Literary studies: fiction Books
MP - University Of Minnesota Press Through The Shattering Glass Cervantes and the
Book SynopsisA provocative new interpretation and approach to the poetic, dramatic and narrative texts of Cervantes, building on the increased attention given to the writer since the 1970s when Foucault identified "Don Quixote" as the first "modernist" novel.Table of ContentsPoetry as autobiography; theatre, literature and social history; theatre as narrativity; narrativity and the dialogic world - the multiple eye.
£999.99
The University of Alabama Press Being a Boy Again Autobiography and the American
Book SynopsisThe recipient of the 1993 Elizabeth Agee Prize in American Literature, this book identifies a literary genre that flourished between the Civil War and World War I - the American boy book. It distinguishes the boy book tradition from the didactic story for boys and the developmental autobiography.
£999.99
The University of Alabama Press Dream Revisionaries Gender and Genre in Womens
Book SynopsisCharts the evolution of women's Utopian writings in Britain and the United States between 1869 and 1920. The period saw the emergence of a new kind of Utopian text, one that redefined women's roles in society and questioned the foundations of the social order on both sides of the Atlantic.
£999.99
The University of Alabama Press Quince Duncan Writing AfroCosta Rican and
Book SynopsisProvides a comprehensive study of the published short stories and novels of Costa Rica's first novelist of African descent and one of the nation's most esteemed contemporary writers. The grandson of Jamaican and Barbadian immigrants to Limón, Quince Duncan (b. 1940) incorporates personal memories into stories about first generation AfroWest Indian immigrants and their descendants in Costa Rica.
£999.99
The University of Alabama Press Conscience and Purpose Fiction and Social
Book SynopsisIn a series of influential essays that appeared in Harper's, WD Howells argued for literature as a vehicle for social change. The author explores the legacy of Howells's beliefs as they manifest themselves in Howell's fiction and in the works of three major American writers - Charles W Chesnutt, Sarah Orne Jewett, and Willa Cather.
£999.99
The University of Alabama Press Panic Fiction Women and Antebellum Economic
Book SynopsisPanic Fiction explores a unique body of antebellum American women's writing that illuminates women's relationships to the marketplace and the links between developing ideologies of domesticity and the formation of an American middle class. Between the mid-1830s and the late 1850s, authors such as Hannah Lee, Catharine Sedgwick, Eliza Follen, Maria McIntosh, and Maria Cummins wrote dozens of novels and stories depicting the effects of financial panic on the home and proposing solutions to economic instability. This unique body of antebellum American women's writing, which integrated economic discourse with the language and conventions of domestic fiction, is what critic Mary Templin terms panic fiction.In Panic Fiction: Antebellum Women Writers and Economic Crisis, Templin draws in part from the methods of New Historicism and cultural studies, situating these authors and their texts within the historical and cultural contexts of their time. She explores events surrounding the panics o
£999.99
University of Missouri Press Looking Homeward
Book SynopsisOffers a set of photographs which are intended to enhance the reader's knowledge of the largely autobiographical work of Thomas Wolfe. The photographs are of Wolfe's family and close associates (his strong-willed father and Aline Bernstein, the older woman he loved), his childhood and so on.
£999.99
University of Missouri Press American Fiction and the Metaphysics of the
Book SynopsisBy synthesising Kayser's and Bakhtin's views of the grotesque and Heidegger's philosophy of ""Being"", this work demonstrates that American fiction has tried to convey the existentialist dimension: the pre-individual totality which defines itself against the mind and its linguistic capacity.
£999.99
University of Missouri Press Flannery OConnor Walker Percy and the Aesthetic
Book SynopsisBy disclosing how Flannery O'Connor and Walker Percy made aesthetic choices based on their Catholicism and their belief that fiction by its very nature is revelatory, the author demonstrates that their work cannot be seen as merely a continuation of the historical aesthetic that dominated southern literature for so long.
£999.99
University of Missouri Press A Fatherless Child
Book SynopsisThe impact of absent fathers on sons in the black community has been a subject for cultural critics and sociologists who often deal in anonymous data. This book examines the impact of fatherlessness on racial and gender identity formation as seen in black men's autobiographies and in other constructions of black fatherhood in fiction.
£999.99
University of Missouri Press Mark Twain France
Book SynopsisTrade ReviewAlternately takes up panoramic historical and cultural vistas and carefully analyzes passages from all sorts of text with judgment and a sense of proportion."" - Tom Quirk, University of Missouri, author of Mark Twain and Human Nature""The authors work seamlessly back and forth between historical data, biographical detail, and attention to multiple works by Twain that illuminate his complex relationship to the French and to France."" - Linda A. Morris, University of California, author of Gender Play in Mark Twain
£999.99
University of Missouri Press My Victorian Novel
Book SynopsisThe previously unpublished essays collected here are by literary scholars who have dedicated their lives to reading and studying nineteenth-century British fiction and the Victorian world. Each writes about a novel that has acquired personal relevance to them.Trade Review“The subjective, autobiographical approach to scholarly writing has no better advocate than Annette Federico. Her wise and wide-ranging introduction identifies it, surely correctly, not so much as a recent trend as an entirely natural way of relating to literature. . . . These personal journeys are often passionate and always highly readable. Recounted by critics who know the novels inside out, they encourage others to honour the exhilaration of their earliest reading experiences, while remaining open to new questions and reassessments... The results are inspiring.” — The Times Literary Supplement“Annette Federico's My Victorian Novel is an exhilarating anthology. The essays she assembles here—and they are personal essays, not professional ‘articles’—are riveting narratives even while they are also astute literary analyses. At a moment when the humanities are in the doldrums and theory seems to have withered on the vine, these lively memoirs of richly receptive readings point to a new way forward, an almost Arnoldian compromise between sophisticated thinking and self-aware feeling.”—Sandra M. Gilbert, University of California, Davis, author of Rereading Women: Thirty Years of Exploring Our Literary Traditions“'Professionalism is a means not an end. Less is more. Professors are better off when they professionalize less and risk extinction when professionalization is primary.’ This is the first of the ‘95 Theses’ the poet-academic Charles Bernstein published in the MLA’s journal Profession in 2016. My Victorian Novel rises engagingly and entertainingly to Bernstein’s challenge. Threading together 15 mainly North American lives from our contemporary moment and 15 mainly English novels of the nineteenth century, it does more for literature by doing less for its professors. Mixing up the sexual and the scholarly, the affective and the intellectual, the personal and the political, it celebrates novel reading in fifteen ways, showing how it mattered in the past and why it matters differently now. An essential book for the amateur who lives on in every professional and for so-called ‘ordinary’ readers too.” — Peter D. McDonald, University of Oxford, author of Artefacts of Writing: Ideas of the State and Communities of Letters from Matthew Arnold to Xu Bing“Personal, erudite, and provocative, My Victorian Novel is an engaging collection of essays, which speaks to the intimate nature of our relationship with books. Each essay functions as a miniature memoir and paean to the enduring power and pleasures of the Victorian novel. As contributors reflect on their evolving emotional attachments and critical experiences with novels ranging from The Pickwick Papers to Dracula, what emerges throughout the collection is each work’s enduring and unique capacity to instruct, delight, and surprise. It is impossible to read any of the essays by this distinguished group of scholars without similarly reflecting on that one remarkable book — the steadfast literary companion of our own lives—that has indelibly shaped our personal and professional histories. My Victorian Novel is not just the book that Victorianists have secretly been longing for, it is the book that literary studies has been waiting for.” — Maria K. Bachman, Middle Tennessee State University, coeditor of The Socio-Literary Imaginary in 19th and 20th Century Britain: Victorian and Edwardian Inflections“Call it postcritique, autocriticism, or personal criticism—the contributors to this smart, readable volume tell us how and why a particular Victorian novel got hold of their imaginations and never let go. In these deft, candid accounts, My Victorian Novel shows that literature professors read like everyone else—with their hearts as well as minds.” — Susan Fraiman, University of Virginia, author of Extreme Domesticity: A View from the Margins“Fresh new approaches to novels fondly remembered and much-loved come splendidly framed by a mature and sophisticated return to the effort in the last quarter of the 20th century to revitalize writing about literature via restoration of the essay and personal voice . That effort fizzled; my hope is that this 'project' will succeed. If it does, it will owe a good deal to this informed, passionate, informing, and enjoyable book, skillfully edited, with an excellent introduction (and a gem of a foreword by Jane Tompkins).” — G. Douglas Atkins, professor emeritus, University of Kansas, author of such books as Estranging the Familiar: Toward a Revitalized Critical Writing, Tracing the Essay, and T.S. Eliot and the Essay
£999.99
University of Exeter Press La Quete du Ble Exeter French Texts
Book SynopsisRemy Cazals provides a critical edition of this little-known text accompanied by a biography of its author, who became inflamed by the passions of the Revolution, and who was guillotined in 1794.Trade Review Table of Contents
£29.99
University of Exeter Press The West Country As A Literary Invention Putting
Book SynopsisIs the 'West Country' on the map or in the mind? Is it the south-west peninsula of Britain or a semi-mythical country offering a home for those in pursuit of the romance of wrecking, smuggling and a rural Golden Age? This book investigates these questions in the context of the relationship between place and writing.Trade Review “Trezise convincingly demonstrates with clarity and in painstaking detail that certain authors were highly influential in creating the perception of a West Country that has held sway since Victorian times and in contributing to a sense of region and place . . . a bonus is provided in the numerous entertaining and informative digressions from the central purpose of the book.” (The Devon Historian, Vol. 63, Oct 2001) “This book is a valuable contribution to topoliterary studies and the social history of the region.” (The Totnes Historian, No. 4, 2001/02) “Eight meaty chapters . . . a tour de force of scholarly research . . . I do seriously recommend this book.” (The Sabine Baring-Gould Appreciation Society Newsletter, No 35, 2001) “An exhaustive account . . . probably the most comprehensive single account of the development of the cinema in the nineteenth century.” (Sight and Sound, February 2001) “At last we have a well-crafted critical volume which considers the construction of the “West Country” in literature . . . His research is very thorough in each of the writers considered—so much so that this work is likely to be the definitive regional assessment of these works for some time to come . . . Throughout this brilliant volume Trezise has reassessed many of the classic texts and writers whom we associate with the region. This book has been long overdue. Its research and readability—not to mention its innovation in dealing with a neglected literary landscape—make it one of the essential purchases of the new millennium.” (Cornish History Network Newsletter, December 2000, Issue 9) “A penetrating and challenging examination of the effect of certain landscapes on several writers of eminence and significance, and of the subsequent (and often unforeseen and unintended) effect of these writers on the very landscapes of which they write . . . Simon Trezise’s book will cause us to re-examine some old and favourite authors in a new light.” (Western Morning News, Nov 7, 2000) “The literary and topographical range of this study is comprehensive. Six essays, each devoted to a West Country author, take us from Thomas Hardy at Egdon Heath to Virginia Woolf contemplating the Godrevy Lighthouse . . . Sabine Baring-Gould is summarized as “the amanuensis of West Country people”, and on the evidence of this book, the same could be said of Simon Trezise.” (Times Literary Supplement, December 1, 2000) “Fascinating . . . this is a densely-packed book, animated by enthusiasm and buttressed by meticulous research.” (New Welsh Review, Spring 2001, No 52, 82-3) Table of ContentsContents: Keywords - region, topography, provincial, landscape, chronotope; Parson Hawker's Inventions - Trelawney, Cruel Coppinger and the Cornish King Arthur; Westward Ho! or Charles Kingsley's inventions - Elizabethans viewed through Victorian spectacles; tales from the telling house - the many authors of Lorna Doone; from the West Country into Wessex - Thomas Hardy; Sabine Baring-Gould - novels and folk songs of Devon and Cornwall; conclusion - from the Victorians to the 20th century.
£27.54
University of Exeter Press Contes Americains LAbenaki Zimeo Les Deux Amis
Book SynopsisThese three tales, unpublished for over a century (and in one case for nearly two centuries), are a fictional exploration of Otherness and the intercultural set in the New World, either among native Americans (Abenakis, Iroquois) or runaway slaves in Jamaica befriended by Quakers.Trade Review 'A worthwhile addition to this useful series.' (Modern Language Review, Issue 95 no. 2, 2000) Table of ContentsFrontispice: "Titre-planche" du Traite de la couleur de la peau humaine de Claude-Nicolas Le Cat, Amsterdam, 1765 Introduction Portrait (anonyme) de Saint-Lambert L'Abenaki Carte de l'Amerique septentrionale, 1743 Zimeo Les Deux Amis: conte iroquois Chutes du Niagara, Hennepin, 1698, Davies, 1768 Poemes en prose Un ecrivain genereux Note technique Bibliographie selective Dessin de Pessin Contes Americains; L'Abenkai Zimeo Les Deux Amis: Conte Iroquois Annexes A Commentaire sur le frontispice B Extraits des Incas de Marmontel C Note de Saint-Lambert a un vers des Saisons D Saint-Lambert, Reflexions sur... l'etat des Negres E Extraits des Lettres iroquoises de Maubert de Gouvest F Memoire (anonyme) sur les Iroquois suivi d'extraits du journal de Bougainville G Preceptes de Saint-Lambert sur l'amitie
£30.10
University of Exeter Press Short French Fiction Essays on the Short Story in
Book SynopsisThis volume provides new insights into some of the best examples of this form of writing in the twentieth century and also includes a chapter which explores ways in which the genre is evolving as the century draws to a close.Trade Review “This volume is to be recommended both for the new readings of a number of key texts and for the highly pertinent account it provides of the evolving aesthetics of short fiction in France.” (Modern Language Review, Vol. 95, No. 3, 2000) Table of ContentsContents: Jean-Paul Sartre - "L'Enfance d'un chef", William Bell; Marcel Ayme - "La Carte", Christopher Lloyd; Albert Camus - "La Pierre qui pousse", David Walker; Margaret Yourcenar - "La Lait de la mort", Sally Wallis; Simone de Beauvoir - "La Femme rompue", Ray Davison; Michel Tournier - "Les Suaires de Veronique", Rachel Edwards; Marguerite Duras - "La Mort du jeune aviateur anglais", James Williams; contemporary short French fiction - from the "nouvelle" to the "nouvellistique", Johnnie Gratton.
£101.04
Verso Books Late Imperial Romance Haymarket
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£13.00
Michigan State University Press The Wizard of Oz and Who He Was
Book SynopsisWhen Russel B. Nye and Martin Gardner teamed up to bring out a new edition of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, theirs was the first critical analysis of L. Frank Baum American classic.
£999.99
Michigan State University Press Indian Summers American Indian Studies
Book SynopsisSet against the backdrop of a contemporary reservation that has had its own losses to the dominant culture, this novel introduces Native Amrican identity conflicts through the lives and circumstances of its major characters.
£999.99
Michigan State University Press Peninsula Essays and Memoirs from Michigan
Book SynopsisA collection of 37 contemporary personal essays and memoirs about Michigan. Sometimes funny, sometimes moving, the common theme of these works is the deep affection for Michigan shared by all the writers.
£999.99
Michigan State University Press Hemingway Eight Decades of Criticism
Book SynopsisA guide to contemporary criticism regarding the work (and life) of Ernest Hemingway. It features several essays that discuss Hemingway's life, including the first, which focuses on his own wounding in World War I. It also includes essays that have become 'instant' classics and those that focus attention on The Old Man and the Sea.
£999.99
WW Norton & Co Portrait of a Novel
Book SynopsisA revelatory biography of the American master as told through the lens of his greatest novel.Trade Review"...he [Gorra] has written the kind of patient, sensitive, acute study that gifted teachers should write but rarely do." -- London Review of Books"Michael Gorra...has pulled off an astounding feat...in this impressive study...Gorra goes anywhere that strikes his fancy, and the result is splendid: a book to reread in years to come, a model for what criticism can do when happily married to biography." -- Literary Review
£22.79
WW Norton & Co George Orwell A Life in Letters
Book SynopsisAppearing for the first time in one volume, these trenchant letters tell the eloquent narrative of Orwell’s life in his own words.Trade Review"[A] judiciously chosen selection of some of the most interesting of [his] casual writings…. The result is a much more rounded image of Orwell and his circle…" -- New York Times Book Review"Starred review. Orwell’s keen insight and acerbic wit reverberate throughout these selected letters, culled from more than 10 volumes to offer a comprehensive view of his life and personality…An unusually gratifying read for Orwell enthusiasts and casual readers alike." -- Publishers Weekly"It is the portable Orwell, the condensed autobiography that Orwell never wrote…All [the letters] remain fresh, illuminating the complex paradox that was George Orwell." -- Daily Telegraph"Starred review. Orwell the man truly emerges in these revealing letters; this essential companion volume to the Diaries will be devoured by legions of Orwell fans." -- Library Journal"Beautifully edited…One of the glories of this volume is that it shows Orwell in the round, complete with all his human idiosyncracies and contradictions. [Peter Davison’s] attention to detail is nothing short of heroic…This is the authentic Orwell voice: wonderfully clear and fresh and forthright." -- Mail on Sunday"This new edition of Orwell’s letters is imperative for anyone who wishes to earn a larger understanding of the twentieth century’s most potent essayist." -- William Giraldi - The New Republic"Any Orwell admirer will be grateful for Davison’s industry in carving out manageable chunks from the millions of words Orwell wrote, and for all except the most fanatical, this will be plenty. There are pleasures and surprises on every page." -- Andrew Ferguson - The American Spectator"[Orwell’s] critique of the political and economic systems that create and justify poverty and his personal courage in the face of threats to freedom and injustice remain as relevant and inspirational for us today as they were in the years leading to and following World War II…. The George Orwell that Davison presents to us is an appealing one: indefatigable writer, generous friend, champion of the poor and oppressed, avid gardener and outdoorsman…. If Davison’s compilation of Orwell’s letters, which help fill out our understanding of this oft-caricatured writer, can draw readers more deeply into the life and catalogue of George Orwell, then he will have accomplished an important objective." -- James Lang - America: The National Catholic Weekly"In distilling the 1,700 letters written by Orwell, Davison set himself two goals: the letters should illustrate his life and hopes, and “each should be of interest in its own right.” This volume admirably fulfills this twofold mission; it is a tribute to Davison’s decades-long scholarship on Orwell’s life." -- Daniel P. King - World Literature Today
£26.59
University of Iowa Press Jazz Country
Book SynopsisUsing jazz as the key metaphor, Porter refocuses old interpretations of Ellison by placing jazz in the foreground and by emphasizing, especially as revealed in his essays, the power of Ellison's thought and cultural perception.Trade ReviewI suspect that the one body of music which expresses the United States - which expresses this continent - is jazz and blues. - Ralph Ellison; ""Jazz Country is an appropriate and even inspired entry into the world of Ellison's writing. It explores the interplay between Ellison's passionate Love or 'appropriation' of jazz and blues and his ideas about many other important issues, including his own ideal standards in the writing of American fiction and his analysis of the broad implications of American culture itself."" - Arnold Rampersad, Stanford University; ""Ralph Ellison based his ideal of the Renaissance man, American style, on the jazz musicians he had known. In Jazz Country, Horace Porter excavates Ellison's writings on jazz for a view of the artist we have never before seen in such sharp focus."" - Diane Middlebrook, author of Suits Me: The Double Life of Billy Tipton
£999.99
Inner Traditions Bear and Company HerBak
Book SynopsisIn these fictional accounts, Ancient Egypt is made accessible, revealed through the eyes of young Her-Bak, candidate for initiation into the Inner Temple.
£18.99
The New York Review of Books, Inc The Quest For Corvo An Experiment in Biography
Book SynopsisOne day in 1925 a friend asked A. J. A. Symons if he had read Fr. Rolfe's Hadrian the Seventh. He hadn't, but soon did, and found himself entranced by the novel -- 'a masterpiece'-- and no less fascinated by the mysterious person of its all-but-forgotten creator. The Quest for Corvo is a hilarious and heartbreaking portrait of the strange Frederick Rolfe, self-appointed Baron Corvo, an artist, writer, and frustrated aspirant to the priesthood with a bottomless talent for self-destruction. But this singular work, subtitled 'an experiment in biography,' is also a remarkable self-portrait, a study of the obsession and sympathy that inspires the biographer's art.
£16.19
The Library of America London Novels and Stories
Book SynopsisThis Library of America volume of Jack London’s best-known work is filled with thrilling action, an intuitive feeling for animal life, and a sense of justice that often works itself out through violence. London enjoyed phenomenal popularity in his own time (which included the depressions of the 1890s and the beginnings of World War One), and he remains one of the most widely read of all American writers. The Call of the Wild (1903), perhaps the best novel ever written about animals, traces a dog’s sudden entry into the wild and the education necessary for his survival in the ways of the wolf pack. Like many of London’s stories, this one is inspired by the early deprivations of his own pathetically short life: the primitive conditions of life as an oyster pirate in San Francisco; the restless existence of a hobo; the isolation of a prison inmate; the exertion of a laborer in the Oakland slums; and the frustration of a failed prospector for gold in t
£36.00
The Library of America Novellas and Other Writings Madame de Treymes
Book SynopsisCollected in this Library of America volume are no fewer than six of the works of Edith Wharton: novels, novellas, and her renowned autobiography, A Backward Glance. Together they represent nearly a quarter century in the productive life of one of the most accomplished and admired of American writers.Madame de Treymes (1907) is set in fashionable Paris society, where a once free-spirited American woman is trying to extricate herself, with the help of a fellow countryman, from her marriage to an aristocratic Frenchman. Such a village is the scene of Ethan Frome (1911), a tale of marital entrapment even more relentless. Ethan’s unhappy marriage and his desperate love for his wife’s cousin Mattie drive him to an act of shattering violence. The magnificent coda is a classic of American realistic fiction.Set in the same region of the Berkshires, Wharton called Summer (1917) “the Hot Etha
£33.75
Otago University Press A Strange Beautiful Excitement
Book SynopsisHow does a city make a writer? Described by Fiona Kidman as a ravishing, immersing read, A Strange Beautiful Excitement is a wild ride through the Wellington of Katherine Mansfields childhood. From the grubby, wind-blasted streets of Thorndon to the hushed green valley of Karori, author Redmer Yska, himself raised in Karori, retraces Mansfields old ground: the sights, sounds and smells of the rickety colonial capital, as experienced by the budding writer. Along the way his encounters and dogged research -- into her Beauchamp ancestry, the social landscape, the festering, deadly surroundings -- lead him (and us) to reevaluate long-held conclusions about the writers shaping years. They also lead to a thrilling discovery. This haunting and beautifully vivid book combines fact and fiction, biography and memoir, as Yska rediscovers Mansfields Wellington, unearthing her childhood as he goes, shining a new lamp on old territory.
£27.42
St Martin's Press Origins of The Wheel of Time
Book SynopsisJordan has come to dominate the world Tolkien began to reveal. -The New York Times on The Wheel of Time(R) seriesExplore never-before-seen insights into the Wheel of Time, including:- A brand-new, redrawn world map by Ellisa Mitchell using change requests discovered in Robert Jordan's unpublished notes- An alternate scene from an early draft of The Eye of the World- The long-awaited backstory of Nakomi- 8 page, full color photo insertTake a deep dive into the real-world history and mythology that inspired the world of Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time(R). Origins of The Wheel of Time is written by Michael Livingston, Secretary-General of the United States Commission on Military History and professor of medieval literature at The Citadel, with a Foreword by Harriet McDougal, Robert Jordan's editor, widow, and executor of his estate.This companion to the internationally bestselling s
£17.84
Random House USA Inc Sisters of the Earth
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£16.16
John Wiley and Sons Ltd Novel Characters
Book SynopsisNovel Characters offers a fascinating and in-depth history of the novelistic character from the birth of the novel in Don Quixote, through the great canonical works of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, to the most influential international novels of the present day An original study which offers a unique approach to thinking about and discussing character Makes extensive reference to both traditional and more recent and specialized academic studies of the novel Provides a critical vocabulary for understanding how the novelistic conception of character has changed over time. Examines a broad range of novels, cultures, and periods Promotes discussion of how different cultures and times think about human identity, and how the concept of what a character is has changed over time Table of ContentsPreface. Acknowledgments. 1 Introduction: Novel Characters. Where Do the Novel's Characters Come From? Surprising Characters. Novel Types. I Wholes. 2 Originals. Quixote: Or the Originality of Imitators. Original Claims and Final Reckonings. The English Original. Conversations with an Original. And Now for Our Heroines. 3 Individuals. Persuasions. Women of Character. Aristocrats and Commoners. The Incomparables. II Fractions. 4 Selves/Identities. Me and Mine. Visualizing the Self. All in All. The Final Me. Identities. III Compounds. 5 Native Cosmopolitans. Native Cosmopolitans. Stereotypes and Mimic Men. The New Man and the Native Cosmopolitan. Index.
£29.95
Free Press Superman Is Jewish How Comic Book Superheroes
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£15.20
Johns Hopkins University Press Thrill of the Chaste
Book SynopsisBy asking questions about authenticity, cultural appropriation, and commodification, Thrill of the Chaste considers Amish fiction's effects on Amish and non-Amish audiences alike.Trade ReviewThe promise of the cover is borne out by the content: an engaging analysis of 'bonnet rippers' and their audience. -- Marilyn Dahl Shelf Awareness Weaver-Zercher's book is a fascinating read, that raises some questions about this increasingly popular genre, but also tries to add complexity to our understandings of how Amish fiction functions. Femonite Thrill of the Chaste is an entertaining read... [Weaver-Zercher's] light, engaging voice makes her ideas accessible. I found myself caught up in her rich, often humorous descriptions... Weaver-Zercher redeems the genre and its readers. -- Melanie Springer Mock Mennonite World Review The unusual subject of Amish romance is treated engagingly in this crossover book... Highly recommended. Choice Weaver-Zercher's book-length exploration is not only a groundbreaking contribution to an area that deserves more study, but also an excellent read, as all-consuming and hard to put down for this scholar of American literature and popular culture as Amish romance novels are for their devoted fans. Mennonite Quarterly Review Thrill of the Chaste is a well-written, well-researched, and very readable study of this fast growing fictional subgenre, and Weaver-Zercher sheds much light on the importance of these texts for understanding contemporary American culture... A major contribution to literary analysis, this book will fascinate all who have wondered about the Amish and why so many people want to read about them. -- Karen M. Johnson-Weiner Yearbook of German-American Studies Weaver-Zercher has made a significant contribution to the field with a very comprehensive and scholarly approach to the "bonnet fiction" phenomenon of the 21st century... Thrill of the Chaste is of interest to anyone working with reader-response theories, the uses and functions of popular literature, and the commodification of culture and cultural products. Weaver-Zercher's book is importantly about the history and evolution of the genre; however, the most significant contribution that the book makes is its examination and evaluation of the publishing industry that is both meeting and creating demand for the genre. -- Lorie Sauble-Otto Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature Articulate, relevant and beautifully written... [ Thrill of the Chaste] is very accessible to those who will give themselves to it. Those who choose to read it will undoubtedly find themselves more discriminating readers. -- Pauline Stevick Brethren in Christ History and Life In this comprehensive book, Valerie Weaver-Zercher explores the recent phenomenon of Amish "bonnet fiction"... In well-written, engaging prose, Weaver-Zercher argues convincingly that this genre is production-drive in nature. -- Beth E Graybill Nova Religio Timely and engaging... Thrill of the Chaste is an eminently readable book... This is a welcome text for a number of fields; we will, indeed, be writing about it for some time. -- Robert Zacharias Conrad Grebel Review Weaver-Zercher's energetic and witty study reaches beyond an examination of the popularity of Amish fiction for individual readers. -- Dawn LLwellyn Journal of Contemporary ReligionTable of ContentsPrefaceAcknowledgments1. Slap a Bonnet on the Cover2. The DNA of Amish Romance Novels3. An Evangelical and an Amishman Walk into a Barn4. Taking the Amish to Market5. Is Amishness Next to Godliness?6. An Amish Country Getaway7. Virgin Mothers8. Amish Reading Amish9. Something Borrowed, Something True10. Happily Ever AfterBibliographyIndex
£29.22
Poisoned Pen Press The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books
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£23.96
Atria Books Books to Die for
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£18.05
University of Minnesota Press None of This Is Normal: The Fiction of Jeff
Book SynopsisHow the otherworldly worlds created by the author of the Southern Reach Trilogy speak to—and even affect—our own If ever a moment and a writer were made for each other, that time is now and Jeff VanderMeer is that writer. Reaching more and more readers as his fantastic fiction delves deeper and deeper into the true weirdness of our day, VanderMeer presents a unique opportunity to explore the cultural frictions and fault lines in today’s—and tomorrow’s— literary landscape. In the first book-length study of this provocative writer, Benjamin J. Robertson focuses on the three major series that have propelled VanderMeer to prominence (his Vennis fictions, Ambergris novels, and Southern Reach Trilogy) as well as his recent stand-alone novel Borne. Most salient for Robertson is how VanderMeer grapples with the transformation of human meaning and being in the contemporary moment. None of This Is Normal reveals how VanderMeer creates fictions that directly address our Anthropocene epoch, in which humanity must reckon with the unprecedented nature of its impact on the environment and with the consequent obsolescence of its methods of representing itself in this altered world. In Robertson’s reading it becomes startlingly clear that certain fiction, especially when willing to abandon humanist assumptions about history, has the power to not simply show us a world “out there” but to actively participate in that world. As realist fiction and even science fiction conventionally reduce the scale and complexity of the Anthropocene to human-sized dimensions, None of This Is Normal shows how VanderMeer’s work conjures what Robertson calls a “fantastic materiality”: a reality that stands apart from us as a model of thinking, irreducible to our own.Trade Review"None of This Is Normal is the first book-length study of the weird fiction of Jeff VanderMeer. Benjamin J. Robertson not only highlights the beauty and power of VanderMeer's fiction, but also shows how this writing is central to any attempt to think through the plight of humanity in what has come to be called the Anthropocene."—Steven Shaviro, author of The Universe of Things: On Speculative Realism"This spirited book disturbs the new normal of the Anthropocene by way of the ‘New Weird’ in Jeff VanderMeer's fiction. At once a meditation on fantastic materiality and a step toward life after aftermath, this first dedicated study of VanderMeer tells a new story about humans and nonhumans both."—Wai Chee Dimock, Yale University"None of This Is Normal offers readers a rich, extended conversation between VanderMeer and Robertson, pointing out how crucial literary texts are to theorizings of themselves." —American Literary HistoryTable of ContentsIntroduction: All of This Is Normal1. Ambergris Rules: Genre and Materiality in the Anthropocene2. Let Me Tell You about the City: The Veniss Milieu and the Problem of Setting3. No One Makes It Out, There May Be a Way: Ambergris as Words and World4. There Is Nothing but Border. There Is No Border.: Area X and the Weird PlanetConclusion: Life after AftermathAfterwordJeff VanderMeerNotes
£999.99
Pen & Sword Books Ltd The Real JRR Tolkien: The Man Who Created
Book SynopsisThe Real JRR Tolkien: The Man Who Created Middle Earth is a comprehensive biography of the linguist and writer; taking the reader from his formative years of home-schooling, through the spires of Oxford, to his romance with his wife-to-be on the brink of war, and onwards into his phenomenal academic success and his creation of the seminal high fantasy world of Middle Earth. "The Real JRR Tolkien" delves into his influences, places, friendships, triumphs and tragedies, with particular emphasis on how his remarkable life and loves forged the worlds of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. Using contemporary sources and comprehensive research, "The Real JRR Tolkien" offers a unique insight into the life and times of one of Britain's greatest authors, from cradle to grave to legacy.
£999.99
Cambridge Scholars Publishing Reflections on Poetry and the World: Walking
Book SynopsisThis collection brings together 40 years of essays about poetry and literature written by Emily Grosholz. The first section includes essays about some of her favorite poets and thinkers in the United States, England, France and Germany. The second section brings poetry into relation with ethics, politics and practical deliberation, and the third considers it alongside science and imagination. The last section is an homage to The Hudson Review, for whom she has served as an Advisory Editor for many years. As a philosopher, Emily Grosholz has written and thought about feminism, racism, and mathematics and science, which has led her to admire all the more the distinct wisdom of poetry. These essays show how poetry reorganized language and memory, eros and experience, and time and place, and how and why it deepens our understanding of life.Trade Review“Since meeting her, I have been dazzled by the combination of poetry, philosophy and mathematics in Emily Grosholz’s thought and writing, particularly in her poems. And those poems are not stiff academic exercises, but true poetry.”Ruth FainlightPoet“Emily Grosholz’s essays are like being in your best friend’s open touring car with a hamper in the back. And the landscape is the most interesting people of our age. We see each mind-landscape in her mellow Mediterranean light of insight, accepting, registering, presenting, pointing so well that explanation is hardly needed. This is Grosholz’s middle way—or as she would say, middle term—between the dazzling inhuman light of her philosophy of science and the intimate glow of her poetry. It’s the vision of a sane, good human being with a mammoth intellect and a half-hidden puckish sense of humor.”Frederick TurnerPoet“This collection is a magnificent testament to Emily Grosholz’s range and depth. She moves effortlessly across disciplines, from mathematics and science, to literature and social issues, sweeping up an extraordinary chorus of thinkers, and illuminating all she touches with lucidity, erudition, and grace.”Philip KitcherPhilosopher and poet
£52.07
Rowman & Littlefield Never a Sidekick
Book SynopsisExplores the history of Batgirlfrom her groundbreaking comics debut to her disappointing live-action appearances and beyond.For over sixty years, every woman who took on the mantle of Batgirl has been a powerful, independent heroine, belying the sidekick status the name implies. Betty Kane, the original Bat-Girl, was a hero for young girls at a time when the genre was leaving them behind. Barbara Gordon embodied the values of the women's liberation movement and became a powerful figure in disability representation. Cassandra Cain was a woman of color in the traditionally monochromatic DC Comics universe. Stephanie Brown was a perpetual outsider, a voice for those who never belonged but kept trying regardless.Exploring the history of the Batgirls and their unconventional fans, Batgirl and Beyond: The Dynamic History of the Heroines of Gotham City showcases the turbulent evolution of the superhero industry and its female heroines, as well as the importance of the legions of fans who pushed the genre forward to become more diverse, inclusive, and welcoming to all. Tim Hanley traces how each Batgirl dealt with a litany of mistreatment from a publisher who didn't understand their distinct appeal and didn't care to learn. From erasure to benchings to grievous injury and even death, Batgirl has been subject to the genre's worst excessesand she has not fared much better on television or in movies. However, Batgirl always comes back stronger and more resilient, and has remained a staple in the DC universe for decades. A must-read for fans new and old, Batgirl and Beyond is a tribute to an iconic character and a call to action for media to better embrace and represent female heroes.
£34.82
Broadview Press Ltd Richard Coeur de Lion
Book SynopsisThe Middle English romance of Richard Coeur de Lion transforms the historical Richard I of England—a Frenchman by upbringing, who spent only four months of his reign in England and who once joked that he would sell London to finance his Crusade if he could only find a buyer—into an aggressively English king. This act of historical revision involves the invention of several fantastic elements that give Richard the superhuman force necessary to unite the English nation and elevate it above all others. Springing from a supernatural birth and endowed with exceptional strength and an insatiable and transgressive appetite, Richard embodies a vision of triumphant Englishness that humiliates and decimates England’s foes, whether they be French, German, or Muslim. Katherine Terrell’s faithful but poetic new modern English translation is fully annotated. Appendices include materials on cannibalism, the Crusades, and English national myths.Trade Review“Richard Coeur de Lion stands out in the Middle English romance tradition for its union of historical details of the Third Crusade with fantastical elements, including royal cannibalism, a flying demonic mother, and almost magical feats of technology. Katherine H. Terrell’s translation is well crafted and clear, while her abundant selections from historical chronicles and documents in the appendices open up the twelfth-century context of Richard’s reign to the reader. This volume is an excellent addition to courses on medieval studies, history of the Crusades, romance, and fantasy literature through the ages. It also sheds light on women’s history, through the romance’s elaborate yet oblique treatment of the historical Richard’s powerful mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine.” — Suzanne Conklin Akbari, University of Toronto“Terrell’s edition offers the first complete modern English translation of Richard Coeur de Lion. This provocative Middle English romance reimagines the events of the Third Crusade and provides valuable insight into fourteenth-century identity formation contingent on crusading involvements and religious competition. The fictive account, which presents a King Richard I of England who engages in crusader cannibalism, invites students and scholars to explore the historical exigencies of premodern religious warfare as well as to examine the management and production of a royal, proto-national image. Terrell’s meticulous and elegant translation will provide undergraduate students and general readers with a welcome entrance into this complex poem. Richard Coeur de Lion in translation will certainly find its place in university classrooms alongside other fourteenth-century Middle English crusade romances such as Boyarin’s Siege of Jerusalem, and canonical works such as Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Knight’s Tale.” — Suzanne M. Yeager, Fordham UniversityTable of Contents Appendix A: The Middle English Richard Coer de Lyon 1. Cassodorien’s marriage 2. First episode of cannibalism 3. Richard’s message to Saladin 4. King Richard at Jaffa Appendix B: Calls to Crusade 1. Pope Urban II’s Call for a Crusade (1095) 2. Pope Gregory VIII’s Call for a Crusade (1187) Appendix C: Cannibalism 1. Crusader Cannibalism a. letter from leaders of crusade to Pope Urban II (1099) b. Gesta Francorum (c.1100) c. Raymond d’Aguilers (c. 1102) d. Fulcher of Chartres (c. 1106) e. Guibert of Nogent (c. 1109) f. Ralph of Caen (c. 1118) g. William of Malmesbury (c. 1127) h. Oderic Vitalis (c. 1142) i. William of Tyre (c. 1184) j. Chanson d’Antioch (c. 1200) 2. Religious Cannibalism a. Robert Mannyng, Handlyng Synne (early 14th c.) b. On the Feast of Corpus Christi (late 14th c.) 3. Literary Cannibalism a. Geoffrey of Monmouth, The History of the Kings of Britain (c. 1138) b. The Alliterative Morte Arthur (late 14th c.) Appendix D: Richard I and the Third Crusade 1. Richard’s Character a. Itinerarium Peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Ricardi (c. 1220) 2.Richard in Sicily a. Roger of Howden: Siege of Messina (c. 1200) b. Roger of Howden: Richard does penance (c. 1200) 3. Richard at Acre a. Letter from Richard (1191) b. Richard of Devizes (c. 1192) c. Two accounts of the killing of hostages 1. Bah?’ al-D?n Ibn Shadd?d (c. 1198-1215) 2. Ambroise (c. 1194-99) 4. Richard at Jaffa a. Letter of Richard I (1 October, 1191) b. Richard of Devizes (c. 1192) c. Gift of a horse: Conquest of Jerusalem (mid-13th c.) Appendix E: National and Family Legends 1. Demonic Ancestry: Gerald of Wales (c. 1216-23) 2. Eleanor of Aquitaine a. John of Salisbury (c. 1164) b. Walter Map (1181-92) c. William of Tyre (1184) d. Richard of Devizes (c. 1192) e. Gerald of Wales (c. 1216-23) f. A Thirteenth-Century Minstrel’s Chronicle (c. 1260) g. French Chronicle of London (early 14th c.) 3. Englishmen with Tails a. Richard of Devizes (c. 1192) b. Layamon’s Brut (c. 1205)
£21.95
Graywolf Press,U.S. Early Morning: Remembering My Father, the Poet
Book Synopsis
£19.80
University of Massachusetts Press A History of American Literary Journalism: The
Book SynopsisThis study examines the roots of the distinctive form of writing known as journalism - whether called literary journalism or creative non-fiction - and argues that within America it can be traced at least as far back as the late-19th century.
£999.99
University of Massachusetts Press America the Middlebrow: Women's Novels,
Book SynopsisBetween the two world wars, American publishing entered a ""golden age"" characterized by an explosion of new publishers, authors, audiences, distribution strategies, and marketing techniques. The period was distinguished by a diverse literary culture, ranging from modern cultural rebels to working-class laborers, political radicals, and progressive housewives. In ""America the Middlebrow"", Jaime Harker focuses on one neglected mode of authorship in the interwar period - women's middlebrow authorship and its intersection with progressive politics. With the rise of middlebrow institutions and readers came the need for the creation of the new category of authorship. Harker contends that these new writers appropriated and adapted a larger tradition of women's activism and literary activity to their own needs and practices. Like sentimental women writers and readers of the 1850s, these authors saw fiction as a means of reforming and transforming society. Like their Progressive Era forebears, they replaced religious icons with nationalistic images of progress and pragmatic ideology. In the interwar period, this mode of authorship was informed by Deweyan pragmatist aesthetics, which insisted that art provided vicarious experience that could help create humane, democratic societies. Drawing on letters from publishers, editors, agents, and authors, ""America the Middlebrow"" traces four key moments in this distinctive culture of letters through the careers of Dorothy Canfield, Jessie Fauset, Pearl Buck, and Josephine Herbst. Both an exploration of a virtually invisible culture of letters and a challenge to monolithic paradigms of modernism, the book offers fresh insight into the ongoing tradition of political domestic fiction that flourished between the wars.Trade ReviewPart cultural/intellectual history and part literary history and criticism, this book is interesting and useful.... The writing is clear and accessible, and the book will be of use not only to literary scholars, but also to cultural historians of the early twentieth century. - Trysh Travis, University of Florida
£999.99
Pelican Publishing Co Evangeline: A Novel
Book SynopsisThe heartbreaking story of two Acadian lovers separated during the expulsion of the French settlers from Nova Scotia.
£7.59
Centre for the Study of Language & Information Conversations with John L'Heureux
Book SynopsisThis book presents a sequence of interviews between Dikran Karagueuzian and prolific fiction writer John L'Heureux that investigate the nature of writing fiction and the writer's need to write. This conversation includes a discussion of contemporary fiction, its virtues and vices, and its distinguished practitioners, along with a personal perspective on writing novels as opposed to short stories. "Karagueuzian and L'Heureux" also explore L'Heureux's years as director of 'The Stanford Writing Program', detailing his relationship with some of his better-known students, and offering insight into what can and can't be taught in a creative writing program.
£999.99
Autonomedia Learning What Love Means
Book Synopsis
£14.39
St Augustine's Press Symposium Of Plato – Shelley Translation
Book SynopsisIn the summer of 1818, Percy Bysshe Shelley pulled himself away from a flurry of other projects to devote himself to translating Plato's Symposium. Besides being one of the very great lyric poets of Romanticism, Shelley was an accomplished Hellenist, and had a natural sympathy for Plato's way of seeing the world. The result of his labor was a translation of Plato's principal work on love that is, in both clarity and felicity of expression, unmatched by any contemporary translation. Much of what the dialogue offers to today's reader - namely, its invitation to see erotic experience as the privileged locus of our contact with the sacred and the divine - is lost in translation by failures of tone more than by inaccuracies or simple infelicities. The elevation and sophistication of Shelley's prose makes his translation a much better English vehicle for Plato's writing than the rather chatty and colloquial translations current today. Plato's speeches on love need an English idiom in which myth is at home, and in which humour rises to urbanity rather than descending to mere wit and joke. With Shelley, we get a translation of a great literary masterpiece by a writer who is himself a literary master, and his mastery is of exactly the type required by Plato's text. This translation came at the height of Shelley's powers, mirroring in language and conception some of his finest works, and so is itself a precious document in the history of Romanticism, for which the re-appropriation of Plato is second in importance only to the massive influence of Shakespeare. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, her husband's literary executor, upon publication of (a somewhat expurgated version of) the dialogue, boasted that "Shelley resembled Plato; both taking more delight in the abstract and the ideal than in the special and the tangible. This did not result from imitation; for it was not till Shelley resided in Italy that he made Plato his study. He then translated his Symposium and Ion; and the English language boasts of no more brilliant composition than Plato's Praise of Love translated by Shelley." If this goes too far, it goes at least in the right direction. David K. O'Connor, in his introduction and footnotes, provides the historical and philosophic framework to appreciate best the importance of the dialogue and translation.Table of Contentsintroduction, notes, Stephanus numbers, index
£999.99
