Literary studies: from c 2000 Books
Hodder Education Study and Revise Literature Guide for AS/A-level:
Book SynopsisExam Board: Pearson EdexcelLevel: AS/A-levelSubject: English literatureFirst teaching: September 2015First exams: Summer 2016 (AS); Summer 2017 (A-level)Enable students to achieve their best grade with this Pearson Edexcel AS/A-level English literature guide, designed to instil in-depth textual understanding as students read, analyse and revise the Poems of the Decade anthology throughout the course.This Study and Revise guide:- Increases students' knowledge of the Poems of the Decade anthology as they progress through the detailed commentary and contextual information written by experienced teachers and examiners- Develops understanding of characterisation, themes, form, structure and language, equipping students with a rich bank of textual examples to enhance their coursework and exam responses- Builds critical and analytical skills through challenging, thought-provoking questions and tasks that encourage students to form their own personal responses to the poems- Extends learning and prepares students for higher-level study by introducing critical viewpoints, comparative references to other literary works and suggestions for independent research- Helps students maximise their exam potential using clear explanations of the Assessment Objectives, sample student answers and examiner insights- Improves students' extended writing techniques through targeted advice on planning and structuring a successful essay
£15.09
HarperCollins Publishers The Common Reader
Book SynopsisHarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics.The only advice, indeed, that one person can give another about reading is to take no advice, to follow your own instincts, to use your own reason, to come to your own conclusions.In her second volume of essays, Virginia Woolf delves deeper into the delights of reading. Here, she explores the novels of Thomas Hardy and Daniel Defoe, and recounts the fascinating lives of Christina Rossetti and Mary Wollstonecraft. In How Should One Read a Book?' she offers sage advice for the common reader, and sheds light on the lessons and pleasures literature can provide.Published in 1932, The Common Reader: Second Series is a wise and illuminating companion collection to her 1925 First Series. Woolf's enduring appeal and ideas continue to resonate with readers in the twenty-first century.
£5.62
University of Wales Press Llwyfannu’r Genedl Anghyflawn: Iaith a Hunaniaeth
Book SynopsisSut mae ysgrifennu drama ‘genedlaethol’ mewn cenedl ddwyieithog a diwladwriaeth? A yw ymdrech dramodwyr yr 1990au i ddychmygu cenedl amgen ac annibynnol ar lwyfan wedi pylu ers datganoli? Sut y mae lleiafrifoedd eraill wedi dygymod â heriau’r oes honedig ôl-fodern ac ôl-genedlaethol hon, ac a oes gan eu profiadau wersi i Gymru? Dyma rai o’r cwestiynau y mae nifer o arloeswyr y ddrama Gymraeg gyfoes yn ymhél â nhw yn y gyfrol ddiweddaraf hon yng nghyfres Safbwyntiau. Mae Llwyfannu’r Genedl Anghyflawn yn gasgliad heriol o ysgrifau, wedi ei guradu a’i olygu gan un o’n dramodwyr mwyaf blaengar.Table of ContentsRhagair Dramodydd ‘Proses’ Datganoli: Sylwadau ar Lwyfannu Cenedl Anghyflawn Ian Rowlands Plethu Diwylliannau Perfformio: Theatr Drawsddiwylliannol Gyfoes rhwng Cymru a Bryniau Casi Lisa Lewis Pwy fuck yw’r werin datws erbyn hyn?’ Y Werin, y Genedl a’r Ddrama Dafydd Llewelyn Menywod ar Lwyfan: Llais y Fenyw yn y Theatr Gymraeg Sharon Morgan Iaith fel Arf, Iaith fel Allwedd: Cyfweliad gydag Aled Jones Williams a Sergi Belbel Hannah Sams a David George Bywgraffiadau Mynegai
£16.14
Verso Books Everything and Less: The Novel in the Age of
Book SynopsisAs the story goes: Jeff Bezos left a lucrative job to start something new in Seattle only after a deeply affecting reading of Kazuo Ishiguro's Remains of the Day. But if a novel gave usAmazon.com, what has Amazon meant for the novel? In Everything and Less, acclaimed critic Mark McGurl discovers a dynamic scene of cultural experimentation in literature, with a confidence that rivals modernism. Its innovations have little to do with how the novel is written and more to do with how it's distributed online. On the internet, all fiction becomes genre fiction, which is simply another way to predict customer satisfaction. With an eye on the longer history of the novel, this witty, acerbic book tells a story that connects Henry James to E.L. James, Faulkner and Hemingway to contemporary romance, science fiction and fantasy writers. Reclaiming several works of self-published fiction from the gutter of complete critical disregard, it stages a copernican revolution in how we understand the world of letters: it's the stuff of high literature - Colson Whitehead, Don DeLillo, and Amitav Ghosh - that revolve around the star of countless unknown writers trying to forge a career by untraditional means, Adult Baby Diaper Lover erotica being just one fortuitous route. In opening the floodgates of popular literary expression as never before, the Age of Amazon shows a democratic promise, as well as what it means when literary culture becomes corporate culture in the broadbest but also deepest and most troubling sense.Trade ReviewIt is a cliché to say that a book so changes your view of a particular historical period or problem that you never see it the same old way again. But this is the kind of book that warrants such praise. McGurl has brought deep learning, sweeping ambition, and stylistic brio together here to produce a whole new story of postwar American fiction. There is nothing else like it on the shelves of contemporary literary criticism -- Jim English, author of The Economy of Prestige, in praise of McGurl's The Program EraThe Program Era is a brilliant book of great ambition and originality. It will be rightly regarded as a landmark work and will shape the critical understanding of postwar American literature and culture for many years to come -- Sean McCann, author of A Pinnacle of Feeling: American Literature and Presidential Government, in praise of McGurl's The Program Eraan impressive and imaginative book -- Louis Menand, New Yorker, in praise of McGurl's The Program EraAs Mark McGurl suggests in this deep dive into the ubiquitous reach of "the world's biggest bookstore," in the age of Amazon, "every novel is a genre novel." * Lit Hub (Most Anticipated Books of 2021) *Provocative ... [McGurl] raises significant questions about the state of publishing. * Publishers Weekly *In Everything and Less, accomplished literary critic Mark McGurl makes the case that the online superstore has also changed the way that we read. -- Jeva Lange * The Week *Consumers might find in McGurl's book a warning to stay as far away as possible and seek out better forms of discovery than Amazon's website, like visiting an indie bookstore, asking a friend, or reading a magazine-looking for anything but what rises to the top of the feed. -- Kyle Chayka * The New Republic *The point here - and I think it's the most profound in McGurl's very entertaining book - is that Amazon is refashioning the novel as an object. -- Christopher Webb * Review 31 *Fierce ... Everything and Less enlists literary sources to explain the place of culture in a neoliberal economy. -- Leah Price * New York Times *Provocative ... in lucid and well-argued prose, McGurl goes spelunking through the many genres shaped by Amazon's consumerist logic. -- Adrienne Westenfeld * Esquire (October Book Club Pick) *Intriguing and entertaining ... Everything and Less is a good starting point for a re-consideration of literary production and reading in our times. -- M.A.Orthofer * The Complete Review *Engrossing ... McGurl argues that Amazon's outsize role in serving readers' needs has had a profound impact, not just on well-documented matters of retailing and warehousing, but on what we read, and to an extent, the content of the books themselves. -- Mark Athitakis * On the Seawall *[Mark McGurl is] the most exhaustive scholar to track US fiction's myriad paths from Henry James to Chuck Tingle ... a man who has read a lot, and, in the end, very earnestly. -- Dan Sinykin * Los Angeles Review of Books *Intriguing ... McGurl's object of study is not just the literary Age of Amazon but the place of the novel within it. -- Megan Marz * The Baffler *[McGurl] is attuned to America's signature queasiness about class, pleasure, and mass culture that constellates around reading and education. In Everything and Less, this takes the form of wild anthropological delight as he explores genres, and micro-genres, long dismissed by most mainstream scholarship and criticism. -- Parul Sehgal * New Yorker *Probing ... Everything and Less will speak to those who submerge themselves-whether as writers or readers, entrepreneurs or customers-into the [Kindle Direct Publishing] landscape, while offering much to think about ... for those who cherish traditional publishing and still place some value in the role that gatekeepers have long played in the book industry. -- Robert Weibezahl * BookPage *To survey the vast expanse of Amazon's literary domain, McGurl makes frequent excursions into popular genres rarely considered among academics and critics ... prompting a reassessment of the literary center and the literary fringe. -- Hannah Gold * The Nation *Everything and Less offers a sprawling account of the contemporary literary field, now being remade according to the ethos of the megacorporation. McGurl's theory of the novel is a romp, keyed to his compelling account of the genre system as it is being driven by Amazon and refined by Kindle Direct Publishing. -- Lisa Gitelman * Public Books *McGurl is above all a literary sociologist, and a brilliant one at that: it seems unlikely that any recent or forthcoming book can rival Everything and Less as a survey, at once brashly comprehensive and nimbly speculative, of the contemporary literary world. -- Benjamin Kunkel * Bookforum *
£18.00
Liverpool University Press Ireland, Migration and Return Migration: The
Book SynopsisDrawing on historical, literary and cultural studies perspectives, this book examines the phenomenon of the “Returned Yank” in the cultural imagination, taking as its point of departure the most exhaustively discussed Returned Yank narrative, The Quiet Man (dir. John Ford, 1952). Often dismissed as a figure that embodies the sentimentality and nostalgia of Irish America writ large, this study argues that the Returned Yank’s role in the Irish cultural imagination is much more varied and complex than this simplistic construction allows. Throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, s/he has been widely discussed in broadcast and print media, and depicted in plays, novels, short stories and films. The imagined figure of the Returned Yank has been the driving impetus behind some of Ireland's most well-known touristic endeavours and festivals. In the form of U.S. Presidential visits, s/he has repeatedly been the catalyst for questions surrounding Irish identity. Most significantly, s/he has been mobilised as an arbiter in one of the most important debates in post-Independence Ireland: should Ireland remain a "traditional" society or should it seek to modernise? His/her repeated appearances in Irish literature and culture after 1952 – in remarkably heterogeneous, often very sophisticated ways – refute claims of the “aesthetic caution” of Irish writers, dramatists and filmmakers responding to the tradition/modernity debate.Trade Review'An incisive and impressively contextualized study of the trope of "the Returned Yank" in Irish culture. This fascinating and outstanding book will make an invaluable and timely contribution to Irish and American Studies, as well as to diaspora studies more widely.'Dr Tony Murray, Director of the Irish Studies Centre at London Metropolitan University'Extremely commendable in its scope and ambition, this book offers a valuable contribution to Irish cultural studies, in particular to research on the complex relationship between "tradition" and "modernity" in Irish culture. It fills a genuine gap in existing scholarship, and its sustained analysis across several decades and multiple forms of representation is especially impressive, as it allows the reader to track a complex and historically-informed narrative arc for the "Returned Yank" figure.'Dr Stephanie Rains, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Media Studies, Maynooth UniversityReviews 'Sinéad Moynihan’s Ireland, Migration and Return Migration is an impressively wide-ranging and insightful study of migration to and from the United States in Irish literature, film, and culture. This book pushes beyond simplistic models of deracination, exile or the émigré, to think about the recurring nature of migration and return migration, and raises questions about decolonization, neo-colonialism, and the nature of “modern” Ireland both before and after the Celtic Tiger. Moynihan's work interrogates gendered mythologies about maternity and return, and similarly reworks notions of return in relation to literary forebears and genres. She combines an impressive range of cultural sources with nuanced close readings in an important and timely contribution to Irish Studies.' 2019 ACIS Michael J. Durkan PrizeTable of ContentsAcknowledgementsIntroduction - “The Meanest Form of Animal”?: The Returned Yank in the Cultural ImaginationChapter 1. “Quiet Men”: Film and Filmmaking in Returned Yank Fictions of the TroublesChapter 2. “Mother Macree ad nauseam”: Maternity, Modernity and the Female Returned Yank Chapter 3. Erin’s Acres: The Returned Yank, Property Disputes and the Rise and Fall of the Irish EconomyChapter 4. “The Secret Dotted Line”: Return, Roots Journeys and Irish Literary GenealogiesCoda - “We are where we are”: Mythologies of Return and the Post-Celtic Tiger MomentWorks CitedIndex
£82.12
Basic Books Don't Read Poetry: A Book About How to Read Poems
Book Synopsis"At once erudite and colloquial" (New Yorker), this book provides an accessible introduction to the joys and challenges of poetry In Don't Read Poetry, poet and literary critic Stephanie Burt offers an accessible introduction to the seemingly daunting task of reading, understanding, and appreciating poetry. Burt dispels preconceptions about poetry and explains how poems speak to one another-and how they can speak to our lives. She shows readers how to find more poems once they have some poems they like, and how to connect the poetry of the past to the poetry of the present. Burt moves seamlessly from Shakespeare and other classics to the contemporary poetry circulated on Tumblr and Twitter. She challenges the assumptions that many of us make about "poetry," whether we think we like it or think we don't, in order to help us cherish-and distinguish among-individual poems.A masterful guide to a sometimes confounding genre, Don't Read Poetry will instruct and delight ingénues and cognoscenti alike.
£15.29
Syracuse University Press Broken Irelands
Book SynopsisExamines Irish novels of the post-crash era, addressing the proliferation of writing that downplays realistic and grammatical coherence in works of fiction. McGlynn argues that they are reflecting and responding to social and economic conditions during the global economic crisis and its aftermath of recession, austerity, and precarity.
£26.55
Verso Books Raymond Chandler: The Detections of Totality
Book SynopsisRaymond Chandler, a dazzling stylist and portrayer of American life, holds a unique place in literary history, straddling both pulp fiction and modernism. With The Big Sleep, published in 1939, he left an indelible imprint on the detective novel. Fredric Jameson offers an interpretation of Chandler's work that reconstructs both the context in which it was written and the social world or totality it projects. Chandler's invariable setting, Los Angeles, appears both as a microcosm of the United States and a prefiguration of its future: a megalopolis uniquely distributed by an unpromising nature into a variety of distinct neighborhoods and private worlds. But this essentially urban and spatial work seems also to be drawn towards a vacuum, an absence that is nothing other than death. With Chandler, the thriller genre becomes metaphysical.Trade ReviewFredric Jameson is America's leading Marxist critic. A prodigiously energetic thinker whose writings sweep majestically from Sophocles to science fiction. -- Terry EagletonNot often in American writing since Henry James can there have been a mind displaying at once such tentativeness and force. The best of Jameson's work has felt mind-blowing in the way of LSD or mushrooms: here before you is the world you'd always known you were living in, but apprehended as if for the first time in the freshness of its beauty and horror. -- Benjamin Kunkel * London Review of Books *Probably the most important cultural critic writing in English today . it can truly be said that nothing cultural is alien to him. -- Colin MacCabeThe most muscular of writers. * Times Literary Supplement *Even the most anti-Marxian among us, [will] find ourselves compelled, if not to accept the book's intricate hypotheses, at least to accord them an ungrudged admiration for the brilliance of their formulation and the serene and quietly convinced tone in which they are advanced. -- John Banville * New York Review of Books *The small length of Jameson's book adds a tightness to its arguments and the style is often Chandler-esque: words are not wasted, literary observations are pin-sharp and there are some wry aperçu. Winningly, Jameson occasionally employs the genre's rhetoric, so his theorising becomes the pursuing of "lines of enquiry", a "procedure", etc. It's touches like this that make Jameson such a joy to read -- Cornelius Fitz * 3AM Magazine *
£12.00
HarperCollins Publishers Never Let Me Go AQA GCSE 91 English Literature
Book SynopsisExam Board: AQALevel: GCSE Grade 9-1Subject: English LiteratureSuitable for the 2024 examsEverything you need to revise for your GCSE 9-1 set text in a snap guideEverything you need to score top marks on your GCSE Grade 9-1 English Literature exam is right at your fingertips! Revise Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro in a snap with this new GCSE Grade 9-1 Snap Revision Text Guide from Collins. Refresh your knowledge of the plot, context, characters and themes and pick up top tips along the way to ace your AQA exam. Each topic is explained in an easy-to-read format so you can get straight to the point. Then, put your skills to the test with plenty of practice questions included in every section. The Snap Text Guides are packed with every quote and extract you need. We've even included examples of how to plan and write your essay responses! This Collins English Literature revision guide contains all the key information you need to practise and pass.
£7.49
Transit Books Lecture
Book Synopsis[Cappello''s] excellent new book-length essay, Lecture... at once defends the lecture and calls for holistic and creative improvements to the form.—The AtlanticIn twenty-first century America, there is so much that holds or demands our attention without requiring it. Imagine the lecture as a radical opening.Mary Cappello''s Lecture is a song for the forgotten art of the lecture. Brimming with energy and erudition, it is an attempt to restore the lecture''s capacity to wander, question, and excite. Cappello draws on examples from Virginia Woolf to Mary Ruefle, Ralph Waldo Emerson to James Baldwin, blending rigorous cultural criticism with personal history to explore the lecture in its many formsfrom the aphorism to the noteand give new life to knowledge's dramatic form.
£11.39
Yale University Press Retroland
Book SynopsisThe essential companion for lovers of the contemporary novelTrade Review“Altogether, a stimulating and useful enterprise.”—Kevin Power, Irish Times“It is very possible that Peter Kemp is the best-read man in Britain.” —Ian Sansom, The Spectator“Peter Kemp has held the torch for fiction over many years—scrupulous, devoted to his favourite authors, and insightful about emerging talent.”—Edna O’Brien“An exhilarating gallop across the landscape of recent English-language fiction. You may not share all of Peter Kemp’s trans-genre enthusiasms, but you will certainly be awed by his omnivorous appetite and will come away with at least a dozen books you are now itching to read.”—Sebastian Faulks“Readable and enjoyable as well as informative. The sort of book that keen novel readers should buy and praise.”—Lindsay Duguid“No one knows more about fiction over the last 50 years than Peter Kemp. He has been a fearless and fiercely knowledgeable and entertaining critic for decades, and in this fascinating book he offers a completely original take on the modern novel—one that will completely change how we think about what we all have been reading.”—Andrew Holgate“A rich, vivid, and endlessly informative book, with an awe-inspiring command of detail.”—Leo Robson
£18.00
Edinburgh University Press TwentiethCentury Gothic
Book SynopsisThe most extensive and up-to-date volume of essays on the Gothic mode in twentieth century culture.
£22.49
University of Minnesota Press Cacaphonies: The Excremental Canon of French
Book SynopsisExploring why there is so much fecal matter in literary works that matterCacaphonies takes fecal matter and its place in literature seriously. Readers and critics have too long overlooked excrement’s vital role in the twentieth- and twenty-first-century French canon. In a stark challenge to the tendency to view this literature through sanitizing abstractions, Annabel L. Kim undertakes close readings of key authors to argue for feces as a figure of radical equality, both a literary object and a reflection on literature itself, without which literary studies is impoverished and sterile. Following the fecal through line in works by Céline, Beckett, Genet, Sartre, Duras, and Gary and the contemporary authors Anne Garréta and Daniel Pennac, Kim shows that shit, far from vanishing from the canon after the early modern period, remains present in the modern and contemporary French literature that follows. She argues that all the shit in the canon expresses a call to democratize literature, making literature for all, just as shit is for (or of) all. She attends to its presence in this prized element of French identity, treating it as a continually uttered desire to manifest the universality France aspires to—as encapsulated by the slogan Liberté, égalité, fraternité—but fails to realize. In shit there is a concrete universalism that traverses bodies with disregard for embodied differences. Cacaphonies reminds us that literature, and the ideas to be found therein, cannot be separated from the corporeal envelopes that create and receive them. In so doing, it reveals the aesthetic, political, and ethical potential of shit and its capacity to transform literature and life. Trade Review "In dazzling readings of classic French texts, Annabel L. Kim reclaims feces as literary matter. Sidestepping familiar psychoanalytic frames, Kim turns excrement into a force for democracy. From Céline to Duras to Garréta, this caca communism blows up our old ways of thinking. Irreverent and erudite, as funny as Rabelais, Cacaphonies is a genuine scatological pleasure!"—Lynne Huffer, Emory University "We tend to assume that the trajectory of modern literature repeats that of society and technology (urbanization, sanitation, dematerialization, sanitization, deodorization) in taking us ever further away from the excretory body. It does not, insists Annabel L. Kim. On the contrary, modern literature refuses to endorse the fantasy of being ‘free from or clear of shit.’ Thus, to turn to the excretory body in literary works is to ask what literature’s deepest understanding of the human is, and what literature itself is. Cacaphonies is an extraordinarily engaging project: insightful, serious, self-consciously ‘profane,’ metacritically alive."—Thangam Ravindranathan, author of Behold an Animal: Four Exorbitant Readings "Kim’s readings are creative, bold and surprising. They reek, but they are never gratuitous, and they open up a field of literary waste studies that poses pressing ecological questions."—Times Literary Supplement "Kim’s book offers a fresh, fun(ny), clever, and innovative perspective on canonical texts while weaving through her analysis a discussion about life and death, and about how shit ultimately brings us back to that."—H-France Reviews "A must-read, Cacaphonies provides a truly insightful, engaging, and joyful reading experience."—The French Review Table of ContentsContentsIntroduction: We Have Always Been FecalPart I. Necessary Shit1. Céline: Shit on the Installment Plan2. Beckett: Shit for BrainsPart II. Shitty Ideas3. Fecal Freedom: Sartre and Genet’s ))< >((4. To Wipe the Other: Duras’s and Gary’s Fecal Care EthicsPart III. Political Shit5. Fighting Words: Anne Garréta’s Ultimate Weapon6. Daniel Pennac’s Excremental Poetics: Literature for AllConclusion: Caca CommunismAcknowledgmentsNotesBibliographyIndex
£17.24
Academic Studies Press Companion to Victor Pelevin
Book SynopsisCompanion to Victor Pelevin, a collaborative undertaking by a group of emerging Russianist scholars, focuses on the work of one of the most important and hotly debated post-Soviet writers. It provides a valuable resource to scholars, teachers, and students, including how best to teach Pelevin to university-level students, and which critical debates invite further investigation. The contributors offer new readings of Pelevin texts that cover a broad time span and pay due attention to the philosophical and aesthetic complexities of Pelevin’s oeuvre in its development from the early post-Soviet years to the second decade of the present millennium. Examining all of Pelevin’s major works and all Peleviniana currently available in English, the Companion aims to prompt further inquiry into this author’s intellectually stimulating and socially prescient work.Trade Review“Khagi’s project is intertextual, elucidating both Pelevin’s highly self-referential writing and its relation to Russian literature as a whole. Her holistic approach to Pelevin’s fiction is demonstrated by the extensive footnotes outlining literary theories and politics, and linking to multiple Russian authors, elevating the Companion from a sourcebook on ‘Peleviniana’ to a masterclass in post-Soviet literature. … This concern with intertextuality is embedded within each of the eight essays here, allowing Khagi’s Companion to offer Anglophone readers an invaluable map of the contemporary literary world that Pelevin both creates and critiques.”— Sarah Gear, University of Exeter, Modern Language Review (April 2023: Vol. 118, No. 2)“This companion to Pelevin’s work has two major benefits. It offers some usefully workmanlike analyses of his early texts, with handy plot synopses, some general contextualization and thematically engaging discussions. The Companion also offers some introduction to common critical approaches to the writer. The writing is accessible and succinct (if often rather descriptive), and the illustrations a pleasant touch. … [O]verall this is an excellent, balanced and carefully neutral… study that collects everything the Pelevin initiate needs to begin appreciating his work.”— Sally Dalton-Brown, University of Melbourne, Slavonic and East European Review 100, no. 3 (July 2022)“The new collection is thoughtfully crafted for a specific audience, namely US and European nonspecialists looking to teach Pelevin at the university level. The chapters… treat all the author’s major works, particularly those translated into English, but they also draw in less-known compositions and avoid going into the weeds on topics more relevant to Russianists. … In sum, the Companion’s scope is simultaneously expansive and tightly focused, and it models effective ways to approach Pelevin in the classroom. … Highly recommended.”— B. J, Nieubuurt, University of Michigan, CHOICE (December 2022: Vol. 60, No. 4)“The Companion to Victor Pelevin is a collaborative undertaking by current and recent graduate students from American universities and serves scholarly and pedagogical objectives… Some contributions, like Sofya Khagi’s and Alexander McConell’s, are innovative and explore new avenues in research about Pelevin…”— Clemens Günther, Freie Universität Berlin, Zeitschrift für Slavische Philologie 78.2Table of ContentsIntroduction Victor Pelevin: Life, Works, Critical DebatesSofya Khagi, University of MichiganPart One: The Post-Soviet1. The Early Years: Post-Soviet with a Capital “S”Michael Martin, University of MichiganPart Two: Space, Time, History2. Space-Time Poetics in Chapaev and the VoidSofya Khagi, University of Michigan3. Parody of Past and Present in Chapaev and the VoidChristopher Fort, University of Michigan4. Masking the Void, Voiding the Mask: Viktor Pelevin and the Performance of HistoryAlexander McConnell, University of MichiganPart Three: Simulation and Mind Control5. “The Battle for Your Mind”: Transformation of Western Social Theory in Generation ‘П’Dylan Ogden, University of Michigan6. Totalitarian Literature in Generation ‘П’Meghan Vicks, University of Colorado, BoulderPart Four: Metamorphosis and Utopia7. Transformative Reading for Tailless Monkeys: Metamorphoses in The Sacred Book of the WerewolfGrace Mahoney, University of Michigan8. The Mythic and the Utopian: Visions of the Future through the Lens of Victor Pelevin’s S.N.U.F.F. and Love for Three ZuckerbrinsTheodore Trotman, University of ChicagoAppendixSelect Publications by Victor Pelevin in Russian and English
£78.19
Liverpool University Press Sport and Monstrosity in Science Fiction
Book SynopsisSport and Monstrosity in Science Fiction examines fantastic representations of sport in science fiction, both cataloguing this almost entirely unexamined literary tradition and arguing that the reason for its neglect reflects a more widespread social suspicion of the athletic body as monstrous. Combining scholarship of monstrosity with a biopolitically focused philosophy of embodiment, this work plumbs the depths of our abjection of the athletic body and challenges us to reconsider sport as an intersectional space. In this latter endeavour it contradicts the image presented by both the most dystopian films such as Deathrace and Rollerball as well as social criticism of sport that limits its focus to an essentially violent masculinity. The book traces an alternative tradition of sport sf through authors as diverse as Arthur C. Clarke, Steven Barnes, and Joan Slonczewski, exploring the way the intersectional categories of gender, race, and age in these works are negotiated in, for example, a solar wind sailing race or futuristic anti-gravity boxing. These complex athletic bodies display the social mobility that sport allows and challenge us to acknowledge our own monstrously animal bodies and our place in a “cycle of living and dying.”Table of ContentsAcknowledgementsIntroduction: Beastmode1 Baseball, Not Biology: Sex and Gender in Sport SF2 Broken Teeth: Race, Bodies, and Sport SF3 Graying the Playing Field: SF Sport and Age4 SF Sport and the Individual Talent5 Sport, Institution, and the Devil6 Beasts in the Stands: Fandom, Sport, and SFConclusion, or How to Stop Looking for SinnersWorks Cited
£82.12
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC The Book About Everything: Eighteen Artists,
Book SynopsisTo celebrate the centenary of the publication of Ulysses, the most important literary work of the twentieth century, eighteen artists, writers and thinkers respond to an episode each of the great modernist text. Each essayist is an expert in one of the subjects treated in the novel, but what brings them together is a common love of Ulysses. Joseph O'Connor considers the music-saturated Sirens episode and David McWilliams writes about the bigotry and violence of nationalism on display in Cyclops. Irish obstetrician Rhona Mahony responds to Oxen and the Sun, set in a maternity hospital, journalist Lara Marlowe examines the Aeolus episode, which takes place in a newspaper office, and Irish philosopher Richard Kearney reflects on the erudite musings of Stephen Dedalus as he walks along Sandymount strand. The Book About Everything counters the perception of Ulysses as the sole preserve of academics and instead showcases readers' responses to the book. It is a vivid, even eccentric collection, filled with life and Joycean spirit.Trade ReviewCan profitably be read by anyone with an interest in Joyce... Illuminating insights underscore that Ulysses will continue to be a touchstone into its second century * Irish Times *Show[s] Ulysses is not the sole preserve of academics * Big Issue North *
£10.44
Verso Books Osip Mandelstam: A Biography
Book SynopsisThis is the first full-scale biography of Osip Mandelstam to combine an analysis of his poetry with a description of his personal life, from his beginnings as a young intellectual in pre-revolutionary Russia to his final fate as a victim of Stalinism.The myth has grown up that Mandelstam was a gloomy, miserable figure; Dutli deconstructs this, stressing Mandelstam's enjoyment of life. There are several underlying themes here. One is Mandelstam's Jewish background in pre-1914 Russia, which he rejected as a young man, but reaffirmed in later life. Another is the inescapable impact of Russia's political and social transformation.His evolution as a poet naturally occupies a large place in the biography, which quotes many of his most famous poems, including his devastating anti-Stalin epigram. He produced wonderful poetry before the October Revolution, but did not reach his full poetic stature until the 1930s when in exile in Voronezh. He was never an official Soviet poet, and it was only thanks to the intervention of Bukharin that he was brought back from utter impoverishment.The biography gives full weight to his emotional life, beginning with his friendship with two other Russian poets, Marina Tsvetaeva and Anna Akhmatova, followed by love and marriage to Nadezhda Khazina."One of the century's greatest lyric poets." - Elaine Feinstein, Sunday Times"Mandelstam's poems are both bold and delicate. His imagery can seem both profoundly startling yet entirely natural". - Robert Chandler"Mandelstam was a tragic figure. Even while in exile in Voronej, he wrote works of untold beauty and power. And he had no poetic forerunners. In all of world poetry, I know of no other such case. We know the sources of Pushkin and Blok, but who will tell us from where that new, divine harmony, Mandelstam's poetry, came from?" - Anna Akhmatova"Russia's greatest poet in the twentieth century." - Joseph BrodskyTrade ReviewA timely reminder of both the long history of repression in Russia and the powerful role that literature can play. Dutli's rounded portrait of a Russian poet unafraid to speak truth to power brings to life the man and his time. -- Carl Wilkinson, Best Books of the Year * Financial Times *Likely to become the standard reference work for the English reader ... enlightening -- Donald Rayfield * Literary Review *Deftly examines [Mandelstam's] literary legacy and explains why, in the opinion of the Nobel laureate Joseph Brodsky, [he] can be considered the greatest Russian poet of the 20th century -- John Thornhill * Financial Times *[Dutli's] understanding of his subject is profound and his assessments informed ... his sympathetic grasp of Mandlestam's artistic genius should yet be enough to encourage readers to explore some of the greatest poetry of the 20th century. -- Mark Glanville * Jewish Chronicle *Compelling ... [Dutli] provides a vibrant, deeply informed guide to the life, the writing and the tumultuous age that shaped them. -- Clare Cavanagh * Times Literary Supplement *The author, Ralph Dutli, approaches the poet unobtrusively and sensitively. He deconstructs the myths that have surrounded him, such as the notion that he was a restless ascetic who never put down any roots or settled anywhere. It was sheer necessity that forced him to move from place to place. Dutli brings out the sensual and witty side of Mandelstam, who was full of the joys of life. -- Marion Lülte * Die Tageszeitung *This biography crowns Dutli's work as editor of the poet's oeuvre. Thanks to Ralph Dutli, the German public now have the best conceivable access to Mandelstam's work. Dutli hasn't just told the story of Mandelstam's life; he has included in an appendix a range of comments by other poets, the most remarkable of them being that by Pasolini. -- Christoph Bartmann * Süddeutsche Zeitung *This is a biography written with insight and precision, which can be recommended unreservedly. The aim of the book is to explain how Mandelstam managed to retain his enjoyment of life and clarity of vision despite all his suffering. This is a successful biography written with empathy, sobriety and a wealth of information. -- Renate Wiggershaus * Frankfurter Rundschau *A model biography by Dutli, who is better qualified than anyone else to do this, because he has a precise knowledge of every facet of the poet's life and work. He corrects the picture presented by Celan, whose translations overemphasised the tragic, elegiac aspect of Mandelstam's poetry. -- Ulrich M. Schmid * Neue Zürcher Zeitung *The details of the road that led to Mandelstam's death have never been presented to the German public so precisely and with so much tact, as here. Dutli's language is muscular, warm and colourful. -- Andreas Isenschmid * Die Zeit *Dutli is able to illuminate the interaction between the poet's life and his work in a masterly fashion, without reducing his poems to a mere reflection of aspects of his biography. -- Michael Braun * Deutschlandfunk *
£22.50
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Studies in Medievalism XXXII: Medievalism in Play
Book SynopsisThough manifestations of play represent a burgeoning subject area in the study of post-medieval responses to the Middle Ages, they have not always received the respect and attention they deserve. This volume seeks to correct those deficiencies. Though manifestations of play represent a burgeoning subject area in the study of post-medieval responses to the Middle Ages, they have not always received the respect and attention they deserve. This volume seeks to correct those deficiencies via six essays that directly address how the Middle Ages have been put in play with regard to Alice Munro's 1977 short story "The Beggar Maid"; David Lowery's 2021 film The Green Knight; medievalist archaisms in Japanese video games; runic play in Norse-themed digital games; medievalist managerialism in the 2020 video game Crusader Kings III; and neomedieval architectural praxis in the 2014 video game Stronghold: Crusader II. The approaches and conclusions of those essays are then tested in the second section's six essays as they examine "muscular medievalism" in George R. R. Martin's 1996 novel A Game of Thrones; the queering of the Arthurian romance pattern in the 2018-20 television show She-Ra and the Princesses of Power; the interspecies embodiment of dis/ability in the 2010 film How to Train Your Dragon; late-nineteenth and early twentieth-century nationalism in Irish reimaginings of the Fenian Cycle; post-bellum medievalism in poetry of the Confederacy; and the medievalist presentation of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's 2020-21 Covid inoculation.Table of ContentsPreface - Karl Fugelso I: Medievalism in Play Sexual Play and Medievalism: Alice Munro's "The Beggar Maid" - M. J. Toswell Spoiling the Sport, Upping the Ante, and Calling His Bluff: Why St. Winifred Appears in David Lowery's 2021 Film The Green Knight - Kevin J. Harty "My guise doth not incur thy trust": Translating English Medievalism and Archaism to and from Japanese in a Video Game Context - Jacob W. Runner "Boy, what do those runes say?": Runic Play in Norse-Themed Digital Games - Tom Birkett Middle (Ages) Managers: Crusader Kings III as Medievalist Managerialism - Andrew Baerg "Castles are like possessions: merely temporary!": Neomedieval Architectural Praxis in Stronghold: Crusader II - Kevin Moberly and Brent Moberly II: Other Responses to Medievalism George R. R. Martin's "Muscular Medievalism" in A Game of Thrones: Masculinity, Violence, and Fantasy - Steven Bruso Big Sword-in-the-Stone Energy: Queering the Arthurian Romance Pattern in She-Ra and the Princesses of Power - Jessica Stanley Interspecies Embodiment of Dis/Ability in How to Train Your Dragon - Leah Haught Fenian Medievalisms, from Imperialist to Insurrectionist: Reimagining the Fenian Cycle and the Future of Ireland, 1878-1916 - Vanessa K. Iacocca Medievalism and the Old South: Metaphors and References in the Works of Poets of the Confederacy - Michel Aaij From Holy Lance to Covid-19 Syringe: Benjamin Netanyahu as Curator and Saint - Galit Noga-Banai
£71.25
Penguin Books Ltd The Terrible
Book Synopsis**WINNER of the 2019 PEN Ackerley Prize**'A major literary talent . . . speaks about the power and powerlessness that young women are subject to in a wholly fresh, clear-eyed way . . . you'll find it hard to come away from The Terrible without a stab of recognition in your chest' Stylist 'You may not run away from the thing that you arebecause it comes and comes and comes as sure as you breathe.'This is the story of Yrsa Daley-Ward, and all the things that happened - 'even the Terrible Things (and God, there were Terrible Things)'. It's about her childhood in the north-west of England with her beautiful, careworn mother and her little brother who sees things written in the stars. It's also about growing up and discovering the power and fear of sexuality, about pitch grey days of pills and powder: going under, losing yourself, and finding your voice. 'Yrsa's work is like holding the truth in your hands' Florence WelchTrade ReviewElegant, daring, profound - confirms her abundant talent as a writer -- Arifa Akbar * Observer *Beautiful and harrowing . . . Daley-Ward writes with disarming honesty * Vogue *A major literary talent . . . speaks about the power and powerlessness that young women are subject to in a wholly fresh, clear-eyed way . . . you'll find it hard to come away from The Terrible without a stab of recognition in your chest * Stylist *Daley-Ward explores the connection between raw emotion and the mechanics of language with more wildness and tenacity than ever * Dazed *A rare combination of literary brilliance, originality of voice and a narrative that commands you to keep going until you've reached the last page . . . her prose is invigorating, razor-sharp and moves at the speed of light . . . Yrsa Daley-Ward is an explosive new talent and this book should not be missed -- Anna van Praagh * Evening Standard *The Terrible's raw yet lilting prose draws the reader in at once. Unpredictable shifts in form and structure - from prose to poetry and script - are refreshingly disorientating. This is both a defiant book and a defiantly inventive one. -- Patricia Yaker Ekall * The Times Literary Supplement *Daley-Ward is a stylish writer, as well as an unusual voice . . . she has a knack for distilling wild emotions into precise imagery, for selecting insightful impressions. -- Francesca Angelini * Sunday Times *Daley-Ward's beautiful prose wrapped its hands around my neck - I found myself doing stupid things like walking through New York at rush hour with my nose buried in her book. -- Jamal Jordan * The New York Times *The Terrible is a lyrical piece of writing that oscillates between prose and poetry . . . Daley-Ward's lines land like dandelion spores, these weightless things that are somehow simultaneously profound -- Una Mullally * Irish Times Magazine *Daley-Ward has cooked a broth of dizzying emotions and touching moments down to a nuanced and taut account . . . there are so many flourishes of imagination and pathos here, that it's impossible not to get caught up in the torrential pace of the narrative . . .the result is one of the year's genuine must reads * Irish Independent *Daley-Ward combines beautifully crafted and deeply personal verse with impressive prose, bending the form of the memoir into her own genre -- Alexander Holmes * Metro *Daley-Ward is twenty-nine years old, but the events of her life more than justify the publication of this unflinching chronicle. -- Patricia Yaker Ekall * The Times Literary Supplement *Daley-Ward is twenty-nine years old, but the events of her life more than justify the publication of this unflinching chronicle. -- Patricia Yaker Ekall * The Times Literary Supplement *
£9.49
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Love Me Fierce In Danger
Book SynopsisWINNER OF 2024 EDGAR ALLAN POE AWARD (BEST CRITICAL/BIOGRAPHICAL BOOK)THE TELEGRAPH'S BEST BOOKS OF THE YEARSHORTLISTED FOR THE H.R.F KEATING AWARD FOR BEST BIOGRAPHICAL/CRITICAL BOOKAs gripping and twisted as a James Ellroy novel. - Ian RankinA masterpiece of literary biography. - David PeaceThe first critical biography of a titan of American crime fiction. Love Me Fierce In Danger is the story of James Ellroy, one of the most provocative and singular figures in American literature. The so-called Demon Dog of Crime Fiction, Ellroy enjoys a celebrity status and notoriety that few authors can match. However, traumas from the past have shadowed his literary success. When Ellroy was ten years old, his mother was brutally murdered. The crime went unsolved, and her death marked the start of a long and turbulent road for Ellroy that has included struggles with alcoholism, drug addiction, homelessness, and jail time. In tracing his life and career, Steven Powell reveals how Ellroy's upbriTrade ReviewHere is 'the skinny' (as the subject himself might put it) on one of the most charismatic and complex crime writers on the planet, affording insights into both the man and his craft. It's every bit as gripping and twisted as a James Ellroy novel. Dig it, cats. * Ian Rankin *Powell brings out the conflicting sides of Ellroy’s personality tactfully and sympathetically — without ever taking his eye off the truth … [It] has all the pace, twists and shocks of a good crime novel. -- Mark Sanderson * The Times *A highly enjoyable read … shrewd in its critiques of the work and jargon-free – an academic biography in the best sense. I suspect it will spoil the genre of literary biography for me for a while: can the life of any other living writer be anywhere near as horribly gripping? -- Jake Kerridge * The Daily Telegraph *Steven Powell’s brilliant, unflinching biography reveals how the novelist’s obsessions have their roots in the extraordinary experiences of his childhood and early years … Powell scrupulously chronicles Ellroy’s hectic career: his compulsive womanising; lapses in sobriety; near nervous breakdowns; and attention grabbing performances as the self-styled ‘Demon Dog of American Crime Fiction’… According to his ex-wife, Helen Knode: ‘James lives life like he was shot out of a cannon.’ This gripping, illuminating biography not only throws light on just what she meant by that. It also reveals why he does so. -- Nick Rennison * The Daily Mail *Sober … Powell’s unruffled approach is a shrewd way of tackling Ellroy’s sensational life and imagination. -- Anthony Cummins * Literary Review *[A] stark, revealing account of [Ellroy’s] life. -- Martin Chilton * The Independent *When it comes to James Ellroy, [Powell] is the go-to expert who plays sleuth to the inventor of many an L.A. sleuth. . . . The same obsessive thread that runs through all of Ellroy's work also weaves kinetically through Powell's prose. In this latest book, he reveals nuances of the epic writer’s life and process that only an Ellroy expert can. * Brooklyn Rail *Powell's biography is wonderful, a must-read. . . . It is a testament to him and to his subject. * Hedgehog Review *An essential purchase for anyone interested in modern American crime fiction, couched in prose that is as lively as its uncompromising subject. -- Barry Forshaw * Crime Time *Contributes a wealth of material and insight into Ellroy's private life and personal struggles. . . . Love Me Fierce In Danger is a substantial work of literary scholarship. . . . A must read for fans and scholars of contemporary American crime fiction. * Pulp Curry *Whatever we thought we knew about the Demon Dog of American Literature, we were wrong; Love Me Fierce in Danger is as revelatory as it is compelling, and a masterpiece of literary biography: James Ellroy deserves no less. * David Peace *Unflinching in detailing the life of one of the living greats of crime fiction … As biographies go, this one is quite a ride. -- Ayo Onatade * Shots magazine *Steven Powell’s biography is notably short on longueurs ... Powell has clearly worked hard to do justice to his subject. -- Nicholas Lezard * The Spectator *Provides fascinating revelations about the life of James and his remarkable parents, Jean & Armand. It is amazing how much new information the biography provides—in clear and eloquent fashion. . . . This is a testament to Steven’s rigorous research and his unprecedented access to Mr. Ellroy, his friends, his family, former lovers and former colleagues. * Apocalypse Confidential *Equal parts literary examination of Ellroy’s stylistic and thematic journey and a fulsome exploration of his personal struggles. . . . A rich and sprawling read. * Zoomer Magazine *From countless interviews with friends, family peers, former lovers, literary and film collaborators, as well as extensive interviews with Ellroy himself, author Steven Powell pulls back the curtain on the life of this enigmatic, often bombastic, charismatic and complex author. The tale he reveals is every bit as gripping, twisted, dark and provocative as any of Ellroy's dozen novels. * The Irish Scene *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgements James Ellroy Bibliography: List of Key Works 1. In the Shadow of Hollywood - Los Angeles (1948-1958) 2. Murder in El Monte (1958-1965) 3. Down and Out in the City of Angels (1965-1975) 4. Debris by the Sea (1975-1981) 5. The Road to the Dahlia (1981-1985) 6. Sweet Smell of Success (1986-1990) 7. Enter the Borzoi (1990-1993) 8. On the Trail of Swarthy Man (1993-1995) 9. Demon Dog of American Crime Fiction (1995-2000) 10. The Crack-Up (2000-2006) 11. Chasing It: Ellroy’s Return to LA (2005-2009) 12. The Big Hurt (2009-2015) 13. Sanctuary (Denver 2016-2020) Notes Works Cited Index
£14.24
Harvard University Press AvantGarde Post
Book SynopsisAvant-Garde Post– follows seven Russophone poets as they reinvigorate leftist art in the wake of state socialism. Rejecting both the Putin regime—with its selective mobilizations of Soviet nostalgia—and Western discourses of liberal superiority, this circle is reviving class-based critique through experimental forms and global collaborations.Trade ReviewMarijeta Bozovic has written the definitive study of avant-garde poetry’s role in the leftist resistance movement that has long stood opposed to the Putin regime. Her command of twentieth- and twenty-first-century poetry and politics is extraordinary. -- Marjorie Perloff, author of Infrathin: An Experiment in MicropoeticsAn informative introduction to two recent generations of aesthetically inventive Russian-language poets, whose works embrace both a politics of resistance to authoritarianism and agitation for social and economic liberation. Writing in the wake of Dragomoshchenko and Prigov, the radical poets at the center of this book are brilliant and necessary voices, who we need to hear all the more in this time of crisis for Russian culture. -- Charles Bernstein, author of Pitch of PoetryBrilliant and essential. With dazzling insights and vibrant, compelling prose, Bozovic captures the political-aesthetic energy, urgency, and vitality of post-Soviet radical poetics. Her account is at once a literary history of this new movement, a portrait of seven major poets, and a theorization of a new tendency in Russian poetics. It is not only the most important book on post-Soviet poetry, but also the best book I have read on post-Soviet Russia as such. At the same time, it makes a crucial contribution to broader debates about the possibilities for transformative, leftist art across the world. -- Jonathan Flatley, author of Affective Mapping: Melancholia and the Politics of ModernismAvant-Garde Post– is an incisive study of the most intriguing leftist poets working in and around Russia today. Informed by years of research in close contact and partnership with the authors themselves, Bozovic’s work explains how they have renovated traditions of engaged, experimental, and revolutionary culture for a new era. Her examination of these figures, who have worked in opposition to the Putin regime for decades, could not be more timely. -- Kevin M. F. Platt, author of Terror and Greatness: Ivan and Peter as Russian Myths
£30.56
Song Cave Telling the Truth as It Comes Up: Selected Talks
Book SynopsisOnce again, we encounter Notley as one the great interlocutors of the world, a dedicated advocate for what is between and beyond definition. Tess Michaelson, Full StopAlice Notley, the author of more than 40 books of poetry, has delivered an expert array of discussions over the last three decades. Telling the Truth as It Comes Up: Selected Talks & Essays 1991-2018 offers a significant contribution to literature, reimagining the possibilities of writing in our time and the complicated business of how and why writers devote their lives to their craft. Whether she is writing about other poetsEd Dorn, Allen Ginsberg, Homer, bpNichol, Douglas Oliver or William Carlos Williamsnoir fiction, the First Gulf War, dreams or giving us insight into her own work, Notley''s observations are original, sobering and always memorable. This collection often eschews the typical style of essay or lecture, resisting any categorization, and is consciously disobedient to academic structures in form. The results are thrilling new modes of thinking that may change the ways we read and write.Alice Notley was born in Bisbee, Arizona, in 1945, and grew up in Needles, California. During the late 60s and early 70s she lived a traveling poet's life before settling on New York's Lower East Side. For 16 years there, she was an important force in the eclectic second generation of the so-called New York School. Notley is the author of more than 40 books of poetry, including At Night the States, the double volume Close to Me and Closer . . . (The Language of Heaven) and Désamère and How Spring Comes, which was a co-winner of the San Francisco Poetry Award. In 1998, Penguin published Mysteries of Small Houses, which was one of three finalists for the Pulitzer Prize and the winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Poetry. In 2015 she was awarded the Ruth Lilly Prize for lifetime achievement in poetry.
£18.00
The University of Chicago Press Novels by Aliens
Book SynopsisTrade Review"[An] excellent new book. . . . For Marshall. . . the Weird, in its many manifestations, stands at the center of contemporary literary culture — so long as we know where and how to see it." -- Jess Keiser * The Washington Post *“To a novelistic landscape populated by zombies, trees, amnesiacs, robots, and geological traces of an unimaginable past, you'll find no surer guide than Kate Marshall. But Novels by Aliens is an introduction to far more than the semi-human wilds of recent fiction. As we learn in these beautifully argued pages, the novel has been weird for centuries—indeed, perhaps never more than when it has most aimed to be realist. In retheorizing the form itself, Marshall demonstrates the importance of fictional thinking to contemporary dilemmas that themselves prove to be less novel than we often assume.” * Jennifer Fleissner, Indiana University Bloomington *“Marshall’s electrifying book takes us on a tour of early twenty-first-century novels that want to be narrated by Martians—but also landscapes, animals, monsters, artificial intelligences, and myriad other nonhuman entities. Though this desire for a radically external perspective often fails, novel forms of sentience, and the worlds they inhabit or imagine, come to structure thought experiments that speculate their way through problems as seemingly unrepresentable as human extinction. With an ambitious scope and synthetic skill, this book connects classic literary texts by writers such as Stephen Crane and Frank Norris to contemporary work by novelists such as Teju Cole, Colson Whitehead, and Marilynne Robinson. Novels by Aliens succeeds at making our world feel weirder and more alien in ways that ultimately make it far more available to thought.” * Patrick Jagoda, University of Chicago *“Dense yet expansive, this study illuminates whole worlds—and the very edges of the known world. Marshall has a preternatural gift for getting to the point. Read this whole book for a surefooted survey of the novel’s most exorbitant possibilities presented with peerless critical depth and balance. Ranging across the Wild Wests of capitalism before 1900 and after 2000, Marshall shows us novels aiming to cut loose from the human subject while remaining tethered to the genre histories of frontier naturalism and the old weird.” * Jed Esty, University of Pennsylvania *“Marshall remains the same scholar whose ‘The Old Weird’ made such a suggestive genealogy between the spooky aspects of Naturalism and the twenty-first century revival of gothic horror. Novels by Aliens is an impressive account that gives readers a way to consider the irony of the Anthropocene being an era both of exaggerated human agency (to mar the planet) and also an era where the truly picayune nature of human agency and importance within a vaster world/universe comes more clearly into view.” * John Plotz, English, Brandeis University *“A timely and insightful study. . . This book has the potential to transform novel theory and literary criticism generally and to illustrate the important contribution both fiction and literary theory have to make to debates concerning humanity’s most urgent and pressing issues.” * Priscilla Wald, author of "Contagious: Cultures, Carriers, and the Outbreak Narrative" *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Dispatches from the Extinguished World 1 The Old Weird 2 Cowboys and Aliens 3 Cosmic Realism 4 The Novel in Geological Time 5 Pseudoscience Fictions 6 After Extinction Acknowledgments Notes Works Cited Index
£21.00
McGill-Queen's University Press Do You Want to Be Happy and Write Critical
Book SynopsisThis new collection on Michael Ondaatje’s work – the first in twenty years – offers an innovative analysis of the author’s oeuvre from 1967 to the present. In twenty essays, contributors explore Ondaatje’s poetry, novels, and work in film, highlighting the transnational, postcolonial, and diasporic issues apparent in his writings.Trade Review“Chock full of complex theoretical language, Do You Want to Be Happy and Write? will likely appeal to academic audiences (and determined CanLit enthusiasts). But general readers may find this insightful analysis a welcome supplement to their continued enjoyment of Ondaatje’s enduring works.” Literary Review of Canada
£27.90
Cambridge University Press Jazz and American Culture
Book SynopsisThis book offers an entry point for understanding the comprehensive way this uniquely American artistic form has influenced literature, art, film, and other art forms, while also providing a cultural space for political commentary or social critique.Trade Review'In this elegant, bold, ambitious, and much-needed intervention in the standard histories of Jazz, Borshuk brings together an all-star cast of leading scholars on a comprehensive set of topics that together enable us all to make a great leap forward in understanding the music's essential relation to American culture. The book begins with several insightful discussions of the specific aesthetic features that define jazz in the context of improvisation, race, literature, and performance, then situates the music historically in terms of Harlem, Modernism, and the watershed upheaval that peaked in 1968; from there, it connects jazz to American vernacular, the personal style of “cool,” and the music's eventual and always fraught relations with institutions of various kinds, its representation in poetry, autobiography, liner notes, and in the visual realm from cinema to TV to photography. An invaluable resource, a stunning achievement.' T. R. Johnson, Tulane University, Author of New Orleans: A Writer's CityTable of ContentsIntroduction: a brief history of jazz in American culture Michael Borshuk; Part I. Elements of Sound and Style: 1. Improvisation Ajay Heble; 2. Scat and vocalese Chris Tonelli; 3. Jazz as intertextual expression Charles Hersch; 4. How to watch jazz: the importance of performance Michael Borshuk; Part II. Aesthetic Movements: 5. Jazz age Harlem Fiona Ngo; 6. 'Hard Times Don't Worry Me': the blues in Black music and literature in the 1930s Steven Tracy; 7. A fool for beauty: modernism and the racial semiotics of crooning Michael Coyle; 8. Free Jazz, critical performativity, and 1968 Michael Hrebeniak; Part III. Cultural Contexts: 9. Jazz slang, jazz speak Amor Kohli; 10. Jazz cool Joel Dinerstein; 11. The institutionalization of jazz Dale Chapman; 12. Jazz abroad Jurgen Grandt; Part IV. Literary Genres: 13. Orchestrating chaos: othering and the politics of contingency in jazz fiction Herman Beavers; 14. 'Wail, wop': jazz poetry on the page and in performance Jessica Teague; 15. Jazz criticism and liner notes Timothy Gray; 16. Jazz autobiography Daniel Stein; 17. Jazz and the American songbook Katherine Williams; Part V. Images and Screens: 18. 'The Sound I Saw': jazz and visual culture Amy Abugo Ongiri; 19. Love, theft, and transcendence: jazz and narrative cinema Krin Gabbard; 20. Reinstating televisual histories of jazz Nicolas Pillai; 21. Documentary jazz/jazz documentary Will Finch; 22. Two dark rooms: jazz and photography Benjamin Cawthra.
£33.24
Bloomsbury Publishing (UK) The Many Worlds of Anglophone Literature
Book SynopsisSilvia Anastasijevic is a doctoral researcher at Goethe University Frankfurt and a research assistant at the University of Bonn, Germany.Magdalena Pfalzgraf is Junior Professor of English Literatures and Cultures at the University of Bonn, Germany.Hanna Teichler is a postdoctoral researcher at Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany.Table of ContentsAcknowledgements List of Contributors Introduction: The Many Worlds of Anglophone Literature: The mobilizing potential of transcultural World Literature: Magdalena Pfalzgraf and Hanna Teichler Foreword: On excentric proximity: Some thoughts for Frank Homi K. Bhabha Part One Theories and concepts 1 'World Literature'? A perspective from the Centre, a perspective from the edge: Michael Chapman 2 Traversal, transversal: A poetics of migrancy: Robert J C. Young 3 On transcultural globalectics: Ngugi meets Schulze-Engler: Tanaka Chidora Part Two Transgressive kinships 4 Not-so-happy families: Durell, Goodall and the myth of Africa: Graham Huggan 5 The 'makings of a diasporic self': Transcultural life writing, diaspora and modernity in Stuart Hall's Familiar Stranger: Katja Sarkowsky 6 Toward re-centring the senescent: Pedagogical possibilities of Anglophone short fiction: Mala Pandurang and Jinal Baxi 7 Notes from a classroom: Teaching Anglophone transculturality amidst environmental devastations: Kathrin Bartha-Mitchell and Michelle Stork Part Three Transversal readings 8 Transculturality and the law: Witi Ihimaera's The Whale Rider and a river with personhood: Mita Banerjee 9 'Mobility at large': Anglophone travel writing as a medium of transcultural communication in a global context: Nadia Butt 10 The transcultural imaginary: South Asian writing from Aotearoa New Zealand: Janet Wilson 11 Passages to India: Jewish exiles between privilege and persecution Flora Veit-Wild Afterword: 'Objects in the rear-view mirror': Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor
£85.50
Edinburgh University Press Contemporary Arab Womens Life Writing and the
Book SynopsisExplores the relationship between revolutionary movements and experimental life writing forms by contemporary Arab women.Trade Review"By examining Arabophone, Francophone, and Anglophone autobiographical writings of Arab women found in various modes, including testimonials, diaries, and more recently in digital media, Cheurfa's book, well-grounded in related theories, contributes to the analysis of dissident literature showing the strong involvement of Arab women in national struggle movements and redefining the modern cultural history of the Arab world." -Nawar Al-Hassan Golley, American University of Sharjah
£76.50
Manchester University Press Mid-Century Gothic: The Uncanny Objects of
Book SynopsisMid-Century Gothic defines a distinct post-war literary and cultural moment in Britain, lasting ten years from 1945-55. This was a decade haunted by the trauma of fascism and war, but equally uneasy about the new norms of peacetime and the resurgence of commodity culture. As old assumptions about the primacy of the human subject became increasingly uneasy, culture answered with gothic narratives that reflected two troubling qualities of the new objects of modernity: their uncannily autonomous agency, and their disquieting intimacy with the reified human body. The book offers fresh readings of novels, plays, essays and films of the period, unearthing neglected texts as well as reassessing canonical works. By bringing these into dialogue with the mid-century architecture, exhibitions and material culture, it provides a new perspective on a notoriously neglected historical moment and challenges previous accounts of the supposed timidity of post-war culture.Table of ContentsIntroduction: ‘The world of things’: an introduction to mid-century gothicPart I: Agency1 Rubble, walls and murals: abstraction and materiality2 Seeing things: found objects and the eye of the beholder3 Machines and spectrality: the gothic potential of technology Part II: Intimacy4 Neophilia and nostalgia: the trouble with gentrification 5 Strange beauty: Costume, performance and power in the New Elizabethan age6 Bombs, Prosthetics and Madness: Incorporating the Intimacy of ThingsConclusion: Beyond the mid-century
£21.00
Manchester University Press British Literature and Archaeology, 1880–1930
Book SynopsisBritish literature and archaeology, 1880-1930 reveals how British writers and artists across the long turn of the twentieth century engaged with archaeological discourse—its artefacts, landscapes, bodies, and methods—uncovering the materials of the past to envision radical possibilities for the present and future. This project traces how archaeology shaped major late-Victorian and modern discussions: informing debates over shifting gender roles; facilitating the development of queer iconography and the recovery of silenced or neglected histories; inspiring artefactual forgery and transforming modern conceptions of authenticity; and helping writers and artists historicise the traumas of the First World War. Ultimately unearthing archaeology at the centre of these major discourses, this book simultaneously positions literary and artistic engagements with the archaeological imagination as forms of archaeological knowledge in themselves.Table of ContentsIntroduction: 'Our real life in tombs'1 Queer archaeologies2 Archaeology and Decadent prose3 Archaeology and authenticity4 Our real life in tombs: Great War archaeologyCODA: Archaeology from a distanceIndex
£60.00
Manchester University Press The Politics of Male Friendship in Contemporary
Book SynopsisHow might our friendships shape our politics? This book examines how contemporary American fiction has rediscovered the concept of civic friendship and revived a long tradition of imagining male friendship as interlinked with the promises and paradoxes of democracy in the United States. Bringing into dialogue the work of a wide range of authors – including Philip Roth, Paul Auster, Michael Chabon, Jonathan Lethem, Dinaw Mengestu, and Teju Cole – this innovative study advances a compelling new account of the political and intellectual fabric of the American novel today.Table of ContentsIntroduction 1 ‘The Love Alternative’: Philip Roth’s I Married a Communist (1998) and The Human Stain (2000)2 The Gift of Friendship: Paul Auster’s Fiction and Film3 Broken Utopias: Michael Chabon’s Telegraph Avenue (2012) and Jonathan Lethem’s The Fortress of Solitude (2003)4 The Borders of Friendship: Dinaw Mengestu’s The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears (2007) and Teju Cole’s Open City (2011)Conclusion
£15.00
Academic Studies Press Companion to Victor Pelevin
Book SynopsisCompanion to Victor Pelevin, a collaborative undertaking by a group of emerging Russianist scholars, focuses on the work of one of the most important and hotly debated post-Soviet writers. It provides a valuable resource to scholars, teachers, and students, including how best to teach Pelevin to university-level students, and which critical debates invite further investigation. The contributors offer new readings of Pelevin texts that cover a broad time span and pay due attention to the philosophical and aesthetic complexities of Pelevin’s oeuvre in its development from the early post-Soviet years to the second decade of the present millennium. Examining all of Pelevin’s major works and all Peleviniana currently available in English, the Companion aims to prompt further inquiry into this author’s intellectually stimulating and socially prescient work.Trade Review“Khagi’s project is intertextual, elucidating both Pelevin’s highly self-referential writing and its relation to Russian literature as a whole. Her holistic approach to Pelevin’s fiction is demonstrated by the extensive footnotes outlining literary theories and politics, and linking to multiple Russian authors, elevating the Companion from a sourcebook on ‘Peleviniana’ to a masterclass in post-Soviet literature. … This concern with intertextuality is embedded within each of the eight essays here, allowing Khagi’s Companion to offer Anglophone readers an invaluable map of the contemporary literary world that Pelevin both creates and critiques.”— Sarah Gear, University of Exeter, Modern Language Review (April 2023: Vol. 118, No. 2)“This companion to Pelevin’s work has two major benefits. It offers some usefully workmanlike analyses of his early texts, with handy plot synopses, some general contextualization and thematically engaging discussions. The Companion also offers some introduction to common critical approaches to the writer. The writing is accessible and succinct (if often rather descriptive), and the illustrations a pleasant touch. … [O]verall this is an excellent, balanced and carefully neutral… study that collects everything the Pelevin initiate needs to begin appreciating his work.”— Sally Dalton-Brown, University of Melbourne, Slavonic and East European Review 100, no. 3 (July 2022)“The new collection is thoughtfully crafted for a specific audience, namely US and European nonspecialists looking to teach Pelevin at the university level. The chapters… treat all the author’s major works, particularly those translated into English, but they also draw in less-known compositions and avoid going into the weeds on topics more relevant to Russianists. … In sum, the Companion’s scope is simultaneously expansive and tightly focused, and it models effective ways to approach Pelevin in the classroom. … Highly recommended.”— B. J, Nieubuurt, University of Michigan, CHOICE (December 2022: Vol. 60, No. 4)“The Companion to Victor Pelevin is a collaborative undertaking by current and recent graduate students from American universities and serves scholarly and pedagogical objectives… Some contributions, like Sofya Khagi’s and Alexander McConell’s, are innovative and explore new avenues in research about Pelevin…”— Clemens Günther, Freie Universität Berlin, Zeitschrift für Slavische Philologie 78.2Table of ContentsIntroduction Victor Pelevin: Life, Works, Critical DebatesSofya Khagi, University of MichiganPart One: The Post-Soviet1. The Early Years: Post-Soviet with a Capital “S”Michael Martin, University of MichiganPart Two: Space, Time, History2. Space-Time Poetics in Chapaev and the VoidSofya Khagi, University of Michigan3. Parody of Past and Present in Chapaev and the VoidChristopher Fort, University of Michigan4. Masking the Void, Voiding the Mask: Viktor Pelevin and the Performance of HistoryAlexander McConnell, University of MichiganPart Three: Simulation and Mind Control5. “The Battle for Your Mind”: Transformation of Western Social Theory in Generation ‘П’Dylan Ogden, University of Michigan6. Totalitarian Literature in Generation ‘П’Meghan Vicks, University of Colorado, BoulderPart Four: Metamorphosis and Utopia7. Transformative Reading for Tailless Monkeys: Metamorphoses in The Sacred Book of the WerewolfGrace Mahoney, University of Michigan8. The Mythic and the Utopian: Visions of the Future through the Lens of Victor Pelevin’s S.N.U.F.F. and Love for Three ZuckerbrinsTheodore Trotman, University of ChicagoAppendixSelect Publications by Victor Pelevin in Russian and English
£21.59
Liverpool University Press Writing and the Revolution: Venezuelan
Book SynopsisIn contrast to recent theories of the ‘global’ Latin American novel, this book reveals the enduring importance of the national in contemporary Venezuelan fiction, arguing that the novels studied respond to both the nationalist and populist cultural policies of the Bolivarian Revolution and Venezuela’s literary isolation. The latter results from factors including the legacy of the Boom and historically low levels of emigration from Venezuela. Grounded in theories of metafiction and intertextuality, the book provides a close reading of eight novels published between 2004 (the year in which the first Minister for Culture was appointed) and 2012 (the last full year of President Chávez’s life), relating these novels to the context of their production. Each chapter explores a way in which these novels reflect on writing, from the protagonists as readers and writers in different contexts, through appearances from real life writers, to experiments with style and popular culture, and finally questioning the boundaries between fiction and reality. This literary analysis complements overarching studies of the Bolivarian Revolution by offering an insight into how Bolivarian policies and practices affect people on an individual, emotional and creative level. In this context, self-reflexive narratives afford their writers a form of political agency.Trade Review'Katie Brown’s monograph explores the intrinsic aesthetic value of literature; how it can be instrumentalized to serve political purposes; and the impact that said instrumentalization has on literary production, access to markets, as well as the creative autonomy and artistic integrity of Venezuelan writers. [...] This monograph is a timely and significant contribution to understanding the effect of Bolivarian cultural policy, and its inherent contradictions, on the ‘minor’ contemporary literature produced by Venezuelans, both within the country and in exile.'Penelope Plaza, Modern Language ReviewTable of ContentsIntroductionChapter 1: Writing for the StateChapter 2: Writing and DistinctionChapter 3: Challenging the National NarrativeChapter 4: Making Literary ConnectionsChapter 5: Form and Popular CultureChapter 6: Fiction and RealityConclusionReferencesAcknowledgements
£82.12
Liverpool University Press Dread Trident: Tabletop Role-Playing Games and
Book SynopsisDread Trident examines the rise of imaginary worlds in tabletop role-playing games (TRPGs), such as Dungeons and Dragons. With the combination of analog and digital mechanisms, from traditional books to the internet, new ways of engaging the fantastic have become increasingly realized in recent years, and this book seeks an understanding of this phenomenon within the discourses of trans- and posthumanism, as well as within a gameist mode.The book explores a number of case studies of foundational TRPGs. Dungeons and Dragons provides an illustration of pulp-driven fantasy, particularly in the way it harmonizes its many campaign settings into a functional multiverse. It also acts as a supreme example of depth within its archive of official and unofficial published material, stretching back four decades. Warhammer 40k and the Worlds of Darkness present an interesting dialogue between Gothic and science-fantasy elements. The Mythos of HP Lovecraft also features prominently in the book as an example of a realized world that spans the literary and gameist modes.Realized fantasy worlds are becoming ever more popular as a way of experiencing a touch of the magical within modern life. Reworking Northrop Frye’s definition of irony, Dread Trident theorizes an ironic understanding of this process and in particular of its embodied forms.Trade Review'Dread Trident sets a novel and rewarding precedent for future research that melds literature studies and game studies... [It] is an impressive investigation into embodiment, play, and posthumanism, in order to synthesize previously understudied connections at work in TRPGs. Carbonell expertly moves between fields of study, from discussions of transhumanism and posthumanism, to literary theory, to game studies, and even between genres even within analog games.' Adrianna Burton, Analog Game Studies‘Dread Trident offers a theoretically rigorous and informative exploration of its focal gametexts and the use of game archives to critically explore how the modern fantastic as a genre evolves in them over time. Carbonell’s approach to theorizing these gametexts as using digital and analogue tools to generate realized worlds… is innovative and compelling.’ Clare Wall, SFRA ReviewTable of Contents1. Introduction: Theorizing the Modern Fantastic2. The Posthuman in the Schismatrix Stories and Eclipse Phase3. Dungeons and Dragons' Multiverse4. Worlds of Darkness: From Gothic to Cosmic Horror5. Lovecraft's (Cthulhu) Mythos6. Warhammer 40,000: A Science Fantasy Epic7. Beyond Borders with Miéville, Wolfe, and Numenera8. Conclusion
£98.55
Liverpool University Press Don Paterson
Book SynopsisDon Paterson is one of Britain’s leading contemporary poets. A popular writer as well as a formidably intelligent one, he has won both a dedicated readership and most of Britain's major poetry prizes, including the T. S. Eliot Prize on two occasions, the Forward Prize in every category, and the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry. In this first comprehensive study of Paterson’s poetry, Ben Wilkinson presents him as a modern-day metaphysical, whose work is characterised by guileful use of form, musicality, colloquial diction and playful wit, in pursuit of poetry as a moral and philosophical project. Drawing on a wide range of commentators, Wilkinson traces Paterson’s development from collection to collection, providing detailed close readings of the poems framed by theoretical and literary contexts. An essential guide for students, specialists, and the general reader of contemporary poetry, it presents Paterson as a major lyric poet.Table of ContentsBiographical OutlinePrologue1. For the Hell of It: Nil Nil (1993)2. Which Man I Am: God's Gift to Women (1997)3. Not Your Name, Not Mine: The Eyes (1999)4. Shrewd Obliquity of Speech: Landing Light (2003)5. Breath, You Invisible Poem: Orpheus (2006)6. None of This Matters: Rain (2009)Coda: 40 Sonnets (2015) and Zonal (2020)
£33.00
Los Angeles Review of Books Los Angeles Review of Books Quarterly Journal:
Book SynopsisLos Angeles Review of Books is a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting and disseminating rigorous, incisive, and engaging writing on every aspect of literature, culture, and the arts. Since its founding in 2011, LARB has quickly established itself as a thriving institution for writers and readers. TheLARB Quarterly Journal, a signature print edition, reflects the best that this institution brings to a national and international readership. The print magazine cultivates a stable of regular and ongoing contributors, both eminent and emerging, to cover all topics and genres, from politics to fiction, film to poetry, and much more.LARB specializes in a looser and more eclectic approach than other journals: grounded in literature but open to all varieties of cultural experience. Headquartered in Los Angeles, but home to writers and artists from all over the world, theLARB Quarterly Journal brings the pioneering spirit of the online magazine into print and and remains committed to covering and representing today’s diverse literary and cultural landscape.
£7.99
Springer Nature Switzerland AG New Forms of Self-Narration: Young Women, Life
Book SynopsisThis book is a timely study of young women’s life writing as a form of human rights activism. It focuses on six young women who suffered human rights violations when they were girls and have gone on to become activists through life writing: Malala Yousafzai, Hyeonseo Lee, Yeonmi Park, Bana Alabed, Nujeen Mustafa, and Nadia Murad. Their ongoing life-writing projects diverge to some extent, but all share several notable features: they claim a testimonial collective voice, they deploy rights discourse, they excite humanitarian emotions, they link up their context-bound plight with bigger social justice causes, and they use English as their vehicle of self-expression and self-construction. This strategic use of English is of vital importance, as it has brought them together as icons in the public sphere within the last six years. New Forms of Self-Narration is the first ever attempt to explore all these activists’ life-writing texts side by side, encompassing both the written and the audiovisual material, online and offline, and taking all texts as belonging to a unique, single, though multifaceted, project.Table of Contents1. Introduction: Life Writing, Human Rights and Young Women.- 2. Malala Yousafzai: Fighting for Girls’ Rights via Collaboration and Co-construction.- 3. Hyeonseo Lee: Seeking Justice for the North Korean People on TED.com.- 4. Yeonmi Park: North Korean Activist and Instagram Celebrity.- 5. Bana Alabed: From Twitter War Child to Peace Icon.- 6. Nujeen Mustafa: Syrian Refugee Defying Labels on TEDx.- 7. Nadia Murad: Yazidi Survivor’s Written vs Audiovisual Testimony.- 8. Conclusion: Victim Girls Becoming Activist Women.
£49.99
Springer International Publishing AG Literature and the Global Contemporary
Book SynopsisThis book attempts to understand what ‘contemporary’ has meant, and should mean, for literary studies. The essays in this volume suggest that an attentive reading of recent global literatures challenges the idea that our contemporary moment is best characterized as a timeless, instantaneous ‘now’. The contributors to this book argue that global literatures help us to conceive of the contemporary as an always plural, heterogeneous, and contested temporality. Far from suggesting that we replace theories of an omnipresent ‘end of history’ with a traditional, single, diachronic timeline, this book encourages the development of such a timeline’s rigorous inverse: a synchronic, multi-faceted and multi-temporal history of the contemporary in literature, and thus of contemporary global literatures. It opens up the concept of the contemporary for comparative study by unlocking its temporal, logical, political, and ultimately aesthetic and literary complexity.Table of Contents1. Introduction: “Contemporaneity: On Refusing to Live in the Moment”; Sarah Brouillette, Emilio Sauri, and Mathias Nilges.- 2. “The Landowner’s Ghosts: Realism and Financialization in Contemporary Latin American Fiction”; Ericka Beckman.- 3. “‘Special Period’-izing Cuba: Limits of the Past Perfect”; Jonathan Dettman.- 4. “Autonomy after Autonomy, or the Novel beyond Nation: Roberto Bolaño’s 2666”; Emilio Sauri.- 5. “#YOLO”; Sarah Brouillette.- 6. “Capitalism’s Long-Spiral: Periodicity, Temporality, and the Global Contemporary in World-Literature”; Sharae Deckard.- 7. “The Technical Composition of Conceptualism”; Joshua Clover.- 8. “The Multitemporal Contemporary: Colson Whitehead’s Presents”; Daniel Grausam.- 9. “Periodizing the Anglophone African Novel: Location(s) in a Transnational Literary Marketplace”; Madhu Krishnan.- 10. “Juggling the Dialectic: The Abyss of Politics in Chris Abani’s Fiction”; Mitchum Huehls.- 11. “Contemporaneity and Contradiction: Uneven Temporal Development in Bridgett M. Davis’s Into the Go-Slow and Okey Ndibe’s Foreign Gods Inc.”; Mathias Nilges.- Index.
£80.99
University of Alberta Press Anarchists in the Academy: Machines and Free
Book SynopsisDani Spinosa takes up anarchism’s power as a cultural and artistic ideology, rather than as a political philosophy, with a persistent emphasis on the common. She demonstrates how postanarchism offers a useful theoretical context for poetry that is not explicitly political—specifically for the contemporary experimental poem with its characteristic challenges to subjectivity, representation, authorial power, and conventional constructions of the reader-text relationship. Her case studies of sixteen texts make a bold move toward politicizing readers and imbuing literary theory with an activist praxis—a sharp hope. This is a provocative volume for those interested in contemporary poetics, experimental literatures, and the digital humanities. Case Studies Jim Andrews Christian Bök Mez Breeze John Cage Andy Campbell Robert Duncan Kenneth Goldsmith Susan Howe Jackson Mac Low Erín Moure [Erin Mouré] Harryette Mullen bpNichol Vanessa Place Juliana Spahr Brian Kim Stefans W. Mark Sutherland Darren WershlerTrade Review"Anarchists in the Academy is required reading for anyone in the field of contemporary and experimental poetry and the digital humanities." -- Weldon Hunter“Dani Spinosa makes compelling arguments for a post-anarchist literary theory that sheds light on politicized reading practices fostered by both innovative print-based and digital poets. … Anarchists in the Academy reveals that the effort to find new ways of apprehending electronic literature, machine writing, and reader engagement is a fertile endeavour that offers rich rewards, and this book will certainly be an indispensable resource for scholars interested in the politics of reading in an ever-expanding digital culture." -- Orchid Tierney * University of Toronto Quarterly, Summer 2020 *Table of ContentsIntroduction 1 Precursors to Digital Writing Jackson Mac Low Is Something Something John Cage Making Excessive Noise Robert Duncan Plagiarizing bpNichol for the Curious Viewer/Reader 2 Feminism, Print, Machines Susan Howe Sleeping in the Library Erín Moure’s Name in Quotation Marks Juliana Spahr Prefers Both Harryette Mullen Making Kimchee in a Museum 3 Easy Concepts Kenneth Goldsmith Talking to Himself Vanessa Place Without Serifs Christian Bök Obsolesces the Avant-Garde Darren Wershler andor Any Number of Readers 4 Digital Interventions Jim Andrews Drifts Apart W. Mark Sutherland Puts the Cedar in Abecedarian Brian Kim Stefans Alphabetizes Dreams Andy Campbell, Mez Breeze, and the Constrict(l)ure of Code Conclusion
£19.79
Ohio University Press A Companion to the Works of Elizabeth Strout
Book SynopsisIn this first study of novelist Elizabeth Strout’s best-selling works, Katherine Montwieler reveals how Strout’s voice, characters, and themes generate a powerful empathic response among mainstream readers—mostly women—that elite scholars undervalue at their own peril. This accessible companion also includes an exclusive interview with Strout.Trade Review“Companion is the appropriate word for Katherine Montwieler’s study of the works of Elizabeth Strout. With her careful analysis and gentle invitation to notice, among other things, the ‘quiet kindnesses, unexpected acts of grace’ of Strout’s characters, the author makes space in this book for enthusiastic readers, fans, and scholars alike to honor Strout’s stories and their centrality to our contemporary literary landscape." -- Cecilia Konchar Farr, author of The Ulysses Delusion: Rethinking Standards of Literary Merit and Reading Oprah: How Oprah's Book Club Changed the Way America Reads
£19.94
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
£15.29
HarperCollins Publishers GOOD AS HER WORD Selected Journalism
Book SynopsisA sparkling collection of journalism from the critically acclaimed author of BAD BLOOD and MOMENTS OF TRUTH.Trade ReviewPraise for GOOD AS HER WORD: 'A tremendous and bracing read that almost brings Sage back to life … Dazzling, erudite pieces.' Observer 'A brilliant collection … When reading her reviews, you get a wonderful feeling of collusion, of attending the best kind of party which mixes great warmth with sophistication.' Time Out 'Smart …. At her epigrammatic best' Daily Telegraph Praise for MOMENTS OF TRUTH ‘Packed with razor-sharp observations and exhilerating humour.’ Sunday Times ‘Thank goodness for Lorna Sage’s brilliant ‘Moments of Truth’. Going into a book with her is like going into a gloomy church, say, in some some foreign city: her eyes adjust to the light so fast she can see the frescoes, and describe them to you in vivd detail, while you are still blinking like a mole.’ Financial Times This is writerly criticism – down to earth, incisive, peppered with memorable phrases – and it makes exhilarating reading.’ Irish Times ‘An apt memorial to a brilliant and stimulating mind.’ Literary Review
£11.39
John Wiley and Sons Ltd The Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Fiction
Book SynopsisFresh perspectives and eye-opening discussions of contemporary American fiction In The Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Fiction: 1980-2020, a team of distinguished scholars delivers a focused and in-depth collection of essays on some of the most significant and influential authors and literary subjects of the last four decades. Cutting-edge entries from established and new voices discuss subjects as varied as multiculturalism, contemporary regionalisms, realism after poststructuralism, indigenous narratives, globalism, and big data in the context of American fiction from the last 40 years. The Encyclopedia provides an overview of American fiction at the turn of the millennium as well as a vision of what may come. It perfectly balances analysis, summary, and critique for an illuminating treatment of the subject matter. This collection also includes: An exciting mix of established and emerging contributors from around the world discTable of ContentsVolume I About the Editors Contributors Introduction XXX - XXX Volume II XXX - XXX Index
£250.75
Liverpool University Press The Short Story after Apartheid: Thinking with
Book SynopsisThe Short Story after Apartheid offers the first major study of the anglophone short story in South Africa since apartheid’s end. By focusing on the short story this book complicates models of South African literature dominated by the novel and contributes to a much-needed generic and formalist turn in postcolonial studies. Literary texts are sites of productive struggle between formal and extra-formal concerns, and these brief, fragmentary, elliptical, formally innovative stories offer perspectives that reframe or revise important concerns of post-apartheid literature: the aesthetics of engaged writing, the politics of the past, class and race, the legacies of violence, and the struggle over the land. Through an analysis of key texts from the period by Nadine Gordimer, Ivan Vladislavić, Zoë Wicomb, Phaswane Mpe, and Henrietta Rose-Innes, this book assesses the place of the short story in post-apartheid writing and develops a fuller model of how artworks allow and disallow forms of social thought.Table of ContentsIntroduction: Long Story Short Nadine Gordimer: Past, Present, and Future A Moment’s Monument: Counter-Monuments in Ivan Vladislavić Zoë Wicomb and the “Problem of Class” Phaswane Mpe’s Aesthetics of Brooding Spatial Form in Henrietta Rose-Innes Conclusion: Small Medium at Large
£95.00
Boydell & Brewer Ltd The Short Story in German in the Twenty-First
Book SynopsisOffers readings of key contemporary trends and themes in the vibrant genre of short-story writing in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, with attention to major practitioners and translations of two representative stories. Since the 1990s, the short story has re-emerged in the German-speaking world as a vibrant literary genre, serving as a medium for both literary experimentation and popular forms. Authors like Judith Hermann and Peter Stamm have had a significant impact on German-language literary culture and, in translation, on literary culture in the UK and USA. This volume analyzes German-language short-story writing in the twenty-first century, aiming to establish a framework for further research into individual authors as well as key themes and formal concerns. An introduction discusses theories of the short-story form and literary-aesthetic questions. A combination of thematic and author-focused chapters then discuss key developments in the contemporary German-language context, examining performance and performativity, Berlin and crime stories, and the openendness, fragmentation, liminality, and formal experimentations that characterize short stories in the twenty-first century. Together the chapters present the rich field of short-story writing in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, offering a variety of theoretical approaches to individual stories and collections, as well as exploring connections with storytelling, modernist short prose, and the novella. The volume concludes with a survey of broad trends, and three original translations exemplifying the breadth of contemporary German-language short-story writing.Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Note on Translations Introduction to the Contemporary Short Story in German - Andrew Plowman, Lyn Marven, and Kate Roy Chapter 1: Berlin Shorts: The German Capital in the Short Story of the Twenty-First Century - Katharina Gerstenberger Chapter 2: The German Crime Story in the Twenty-First Century - Todd Herzog Chapter 3: Performance, Performativity, and the Contemporary German Kurzgeschichte - Emily Spiers Chapter 4: Cramped Spaces, Creative Bottlenecks: Sudabeh Mohafez's das zehn-zeilen-buch and the Short-Short - Kate Roy Chapter 5: Bodo Kirchhoff's Widerfahrnis: A Novelle for Our Time? - Helmut Schmitz Chapter 6: The Liminal Space of the Short Story: Clemens Meyer's Die Nacht, die Lichter and Die stillen Trabanten - Gillian Pye Chapter 7: Framing the Presence: Judith Hermann's Lettipark - Leonhard Herrmann Chapter 8: Of Unhomed Subjects and Unsettled Voices: Alois Hotschnig's Die Kinder beruhigte das nicht - Heide Kunzelmann Chapter 9: Literary Development and Rewriting Spaces in the "Complete Stories": Peter Stamm's Der Lauf der Dinge - Andrew Plowman Chapter 10: On Disappearing: Reading Ulrike Almut Sandig with Sylvia Bovenschen - Heike Bartel and Elizabeth Boa Chapter 11: Metamorphic Becomings: Yoko Tawada's Opium für Ovid: Ein Kopfkissenbuch von 22 Frauen - Áine McMurtry Chapter 12: Melinda Nadj Abonji and Jurczok 1001: Performance, Politics, and Poetry - Rafaël Newman and Caroline Wiedmer Chapter 13: Rhizomatic Wanderings: The Writings of Gabriele Petricek - Margarete Lamb-Faffelberger Chapter 14: Trends and Issues in the Contemporary German-Language Short Story - Lyn Marven Appendix: Contemporary German-Language Short Stories in Translation Sudabeh Mohafez, A Short-Short Selection - Translated by Kate Roy Roman Ehrlich, "Engineers of Time" - Translated by Lyn Marven Saša Stanišić, "The Factory" - Translated by Lyn Marven Bibliography of Primary Texts Notes on Contributors
£99.00
Cambridge University Press The Cambridge History of Asian American Literature
Book SynopsisThe Cambridge History of Asian American Literature presents a comprehensive history of the field, from its origins in the nineteenth century to the present day. It offers an unparalleled examination of all facets of Asian American writing that help readers to understand how authors have sought to make their experiences meaningful. Covering subjects from autobiography and Japanese American internment literature to contemporary drama and social protest performance, this History traces the development of a literary tradition while remaining grounded in current scholarship. It also presents new critical approaches to Asian American literature that will serve the needs of students and specialists alike. Written by leading scholars in the field, The Cambridge History of Asian American Literature will not only engage readers in contemporary debates but also serve as a definitive reference for years to come.Table of Contents1. The origins of Chinese American autobiography Floyd Cheung; 2. Stage orientalism and Asian American performance from the 19th into the 20th century Josephine Lee; 3. 'I seek out poems now incomplete': writings from the Angel Island immigration station Sunn Shelley Wong; 4. The Eaton sisters and the figure of the Eurasian Jinhua Emma Teng; 5. Indian diasporic autobiography: new nations and new selves Sandhya Shukla; 6. Koreans in exile: Younghill Kang and Richard E. Kim Joseph Jeon; 7. Filipino and Filipina voices Denise Cruz; 8. Chinatown life as contested terrain: H. T. Chiang, Jade Snow Wong, and C. Y. Lee Patricia Chu; 9. Coded critique: Japanese American internment literature Traise Yamamoto; 10. Asian American short fiction and the contingencies of form, 1930s–1960s Jinqi Ling; 11. The Chicago School and the sociological imagination Cynthia Tolentino; 12. Documenting the third world student strike, the anti-war movement, and the emergence of second-wave feminism from Asian American perspectives Daryl Joji Maeda; 13. The art of the Asian American movement's social protest performance Lucy Burns; 14. Inventing identity: the manifestos of pioneering Asian American literature anthologies Donald Goellnicht; 15. Maxine Hong Kingston, feminism, and postmodern literature Stella Bolaki; 16. The emergence of Asian American literature as an academic field Viet Thanh Nguyen; 17. Theresa Hak-Kyung Cha and the impact of theory Timothy Yu; 18. Heterogeneity to multiplicity: building Asian American literary critique Anita Mannur and Allan Punzalan Isaac; 19. Whose Asias? Samir Dayal; 20. The South Asian American challenge Asha Nadkarni; 21. Contemporary Filipino American writers and the legacy of imperialism Eleanor Ty; 22. Beyond solitary confinement: rethinking the socio-political context of local literature in Hawai'i Seri Luangphinith; 23. Contemporary Asian American drama Esther Kim Lee; 24. 'More than you ever knew you knew': the rising prestige of fiction Tina Chen; 25. Asian American poetry and the politics of form Dorothy Wang; 26. The forgotten war in Korea Josephine Park; 27. The American war in Vietnam and its diasporas Anh Thang Dao-Shah and Isabelle Thuy Pelaud; 28. Refugee aesthetics: Cambodia, Laos, and the Hmong Cathy Schlund-Vials; 29. The 9/11 of our imagination: Islam, the figure of the Muslim, and the failed liberalism of the racial present Junaid Rana; 30. Narrating war: Arab and Muslim American aesthetics Samina Najmi; 31. Thick time and space: Karen Tei Yamashita's aesthetics Kandice Chuh; 32. New media Konrad Ng; 33. Beyond national literatures: empire and Amitav Ghosh Ruth Maxey.
£140.60
Cambridge University Press TwentyFirst Century American Playwrights
Book SynopsisThe early years of the twenty-first century saw several losses for the American theatre but also marked the emergence of a new generation of exciting playwrights. In this book, Christopher Bigsby explores the work of nine of these developing talents, and the importance of issues including race, gender and politics for their writing. Increasingly, these new figures are gaining their reputations not on Broadway but in small theatres and small towns or even abroad, bringing fresh and diverse perspectives to contemporary American drama. With a focus on female writers and on issues of personal and public identity in contemporary society, this volume investigates the styles and techniques these playwrights favour, the themes they raise, and their role in a changing America and a changing world.Trade Review'By looking at emerging voices who are slowly but surely making a mark on the US stage and building their reputations, Bigsby charts changes in American theater and drama not just in terms of its thematic focus on the politics of identity, but also in terms of the degree to which such themes now penetrate small theaters across the country. Recommended.' ChoiceTable of ContentsIntroduction; 1. Annie Baker; 2. Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig; 3. Katori Hall; 4. Amy Herzog; 5. Tracy Letts; 6. David Lindsay-Abaire; 7. Lynn Nottage; 8. Sarah Ruhl; 9. Naomi Wallace.
£22.99
Transcript Verlag Transnational Black Dialogues: Re-Imagining
Book SynopsisMarkus Nehl focuses on black authors who, from a 21st-century perspective, revisit slavery in the U.S., Ghana, South Africa, Canada and Jamaica. Nehl's provocative readings of Toni Morrison's A Mercy, Saidiya Hartman's Lose Your Mother, Yvette Christiansë's Unconfessed, Lawrence Hill's The Book of Negroesand Marlon James' The Book of Night Women delineate how these texts engage in a fruitful dialogue with African diaspora theory about the complex relation between the local and transnational and the enduring effects of slavery. Reflecting on the ethics of narration, this study is particularly attentive to the risks of representing anti-black violence and to the intricacies involved in (re-)appropriating slavery's archive.
£31.19
Transcript Verlag Pandemic Protagonists: Viral (Re)Actions in
Book SynopsisDuring the first mandatory lockdowns of the Covid-19 pandemic, citizens worldwide turned to ?pandemic fictions? or started to produce their own ?Corona Fictions? across different media. These accounts of (previously) experienced or imagined health crises feature a great variety of protagonists and their (re)actions in response to the exceptional circumstances. The contributors to this volume take a closer look at different pandemic protagonists in fictional narratives relating to the Covid-19 pandemic as well as in existing pandemic fictions. Thereby they provide new insights into pandemic narratives from a cultural, literary, and media studies perspective from antiquity to today.
£35.19
