Literary studies: from c 2000 Books
University of Toronto Press Universality and Social Policy in Canada
Book SynopsisBringing together top scholars in the field, Universality and Social Policy in Canada provides an overview of the universality principle in social welfare.Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgements Introduction: Understanding Universality DANIEL BÉLAND, GREGORY P. MARCHILDON, AND MICHAEL J. PRINCE 1 Placing Universality in Canadian Social Policy and Politics MICHAEL J. PRINCE 2 Equalization and the Fiscal Foundation of Universality P.E. BRYDEN 3 The Single-Tier Universality of Canadian Medicare GREGORY P. MARCHILDON 4 Elementary and Secondary Education: The First Universal Social Program in Canada JENNIFER WALLNER AND GREGORY P. MARCHILDON 5 From Family Allowances to the Struggle for Universal Childcare in Canada RIANNE MAHON WITH MICHAEL J. PRINCE 6 Universality and the Erosion of Old Age Security DANIEL BÉLAND AND PATRIK MARIER 7 Common Differences: The Universalism of Disability and Unevenness of Public Policy MICHAEL J. PRINCE 8 Segmented Citizenship: Indigenous Peoples and the Limits of Universality MARTIN PAPILLON 9 Universality and Immigration: Differential Access to Social Programs and Societal Inclusion TRACY SMITH-CARRIER 10 Universality and Social Policy in the United Kingdom ALEX WADDAN AND DANIEL BÉLAND 11 Universal Social Policy in Sweden PAULA BLOMQVIST AND DANIEL BÉLAND Conclusion: Resiliencies, Paradoxes, and Lessons GREGORY P. MARCHILDON, DANIEL BÉLAND, AND MICHAEL J. PRINCE List of Contributors Index
£28.80
Hodder & Stoughton I Will Be Complete
Book Synopsis''I Will Be Complete is the best memoir I''ve read in years. It''s likely the best memoir published in years.'' Darin Strauss, author of Half a Life and Chang and EngFrom the bestselling author of Carter Beats the Devil and Sunnyside, a shocking, big-hearted memoir about his bizarre upbringing in California in the 1970s and how he survived it. Glen David Gold grew up rich on the beaches of 1970s California, until his father lost a fortune and his parents divorced when he was ten.Glen and his English mother moved to San Francisco, where she was fleeced by a series of charming con men and turned increasingly wayward. When he was twelve, she took off for New York without telling him, leaving him to fend for himself. On midnight streets and at drug-fuelled parties, wise-cracking his way through an alarming adult world, Glen watched his mother''s countless, wild attempts to reinvent herself. In this exceptioTrade ReviewRemarkable . . . The product of nine years of work and a lifetime of reflection, the book is full of humour, unflinching reflection and flashes of horror. And it exudes tremendous empathy for his mother . . . Gold's book is funnier and more hopeful than any story about a child's abandonment and a parent's descent into terrifying chaos has a right to be. * The Times *Gold's heartbreaking, brave book deals with his tangled, troubled and troubling relationship with his tempestuous mother and, with insightful introspection, he reveals how it has affected all his other relationships. It's a shocking read, describing a shattered childhood, a complicated adolescence and an adulthood that finds him happy and whole. * Book of the Month, Psychologies *Gold's sentences reflect the surface of the 1970s perfectly . . . Gold's novelistic handling of these moments is brilliant . . . It's a dazzlingly insightful account how the smart children of emotionally 'shattered' adults attempt to hold themselves and their parents together as they grow . . . Gold says he is finally happy. He's achieved this state by letting go of his need to explain and save his mother. He broke the bonds of her 'terrible love'. And like his muse, Houdini, Gold has made a moving public spectacle of his escape. -- Helen R. Brown * Spectator *An extraordinary memoir . . . It's a tale of a boy's moral and sentimental education, with all the febrile moods and heart-stopping lurches of a Donna Tartt epic . . . There's something painfully sweet about this memoir, particularly the way Gold wills himself to extract something of value from the pain inflicted by irresponsible adults . . . smart, generous, and gripping until the very last pages. It's one of the best books I've read in 2018. -- Joanna Thomas-Corr * New Statesman *Remarkable . . . It's a tale of disintegrating relationships, bad choices, guilt, panic, hurt and weighty sadness so well told, with such lucidity and honesty, it's almost frightening to read . . . Gold wears his wisdom and novelist's powers of observation lightly, remaining beguilingly modest and likeable to the end. -- Jane Graham * Big Issue *Equally subtle and shocking, as clear-eyed about how the sins of the parent are visited on the child as it is generous and loving . . . It touches lightly on the set pieces, bizarre incidents and bravura descriptions that readers of Gold's bestselling novels, Carter Beats the Devil and Sunnyside, will treasure . . . it never feels over-worked or weighed down with detail . . . You cannot read it and remain unchanged. -- Maria Farrell * Irish Times *Imagine Home Alone with a kid who is part Salvador Dali, part Holden Caulfield . . . an extraordinary book about growing up in California . . . Gold's childhood is much more than merely interesting; it is riveting . . . [his] knack for devastating insights are a marvel to read . . . an audacious, boundary-shattering work that will be talked about for a very long time. * Los Angeles Times *Ambitious and brave * New York Times *One helluva ride . . . in his capable hands even the smallest events seem revelatory. Each dimwitted move his mother makes reads as more bonkers (and undeniably sad) than the last. Each time Gold throws himself into love, it's like Orpheus trying to win back Eurydice. When combined with his deadpan delivery and wry sense of humor, each obstacle to overcome or hoop to jump through takes on a life of its own . . . wickedly intelligent, wildly imaginative (well, in some ways) and everything in between. * San Francisco Chronicle *A banquet of vivacity, shrewdness and wit, a soiree of heart-wreck wised up by humour. . . One of the myriad delights of this memoir is its revealing vista onto the ethos of San Francisco in the 70s and Los Angeles in the '80s, deleted worlds in which outrageous characters stagger and strive. . . Gold is a dynamic writer outfitted in wisdom and verve, one whose sentences you'll want to remember. -- William Giraldi * Washington Post *Dazzling . . . Beautiful and deft, witty and searing, like a playful song with a persistent bass line of unresolved grief. I can't stop thinking about it. * Janet Fitch, author of The Revolution of Marina M. and White Oleander *We expect the story of a boy and his mother ought to go a certain way. I Will Be Complete goes in ways you'd never expect. The people shatter, reassemble themselves, and shatter all over again. The prose is crystalline, hard as real diamonds, flashing, revealing. The story is simple, just a boy and his mother's long disintegration, but the journey is darkly complicated, heartbreaking, beautiful as hell * Mark Childress, author of CRAZY IN ALABAMA *Glen David Gold is one of the best storytellers working today. He could write about anything and make it gripping. As it turns out, he also has one hell of a story to tell. * Joseph Fink, author of WELCOME TO NIGHT VALE *An extraordinary account of an extraordinary life. Gold captures with stunning clarity the emotional chaos he grew up in, and that made him the brilliant writer he is now. * Lev Grossman, author of THE MAGICIANS *I Will Be Complete is the best memoir I've read in years. It's likely the best memoir published in years. Gold's a novelist and this book reads like the best fiction. It's exciting, beautiful, and clear-eyed in a way most memoirs aren't. Oh, and you'll never forget this charming, intelligent, unique narrator. * Darin Strauss, author of HALF A LIFE and CHANG AND ENG *A fine, funny, discomfiting book. And very candid. -- Teddy Jamieson * Sunday Herald *
£18.00
Hodder & Stoughton I Will Be Complete
Book Synopsis''I Will Be Complete is the best memoir I''ve read in years. It''s likely the best memoir published in years.'' Darin Strauss, author of Half a Life and Chang and EngFrom the bestselling author of Carter Beats the Devil and Sunnyside, a shocking, big-hearted memoir about his bizarre upbringing in California in the 1970s and how he survived it. Glen David Gold grew up rich on the beaches of 1970s California, until his father lost a fortune and his parents divorced when he was ten.Glen and his English mother moved to San Francisco, where she was fleeced by a series of charming con men and turned increasingly wayward. When he was twelve, she took off for New York without telling him, leaving him to fend for himself. On midnight streets and at drug-fuelled parties, wise-cracking his way through an alarming adult world, Glen watched his mother''s countless, wild attempts to reinvent herself. In this exceptioTrade ReviewDazzling . . . Beautiful and deft, witty and searing, like a playful song with a persistent bass line of unresolved grief. I can't stop thinking about it. * Janet Fitch, author of The Revolution of Marina M. and White Oleander *I Will Be Complete is the best memoir I've read in years. It's likely the best memoir published in years. Gold's a novelist and this book reads like the best fiction. It's exciting, beautiful, and clear-eyed in a way most memoirs aren't. Oh, and you'll never forget this charming, intelligent, unique narrator. * Darin Strauss, author of HALF A LIFE and CHANG AND ENG *We expect the story of a boy and his mother ought to go a certain way. I Will Be Complete goes in ways you'd never expect. The people shatter, reassemble themselves, and shatter all over again. The prose is crystalline, hard as real diamonds, flashing, revealing. The story is simple, just a boy and his mother's long disintegration, but the journey is darkly complicated, heartbreaking, beautiful as hell * Mark Childress, author of CRAZY IN ALABAMA *Glen David Gold is one of the best storytellers working today. He could write about anything and make it gripping. As it turns out, he also has one hell of a story to tell. * Joseph Fink, author of WELCOME TO NIGHT VALE *An extraordinary account of an extraordinary life. Gold captures with stunning clarity the emotional chaos he grew up in, and that made him the brilliant writer he is now. * Lev Grossman, author of THE MAGICIANS *Gold's heartbreaking, brave book deals with his tangled, troubled and troubling relationship with his tempestuous mother and, with insightful introspection, he reveals how it has affected all his other relationships. It's a shocking read, describing a shattered childhood, a complicated adolescence and an adulthood that finds him happy and whole. * Book of the Month, Psychologies *Remarkable . . . The product of nine years of work and a lifetime of reflection, the book is full of humour, unflinching reflection and flashes of horror. And it exudes tremendous empathy for his mother . . . Gold's book is funnier and more hopeful than any story about a child's abandonment and a parent's descent into terrifying chaos has a right to be. * The Times *One helluva ride . . . in his capable hands even the smallest events seem revelatory. Each dimwitted move his mother makes reads as more bonkers (and undeniably sad) than the last. Each time Gold throws himself into love, it's like Orpheus trying to win back Eurydice. When combined with his deadpan delivery and wry sense of humor, each obstacle to overcome or hoop to jump through takes on a life of its own . . . wickedly intelligent, wildly imaginative (well, in some ways) and everything in between. * San Francisco Chronicle *Imagine Home Alone with a kid who is part Salvador Dali, part Holden Caulfield . . . an extraordinary book about growing up in California . . . Gold's childhood is much more than merely interesting; it is riveting . . . [his] knack for devastating insights are a marvel to read . . . an audacious, boundary-shattering work that will be talked about for a very long time. * Los Angeles Times *A banquet of vivacity, shrewdness and wit, a soiree of heart-wreck wised up by humour. . . One of the myriad delights of this memoir is its revealing vista onto the ethos of San Francisco in the 70s and Los Angeles in the '80s, deleted worlds in which outrageous characters stagger and strive. . . Gold is a dynamic writer outfitted in wisdom and verve, one whose sentences you'll want to remember. -- William Giraldi * Washington Post *Gold's sentences reflect the surface of the 1970s perfectly . . . Gold's novelistic handling of these moments is brilliant . . . It's a dazzlingly insightful account how the smart children of emotionally 'shattered' adults attempt to hold themselves and their parents together as they grow . . . Gold says he is finally happy. He's achieved this state by letting go of his need to explain and save his mother. He broke the bonds of her 'terrible love'. And like his muse, Houdini, Gold has made a moving public spectacle of his escape. -- Helen R. Brown * Spectator *Remarkable . . . It's a tale of disintegrating relationships, bad choices, guilt, panic, hurt and weighty sadness so well told, with such lucidity and honesty, it's almost frightening to read . . . Gold wears his wisdom and novelist's powers of observation lightly, remaining beguilingly modest and likeable to the end. -- Jane Graham * Big Issue *Equally subtle and shocking, as clear-eyed about how the sins of the parent are visited on the child as it is generous and loving . . . It touches lightly on the set pieces, bizarre incidents and bravura descriptions that readers of Gold's bestselling novels, Carter Beats the Devil and Sunnyside, will treasure . . . it never feels over-worked or weighed down with detail . . . You cannot read it and remain unchanged. -- Maria Farrell * Irish Times *An extraordinary memoir . . . It's a tale of a boy's moral and sentimental education, with all the febrile moods and heart-stopping lurches of a Donna Tartt epic . . . There's something painfully sweet about this memoir, particularly the way Gold wills himself to extract something of value from the pain inflicted by irresponsible adults . . . smart, generous, and gripping until the very last pages. It's one of the best books I've read in 2018. -- Joanna Thomas-Corr * New Statesman *A fine, funny, discomfiting book. And very candid. -- Teddy Jamieson * Sunday Herald *Ambitious and brave * New York Times *
£9.49
Edinburgh University Press TwentyFirstCentury Children s Gothic
Book SynopsisThis is the first monograph that brings together the fields of Gothic Studies and children s fiction to analyse a range of popular and literary works for children published since 2000.
£81.00
Edinburgh University Press TwentyFirstCentury Gothic
Book SynopsisThis resource in contemporary Gothic literature, film and television takes a thematic approach, providing insights into the many forms the Gothic has taken in the twenty-first century.
£90.00
Edinburgh University Press The Libyan Novel
Book SynopsisAnalysing prominent novelists such as Ibrahim al-Kuni and Hisham Matar, alongside lesser-known and emerging voices, this book introduces the themes and genres of the Libyan novel during the al-Qadhafi era, focusing on encounters between humans, animals and the land.
£24.69
Edinburgh University Press Specters of World Literature
Book SynopsisAt the heart of this book is a spectral theory of world literature that draws on Edward Said, Aamir Mufti, Jacques Derrida and world-systems theory to assess how the field produces local literature as an other that haunts its universalising, assimilative imperative with the force of the uncanny.
£24.69
Edinburgh University Press Iranian Literature After the Islamic Revolution
Book SynopsisAnalyses contemporary Iranian literature in both Iran and its diaspora, in relation to the social, economic and political fields.Trade Review"A most welcome, exceptionally valuable and timely contribution to the study of Iranian literature, world literature, comparative literature and diasporic literature. Nanquette's book is grounded in years of fieldwork and travel in Iran, with extensive interviews, data collection and participant observation; there are few more qualified to write on global Iranian literature." -Professor Karen L. Thornber, Harvard University
£24.69
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
Duke University Press Big Ambitious Novels by TwentyFirstCentury Women
Book Synopsis
£11.39
Protea Boekhuis You make me possible
Book Synopsis
£17.99
University of Toronto Press Useless Joyce
Book SynopsisTim Conley’s Useless Joyce provocatively analyses Joyce’s Ulysses and Finnegans Wake and takes the reader on a journey exploring the perennial question of the usefulness of literature and art. Conley argues that the works of James Joyce, often thought difficult and far from practical, are in fact polymorphous meditations on this question. Examinations of traditional textual functions such as quoting, editing, translating, and annotating texts are set against the ways in which texts may be assigned unexpected but thoroughly practical purposes. Conley’s accessible and witty engagement with the material views the rise of explication and commentary on Joyce’s work as an industry not unlike the rise of self-help publishing. We can therefore read Ulysses and Finnegans Wake as various kinds of guides and uncover new or forgotten uses for them. Useless Joyce invites new discussions about the assumptions at work behind ourTrade Review"...Conley’s insatiable appetite to read Joyce for his usefulness enriches our understanding of his texts and will provoke further research and inquiry." -- Eleni Loukopoulou, Independent Scholar * James Joyce Quarterly, vol 55 no 1-3, Spring/Summer '18 *"Useless Joyce provides an implicit defense of literary pleasure, with the teacher-critic serving as mediator of that pleasure." -- Mark Wollaeger * James Joyce Literary Supplement, Fall 2018 *‘Highly recommended.’ -- R.D. Newman * Choice Magazine vol 55:10:2018 *Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Note on Abbreviations Introduction Part One: Textual Functions Chapter 1: Guidance Systems Chapter 2: Misquoting Joyce Chapter 3: Limited Editions, Edited Limitations Chapter 4: Translation, Annotation, Hesitation Part Two: Cultural Appropriations Chapter 5: Make a Stump Speech of It Chapter 6: Win a Dream Date with James Joyce Chapter 7: The Stephen Dedalus Diet Conclusion: Means without End Appendix Notes Bibliography Index
£20.69
University of Toronto Press Being Poland
Book SynopsisBeing Poland offers a unique analysis of the cultural developments that took place in Poland after World War One, a period marked by Poland’s return to independence. Conceived to address the lack of critical scholarship on Poland’s cultural restoration, Being Poland illuminates the continuities, paradoxes, and contradictions of Poland’s modern and contemporary cultural practices, and challenges the narrative typically prescribed to Polish literature and film. Reflecting the radical changes, rifts, and restorations that swept through Poland in this period, Polish literature and film reveal a multitude of perspectives. Addressing romantic perceptions of the Polish immigrant, the politics of post-war cinema, poetry, and mass media, Being Poland is a comprehensive reference work written with the intention of exposing an international audience to the explosion of Polish literature and film that emerged in the twentieth century.Trade Review"Although designed to cater to the needs of students of Polish studies and literature, this volume will also be of great use to all scholars interested in central and eastern European history, culture, and literature, and indeed to the general public." -- Aleksandra Witczak Haugstad, Research Council of Norway * H-Net Reviews (H-Poland) *"In 2006, several scholars decided to do something about the lack of a comprehensive, up-to-date, research-based work dealing with Polish literature and culture. It took over a decade to complete this ambitious project of delivering a new and updated history of this vast subject for a non-Polish speaking audience…the result of the combined efforts of sixty scholars from both sides of the Atlantic is both impressive and voluminous." -- Aleksandra Witczak Haugstad, Research Council of Norway * H-Net, HABSBURG *Table of Contents1. Transitions 2. Strategies 3. Transmissions 4. Genres and Their Discontents 5. Postwar and Post-1989 Drama 6. Essay 7. Diaries 8. Reportage 9. Literary Theory 10. Film 11. Popular Culture 12. Mass Media
£53.10
University of Nebraska Press Reading the Contemporary Author
Book SynopsisReaders, literary critics, and theorists alike have long demonstrated an abiding fascination with the author, both as a real person—an artist and creator—and as a theoretical concept that shapes the way we read literary works. Whether anonymous, pseudonymous, or trending on social media, authors continue to be an object of critical and readerly interest. Yet theories surrounding authorship have yet to be satisfactorily updated to register the changes wrought on the literary sphere by the advent of the digital age, the recent turn to autofiction, and the current literary climate more generally. In Reading the Contemporary Author the contributors look back on the long history of theorizing the author and offer innovative new approaches for understanding this elusive figure. Mapping the contours of the vast territory that is contemporary authorship, this collection investigates authorship in the context of narrative genres ranging from memoir and autobiograpTrade Review“A brilliant exploration of new manifestations of authorship in the twenty-first century. Alison Gibbons and Elizabeth King provide a powerful through line that reveals transformations in how we approach the subjectivity and intent of the author amid the digital revolution, the relation to identity politics, complex interactions of fact and fiction, and the role of authorial reflexivity as a process of epistemological and self-examination that extends beyond metafictional play. Through an original outside-in structure, Reading the Contemporary Author is a compelling narratological inquiry into how changing concepts of the author have played a central, mediating role in how we read and interpret the increasingly uncertain thresholds of texts and contemporary life.”—Virginia Newhall Rademacher, author of Derivative Lives: Biofiction, Uncertainty, and Speculative Risk in Contemporary Spanish Narrative“The articles in this valuable work provide a foray into the multifarious nature of contemporary authorship, demonstrating that, although our conception of authorship has taken many forms and will take many more, the author always remains a pivotal, often controversial, site of analysis.”—Marjorie Worthington, author of The Story of “Me”: Contemporary American Autofiction“An important contribution to the knowledge of contemporary authorship but also to contemporary narrativity and contemporary narrative genres, including biofiction, autofiction, memoir, novels featuring novelist narrators, and more.”—Sylvie Patron, author of The Narrator: A Problem in Narrative TheoryTable of ContentsList of IllustrationsAcknowledgements Introduction: Authorship in Literary Criticism and Narrative TheoryElizabeth King and Alison Gibbons PART I: THE AUTHOR ON THE WORLD STAGE: SOCIAL AND CULTURAL CONTEXTS 1. The Public Intellectual on Stage: Chimamanda Ngozi AdichieOdile Heynders 2. The Pseudonymic Author and Elena Ferrante’s Evasions of GenderJaclyn Partyka 3. The Permissible Author: Cultural Politics and the Market Economy of the Literary SphereChristopher González PART II: THE AUTHOR IN THE MIRROR: AUTO-AUTHORSHIP, MEMOIR, AND THE NARRATING ‘I’ 4. Authorship and AutobiographyArnaud Schmitt 5. “I wanted to be present to hear her last words”: A Cognitive Approach to Multimodal Autobiographical ElegyAlison Gibbons 6. The Author as a Work of Art: Graphic Memoir, Style, and Authorial AgentsNancy Pedri 7. Radical Realism and Modes of Fictionality in Contemporary Auto/Biographical LiteratureFiona Doloughan PART III: THE AUTHOR ON THE PAGE: REPRESENTATIONS OF AUTHORSHIP IN FICTION 8. Reconstructing the Author through Biofiction’s Anchored ImaginationMichael Lackey and Laura Cernat 9. The Anxiety of Authorship: Novelists as NarratorsPaul Dawson 10. Dead Authors Tell No Tales: The Ailing Author-Character in Contemporary Novels about NovelistsElizabeth King CODA 11. The Author beyond ‘the implied author’: From Postclassical to Postcritical NarratologyStefan Kjerkegaard ContributorsIndex
£48.60
MP-MPP University Press of Mississippi Harry Potter and the Other
Book SynopsisA timely anthology that examines, interrogates, and critiques representations of race and difference across various Harry Potter media, including books, films, and official websites, as well as online forums and the classroom.
£77.35
MP-MPP University Press of Mississippi Conversations with Karl Ove Knausgaard
Book SynopsisPresents a collection of twenty-two interviews, each conducted during the ten-year span in which Karl Ove Knausgaard’s literary prowess gained worldwide recognition. Knausgaard is both a daring writer and a daring interviewee, grounding his observations in the ordinary aspects of the world around him.
£77.35
University Press of Mississippi Conversations with Karl Ove Knausgaard
Book SynopsisPresents a collection of twenty-two interviews, each conducted during the ten-year span in which Karl Ove Knausgaard’s literary prowess gained worldwide recognition. Knausgaard is both a daring writer and a daring interviewee, grounding his observations in the ordinary aspects of the world around him.
£19.96
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Flat Aesthetics
Book SynopsisFlat Aesthetics seeks to secure a more granular and ontologically demotic handle on the contemporary in American literature. While contemporaneity can be viewed as our period, Christian Moraru approaches the contemporary as some-thing made by things themselves. The making of the contemporary is variously restaged by the body of fictional prose under scrutiny here. Thus, this corpus itself participates in the making of contemporaneity.In dialogue with object-oriented ontology and various new materialisms, Moraru contends that the contemporary does not preexist objects or the novels featuring them; it is not their background but an outcome of things' self-presentation. As objects, beings, or existents present themselves in the present, in our now, they foster thing-configurations that together compose the form of, and essentially make, the contemporary the present's cultural-material signature, as Moraru calls it.To decipher this signature, Flat Aesthetics provides Trade Review[The] borderline utopic reimagining of the aesthetic as a fully-fledged, situationist-infused apparatus of ‘de-perverting’ objects of all sorts, pushing them outside the fraudulent logic of the transactional and into the pristine domain of their ontological truth, renders Flat Aesthetics commendable, as do its minutely conducted segments of flat reading. * Metacritic *During the past decade, objects and material culture have come to play an increasingly prominent role in literary and critical studies. Yet, there have been hitherto no significant attempts to assess whether this trend constitutes, in American fiction, a new literary and cultural movement worthy of the name. This is the question that Christian Moraru asks and answers in the affirmative in Flat Aesthetics. He demonstrates that the thematic focus on the object has been a consistent preoccupation of several important American novelists, with remarkable results. [...] [A] user-friendly theoretical text written in a clear, solid and assertive style that itself borrows the qualities of an (intransitive) object. A book worthy of celebration and study. * Philobiblon *Christian Moraru has been a preeminent theorist of the contemporary in literary studies. In previous studies, such as Cosmodernism, he focused on the historical movement of the contemporary in the wake of the Cold War and after 9/11 and emphasized its worldliness. In Flat Aesthetics he turns to chart its distinctive aesthetic sensibility that shifts from a center on human subjectivity to one on the mutual existence of objects, human and nonhuman, yielding a flattened aesthetics. Engaging Object-Oriented Ontology, he shows how this aesthetics runs through work by authors that have become prominent since 2000, such as Mohsin Hamid, Ben Lerner, Emily St. John Mandel, and Colson Whitehead. For Moraru, the contemporary finally is less a period than a sense of existence and an object itself. * Jeffrey Williams, Professor of English, Carnegie Mellon University, USA *Bristling with ideas and insights, Flat Aesthetics sets in motion an exhilarating aesthetic of 'flat reading' focused on the displays, the energies, and the relations of things. Extending his previous investigations of the postmodern, Christian Moraru explores the formation of an epoch and a form that he calls the contemporary, a post-postmodern temporality in which the world of things comes into its own. * John Frow, Professor Emeritus of English, University of Sydney, Australia *After a century or more of deep reading, the time is ripe, says Christian Moraru, for a turn to flat reading – reading that 'screens literary prose for objects,' that explores these objects in themselves and in their ensembles, and that seeks to level the playing-field on which objects interact with humans and other beings. Moraru theorizes flat aesthetics, but even more valuably he models its practice in arresting, exhilarating readings of a series of post-millennial American novels by Ben Lerner, Emily St. John Mandel, Colson Whitehead, Nicole Krauss, and others. If you are curious about what comes after postmodernism in fiction, and dissatisfied with the alternatives that have been proposed so far, then Flat Aesthetics is the place to start. * Brian McHale, Professor Emeritus of English, The Ohio State University, USA, and author of Postmodernist Fiction (1987) and The Cambridge Introduction to Postmodernism (2015) *This effervescent book, at once a broad-based mapping of contemporary American literature and a finely calibrated weave of concepts and objects, gives us a ‘now’ opaque in its very flatness, elusive because so encompassingly near. * Wai Chee Dimock, author of Weak Planet: Literature and Assisted Survival (2020) *Table of ContentsIntroduction: The New Aesthetic, the Contemporary, and Compositional Criticism Flat Aesthetics: Things, Forms, and Exchange Regimes Flat Reading: Object Tangles and Criticism without "Us" Contemporaneity, Periodization, and the Signature of the Present Part I. Language cap'n crunch, planet of the apes, the kingfishers: Ben Lerner and the Uselessness of Poetry necklaces, novels, backpacks: A Post is Being Formed in Leaving the Atocha Station bees, parrot, trains: Murder by Numbers and "the Foulest of Crimes" in The Final Solution Part II. Display freighters, snow globes, comics: Mandel's Museum of Civilization, or Survival Is Insufficient photographs, instant coffee, baby octopuses: "Mere Objecthood," Messianic Readymates, and the Institute of Totaled Art in 10:04 Part III. Exit go, dog. go! scuba diving, massage chairs: The Dog, X/It-Men, and Other Things That Go ravann, doors, cell phones: Un-Telling, "Mocking Objects," and Hamid's Exit West Part IV. Revenant copula, ding, assembly: Zombies and the Body Politics corsica, dust, skels: The Insistence of Things and the Object of Race in Whitehead's Zone One Part V. Kinship fish, peacock, ram: Schulz, Blecher, Foer, and Kafka's Unknown Family hilton, suitcase, ein-sof: Forest Dark and the Machine of Jewish Literature Conclusion: Composing the Contemporary Notes Bibliography Index
£109.89
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
£13.49
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Apocalyptic Ruin and Everyday Wonder in Don
Book SynopsisApocalyptic Ruin and Everyday Wonder in Don DeLillo's America is a fresh and engaging study of last things in Don DeLillo's worksthings like death, mourning, and the decline of the American empire, but then also the apocalypse, the last judgment, and the end of the world more generally. Michael Naas untangles complex themes in short, witty chapters that highlight and celebrate DeLillo's inventive and playful writing, employing a novel approach to literary criticism. Making no use of secondary sources, the book is entirely a discussion of DeLillo''s work, accessible to any level of readership while maintaining a firm grasp of the theory necessary to make this unique argument.And yet, this book is also about all the things that double or shadow those last things in the very same works, like the wonder of language or the radiance of everyday events. From Americana (1971) up through Zero K (2016) and The Silence (2020), and perhaps like no other American author,Trade ReviewMichael Naas's Apocalyptic Ruin and Everyday Wonder in Don DeLillo's America displays a thorough knowledge and an impressive thematic cartography of Don DeLillo's oeurve. This invaluable synthesis, which consider's DeLillo's work through the lens of contrabanding, illuminates the contradictions that make America what it is and confirms DeLillo's magisterial and uninterrupted examination of America as a country and as an idea. * Karim Daanoune, Associate Professor in American Literature, Université Paul Valéry-Montpellier, France *In Apocalyptic Ruin and Everyday Wonder in Don DeLillo’s America, Michael Naas artfully delineates the dense web of thematic crosscurrents and connections that run through DeLillo’s entire oeuvre. Naas foregrounds the pleasure of reading DeLillo, allowing the humour of the works to be reflected in his own distinctive and accessible writing style. Naas reads DeLillo’s fiction as a body of theoretical enquiry in itself rather than applying existing theory and criticism, making this an innovative and necessary addition to scholarship. * Rebecca Harding, Independent Scholar, UK *Table of ContentsAbbreviations of Works by Don DeLillo Preface: Last Things 1. Countermovements America…New York, New York…“USA! USA! USA!”…The West, the Desert, and, Inevitably, California…Automobiles…Airplanes…Beyond America 2. Countercurrents Sports, Games, Sports Gaming…Academia…Philosophy…Technologies of Life and Death 3. Counterproductions Empire, Capital, the Corporation…Money…Advertising…Consumerism and Waste 4. Counterhistories American History 2.0…Terrorism…9-11, The Twin Towers…Creation and Ruin…War and Peace 5. Countermeasures Self and Others…The Individual and the Crowd…Prophylactics and Purifications...The Shit, the Shower, the Shave, and the Haircut 6. Counterforces Life and Death…Mourning…The Afterlife…The Apocalypse…The Omega Point, the Death Drive 7. Counterworlds Space…Time…Space-Time…Religion… Miracles…The Everyday…Earth, Moon, Sun…Radiance Conclusion: Silent Mode (The Future of Contraband) Acknowledgements
£21.84
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
£12.50
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
£68.40
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
University of Minnesota Press Brouhaha: Worlds of the Contemporary
Book SynopsisWithin the hypermediated age where knowledge production is decentered and horizontal, the experience of lived time has become a concordance of temporalities. The literary imagination, which was emblematic of modernity and thoroughly connected to the book as a support structure, has now become integrated within a much vaster regime of publication. Thought concerning the world is from now on a thought concerning a plurality of worlds. By way of six guiding threads (exposition, media, controversy, publication, institutionalization, archaeology), this essay describes the transformation of cultural forms and visions of history.
£18.99
University of Minnesota Press The Political Arrays of American Indian Literary
Book SynopsisBringing fresh insight to a century of writing by Native AmericansThe Political Arrays of American Indian Literary History challenges conventional views of the past one hundred years of Native American writing, bringing Native American Renaissance and post-Renaissance writers into conversation with their predecessors. Addressing the political positions such writers have adopted, explored, and debated in their work, James H. Cox counters what he considers a “flattening” of the politics of American Indian literary expression and sets forth a new method of reading Native literature in a vexingly politicized context. Examining both canonical and lesser-known writers, Cox proposes that scholars approach these texts as “political arrays”: confounding but also generative collisions of conservative, moderate, and progressive ideas that together constitute the rich political landscape of American Indian literary history. Reviewing a broad range of genres including journalism, short fiction, drama, screenplays, personal letters, and detective fiction—by Lynn Riggs, Will Rogers, Sherman Alexie, Thomas King, Leslie Marmon Silko, Louise Erdrich, Winona LaDuke, Carole laFavor, and N. Scott Momaday—he demonstrates that Native texts resist efforts to be read as advocating a particular set of politicsMeticulously researched, The Political Arrays of American Indian Literary History represents a compelling case for reconceptualizing the Native American Renaissance as a literary–historical constellation. By focusing on post-1968 Native writers and texts, argues Cox, critics have often missed how earlier writers were similarly entangled, hopeful, frustrated, contradictory, and unpredictable in their political engagements.Trade Review"With his own array of historicist assiduity, keen sensitivity to contemporary issues, and a storyteller’s verve, James H. Cox uncovers the multitudes of political ambivalences that American Indian literature contains. He introduces a trove of unknown works and challenges us to make sense of them with our assumptions of what’s requisite for Native political perspectives. As he compellingly demonstrates, that’s a hard row to hoe."—Joshua B. Nelson, author of Progressive Traditions: Identity in Cherokee Literature and Culture"In this field-changing study, James H. Cox introduces the political array, a paradigm that allows him to demonstrate that Native texts and their authors are more politically complicated—more nuanced, more situational, more dynamic and fluid—than our all too often reductive generalizations indicate. More, he makes visible previously understudied connections between pre- and post-1968 Native writers. Elegantly researched, wonderfully lucid, and truly essential."—Eric G. Anderson, George Mason University"Cox’s monograph will prompt a variety of scholars to continue to add to and complicate what is an important and necessary endeavor—to understand the complexities and contradictions that shape and are shaped by Indigenous literary history in the United States."—Transmotion"What Cox’s text offers is a new paradigm from which to consider the study of American Indian literature, and for that alone he should be justly lauded."—Tribal College
£20.69
University of Minnesota Press Training for Catastrophe: Fictions of National
Book SynopsisA timely, politically savvy examination of how impossible disasters shape the very real possibilities of our worldWhy would the normally buttoned-down national security state imagine lurid future scenarios like a zombie apocalypse? In Training for Catastrophe, author Lindsay Thomas shows how our security regime reimagines plausibility to focus on unlikely and even unreal events rather than probable ones. With an in-depth focus on preparedness (a pivotal, emergent national security paradigm since 9/11) she explores how fiction shapes national security.Thomas finds fiction at work in unexpected settings, from policy documents and workplace training manuals to comics and video games. Through these texts—as well as plenty of science fiction—she examines the philosophy of preparedness, interrogating the roots of why it asks us to treat explicitly fictional events as real. Thomas connects this philosophical underpinning to how preparedness plays out in contemporary politics, emphasizing how it uses aesthetic elements like realism, genre, character, and plot to train people both to regard some disasters as normal and to ignore others.Training for Catastrophe makes an important case for how these documents elicit consent and compliance. Thomas draws from a huge archive of texts—including a Centers for Disease Control comic about a zombie apocalypse, the work of Audre Lorde, and the political thrillers of former national security advisor Richard Clarke—to ask difficult questions about the uses and values of fiction. A major statement on how national security intrudes into questions of art and life, Training for Catastrophe is a timely intervention into how we confront disasters.Trade Review "Training for Catastrophe reveals how science fictional narratives habitually assume that, no matter what happens, the further expansion of the security state in the name of ‘preparedness’ and safety is the first, last, and only possible response to crisis. Lindsay Thomas calls on us to think outside the fantasies of total surveillance and maximum control that dominate contemporary visions of the future—and the apocalypse will never be the same."—Gerry Canavan, president, Science Fiction Research Association "In Training for Catastrophe, Lindsay Thomas chronicles how the national security state uses fiction to shape public perception about risk, security, preparedness, and the future and with what consequences. This timely and important work shows how preparedness documents at once produce a false sense of security and reproduce the inequities of structural racism. It is a must read for the contemporary moment."—Priscilla Wald, author of Contagious: Cultures, Carriers, and the Outbreak Narrative "This book would benefit any cross-disciplinary analysis within the humanities, as it skillfully interweaves political science and media, cultural, and literary studies."—Critical Studies on Terrorism "Thomas’s writing is clear, and she deftly weaves together scholarship from the fields of literary and security studies."—Modern Fiction Studies Table of ContentsContentsIntroduction: Prepare Yourself1. Training in an Empiricist Epistemology of Fiction2. Realism: Consenting to the Possibilistic Logic of Preparedness3. Thinking Generically: The Professional Management of Disaster4. Character: The Resilience of the Hero5. Looking for the Plot: Counterterrorism and the Hermeneutics of SuspicionEpilogue: The Uses of FictionAcknowledgmentsNotes Index
£80.00
University of Minnesota Press Training for Catastrophe: Fictions of National
Book SynopsisA timely, politically savvy examination of how impossible disasters shape the very real possibilities of our worldWhy would the normally buttoned-down national security state imagine lurid future scenarios like a zombie apocalypse? In Training for Catastrophe, author Lindsay Thomas shows how our security regime reimagines plausibility to focus on unlikely and even unreal events rather than probable ones. With an in-depth focus on preparedness (a pivotal, emergent national security paradigm since 9/11) she explores how fiction shapes national security.Thomas finds fiction at work in unexpected settings, from policy documents and workplace training manuals to comics and video games. Through these texts—as well as plenty of science fiction—she examines the philosophy of preparedness, interrogating the roots of why it asks us to treat explicitly fictional events as real. Thomas connects this philosophical underpinning to how preparedness plays out in contemporary politics, emphasizing how it uses aesthetic elements like realism, genre, character, and plot to train people both to regard some disasters as normal and to ignore others.Training for Catastrophe makes an important case for how these documents elicit consent and compliance. Thomas draws from a huge archive of texts—including a Centers for Disease Control comic about a zombie apocalypse, the work of Audre Lorde, and the political thrillers of former national security advisor Richard Clarke—to ask difficult questions about the uses and values of fiction. A major statement on how national security intrudes into questions of art and life, Training for Catastrophe is a timely intervention into how we confront disasters.Trade Review "Training for Catastrophe reveals how science fictional narratives habitually assume that, no matter what happens, the further expansion of the security state in the name of ‘preparedness’ and safety is the first, last, and only possible response to crisis. Lindsay Thomas calls on us to think outside the fantasies of total surveillance and maximum control that dominate contemporary visions of the future—and the apocalypse will never be the same."—Gerry Canavan, president, Science Fiction Research Association "In Training for Catastrophe, Lindsay Thomas chronicles how the national security state uses fiction to shape public perception about risk, security, preparedness, and the future and with what consequences. This timely and important work shows how preparedness documents at once produce a false sense of security and reproduce the inequities of structural racism. It is a must read for the contemporary moment."—Priscilla Wald, author of Contagious: Cultures, Carriers, and the Outbreak Narrative "This book would benefit any cross-disciplinary analysis within the humanities, as it skillfully interweaves political science and media, cultural, and literary studies."—Critical Studies on Terrorism "Thomas’s writing is clear, and she deftly weaves together scholarship from the fields of literary and security studies."—Modern Fiction Studies Table of ContentsContentsIntroduction: Prepare Yourself1. Training in an Empiricist Epistemology of Fiction2. Realism: Consenting to the Possibilistic Logic of Preparedness3. Thinking Generically: The Professional Management of Disaster4. Character: The Resilience of the Hero5. Looking for the Plot: Counterterrorism and the Hermeneutics of SuspicionEpilogue: The Uses of FictionAcknowledgmentsNotes Index
£21.59
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
£82.45
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
£20.69
Manchester University Press A Vision of Battlements: By Anthony Burgess
Book SynopsisA Vision of Battlements is the first novel by the writer and composer Anthony Burgess, who was born in Manchester in 1917. Set in Gibraltar during the Second World War, the book follows the fortunes of Richard Ennis, an army sergeant and incipient composer who dreams of composing great music and building a new cultural world after the end of the war. Following the example of his literary hero, James Joyce, Burgess takes the structure of his book from Virgil’s Aeneid. The result is, like Joyce’s Ulysses, a comic rewriting of a classical epic, whose critique of the Army and the postwar settlement is sharp and assured.The Irwell Edition is the first publication of Burgess’s forgotten masterpiece since 1965. This new edition includes an introduction and notes by Andrew Biswell, author of a prize-winning biography of Anthony Burgess.Trade Review‘A Vision of Battlements is an enticing potpourri of subjects. His comic touch is irresistible, and a reader is rewarded with a feast of language and wit.’Geoffrey Aggeler, novelist, critic and the author of Anthony Burgess: The Artist as Novelist‘A Vision of Battlements vividly depicts WWII-era Gibraltar through the eyes of a British soldier strikingly akin to Sergeant Major John Burgess Wilson, as Anthony Burgess was then known. The bittersweet travails of protagonist Richard Ennis, a semi-autobiographical composite of the author and Virgil’s Aeneas, imbue this black comedy with poignancy and the literary sophistication that one would expect from an author deeply influenced by James Joyce. Like Burgess, Ennis’s great passion is to compose music, but life keeps interfering. As Burgess points out in his introduction to the novel, “Richard Ennis, my composer-hero…means a good deal to me, because he is a failed composer, but readers may see in him an anticipation of a particular type of contemporary hero, or anti-hero.” R. Ennis, whose name in reverse spells “sinner”, is a passionate yet flawed character whose repeated efforts to elevate his fellow men through education and cultural appreciation are inevitably doomed to failure. Many of the enduring themes that one finds throughout Burgess’s fiction are introduced in this early novel: richly drawn characters from all levels of society, class and cultural conflict, ill-fated love affairs, doppelgängers, and, especially, music.’Paul Phillips 26/02/2017‘A Vision of Battlements is a key book in the Anthony Burgess canon. Although the fifteenth novel he published, it is the first he started writing in the early 1950s. Set in garrison Gibraltar, where Burgess (then Sergeant John B. Wilson of the Army Education Corps) served from 1943 to 1946, it is therefore one of his end-of-empire books, like the Malayan trilogy and Devil of a State, accurately depicting the Rock at a historic moment of change. The novel is Joycean in its packed language (‘salty knouts of broken sea lunged and sloggered’) and in its mock-heroism, which nods to the Aeneid. The book’s hero, R. Ennis, (‘sinner’ backwards), a semi-lapsed Catholic composer of serious music, is characteristically Burgessian: a libidinous misfit ‘of base stock’ now happily expatriate, and drinking, smoking, fornicating and mixing with all races and classes. Pelagianism pops up, in the mouth of an American deserter who goes native in Spain, much as the poet Enderby does in Tangier. There is an interesting homosexual theme. It is wonderful to see A Vision of Battlements back in print in Burgess’s centenary year, and shorn of the ugly illustrations that marred the 1965 first edition.’ Nicholas Rankin, author of Defending the Rock: how Gibraltar blocked Hitler’s path to victory (Faber, 2017) -- .Table of ContentsIntroductionA Vision of BattlementsAppendices:1 Textual variants2 Burgess’s introductions, reviews and selection of contemporary responses
£19.00
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
£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
£72.00
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
£19.00
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
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Edinburgh German Yearbook 11: Love, Eros, and
Book SynopsisNew essays exploring the resurgence of the theme of romantic relationships and love in German literature since around the turn of the millennium. While sociologists have long agreed that the problems of modern and contemporary subjectivity crystallize in the issue of romantic relationships and love (e.g., Luhmann, Illouz, Beck, etc.), the theme of love, so crucial to the foundational text of modern German literature, Goethe's Werther, all but disappeared from German prose literature in the second half of the twentieth century. Yet over the past fifteen years German-language literature has witnessed an explosion of novels with "Liebe" in their titles as well as novels that centrally focus on intersubjective erotic and emotional relationships. A number of major contemporary writers (Treichel, Walser, Kermani, Ortheil, Maron, Zaimoglu, Genazino) have written Liebesromane or novels in which significant sociohistorical questions are refracted through the love relationships of their protagonists. German film likewise has increasingly thematized love relationships under postromantic conditions, e.g. in the films of the Berlin school. Simultaneously, the development of both feminist and LGBTQ politics over the past decades has exploded the heteronormative discourses ofdesire in a way that has both expanded and enriched the lovers' discourse, while recent developments of urban (hetero)sexuality have expanded the previously available models of expressing erotic relationships in ways that are reminiscent of the utopian ending of Goethe's first version of Stella. The present collection offers a wide-ranging set of essays on these developments. Contributors: Esther K. Bauer, Sven Glawion, Silke Horstkotte,Sarra Kassem, Maria Roca Lizarazu, Helmut Schmitz, Angelika Vybiral. Helmut Schmitz is Reader in German at the University of Warwick. Peter Davies is Professor and Head of German at the University of Edinburgh.Table of ContentsIntroduction: Love, Literature, (Post-)Modernity: On the Re-Emergence of Love in Contemporary German Literature - Helmut Schmitz Not so Happily Ever After: Romantic Love in Novels by Alain Claude Sulze - Esther K. Bauer Love as Literature: Hanns-Josef Ortheil's Die große Liebe - Helmut Schmitz Healthy Socialists and Kinky Heroes: Carnivalesque Deconstruction of Heteronormativity in Thomas Brussig's Helden wie wir - Sven Glawion Disembodied Love and Desire: Virtual Love in Daniel Glattauer's Gut gegen Nordwind - Angelika Vybiral Thomas Mann in Furs: Remediations of Sadomasochism in Maxim Biller's Im Kopf von Bruno Schulz and Harlem Holocaust - Maria Roca Lizarazu Precarious Subjects, Vulnerable Love: Thomas Melle's 3000 Euro, Feridun Zaimoglu's Isabel and Julia Wolf's Alles ist jetzt - Silke Horstkotte Love as Anathema: Social Constraints and the Demise of Desire in Fatih Akin's Gegen die Wand - Sarra Kassem
£58.50
Barcharts, Inc American Literature: Reference Guide
Book Synopsis
£5.76
Modern Language Association of America Teaching Modern Latin American Poetries
Book SynopsisOffers techniques for teaching modern Latin American poetry in college courses, including considerations of teaching the silva, human rights, poetry in indigenous Languages, community-based learning, lesser-known contemporary poetry, Afro-descendant poetry, performance, the long poem, and queer theory. Provides classroom exercises and assignments.Trade ReviewThis is more than a guide for literature and Spanish-Language classrooms-it is a resource for other disciplines as well . . . an indispensable resource." - Juan Pablo Lupi, University of California, Santa Barbara
£34.81
University of Iowa Press Poetics and Praxis After Objectivism
Book SynopsisPoetics and Praxis ‘After’ Objectivism examines late twentieth-and early twenty-first-century poetics and praxis within and against the dynamic, disparate legacy of Objectivism and the Objectivists. This is the first volume in the field to investigate the continuing relevance of the Objectivist ethos to poetic praxis in our time. The book argues for a reconfiguration of Objectivism, adding contingency to its historical values of sincerity and objectification, within the context of the movement’s development and disjunctions from 1931 to the present. Essays and conversations from emerging and established poets and scholars engage a network of communities in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K., shaped by contemporaneous oppositions as well as genealogical (albeit discontinuous) historicisms. This book articulates Objectivism as an inclusively local, international, and interdisciplinary ethos, and reclaims Objectivist poetics and praxis as modalities for contemporary writers concerned with radical integrations of aesthetics, lyric subjectivities, contingent disruption, historical materialism, and social activism. The chapter authors and roundtable contributors reexamine foundational notions about Objectivism—who the Objectivists were and are, what Objectivism has been, now is, and what it might become—delivering critiques of aesthetics and politics; of race, class, and gender; and of the literary and cultural history of the movement’s development and disjunctions from 1931 to the present.
£65.70
University of Iowa Press Profiles and Plotlines: Data Surveillance in
Book SynopsisAlgorithmic data profiling is not merely an important topic in contemporary fiction, it is an increasingly dominant form of storytelling and characterization in our society. These stories are being told inside boardrooms, banks, presidential briefings, police stations, advertising agencies, and technology companies. And so, to the extent that data has taken up storytelling, literature must take up data. After all, profiling coincides with character development; surveillance reflects point of view; and data points track as plot points in tales of the political economy. In Profiles and Plotlines, Katherine Johnston engages this energetic reformation of contemporary literature to account for a society and economy of frenetic counting. Fiction and poetry are capable of addressing precisely that for which algorithms cannot or do not account: the effects of profile culture; the ideologies and supposed truth-power of data; the gendered and racialized dynamics of watching and being watched; and the politics of who counts and what gets counted. Johnston analyzes prescient work by contemporary authors such as Jennifer Egan, Claudia Rankine, Mohsin Hamid, and William Gibson to probe how the claims of data surveillance serve to make lives seem legible, intelligible, and sometimes even expendable.Trade Review“This magnificent book mobilizes contemporary fiction and poetry to confront the unequal effects of surveillance-based profiling. Literature tracks growing apprehension about the datafication of everyday life, but, as Katherine Johnston shows, literature can also provide insight into the rhetorical and partial nature of all data profiling.”—Torin Monahan, author, Crisis Vision: Race and the Cultural Production of Surveillance“Profiles and Plotlines is a tour de force. Surveillance—corporate, state, or domestic—is one of the key issues of our time. Katherine Johnston deftly guides readers through a wealth of material as she explains how literature encounters/incarnates data. A triumph.”—Toby Miller, author, A COVID Charter, A Better World“Johnston’s sharp analyses of contemporary American literature distinguishes the prevalence of a datafied and quantified culture. Her unique blending of literary studies, cultural studies, and media studies highlights the ways in which the reciprocal relationship between algorithms and stories has recreated how we understand character profiling in our information society.”—Joelle Mann, author, Mixed Media in Contemporary American Literature: Voices Gone Viral
£69.30
Rowman & Littlefield French Cultural Studies for the Twenty-First Century
Book SynopsisFrench Cultural Studies for the Twenty-First Century brings together current scholarship on a diverse range of topics—from French postcards and Third Republic menus to Haitian literary magazines and representation of race in vaudeville theater—in order to provide methodological insight into the current practice of French cultural studies. The essays in the volume show how scholars of French studies can effectively analyze what we term “non-traditional sources” in their historical and geographical contexts. In doing so, the volume offers a compelling vision of the field today and maps out potential paradigms for future research. This book builds upon previous scholarship that defined the stakes of using an interdisciplinary approach to analyze cultural objects from France and Francophone regions and aims to evaluate the current state of this complex and constantly evolving field and its current methodological practices.Trade ReviewAll of the essays are carefully researched and articulate “the importance of the broader social and historical settings” (xix). Most of the essays are beautifully illustrated. This book is definitely worth reading. * The French Review *Here is a well-arranged composite English-language work that introduces us to the literary movement of French cultural studies through its methodological practice. The analysis of non-traditional sources - generally left in the shadows by their popular origin (contrary to what is called the "high literature" of the great recognized authors) presents, in fact, a certain interest, and moreover, sheds new light on the research possibilities of cultural studies in literature and customs that have dominated the post-revolutionary period to the present day. . . . This original work once more opens discussions for the development of French cultural studies and serves as an example for anyone interested in this form of literary criticism. [Translated from original French] * Nineteenth-Century French Studies *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgements Introduction: French Cultural Studies for the 21st Century by Masha Belenky, Kathryn Kleppinger, Anne O’Neil-Henry I. Press and Literary Culture Chapter 1: Methods and Challenges in Deciphering Representations of Authorial Intimacy in Late Nineteenth-Century French Photoreportages by Elizabeth Emery Cahpter 2: The Haitian Literary Magazine in Francophone Postcolonial Literary and Cultural Production by Chelsea Stieber II. Race and Identity in Popular Performance Chapter 3: Reading Race in Nineteenth-Century French Vaudeville by Lise Schreier Chapter 4: Diversity, Exploitation, and Immigration Politics in French “Ethnic” Erotica by Mehammed Mack III. Repurposed Images Chapter 5: Rediscovering Third Republic Illustrated Menus by Michael Garval Chapter 6: Picturing the Catherinette: Reinventing Tradition for the Postcard Age by Susan Hiner IV. Media Storms Chapter 7: Unpacking the Success and Criticisms of Intouchables (2011) by Leslie Kealhofer-Kemp Chapter 8: “La Transgression de l’écriture”: Marguerite Duras and the Affaire Villemin by Anne Brancky Chapter 9: Understanding the Tinayre Affair: New Media, New Methods for the Belle Epoque by Rachel Mesch About the Contributors Index
£35.15
Purdue University Press Everyday Consumption in Twenty-First-Century Brazilian Fiction
Book Synopsis Everyday Consumption in Twenty-First-Century Brazilian Fiction is the first in-depth study to map out the representation of consumption in contemporary Brazilian prose, highlighting how our interactions with commodities connect seemingly disconnected areas of everyday life, such as eating habits, the growth of prosperity theology, and ideas of success and failure. It is also the first text to provide a pluralistic perspective on the representation of consumption in this fiction that moves beyond the concern with aesthetic judgment of culture based on binaries such as good/bad or elevated/degraded that have largely informed criticism on this body of literary work. Current Brazilian fiction provides a variety of perspectives from which to think about our daily interactions with commodities and about how consumption affects us all in subtle ways. Collectively, the narratives analyzed in the book present a wide spectrum of more or less hopeful portrayals of existence in consumer culture, from totalizing dystopia to transformative hope.Table of Contents Acknowledgments Introduction Chapter One: A Consumer's Dystopia Chapter Two: The Consuming Self Chapter Three: Consumer Culture's "Collateral Damage" Chapter Four: A Consumer's Dreams and Nightmares Chapter Five: Working-Class Consumption Consuming Together Aesthetic Interruptions of the Mundane Low and High Tactical Consumption Conclusion Conclusiom Notes Works Cited Index
£77.40
Purdue University Press Everyday Consumption in Twenty-First-Century Brazilian Fiction
Book Synopsis Everyday Consumption in Twenty-First-Century Brazilian Fiction is the first in-depth study to map out the representation of consumption in contemporary Brazilian prose, highlighting how our interactions with commodities connect seemingly disconnected areas of everyday life, such as eating habits, the growth of prosperity theology, and ideas of success and failure. It is also the first text to provide a pluralistic perspective on the representation of consumption in this fiction that moves beyond the concern with aesthetic judgment of culture based on binaries such as good/bad or elevated/degraded that have largely informed criticism on this body of literary work. Current Brazilian fiction provides a variety of perspectives from which to think about our daily interactions with commodities and about how consumption affects us all in subtle ways. Collectively, the narratives analyzed in the book present a wide spectrum of more or less hopeful portrayals of existence in consumer culture, from totalizing dystopia to transformative hope.Table of Contents Acknowledgments Introduction Chapter One: A Consumer's Dystopia Chapter Two: The Consuming Self Chapter Three: Consumer Culture's "Collateral Damage" Chapter Four: A Consumer's Dreams and Nightmares Chapter Five: Working-Class Consumption Consuming Together Aesthetic Interruptions of the Mundane Low and High Tactical Consumption Conclusion Conclusiom Notes Works Cited Index
£35.06
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Willful Girls: Gender and Agency in Contemporary
Book SynopsisExplores the process of "becoming woman" through an analysis of the depiction of girls and young women in contemporary Anglo-American and German literary texts. What does it mean to "become woman" in the context of neoliberalism and postfeminism? What is the role of will in this process? Willful Girls explores these questions through an analysis of the depiction of girls and youngwomen in contemporary Anglo-American and German literary texts. It identifies four sets of concerns that are vital for an understanding of gendered subject formation in the contemporary context: agency and volition; body and beauty; sisterhood and identification; and sex and desire. The book examines numerous nonfiction feminist texts as well as novels by Helene Hegemann, Caitlin Moran, Charlotte Roche, Emma Jane Unsworth, Kate Zambreno, and Juli Zeh, among others. These texts illustrate the complex processes by which female subjects become women today. Failure, refusal, disgust, and anger are striking features of these becomings. Drawing on the work of Sara Ahmed (Willful Subjects) and thinkers including Simone de Beauvoir, Rosi Braidotti, and Elizabeth Grosz, the book demonstrates the significance of willfulness for understandings and assertions of female agency. In addition, it proposesa view of literary works themselves as instances of willfulness. The book will be of interest to scholars working in comparative literature, English, German studies, and feminist, gender, and queer studies. Emily Jeremiah is Senior Lecturer in German and Gender Studies at Royal Holloway, University of London.Trade ReviewAn intricate and important work of literary criticism which will be of interest to scholars, students, and those curious about contemporary feminisms across national and linguistic boundaries. * MODERN LANGUAGE REVIEW *[T]his book [is] a useful corrective to the excessive focus on 'adult models of subjectivity' (2) that still dominate mainstream feminist literature. Jeremiah is, instead, attentive to literary depictions of childhood . . . . Jeremiah's methodology is both comparative and connective . . . . [Her] narration is lucid, cogent, and conversational, beginning with a synoptic reading of the various novels, and culminating in a sustained critical engagement with their various thematic issues. . . . It is perhaps a measure of how good Jeremiah's critical work is that I found [this book] to be an excellent template for examining similar concerns in other genres, such as Modernist poetry and ?lm. -- Shalini Sengupta * CONTEMPORARY WOMEN'S WRITING *[O]ffers a critical exploration of the formation of gendered subjects by analyzing depictions of young women in a selection of . . . texts, both fiction and nonfiction. . . . [W]ill prove useful both in the German and Anglo-American context. * GEGENWARTSLITERATUR *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Willful Girls Contemporary Anglo-American and German Feminisms Agency and Volition Body and Beauty Sisterhood and Identification Sex and Desire Conclusion: Green Girls, Trainwrecks, and Willful Politics Notes Bibliography Index
£76.50
Boydell & Brewer Ltd German Women's Writing in the Twenty-First
Book SynopsisEssays in this volume rethink conventional ways of conceptualizing female authorship and re-examine the formal, aesthetic, and thematic terms in which German women's literature has been conceived. What is the status of women's writing in German today, in an era when feminism has thoroughly problematized binary conceptions of sex and gender? Drawing on gender and queer theory, including the work of Lauren Berlant, Judith Butler, and Michel Foucault, the essays in this volume rethink conventional ways of conceptualizing female authorship and re-examine the formal, aesthetic, and thematic terms in which "women's literature" has been conceived. With aneye to the literary and feminist legacy of authors such as Christa Wolf and Ingeborg Bachmann, contributors treat the works of many of contemporary Germany's most significant literary voices, including Hatice Akyün, Sibylle Berg,Thea Dorn, Tanja Dückers, Karen Duve, Jenny Erpenbeck, Julia Franck, Katharina Hacker, Charlotte Roche, Julia Schoch, and Antje Rávic Strubel -- authors who, through their writing or their roles in the media, engage with questionsof what it means to be a woman writer in twenty-first-century Germany. Contributors: Hester Baer, Necia Chronister, Helga Druxes, Valerie Heffernan, Alexandra Merley Hill, Lindsay Lawton, Sheridan Marshall, Mihaela Petrescu, Jill Suzanne Smith, Carrie Smith-Prei, Maria Stehle, Katherine Stone. Hester Baer is Associate Professor of Germanic Studies at the University of Maryland. Alexandra Merley Hill is Associate Professor of German at the University of Portland.Trade Review[S]ucceeds in demonstrating the continued relevance of 'German women's writing,' not least its ability to critique, destabilize, and confound. . . . A welcome resource for undergraduate and graduate seminars, the volume is also of value for scholarly research on the diverse approaches and authors that constitute the field of the field of German women's writing today. -- Brigitte Rossbacher * STUDIES IN 20TH- AND 21ST-CENTURY LITERATURE *[A] very useful volume which takes stock of women's writing today while also exploring how women have been affected by socio-cultural, political, and economic changes. -- Linda Shortt * MONATSHEFTE *[A] volume which shows the variety of topics covered by women's German-language writing today. It succeeds in fulfilling its aim of making the case for women's writing in the age of neoliberalism and for feminist analysis that avoids what is facile or categorical. -- Stuart Parkes * JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY EUROPEAN STUDIES *[E]ngaging, provocative . . . . [D]emonstrates . . . the ways in which feminist analyses open up texts to critical questions of gender within larger configurations of identity and the lasting need to consider women's literature. -- Barbara Kosta * GERMAN STUDIES REVIEW *The volume succeeds in making the case for the relevance of reading and researching women's writing in the twenty-first century. . . . It . . . is a fine example of careful, profound, and progressive scholarship. Editors and contributors are to be commended for this excellent work. -- Katharina Gerstenberger * GEGENWARTSLITERATUR *Baer and Hill have put together an attractive collection that seeks to analyze contemporary fiction in conjunction with feminism. Using new perspectives in feminist theory, the contributors offer original interpretations and challenging insights. . . . Approaching contemporary literature in fresh, productive ways, all these essays are interesting and well researched. . . . Recommended. * CHOICE *In sum, this volume presents a valuable and highly recommended reference for anyone interested not only in contemporary women's writing, but also intersectional feminist research and the debates surrounding feminist literary criticism. -- Sonja Klocke * WOMEN IN GERMAN NEWSLETTER *Table of ContentsIntroduction: German Women's Writing Beyond the Gender Binary - Hester Baer and Alexandra Merley Hill Language-Bodies: Interpellation and Gender Transition in Antje Rávic Strubel's Kältere Schichten der Luft and Judith Hermann's "Sonja" - Necia Chronister Matrilineal Narrative and the Feminist Family Romance - Valerie Heffernan The Pitfalls of Constructing a Female Genealogy: Cultural Memory of National Socialism in Recent Family Narratives - Katherine Stone Reckoning with God: Attitudes toward Religion in German-Language Women's Writing in the Twenty-First Century - Sheridan Marshall Muslim Writing, Women's Writing - Lindsay Lawton Popfeminism, Ethnicity, and Race in Contemporary Germany: Hatice Akyün's Popfeminist Autobiographic Works Einmal Hans mit scharfer Soße (2005) and Ali zum Dessert (2008) - Mihaela Petrescu The Awkward Politics of Popfeminist Literary Events: Helene Hegemann, Charlotte Roche, and Lady Bitch Ray - Carrie Smith-Prei The Awkward Politics of Popfeminist Literary Events: Helene Hegemann, Charlotte Roche, and Lady Bitch Ray - Maria Stehle The Indictment of Neoliberalism and Communism in the Novels of Katharina Hacker, Nikola Richter, Judith Schalansky, and Julia Schoch - Helga Druxes Sounds of Silence: Rape and Representation in Juli Zeh's Bosnian Travelogue - Jill Suzanne Smith Bibliography Notes on the Contributors Index
£23.74
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Tatort Germany: The Curious Case of
Book SynopsisNew essays by leading scholars examining today's vibrant and innovative German crime fiction, along with its historical background. Although George Bernard Shaw quipped that "the Germans lack talent for two things: revolution and crime novels," there is a long tradition of German crime fiction; it simply hasn't aligned itself with international trends. Duringthe 1920s, German-language writers dispensed with the detective and focused instead on criminals, a trend that did not take hold in other countries until after 1945, by which time Germany had gone on to produce antidetective novels that were similarly ahead of their time. German crime fiction has thus always been a curious case; rather than follow the established rules of the genre, it has always been interested in examining, breaking, and ultimately rewriting those rules. This book assembles leading international scholars to examine today's German crime fiction. It features innovative scholarly work that matches the innovativeness of the genre, taking up the Regionalkrimi;crime fiction's reimagining and transforming of traditional identities; historical crime fiction that examines Germany's and Austria's conflicted twentieth-century past; and how the newly vibrant Austrian crime fiction ties in with and differentiates itself from its German counterpart. Contributors: Angelika Baier, Carol Anne Costabile-Heming, Kyle Frackman, Sascha Gerhards, Heike Henderson, Susanne C. Knittel, Anita McChesney, Traci S. O'Brien,Jon Sherman, Faye Stewart, Magdalena Waligórska. Lynn M. Kutch is Professor of German at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania. Todd Herzog is Professor and Head of the Department of German Studies at the University of Cincinnati.Trade ReviewOpens up both the foreign view of German-language crime literature and the cultural self-descriptions to which [that literature] gives rise. . . . [Also] contains contributions on crime literature 'by women for women,' on feminist crime literature . . . . -- Nele Hoffmann * ARBITRIUM *[C]omprehensive and interesting analysis. . . . For readers in Germany and Austria as well the essays in Tatort Germany should be of great interest [because it allows one] to learn how the German-language detective novel is perceived in the US. I recommend Tatort Germany as an enrichment of any collection of secondary literature on the genre. * CRIMEMAG *This volume offers a rich insight into contemporary German-language crime fiction and its emerging trends. . . . [T]he extensive analysis of currently untranslated texts--with quotations in English--performs an important function, too, especially as it serves to encourage more translations of German-language crime novels in future. * TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT *The volume's focus on contemporary trends in German-language crime fiction offers a welcome corrective to [the widespread lack of knowledge of German-language crime fiction in the English-speaking world], as does its exploration of the 'peculiarly German twists' of the genre in its three sections on place, history, and identity. . . . [R]ich and diverse . . . highly recommended for researchers of genre fiction, whether working in German Studies or beyond: quotations are provided in German and English, and an extensive bibliography[y] direct[s] readers to resources in both languages. . . . -- Katharina Hall * MODERN LANGUAGE REVIEW *[C]onvincingly make[s] a case for the serious scholarly study of your favorite guilty pleasure: those prolific German crime novels that are, in their own idiosyncratic way, every bit as good as their English and Swedish counterparts. By placing twenty-first century German crime fiction into its historical, international and theoretical contexts, Kutch and Herzog-and the volume's contributors-provide a fascinating broader explanation of a current literary phenomenon. -- Rob McFarland * WOMEN IN GERMAN NEWSLETTER *That crime fiction written in German represents a 'curious case' has been established before, but a more wide-reaching case can indeed be made for contemporary German-language crime fiction, and the editors and contributors of this volume succeed in doing so quite admirably. -- Thomas Kniesche * JOURNAL OF AUSTRIAN STUDIES *Table of ContentsIntroduction - Lynn M. Kutch and Todd Herzog Vor Ort: The Functions and Early Roots of German Regional Crime - Kyle Frackman Krimi Quo Vadis: Literary and Televised Trends in the German Crime Genre - Sascha Gerhards Plurality and Alterity in wolf Haas's Detective Brenner Mysteries - Jon Sherman The Case of the Austrian Regional Crime Novel - Anita McChesney "Darkness at the Beginning": The Holocaust in Contemporary German Crime Fiction - Magdalena Waligórska Case Histories: The Lagacy of Nazi Euthanasia in Recent German Heimatkrimis - Susanne C. Knittel "Der Fall Loest": A Case Study of Crime Stories and the Public Sphere in the GDR - Carol Anne Costabile-Heming What's in Your Bag?: "Freudian Crimes" and Austria's Nazi Past in Eva Rossmann's Freudsche Verbrechen - Traci S. O'Brien Layered Deviance: Intersexuality in Contemporary German Crime Fiction - Angelika Baier Girls in the Gay Bar: Performing and Policing Identity in Crime Fiction - Faye Stewart Eva Rossmann's Culinary Mysteries - Heike Henderson Works Cited Index
£23.74
Boydell & Brewer Ltd The Musical Novel: Imitation of Musical
Book SynopsisAnalyzes two groups of "musical novels" -- novels that take music as a model for their construction -- including jazz novels by Toni Morrison and Michael Ondaatje, and novels based on Bach's Goldberg Variations. What is a "musical novel"? This book defines the genre as musical not primarily in terms of its content, but in its form. The musical novel crosses medial boundaries, aspiring to techniques, structures, and impressions similar tothose of music. It takes music as a model for its own construction, borrowing techniques and forms that range from immediately perceptible, essential aspects of music (rhythm, timbre, the simultaneity of multiple voices) to microstructural (jazz riffs, call and response, leitmotifs) and macrostructural elements (themes and variations, symphonies, albums). The musical novel also evokes the performance context by imitating elements of spontaneity that characterize improvised jazz or audience interaction. The Musical Novel builds upon theories of intermediality and semiotics to analyze the musical structures, forms, and techniques in two groups of musical novels, which serve as case studies. The first group imitates an entire musical genre and consists of jazz novels by Toni Morrison, Albert Murray, Xam Wilson Cartiér, Stanley Crouch, Jack Fuller, Michael Ondaatje, and Christian Gailly. The secondgroup of novels, by Richard Powers, Gabriel Josipovici, Rachel Cusk, Nancy Huston, and Thomas Bernhard, imitates a single piece of music, J. S. Bach's Goldberg Variations. Emily Petermann is Assistant Professor of American Literature at the University of Konstanz.Trade Review[R]ecommends itself to literary or music libraries, as well as to all those interested in the sounds and structures of the contemporary Anglo-American novel. * AMERIKASTUDIEN *[A] necessary work of methodology, refining and clarifying prior attempts at intermedial analysis into a toolset that offers much as a foundation for future works of criticism. * H-MUSIC *For the scholar of musical fiction, this book is of great interest. * JIVE-TALK.COM *[O]f significant interest not only to the literary scholar but also to the philosopher of art. . . . Petermann's exploration of th[e] literary subgenre [of the 'musical novel'], defined as 'musical not primarily in terms of its content, but in its very form' (p.2) invites us to rethink a series of classical problems - the essence of music, boundaries of art forms, musical sense and meaning, the relation between music and language - through the lens of these peculiar textual artworks. * UNIVERSA. RECENSIONI DI FILOSOFIA *Selected as a CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title of 2014 * . *[A]n important contribution to the field of word and music studies. . . . Petermann offers a theory of intermediality that standardizes the features of novels that 'transpos[e] elements of music.' . . . . [E]xpertly crafted. . . . If for no other reason, one should read The Musical Novel to enjoy the author's elegant language --Petermann's prose was music to this reviewer's ears. Highly recommended. * CHOICE *Petermann makes a strong and patient case for a thriving tradition of intermediality, and one - this is what distinguishes her book from earlier passes at the subject - that crucially involves audience expectations and reception as part of the equation: knowing the Goldberg Variations or a particular jazz standard provides a subliminal framework for fictional improvisation which a reader unfamiliar with the music might lack. * TLS *The musical knowledge that Petermann displays throughout her book is as sound as her literary background: this promotes illuminating insights for readers coming from both worlds. . . . [Her] theory of intermediality is entirely persuasive and plausible, and as such it is highly useful to anybody seeking to expand further the field of word and music studies. Overall . . . a most thoughtful and comprehensive formalist approach to intermediality in general and the musical novel in particular. * MUSIC & LETTERS *Table of ContentsIntroduction Theorizing the Musical Novel Elements of Sound in Jazz Novels Structural Patterns in Jazz Novels The Performance Situation in Jazz Novels Structural Patterns in Novels Based on the Goldberg Variations Composition, Performance, and Reception in Novels Based on the Goldberg Variations Conclusion Appendix: Diagrams of Intermediality in Selected Novels Works Cited Index
£23.74
H.W. Wilson Publishing Co. Critical Insights: Amy Tan
Book SynopsisThis volume discusses some of Tan's key themes: communication across generations of a family when those generations have grown up in different cultures, the immigrant experience, mother/daughter relationships, the intersection of gender roles and an Asian or Asian American experience, and depression and the artist, among others.Amy Tan has called writing "an extreme privilege, but it's also a gift. It's a gift to yourself and it's a gift of giving a story to someone." It seems Amy Tan will always be most associated with her highly successful debut novel, The Joy Luck Club. Yet she has also published five other bestselling novels, two memoirs, two children's books, and has participated in adapting her writing into many other forms of media, including film, television, and opera. This volume offers insights into the full range of her creative work.
£83.20
