Literary studies: fiction Books

Book SynopsisAn Open Access edition of this book is available on the Liverpool University Press website and through Knowledge Unlatched. Haitian writers have made profound contributions to debates about the converging paths of political and natural histories, yet their reflections on the legacies of colonialism, imperialism, and neoliberalism are often neglected in heated disputes about the future of human life on the planet. The 2010 earthquake only exacerbated this contradiction. Despite the fact that Haitian authors have long treated the connections between political violence, precariousness, and ecological degradation, in media coverage around the world, the earthquake would have suddenly exposed scandalous conditions on the ground in Haiti. This book argues that contemporary Haitian literature historicizes the political and environmental problems brought to the surface by the earthquake by building on texts of earlier generations, especially at the end of the Duvalier era and its aftermath. Informed by Haitian studies and models of postcolonial ecocriticism, the book conceives of literature as an “eco-archive,” or a body of texts that depicts ecological change over time and its impact on social and environmental justice. Focusing equally on established and less well-known authors, the book contends that the eco-archive challenges future-oriented, universalizing narratives of the Anthropocene and the global refugee crisis with portrayals of different forms and paths of migration and refuge within Haiti and around the Americas.Trade Review'Walsh provides a well-written and well-researched piece of work, one that scholars of Haiti will be excited to read. The book carries out a close ecocritical engagement with Haitian literature, using a broad corpus of primary works and drawing on the extensive body of recent work in Haitian studies. Walsh is a thoughtful and sensitive reader, and with this work further establishes himself as a leading scholar of Haiti.' Martin Munro, Florida State University‘Dans une approche internationale qui commence à dépasser l’attitude de déni pour mettre en relief les problématiques concernant l’environnement et les relations historiques et humaines, ce volume nous permet d’alimenter le débat et nous offre une bonne démarche de travail.’ -- ‘In an international approach that is beginning to go beyond the attitude of denial to highlight environmental issues and historical and human relations, this volume allows us to fuel the debate and offers us a good working approach.’ Emanuela Cacchioli, Studi Francesi‘The book is persuasive in the best ways: gently, intelligently, insistently, so that it achieves finally something that is quite rare—it leads you to rethink a whole literary tradition in ways that will resonate for years and generations to come.' Martin Munro, New West Indian Guide Table of ContentsIntroduction: "Tè glise, Continents à la dérive: Haiti between Shifting Continents, Past and Present"I. The Eco-ArchiveCh. 1 "For an Eco-Archive"Ch. 2 "Haitian Odysseys"II. Literary WitnessesCh. 3 "The Banality of Disaster"Ch. 4 "The Distant Literary Witness and the Ghosts of History in the ‘Other America’"III. The Anthropocene from BelowCh. 5 "Fictions of Migration and Refuge from the Anthropocene"Epilogue: "Land and Seas of Migration and Refuge, Past and Present"

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Book SynopsisApocalypse is traditional and familiar, and it is an actual threat; it is feared, desired, and banal. Apocalypse in Crisis discusses fictions from the 1940s to the present, examining shifts in the imagination of apocalypse from the postwar British disaster novels, through novels of the countercultural sixties, feminist interventions, and recent revisions and critiques. As empire fades, ideas of sexuality shift, and attitudes to nature and to the city change, so apocalyptic fictions change. The individual subject is asserted, immolated, transcended, abandoned; individual deaths are substituted for mass death; death is faked or erased. The subjects and survivors of catastrophe set about re-establishing civilization, or they abandon it, finding new ways of being and of dying; they respond to it when it comes from outside, as an invasion, or they are immersed in it, as it shifts from being an event to being a condition. They flee the city for the country, or accept that they must draw on the energies of the world city in order to survive. The book includes detailed discussion of novels by H. G. Wells, George M. Stewart, Nevil Shute, John Wyndham, Arthur C. Clarke, J. G. Ballard, Brian Aldiss, Doris Lessing, Angela Carter, Anna Kavan, Arno Schmidt, Anthony Burgess, Ursula K. Le Guin, Tom Perrotta, Douglas Coupland, Don DeLillo, China Miéville, Jeff VanderMeer, and Kim Stanley Robinson. Trade Review“The individual readings in the book are often illuminating, particularly in the discussion of points of style, an issue that is often overlooked in discussion of sf texts.” Connor Pitetti, Science Fiction StudiesTable of ContentsIntroduction: Apocalypse Now and ThenPart 1: The Nineteenth Century to the Postwar Disaster Novels1. Modern Apocalypses and Modernism: Enter Science Fiction2. The Postwar Disaster Novels: Apocalypse ContainedPart 2: Post-Imperial Subjects3. Style and Immolation: J. G. Ballard 4. Apocalypse in 1969: Brian Aldiss and Angela Carter5. Darker Imaginations, Harder Lessons: Anna Kavan, Doris Lessing Part 3: Resistance and Revision6. Apocalypse, Comedy, Multiplicity: Arno Schmidt, Anthony Burgess, Ursula K. Le Guin7. Apocalypse and Everyday Life: Tom Perrotta, Douglas Coupland8. Apocalypse in the Contemporary World City: Don DeLillo, China Miéville9. Beyond Apocalypse: Two Paths: Jeff VanderMeer, Kim Stanley Robinson

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Book SynopsisWith the pressing work of decolonising our reading lists gaining traction in UK higher educational contexts, Decolonising the Conrad Canon shows how those author-Gods most associated with the colonial literary canon can also be retooled through decolonial, queer, feminist readings. This book finds pockets of powerful anti-colonial resistance and queer dissonance in Joseph Conrad’s lesser-known works – breathing spaces from the colonial rhetoric that dominates his novels – and traces the female characters who voice them off the page and into their transmedia (digital/illustrative/cinematic) afterlives. From Immada and Edith’s queer gaze in The Rescue and the periodical illustrations that accompanied its initial serialization, to Aïssa’s sustained critique of imperialism in An Outcast of the Islands and her portrayal on mass-market paperback book covers, to the structural female bonds of Almayer’s Folly and Nina’s embodiment in Chantal Akerman’s adaptation La Folie Almayer, this book centres Conrad’s female characters as viable, meaning-making citizens of the canon. Through this intervention, Decolonising the Conrad Canon proposes an innovative model for teaching, reading and studying not just Joseph Conrad’s work but the colonial literary canon more broadly.Trade Review'New books on Conrad appear with such regularity that one wonders if there is anything new to say on the author, but in Decolonising the Conrad Canon, Alice M. Kelly proves that original approaches are by no means exhausted. This volume offers refreshing and challenging new readings of Conrad’s Malay fiction within a stimulating and compelling re-evaluation of women and gender in these novels.'- Linda Dryden, Professor of English Literature, Edinburgh Napier UniversityTable of ContentsIntroduction: Dead White ManPart 1: The Rescue1. Female Homoeroticism and The Rescue’s ‘Lesbian Context’2. The ‘Invisible Lesbian’ in the Land and Water Illustrations of The RescuePart 2: An Outcast of the Islands3. Aïssa: Agency, Race and the Articulation of Desire in An Outcast of the Islands4. Trash Conrad: Pulps, Paratexts and ProtagonistsPart 3: Almayer’s Folly5. ... and Nina and Taminah and Mrs Almayer6. ‘Full-Bodied’: Embodiment in Chantal Akerman’s La Folie AlmayerConclusion: Breathing Spaces and Afterlives

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Book SynopsisShortlisted for the Locus Science Fiction Foundation Non-Fiction Award 2023 The Rise of the Cyberzines concludes Mike Ashley's five-volume series, which has tracked the evolution of the science-fiction magazine from its earliest days in the 1920s to its current explosion via the internet. This series has traced the ways in which the science-fiction magazine has reacted to the times and often led the way in breaking down barriers, for example in encouraging a greater contribution by women writers and stimulating science fiction globally. Magazines have continued to build upon past revolutions such as the 'new wave' and 'cyberpunk', producing a blend of high-tech science fiction and expansive speculative fiction that has broadened the understanding of science and its impact on society. This final volume, which covers the years 1991-2020, shows how the online magazine has superseded the print magazine and has continued to break down barriers, especially for the LGBTQ community and for writers of colour. Trade Review'I enjoyed how much Ashley focused on the very small press, while doing his homework with a high degree of accuracy with the large commercial publishers... This is exhaustive work, so much credit goes to Ashley for this gargantuan task.' Andy Andrews, True Review‘Mike Ashley’s dedicated, thoroughly researched history of the SF magazines during this specific time period is testament to his love of the genre. It is a remarkable book and a must have for serious collectors and those interested in the history of the SF magazine field.’ Dave Truesdale, TangentTable of Contents1. Before the WebBase CampAsimov’s RulesInterzone and AnalogF&SF—The Rusch YearsPulphouse ExpandsTomorrow ComesGoing SlickScience Fiction AgeSlipstreamingWorlds BeyondThe Small-Press LabyrinthD.N.A. Sequence2. Into the WebDigital DustThe Omni ExperienceGalaxy TransformsThrough the Cyber ForestBeyond the Event Horizon3. The ChallengeBusiness Almost as UsualThe Small-Press SurvivorsThe British AlternativesAdvance of the Cyberzines4. Taking StockAppendix 1. Checklist of English-Language Science Fiction MagazinesAppendix 2. Schedule of Magazine Circulation Figures

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Book SynopsisTouchstones examines the ways in which John McGahern became a writer through his reading. This reading, it is shown, was both extensive and intensive, and tended towards immersion in the classics. As such, new insights are provided into McGahern’s admiration and use of writers as diverse as Dante Alighieri, William Blake, James Joyce, Albert Camus and several others. Evidence for these claims is found both through close reading of McGahern’s published texts as well as unprecedented sleuthing in his extensive archive of papers held at the National University of Ireland, Galway. The ultimate intention of the book is to draw attention to the very literary and writerly nature of McGahern as an artist, and to place him, not just as a great Irish writer, but as part of a long and venerable European tradition.Trade ReviewReviews 'Well-organized, well-written, passionate when needed, and intensely readable... I was thrilled to find so much that is new in Shovlin’s study.' Eamonn Wall, Smurfit-Stone Professor of Irish Studies, University of Missouri-St. Louis'Frank Shovlin elegantly and insightfully weaves a tapestry of allusions and linkages around [McGahern's] work.'Ruth Gilligan, Times Literary Supplement'This is a smart, convincing, and approachable study. ... Frank Shovlin’s Touchstones gives abundant insights into how this art came about and as such makes for an ideal introduction to the various influences and precedents at play in John McGahern’s impressive fictional world.'Gerald Dawe, Irish University ReviewTable of ContentsAcknowledgements Abbreviations Touching Stones: Matthew Arnold and the Canon 1 We Other Clerks: James Joyce and the Classical Temper 2 A Walking Mirror: Stendhal, Horace, Nietzsche 3 One lone paperback: Tolstoy and Religious Sensibility 4 Magic: The Centrality of W. B. Yeats 5 Instinct: Douglas Stewart and Sex 6 The fume of muscatel: Yeats's Ghosts 7 Bohemian Rhapsody: Patrick Kavanagh and Generation X 8 Absurdity: Camus comes to Clones 9 Aristocracy: Andrew Marvell, W. B. Yeats and the Curse of Cromwell 10 The Consolations of Nothingness: William Blake, W. B. Yeats and Prayer 11 Deliberate Happiness: W. B. Yeats and the Inner Life 12 Stranger in Paradise: Dante and Epic Style Conclusion: What Then? Bibliography

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Book SynopsisThe Secular Rabbi is an intellectual biography of Philip Rahv, co-founder of Partisan Review, which T.S. Eliot called the best American literary periodical. It focuses on the ambivalent ties that Rahv, a Russian immigrant, retained to his Jewish cultural background. Drawing on letters Rahv wrote to her mother from 1928 to 1931, when he was still named Philip Greenberg, Doris Kadish delves into the complex and enigmatic character of a man admired by luminaries as diverse as George Orwell, Mary McCarthy, Saul Bellow, Elizabeth Hardwick, and William Styron. Textual analyses of Rahv’s works are woven together with other disparate materials: historical accounts, genealogical records, memoirs by Rahv’s colleagues, friends, and associates, interviews with persons who knew him, and the abundant body of secondary scholarship devoted to the New York intellectuals, the history of Partisan Review, and Jewish studies. Kadish positions herself in relation to Rahv in attempting to understand her own Jewish identity. In tracing Rahv’s personal, political, and literary evolution, Kadish sheds light on such literary movements as modernism, proletarian literature, and Jewish writing as well as movements that defined American political history in the 20th century: immigration, socialism, communism, fascism, the cold war, feminism, and the New Left.Trade Review'Providing a unique personal, biographical and autobiographical lens on Philip Rahv, this book offers a fresh perspective on one of the New York Intellectuals leading members.' Professor Nathan Abrams, Bangor University, author of Stanley Kubrick: New York Jewish IntellectualTable of ContentsLIST OF FIGURESACKNOWLEDGMENTSCAST OF CHARACTERSFOREWORDCHAPTER 1: DISCOVERIESCHAPTER 2: FROM GREENBERG TO RAHVCHAPTER 3: ROADS TO AND FROM REVOLUTIONCHAPTER 4: CRISESCHAPTER 5: CONFLICTING IDENTITIESCHAPTER 6: ENDGAMESCHAPTER 7: CONCLUSIONBIBLIOGRAPHYAPPENDICESA. THE LAST LETTERSB. TO YONAC. “PALEFACE AND REDSKIN” INDEX

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Book SynopsisThe rapidity of postwar globalization and the structural changes it has brought to both social and spatial aspects of everyday life has meant, in France as elsewhere, the destabilizing of senses of place, identity, and belonging, as once familiar, local environments are increasingly de-localized and made porous to global trends and planetary preoccupations. Maps and Territories identifies such preoccupations as a fundamental underlying impetus for the contemporary French novel. Indeed, like France itself, the protagonists of its best fiction are constantly called upon to renegotiate their identity in order to maintain any sense of belonging within the troubled territories they call home. Maps and Territories reads today’s French novel for how it re-maps such territories, and for how it positions its protagonists vis-à-vis the pressures of globalization, uncovering previously unseen affinities amongst, and offering fresh readings of—and offering exciting new perspectives on—a diverse set of authors: namely, Michel Houellebecq, Chloé Delaume, Lydie Salvayre, Jean-Philippe Toussaint, Virginie Despentes, Philippe Vasset, Jean Rolin, and Marie Darrieussecq. In the process, it sets the literary works into dialogue with a range of today’s most influential theorists of postmodernity and globalization, including Paul Virilio, Marc Augé, Peter Sloterdijk, Bruno Latour, Fredric Jameson, Edward Casey, David Harvey, and Ursula K. Heise.Trade Review'This book importantly addresses questions that are at the very heart of contemporary debates about our relationship to space and places in a world where borders and distance are being redefined by the forces of globalization.' Jean-Xavier Ridon, University of Nottingham'Its wide-ranging corpus, ambitious scope, and nuanced readings make Armstrong’s study an essential starting point for anyone interested in the current state of contemporary French fiction, and a persuasive account of the concerted way in which that fiction is capturing the profound social, physical, and psychical effects of globalization.' Edward Welch, Modern Language Review'[The book] provides insightful examples of how the French view their own sense of belonging within the dynamics of new territories and realities. [...] Maps and Territories is extremely useful for scholars of contemporary French novels. His clear prose and thoughtful commentary help explain the unease that a changing postwar France experiences today. Thanks to Armstrong's thoughtful analysis, we better understand pressures facing an ever-increasing urbanized society in France and the world.'Kory Olson, L'Esprit CréateurTable of ContentsIntroductionI. Watching the World Go ByChapter One: Absolute Clarity: Michel Houellebecq’s La carte et le territoireChapter Two: Dérive psychose géographique: Chloé Delaume’s J’habite dans la télévisionII. Getting Up to SpeedChapter Three: Planetary Ambitions: Lydie Salvayre’s Portrait de l’écrivain en animal domestiqueChapter Four: Décalage Permanent: Jean-Philippe Toussaint’s FuirIII. Falling Through the CracksChapter Five: A Tale of Two Frances: Virginie Despentes’s Vernon Subutex TrilogyChapter Six: Deep Dérive: Philippe Vasset’s La conjurationIV. Making RoomChapter Seven: Asymmetrical Tactics: Jean Rolin’s OrmuzChapter Eight: Sense of Planet: Marie Darrieussecq’s Le paysConclusionWorks Cited

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Book SynopsisDavid J. Supino traces in unprecedented detail the lineaments of Joseph Conrad’s authorial career and the fortunes (and misfortunes) of his publishers on both sides of the Atlantic. This work is a model of the integrative scholarly method, combining close bibliographical scrutiny of particular textual artifacts with archival recovery of book-historical information in as much detail as the surviving documents allow. The book is essential reading not only for students of Conrad but also for all those who wish to understand the publishing history of this era.Trade Review'David Supino’s magnificent volume is a remarkable achievement, building on the expertise he demonstrated in his equally authoritative bibliography of Henry James. This treasure-house of fascinating information, based on painstaking original research, will be a required resource for libraries, scholars and collectors, and an unrivalled point of reference for those interested in the oeuvre of this enduringly important author.'- Professor Philip Horne, University College London Table of ContentsPrefaceAcknowledgementsIntroduction AbbreviationsList of PlatesSection A: Principal WorksSection BB1: The PamphletsB2: PlaysB3: Minor WorksSection C: Early Collected EditionsSection D: Tauchnitz EditionsAppendix A: The Publishers of Conrad's Major WorksAppendix B: Conrad in the English Catalogue of Books 1895-1930Appendix C: A Note on Currencies and WorthIndices

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Book SynopsisShortlisted for the British Fantasy Awards (Non-Fiction) 2022Shortlisted for the Locus Science Fiction Foundation Non-Fiction Award 2022SF has long been understood as a literature of radical potential, capable of imagining entirely new worlds and ways of being. Yet SF has been slow to embrace posthumanist ideas about the human subject. The human of the SF tradition is instead a liminal being, caught somewhere between the transcendent ‘Man’ of classical humanism and the subversive ‘cyborg’ of posthumanist thought. This study offers a critical history of the 'human' in SF. By examining a range of SF works from 1818 to the 1970s, it seeks to answer some key questions: What role does technology play in defining what it means to be—or not to be—human? How do these writers understand the relationship between humanity and the rest of nature? And how can we use SF to re-examine our ethical position towards the non-human world and move to more egalitarian understandings of the human subject?Trade Review'This wide-ranging and original study convincingly shows how science fiction has (almost) always been posthuman. Thomas Connolly’s critical and cultural history of “the human” in Anglo-American sf ranges from the nineteenth century through the 1970s, constructing an expansive pre-history of the posthuman before the cyberpunk explosion of the 1980s. This is an exciting new story about the history of science fiction.' Veronica Hollinger, co-editor of Science Fiction Studies"This monograph gives a valuable starting point for considering the developments of human figures in science fiction before posthumanism had been articulated and it contributes productively to current conversations about reading such texts retroactively as engagements with the posthuman and posthumanism."Anna McFarlane, Science Fiction Studies'For those scholars interested to treat posthumanism not as a given of the 21st century, but as a development of the humanism and anti-humanism that came before, Connolly’s book is a valuable resource explaining the lines of thought in sf that have led up to, for example, the cyberpunk multiplication of posthumanism. After Human will help ground current work in contemporary posthumanist criticism by providing a historical perspective.' Lars Schmeink, SFRA ReviewTable of ContentsIntroduction: 'Beyond the common range of men': H.G. Wells, the OncoMouse, and the Human in Anglo-American SF1. Worlds Lost and Gained: Evolution, Primitivism, and the Pre-Human in Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World and Jack London's The Iron Heel2. Soma and Skylarks: Technocracy, Agency and the Trans-Human in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and E.E. 'Doc' Smith's Skylark Series3. Homo Gestalt: Atomics, Empire, and the Supra-Human in Isaac Asimov's Foundation and Arthur C. Clarke's The City and the Stars4. Disaster and Redemption: Utopia, Nature, and the Post-Human in J.G. Ballard's The Crystal World and Ursula K. Le Guin's The DispossessedConclusion: Bio/Techno/Homo: The Future of the Human in SF

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Book SynopsisAs publishers in private printing presses, as writers of dissident texts and as political campaigners against censorship and for intellectual freedom, a radical group of twentieth-century Irish women formed a female-only coterie to foster women’s writing and maintain a public space for professional writers. This book documents the activities of the Women Writers’ Club (1933–1958), exploring its ethos, social and political struggles, and the body of works created and celebrated by its members. Examining the period through a history of the book approach, it covers social events, reading committees, literary prizes, publishing histories, modernist printing presses, book fairs, reading practices, and the various political philosophies shared by members of the Club. It reveals how professional women writers deployed their networks and influence to carve out a space for their writing in the cultural marketplace, collaborating with other artistic groups to fight for creative freedoms and the right to earn a living by the pen. The book paints a vivid portrait of the Women Writers’ Club, showcasing their achievements and challenging existing orthodoxy on the role of women in Irish literary life.Trade Review‘The book is a triumph of archival detective work… Brady’s history chronicles a space laboriously carved out by twenty-five years of wit, courage and cunning… It is a finely drawn, rich and illuminating history, and offers significant insights into the relationship between women’s social networks, cultural activism, and sexual dissidence with implications far beyond mid-twentieth century Ireland.’ Gerardine Meaney, Irish University ReviewTable of ContentsIntroduction1. Intellectual Fraternities? Dublin United Arts Club, the Irish Academy of Letters, and the Irish PEN 2. Coterie Culture and the Women Writers’ Club, 1933-1958 3. ‘A Wild Field to a Later Generation’: The ‘Book of the Year’ Award 4. Women Writers in Irish Print Culture, 1930-1960 5. Coterie Culture and Modernist Presses: The Gayfield Press Conclusion

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Book SynopsisScience fiction might not be the first thing that springs to mind when we think of Irish literature. But in the post-war period in Belfast, two authors, Bob Shaw and James White, began producing science fiction stories, eventually selling them to international markets and gaining the respect of luminaries such as Arthur C. Clarke, Brian Aldiss and Stanley Kubrick.Although lauded in the international science fiction scene for their innovations in the genre, Shaw and White’s work has been relatively ignored within Irish Studies. This book connects the emergence of science fiction in Belfast with the position of the city as the locus of technological development on the island of Ireland, and the development of a corresponding technological imaginary. Breaking new ground in the study of Irish modernity, Richard Howard draws parallels between the narratives of Shaw and White and the persistent influence of historical narratives embodied by the two-traditions paradigm in the region, as well as exploring the figure of the alien both in science fiction and in the history of Northern Ireland. He also considers the works of Shaw and White as utopian gestures against the backdrop of the Irish Troubles, finding both repressive and redemptive elements therein. The book makes an important contribution to the growing conversation about Irish science fiction and our understanding of modernity in Ireland.Trade Review'Howard’s Space for Peace is a valuable contribution to the dynamic body of work emerging at the intersections of Irish literary and sf studies... [Space for Peace] is to be welcomed for its embraided engagement with the overall scholarship in both fields... and, in particular, the lifetime work of Bob Shaw and James White.'Tom Moylan, Science Fiction Studies Table of ContentsIntroduction1. A Proximity to Technology2. Historical Continuity and Alternative Modernities3. The Alien and the Other4. Utopias, Repressive and RedemptiveConclusion

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Book SynopsisMichaël Ferrier is a prize-winning novelist, essayist and academic whose cosmopolitan life – he grew up in Chad and France, has Mauritian roots and lives in Japan – has inspired him to write some fascinating novels that cross generic and geographical boundaries. This book is the first ever monograph dedicated to his works, which explore themes as various as an African childhood, notions of Frenchness, inter-identities, and post-Fukushima life in Japan. Hybridity is key to his themes, forms and genres, which include – as befits a twenty-first century author – a website, called ‘Tokyo-Time-Table’ and discussed in this study. Kawakami uses an eclectic range of frameworks to analyse Ferrier’s output, ranging from translingualism to Environmental Humanities and Ferrier’s own vision of his oeuvre, which he discloses for the first time in this book in the interview that he grants Kawakami. This interview, first published in this volume, is rich in insights into Ferrier’s views on dreams, Japan, the internet, and collaborating with other artists. This book is an indispensable guide to an author who is one of the rising stars of contemporary French and Francophone literature, and a unique voice that crosses all kinds of borders across the globe.Table of ContentsIntroduction. French, without Borders Chapter 1. Portraying Japan Chapter 2. Scatter and Resist: Ferrier Writing Fukushima Chapter 3. Challenging Space and Time: Mémoires d’outre-mer and Scrabble Chapter 4. Bringing Back the Dead Coda and Conclusion. Scrabble as Photobiography, and Writing without Borders Interview with Michaël Ferrier Bibliography

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Book SynopsisDidactics and the Modern Robinsonade examines modern and contemporary Robinsonade texts written for young readers, looking specifically at the ways in which later adaptations of the Robinson Crusoe story subvert both traditional narrative structures and particular ideological codes within the genre. This collection redresses both the gender and geopolitical biases that have characterized most writings within the Robinsonade genre since its inception, and includes chapters on little-known works of fiction by female authors, as well as works from outside the mainstream of Anglo-American culture.Trade Review'Ian Kinane discerns the beginnings of a post-colonial didactics entering the Robinsonade […] Kinane is marking a significant shift away from the Euro-centric Robinsonade’s allegiance to the colonialist ideology that undergrided the genre for two centuries. […] The young reader, viewing the world through Karana or Friday’s eyes, perceives the perversions and injustices of imperial power.'Susan Naramore Maher, Children’s Literature Association QuarterlyTable of ContentsForeword: The Progressive Pedagogies of the Modern Robinsonade - Andrew O’MalleyIntroduction: The Robinsonade Genre and the Didactic Impulse: A Reassessment - Ian Kinane1. ‘What a Crusoe crowd we shall make!’: Destabilizing Imperialist Attitudes to Space in G. Warren Payne’s Three Boys in Antarctica - Sinead Moriarty2. Borrowing (from) Crusoe: Library Books and Identity Formation in the Irish Free State - Mairéad Mooney and Clíona Ó Gallchoir3. Navigating Nationhood, Gender, and the Robinsonade in The Dreams of Myfanwy - Siwan M. Rosser4. Call it Courage and the Survival of the Imperial Robinsonade - Clive Barnes5. Shifting Perspectives in Two Mid-Twentieth Century Robinsonades - Ian Kinane6. Between Communitas and Pantheism: Terry Pratchett’s Nation as a Post-Christian Robinsonade for a Post-Colonial World - Anja Höing7. Romance, the Robinsonade, and the Cultivation of Adolescent Female Desire in Libba Bray’s Beauty Queens - Amy Hicks

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Book SynopsisMonsters and other supernatural malefactors disrupt the human world in distinct ways: werewolves and cunning beasts challenge the philosophical distinction between human and animal; demons offer deceptive pacts to prey upon our delusions of mastery over the world; capricious fairies claim dominion over the landscape and exact disproportionate revenge for our intrusions. When a monster appears, human history must halt until it departs.Irish history, meanwhile, has been punctured by dramatic ruptures, such as the Great Famine of 1845 to 1849. Monstrous imagery flourishes in these ruptures, so it is hardly surprising that Irish literature boasts a great many rough beasts and ravenous corpses. In this book, various monsters from Irish literature are considered in different historical contexts, to illustrate the role of horror and monstrosity in Ireland’s history and culture. In both English- and Irish-language texts, from the Act of Union to the death of the Celtic Tiger, hordes of night-creatures arise in times of crisis, embodying chaos and absurdity. Building upon the critical framework established in Irish Science Fiction (2014), this study looks at the specific ways in which ghosts, malevolent magicians, shape-shifters, cryptids and the corporeal undead oppose human agency by ‘breaking history’.Trade Review‘What is most impressive about this book is the sheer range of theoretical and fictional material with which it engages. [….] It is a very welcome addition to the growing scholarship on Irish horror fiction.’ Jarlath Killeen, Books Ireland Magazine '[Rough Beasts] opens up new possibilities in both Irish studies and the theory of horror. For this reason, it deserves the attention of any reader researching a definitively Irish gothic.'William Hughes, Victorian StudiesTable of ContentsIntroduction: In Defence of FearWe Dare Not Go A-Hunting: Fairies, Deep Time and the Irish WeirdHarbingers of HungerFrom Lore to LawLifting the VeilJust Sign HereThe Undead GenerationsBreeding Breaks OutHaunted Spaces, Monstrous LairsConclusions

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Book SynopsisShortlisted for the British Science Fiction Association Best Non-Fiction Award 2020Shortlisted for the Locus Science Fiction Foundation Non-Fiction Award 2021An Open Access edition of this book is available on the Liverpool University Press website and through Knowledge Unlatched.Despite the occasional upsurge of climate change scepticism amongst Anglophone conservative politicians and journalists, there is still a near-consensus amongst climate scientists that current levels of atmospheric greenhouse gas are sufficient to alter global weather patterns to disastrous effect. The resultant climate crisis is simultaneously both a natural and a socio-cultural phenomenon and in this book Milner and Burgmann argue that science fiction occupies a critical location within this nature/culture nexus. Science Fiction and Climate Change takes as its subject matter what Daniel Bloom famously dubbed ‘cli-fi’. It does not, however, attempt to impose a prescriptively environmentalist aesthetic on this sub-genre. Rather, it seeks to explain how a genre defined in relation to science finds itself obliged to produce fictional responses to the problems actually thrown up by contemporary scientific research. Milner and Burgmann adopt a historically and geographically comparatist framework, analysing print and audio-visual texts drawn from a number of different contexts, especially Australia, Britain, Canada, China, Finland, France, Germany, Japan and the United States. Inspired by Williams's cultural materialism, Bourdieu's sociology of culture and Moretti's version of world systems theory, the book builds on Milner’s own Locating Science Fiction to produce a powerfully persuasive study in the sociology of literature. Trade Review'[This] volume offers an interesting introductory overview covering a variety of climate fictions... The clear, easily accessible writing style and overall useful introductory nature of the material would definitely recommend the volume as a text for undergraduates studying climate fictions as part of a literary studies or cultural studies curriculum.'Anya Heise-von der Lippe, Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts'Andrew Milner and J.R. Burgmann’s Science Fiction and Climate Change: A Sociological Approach adds some vitally needed critical rigor to the burgeoning subgenre of SF literature and media Daniel Bloom has labelled “cli-fi,” that is, climate fiction.'Jerome Winter, SFRA Review'Science Fiction and Climate Change is a comprehensive examination of the current state of CF [climate fiction]. It is pleasingly open to genre and form, and Milner and Burgmann's accessible style results in a book that is at once objective sociological-literary commentary and personal reflection on the practice of CF research.' Jasmin Kirkbride, Green LettersTable of Contents1. Ice, Fire and Flood: A Short Pre-History of Climate Fiction 2. A Theoretical Interlude 3. Climate Fiction and the World Literary System 4. The Classical Dystopia in Climate Fiction 5. The Critical Dystopia in Climate Fiction 6. The Problem of Fatalism in Dystopian Climate Fiction 7. Base Reality Texts and Eutopias 8. Cli-Fi in Other Media 9. Changing the Climate: Some Provisional Conclusions

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Book SynopsisAlternate history is a genre of fiction that, although connected to science fiction, has its own rich history and lineage. With its roots in the writings of ancient Rome, alternate history matured into something close to its current form in the essays and novels of the nineteenth century. In more recent years a number of highly acclaimed novels have been published as alternate histories, by authors ranging from bestselling science fiction writers to Pulitzer prize-winning literary icons. The popularity of the genre is reflected in its success on television, where original concepts have been developed alongside adaptations of classic texts such as Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle.This collection of essays, by both leading scholars in the field and rising stars, seeks to redress an imbalance between the importance and quality of alternate history texts and the available critical scholarship on the genre. The essays acknowledge the long and distinctive history of alternate history whilst also revelling in its vitality, adaptability, and contemporary relevance.Trade Review‘Fascinating… the authors all help us understand how the Alternate History genre itself stimulates and encourages us to think about our own history, and our place in it.’ Martin Empson, Resolute Reader‘A fine collection which is extremely well-edited… Sideways in Time is a significant addition to science fiction scholarship in general and alternate history in particular. It also raises fundamental and pressing questions about agency that we need to consider in the context of a twenty-first century which is turning out to be very different from its predecessor.’ Nick Hubble, Vector'Sideways in Time makes a rich, valuable, and timely intervention in the nascent field studying alternate history... The cumulative effect of reading Sideways in Time in its entirety is one of generic saturation and full immersion in both the richness of the field and the possibilities newly open for analysis. Particularly impressive is the collegiality evident in the volume, with virtually every chapter referencing at least one other chapter from the collection. This is a difficult feat to accomplish and depends both on editorial tenacity and on the generosity and willingness of the authors to see their contributions as part of a larger conversation. Indeed, Morgan and Palmer-Patel’s great achievement lies not only in their own incisive and instructive framing chapters, but, evidently, in their editorial leadership. Although very different from one another in scope, perspective, material, and claim, each chapter is just as valuable for stand-alone scholarship pertaining to the primary material as it is for contributing insights into the larger generic concerns of the volume. As such, Sideways in Time is a book that takes alternate history scholarship to the next level.'Keren Omry, Los Angeles Review of Books‘Readers of Sideways in Time whose predilection is for narratives that focus on the thoughts and emotions of individuals or that play with the weird and fantastic will have a different set of favorites. To paraphrase the editors, they will be drawn to the narratives that expand, stretch, subvert, and redefine the genre. For all of us, however, the collection is worth reading and consulting.’ Carl Abbott, SFRA Review‘Taken as a whole, it is a fine addition to Liverpool University Press’ own, ever-branching series of critical reflections upon SF. Despite its preoccupation with genre, it can also be enjoyed by readers for whom SF is not their primary interest. I very much hope it finds as large a readership as possible.’ Paul March-Russell, Fantastika Journal 'Future studies of the genre will turn to this collection for key scholarly definitions and inspiration for new ways to approach alternate history texts... To that end, the book draws together a thorough—possibly even comprehensive—catalog of the major scholarship and names relevant to the scholarship of alternate history texts. Ultimately, Sideways in Time is essential reading for those with any interest in the genre as a whole or texts that happen to intersect with it.'Paul Williams, Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts"A welcome addition to scholarship on alternative histories."Suparno Banerjee, Science Fiction Studies'The need for this edited collection is perhaps mirrored in the rise, popularity and circulation of alternate histories across the mass media... As alternate history continues to win audience and accolades, collections such as this one will be welcomed by scholars and fans alike.' Kathryn Heffner, FoundationTable of ContentsForeword - Stephen BaxterIntroduction - Glyn Morgan and C. Palmer-PatelI. Points of DivergenceNapoleon as Dynamite: Geoffroy’s Napoléon Apocryphe and Science Fiction as Alternate History - Adam Roberts‘It Is One Story’: Writing a Global Alternate History in Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Years of Rice and Salt - Chris Pak‘Forever Being Yamato’: Alternate Pacific War Histories in Japanese Film and Anime - Jonathan Rayner‘Her dreams receding’: Gender, Astronauts, and Alternate Space Ages in Ian Sales’ Apollo Quartet - Brian BakerTime and Affect After 9/11: Lavie Tidhar’s Osama: A Novel - Anna McFarlaneII. Manipulating the GenreThe Subjective Nature of Time and The Individual’s (In)Ability to Inflict Social Change - Molly CobbBetween the Alternate and the Apocryphal: Religion and Historic Place in Aguilera’s La locura de Dios - Derek J. ThiessWeird history / Weird knowledge: H. P. Lovecraft versus Sherlock Holmes in Shadows over Baker Street - Chloé Germaine BuckleyQuest for Love: A Cosy Uchronia? - Andrew M. ButlerAgency and Contingency in Televisual Alternate History Texts - Karen HelleksonAfterword - C. Palmer-Patel and Glyn Morgan

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Book SynopsisIn the 1880s and 1890s, Walter Besant was one of Britain’s most lionized living novelists. Like many popular writers of the period, Besant suffered from years of critical neglect. Yet his centrality to Victorian society and culture all but ensured a revival of interest. While literary critics are now rediscovering the more than forty works of fiction that he penned or co-wrote, as part of a more general revaluation of Victorian popular literature, legal scholars have argued that Besant, by advocating for copyright reform, played a crucial role in consolidating a notion of literary property as the exclusive possession of the individuated intellect. For their part, historians have recently shown how Besant – as a prominent philanthropist who campaigned for the cultural vitalization of impoverished areas in east and south London – galvanized late Victorian social reform activities. The expanding corpus of work on Besant, however, has largely kept the domains of authorship and activism, which he perceived as interrelated, conceptually distinct. Analysing the mutually constitutive interplay in Besant’s career between philanthropy and the professionalization of authorship, Walter Besant: The Business of Literature and the Pleasures of Reform highlights their fundamental interconnectedness in this Victorian intellectual polymath’s life and work.Trade Review'This dedication to the complex network of ideas and lived practice makes Walter Besant more than a mere love letter to a forgotten Victorian. Rather, it provides an integral contribution to the history of publishing and of literary production, and to studies of libralism and reform as they appeared at the end of the century.' Peter Katz, Victorians Institute Journal‘Kevin A. Morrison’s recent volume of essays, Walter Besant: The Business of Literature and the Pleasures of Reform, offers a timely and important meditation on the restoration of authors who have fallen out of favor or slipped into obscurity… The essays in this volume offer nuanced reflections on Besant’s marginal status, thoughtful speculations about his fall from popularity, and compelling arguments for bringing him back into the Victorian studies.’ Heidi Kaufman, Victorian StudiesTable of ContentsIntroduction1. Walter Besant Now Kevin A. Morrison Part One: Literary Collaborations 2. Besant and Collaboration Kirsty Bunting 3. ‘Another like me’: The Literary Partnership of Walter Besant and James Rice Richard Storer 4. ‘I have altered nothing’: Walter Besant’s Completion of Blind Love Maria K. Bachman and Don Richard Cox Part Two: Reforming Authorship 5. Walter Besant and Copyright Reform Mary Ann Gillies 6. The Author Function in Walter Besant’s Fiction: the Notion of Artistic Value in the Wake of Copyright Law and the Nationalist Restructuring of the Trade Alberto Gabriele 7. Besant, Chatto and Watt: a Literary Income in the 1890s Simon Eliot 8. Workers as Artists: From Copyright to the Palace of Delight in Besant’s Writings Ayşe Çelikkol Part Three: Authoring Reforms 9. Altruism and The Monks of Thelema: Ideals and Realities Geoffrey A.C. Ginn 10. The Ethics of Perception and the Politics of Recognition: Walter Besant’s All Sorts and Conditions of Men Kevin Swafford 11. From Happy Individuals to Universal Sisterhood: Affective Reforms in All Sorts and Conditions of Men and Children of Gibeon Vicky Cheng and Haejoo Kim Part Four: Literary Relations 12. Moral Perfectionism, Optatives, and the Inky Line in Besant’s All in a Garden Fair and Gissing’s New Grub Street Tom Ue 13. Walter Besant: A Latter-Day Dickens? Andrzej Diniejko

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Book SynopsisThe psychologist may appear in science fiction as the herald of utopia or dystopia; literary studies have used psychoanalytic theories to interpret science fiction; and psychology has employed science fiction as an educational medium. Science Fiction and Psychology goes beyond such incidental observations and engagements to offer an in-depth exploration of science fiction literature’s varied use of psychological discourses, beginning at the birth of modern psychology in the late nineteenth century and concluding with the ascendance of neuroscience in the late twentieth century. Rather than dwelling on psychoanalytic readings, this literary investigation combines with history of psychology to offer attentive textual readings that explore five key psychological schools: evolutionary psychology, psychoanalysis, behaviourism, existential-humanism, and cognitivism. The varied functions of psychological discourses in science fiction are explored, whether to popularise and prophesy, to imagine utopia or dystopia, to estrange our everyday reality, to comment on science fiction itself, or to abet (or resist) the spread of psychological wisdom. Science Fiction and Psychology also considers how psychology itself has made use of science fiction in order to teach, to secure legitimacy as a discipline, and to comment on the present.Trade ReviewReviews'Setting up an encounter between the histories of science fiction and psychology might portend a collision of alienworlds. Instead, Gavin Miller's Science Fiction and Psychology constructs a reflexive dialogue, which results in aunique synthesis of these two cultures.'David C. Devonis, Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences‘Miller’s work stays focused on the core argument, with no chance of descending into minutiae, errata, or apocrypha. This structure is a reflection of the careful and insightful scholarship Miller brings to bear on the subject. I highly recommend it for any waihang interested in a deeper understanding of the relationship between science fiction and the science of the mind.’ Nathaniel Isaacson, Science Fiction Studies‘Indeed, Miller’s book “wittingly or unwittingly” encourages a well-deserved shift in attention to marginalized science fictions and sciences.’ Sydney Lane, Journal of Science Fiction ‘Gavin Miller’s Science Fiction and Psychology is a fantastic foundation for science fiction scholars to further explore the relevance of psychological novum in science fiction, and I have no doubt scholars working in other interdisciplinary fields would also appreciate understanding the “cultural traffic between the two territories” (242) which have shaped the 20th century and continue to affect our current understanding of the human mind and its relationship to its environment.’ Beata Gubacsi, The Polyphony ‘Science Fiction and Psychology is a rich, densely-argued study in how science fiction and psychology overlap… [It] is incredibly detailed and painstakingly outlined in its aims and goals, which is to initiate an inquiry into the fruitful intersection of science fiction and psychology.’ Sue Smith, SFRATable of ContentsIntroduction1. Evolutionary Psychology2. Psychoanalytic Psychology3. Behaviourism and Social Constructivism4. Existential-Humanistic Psychology5. Cognitive PsychologyConclusion: Science Fiction in PsychologyWorks Cited

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Book SynopsisAnita Brookner was known for writing boring books about lonely, single women. Misreading Anita Brookner unlocks the mysteries of the famously depressed Brookner heroine by creating entirely new ways to read six Brookner novels.Drawing on Brookner’s legacy as a renowned historian of French Romantic art and on diverse intertextual sources from Charles Baudelaire to Henry James, Renée Vivien and Freud, this book argues that Brookner’s solitary twentieth-century women can also be seen as variations of queer nineteenth-century male artist archetypes. Conjuring a cast of Romantic personae including the flâneur, the dandy, the aesthete, the military man, the queer, the analysand, the degenerate and the storyteller, it illuminates clusters of nineteenth-century behaviours which help decode the lives of Brookner’s twentieth-century women. This exploration of Brookner’s ‘performative Romanticism’ exposes new depths within her outsider introverts, who are revealed as a subversive blend of the historical, the contemporary, the masculine and the feminine.Trade ReviewReviews ‘Anita Brookner deserves this detailed, sophisticated, brilliant reading that appreciates Brookner’s peculiar genius and uncovers the ways in which she “does indeed write a different kind of novel.” Given the intertextual, allusive nature of Brookner’s work and her extraordinary expertise on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European art and literature, Dr Mayer’s “misreading” of Brookner’s “performative romanticism” is entirely appropriate.' Ann Holbrook, Professor of English at Saint Anselm College'By tracing the ways in which Brookner’s intellectual achievements as an art historian informed her fiction, Mayer celebrates the subversive potential of Brookner’s performative Romanticism, and offers an important reevaluation of this author’s too long underrated body of work.'Kathryn Pallant, Contemporary Women's WritingTable of ContentsIntroduction1. The Military Man, the Analysand and the Queer in A Friend from England (1987)2. The Aesthete in A Misalliance (1986)3. The Dandy in Brief Lives (1990)4. The Flâneur in Undue Influence (1999)5. The Degenerate in Falling Slowly (1998)Epilogue

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Book SynopsisWinner of the Science Fiction Research Association Book Award 2021.This is the first book-length study of the relationship between science fiction, the techno-scientific policies of independent India, and the global non-aligned movement that emerged as a response to the Cold War and decolonization. Today, we see the trend of science fiction writers being used by governments as advisors on techno-scientific policies and defence industries. But such relationships between literature, policy and geo-politics have a long and complex history. Glimpses of this history can be seen in the case of the first generation of post-colonial Indian science fiction writers, the policies of scientific and technological development in independent India, and the political strategy of non-alignment advocated by India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, who proposed that Third World nations should maintain an equal distance between Washington and Moscow. Such a perspective reveals the surprisingly long and relatively unknown life of Indian science fiction, as well as the critical role played by the genre in imagining alternative pathways for scientific and geo-political developments to those that dominate our lives now. Trade ReviewReviews‘Final Frontiers is path breaking not only in being the first book-length study of non-Anglophone Indian science fiction, but also in Mukherjee’s provocative consideration of the form alongside the “combined and uneven” historical axes of Cold War Non-Alignment, Nehruvian techno-scientific policy, and Indian modernization in the twentieth-century world-system. This intelligent, sophisticated, and scrupulous book makes a much-needed contribution to postcolonial studies, science fiction studies, world literature studies, and cultural studies and will no doubt inform scholarly conversation in these fields for some time to come.' Eric D. Smith, University of Alabama in Huntsville'This is an exciting and vital new work in the field of sf studies. Its focus on an under-represented set of authors is welcome; its analytical frameworks are contemporary and productive, and give new and exciting insights and directions to the fields of sf studies, energy humanities and world-literature.' Rhys Williams, University of Glasgow'Final Frontiers is a meticulously researched and engagingly argued book that foregrounds an sf tradition largely unknown outside of South Asia.'Suparno Banerjee, Science Fiction StudiesTable of ContentsIntroduction: Science, Fiction and the Non-Aligned World1. Laboratory Lives2. The Uses of Weapons3. Energy MattersConclusion: Science, Fiction and the End of Non-Alignment

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Book SynopsisCriminal Moves: Modes of Mobility in Crime Fiction offers a major intervention into contemporary theoretical debates about crime fiction. It seeks to overturn the following preconceptions: that the genre does not warrant critical analysis, that genre norms and conventions matter more than textual individuality, and that comparative perspectives are secondary to the study of the British-American canon. Criminal Moves challenges the distinction between literary and popular fiction and proposes that crime fiction be seen as constantly violating its own boundaries. Centred on three axes of mobility, the essays ask how can we imagine a mobile reading practice that realizes the genre’s full textual complexity, without being limited by the authoritative self-interpretations provided by crime narratives; how we can overcome restrictive notions of ‘genre’, ‘formula’ or ‘popular’; and how we can establish transnational perspectives that challenge the centrality of the British-American tradition and recognize that the global history of crime fiction is characterized, not by the existence of parallel national traditions, but rather by processes of appropriation and transculturation. Criminal Moves presents a comprehensive reinterpretation of the history of the genre that also has profound ramifications for how we read individual crime fiction texts.Trade ReviewReviews'The three editors of this rich collective volume are driven by the ambitious desire to radically revise crime fiction studies, sweeping away existing prejudices and providing a new conceptual framework to the study of the genre... in a few years, this work will be acknowledged as a turning point in the history of crime scholarship.'Stefano Serafini, Linguæ &'Criminal Moves is an excellent resource for scholars who are reconsidering how they research and teach foundational texts in the crime fiction genre. It can also help readers identify ways to analyse and appreciate transnational works outside of the traditional British-American canon without confining them to a fixed taxonomy.'Jennifer Schnabel, Crime Fiction Studies'Criminal Moves is an exciting venture. [...] It asks provocative questions about the transparency of narrative. [...] It is the reader, as consumer and companion of the detective and author, who is at the core of the experience. Also, the issue of the reader’s gaze and attention are important considerations.'Fred Isaac, CluesTable of ContentsIntroduction: Criminal Moves: Towards a Theory of Crime Fiction MobilityJesper Gulddal, Stewart King and Alistair RollsMobility of Meaning1. Behind the Locked Door: Leblanc, Leroux and the Anxieties of the Belle ÉpoqueJean Fornasiero and John West-Sooby2. Moving Fergus Hume’s The Mystery of a Hansom Cab and Breaking the Frame of Poe’s 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue’Alistair Rolls3. Reading Affects in Raymond Chandler’s The Big SleepHeta Pyrhönen4. Contradicting the Golden Age: Reading Agatha Christie in the Twenty-First CenturyMerja MakinenMobility of Genre5. Criminal Minds: Reassessing the Origins of the Psycho-ThrillerMaurizio Ascari6. Foggy Muddle: Narrative, Contingency and Genre Mobility in Dashiell Hammett’s The Dain CurseJesper Gulddal7. Burma’s Bagnoles: Urban Modernity and the Automotive Saccadism of Léo Malet’s Nouveaux mystères de Paris (1954-1959)Andrea Goulet8. Secrecy and Transparency in Hideo Yokoyama’s Six FourAndrew PepperTransnational Mobility9. The Reader and World Crime Fiction: The (Private) Eye of the BeholderStewart King10. From Vidocq to the Locked Room: International Connections in Nineteenth-Century Crime FictionStephen Knight11. Brain Attics and Mind Weapons: Investigative Spaces, Mobility and Transcultural Adaptations of Detective FictionMichael B. Harris-Peyton 

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Book SynopsisContemporary literature gathers in a commemorative site the remains of H/history and its own story by erecting literary tombs. Necrofiction and The Politics of Literary Memory argues that current narratives of the aftermath enable writers to honour the past while casting off its burdensome legacy, and to dismantle while reassembling affective, political, and aesthetic communities. The genre is defined and discussed in relation to other literary forms such as trauma writing, historical novels, archival narratives, biofiction, or field literature. Necrofiction fulfils in distinct ways the social and artistic function of an individual or collective act of remembrance of a lost family member or a historical figure. At the same time, it offers a creative space in which the authors can overcome the burden of literary tradition by incorporating existing models and devices into their own poetic art while as demonstrated by the works of five writers whose personal and artistic trajectories transcend political, cultural, and linguistic frontiers: Linda Lê, Patrick Modiano, Assia Djebar, Patrick Chamoiseau, and Maylis de Kerangal. By examining the ways in which fiction both reflects and resists what Achille Mbembe has defined as “necropolitics,” Necrofiction and The Politics of Literary Memory delves into the contentious yet intimate relationship between singular models of literary remembrance and the frameworks of hegemonic discourses.Table of ContentsIntroduction: NecropoeticsI. Revenants: The Deadly Symbiosis of Linda LêII. Haunting: Living Memory and Dead Silence in Patrick ModianoIII. Afterlives: Open Tombs and Proper Burials in Assia DjebarIV. Remains: Grasping the Void with Patrick ChamoiseauV. Recovery: Maylis de Kerangal’s Anonymous LitanyConclusion: From Dead Letters to Literary Tombs

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Book SynopsisAn Open Access edition of this book is available on the Liverpool University Press website and through Knowledge Unlatched.Reimagining Urban Nature questions some of the underlying imaginaries which have for so long allowed us humans to develop technologically at great cost to the more-than-human world and ourselves. In urban places, cultural and more-than-human entities are in frequent contact; however, the non-human is often seen as expendable in these human-centric places. While much important work has been done on improving care for the more rural and wild areas of the globe, to really address environmental damage we must work towards reimagining the city. These are places where the majority of people live and work, and where the majority of decisions are made about the care and protection of many environments within and beyond the city. This book contributes to the still under-developed field of urban ecocriticism by adding a posthumanist perspective, as well as expanding current discussions within urban studies and environmental activism that seek to shift political and cultural imaginaries of urban nature. Importantly, this investigation is grounded in the Australian (and more broadly, the Australasian) context to allow for the analysis of a more diverse set of voices, texts and ecologies in an area still dominated by the northern hemisphere and the Global North.Trade Review'Written from an explicit settler-migrant Antipodean perspective, this book makes a convincing case for a relational understanding of entanglements with nature. Respectful in its handling of material from indigenous writers, it advances in fresh and cogent ways the discussion of the “more than human” in current ecological and environmental humanities.'- Professor Julie Sanders, Principal of Royal Holloway, University of LondonTable of ContentsIntroduction: Towards a Posthuman Urban Ecocriticism1. The Language of Urban Nature2. Writers Who Venture: Posthuman Methodologies3. Private Entanglements: Houses and Gardens4. Bodies of Water5. Public Entanglements: Streets and ParksConclusion: Recipro-city

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Book SynopsisEating and drinking are essential to survival. Yet for human animals, they are intrinsically ambivalent, proliferating with ideological, historical and psychological leftovers. This study reveals and mobilizes the provisional meanings, repressed experiences and unacknowledged tensions bound up with representations of food, drink and their consumption. It creates a flexible critical framework by bringing together an unexploited convergence of post-war French thinkers who use – or whose thought is legible through – figures of eating and drinking, including Barthes, Bataille, Beauvoir, Bourdieu, Certeau, Cixous, Derrida, Fischler, Giard, Kristeva, Lacan, Lefebvre, Lévi-Strauss, Mayol and Sartre. New combinations emerge for elucidating the intersecting effects of incorporation; constructs of class, gender and racial difference; bad faith; distinction; secondary ideological signifying systems; provisional meanings bound up with linguistic traces; economies of excess; everyday ‘making-do’; the ethics of consuming the other; the return of the repressed; lack; abjection; and notions of ‘eating on the sly’, ‘mother’s milk’, the ‘omnivore’s paradox’ and ‘gastro-anomie’. The vast possibilities for re-thinking with eating and drinking are further exemplified in case studies of novels in which – often beyond authorial intentions – food and drink are structurally important and interpretatively plural. These are Robbe-Grillet’s Les Gommes/The Erasers (1953); Ernaux’s Les Armoires vides/Cleaned Out (1974); Darrieussecq’s Truismes/Pig Tales (1996); and Houellebecq’s La Carte et le territoire/The Map and the Territory (2010). New understandings of post-war French cultural production are revealed in these case studies. But above all, the analyses demonstrate the potential for literary, comparative, cultural, film, gender and food studies of re-thinking with eating and drinking across genres, periods and places.Trade Review'The discussion in this book engages with and extends current debates in its field but more importantly the deployment of the trope of ‘leftovers’ as an analytical tool is really innovative and exciting.' Kathryn Robson, Newcastle University‘The wide-ranging implications of food and drink that Cruickshank analyzes make this book essential reading for all students and scholars.' Jennifer L. Holm, GastronomicaTable of ContentsAcknowledgementsIntroduction – Tapping the Critical Potential of Representations of Eating and DrinkingChapter 1 – (Re-)Thinking with Eating and DrinkingChapter 2 – Re-thinking the Story: Food, Drink and Interpretation in Alain Robbe-Grillet’s Les Gommes/The ErasersChapter 3 – Feeding and Reading Ambivalence: Incorporating Difference in Annie Ernaux’s Les Armoires vides/Cleaned OutChapter 4 – Food Questioning Values in Marie Darrieussecq’s Truismes/Pig TalesChapter 5 – Weighing up the Potential of Literary Consumption: Feeding on Scraps in Michel Houellebecq’s La Carte et le territoire/The Map and the TerritoryConclusion – Taking Leftovers OnBibliography

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Book SynopsisSpeculative Epistemologies is about truth effects in sf, which stands for both science fiction and speculative fiction. It examines six narratives, one from each decade from the 1960s to the 2010s, that challenge dominant assumptions about the normal, the possible, and the real. It asks what the patterns of overlap and interference generated by texts located in border territories that make their identification as sf problematic, and sometimes controversial, can reveal about the dynamics of sf’s multiple subcultures (e.g. professionals, academics, and fans); the complexity of the genre’s communities of practice and their routes of production, distribution, and reception; and the genre’s shifting position within a broadly conceived field of literary and cultural production. The “speculative epistemologies” in these stories are counter-hegemonic ways of knowing, ways of imagining knowing differently, and the focus of this study is their effect on the formation of identities and communities. Combining the methods of genre theory, reception theory, and the sociology of cultural production, the readings of these six narratives trace a history of sf’s increasingly feminist, racially and ethnically diverse, philosophically ambitious, and politically engaged character from the 1960s to the present.Trade Review“A new book by John Rieder is an event, and Speculative Epistemologies delivers. It is, exactly as its title promises, ‘eccentric,’ in the best possible sense – reorienting science fiction studies to unconventional vistas, alternate possibilities, and roads not taken. It’s not to be missed.”Gerry Canavan, Marquette University‘In Speculative Epistemologies… [Rieder] displays his uncanny knack for spotting those things bobbing and flickering in the corner of sf studies’ eye, of gathering them together and placing them center stage, and of saying things about sf that immediately strike you as obvious and true—but only after he has said them.’ Mark Bould, Science Fiction Studies'Speculative Epistemologies is a reminder of Rieder's expertise and a concerted investigation into the grand narrative of sf via some of its minor literature… More of us should be producing "eccentric" scholarship of this nature in an effort to spark new coversations about sf from voices that can get lost in the shadow of history.' D. Harlan Wilson"Rieder’s reputation as a wide and generous reader precedes him, and the chapters devoted to each work in this book are testament to a body of knowledge and experience that puts my own to shame. What I can say with certainty is that he provides ample reason to seek out the stories I haven’t read, and to return to those I have.' Paul Graham Raven, SFRA Review "Table of Contents1. SF, Disciplinary Knowledge, and Mass Culture 2. The Canonical Marginality of Pamela Zoline’s “The Heat Death of the Universe”3. How Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony Became SF4. Power and the Proper Fiction in Samuel R. Delany’s “The Tale of Plagues and Carnivals”5. Theodore Roszak’s The Memoirs of Elizabeth Frankenstein and the Feminist Critique of Science6. Albert Wendt’s Postcolonial Wonderwork: The Adventures of Vela7. What Kind of Genre Fiction Is This? Donna Haraway’s “The Camille Stories”8. Conclusion: Truth and SF in 2020

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Book SynopsisThis is the first book-length study of Forster’s posthumously-published novel. Nine essays focus exclusively on Maurice and its dynamic afterlives in literature, film and new media during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Begun in 1913 and revised over almost fifty years, Maurice became a defining text in Forster’s work and a canonical example of queer fiction. Yet the critical tendency to read Maurice primarily as a ‘revelation’ of Forster’s homosexuality has obscured important biographical, political and aesthetic contexts for this novel. This collection places Maurice among early twentieth-century debates about politics, philosophy, religion, gender, Aestheticism and allegory. Essays explore how the novel interacts with literary predecessors and contemporaries including John Bunyan, Oscar Wilde, Havelock Ellis and Edward Carpenter, and how it was shaped by personal relationships such as Forster’s friendship with Florence Barger. They close-read the textual variants of Forster’s manuscripts and examine the novel’s genesis and revisions. They consider the volatility of its reception, analysing how it galvanizes subsequent generations of writers and artists including Christopher Isherwood, Alan Hollinghurst, Damon Galgut, James Ivory and twenty-first-century online fanfiction writers. What emerges from the volume is the complexity of the novel, as a text and as a cultural phenomenon.Trade ReviewReviews'Twenty-First-Century Readings of E.M. Forster's Maurice is a smart and wide-ranging collection of essays on a critically neglected novel whose time is very much now. Exploring the novel’s queer politics, historical contexts, and aesthetic afterlives, the contributors elevate it in the Forster canon and establish its vital relevance to contemporary LGBT life.'Benjamin Bateman, University of Edinburgh'I would absolutely recommend the book. Twenty-First-Century Readings not only encapsulates and expands the present state of research concerning Maurice but above all, it invites and creates space for further Maurice related discussions... A real treat for the fans of Maurice and its author.'Anna Kwiatkowska, Polish Journal of English Studies'The scholarly ambition and intellectual range of the essays collected in Emma Sutton and Tsung-Han Tsai’s new volume suggest that scholarly work on E.M. Forster retains a pleasing energy and vibrancy in the author’s anniversary year... a deeply satisfying collection... It will undoubtedly send readers to the greenwood afresh, copies of Maurice in hand.'Fraser Riddell, Language and Literary Studies of WarsawTable of ContentsIntroduction: Maurice Through TimeEmma Sutton and Tsung-Han TsaiPart I. Forebears and Friends1. ‘An unspeakable of the Oscar Wilde sort’: E. M. Forster, Maurice, and the Legacy of AestheticismJoseph Bristow2. Women In and Out: Forster, Social Purity, and Florence BargerGemma Moss3. The Master and the Pupil: E. M. Forster, Christopher Isherwood, and the Forging of a Queer AestheticCharlotte CharterisPart II. Contemporary Contexts4. ‘Flat pieces of cardboard stamped with a conventional design’: Women and Narrative Exclusion in E. M. Forster’s Maurice Anna Watson5. Maurice: Beyond Body and SoulFinn Fordham6. Maurice and ReligionKrzysztof FordońskiPart III. Afterlives7. ‘A man embedded in society’: Homosexuality and the ‘Social Fabric’ in Maurice and Hollinghurst’s The Swimming-Pool LibraryDavid Medalie8. Sexuality, Allegory, and Interpretation: E. M. Forster’s Maurice and Damon Galgut’s Arctic SummerHoward J. Booth9. Maurice without Ending, from Forster’s Palimpsest to Fan-TextClaire Monk

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Book SynopsisGiven the extensive influence of the 'transport revolution' on the past two centuries (a time when trains, trams, omnibuses, bicycles, cars, airplanes, and so forth were invented), and given science fiction’s overall obsession with machines and technologies of all kinds, it is surprising that scholars have not paid more attention to transportation in this increasingly popular genre. Futuristic Cars and Space Bicycles is the first book to examine the history of representations of road transport machines in nineteenth-, twentieth-, and twenty-first-century American science fiction. The focus of this study is on two machines of the road that have been locked in a constant, often bitter, struggle with one another: the automobile and the bicycle. With chapters ranging from the early science fiction of the pulp magazine era in the 1920s and 1930s, to the postcyberpunk of the 1990s and more recent media of the 2000s such as web television, zines, and comics, this book argues that science fiction by and large perceives the car as anything but a marvelous invention of modernity. Rather, the genre often scorns and ridicules the automobile and instead promotes more sustainable, more benign, more restrained technologies of movement such as the bicycle.Trade Review‘With its broad historic reach, its synthesis of a variety of disparate types of research from a variety of scholarly disciplines, its lucid prose, and its welcome readability, Withers' Futuristic Cars and Space Bicycles offers a significant contribution to both ecocritical discourse and the study of science fiction as a genre.’- Lisa Swanstrom, University of UtahTable of ContentsIntroduction1. Perfectibility and Techno-Optimism in the Pulp Era2. Murderous Cars, Space Bikes, and Alien Bicycles in the Golden Age3. Electric Cars, Auto-Dueling, and Bike Shares in the New Wave4. Messenger Skateboards and Messenger Bikes in Postcyberpunk5. Staying Mobile in the Post-Apocalyptic World6. Kids on Bikes in 1980s Nostalgia TextsConclusion

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Book SynopsisThis volume of essays continues the establishment of Lois McMaster Bujold as an important author of contemporary science fiction and fantasy. It argues persuasively that Bujold's corpus spans the distance between two full arcs of US feminism, and has anticipated or responded to several of its current concerns in ways that invite or even require theoretical exploration. The fourteen essays collected here provide wide-ranging scholarly analyses of Bujold’s work and worlds so far, covering not only the science fiction and fantasy series, but taking into account the wealth of ancillary material inspired by her works, such as fan fiction and role-playing games. Examining the major series through a range of perspectives, including feminist readings, queer theory, and disability studies, this volume aims to establish beyond doubt the seriousness of intent behind Bujold’s various artistic projects and provide a set of rich readings of this engaging, experimental, playful, and popular author. Trade ReviewReviews'Biology and Manners: Essays on the Worlds and Works of Lois McMaster Bujold advances scholarship on this important author by light-years. This collection covers nearly the entire chronological range of Bujold’s work, and gives equal attention to her Vorkosiverse science fiction and her Chalion and Sharing Knife fantasy worlds. Lee and McCormack have gathered a set of particularly strong essays applying queer theory and theological analysis to Chalion’s five-god pantheon and its interactions with humanity, and the chapters on women and reproduction are equally thought-provoking. Overall, an impressive and essential addition to Bujold studies.'Janet Brennan Croft, editor of Lois McMaster Bujold: Essays on a Modern Master of Science Fiction and Fantasy'Biology and Manners substantially advances previous scholarship through its comprehensive coverage of Bujold’s fictional range, its depth, and its attention to detail. The various scholarly approaches provide a central holographic reader response to Bujold’s oeuvre that becomes three-dimensional as the chapters come together, providing a clearer image of Bujold’s literary genius as well as her empathy and subversiveness... the accessibility of the prose in these essays makes this anthology of value not only to scholars and libraries, but also to serious fans.'Sandra Lindow, Science Fiction Studies'Biology and Manners is a compelling read. Upon completion, the reader is left with a pronounced feeling the anthology will become a foundational text that promotes future Bujold research... In these ways, Biology and Manners should prove its value to readers for years to come.' Karen Stewart, Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts"Overall, this collection’s use and array of theoretical approaches speaks to the range of Bujold’s writing, the need for further scholarly analysis of her works, and the impact they continue to have on her readers."Rebecca Jones, FoundationTable of ContentsSection 1: The Emergence of Bujold StudiesIntroduction: The Emergence of Bujold StudiesRegina Yung Lee and Una McCormackThe History of Scholarship on Lois McMaster Bujold’s Science Fiction and Fantasy: A Feminist Bibliographic EssayRobin Anne ReidSection 2: Bujold’s WomenUntimely Graces: Gender, Failure, and Sainthood in Lois McMaster Bujold’s Paladin of SoulsRegina Yung LeeYou Wish to Have the Curse Reversed? Traditional Narrative Motifs of Gender Reconfigured in Bujold’s Chalion NovelsCaitlin HeringtonIn Quiet Converse: The Intertextual Speaking of Madame Vorsoisson and Miss PriceKatharine WoodsSection 3: Heroes’ JourneysThe Shape of a Hero’s Soul: Exploring the Paradox of Fate and Free Will in The Curse of Chalion and Paladin of SoulsC. Palmer-PatelThe Road and the River: Genre-Neering a Future in The Sharing Knife SeriesSylvia KelsoPain Made Holy: Narratives of Disability and Pain in The Curse of ChalionJoanne WoiakSection 4: Potential Futures and Imagined PastsQueering Barrayar: The Uterine Replicator in Gentleman Jole and the Red QueenJey Saung‘What you need is a liege lord’: Futuristic Feudalism in The Warrior’s ApprenticeSarah LindsayWomb with a View: Ectogenesis in Ethan of Athos and Brave New WorldAlly WolfeSection 5: Holy FamiliesThe Holy Family: Divine Queerness in The Curse of Chalion and The Hallowed HuntRobin Anne ReidThe Bastard Balances All: The Essential Other in Bujold’s Queer TheologyMeg MacDonaldSection 6: Beyond the BooksThe Naismith Stratagem: Authenticity and Adaptation in Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan Saga: Sourcebook and Roleplaying GameJennifer Woodward and Peter WrightCanon Compliance and Creative Analysis in Vorkosigan Saga Fan FictionKristina Busse

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Book SynopsisThe study of French science fiction – even in France – remains an underexploited field. Only recently have French literary scholars been able to gain recognition for the validity of studying SF, but their works are often literary histories. This is the first book-length study to take into account both French and Anglo-American intellectual trends, theories, and SF scholarship and apply them to a corpus of French works. It shows how contemporary French SF imagines two broad philosophical inquiries into the powerful, yet terrifying geological age of the Anthropocene: posthumanism and transhumanism. While the posthumanist perspective calls attention to the interdependence and co-evolution of humans and nonhumans within a complex ecosystem of life, the transhumanist view of coping with the Anthropocene offers more pragmatic, tool-based solutions, rather than a reworking of the human imagination. Given the history of philosophical thought’s entanglement with literature in France, French SF can tell us a lot about this existential crisis of Anthropos as both destroyer and savior of worlds and bodies alike. With a focus on encounters between humans, nonhumans, and posthumans in selected works, this book investigates both the immaterial (the psychological state of the mind) and material (the body) stakes of posthumanist or transhumanist thinking in French SF.Table of ContentsPart One: Evolutionary and Ecological ShiftsIntroduction1. From Spears to Spaceships: Alien Encounters in the SF of J.H. Rosny aîné2. Becoming Orangutan: Animal Encounters in the Fiction of Éric ChevillardPart Two: Posthuman Bodies, Posthuman Minds3. Cyborg Encounters in the Fiction of Jean-Claude Dunyach and Ayerdhal4. Encounters with Posthuman Women in the Films of Luc BessonConclusion

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Book SynopsisThis book is an exciting and accessible account of an author whose work has played a significant role in shaping contemporary British literature. Drawing on literary theory and genre studies, it provides a detailed analysis of David Peace’s writing, as well as the socio-cultural contexts of its production and dissemination. It covers the full body of Peace’s work to date, with a particular focus on his more recent writing (including his latest book Tokyo Redux), and also includes an interview with the author. This book positions Peace as one of the most dynamic British novelists of the twenty-first century.Table of ContentsBiographical Outline Introduction: David Peace and His Work Rape and Rhubarb Redux: The Red Riding Quartet (1999-2002) Acid Shanklyism: Red or Dead (2013) Authorial Afterlives: Patient X (2018) We Are All Ghosts Now: The Tokyo Trilogy (2007-2021)

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Book SynopsisThis volume explores Italian science fiction from the nineteenth century to the twenty-first, covering literary texts, films, music and visual works by figures as diverse as Maria Rosa Cutrufelli, Peter Kolosimo, Primo Levi, Antonio Margheriti, Gilda Musa and Roberto Vacca. It broadens the horizons of both Italian studies and the environmental humanities by addressing a long-neglected genre, and expands our understanding of relations between the ecological, the imaginary and the sociopolitical. The chapters draw on a variety of methodological frameworks, including animal studies, ecocriticism, ecofeminism, eco-media studies, energy humanities and posthumanism. The reader will gain insights into consequential topics such as anthropocentrism/speciesism, ecomodernist thought, environmental justice struggles at the planetary and regional level, non-human and new materialist ontologies, utopian/dystopian philosophies and prospects for transitioning beyond the crisis of petro-modernity through the construction of post-depletion futures. Open Access versions of the introduction and six of the book chapters are available on the Liverpool University Press website.Trade Review‘This collection of essays takes the reader to the uncanny territory of Italian science fiction, a world animated by apocalyptic fantasies and ecological dystopias, consumerist annihilations and nonhuman socialities. In an epoch of multiple planetary crises, this revelatory book is a must-read for any archaeologist of the present.’ Federico Luisetti, University of St. Gallen‘If Italian culture has an ecological unconscious, that unconscious is embodied in science fiction. Rarely do so many creative motifs converge in the imagination of our species and the planet within a single literary genre: there are the anxieties of the automaton as an other-than-human, encounters with our spatio-temporal otherness, technological apocalypses, dilemmas of hybridity with real and imaginary life forms, and the desires of new socio-energetic utopias. With a perspective that encompasses cinema, art, and literature, ranging from great classics like Buzzati, Levi, Calvino, and Scerbanenco to “alien archaeologies” and solarpunk, Italian Science Fiction and the Environmental Humanities retrieves this unconscious and inaugurates the entrance of Italian science fiction into the international eco-literary canon. A futuristic and pioneering book that rightfully joins the essential references of environmental humanities studies.’ Serenella Iovino, University of North Carolina at Chapel HillTable of ContentsIntroduction: Greening Italian Science Fiction – New Approaches to a Long-Lasting Genre Daniel A. Finch-Race, Emiliano Guaraldo, Marco Malvestio Section I: Science in the Anthropocene Herbert Pagani’s Mégalopolis: A Rock Opera between Dystopian Science Fiction and Ecological Utopia Eleonora Lima Cultural and Ecological Extinction in Primo Levi’s Science-Fiction Michele Maiolani What Kind of Science? Italian Science Fiction Writers against the Economic Boom Daniele Comberiati Section II: Visions of Extinction Ecofeminist Care at the End of the World: Collaborative Survival in Niccolò Ammaniti’s Anna and Maria Rosa Cutrufelli’s L’isola delle Madri Raffaella Baccolini and Chiara Xausa Barbarism, Animalization, and the End of the World: Fantasies of Regression and Mutation in Italian Science Fiction Simona Micali A Post-Apocalyptic Garden of Eden. Marco Ferreri’s Il Seme dell’Uomo Emiliano Guaraldo Section III: Urban Landscapes and Industrial Capitalism in a Rapidly Changing Country Industrial Wonders and Pitfalls in Émile Souvestre’s Le Monde tel qu’il sera en l’an 3000 (1846) and Agostino della Sala Spada’s Nel 2073! (1874) Daniel A. Finch-Race Spaceships in the Anthropocene: Peter Kolosimo and the End of (Our) Times Marco Malvestio Uncanny Spaces in Inhuman Times: The Art of Giacomo Costa Matteo Gilebbi Against Eco-Fascism: Space and Place in Tullio Avoledo’s Furland Florian Mussgnug Section IV: Posthuman, More-than-Human, and Interspecies Relations Green Traces: Vegetal Imagination in Italian Science Fiction from Gilda Musa to Solarpunk Enrico Cesaretti Bonsai Children, Enchanted Gardens: Nature as Artifice in Paolo Zanotti’s Dystopian Fairy Tale Valentina Fulginiti ‘All We Need is Love’?: Eros, Agape, and Koinonia in the Time of Mass Extinction Danila Cannamela Eco-Horror: Human-Animal Encounters in Italian Science-Fiction Films Robert A. Rushing Solarpunk, or rather Solartivismo: An Interview with Francesco Verso Arielle Saiber

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Book SynopsisWhat did it mean to have an ‘Irish’ dwelling in the nineteenth century? How did Irish people write about, think about, visually represent or imagine what constituted home? Showcasing research from scholars based in Ireland, the United Kingdom and further afield, this interdisciplinary volume seeks to answer these questions by exploring the physicality and symbolism of Irish dwellings, and the home as a place of repose, exercise and work. Using a range of methodological approaches including history, folklore and literature, this volume offers new perspectives on the material culture of home, fictionalized homes, social housing schemes, suburban living spaces, home and social mobility, institutional living, migration and memories of the home-house, and gender and eviction. Rather than focus on the Big House, which has already received considerable scholarly attention, this volume foregrounds dwelling spaces that were especially vulnerable to economic forces: the homes of the urban and rural poor. Additionally, the book acknowledges the importance to nineteenth-century Ireland of a class that has arguably received even less attention in Irish scholarship than the poor, a rising urban/suburban middle class, exploring their impact on housing and on cultural and leisure activities. An Open Access version of Christopher Cusack's chapter '"Back into the old homestead": The Irish Cottage in Irish-American Fiction, 861−1910' will be made available on publication.Table of ContentsIntroduction: Dwelling(s) in Nineteenth-Century Ireland Heather Laird and Jay R. Roszman I. Modernity and the Irish Cabin The Nonhuman and the Irish Peasant Cabin in Nineteenth-Century Culture Maureen O’Connor ‘Hold manfully onto your farms’: Gender and Resistance During the Irish Land War Patrick Bethel ‘Back into the old homestead’: The Irish Cottage in Irish-American Fiction, 1861−1910 Christopher Cusack II. Class Mobility and Home ‘A partition . . . making of it a kitchen and a bedroom’: Working-Class Housing in Irish Provincial Towns in the Late Nineteenth Century Peter Connell Spreading Out: Suburbanization and Dwelling-Places in Middle-Class Belfast Alice Johnson Health from Home?: Home Gymnasiums in Nineteenth-Century Ireland Conor Heffernan After Castle Rackrent: The Wardlaws (1896) and Literary Responses to Edgeworth’s Castle Rackrent Patrick Maume III. Families and Intimate Spaces in Institutional Dwellings The Policeman’s Home: The Constabulary Barracks in Victorian and Edwardian Ireland Brian Griffin ‘No relatives or anyone … to take the slightest interest in her’: Insanity, Patients, and their Families in the Nineteenth-Century Irish Asylum Tríona Waters Picturing Patients: Cork Street Fever Hospital, Photography and Childhood in Late Nineteenth-Century Dublin Orla Fitzpatrick IV. The Material Culture of Home Burying Bad Luck: Material Cultures of Magic in Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Irish Houses and Farmyards Clodagh Tait ‘The tailors generally went from house to house in those days’: Travelling Tailors and the Making of Apparel in the Rural Irish Dwelling, 1850−1900 Eliza McKee Walter Osborne and the Domestic Scene: Family and Professional Life in a Dublin Suburb Kathryn Milligan

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Book SynopsisRecent research has revealed that the borrowings in Yambo Ouologuem's epochal novel Le Devoir de violence (Bound to Violence) are far more extensive than was previously thought. This book attempts to provide both a complete table of the borrowings in Le Devoir de Violence and a new theory of their meaning.

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Book SynopsisRecent research has revealed that the borrowings in Yambo Ouologuem's epochal novel Le Devoir de violence (Bound to Violence) are far more extensive than was previously thought. This book attempts to provide both a complete table of the borrowings in Le Devoir de Violence and a new theory of their meaning.

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Book SynopsisEliot Studies Annual strives to be the leading venue for the critical reassessment of Eliot's life and work in light of the ongoing publication of his letters, critical volumes of his complete prose, the new edition of his complete poems, and the forthcoming critical edition of his plays.

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Book SynopsisThe Secular Rabbi is an intellectual biography of Philip Rahv, co-founder of Partisan Review, which T.S. Eliot called the best American literary periodical. It focuses on the ambivalent ties that Rahv, a Russian immigrant, retained to his Jewish cultural background. Drawing on letters Rahv wrote to her mother from 1928 to 1931, when he was still named Philip Greenberg, Doris Kadish delves into the complex and enigmatic character of a man admired by luminaries as diverse as George Orwell, Mary McCarthy, Saul Bellow, Elizabeth Hardwick, and William Styron. Textual analyses of Rahv’s works are woven together with other disparate materials: historical accounts, genealogical records, memoirs by Rahv’s colleagues, friends, and associates, interviews with persons who knew him, and the abundant body of secondary scholarship devoted to the New York intellectuals, the history of Partisan Review, and Jewish studies. Kadish positions herself in relation to Rahv in attempting to understand her own Jewish identity. In tracing Rahv’s personal, political, and literary evolution, Kadish sheds light on such literary movements as modernism, proletarian literature, and Jewish writing as well as movements that defined American political history in the 20th century: immigration, socialism, communism, fascism, the cold war, feminism, and the New Left.Trade Review'Providing a unique personal, biographical and autobiographical lens on Philip Rahv, this book offers a fresh perspective on one of the New York Intellectuals leading members.' Professor Nathan Abrams, Bangor University, author of Stanley Kubrick: New York Jewish IntellectualTable of ContentsLIST OF FIGURESACKNOWLEDGMENTSCAST OF CHARACTERSFOREWORDCHAPTER 1: DISCOVERIESCHAPTER 2: FROM GREENBERG TO RAHVCHAPTER 3: ROADS TO AND FROM REVOLUTIONCHAPTER 4: CRISESCHAPTER 5: CONFLICTING IDENTITIESCHAPTER 6: ENDGAMESCHAPTER 7: CONCLUSIONBIBLIOGRAPHYAPPENDICESA. THE LAST LETTERSB. TO YONAC. “PALEFACE AND REDSKIN” INDEX

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Book SynopsisIn France, the fundamental intellectual debate over ecology might best be summarized by the contrasting views of Michel Serres and Luc Ferry. In The Natural Contract, Serres calls for an end to humans’ war on nature: Our world view must turn from anthropocentric to ecocentric, and our relationship to the earth must become symbiotic instead of parasitic. Luc Ferry’s response to Serres in The New Ecological Order ridicules the metaphor of a natural contract, by which humans (and humanism) would no longer reign over the earth. Ferry accuses Serres and other ecological thinkers of being “premodern” and “prehumanistic”; valuing nonhuman life as much as human life evokes the ridiculous trials of five centuries ago when beetles and rats were threatened with excommunication if they did not cease their antihuman activities.After analyzing the Serres-Ferry debate, Ecocritics and Ecoskeptics examines environmental themes in novels by Michel Tournier, Stéphane Audeguy, and Chantal Chawaf. It then considers the complex and evolving relationship between humans and animals as expressed in novels by Vercors and Olivia Rosenthal, and in philosophical works by Jacques Derrida, Élisabeth de Fontenay, and Peter Singer, among others. Two novels each by the humanist J.-C. Rufin and the humorist Iegor Gran provide a dose of healthy skepticism. Rufin’s stories reveal the potential dark side of extreme environmentalism—authoritarianism and terrorism—while Gran’s hilarious satires critique some environmentalists’ piousness, opportunism, humorlessness, and antihumanism. The book concludes that environmentalism and humanism are not incompatible, if we proceed beyond the traditional humanism of Ferry and other modernists. Essays by philosophers such as Claude Lévi-Strauss, Pierre Rabhi, Edgar Morin, and Michel Maffesoli demonstrate that an inclusive, ecological humanism is not only possible but necessary for our survival.Trade Review"This pioneering study provides eco-humanist insights into a broad spectrum of contemporary French fiction. Professor Krell contributes richly to discussions around the green agenda that are more and more urgent because of the intensity of manmade changes in our planet’s climate."Daniel Finch-Race, Research Fellow in Environmental Humanities at Università Ca' Foscari'This book belongs to a recent current of expanding criticism exploring environmental issues in French Literature. [...] Ecocritics and Ecoskeptics intends to portray the diverse landscape of French environmental literature. [...] It succeeds in doing so, with theoretical references ranging from the anthropological to the philosophical, and from Antiquity to today [...] offer[ing] a rich perspective to the emergent field of French eco-criticism.'Lucile Desblache, L'Esprit Créateur'Krell’s study clears an ambitious path into the genealogy of humanism and its historical tensions with ecocriticism, [...] inviting readers into longstanding philosophical meditations about what it means to be human in the age of ecological vulnerability. [...] Krell deftly weaves together close readings and extensive forays into humanistic and ecocritical theory and situates the texts he brings together within the specificities of French ecological thought. [...] Krell seeks out diverse approaches to ecological questions without obscuring his overarching argument about the compatibility of environmentalism and humanism. [...] The book provides a rich resource for both established and new scholars of ecocriticism. Perhaps more importantly, though, his work exemplifies not only ho w the humanities intervene in pressing questions about life in the Anthropocene epoch, but also why the humanities can, and must, continue to reflect on deeply crucial questions about what it means to value simultaneously human ingenuity and the environment.'Lisa Connell, Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature Table of ContentsAcknowledgementsIntroduction: The Fundamental Debate: Michel Serres the ecocritic vs. Luc Ferry the criticPart 1: Three French EcofictionsChapter 1Time, Weather, and Waste: Michel Tournier’s GeminiChapter 2Cloud Erotica: Stéphane Audeguy’s The Theory of CloudsChapter 3A Fairy in the Age of Prometheus: Chantal Chawaf’s Mélusine des détritusPart 2: The Animal QuestionChapter 4Ethical Humanism and the Animal Question: Vercors’s You Shall Know ThemChapter 5Marginality and Animality: Olivia Rosenthal’s Que font les rennes après Noël?Part 3: Two Ecoskeptics: The Humanist and the HumoristChapter 6Deep Ecology Gone Wrong: J.-C. Rufin’s Globalia and Le Parfum d’AdamChapter 7From Ecohumor to Ecohumanism: Iegor Gran’s O.N.G! and L’Écologie en bas de chez moiConclusion: Environmentalism is a HumanismAppendix: Interviews with Stéphane Audeguy and Iegor GranBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisIn a career that spanned over thirty years, Iain M. Banks became one of the best-loved and most prolific writers in Britain, with his space opera series concerned with the pan-galactic utopian civilisation known as "the Culture" widely regarded as his most significant contribution to science fiction. The Culture of "The Culture" focuses solely on this series, providing a comprehensive, thematic analysis of Banks’s Culture stories from Consider Phlebas to The Hydrogen Sonata. It explores the development of Banks’s political, philosophical and literary thought, arguing that the Culture offers both an image of a harmonious civilisation modelled on an alternative socialist form of globalisation and a critique of our neo-liberal present. As Joseph Norman explains, the Culture is the result of an ongoing utopian process, attempting through the application of technoscience to move beyond obstacles to progress such as imperialism, capitalism, the human condition, religious dogma, patriarchy and crises in artistic representation. The Culture of "The Culture" defines Banks’s creation as culture: a utopian way of doing, of being, of seeing: an approach, an attitude and a lifestyle that has enabled, and is evolving alongside, utopia, rather than an image of a static end-state.Trade Review'[The Culture of "The Culture"] stands as an invaluable contribution to the study of Banks’s CULTURE series, in particular its relation to the space opera subgenre and the history of utopian thinking.' Chad Andrews, Science Fiction Studies‘Norman provides a deep, thorough overview of the complex world of the Culture and the ways in which it both fulfills and belies our assumptions about a utopian society… optimism drives Banks’ work, and it goes far in explaining why the Culture sequence remains not only eminently and beautifully readable but an emotional necessity for this historical moment.’ Jeremy Brett, SFRA ReviewTable of ContentsIntroduction1. Interventions, Imperialism, the Technologiade2. Thinking the Break: The Culture as Postscarcity Utopia3. Senescence, Rejuvanessence, and (Im)mortality: The Culture and the Posthuman4. Feminist Space Opera and the Handy Man5. Secularism, Humanism and the Quasi-religious Culture 6. Art in Utopia and Utopian Art: the Culture of 'the Culture'Conclusion

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Book SynopsisThis invigorating volume explores the literary worlds inhabited by the pioneering Irish author George Moore (1852–1933). With an eye to Moore’s innovative embrace of visual art, feminism and literary history, and in the spirit of his feisty resistance to ‘orthodoxy’, it investigates his influences and inventive strategies in novel, short story and memoir. Amongst the names emerging from the disparate spheres of impressionism, literary coteries, the paratextual and the music world are those of Manet, Mallarmé, Wilde, Héloïse, Elgar and Bourdieu, all with Moorian links. Contested depictions of religion and nationalism simmer; France and French influences encompass fin-de-siècle stories and medieval texts; epistolary details evidence vital parental support; contemporary authors write back to Moore. These voyages of discovery enter the fields of feminist scholarship and the New Woman, life writing and letters, fin-de-siècle aesthetics, intersections between art, music and literature, and literary transitions from Victorian to Modern. Valuably, the authors suggest numerous opportunities for additional research in these areas, as well as within Moore studies. This collection, with contributions from an international set of established and new scholars, delivers fresh and original findings as it builds on the substantial and ever-growing corpus of Moore studies.Trade Review‘This collection conveys the spirit of an active scholarly community. Moore’s relationship with women excites a frenzy of attention – a complex case, and interesting to clarify. Often, a contributor spots George Moore in a contemporary’s writing, or notices how a motif from Moore is countered in a work by a contemporary. Overall, a fascinating fusion of scholarship, truly international.’ Adrian Frazier, Professor Emeritus at the University of Galway and author of George Moore: 1852–1933Table of ContentsIntroduction I. Artistic Influences and Approaches The French Artist as Father, Muse and Rival in Memoirs of My Dead Life Ann Heilmann “Superfluous” Irish Gentry: Moore and Turgenev Márta Pellérdi Literature, Music, Art and the Salon: George Moore’s Perennial Courting of Creativity Mary Pierse The Prefaces of George Moore: Enigma Variations Kathi R. Griffin II. Cherchez la Femme? Sphinxes without Secrets: Oscar Wilde, George Moore and the Woman Question Nathalie Saudo Welby George Moore, London ‘Literary Ladies’, Networks, and New Artistic Impulses Kathryn Laing The “Puzzle” of Gladys Parrish’s Carfrae’s Comedy and George Moore’s Evelyn Innes: Some Intertextual Connections Brendan Fleming III. France: Fiction and Letters Between France and Ireland: How George Moore and Helen Waddell used Héloïse and Abélard George Hughes A French Train of Thought in ‘Two Men, a Railway Story’: From Impressionism to Expressionism Michel Brunet Epistolary Truths: ‘How one runs to ones mother when in trouble’ Maggie Breslin IV. Politics, Religion and Nationality George Moore and Decadent Catholicism: a Case Study of Evelyn Innes Claire Masurel Murray George Moore’s Irish Catholic Characters With ‘English’ Names David Clare Appropriating George Moore: J.O. Hannay’s The Seething Pot Conor Montague

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Book SynopsisCold War Negritude is the first book-length study of francophone Caribbean literature to foreground the political context of the global Cold War. It focuses on three canonical francophone Caribbean writers—René Depestre, Aimé Césaire, and Jacques-Stephen Alexis—whose literary careers and political alignments spanned all three “worlds” of the 1950s Cold War order. As black Caribbean authors who wrote in French, who participated directly in the global communist movement, and whose engagements with Marxist thought and practice were mediated by their colonial relationship to France, these writers expressed unique insight into this bipolar system as it was taking shape. The book shows how, over the course of the 1950s, French Caribbean Marxist authors re-evaluated the literary aesthetics of Negritude and sought to develop alternatives that would be adequate to the radically changed world system of the Cold War. Through close readings of literary, theoretical, and political texts by Depestre, Césaire, and Alexis, I show that this formal shift reflected a strikingly changed understanding of what it meant to write engaged literature in the new, bipolar world order. Debates about literary aesthetics became the proxy battlefield on which Antillean writers promoted and fought for their different visions of an emancipated Caribbean modernity. Consequent to their complicated Cold War alignments, these Antillean authors developed original and unorthodox Marxist literary aesthetics that syncretized an array of socialist literary tendencies from around the globe.Trade Review“Such restorative work is much needed in the field of francophone postcolonial studies, and decolonial studies more broadly.” - Jackqueline Frost“This is a remarkable, original and penetrating study of French Caribbean literature in the context of the Cold War.” - Dr Musab YounisTable of ContentsINTRODUCTION CHAPTER 1 Black Bloc: Reading the First Congress Through a Cold War Lens CHAPTER 2 Comrade Depestre: The Césaire-Depestre Debate and René Depestre’s Lessons in National Poetry CHAPTER 3 Poetry of the Césaire-Soviet Split : The Melancholy Geopolitics of Aimé Césaire’s Cold War Poems CHAPTER 4 Engineer of the Haitian Soul: Jacques Stephen Alexis’ Experiments in Socialist Realism Epilogue Acknowledgements Bibliography

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Book SynopsisAn Open Access edition of this book is available on the Liverpool University Press website and the OAPEN library as part of the Opening the Future project with COPIM. The early twentieth century was awash in revolutionary scientific discourse, and its uptake in the public imaginary through popular scientific writings touched every area of human experience, from politics and governance to social mores and culture. Feeling Strangely argues that these shifting scientific understandings and their integration into Hispanic and Lusophone society reshaped the experience of gender. The book analyzes gender as a felt experience and explores how that experience is shaped by popular scientific discourse by examining the “strange” femininity of young protagonists in four novels written by women in Spanish and Portuguese: Rosa Chacel’s Memorias de Leticia Valle (published in Argentina in 1945); Norah Lange’s Personas en la sala (Argentina, 1950); Carmen Laforet’s Nada (Spain, 1945); and Clarice Lispector’s Perto do coração selvagem (Brazil, 1943). It pairs each novel with a broad scientific theme selected from those that captured the contemporary popular imagination to argue that the young female protagonists in these novels all put forth visions of young womanhood as an experience of strangeness. Building on Carmen Martín Gaite’s term chicas raras, Rankin proposes this strangeness as constitutive of a gendered experience inextricable from affective and material engagements with the world.Trade Review‘This is an elegant and deftly argued book with a radical feminist proposal at its heart. It is beautifully written (and is enormously enjoyable to read) and is a work of first-rate scholarship and originality.' Claire Lindsay, University College LondonTable of ContentsINTRODUCTION CHAPTER 1. ¿Qué es la materia? / What’s the Matter? Material Rareza and Memorias de Leticia Valle CHAPTER 2. (Un)Toward Magnetism: Relational Rareza and Personas en la sala CHAPTER 3. Self-Centered Worlds: Perceptual Rareza and Nada CHAPTER 4. Difference and Desire after Darwin: Animal Rareza and Perto do coração selvagem CONCLUSION WORKS CITED

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Book SynopsisThis book by Rodge Glass, the award-winning novelist, short story writer and biographer, is the first ever detailed assessment of Michel Faber’s life and work across genre and form. It draws on intimate, wide-ranging interviews with the author over a two-year period and investigates previously unexplored archival material, from the Canongate Books records to Faber’s own personal archive, to bring fresh perspectives to light. Glass presents detailed interrogations of unpublished texts, including a novel, A Photograph of Jesus, as well as providing deep dives into Faber’s most celebrated works such as Under the Skin and The Crimson Petal and the White. Known for his hybrid creative-critical approach, Glass uses Faber’s interest in generosity and compassion in writing as a focus for this study. Grouping his works by ‘World’, the book ranges across poetry, short stories, novels and novellas to make an argument for Faber as a writer who has consistently sought to explore narrow emotional territory, that of the human instinct to seek connection with others, even if genuine connection seems unlikely or impossible. Glass draws on individual case studies across Faber’s hugely diverse body of work in a way that will be both- interesting for fans and informative for students of Faber’s writing.Table of ContentsBiographical Outline Introduction Faber’s World of the Short Story Faber’s World of The Novella (or, The Medium-Sized Story) Faber’s World of the Novel Faber’s World of The Crimson Petal Faber’s World of Verse Faber, Out of Time Select Bibliography: Books, Essays, Interviews, Criticism

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Book SynopsisH.G. Wells has been branded as a novelist who betrayed his vocation. But Wells saw himself as what we would today call a public intellectual. How credible is this claim? And what happens when we look at him in this way? So typecast has Wells’s reputation become that neither of these questions has been previously asked, but when we look at Wells as a thinker we find a whole new quality to his later works, which have invariably been dismissed by literary scholars as of low quality or even not worth reading. In particular, Wells’s prescience as a prophet of our current environmental problems stands out - for example, he foresaw anthropogenic climate change as early as 1931. Popular conceptions of Wells as racist, imperialist and eugenicist are also challenged. What emerges is a new perspective on a significant public intellectual and- pioneering prophet of the twenty-first century.Table of ContentsForeword by Patrick Parrinder Introduction: H.G. Wells, the Disorderly Prophet Wells as Some Sort of Philosopher Days of Future Past: Wells as Historian and Prophet Should Wells Be Cancelled? The Dream of Cosmopolis: Wells and Politics God, Science and Mr Wells Wells and Human Ecology Appendix I: The Philosophical Works of H.G. Wells Appendix II: The Prophecies of H.G. Wells

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Book SynopsisAn absorbing study of the contested embodiment of the idea of "presence" in the plays and novels of the eighteenth century.

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Book SynopsisThe first full-length examination of the medieval Charlemagne tradition in the literature and culture of medieval England, from the Chanson de Roland to Caxton. The Matter of France, the legendary history of Charlemagne, had a central but now largely unrecognised place in the multilingual culture of medieval England. From the early claim in the Chanson de Roland that Charlemagne held England as his personal domain, to the later proliferation of Middle English romances of Charlemagne, the materials are woven into the insular political and cultural imagination. However, unlike the wide range of continental French romances, the insular tradition concentrates on stories of a few heroic characters: Roland, Fierabras, Otinel. Why did writers and audiences in England turn again and again to these narratives, rewriting and reinterpreting them for more than two hundred years? This book offers the first full-length, in-depth study of the tradition as manifested in literature and culture. It investigates the currency and impact of the Matter of France with equal attention to English and French-language texts, setting each individual manuscript or early printed text in its contemporary cultural and political context. The narratives are revealed to be extraordinarily adaptable, using the iconic opposition between Carolingian and Saracen heroes to reflect concerns with national politics, religious identity, the future of Christendom, chivalry and ethics, and monarchy and treason. PHILLIPA HARDMAN is Readerin Medieval English Literature (retired) at the University of Reading; MARIANNE AILES is Senior Lecturer in French at the University of Bristol.Trade ReviewThis excellent study, long overdue, serves as a thorough introduction to the English Charlemagne texts and as a corrective to the common assumption that these works lack merit. . . . Highly recommended. * JOURNAL OF ENGLISH AND GERMANIC PHILOLOGY *An essential study for those interested in the Charlemagne legend. * FRANCIA *Carefully researched, ambitious in scope, and lucidly written, [the book] conclusively debunks long-held perceptions of the insular Charlemagne narratives as inferior `hack-work' and will become an indispensable resource for anyone working within this tradition. * REVIEW OF ENGLISH STUDIES *Hardman and Ailes have made an important contribution to this initiative by giving scholars a much-needed survey and study of insular Charlemagne literature. * SPECULUM *this book offers many new insights into the political and cultural uses of translation and adaptation, as well as a fresh perspective on the development of Middle English literature through dialogue with literature in French. * FRENCH STUDIES *[A] rich and deeply researched study that is carefully organized and refreshingly readable, especially given the depth and detail that it provides. * H-FRANCE REVIEW *Over recent years an increasing awareness of multilingualism in medieval England has been informing linguistic, literary, and cultural scholarship. This book, exploring the intersection of Anglo-Norman and Middle English literary production across religious, geographic, and socio-political contexts, is a solid piece of work sharing in this discourse. * PARERGON *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Charlemagne in England: Owning the Legend Acculturating Charlemagne: The Insular Literary Context Charlemagne 'Translated' [i]: The Anglo-Norman Tradition Charlemagne 'Appropriated' [ii]: The Middle English Tradition Re-Imagining the Hero: The Insular Roland and the Battle of Roncevaux Re-Presenting Otherness: The Insular Fierabras Tradition Re-Purposing the Narrative: The Insular Otinel Tradition Conclusion: The Insular Afterlife of the Matter of France Appendix: The Corpus: Texts and Manuscripts Bibliography

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Book SynopsisThe first full-length examination of the medieval Charlemagne tradition in the literature and culture of medieval England, from the Chanson de Roland to Caxton. The Matter of France, the legendary history of Charlemagne, had a central but now largely unrecognised place in the multilingual culture of medieval England. From the early claim in the Chanson de Roland that Charlemagne held England as his personal domain, to the later proliferation of Middle English romances of Charlemagne, the materials are woven into the insular political and cultural imagination. However, unlike the wide range of continental French romances, the insular tradition concentrates on stories of a few heroic characters: Roland, Fierabras, Otinel. Why did writers and audiences in England turn again and again to these narratives, rewriting and reinterpreting them for more than two hundred years? This book is the first full-length study of the tradition. It investigates the currency and impact of the Matter of France with equal attention to English and French-language texts, setting each individual manuscript or early printed text in its contemporary cultural and political context. The narratives are revealed to be extraordinarily adaptable, using the iconic opposition between Carolingian and Saracen heroes to reflect concerns with national politics, religious identity, the future of Christendom, chivalry and ethics, and monarchy and treason.Table of ContentsIntroduction: Charlemagne in England: Owning the Legend Acculturating Charlemagne: The Insular Literary Context Charlemagne 'Translated' [i]: The Anglo-Norman Tradition Charlemagne 'Appropriated' [ii]: The Middle English Tradition Re-Imagining the Hero: The Insular Roland and the Battle of Roncevaux Re-Presenting Otherness: The Insular Fierabras Tradition Re-Purposing the Narrative: The Insular Otinel Tradition Conclusion: The Insular Afterlife of the Matter of France Appendix: The Corpus: Texts and Manuscripts Bibliography

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Book SynopsisAlthough Henry Green has been recognised by James Wood, David Lodge and John Updike as one of the most innovative writers of his time, his significant achievement remains largely neglected. Henry Green at the Limits of Modernism provides a theoretically sophisticated and historically nuanced reading of Green's novels and makes the case for Green's importance in reconsiderations of modernism, late modernism and post-war realism. This work is the most ambitious reassessment of Green's oeuvre to date and thus critical reading for scholars interested in modernism, late modernism, and the evolution of British post-war fiction. Arguing against the predominant view of Green's fiction as an autonomous literary construction, the work connects Green to a number of social and literary contexts, resulting in fresh readings of his novels and also a greater accessibility to an author long considered 'oblique' and 'elusive'. With significant investigations of Green's connection to his literary generation, his multifaceted and formally innovative handling of social class, his negotiations of narrative authority and authorship, and the importance of disability studies to understanding Green's fiction, this study charts the complex trajectories of Green's fiction against both social and literary contexts. The work also moves beyond the narrow confines of British literature to explore Green's connections to broader trends in European literature.

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Book Synopsis"THIS WAS DRAWYN BY A KNYGHT PRESONER, SIR THOMAS MALLEORE, THAT GOD SENDE HYM GOOD RECOVER." In 1934, these were the lines which made the Librarian of Winchester College realize that he had discovered a hitherto unknown version of Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, a work known to all previous readers only through Caxton's 1485 edition. For it was known that Thomas Malory of Newbold Revel had been imprisoned on numerous occasions between the 1450s and his death in 1471 by Lancastrians and Yorkists. But who was Malory? Why did successive authorities want to lock him up? How did he come to write the Morte d'Arthur? And why has that text been so persistent a presence in English culture? Going in quest of Malory and of the meaning of the Morte the author addresses the text's central preoccupations violence, desire, and the nature of Englishness. Malory is placed in his social context, at a time of unprecedented national and regional unrest. Lustig traces the connections between writers and commentators from Tennyson to T.S. Eliot who have been fascinated by Malory's work. A prime purpose of the volume is to reveal the Morte's extraordinary ability to move its readers intensely, to become part of their lives. Accordingly, the author delves into his own boyhood fascination with the stories of King Arthur, exploring their influence on him both then and now. The Morte d'Arthur was one of the last great literary works of the Middle Ages. But it was also one of the first to articulate a distinctively modern set of concerns particularly with the nature of identity, both personal and national. Knight Prisoner: Thomas Malory Then and Now will send readers back to Malory's work with renewed enjoyment and understanding.

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