative Theory pave the way for the reception of literary works that, otherwise, remain regrettably off the radar even among many in academia." * Hispanic Review *"Earl E. Fitz advances the question of language as key to innovation and modernity in the mature works of Machado de Assis. Fitz attributes his departure from realism to a new awareness of the mutability, instability, self-referentiality and inescapable ambiguity of language in relation to meaning. What the novels are really about is not what they seem." -- K. David Jackson * Yale University *Is Machado de Assis a theoretician of the novel? Earl Fitz’s book is a fascinating response to such a question. In this exciting journey through the writer’s late novels, we learn that Machado didn’t tell us what he was thinking; differently, he showed us the very act of thinking through language. It’s worth reading: Fitz’s passion for Machado is contagious. -- Pedro Meira Monteiro, Arthur W. Marks ’19 Professor of Spanish and Portuguese * Princeton University *"A masterwork of original and seminal scholarship that rescues a critically important Latin American writer from an undeserved obscurity." * Midwest Book Review *"Earl Fitz’s book should be appreciated as a complement to the many other excellent studies of Machado’s relation to a plentiful external landscape. Lest we become overly confident about our ability to know these realities, we should pause and, considering perspectives like those of this book, clean our glasses." * Journal of Lusophone Studies *"Fitz’s study provides a strong argument for why scholars interested in narrative theory and form should give, if not renewed, then new attention to the work of Machado de Assis." * Bulletin of Spanish Studies *"[A] passionate and convincingly argued monograph...Fitz’s study makes a vital contribution to Machadoan criticism in that it highlights, perhaps more clearly, more forcefully, and in more detail than previously offered, the holistic view Machado came to embrace of narrative as a dynamic confluence of unstable signs capable of creating seemingly stable realities." * Hispania *"Along with the translation of more works by Brazilian writers and scholars alike, books like Machado de Assis and Narrative Theory pave the way for the reception of literary works that, otherwise, remain regrettably off the radar even among many in academia." * Hispanic Review *Table of ContentsAbbreviations .. ivA Note on Translations... v Introduction ... 1 One - The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas ... 95 Two - The Psychiatrist ... 132 Three - Quincas Borba ... 169 Four - Dom Casmurro ... 196 Five - Esau and Jacob ... 235 Six - Counselor Ayres Memorial ... 260 Conclusion ... 283Acknowledgements ... 310Bibliography ... 311Index ... 324About the Author ... 325

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis book makes the argument that Machado de Assis, hailed as one of Latin American literature’s greatest writers, was also a major theoretician of the modern novel form. Steeped in the works of Western literature and an imaginative reader of French Symbolist poetry, Machado creates, between 1880 and 1908, a “new narrative,” one that will presage the groundbreaking theories of Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure by showing how even the language of narrative cannot escape being elusive and ambiguous in terms of meaning. It is from this discovery about the nature of language as a self-referential semiotic system that Machado crafts his “new narrative.” Long celebrated in Brazil as a dazzlingly original writer, Machado has struggled to gain respect and attention outside the Luso-Brazilian ken. He is the epitome of the “outsider” or “marginal,” the iconoclastic and wildly innovative genius who hails from a culture rarely studied in the Western literary hierarchy and so consigned to the status of “eccentric.” Had the Brazilian master written not in Portuguese but English, French, or German, he would today be regarded as one of the true exemplars of the modern novel, in expression as well as in theory. Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.Trade Review"Earl E. Fitz advances the question of language as key to innovation and modernity in the mature works of Machado de Assis. Fitz attributes his departure from realism to a new awareness of the mutability, instability, self-referentiality and inescapable ambiguity of language in relation to meaning. What the novels are really about is not what they seem." -- K. David Jackson * Yale University *Is Machado de Assis a theoretician of the novel? Earl Fitz’s book is a fascinating response to such a question. In this exciting journey through the writer’s late novels, we learn that Machado didn’t tell us what he was thinking; differently, he showed us the very act of thinking through language. It’s worth reading: Fitz’s passion for Machado is contagious. -- Pedro Meira Monteiro, Arthur W. Marks ’19 Professor of Spanish and Portuguese * Princeton University *"A masterwork of original and seminal scholarship that rescues a critically important Latin American writer from an undeserved obscurity." * Midwest Book Review *"Earl Fitz’s book should be appreciated as a complement to the many other excellent studies of Machado’s relation to a plentiful external landscape. Lest we become overly confident about our ability to know these realities, we should pause and, considering perspectives like those of this book, clean our glasses." * Journal of Lusophone Studies *"Fitz’s study provides a strong argument for why scholars interested in narrative theory and form should give, if not renewed, then new attention to the work of Machado de Assis." * Bulletin of Spanish Studies *"[A] passionate and convincingly argued monograph...Fitz’s study makes a vital contribution to Machadoan criticism in that it highlights, perhaps more clearly, more forcefully, and in more detail than previously offered, the holistic view Machado came to embrace of narrative as a dynamic confluence of unstable signs capable of creating seemingly stable realities." * Hispania *"Along with the translation of more works by Brazilian writers and scholars alike, books like Machado de Assis and Narrative Theory pave the way for the reception of literary works that, otherwise, remain regrettably off the radar even among many in academia." * Hispanic Review *"Earl E. Fitz advances the question of language as key to innovation and modernity in the mature works of Machado de Assis. Fitz attributes his departure from realism to a new awareness of the mutability, instability, self-referentiality and inescapable ambiguity of language in relation to meaning. What the novels are really about is not what they seem." -- K. David Jackson * Yale University *Is Machado de Assis a theoretician of the novel? Earl Fitz’s book is a fascinating response to such a question. In this exciting journey through the writer’s late novels, we learn that Machado didn’t tell us what he was thinking; differently, he showed us the very act of thinking through language. It’s worth reading: Fitz’s passion for Machado is contagious. -- Pedro Meira Monteiro, Arthur W. Marks ’19 Professor of Spanish and Portuguese * Princeton University *"A masterwork of original and seminal scholarship that rescues a critically important Latin American writer from an undeserved obscurity." * Midwest Book Review *"Earl Fitz’s book should be appreciated as a complement to the many other excellent studies of Machado’s relation to a plentiful external landscape. Lest we become overly confident about our ability to know these realities, we should pause and, considering perspectives like those of this book, clean our glasses." * Journal of Lusophone Studies *"Fitz’s study provides a strong argument for why scholars interested in narrative theory and form should give, if not renewed, then new attention to the work of Machado de Assis." * Bulletin of Spanish Studies *"[A] passionate and convincingly argued monograph...Fitz’s study makes a vital contribution to Machadoan criticism in that it highlights, perhaps more clearly, more forcefully, and in more detail than previously offered, the holistic view Machado came to embrace of narrative as a dynamic confluence of unstable signs capable of creating seemingly stable realities." * Hispania *"Along with the translation of more works by Brazilian writers and scholars alike, books like Machado de Assis and Narrative Theory pave the way for the reception of literary works that, otherwise, remain regrettably off the radar even among many in academia." * Hispanic Review *Table of ContentsAbbreviations .. ivA Note on Translations... v Introduction ... 1 One - The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas ... 95 Two - The Psychiatrist ... 132 Three - Quincas Borba ... 169 Four - Dom Casmurro ... 196 Five - Esau and Jacob ... 235 Six - Counselor Ayres Memorial ... 260 Conclusion ... 283Acknowledgements ... 310Bibliography ... 311Index ... 324About the Author ... 325

Read more less

Book SynopsisNarrative Mourning explores death and its relics as they appear within the confines of the eighteenth-century British novel. It argues that the cultural disappearance of the dead/dying body and the introduction of consciousness as humanity’s newfound soul found expression in fictional representations of the relic (object) or relict (person). In the six novels examined in this monograph—Samuel Richardson's Clarissa and Sir Charles Grandison; Sarah Fielding's David Simple and Volume the Last; Henry Mackenzie's The Man of Feeling; and Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho—the appearance of the relic/relict signals narrative mourning and expresses (often obliquely) changing cultural attitudes toward the dead. Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press. Trade Review"Oliver’s study represents a fascinating and welcome addition to eighteenth-century literary studies. Considering the novel of sensibility and the gothic novel in relation to death, Narrative Mourning addresses contemporary beliefs about death, the dead body, the soul, and the material objects associated with death. Oliver explores relics—objects such as waxen transi and hair jewelry—and relicts—the people left behind after a death occurs. Throughout, she offers a number of insightful readings, from the high body count of David Simple and its sequel, to Richardson’s Sir Charles Grandison with the mock-widow and pseudo-ghost Clementina della Porretta, to the haunting narrative strategies of The Man of Feeling." -- Bonnie Latimer * author of Making Gender, Culture and the Self in the Fiction of Samuel Richardson *"With its extensive close readings of both the novel of sensibility and the Gothic novel, Kathleen M. Oliver’s Narrative Mourning: Death and Its Relics in the Eighteenth-Century British Novel compellingly argues for the cultural disappearance of the dead in its lucid examination of relics and relicts in fictional representations of death and loss. Its distinctive focus on objects, persons, and ghosts offers a fascinating and well-needed study of the role of melancholy and mourning in the eighteenth-century novel." -- Jolene Zigarovich * author of Writing Death and Absence in the Victorian Novel *"'Death and loss haunt the eighteenth-century British novel,'" writes Kathleen M. Oliver in her compelling study, Narrative Mourning. From Clarissa Harlowe's mourning rings to her own corpse in Clarissa; from portraits to wax effigies in The Mysteries of Udolpho; from relics to relicts in David Simple, Volume the Last, and Grandison; from torn manuscript to lively spectral narrator in The Man of Feeling, Oliver's careful readings limn the dynamic 'lives' of eighteenth-century literary remains." -- Mary Elizabeth Hotz * author of Literary Remains: Representations of Death and Burial in Victorian England *"[Narrative Mourning's] clearly marked conclusions...eloquently and often lyrically summarize the concerns of each chapter and section while signposting the more difficult arguments in the interest of accessibility." * Eighteenth-Century Fiction *Table of Contents List of Illustrations Introduction: The Relic Objects 1 “With My Hair in Crystal”: Commemorative Hair Jewelry and the Entombed Saint in Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa (1748) 2 “You Know Me Then”: The Relic versus the Real in Ann Radcliffe’s Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) Part I. The Secret Life of Portraits Part II. Death as the Lost Beloved Persons 3 “All the Horrors of Friendship”: Counting the Bodies in Sarah Fielding’s David Simple (1744) and Volume the Last (1753) Part I. The Sorrows of Young David: Melancholia Part II. Double Vision: Allegory 4 “It is All for You!”: Dying for Love in Samuel Richardson’s The History of Sir Charles Grandison (1753) Ghosts 5 “‘Tis at Least a Memorial for Those Who Survive”: The It-Narrator, Death Writing, and the Ghostwriter in Henry Mackenzie’s The Man of Feeling (1771) Conclusion: Death and the Novel Acknowledgments Works Cited Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisWriting Lives in the Eighteenth Century is a collection of essays on memoir, biography, and autobiography during a formative period for the genre. The essays revolve around recognized male and female figures—returning to the Boswell and Burney circle—but present arguments that dismantle traditional privileging of biographical modes. The contributors reconsider the processes of hero making in the beginning phases of a culture of celebrity. Employing the methodology William Godwin outlined for novelists of taking material “from all sources, experience, report, and the records of human affairs,” each contributor examines within the contexts of their time and historical traditions the anxieties and imperatives of the auto/biographer as she or he shapes material into a legacy. New work on Frances Burney D’Arblay’s son, Alexander, as revealed through letters; on Isabelle de Charriere; on Hester Thrale Piozzi; and on Alicia LeFanu and Frances Burney’s realignment of family biography extend current conversations about eighteenth century biography and autobiography. Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press. Trade Review"Rich and thought-provoking, Writing Lives in the Eighteenth Century offers fresh perspectives on figures at the centre of studies of eighteenth-century life writing, including James Boswell and Frances Burney, and engages them in a fascinating dialogue with less prominent writers, such as Isabelle de Charrière and Alicia LeFanu. The essays are deeply knowledgeable, elegantly written, and pose important questions for studies of the genre. Collectively, they will be of significant value to scholars of eighteenth-century literature and life writing." -- Amy Culley * author of British Women’s Life Writing, 1760-1840: Friendship, Community, and Collaboration *"Writing Lives in the Eighteenth Century offers a rich and expansive collection of essays by accomplished scholars, demonstrating how underserved the topic of life writing has been in the field that, arguably, invented its modern form." -- Laura Rosenthal * author of Nightwalkers: Prostitute Narratives from the Eighteenth Century *"Rich and thought-provoking, Writing Lives in the Eighteenth Century offers fresh perspectives on figures at the centre of studies of eighteenth-century life writing, including James Boswell and Frances Burney, and engages them in a fascinating dialogue with less prominent writers, such as Isabelle de Charrière and Alicia LeFanu. The essays are deeply knowledgeable, elegantly written, and pose important questions for studies of the genre. Collectively, they will be of significant value to scholars of eighteenth-century literature and life writing." -- Amy Culley * author of British Women’s Life Writing, 1760-1840: Friendship, Community, and Collaboration *"Writing Lives in the Eighteenth Century offers a rich and expansive collection of essays by accomplished scholars, demonstrating how underserved the topic of life writing has been in the field that, arguably, invented its modern form." -- Laura Rosenthal * author of Nightwalkers: Prostitute Narratives from the Eighteenth Century *Table of ContentsIntroduction: The Art of Writing Lives Tanya Caldwell Chapter 1: Dr. Johnson’s Apology for the Married Life of Hester Thrale’: Hester Lynch Piozzi’s Letters to and from the Late Samuel Johnson LLD Lisa Berglund Chapter 2: The Education of Alexander d’Arblay: “The Idol of the World” Peter Sabor Chapter 3: Trying to Set the Record Straight: Alicia LeFanu, Frances Burney D’Arblay, and the Limits of Family Biography Marilyn Francus Chapter 4: The Life of Isabelle de Charrière: ‘Written by Herself’ Victoria Warren Chapter 5: Clashes of conversations in James Boswell’s Hebrides and Life of Johnson and ‘My Firm Regard to Authenticity’ James J. Caudle Chpater 6: Charles Burney’s Handel Reconsidered Todd Gilman Acknowledgements Bibliography Notes on Contributors Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisLaurence Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy continues to be as widely read and admired as upon its first appearance. Deemed more accessible than Sterne’s Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, and often assigned as a college text, A Sentimental Journey has received its share of critical attention, but—unlike Tristram Shandy—to date it has not been the subject of a dedicated anthology of critical essays. This volume fills that gap with fresh perspectives on Sterne’s novel that will appeal to students and critics alike. Together with an introduction that situates each essay within A Sentimental Journey’s reception history, and a tailpiece detailing the culmination of Sterne’s career and his death, this volume presents a cohesive approach to this significant text that is simultaneously grounded and revelatory.Trade Review"This collection brings together a group of distinguished Sterne scholars whose focus on the author’s final publication demonstrates the way new questions, new methodologies, new pairings, and new contexts can invigorate our understanding of Sterne, his world, and his work." -- Elizabeth Kraft * author of Laurence Sterne Revisited *"The prime virtue of this collection is that it combines more traditional literary approaches with more recent models of literary scholarship, influenced by affect theory, gender studies, animal studies, and thing theory. As such, it stands as a valuable snapshot of Sterne studies in the present." -- Jesse Molesworth * author of Chance and the Eighteenth-Century Novel: Realism, Probability, Magic *"A welcome addition to criticism on Sterne." * XVII-XVIII *"The strength of the resulting volume lies not only in the constituent essays, but also in the intelligence and creativity with which Newbould and Gerard have disposed and framed them, setting them in constantly illuminating conversation with one another. In their expert editorial hands, A Sentimental Journey has never looked so rich in imaginative implication and interpretative possibility." * The Shandean *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Abbreviations and Conventions W. B. Gerard and M-C. Newbould, “Introduction: A Sentimental Journey’s Critical Legacies.” I. Men, Women, and other Animals 1. Shaun Regan, “Refining Masculinity in Yorick’s Journey: Courtesy, Chivalry, Gallantry.” 2. Julia Banister, “Yorick’s War: Patriot Politics, Military Men, and Willing Women in A Sentimental Journey.” 3. Glynis Ridley, “Sterne’s Journey into Animal Affect.” II. Words, Structures, Things 4. Chris Ewers, “Spatial Digression and the Borders of Knowledge in A Sentimental Journey.” 5. Alexander Hardie-Forsyth, “(O)economy and Order: Laurence Sterne’s Chaptering.” 6. Fraser Easton, "Yorick's Speech and the Starling's Song: The Limits of Elocution in A Sentimental Journey" 7. Jennifer Preston Wilson, “Things of the Spirit: Vibrant Matter in A Sentimental Journey.” III. Historical Contexts, Rewritten Texts 8. Melvyn New, “Boswell and Sterne in 1768.” 9. Peter Budrin, “The Shadow of Eliza: Sterne’s Underplot in A Sentimental Journey.” 10. Paul Goring, “Debt, Death, and Literary Inheritance: The Ends of Sterne and A Sentimental Journey.” Pat Rogers, “Afterword” Acknowledgments Works Cited and Selected Bibliography Index About the Contributors

Read more less

Book SynopsisCalila: The Later Novels of Carmen Martín Gaite explores the last six novels by Spain´s most honored contemporary woman writer. Its scholarship is enriched by the voice of Calila herself—as Brown called Martín Gaite, who was a dear friend—as they conversed and exchanged letters during the composition of the novels. The book opens with an introduction to Martín Gaite´s life and literature and ends with a consideration of her legacy. Each central chapter analyzes a later novel in its historical, biographical, and critical contexts. From the young adult fantasy Caperucita en Manhattan (Red Riding Hood in Manhattan) to the post-Transition epistolary masterpiece Nubosidad variable (Variable Cloud), the Transition-era saga La Reina de las Nieves (The Farewell Angel), the Proustian reminiscence Lo raro es vivir (Living’s the Strange Thing), the narrative tapestry Irse de casa (Leaving Home), and the memoir of family secrets Los parentescos (Family Relations), these fascinating novels evoke themes that resonate today. Trade Review"Calila: The Later Novels of Carmen Martin Gaite is a fascinating window into the life and later works of one of the most eminent Spanish novelists of all times. Joan L. Brown combines relevant history, original analysis and personal anecdotes from 'Calila’s' personal letters into a compelling and delightful rendition." -- María-Luisa Guardiola * editor of the Royal Spanish Academy's critical edition of Antonio García Gutiérrez's El trovador *"Martín Gaite’s works are now studied all around the world, especially in further education establishments. More and more students are researching her latest novels and Calila will be an indispensable read as Brown combines the critical study of the author’s texts, with their socio-historical background, and a personal view of the process of writing." -- Maria-José Blanco * author of Life-writing in Carmen Martín Gaite’s Cuadernos de todo and her Novels of the 1990s *"As I read Calila: The Later Novels of Carmen Martín Gaite, I had to battle the temptation to put the volume aside in order to re-read the novels that Brown analyzes in the book. There can hardly be a greater testament to a literary critic’s skill than her capacity to communicate to the reader her love and enthusiasm for the texts she analyzes. Brown’s central argument in Calila is that Martín Gaite’s novels of the 1990s deserve to be read, and the book will, without a doubt, bring new and returning readers and inspire renewed critical interest in the writer’s later work." * Hispania *"This insightful monograph on Martín Gaite’s final six novels is part-literary criticism and part-personal anecdote based on the extended friendship between the author and Brown who draws from a variety of scholarly sources, personal correspondence and photographs to provide readings of her works." * Anales de la literatura española contemporánea *"Calila: The Later Novels of Carmen Martin Gaite is a fascinating window into the life and later works of one of the most eminent Spanish novelists of all times. Joan L. Brown combines relevant history, original analysis and personal anecdotes from 'Calila’s' personal letters into a compelling and delightful rendition." -- María-Luisa Guardiola * editor of the Royal Spanish Academy's critical edition of Antonio García Gutiérrez's El trovador *"Martín Gaite’s works are now studied all around the world, especially in further education establishments. More and more students are researching her latest novels and Calila will be an indispensable read as Brown combines the critical study of the author’s texts, with their socio-historical background, and a personal view of the process of writing." -- Maria-José Blanco * author of Life-writing in Carmen Martín Gaite’s Cuadernos de todo and her Novels of the 1990s *"As I read Calila: The Later Novels of Carmen Martín Gaite, I had to battle the temptation to put the volume aside in order to re-read the novels that Brown analyzes in the book. There can hardly be a greater testament to a literary critic’s skill than her capacity to communicate to the reader her love and enthusiasm for the texts she analyzes. Brown’s central argument in Calila is that Martín Gaite’s novels of the 1990s deserve to be read, and the book will, without a doubt, bring new and returning readers and inspire renewed critical interest in the writer’s later work." * Hispania *"This insightful monograph on Martín Gaite’s final six novels is part-literary criticism and part-personal anecdote based on the extended friendship between the author and Brown who draws from a variety of scholarly sources, personal correspondence and photographs to provide readings of her works." * Anales de la literatura española contemporánea *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Introduction: Calila and Her Later Novels 1 Backstory: Carmen Martín Gaite’s Earlier Life and Literature 2 Caperucita en Manhattan: A Young Adult Novel of Recovery 3 Nubosidad variable: Contemporary Feminism in Post-Transition Spain 4 La Reina de las Nieves: Rewriting a Tragedy of Spain’s Transition 5 Lo raro es vivir: Existential Questions in Uncertain Times 6 Irse de casa: Back to the Future in Democratic Spain 7 Los parentheses: Fractured Families in the Twenty-First Century Conclusion: The Later Novels and Martín Gaite’s Legacy Notes Works Cited Index

Read more less

Book Synopsis'I know it's a daring suggestion, but I'll make it anyway.'Charmian Clift was a writer ahead of her time. Lyrical and fearless, her essays seamlessly the personal and the political.In 1964, Charmian Clift and her husband George Johnston returned to Australia after living and writing for many years in the cosmopolitan community of artists on the Greek island of Hydra. Back in Sydney, Clift found her opinions were far more progressive than those of many of her fellow Australians.This new edition of Charmian Clift's essays, selected and introduced by her biographer Nadia Wheatley, are drawn from the weekly newspaper column Clift wrote through the turbulent and transformative years of the 1960s. In these 'sneaky little revolutions', as Clift once called them, she supported the rights of women and migrants, called for social justice for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, opposed conscription and the war in Vietnam, acknowledged Australia's role in the Asia-Pacific, fought censorship, called for an Australian film industry — and much more. In doing so, she set a new benchmark for the form of the essay in Australian literature.

Read more less

Book SynopsisArchetypes from Underground: Notes on the Dostoevskian Self uncovers archetypal imagery in Dostoevsky's stories and novels and argues that archetypes bring a new dimension to our understanding and appreciation of his works. In this interdisciplinary study, Harrison analyzes selected texts in light of fresh research in Dostoevsky studies, cultural history, comparative mythology, and depth psychology. He argues that one of Dostoevsky's chief concerns is the crisis of modernity, and that he dramatizes the conflicts of the modern self by depicting the dynamic, transformative nature of the psyche. Harrison finds the language and imagery of archetypes in Dostoevsky's characters, symbols, and themes, and shows how these resonate in remarkable ways with the archetypes of self, persona, and the shadow. He demonstrates that major themes in Dostoevsky coincide with Western esotericism, such as the complementarity of opposites, transformation, and the symbolism of death and resurrection. These arguments inform a close reading of several of Dostoevsky's texts, including The Double, Notes from Underground, and The Brothers Karamazov. Archetypes inform these works and others, bringing vitality to Dostoevsky's major characters and themes. This research represents a departure from the religious and philosophical questions that have dominated Dostoevsky studies. This work is the first sustained analysis of Dostoevsky's work in light of archetypes, framing a topic that calls for further investigation. Archetypes illumine the author's ideas about Russian national identity and its faith traditions and help us redefine our understanding of Russian realism and the prominent place Dostoevsky occupies within it.Trade Review"Readers are often asked to choose between two filters, the secular and the religious, in their quest for Dostoevsky's paradoxical sense of personality: socially conditioned but not schematic, rebellious but not free. Lonny Harrison suggests that we work instead with an expanded Jungian concept of archetype, with its unconscious, its shadow, its ego-transcendence and rebirth. The result is a fascinating hypothesis about the Dostoevskian psyche, poised between the ruins of European positivism and the potentials of cosmic myth." -- Caryl Emerson, Princeton University -- 201603

Read more less

Book SynopsisCan literary criticism help transform entrenched Settler Canadian understandings of history and place? How are nationalist historiographies, insular regionalisms, established knowledge systems, state borders, and narrow definitions continuing to hinder the transfer of information across epistemological divides in the twenty-first century? What might nation-to-nation literary relations look like? Through readings of a wide range of northeastern texts - including Puritan captivity narratives, Wabanaki wampum belts, and contemporary Innu poetry - Rachel Bryant explores how colonized and Indigenous environments occupy the same given geographical coordinates even while existing in distinct epistemological worlds. Her analyses call for a vital and unprecedented process of listening to the stories that Indigenous peoples have been telling about this continent for centuries. At the same time, she performs this process herself, creating a model for listening and for incorporating those stories throughout.This commitment to listening is analogous to homing - the sophisticated skill that turtles, insects, lobsters, birds, and countless other beings use to return to sites of familiarity. Bryant adopts the homing process as a reading strategy that continuously seeks to transcend the distortions and distractions that were intentionally built into Settler Canadian culture across centuries.Trade Review"The Homing Place enacts and advocates for a paradigm shift in 'literary relations' in North America, revealing the 'invisible wall ' in colonial perceptions that may at first seem as impermeable as the nation-state borders that divide the continent. Yet just as Indigenous people and homelands have always traversed those borders, so may our readings transcend that wall. Rachel Bryant foregrounds and leads us to acknowledge the active ways our embodied minds evade or engage Indigenous contexts and communities, producing greater awareness of the impacts of our activities as readers and writers, Native people and settlers, those who make policy, and those who are most impacted by it." -- - Lisa Brooks, Amherst College"Bryant's excavation of US and Canadian exceptionalisms could not be timelier. She shows how Anglo-Atlantic writing has built a 'system of self-protection' that has sought to contain Indigenous geographies and indeed Indigenous agency. At the same time, she shows how First Nations have always effectively written back against this system. This book shines new light on settler colonialism and Indigenous resurgence, historic and contemporary, through sharp analyses of some influential but lesser-discussed writers. It belongs on the shelf of every scholar in Indigenous Studies, Canadian Studies, American Studies, Atlantic and Maritime Studies, Material Culture Studies, Cultural Geography, and Literary Criticism, for it creates fresh new dialogues among all of these fields and interests." -- Siobhan Senier, University of New Hampshire"If you are interested in Indigenous affairs, the history of how the eastern tribes came to be in such dire straits today, and how literature has reflected these changes - and even attempts to embrace and effect change for the better - then The Homing Place will certainly appeal to you." -- The Miramichi ReaderIf you are of settler ancestry and are open to the reconciliation process in its truest sense, and if you are willing to learn as part of that process, The Homing Place is a good place to start.... Rachel Bryant reminds her readers that there is a huge amount of work to do. I'm very glad to have come across this book, the truth within its pages, and the author's dedication to making a positive contribution to the reconciliation process. -- Patty Musgrave -- Atlantic Books Today, 20180509Table of Contents Introduction: Inscriptions of Possession and Place Cultural Iconoclasm: John Gyles's Atlantic Canadian Captivity Narrative Canadian Exceptionalism: Finding Anna Brownell Jameson in the Anglo Atlantic World Longing across the Line: Cultural Storytelling in the Northeast Borderlands Making Words Walk: Joséphine Bacon's Poetic Tshissinuatshitakana ""A wigwam on the hill"": Meeting Rita Joe in Native Space Cartographic Dissonance: Between Geographies in Douglas Glover's Elle Conclusion: The Homing Place Bibliography

Read more less

Book SynopsisTimothy Findley (1930-2002) was one of Canada's foremost writers--an award-winning novelist, playwright, and short-story writer who began his career as an actor in London, England. Findley was instrumental in the development of Canadian literature and publishing in the 1970s and 80s. During those years, he became a vocal advocate for human rights and the anti-war movement. His writing and interviews reveal a man concerned with the state of the world, a man who believed in the importance of not giving in to despair, despite his constant struggle with depression. Findley believed in the power of imagination and creativity to save us. Tiff: A Life of Timothy Findley is the first full biography of this eminent Canadian writer. Sherrill Grace provides insight into Findley's life and struggles through an exploration of his private journals and his relationships with family, his beloved partner, Bill Whitehead, and his close friends, including Alec Guinness, William Hurt, and Margaret Laurence. Based on many interviews and exhaustive archival research, this biography explores Findley's life and work, the issues that consumed him, and his often profound depression over the evils of the twentieth-century. Shining through his darkness are Findley's generous humour, his unforgettable characters, and his hope for the future. These qualities inform canonic works like The Wars (1977), Famous Last Words (1981), Not Wanted on the Voyage (1984), and The Piano Man's Daughter (1995).Trade Review"Written with great sensitivity and attention to detail, Grace’s comprehensive biography succeeds in giving a complete picture of its subject as an individual and an artist." - Publishers Weekly"A meticulously researched deep dive into a troubled and fascinating life—passionate, engaged, often messy, vastly rewarding." - Margaret Atwood"Memory and remembering were central to Timothy Findley’s life and work—and equally to Sherrill Grace’s outstanding biography of the celebrated Canadian author. Drawing impressively and insightfully on a vast archive of letters, photos, journals, diaries, and interviews, and on her own towering talents as one of Canada’s foremost literary scholars, Grace presents a compelling portrait of a complex man and brilliant multifaceted writer—himself a master of auto/biography—whose professional and personal experiences tracked the far-reaching changes of late-20th-century Canada’s social and cultural landscape." - - Christl Verduyn, Mount Allison University"A tactful, sensitive, generous, storyteller, Sherrill Grace recounts the life of one of Canada’s greatest storytellers, illuminating his life and work, the people he knew and the cultural times in which he performed that life so passionately. We follow him as he learns his craft through writing and through living that intense, well-examined, if often tormented, life. At once learned and elegant, this immensely readable biography is a glorious summing up of all the themes of his work and life." - Linda Hutcheon, University of Toronto, author of The Canadian Postmodern"A powerful, eye-opening portrait of the artist as an anguished man who tried desperately to live by his motto: Against despair." - Jerry Wasserman, Emeritus Professor of English and Theatre, UBC, editor of Modern Canadian Plays"Sherrill Grace brings thoughtful attention to both the man and the work, the latter of which notably marked the national literature by its particular obsessions and inventions." - Andrew Pyper, author of The Demonologist and The Homecoming

Read more less