Literary theory Books

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Book SynopsisBringing together scholars who have critically followed New Formalism's journey through time, space, and learning environment, this collection of essays both solidifies and consolidates New Formalism as a burgeoning field of literary criticism and explicates its potential as a varied but viable methodology of contemporary critical theory.Trade Review"Following on several prominent interventions announcing the arrival of a New Formalism, this collection takes a catholic view of that movement, emphasizing an aesthetic turn, a return to formalism that cooperates with historical and contextual analysis. It recognizes craft, acknowledging the experience of practitioners. It will be widely assigned and debated." - Suzanne Keen, Washington and Lee University, USA "This exciting collection of essays and manifesti reminds us of the "form" behind "formalism": that it engages society and history, is realized through process, and depends on transactions across the literary work. New Formalisms and Literary Theory will make you think again about both concepts." - Roland Greene, Stanford University, USATable of Contents Foreword; Heather Dubrow Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors PART I: INTRODUCTION 1. New Formalism(s): A Prologue; Verena Theile PART II: THEORY 2. Toward a New Formalism: The Intrinsic and Related Problems in Criticism and Theory; Fredric V. Bogel 3. Doing Genre; Group Phi PART III: PRACTICE 4. Inventing an Ancestor: The Scholar-Poet and the Sonnet; Edward Brunner 5. From Close Reading to Cross-Reading: Sacco-Vanzetti Poetry and the Politics of New Formalism; Bartholomew Brinkman 6. Re-Reading for Forms in Sir Philip Sidney's Defence of Poesy ; Corey McEleney and Jacqueline Wernimont 7. Collecting Body Parts in Leonardo's Cave: Vasari's Lives and the Erotics of Obscene Connoisseurship; Harry Berger Jr 8. Form as a Pattern of Thinking: Cognitive Poetics and New Formalism; Karin Kukkonen PART IV: PEDAGOGY 9. Reading Like a Writer: A Creative Writer's Approach to New Formalism; Kelcey Parker 10. Punk Bodies, Jorie Graham, and the Draft Itself: Notes Toward a Lyric Formalism; Cynthia Nichols 10. 'One Another's Hermitage': New Formalist Pedagogy; Linda Tredennick Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisDrawing on theories of sublimity, trauma, and ecocriticism, this book examines how the often sharp division between European American and African American experiences of the natural world developed in American culture and history, and how those natural experiences, in turn, shaped the construction of race.Trade Review"Exciting, often brilliant readings...Outka has made a major contribution to the fields of ecocriticism and race studies, revealing much of their mutual interest." - Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment "At each stopping point, the book sparkles with fascinating insights...powerfully provocative." - Journal of American Ethnic History "Outka's book sets a new precedent for important work to be done in articulating ecocriticism with African-American literature and other related fields." - Journal of Ecocriticism "The most theoretically ambitious and historically inclusive coordinated assessment to date of the traditional ecocritical canon in relation to African-American writing." - Lawrence Buell, Powell M. Cabot Professor of American Literature, Harvard University, USA and author of The Environmental Imagination and Writing for an Endangered World "This book has the potential to change ecocritical scholarship, and perhaps even American environmental thinking, for the better. It promises to wake us up to the ways race and nature are deeply entangled in American history and ideology. When we can see the majestic mountain, says Outka, as well as the 'strange fruit' hanging from the tree when we can see that white relationship to nature has its roots in the Romantic sublime, while African American relationship to nature has it roots in the traumatic racism of slavery and its aftermath, then we can begin, as scholars and environmentalists, to embrace the true complexity of the American landscape." - Gretchen Legler, Professor, Department of Humanities, BFA Program in Creative Writing, University of Maine at Farmington, USA "A very important book. It will significantly advance the discussion of environmental justice. I strongly recommend it." - James H. Cone, Charles Augustus Briggs Distinguished Professor of Systematic Theology, Union Theological Seminary, USATable of ContentsThe Sublime and the Traumatic The Colonial Pastoral, Abolition, and the Transcendentalist Sublime 'Behold a man transformed into a brute': Slavery and Antebellum Nature Trauma, Postbellum Nostalgia, and the Lost Pastoral Trauma and Metamorphosis in Charles Chesnutt's Conjure Tales Strange Fruit White Flight Migrations

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Book SynopsisWhat do we mean by 'voice' in poetry? In this work, David Nowell Smith teases out the diverse meanings of 'voice', from a poem's soundworld to the rhetorical gestures through which poems speak to us, in order to embark on a philosophical exploration of the concept of voice itself.Trade Review“Nowell Smith begins and ends with Hopkins, giving circular coherence, but each chapter is individually ‘essayistic,’ offering a ‘speculative poetics.’ … what is explored here is explored brilliantly. … this is a fascinating work of animation.” (Rebecca Varley-Winter, The Goose, Vol. 14 (2), February, 2016)Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Voice in Poetry: Opening up a Concept 1. A Natural Scale 2. Vibration and Difference 3. Turnings of the Breath 4. 'The Multitudinous Tongue' 5. Getting the Measure of Voice Bibliography

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Book SynopsisShakespeare, Cinema and Desire explores the desires and the futures of Shakespeare's language and cinematographic adaptations of Shakespeare. Tracing ways that film offers us a rich new understanding of Shakespeare, it highlights issues such as media technology, mourning, loss, the voice, narrative territories and flows, sexuality and gender.Trade Review"Shakespeare, Cinema and Desire is sophisticated, thought-provoking, and intellectually stimulating. Simon Ryle's relation of the Shakespearean text to later films is outstanding; he provides many compelling, unique readings of Shakespeare's language in specific adaptations and in the history of cinema itself. The book is an important addition to existing Shakespeare and film criticism that will appeal to Shakespearean scholars, teachers, and students." Lisa Starks-Estes, University of South Florida, USATable of ContentsPreface Introduction: Shakespeare, Cinema and Desire 1. Something from Nothing: King Lear and Film Space 2. Body Space: The Sublime Cleopatra 3. Ghost Time: Unfolding Hamlet 4. Re-nascences: The Tempest and New Media Epilogue Bibliography

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Book SynopsisStaged Transgression in Shakespeare's England is a groundbreaking collection of seventeen essays, drawing together leading and emerging scholars to discuss and challenge critical assumptions about the transgressive nature of the early modern English stage.Trade Review"Wisely, the editors have not grouped the essays according to categories that one might expect in a book on transgression (race, gender, politics, etc), thereby leaving the reader free to make their own connections in a series of essays well worth reading in their entirety... Scrutinizing different transgressive behaviour produces some fresh insights into familiar plays throughout... overall a very rich, intelligent and rewarding book." Sarah Dustagheer, The Review of English StudiesTable of ContentsList of Illustrations.- Acknowledgements.- Notes on Contributors.- Introduction: Stages of Transgression; Rory Loughnane.- 1. "On the most Eminent seate thereof is Gouernement Illustrated": staging power in the Lord Mayor's Show; Tracey Hill.- 2. The Transgressive Stage Player; William Ingram.- 3. "Ha, Ha, Ha": Shakespeare and the edge of laughter; Adam Smyth.- 4. "Have we done aught amiss?": Transgression, Indirection and Audience Reception in Titus Andronicus; Darragh Greene.- 5. The King's Three Bodies: Resistance Theory and Richard III; Rob Carson.- 6. Marriage, Politics and Law in The Tragedy of Mariam and The Duchess of Malfi; Christina Luckyj.- 7. Incapacitated Will; Rebecca Lemon.- 8. Transgression Embodied: Medicine, Religion and Shakespeare's Dramatised Persons; Thomas Rist.- 9. The Taming of the Jew: Spit and the Civilizing Process in The Merchant of Venice; Brett D. Hirsch.- 10. 'Edgar I Nothing Am': Blackface in King Lear; Benjamin Minor and Ayanna Thompson.- 11. Marrying the Dead: A Midsummer Night's Dream, Hamlet, Antony and Cleopatra, Cymbeline and The Tempest; Lisa Hopkins.- 12. Speaking Out of Turn: Gender, Language and Transgression in Early Modern England; Danielle Clarke.- 13. Rethinking Transgression with Shakespeare's Bawds; Edel Semple.- 14. 'Nothing but pickled cucumbers': The Longing Wives of Middletonian City Comedy; Celia R. Caputi.- 15. Lady Macbeth and Othello, Transgression and Convention in Early Modern Tragedy; Andrew J. Power.- 16. "How to vse your Brothers Brotherly": Civility, Incivility and Civil War in 3 Henry VI; Christopher Ivic.- Afterword; Jean E. Howard.- Bibliography.- Index.-

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Book SynopsisNew Formalist Criticism defines and theorizes a mode of formalist criticism that is theoretically compatible with current thinking about literature and theory. New formalism anticipates a move in literary studies back towards the text and, in so doing, establishes itself as one of the most exciting areas of contemporary critical theory.Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Introduction 1. Method, Meaning, Formalism 2. Old and New Formalisms 3. New Formalist Interpretation 4. Textual Infatuation, True Infatuation Coda: New Formalisms Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisEstablished accounts of the child in nineteenth century literature tend to focus on those who occupy a central position within narratives. This book is concerned with children who are not so easily recognized or remembered, the peripheral or overlooked children to be read in works by Dickens, Brontë, Austen and Rossetti.Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction PART I: THE RETURN OF THE CHILD 1. The Child and the Return: Persuasion 2. The Child and the Letter: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall 3. The Child and Transmission: 'Goblin Market' 4. The Child and the Thing: The Mystery of Edwin Drood PART II: HISTORY, ETHICS, AND ANALYSIS 5. The Queer Child: No Future and 'Dickens and the Construction of the Child 6. The Child and History: Strange Dislocations and The Mind of the Child Conclusion: Why Analysis? Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisThis collection focuses attention on theoretical approaches to travel writing, with the aim to advance the discourse. Internationally renowned, as well as emerging, scholars establish a critical milieu for travel writing studies, as well as offer a set of exemplars in the application of theory to travel writing.Trade Review“New Directions is thus an important contribution to the burgeoning field of travel writing studies … . It will surely become a basic (re)source in travel writing studies that I recommend to those who have already ventured into the field and are familiar with the basic tenets and approaches, and to those who are encountering the opportunities offered by the study of the genre and are looking for possible ways to become engaged in this field of research.” (Balázs Venkovits, Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies, Vol. 23 (2), 2017)Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Notes on Contributors Introduction; Julia Kuehn and Paul Smethurst PART I: TEXTUALITY 1. 'A Study not a Rapture': Isabella Bird on Japan; Steve Clark 2. On Top of the World: Tourist's Spectacular Self-Locations as Multimodal Travel Writing; Crispin Thurlow and Adam Jaworski 3. The Garden of Forking Paths: Paratexts in Travel Literature; Alex Watson PART II: TOPOLOGY 4. Metaphor, Travel, and the (Un)making of the Steppe; Joseph Gualtieri 5. 'That mighty Wall, not fabulous/ China's stupendous mound!' Romantic Period Accounts of China's 'Great Wall'; Peter Kitson 6. 'Habits of a landscape': the Geocritical Imagination in Robert Macfarlane's The Wild Places and The Old Ways; Paul Smethurst PART III: MOBILITY 7. Travel Writing, Disability, Blindness: Venturing Beyond Visual Geographies; Charles Forsdick 8. Travel Literature and the Infrastructural Unconscious; Caitlin Vandertop 9. 'Take out your machine': Narratives of Early Motorcycle Travel; Tim Youngs PART IV: MAPPING 10. 'The Thing which is not': Mapping the Fantastic History of the Southern Continent; Vanessa Collingridge 11. Locating Guam: The Cartography of the Pacific and Craig Santos Perez's Re-mapping of Unincorporated Territory; Otto Heim 12. Map Reading in Travel Writing: The 'Explorers' Maps' of Mexico, This Month; Claire Lindsay PART V: ALTERITY 13. The Travellee's Eye: Reading European Travel Writing, 1750-1850; Wendy Bracewell 14. Anthropology/ Travel/ Writing: Strange Encounters with James Clifford and Nicolas Rothwell; Graham Huggan PART VI: GLOBALITY 15. Travel and Utopia; Bill Ashcroft 16. Colonial Cosmopolitanism: Constance Cumming and Isabella Bird in Hong Kong, 1878; Julia Kuehn 17. Afropolitan Travels: 'Discovering Home' and the World in Africa; Maureen Moynagh 18. Revising the 'Contact Zone': William Adams, Reception History, and the Opening of Japan, 1600-1860; Laurence Williams Index

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Book SynopsisThis book demonstrates how authors performing the role of a public intellectual discuss ideas and opinions regarding society while using literary strategies and devices in and beyond the text. Their assumed persona thereby reads the world as a book - interpreting it and offering alternative scenarios for understanding it.Table of Contents1. Transformations of the Public Intellectual 2. Conscientious Chronicler; H.M. Enzensberger (1929) 3. Eastern European Voices; Slavenka Drakulic (1949) and Dubravka Ugresic (1949) 4. Public Man as Actor; Bernard-Henri Levy (1948) 5. A Protean Public Figure; Ayaan Hirsi Ali (1969) 6. Public Intellectual in Brussels; David van Reybrouck (1971) and Geert van Istendael (1947) 7. Responsible Satire; Hamed Abdel-Samad (1972) 8. Popular Fiction; Elif Shafak (1971) Bibliography Index

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Book Synopsis1. Introduction.- 2. Lord Dunsany: The Conquering Hours.- 3. E. R. Eddison: Bearing Witness to the Eternal.- 4. J. R. R. Tolkien: More than Memory.Trade Review“This is an important study of two critically undersubscribed authors and an impressive look at a third who benefits from reconsideration in relation to them. It is not the last word on any of its subject texts, but it serves as a robust contribution to a weighty, potentially inexhaustible debate.” (JosephYoung, Gramarye, Issue 19, 2021)“Fantasies of Time and Death makes us hungry to return to the primary worlds it discusses.” (Sarah R.A. Waters, Mythlore, Vol. 39 (2), 2021)“One of the greatest strengths of this study overall is Vaninskaya’s extensive familiarity with the work of each author … . The volume is particularly well suited as a reference for readers who are already well-versed in the works of one or more of these three authors. … Overall, it is a thorough and thoughtful work which will be of value for studies of all three authors.” (Holly Ordway, Journal of Inklings Studies, Vol. 10 (1), October, 2020)“Vaninskaya’s attentive, detailed, and well-supported claims, which remain strong through the entirety of the text, will likely be a welcome addition to the shelves of academics interested in the subjects of time and death or these authors, as well as libraries looking to expand their selection of volumes on the same.” (R. J. Murphy, Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, Vol. 31 (3), 2020)Table of Contents1. Introduction.- 2. Lord Dunsany: The Conquering Hours.- 3. E. R. Eddison: Bearing Witness to the Eternal.- 4. J. R. R. Tolkien: More than Memory.

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Book SynopsisFreud is best remembered for two applied works on society, The Future of an Illusion and Civilization and its Discontents. Yet the works of the final period are routinely denigrated as merely supplemental to the earlier, more fundamental ''discoveries'' of the unconscious and dream interpretation. In fact, the ''cultural Freud'' is sometimes considered an embarrassment to psychoanalysis. Dufresne argues that the late Freud, as brilliant as ever, was actually revealing the true meaning of his life''s work. And so while The Future of an Illusion, Civilization and its Discontents, and his final work Moses and Monotheism may be embarrassing to some, they validate beliefs that Freud always held - including the psychobiology that provides the missing link between the individual psychology of the early period and the psychoanalysis of culture of the final period. The result is a lively, balanced, and scholarly defense of the late Freud that doubles as a major reassessment of psychoanalysis ofTrade Review'A superb book that will count among a handful of landmark works in the field of Freud Studies. Blending close readings of texts, a sustained attention to Freud's rhetoric, and rigorous historical-cum-biographical contextualization, Dufresne provides a major reassessment of Freud's late 'cultural' works.' Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen, University of Washington'Dufresne serves as a deft, surefooted guide into the dazzling dark continent of drives explored by Freud's later 'cultural' work. It is an intriguing journey.' Richard Kearney, Boston College'In this provocative and engaging study, Dufresne demonstrates the philosophical relevance of Sigmund Freud's late work – including The Future of an Illusion (1927), Civilization and its Discontents (1927), and the essays leading to Moses and Monotheism (1939) – as well as the strong link between Freud's cultural critique and his psychoanalytic theory.' Liliane Weissberg, University of Pennsylvania'This book will provide scholars of Freudian theory with useful and complex considerations of Freud's understanding of culture.' CHOICE'This book is must reading for anyone interested in the history and historiography of psychoanalysis … anyone interested in Freud's life and times will find this an extremely rewarding book.' Daniel Burston, PsycCRITIQUES'The author writes with great wit and impressive conviction; an astonishing wealth and density of his learning, research and extrapolations are on display in these pages … As a reviewer, one can offer no purer praise, perhaps, than to say that the book under review will be picked up again and consulted; and this one will.' David Matthew, Metapsychology Online Reviews (www.metapsychology.mentalhelp.net)'Dufresne's exploration of the key cultural texts mixes a critical reading, intellectual history and biography. In the course of which he attempts to highlight hitherto underemphasised elements of the late Freud.' Matt Dawson, SociologyTable of ContentsPreface; Acknowledgments; Introduction. Death and the cultural turn in psychoanalysis; 1. Positivism and the specter of non-existence: the romantic depths of Freud's The Future of an Illusion; 2. Mysticism, war, love, and religion: Civilization and its Discontents, reality, and Romain Rolland; 3. 'The audacity cannot be avoided': Freud and Moses, reality and fiction; Conclusion. Ethics, spirituality, and psychoanalysis: prequel to the 'late Freud'; Coda. 'Undisguised resentment', war, and the challenge of being cultured; References; Index.

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Book SynopsisAcknowledgements Voice in Poetry: Opening up a Concept 1. A Natural Scale 2. Vibration and Difference 3. Turnings of the Breath 4. 'The Multitudinous Tongue' 5. Getting the Measure of Voice BibliographyTrade Review“Nowell Smith begins and ends with Hopkins, giving circular coherence, but each chapter is individually ‘essayistic,’ offering a ‘speculative poetics.’ … what is explored here is explored brilliantly. … this is a fascinating work of animation.” (Rebecca Varley-Winter, The Goose, Vol. 14 (2), February, 2016)Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Voice in Poetry: Opening up a Concept 1. A Natural Scale 2. Vibration and Difference 3. Turnings of the Breath 4. 'The Multitudinous Tongue' 5. Getting the Measure of Voice Bibliography

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Book SynopsisAlison Waller is Senior Lecturer at the University of Roehampton, UK. She is the author of Constructions of Adolescence in Fantastic Realism (2009).Trade ReviewRereading Childhood Books offers a rich and sophisticated account of the many ways in which our reading lives are woven into our regular daily existence, not just at any particular moment but over a reading lifetime…[Waller’s] evocation of the reading scene, the life space, and the affective traces that allow a childhood book to resonate throughout a lifetime is potent and persuasive. Her argument that children's literature (using the term broadly to include that paracanon as well as the masterpieces) may resonate throughout a lifespan, through both memory and re-engagement in multiple readings, is highly significant and demonstrates the intellectual value of talking with readers as well as engaging with the texts…This is a volume that I am very glad to add to my shelf. * Professor Margaret Mackey, University of Alberta, Canada in Children’s Literature Association Quarterly *Waller’s is an open-ended exploration, a qualitative dipping of toes into a vast, virtually unmapped, and elusive territory. Benjamin’s depiction of memory work as a ‘cautious probing of spade in dark loam’ […] is an apt description of Waller’s own highly commendable undertaking. She tackles the subject through well-informed discussion of underlying concepts illuminated by teasing glimpses of personal memory. * Gillian Lathey, International Research in Children's Literature 2020 13:2, 350-353 *In this fascinating study, Waller examines memory, emotional attachment (both positive and negative) to books, and lifelong learning through the lens of rereading favorite childhood books in adulthood … A must-read for any bibliophile or educator, this is a delightful examination of the ramifications of rereading. Summing Up: Essential. * CHOICE *[Waller] tackles the subject through well-informed discussion of underlying concepts illuminated by teasing glimpses of personal memory. * International Research in Children's Literature *Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Introduction: Excavating Paracanons and the lifelong reading act Nostalgia, memoirs and re-memorying Experiments in rereading Rereading Childhood Books: A Poetics 1. The reading scene Memory and the reading scene Childhood reading and reminiscence Childhood books and recollection Rereading and recognition Reconstructing through rereading Conclusion 2. The life space The life space and autotopography Co-reading Learning to read School and home Reading spaces Mapping reading Conclusion 3. Affective traces Affective traces and resonance Pleasures Passions Grief Fear Desire and boredom Conclusion 4. Rereading attitudes The uses of childhood books and rereading attitudes Nostalgia Rereading with children As scholars Understanding literary life Conclusion 5. Transforming, misremembering, forgetting Transformed texts Material mismatches Translations and transmediations Forgetting and anamnesis Conclusion Conclusion: The lifelong reading act Future directions Final words Appendix: Paricipants Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisIn the hands of such writers as Rebecca Solnit, Claudia Rankine, David Shields, Zadie Smith and many others, the essay has re-emerged as a powerful literary form for tackling a fractious 21st-century culture. The Essay at the Limits brings together leading scholars to explore the theory, the poetics and the future of the form. The book links the formal innovations and new voices that have emerged in the 21st-century essay to the history and theory of the essay. In so doing, it surveys the essay from its origins to its relation to contemporary cultural forms, from the novel to poetry, film to music, and from political articles to intimate lyrical expressions. The book examines work by writers such as: Theodor W. Adorno, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Francis Bacon, James Baldwin, Roland Barthes, Maurice Blanchot, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Annie Dillard, Brian Dillon, Jean Genet, William Hazlitt, Samuel Johnson, Karl Ove Knaussgaard, Ben Lerner, Audre Lorde, Oscar Wilde, Michel de Montaigne, ZadiTrade ReviewAn outstanding collection of cutting-edge criticism and scholarship on a historically undervalued genre. The contributors offer fresh and diverse perspectives on traditional approaches to the essay as well as provocative new ways to reimagine the genre’s literary and cultural significance as we move deeper into a digital future. The essay needs and deserves more rigorous studies like this one. * Robert Atwan, Series Editor, The Best American Essays *The Essay at the Limits, like the Roman god Janus, has a double vision: a set of eyes look back at the beginnings of the essay, its etymologies, genealogies and traditions; the other pair observe the essay’s relevance in the 21st century as “a powerful literary form,” as the blurb puts it, in a contemporary world riddled with post-truth. This double vision equips the editor and the contributors with critical foresight. * Fourth Genre *Mario Aquilina’s selection of [examined work] indicates that he has his finger on the pulse of the essay today. Yet Aquilina, like the authors contributing to this collection, also has the ability to connect contemporary zeitgeist to the history of the essay genre. * The Cambridge Quarterly *Table of ContentsNotes on Contributors Preface Suggested Reading Mario Aquilina (University of Malta) Thinking the Essay at the Limits Part 1: The Essay and the World 1. Erin Plunkett (University of Hertfordshire, UK) The Essay as Phenomenology 2. James Corby (University of Malta) An Essay on the Post-Literary 3. Neil Badmington (Cardiff University, UK) Brief Scenes: Roland Barthes and the Essay 4. Nicole B. Wallack (Columbia University, USA) The ‘Subversive Possibilities’ of the Essay for Public Intellectuals 5. Joseph Tabbi (University of Bergen, Norway) Is Writing All Over, or Just Dispersed? Digital Essayism in TRINA, A DESIGN FICTION Part 2: The Essay and the Self 6. Ivan Callus (University of Malta) Tone and the Essay 7. Jennifer Spinner (Saint Joseph’s University, USA) What the Periodical Press Made Possible: Women Essayists in the Eighteenth Century 8. Rachel Baldacchino (University of Malta) Otherness and the Essay in the Pacifist Work of Vernon Lee 9. Aaron Aquilina (Lancaster University, UK) Margins and Marginality: Jean Genet and the Queer Essay 10. Michael Askew (University of East Anglia, UK) The Essay and the ‘I’: Eliot Weinberger’s Transformation of the Authorial Self Part 3: The Essay, Form and the Essayistic 11. R. Eric Tippin (Palm Beach Atlantic University, USA) At the Limits of Fixité: The Essay and the Aphorism 12. Jason Childs (Independent scholar) Assaying the Novel 13. Allen Durgin (Columbia University, USA) Wallace Stevens, Audre Lorde and the Queer Performativity of the Essay 14. Maria Frendo (University of Malta) Transgression as Transcendence: Essayistic Poetics in Selected Works by Dmitri Shostakovich and Joseph Vella 15. Bob Cowser Jr. (St. Lawrence University, USA) Hersey, Resnais and Representing Hiroshima: Toward an Essayistic Historiography

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Book SynopsisElsa Högberg is a research fellow in English Literature at Uppsala University, Sweden. Trade ReviewProvides a compelling and uncommonly detailed examination of the ethical and political dimensions of Modernist interiority in Virginia Woolf’s fiction. * Forum for Modern Language Studies *This major new contribution to Woolf and modernist studies combines brilliant close readings of the novels with a sophisticated and searching theoretical framework. It opens up questions of intimacy and interiority, ethics and affect, and principles of non-violence, in highly original and compelling ways. Developing a model of an ethics of intimacy and politicising Woolf’s modernist writing of interiority, it affords new ways of understanding the place of ethics and aesthetics in the charged context of the interwar years. * Laura Marcus, Goldsmiths' Professor of English Literature, University of Oxford, UK *Intimacy itself is knowledge is the startling revelation of Virginia Woolf's writing, Elsa Högberg convincingly argues, in this stunningly insightful and truly timely new work, Virginia Woolf and the Ethics of Intimacy. Högberg recognises and lucidly delineates Woolf's importance for more recent developments in an emergent and compelling post-Levinasian ethics and aesthetics of intimacy evident in major late twentieth-century and twenty-first century feminist works such as Julia Kristeva's Intimate Revolt, Luce Irigaray's Sharing the World and Judith Butler's Frames of War. Like waters poured into one jar, Högberg places these thinkers in fluent and intimate dialogue with Woolf's writings—unfolding scintillating new readings of Jacob's Room, Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse and The Waves and likewise reflecting back on the achievements of Kristeva, Irigaray and Butler—in order to clarify an emergent and radical ethics of intimacy that revises received understandings of autonomous subjectivity and subjects-in-process, of encounters with the other, of vulnerability and violence, of interiority and affect. If you think you understand what Woolf meant by her famous injunction 'Look within', then think again: Högberg will help you grasp anew the political and ethical radicality of that injunction. Pay full attention to this thrilling and urgent work of outstanding scholarship which makes possible a powerful ethical model of radical intimacy with a capacity for non-violent resistance to patriarchy, fascism and war, and also for a replenishing affective intensity, a reparative lyric jouissance by which we might begin to think peace into existence. * Jane Goldman, Reader in English, University of Glasgow, UK *Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Abbreviations Introduction: Towards an Ethics of Intimacy 1. Jacob’s Room: Modernist Melancholia and the Eclipse of Primal Intimacy 2. “An inner meaning almost expressed”: Introspection as Revolt in Mrs Dalloway 3. Post-Impressionist Intimacy and the Visual Ethics of To the Lighthouse 4. Chalk Marks: Violence and Vulnerability in The Waves Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisOne way and another, nearly all of Shakespeare's countrymen and women (including the playwright himself) spent at least parts of their lives as servants of someone else.Table of ContentsThe Great Paradox, From St. Paul to Shakespeare The Hop and the Pole: The Limits of Materialism 'Surprising Confrontations': Discourses of Service in The Taming of the Shrew 'Monsieur, We Are Not Lettered': Classical Influences and the Early Modern Marketplace 'Clubs, Bills, and Partisans': Retainer Violence and Male Bonding Fidelis Servus...: Good Service and the Obligations of Obedience Perpetuus Asinus: Bad Service and the Primacy of the Will 'A Place in the Story': Gender, Commodity, Alienation, and Service 'As Willing As Bondage E'er of Freedom': The Vindication of Willing Service in The Tempest

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Book SynopsisIntroduction Benvenuto Cellini, Life and Works Criminal Acts and Literary Practice Cellini's Poetics I: The Rime Cellini's Poetics II: The Vita Honor and Manlisness ConclusionTrade Review"Gallucci taps a wide and varied body of contemporary and secondary sources in an effort to avoid anachronism in repositioning the writer-artist in a broader and more comprehensive context . . . Gallucci's groundbreaking discussions on the legal aspects of sodomy, a problem avoided by all but a few Cellini scholars (Paolo Rossi, for example) are of particular interest to scholars seeking to separate the historical man from his autobiographical persona." - Gwendolyn Trottein, Canadian Art Review "This fascinating new look at Benvenuto Cellini offers a thoroughly innovative approach to, and understanding of, the man Jacob Burckhardt called a wholly recognizable prototype of modern man. " - Konrad Eisenbichler, CAA Reviews "A fascinating read . . .a brilliant rethinking of his autobiography . . .Gallucci s cross-disciplinarity marks this book as the kind of cutting-edge scholarship needed to revitalize traditional historical work." - Juliana Schiesari, Annali d Italianistica "The most intriguing chapter of Gallucci s study addresses the role of violence in Cellini s self-representation." - Ian Frederick Moulton, Huntington Library Quarterly " "Gallucci succeeds brilliantly at integrating a variety of approaches, placing the swashbuckling bisexual Cellini and his cultural production in the context of contemporary discourses about law, magic, virility, and honor." - James M. Saslow "Evocative [and] astonishing. Within the framework of New Historicism and sexual and gender studies, Gallucci puts forth new scholarship in areas, such as Cellini s literature and poetics." - Cristina Colasanto, US ItaliaTable of ContentsIntroduction Benvenuto Cellini, Life and Works Criminal Acts and Literary Practice Cellini's Poetics I: The Rime Cellini's Poetics II: The Vita Honor and Manlisness Conclusion

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Book SynopsisGoing beyond merely explaining how the artists in these genres achieved their peculiar effects, he presents challenging new analyses of telling craft details which help students and scholars come to know more fully this bold age of aesthetic extremism.Trade ReviewScholarly and impressive... Such a thorough consideration of the interconnectedness of modernism illuminates how truly revolutionary this artistic movement was. ChoiceTable of ContentsList of IllustrationsIntroduction. Modernist TransvaluationI. Two Originary Texts1. Baudelaire and Symbolism2. Nietzsche and the DionysiacII. Isms3. Impressionism4. Expressionism5. Futurism6. Cubism7. Abstractionism8. Primitivism9. Imagism10. Neoclassicism11. Dadaism12. Surrealism13. Aestheticism14. Corporealism15. Totalizing Art16. Communism, Fascism, and Later ModernismEpilogue. The End of Modernism?Notes

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Book SynopsisThe first holistic reappraisal of the significance of the decadent movement, from the 1900s through the 1930s. Decadence in the Age of Modernism begins where the history of the decadent movement all too often ends: in 1895. It argues that the decadent principles and aesthetics of Oscar Wilde, Walter Pater, Algernon Swinburne, and others continued to exert a compelling legacy on the next generation of writers, from high modernists and late decadents to writers of the Harlem Renaissance. Writers associated with this decadent counterculture were consciously celebrated but more often blushingly denied, even as they exerted a compelling influence on the early twentieth century. Offering a multifaceted critical revision of how modernism evolved out of, and coexisted with, the decadent movement, the essays in this collection reveal how decadent principles infused twentieth-century prose, poetry, drama, and newspapers. In particular, this book demonstrates the potent impact of decadence on tTrade ReviewDecadence in the Age of Modernism will be of great import for scholars concerned with Decadent art and literature and would work well as a required text for graduate seminars on Decadent literature and visual and material culture.—Julia Skelly, McGill University, Victorian StudiesDecadence in the Age of Modernism provides essential reading for decadence studies, continues a necessary intervention in modernist studies, and suggests important changes to twentieth-century literature surveys.—Robert Stiling, Florida State University, Nineteenth-Century ContextsThis book vividly demonstrates the value of bridging the fields of Victorian, Modernist, and Harlem Renaissance studies.—Mimi Winick, The Journal of Pre-Raphaelite StudiesOn the whole, Decadence in the Age of Modernism is a considerable accomplishment that offers much to discover.—The Modernist ReviewThis collection of essays offers a series of fascinating examples that illuminate the nuances of this relationship and, crucially, collectively draw attention to the plurality of both traditions in a period too often dominated by the high modernist canon.—Natasha Ryan, University of Oxford, Decadence and CinemaDecadence in the Age of Modernism is an illuminating and ground-breaking consideration of an under-examined subject, one that ably demonstrates that the fin not only outlived the siècle, it thrived in a new century.—Richard A. Kaye, Modernism/Modernity...distinguished and exceptional.—Robert Finnigan, Nottingham Trent University, VictoriographiesTable of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroductionKate Hext and Alex Murray1. Dainty Malice: Ada Leverson and Post-Victorian Decadent FeminismKristin Mahoney2. The Ugly Things of SalomeEllen Crowell3. Decadent Paths and Percolations after 1895Nick Freeman4. "A Poetess of No Mean Order": Margaret Sackville, Women's Poetry, and the Legacy of AestheticismJoseph Bristow5. The Queer Drift of FirbankEllis Hanson6. Burning the Candle at Both Ends: Edna St. Vincent Millay's DecadenceSarah Parker7. Woolf and Joyce, Barnes and Beckett: The Legacy of Decadence in Major Modernist NovelsVincent Sherry 8. "The Woodland Whose Depths and Whose Heights Were Pan's": Swinburne and Lawrence, Decadence and ModernismHoward J. Booth9. The Naughtiness of the Avant-Garde: Donald Evans, Claire Marie, and Tender ButtonsDouglas Mao10. The Queerness of Being 1890 in 1922: Carl Van Vechten and the New DecadenceKirsten MacLeod11. A Decadent Dream Deferred: Bruce Nugent and the Harlem Renaissance's Queer ModernityMichèle MendelssohnContributors Index

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Book SynopsisLuce Irigaray is Director of Research in Philosophy at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris. A doctor of philosophy, Luce Irigaray is also trained in linguistics, philology, psychology and psychoanalysis. Now acknowledged as a key influential thinker of our times, her work focuses on the culture of two subjects, masculine and feminine - particularly through the liberation of a feminine subjectivity - something she explores in a range of literary forms, from the philosophical to the scientific, the political and the poetic.Table of ContentsAcknowledgements \ 1. Introduction: The Ecstasy of the Between-Us \ 2. When Life Still Was \ 3. A Being Created Without Regard for His Being Born \ 4. The Wandering of Man \ 5. Between Myth and History: The Tragedy of Antigone \ 6. The Return

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Book SynopsisUses cybertext theory and ludology to solve several persistent problems in the fields of literary theory, narratology, game studies, and digital media. This title constructs a ludological basis for comparative game studies, shows importance of game studies to the understanding of digital media, and argues for a plurality of transmedial ecologies.Trade ReviewCybertext Poetics confirms Markku Eskelinen to be a meticulous scholar, sensitive to the nuances of games and literature, yet never afraid to pick any fight that needs to be fought. --Jesper Juul, New York University Game Center, author of Half-RealConfidently, relentlessly, radically, Markku Eskelinen re-tunes the critical apparatus for this new century, when the glimmering possibilities of dynamic textuality have passed from dream-vision to everyday experience. This is a momentous study, both for its crucial extension of cybertext theory, and its deep, careful affiliation with formalist aesthetics, a project it both revives and vitally revises. Rare is the critic who will match Eskelinen's combination of erudition, honesty, and sublime perverseness, his insistence on making us see clearly the world we are after making. Though one sometimes feels this writer would never choose to be part of a canon that would have him, this book deserves a place very near the center of any serious consideration of literature, narrative, and new media. --Stuart Moulthrop, Professor of English, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, USA, and founding board member of the Electronic Literature OrganizationMarkku Eskelinen has built a great critical monument devoted to the text as a whole and its theoretical study ranging stunningly across literary theory, ludology, ergodism, new media studies and transmediality. His deep knowledge of the subjects that are object of his sharp attention, his intelligence and intellectual brightness, his provocative style and the will to understand and explain how textuality works make Eskelinen the foremost scholar in the field. With connections to all literary media and transtextual relations between them, Cybertext Poetics is a major work of cultural criticism that reminds us of the power of literature. --Laura Borràs, Associate Professor, Comparative Literature and Literary Theory, University of Barcelona, Spain; and Director of the Hermeneia Research GroupCybertext Poetics is an extraordinarily ambitious work whose argument successfully challenges the explanatory power of current literary theories for digital practices. The two major contributions of Cybertext Poetics are (1) its revision and expansion of narratological categories, and (2) its close examination of the configurative nature of game-like procedures in cybertexts. Narratological and ludological theories are productively combined in ways that advance our thinking about literature and about games in the new media age. -- Manuel Portela * Digital Humanities Quarterly *Table of ContentsAcknowledgements; Chapter 1: Introduction; Chapter 2: Cybertext Theory Revisited; Chapter 3: Cybertextuality and Transtextuality; Chapter 4: The Textual Whole; Chapter 5: Modes, Genres, Text Types and the Enigma of the Ergodic; Chapter 6: Towards Cybertextual Narratology: The Amalgam of Narratologies; Chapter 7: Interval 1: Towards an Expanded Narratology; Chapter 8: Tense; Chapter 9: Mood; Chapter 10: Voice; Chapter 11: Interval 2: Ergodic and Narrative Discourses; Chapter 12: Ludology and the Exhaustion of Narratology; Chapter 13: Game Ecology and the Classic Game Model; Chapter 14: Game Ontology; Chapter 15: The Gaming Situation; Chapter 16: Game Time; Chapter 17: Interval 3: Games as Configurative Practices: Models and Metaphors; Chapter 18: Transmedial Modes and Ecologies; Chapter 19: Ergodic Modes and Play; Chapter 20: Textual Instruments and Instrumental Texts; Bibliography; Index.

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Book SynopsisOffers a defense of the value of literature and suggests ways in which the problematic relationship between personal and academic reading may be overcome. This title offers a conception of the value of literary reading that demonstrates its importance for psychological and social wellbeing.Trade Review"This bold, innovative, clear, and well-argued book not only gives an answer to the question 'Why Literature?' at a time when many people doubt its value. It also makes detailed recommendations, in the light of the answer given, for how literature should be taught. We need literature, Cristina Vischer Bruns argues, because a literary work is an ideal example of what D. W. Winnicott, one of the founders of object relations psychoanalysis, calls a 'transitional object'—an object, that is, halfway between the self and the external world. Such an object aids in the (primarily unconscious) discovery and transformation of the self. Bruns's teaching agenda is based not only on this theory of literature's 'why,' but also on her long face to face experience in the classroom. Rather than stressing analytical reading, she argues, teachers should encourage self-reflection in students about what happens to them in 'immersive reading.' In such reading the reader gets lost in the imaginary world the words on the page create. That can lead to a transition in selfhood. Distanced reading, analytical reading, may inhibit that transformation, though it can also serve as a way station toward a more powerful immersive reading. This is one of the most informed and challenging books on why we should read and teach literature." -- J. Hillis Miller, UCI Distinguished Research Professor, Departments of Comparative Literature and English, University of California Irvine, USA"A very well-written, powerfully insightful, thorough and thoughtful contribution to the ongoing conversations about literary theory, critical theory, psychology of understanding, and pedagogy. I do not know of anything else written in the last ten years that I would regard as a more important contribution to ongoing professional conversations about the teaching of literature." -- Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Professor of English Education and Director of Boise State Writing Project, Boise State University, USA"Cristina Bruns is clearly not one of those teachers who conveys to students, ‘If you don't know why you should read literature, then what are you doing in this course?' Thanks to this well informed and immensely readable study, the Why Literature? question has taken on a whole new life." -- Professor Gerald Graff, Professor of Literature and Education, University of Illinois at Chicago, USA, and author of Clueless in Academe: How Schooling Obscures the Life of the Mind (Yale University Press)Christina Vischer Bruns’ work is highly readable. She situates herself very clearly as a teacher and researcher and reveals her perspective as what it is, not assuming more claim to truth than an individual perspective allows. Following a very stringent argument, she guides the reader strongly and with a clear voice. Speaking in her own terms, her text facilitates immersive reading on all levels. -- Kira Sara, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen * Journal of Literary Theory *Table of ContentsPreface - Situating the Questioner; Introduction - The Question and Its Importance; Chapter 1: Why Read Literature?; Chapter 2: From Words on Paper to an Object in Transitional Space: Reading for the; Chapter 3: Recent Conceptions of Literary Education and Their Potential Impact on; Students' Formative Use of Literature; Chapter 4: Toward a Literary Education Conducive to the Formative Use of; Literature.

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Book SynopsisThe Bloomsbury Anthology of Aesthetics provides teachers and students with a new perspective on the history and present of aesthetic theory. It contains a comprehensive survey of the field of aesthetics, with selections drawn from ancient, medieval, renaissance, modern, and contemporary sources. It provides readers with a radically new perspective on the genesis and development of aesthetic theory by including an expanded section on early modern aesthetics. The Anthology likewise pays special attention to the interdisciplinary nature of aesthetics, reconstructing some of the dialogues in literary theory and art criticism that gave rise to philosophy''s more systematic efforts. It introduces readers to contemporary debates by including a number of thinkers not yet anthologized. It contextualizes these positions by situating them in terms of the history to which they are responding. In short, The Bloomsbury Anthology of Aesthetics brings course materials up-to-date with the state of the Trade Review…the anthology is valuable; it not only presents a captivating account of the history of aesthetics, but also, as promised by the editors, ‘redraws the picture of aesthetics’ so that a richer landscape emerges. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through researchers/faculty; general readers. -- E. Millin, DePaul University * CHOICE *This ambitious anthology on the aesthetics of Bloomsbury editions will preferably to PhD students of English who are seeking various writings on art, in a decidedly philosophical perspective, which means highly distinct from the art history or sociology of art. -- Yves Laberge * Symposium *Table of ContentsGeneral IntroductionAcknowledgementsI. Introduction to Ancient Aesthetics1. Plato, Republic2. Aristotle, Poetics 3. Plotinus, Enneads4. Longinus, On the SublimeII. Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Aesthetics5. Augustine, The Confessions6. Pseudo-Dionysius, The Divine Names7. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica8. Petrarch, On the Nature of Poetry9. Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors, and ArchitectsIII. Introduction to Early Modern Aesthetics10. Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux, The Art of Poetry11. Jean-Baptiste DuBos, Critical Reflections on Poetry and Painting12. Francis Hutcheson, An Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue13. Johann Christoph Gottsched, Critical Poetics14. Charles Batteux, The Fine Arts15. Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, Aesthetics16. Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful17. David Hume, Of the Standard of Taste18. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Laocoön19. Moses Mendelssohn, On the main principle of the fine arts and sciencesIV. Introduction to Modern Aesthetics20. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment21. Friedrich Schiller, On the Aesthetic Education of Man22. Schelling, Hegel, Hölderlin, Oldest Programme For a System of German Idealism23. F. W. J. Schelling, System of Transcendental Idealism24. Novalis, Miscellaneous Observations and Logical Fragments25. G. W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Art26. Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation27. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy28. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power as Art29. Charles Baudelaire, "The Dandy," from The Painter of Modern Life30. Martin Heidegger, The Origin of the Work of Art 31. Meyer Schapiro, The Still Life as Personal Object32. Paul Valéry, The Idea of Art 33. Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility34. Clement Greenberg, Avant-Garde and Kitsch35. Herbert Marcuse, The Aesthetic Dimension36. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Eye and Mind V. Introduction to Contemporary Aesthetics37. Michel Foucault, This is not a Pipe38. Jacques Derrida, Restitutions39. Jean-Luc Nancy, The Image-the Distinct40. Cornel West, The New Politics of Cultural Difference41. Jean-François Lyotard, The Sublime and the Avant-Garde 42. Arthur Danto, Three Decades After the End of Art43. Alexander Nehamas, An Essay on Beauty and Judgment44. Christine Battersby, The Male Gift45. Rita Felski, Why Feminsim Doesn't Need an Aesthetic (And Why It Can't Ignore Aesthetics)46. Laura Mulvey, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema47. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Percept, Affect, and Concept48. Alain Badiou, Art and Philosophy49. Jacques Rancière, The Aesthetic Revolution and Its Outcomes

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Book SynopsisAnthony Uhlmann is Professor of English in the Writing and Society Research Group at the University of Western Sydney, Australia. He is the author of Beckett and Poststructuralism (Cambridge University Press, 1999), Samuel Beckett and the Philosophical Image (Cambridge University Press, 2006) and co-editor of The Ethics of Arnold Geulincx (Brill, 2006). He is chief editor of The Journal of Beckett Studies.Trade Review"Anthony Uhlmann offers an impressively original and compelling series of interpretations that will substantially alter accepted ideas not only of Joyce, Woolf and Nabokov, but also of the epistemology and aesthetics of modernism. Uhlmann's Deleuzian approach—post-expressionist and post-representationalist—seeks to move beyond the traditional conception of modernism as an "inward turn" centered in subjectivity and interiority. Thinking in Literature accomplishes its highly innovative readings with subtlety, intelligence and insight." -- Richard Begam, Professor of English, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA"In this ambitious contribution to literary theory, Anthony Uhlmann shows how a work of literature can be said to think, and thus in what sense literature helps us to understand the world. On the way he provides exemplary analyses of Virginia Woolf and Vladimir Nabokov at work, as well as useful unfoldings of difficult material from Spinoza and Leibniz." -- J M CoetzeeAt a time when the humanities are increasingly under attack, Uhlmann’s slender volume about Thinking in Literature is a much-needed study, as it intelligently defines the value of literature and literary studies…Uhlmann’s expanded but rigorous concept of thinking is an essential contribution to modernist studies in general and Woolf studies in particular, as it provides a clear pathway for going beyond those deconstructive approaches that strand authors and readers in the abyss of the textual gap. Uhlmann has established an excellent framework that will enable scholars to think in new and more rigorous ways about literature and educators to teach students how to use modernist literature to refine their capacity to think. -- Michael Lackey, University of Minnesota, Morris * Journal of Modern Fiction *Thinking in Literature does represent a rare and robust attempt to reformulate the aesthetic and cognitive characteristics of modernism. -- David Winters * Textual Practice *Table of ContentsIntroduction Part 1: Literature and Thought 1. Spinoza and Relation 2. Leibniz's 'perception': the Incompossible, the Viewpoint, and the Composition of Sensation 3. Composition as the Externalised Expression of Sensation Part 2: Thought in Modernist Fiction 4. James Joyce: the art of Relation 5. Virginia Woolf: the art of Sensation 6. Vladimir Nabokov: the art of Composition Conclusion Bibliography

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Book SynopsisAre we living in a post-temporal age? Has history come to an end? This book argues against the widespread perception of postmodern narrativity as atemporal and ahistorical, claiming that postmodernity is characterized by an explosion of heterogeneous narrative timeshapes or chronotopes. Chronological linearity is being challenged by quantum physics that implies temporal simultaneity; by evolutionary theory that charts multiple time-lines; and by religious and political millenarianism that espouses an apocalyptic finitude of both time and space. While science, religion, and politics have generated new narrative forms of apprehending temporality, literary incarnations can be found in the worlds of science fiction. By engaging classic science-fictional conventions, such as time travel, alternative history, and the end of the world, and by situating these conventions in their cultural context, this book offers a new and fresh perspective on the narratology and cultural significance of timeTrade Review"In this probing study we see how our sci-fi dreams remain haunted by inexorable Time and discover why postmodernist reports of the death of Time are mistaken." - Professor Penelope J. Corfield, University of London, UK.Table of Contents1. Introduction: World Enough and Time; 2. The Times Machines; 3. Strangled by a Time Loop: Paradoxes of Determinism; 4. The Garden of History: The Branching Paths of Contingency; 5. Everyday Apocalypse: The Ethics and Aesthetics of the End of Time; 6. Conclusion; Bibliography; Index.

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Book SynopsisSean Gaston is Reader in English at Brunel University, UK. Ian Maclachlan is University Lecturer in French and a Fellow of Merton College, Oxford, UK.Trade Review'A star-studded cast of commentators here offer their takes on Derrida's most famous work, clarifying its many difficulties and exploring its multifarious implications. A most valuable book.' -- Jonathan Culler, Professor of English, Cornell University, USARather than carve the Grammatology up into themes or sections imposed from without, the editors have divided their collection according to the letter of the divisions of Derrida's book. This offers practical advantages to the reader who may be searching for discusion of one particular passage...Some [contributions] are usefully orientated towards filling in the background context of a certain passage, where others are concerned to unpack the conceptual content of Derrida's technical vocabulary. A valuable few reach across large portions of the work, synthesising context, content, and structure...the strongest element of this book id that so may admirable readers of Derrida are gathered here together...Many of the entries here could serve as springboards for articles and research projects...Reading Derrida's Of Grammatology does succeed admirably in underscoring the overflowing brilliance of Derrida's book. -- Andrew Dunstall * Radical Philosophy Review *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Punctuations Sean Gaston; Translator's Preface: Reading De la grammatologie Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak; PART I: WRITING BEFORE THE LETTER; 1. The End of the Book and the Beginning of Writing; i. Epoch, Event, Context Christopher Johnson; ii. Origins: "the most original and powerful ethnocentrism" Michael Syrotinski; iii. Even Leibniz Sean Gaston; iv. The Cybernetic Imaginary Christopher Johnson; v. Deconstruction - A Little Note Forbes Morlock; vi. From Etymology ("etumos logos") to Translation, via Badiou and Paulhan Michael Syrotinski; vii. Of Dark Sentences and Gnomes Julian Wolfreys; viii. Pneumatology, Pneuma, Souffle, Breath Michael Naas; ix. Good Writing Sarah Wood; x. A Certain Way of Inhabiting Peggy Kamuf; xi. The Idea of the Book Ian Maclachlan; xii. Forbes Morlock; 2. Linguistics and Grammatology; i. Exergue J. Hillis Miller; ii. Brisure J. Hillis Miller; iii. Jeu J. Hillis Miller; iv. Trace J. Hillis Miller; v. Bizarre Nicholas Royle; vi. Arbitrary Derek Attridge; vii. Writing and World Sean Gaston; viii. This Concept Destroys its Name Ann Smock; ix. Embarrassing Experience Ian Maclachlan; x. A Hinge Ian Maclachlan; xi. Something Other Than Finitude Ian Maclachlan; xii. L'overture blanche Jean-Luc Nancy; 3. Of Grammatology as a Positive Science; i. Grammatology as a "Positive" Science Christopher Johnson; ii. Writing In Evolution, Evolution As "Writing" Christopher Johnson; iii. Grammatology as General Science Peggy Kamuf; iv. Why Leibniz Paul Davies; v. Difference - A Little Note Forbes Morlock; vi. The Constitution of Good and Bad Objects Sarah Wood; PART II: WRITING, NATURE, CULTURE; 1. The Violence of the Letter: From Levi-Strauss to Rousseau; i. Leurre, Lure, Delusion, Illusion Michael Naas; ii. The Subject of Reading - 1 Forbes Morlock; 2. "... That Dangerous Supplement..."; i. Entamer, Entame, To Initiate or Open Up, to Breach or Broach Michael Naas; ii. The Subject of Reading - 2 Forbes Morlock; iii. The Subject of Reading - 3 Forbes Morlock; iv. L'habitation des femmes Peggy Kamuf; 3. Genesis and Structure of the Essay on the Origin of Languages; 3.1 The Place of the "Essay"; i. Pity, Virtuality and Power Sean Gaston; ii. Being-in Nature Peggy Kamuf; iii. Preference and Force Clare Connors; iv. Dynamis and Energia Clare Connors; 3.2 Imitation; i. Fractal Geography Geoffrey Bennington; ii. Estampe Ann Smock; iii. Accents Ann Smock; iv. The Copyist Forbes Morlock; v. Articulation, Accent and Rhyme Clare Connors; 3.3 Ariticulation; i. Butades, the Invention of Drawing and "immediate sign" Michael Naas; ii. The Eye at the Centre of Language Peggy Kamuf; iii. Climate and Catastrophe: A Lost Opening? Timothy Clark; iv. The Subject of Reading - 4 Forbes Morlock; v. The Subject of Reading - 5 Forbes Morlock; vi. The Point d'Eau or the Water-Holes that are Imperceptibly Present in Writing Sarah Wood; vii. Rhythm Clare Connors; viii. Presque Clare Connors; 4. From/Of the Supplement to the Source: The Theory of Writing; i. The Subject of Reading - 6 Forbes Morlock; ii. Theatre Without Theatre Ann Smock; iii. On Naivete Peggy Kamuf; iv. Kafka, Literature and Metaphor Sean Gaston; v. Periodicity Sean Gaston; vi. Habitation in General Peggy Kamuf; vii. "From somewhere where we are" Peggy Kamuf; Biographical Notes: Intervals; Bibliography; Index.

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Book SynopsisExplores the divide between practical criticism and theory in 20th century criticism to propose a new way of reading poetry. This book considers such topics as rhyme, poetic voice and language.Trade ReviewRobert Smith's On Modern Poetry dazzles and illuminates, as does poetry itself. The book is an exciting intervention in poetic criticism, and the zest with which the book apprehends as well as comprehends its material will ensure that all kinds of readers interested in poetry will be enthused to think more carefully about its idioms, strange logics, and its genres. In bringing together intuitive and intellectual attention without simply pre-empting the distinction or its affects, the book achieves what it sets out to do. -- Dr Anthony Mellors, Reader in Poetry and Poetics, Birmingham City University, UK‘Smith's writing moves with an ease and elegance that can belie the, sometimes breath-taking, flair, reach and focus of his readings... it has much to recommend it to a wide audience, from general readers, to students, to specialists.' -- Dr Clare Connors, University of East Anglia, UKSumming Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. -- R.T. Prus, Southeastern Oklahoma State University * CHOICE *Table of ContentsIntroduction; Part I: Themes; 1. Two or Three Genealogies for Modern Poetic Theory; 2. Rhyme and Reason; 3. The Object; 4. 'You Hear Voices? You Are Possessed!'; 5. Rhetoric + Heidegger + Derrida; Part II: Readings; 6. Darkling; 7. Fl...; 8. Le Malade Imaginaire; 9. Symons in the Decade of Decadence; 10. For the Sake of a Single Poem; Conclusion: Criticism and the Case of J. H. Prynne; Bibliography; Index.

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Book SynopsisThe first book to provide a detailed account of fragmentary writing in the work of the French novelist, critic, and thinker Maurice Blanchot (1907-2003).Trade Review"Maurice Blanchot and Fragmentary Writing is a remarkable study of the most extraordinary and enduring literary figure in twentieth-century France. An acknowledged authority on Blanchot and his peers, Leslie Hill guides the reader through some of the most difficult and exciting writing produced after the Second World War: his remarks on the imbrications of literature and philosophy are never less than illuminating. Any new book by Leslie Hill is an event in French Studies, and this one is no exception." -- Kevin Hart, Edwin B. Kyle Professor of Christian Studies in the Department of Religious Studies, University of Virginia, USA"What are fragments? Chips, flecks, scraps, orts, bits, grinds, clasts, shards, sherds, slivers, splinters, crumbs... a potentially infinite list, which is the point made by Leslie Hill's subtle and forceful meditation on Blanchot's practice of the literary fragment. Such pulverulence contaminates everything, every whole comes undone until we face a more open future since it, too, is fragmentary." -Jean-Michel Rabaté, Vartan Gregorian Professor in the Humanities at the University of PennsylvaniaSummarized. * Notre Dame Philosophical Review *In his recent book, Maurice Blanchot and Fragmentary Writing, Hill argues convincingly that the fragmentary indicates an ethico-political exigency in Blanchot’s writing that is all too often overlooked by his critics and neglected by historians of modern literature. Hill frames his readings of Blanchot around the view that the fragment does not simply designate a missing piece of the whole, which must be recovered or restored. On the contrary, it ruins the logic of completion that is elsewhere held to unify the work of literature. -- Michael Krimper * Make Mag *Table of ContentsChapter One: A Turning1. A spectre2. Writing the future3. From fragment to fragmentary4. The limits of nihilism5. Radical suspensionChapter Two: The Demand of the Fragmentary1. A gift2. A double voice3. Presence without presentChapter Three: An Interruption1. From threshold to threshold2. A step further3. The law of return4. Voice without voice5. A politics of the fragmentary6. Burying the dead Chapter Four: Writing — Disaster1. What is called disaster?2. Another epoch3. What happened4. The youngest dayChapter Five: A Change of Epoch Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisIn Portraits and Miniatures, Roy Jenkins brings his penetrating intelligence and elegant prose to subjects ranging from literature and political history to wine and croquet. Long experience in both Houses of Parliament and as President of the European Commission has given him unparalleled insight into political figures such as R. A. Butler, Aneurin Bevan, Konrad Adenauer, and de Gaulle. A varied selection of essays, Portraits and Miniatures is fascinating, witty, and endlessly entertaining.

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Book SynopsisPeta Mitchell is Senior Lecturer in the School of English, Media Studies, and Art History at the University of Queensland, Australia, and author of Cartographic Strategies of Postmodernity (Routledge, 2008).Trade ReviewThis book is a treasure-trove for references to ‘social contagion’ metaphors past and present and has interesting historical commentaries. * Modern Language Review *Peta Mitchell's highly readable ContagiousMetaphor explores medical and popular beliefs and practices aboutcontagion—and the metaphors that shape them. Reaching back through thenineteenth century and then ranging widely through more recent decades, sheshows how ambivalence about figurative language and misunderstanding ofmetaphor itself has shaped our responses to epidemics both imaginedand experienced. From miasma to Dionysian frenzy to memes on theinternet, Mitchell challenges our assumptions about both language andcontagion, providing engaging and provocative analyses of examples from film,philosophy, linguistics and literature. -- Pamela K. Gilbert, Department of English, University of Florida, USA'The history of medicine and metaphor come together inContagious Metaphor; Peta Mitchell perceptively chronicles the circulation ofthe metaphor of contagion and the contagion of metaphor in the current momentto show how ideas travel through language to shape lived experience. ContagiousMetaphor anatomizes the transmission of thought itself as it brings together astudy of the social phenomenon of a veritable obsession with the concept ofcontagion and a profound understanding of the role of language in creating notjust individual, but a broadly cultural consciousness. This study will enrichcontemporary understanding of the longstanding appeal of contagion as a conceptand of the power of metaphor as they circulate through, and register awidespread attempt to make sense of, the networks of contemporary social life.' -- Priscilla Wald, Department of English, Duke University, USAThisis a captivating book: interdisciplinary scholarship at its best. Moving deftlybetween meme theory and modern literature, nineteenth-century French socialscience and fifth-century theological debates, Peta Mitchell's genealogy ofcontagion metaphor reveals the intimacy, and indeed interdependency, of thesetwo concepts. The subtlety, sophistication and scholarly rigour of ContagiousMetaphor all but guarantee the spread of its ideas. -- Angela Woods, Centre for Medical Humanities, Durham University, UKTable of ContentsAcknowledgements \ Introduction: Due Preparations \ 1. Contagious metaphor \ 2. Pestilence and poison winds: Literary contagions and the endurance of miasma theory \ 3. The French fin de siècle and the birth of social contagion theory \ 4. The contagion of example \ 5. Infectious ideas: Richard Dawkins, meme theory, and the politics of metaphor \ 6. Networks of contagion \ Bibliography \ Index

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Book SynopsisSean Latham is Pauline Walter Endowed Chair of English and Comparative Literature and director of the Oklahoma Center for the Humanities. He is editor of the James Joyce Quarterly, co-founder of the Modernist Journals Project. His teaching and research focuses on modernist studies, James Joyce, periodicals, media theory, and the digital humanities. He is the author or editor of nine books including Am I a Snob?: Modernism and the Novel (Cornell University Press, 2003), The Art of Scandal: Modernism, Libel Law, and the Roman à Clef (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), and The Little Review Ulysses (New York: Yale University Press, 2015).Gayle Rogers is Professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh, USA. He works primarily on global modernisms, literary history, translation, comparative literature, and periodicals. His publications include Incomparable Empires: Modernism and the Translation of Spanish and American Literature (2016), Modernism and the New Spain: Britain, Cosmopolitan Europe, and Literary History (2012), and a number of works in PMLA, Modernism/Modernity, Comparative Literature, NOVEL, Journal of Modern Literature, James Joyce Quarterly, The Oxford Handbook of Global Modernisms, Journal of Modern Periodical Studies, Modern Fiction Studies, Revista de Estudios Orteguianos, and 100 Escritores del siglo XX.Trade ReviewThe field of modernist studies consists in large part of debates over how the field should be defined…[This book] is an elegant, lucid, and helpful introduction to the field of modernist studies. Yet— and to its very great credit—it does not shy away from the definitional problems I have described but weaves them into a clear articulation of the difficulties and contradictions at the heart of modernism as a project and as a field. * Twentieth-Century Literature *Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers. * CHOICE *Sean Latham and Gayle Rogers offer a perfectly timed history … that will be of immediate interest to anyone who studies modernism and twentieth-century literary history … They offer a succinct, often fascinating account of how and why it has become impossible to offer a tidy definition of modernism … The picture that emerges from Latham and Rogers’s narrative is one of incredible complexity and variety … With this condensed, lucid, compelling history, Latham and Rogers enable their readers … to learn what has been accomplished in the last century of interrogating modernism and then discover what tasks remain. Because of the significant critical generosity that underwrites this study, we can conclude, with Pound, Latham, and Rogers, that there is still much to do. * James Joyce Quarterly *An ambitious project … tracing the evolution of the term “modernism” from a cultural buzzword to a consolidated … signifier of a particular set of artistic conventions and works … It would not be surprising to see this study on any modernist’s bookshelf. * Make It New (The Ezra Pound Society) *An excellent account of the development of the idea of Modernism, with a useful glossary and a very good critical bibliography. * Ian Patterson, University of Cambridge, UK *The writers display deep and wide expertise as they move nimbly over more than a century’s worth of fraught material. They offer students and colleagues a thorough overview of the debates that have constituted the field they call "modernist studies." * boundary 2 *An engaging introduction to the fraught history of modernism as a critical and aesthetic category, the book makes a substantive case for the lability of its subject ... This is disciplinary historiography at its most lucid, and the narrative weaves introduce readers to or reminds them of an impressive number of arguments without ever feeling rushed, over-stuffed, or, most importantly, tangential ... Latham and Rogers append an extensive critical bibliography of significant works in modernist studies, which should prove invaluable to students and early researchers looking for direction in navigating such a diverse field. The detail of this apparatus speaks to the utility of Modernism as a whole, a book that should become a staple in modernist classrooms and dissertation reading lists for the foreseeable future. * The Year's Work in English Studies *Latham and Rogers succeed in providing in the four chapters of their book an excellent introduction to the shifting conceptualizations and criticisms of modernism in literary and artistic debates. * Contributions to the History of Concepts *Admirably, the authors manage to produce not only a survey of the term’s complex trajectory, but one laced with important critical contentions ... Latham and Rogers’s analyses make their book far more than just an introductory survey. * Textual Practice *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Is there a there there? Chapter 1: The Emergence of “Modernism” Chapter 2: Consolidation Chapter 3: Iron Filings Chapter 4: Networks Glossary Critical Bibliography Works Cited

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Book SynopsisVincent Leitch is George Lynn Cross Research Professor and Paul and Carol Daube Sutton Chair in English at the University of Oklahoma, USA. He is the author of American Literary Criticism Since the 1930s (2nd edition, 2010) and co-editor of The Norton Anthology of Literary Criticism and Theory (2nd edition, 2010).Trade ReviewLiterary Criticism in the 21st Century is a valuable and rewarding book. One of its many virtues is its style, pellucid and often autobiographical. Leitch both describes and wonderfully practices what he calls ‘intimate critique,’ the blending of personal experiences and affects into the analysis of larger structures and trends. -- Joseph Albernaz, University of California—Berkeley, USA * symploke *Lucid and wide-ranging, Literary Criticism in the 21st Century: Theory Renaissance celebrates the ubiquity of theory and its continuing importance for the 21st century, while highlighting the author's distinctive personal, political, and institutional engagement. * Jonathan Culler, Professor of English, Cornell University, USA. *Leitch's book provides a brilliantly lucid account of theory for the twenty-first century. Providing a wonderful antidote to all the declarations of theory's end, this book not only describes but also contributes to theory's renaissance. * Claire Colebrook, Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of English, Penn State, USA. *Table of ContentsPreface 1 What I believe and why 2 Antitheory 3 The tasks of critical reading 4 Theory today and tomorrow 5 Theory crossroads 6 French theory’s second life 7 Second lives of Jacques Derrida 8 Postmodernism revisited 9 Twenty-first-century theory favorites 10 Theory futures Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisSarah Dillon is Lecturer in Contemporary Fiction at the University of St. Andrews, UK.Trade Review'This is a compelling and original book, as multi-layered as its title might lead us to hope. Dillon offers a lucid and lively account of the history and development of the notion of palimpsest, from ancient history through to postcolonialism and queer theory. In a series of deft and insightful readings of De Quincey, Freud, Saussure, Barthes, Riffaterre, Genette, Kristeva and Derrida, as well as literary works by Arthur Conan Doyle, D.H. Lawrence, H.D., Umberto Eco and Ian McEwan, The Palimpsest renews and transforms our understanding of this curious topic.'Professor Nicholas Royle, University of Sussex -- Professor Nicholas Royle"Her chapters focus on a number of literary figures...but there is also a detailed account of the ways in which the palimpsestic - or 'palimpsestuous' - nature of Ian McEwan's Atonement affects our reading of that novel. Strengthening her meticulous analyses of individual texts are the equally detailed complementary readings. The Palimpsest manages to be that rare thing: a work of criticism that remains rigidly focused upon - and loyal to - its subject matter, without ever being afraid to draw on a wide range of different authors and disciplines to explore the significance of its one central metaphor."Modern Language Review, February 2009'a tour de force of twentieth-century theory as well as an adventure in reading' - Forum for Modern Language Studies, May 21 2009"Dillon engages wittily and at times brilliantly with Thomas De Quincey, D. H. Lawrence, Arthur Conan Doyle, Umberto Eco, Ian McEwan and H. D. . . . [her] innovative work fills a cognitive gap by drawing together the history and theory of palimpsests and beginning to investigate how this fascinating concept can inform our understanding of literature. This book is a worthy rival to Gérard Genette Palimpsests (1997) (first published in French as Palimpsestes (1982)) and lays a foundation stone for further studies of the palimpsestuous quality of literature." - The Review of English Studies, New Series, Vol. 60, No. 244, Christopher Whalen 2008"Dillon's book is very reader-friendly, witty and entertaining, which makes it approachable for both specialists and non-specialists alike...The Palimpsest is an excellent and significant work contributing to the discussion about the interconnecting roles of critical and theoretical writing that pushes beyond the boundaries of traditional clear-cut criticism. Dillon's work thus serves as a good reference point for future engagements with the paradigm of the palimpsest."Anglistik: International Journal of English Studies, September 2009"...a fascinating history of the palimpsest which contextualises precisely why Dillon finds them so relevant for contemporary thinking, the book couples literature and theory in each chapter...a tour de force of twentieth-century theory as well as an adventure in reading which focuses refreshingly on literature not so usually in the literary headlights."Forum for Modern Language Studies, Vol 45 No.4Briefly reviewed in the Year's work in English Studies journal, vol 89, No. 1 'Dillon's work explores the palimpsest metaphor through examining its history, its use by De Quincey, D.H. Lawrence, Arthur Conan Doyle, Umberto Eco, H.D., Ian McEwan and others'Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgements 1. Introduction: The Palimpsest2. A Brief History of Palimpsests 3. The Palimpsest of the Mind 4. On Poetry and Metaphor 5. Risky Reading 6. Refiguring Intertextuality 7. Queering the Palimpsest: H.D. Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisIn this book, Author Katharine N. Harrington examines contemporary writers from the French-speaking world who can be classified as literary nomads. The concept of nomadism, based on the experience of traditionally mobile peoples lacking any fixed home, reflects a postmodern way of thinking that encourages individuals to reconsider rigid definitions of borders, classifications, and identities. Nomadic identities reflect shifting landscapes that defy taking on fully the limits of any one fixed national or cultural identity. In conceiving of identities beyond the boundaries of national or cultural origin, this book opens up the space for nomadic subjects whose identity is based just as much on their geographical displacement and deterritorialization as on a relationship to any one fixed place, community, or culture. This study explores the experience of an existence between borders and its translation into writing that. While nomadism is frequently associated with post-colonial authors, tTrade ReviewLiterary nomadism stems from nomadism as sociological phenomenon and existential category. Like other contemporary critics, Harrington (Plymouth State Univ.) points out that cultural nomadism is a postmodern phenomenon that forms new identities that test "the limits of any one fixed national or cultural identity." To illustrate nomadic identities as a cultural phenomenon and a literary aesthetic, the author provides close readings of work by four contemporary Francophone writers. Each represents a different facet of being deterritorialized in relation to national belonging, and each reflects on experience and translate it creatively. J.-M. G. Le Clézio is an "engaged travel" who "gives ... voice to marginalized people around the world." Western Canadian by origin, Nancy Houston writes in French, expressing the anguish that she cannot feel un vrai bilingue. Nina Bouraouri, daughter of a French mother and an Algerian father, articulates the violence of the nomadic experience, which leads her to a "preference for short simple sentences and significant amount of repletion." Polish Jewish Régine Robin left Paris for the villa nomade Montreal. Written in both French and English, her work reflects a "patchwork style" in reaching out to the virtual nomadic communities. Insightful and well organized, this study concludes with useful bibliographic information. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. * CHOICE *This compelling analysis of the nomadic experience in the lives and the literary works of four key contemporary Francophone writers examines the work of J.M.G. Le Clézio, Nancy Huston, Nina Bouraoui, and Régine Robin. ... Engaging and well-written, Writing the Nomadic Experience in Contemporary Francophone Literature achieves its proposed aims of attempting to widen the scope of the study of nomadism in contemporary French and Francophone literature, and to expose the wide range of nomadic subjects and experiences that are present in literature today through the study of four key authors. ... Timely in its anticipation of the current proliferation of nomadic identities and cultural expressions of hybrid identities, and innovative in its selection of four highly diverse and significant Francophone writers today, this book is an important contribution to its field, and will be of interest to scholars of contemporary French and Francophone literatures, transnational writing, and nomadic identities. * Bulletin of Francophone Postcolonial Studies *This original and highly rewarding study explores the complex evolution of nomadism in addition to the myriad of implications that this way of thinking entails for the modern world. Through the lens of the diverse writings of four contemporary authors (J.M.G. Le Clézio, Nancy Huston, Nina Bouraoui, and Régine Robin) whose works and cultural origins defy simplistic categorization or appropriation, Harrington presents a compelling and cogent argument as to why the multifaceted phenomenon of nomadism is more relevant than ever. Harrington successfully underscores that cultural, linguistic, literary, and digital nomads are all endeavoring to carve out a space for a rich hybrid identity in an effort to resist integration into a monolithic global environment increasingly characterized by homogeneity and monoculturalism. Seamlessly blending close textual analyses of numerous narratives with the works of major literary theorists, Harrington also compels the reader to ponder what divergent forms that nomadism will adopt in the future. Harrington notes that given recent inventions, such as the Internet, nomads will undoubtedly continue to play an important role in resisting rigid boundaries and hegemonic domination. -- Keith MoserThis book explores the nomadic experience from a vantage point that entails a new perspective, dismantling familiar borders, linguistic and cultural constructions regarding the self and the others. The first chapter focuses on J.M.G. Le Clézio cultural and philosophical nomadism in his fictional and non-fictional works, which enhance our awareness toward other societies and cultures. In chapter two, Nancy Huston’s novels and essays reveal that if displacement can have destabilizing effects for the deterritorialized individual as a linguistic nomad, it can also be a constructive necessity for survival. Nina Bouraoui’s nomadic condition, studied in chapter three, allows criticizing societal practices and beliefs free from any constraint, while the content and the writer’s style and language recall always violence. Regine Robin explored in chapter four, offers a unique nomadic experience through experimental writing, oscillating between traditional book format and web site exploration, and continually pushing the limits of writing. This book is an important contribution to the field of Francophone Literature with its focus on nomadic experience and its ramifications in Migration Studies, within a cultural perspective. -- Névine El Nossery, University of Wisconsin-MadisonWriting the Nomadic Experience in Contemporary Francophone Literature is a fascinating study of authors who inhabit an 'inbetween' space, between nations, languages and cultures. The issue of nomadism is timely, since the cultural, political and social changes wrought by globalization and the legacies of colonialism create new subject positions and identity formations. Harrington's choice of J.M.G. Le Clézio, Nancy Huston, Nina Bouraoui and Régine Robin provides an illuminating comparison of the literary nomad, who inhabits a position that is at once privileged and painful. Harrington deftly combines close reading with theoretical analysis to tease out the differences between these four writers' representation of nomadism in their work and takes the unique approach of charting the changing effects of their nomadism across their oeuvre. The result is a very readable study that combines questions of exile, diaspora, autofiction, multilingualism, and the inflections of sexuality and religion upon the writing self. -- Natalie Edwards, University of AdelaideThe introduction, which explores the changing significance over time of such terms as nomadism, diaspora, and exile, sets the stage for a thought-provoking discussion of several well-known contemporary Francophone writers and the narrative conceptualizations of place and identity in their respective oeuvres. As Harrington posits, a primary aim of the volume is to ‘widen the scope of the study of nomadism in contemporary French and Francophone literature’ through her selection of four authors with complex bicultural and/or bilingual backgrounds who ‘envision writing as a way to anchor themselves in their uncertain position between nations, cultures, languages, and even between the past and the present’. Each of the book’s four chapters provides biographical information on the authors, references to significant theoretical texts, and a critical analysis of the literary works that best exemplify the evolution of the concept of nomadism in a particular writer’s work. . . .This useful study should be of great interest to scholars of Francophone literature and culture. * The French Review *Table of ContentsINTRODUCTION: The Evolution of the Notion of Nomadism and its Implications for Contemporary Literature CHAPTER 1: Writing from the Margins: Cultural Nomadism in the Life and Work of J.M.G. Le Clézio CHAPTER 2: Nancy Huston and the Art of Negotiating Strangeness CHAPTER 3: Writing as “Seeing” Between Categories in the Novels of Nina Bouraoui CHAPTER 4: From the Page and Beyond: Régine Robin and Transcribing Deterritorialization CONCLUSION: Mapping Out Territories Now and Into the Future

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Book SynopsisThe relationship of philosophy with Kafka's oeuvre is complex. It has been argued that Kafka's novels and stories defy philosophic extrapolation; conversely, it has also been suggested that precisely the tendency of Kafka's writings to elude discursive solution is itself a philosophical tendency, one that is somehow contributing to a wiser relationship of human beings with language. These matters are the focus of the proposed volume on Philosophy and Kafka. The proposed collection brings together essays that interrogate the relationship of philosophy and Kafka, and offer new and original interpretations. The volume obviously cannot claim completeness, but it partially does justice to the multiplicity of philosophical issues and philosophical interpretations at stake. This variety informs the composition of the volume itself. A number of essays focus on specific philosophical commentaries on Kafka's work, from Adorno's to Agamben's, from Arendt's to Benjamin's, from Deleuze and GuatTrade ReviewSeveral readings are illuminating. ... Philosophy and Kafka contains many valuable insights. ... The illuminating moments of Philosophy and Kafka will reward curious fans of Kafka's work. * Jewish Review of Books *These illuminating essays explore some of the ways in which the ideas of philosophers such as Socrates, Spinoza, Kierkegaard, and Kant are at play in Kafka's writing, and the ways in which more recent philosophers such as Adorno, Agamben, Arendt, and Benjamin have considered Kafka's work. What is more, many of the essays collected here shed light on the ways in which Kafka's own thinking can contribute to on-going philosophical debates about issues such as the conditions for identity, the nature of animality, the requirements of justice, and the moral implications and promise of certain forms of writing. Philosophy and Kafka is an important and long overdue contribution to Kafka scholarship as well as to philosophical reflection on a range of pressing issues. -- Marc LuchtThis essay collection – the first of its kind – explores a rich variety of ways in which Kafka’s writings are bound to philosophical concerns. It bridges the gap between the philosophical and the literary, highlighting how the two coexist and illuminate one another. From Socrates to Agamben, from Kierkegaard to Wittgenstein, ethics and aesthetics, logic and literature, Kafka’s prose resonates, reflects and provokes. By bringing together scholars from different disciplines, "Philosophy and Kafka" establishes fascinating new paths of enquiry into Kafka’s thinking and philosophers’ engagement with it. It allows us to understand why we continue to be captured by Kafka’s writing, standing as a testament to its relevance, and attesting to the vitality of the research it inspires. -- Uta Degner, University of SalzburgTable of ContentsIntroduction Part 1: Philosophical Investigations Chapter 1: I Don’t Want to Know that I Know: The Inversion of Socratic Ignorance in the Knowledge of the Dogs Chapter 2: Kafka’s Empty Law: Laughter and Freedom in The Trial Chapter 3: A Kafkan Sublime: Dark Poetics on the Kantian Philosophy Chapter 4: The Everyday’s Fabulous Beyond: Nonsense, Parable, and the Ethics of the Literary in Kafka and Wittgenstein Chapter 5: You’re nobody ‘til somebody loves you: Communication and the Social Destruction of Subjectivity in Kafka’s Metamorphosis Chapter 6: Kafka’s Insomnia Part 2: Philosophical Topics Chapter 7: Animal Bachelors and Animal Brides: Fabulous Metamorphosis in Kafka and Garnett Chapter 8: Kafka’s Political Animals Chapter 9: The Calamity of the Rightless: Hannah Arendt and Franz Kafka on Monsters and Members Chapter 10: Knowing Life Before the Law: Kafka, Kelsen, Derrida Part 3: Philosophical Readings Chapter 11: Anxiety and Attention: Benjamin and Others Chapter 12: On the Mimesis of Reification: Adorno’s Critical Theoretical Interpretation of Kafka Chapter 13: “In the Penal Colony” in the Philosophy of Gilles Deleuze Chapter 14: In a Messianic Gesture: Agamben’s Kafka Index About the Contributors

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Book SynopsisIn Dialogue with Godot: Waiting and Other Thoughts, Ranjan Ghosh puts together thirteen new essays on Beckett's most popular and widely read play, Waiting for Godot. Chapters are envisaged as dialogues with Godot, keeping in mind the event of waiting and other issues related to this Godot-Waiting phenomenon. The merit of this book lies in exploring this play from thirteen fresh perspectives introducing some important themes that have not been dealt previously. Contributors explore the play in reference to topics as varied as Hindu philosophy, Agamben, Kristeva, Derrida, the absence of women in the play, Aristotleanism in structural reading, and anti-existentialism. Essays ask, can we make claims to read this play outside the absurd tradition? Is it an anti-existential play? Can Beckett possibly be Indianized? How can the dialectic between waiting and delay be problematized? If Beckett was up to de-structure conventional modes of drama-writing, what connection could he possibly have witTrade ReviewGhosh has assembled 13 outstanding essays that review Beckett's most popular drama. The volume's contributors engage the play in meaningful contexts that have important implications for performance, production, and scholarship. Standout essays explore the political contexts of site-specific productions in Sarajevo and post-Katrina New Orleans; the affinities and contrasts of Godot to classical Greek tragedy; Beckett and allegory; and the psychodynamics of friendship and coupling. Beckett's attempt to redefine theater in postwar Europe is also explored, as are the ways in which Beckett's experiences in the French resistance suffuse this play and his other postwar writing. The essays contemplate the drama within a range of political and philosophical contexts, including issues of torture and human rights, Marxist and psychoanalytic thought, philosophical reflections on the eternal return, Aristotle's Poetics, poststructuralism, and Hindu philosophy. Taken together they shed contemporary light on this drama in ways that are suggestive for actors, directors, and scholars, and provide valuable insights into the criticism and practices of this most popular of Beckett's plays. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals. * CHOICE *Godot’s 'Underground Ancestry,' 'Vladimir’s Tragic Recognition,' 'The Feminine' in play, motifs of 'Speculation' and 'Infantile Politics,' editor’s Ghosh’s own placing the theme of work and play within what he has called elsewhere 'the wordling of the drama'—what a rich collection of approaches to Waiting for Godot! And as someone who works in the theatre, I also find this commentary wonderfully suggestive for both actors and directors. -- Sidney Homan, University of FloridaThis varied and provocative collection of essays on Beckett's most famous play animates new and productive dialogues with an extraordinary array of thinkers. Situating the writing and performance of Godot in a range of historical contexts, the essays involve Marx, Freud, Benjamin, Hindu philosophy, Adorno, Gramsci, Brecht, Derrida, Sontag, Foucauld, Aristotle and Agamben in intertextual engagement with this profoundly though perversely allusive drama. -- Robert Gordon, Goldsmith College, University of LondonTable of ContentsIntroduction: Dialogic-Godotic Ranjan Ghosh The Politics of Identification in Waiting for Godot Graley Herren “What have I said?” Vladimir’s Tragic Recognition Mark S. Byron Alone and Together: The Psychic Structure of the Couple in Waiting for Godot Mary Catanzaro Beckett contra Aristotle: A Choral Reading of Waiting for Godot Tom Cousineau Waiting upon each other: work and play in waiting for Godot Ranjan Ghosh Rien à faire: The Para-Messianics of Delay in Godot Stephen Barker Waiting For Nothing: Commitment, Resistance, and Godot’s Underground Ancestry Paul Sheehan Scrutinizing the feminine in Waiting for Godot: Vladimir and Estragon await their couples counsellor Art Horowitz Beckett’s Lucky Chance: Speculation in Waiting for Godot Eyal Amiran Samuel Beckett’s Playland: The Profane and Infantile Politics of Waiting for Godot Maria Margaroni ‘Who is Godot?’ Beckett and Allegory Shane Weller Culture, Politics and Human Rights in Waiting for Godot Wanda Balzano Index About the Authors

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Book SynopsisRomana Byrne is an independent scholar based in France. Formerly, she was a Research Fellow at The University of Melbourne, Australia, where she lectured in the history of queer theory, pornography and aesthetics, and sadomasochism in cinema. She has published in Criticism: A Quarterly for Literature and the Arts and Papers on Language & Literature.Trade ReviewRomana Byrne’s philosophical, historical, and literary reflections on 'aesthetic sexuality', or pleasure as a form of self- and other-creation, provides us with a radical alternative approach to sadomasochism as it has existed since the eighteenth century. It illuminates the history and culture of sexual subjectivity in exhilarating ways. -- Joanna Bourke, Professor of History, Birkbeck, University of London, UKRomana Byrne’s Aesthetic Sexuality provocatively reveals sadomasochism as a scandalous art of sexuality embedded within Western culture. Tracking the connections between sadomasochism and aesthetic philosophy, from Kant to Baudrillard, Byrne deftly negotiates the pleasures and paradoxes of sexuality on the surface – sex as a matter of practices, games, and fleeting intensities. The result subtly subverts the demand we speak our sexuality as truth, and offers the pleasure of sexuality as aesthetic self-creation. -- Benjamin Noys, Reader in English, University of Chichester, UK and author of Georges Bataille: A Critical IntroductionAesthetic Sexuality reads against the grain of standard readings of the scientia sexualis versus ars erotica distinction Foucault made famous in his History of Sexuality. From Sade to Nietzsche to contemporary fetish fashion, Byrne brilliantly uses the aesthetics of sadomasochism to reconceptualize sexuality itself. A tour de force! -- Lynne Huffer, Professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Emory University, USATable of ContentsAcknowledgements 1. Introduction | Aesthetic sexuality: a literary history of sadomasochism 2. Universal perversion and the laws of judgment: the Marquis de Sade 3. Brutal beauty: Swinburne’s Poems and Ballads and Mirbeau’s Le Jardin des supplices 4. Tragic self-shattering I: Nietzsche’s aesthetics 5. Tragic self-shattering II: delirious materialism in Bataille’s L’Érotisme and Histoire de l’œil 6. Tragic self-shattering III: mortifying metaphysics in Réage’s Histoire d’O and Berg’s L’image 7. Sadomasochism as anti-aesthetic theatre 8. Conclusion | Fashioning BDSM today Works Cited Index

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Book SynopsisNicholas Birns is Associate Professor at New York University, USA. His books include The Contemporary Spanish-American Novel (co-edited, 2013) and Theory After Theory (2010).Juan E. De Castro is an Associate Professor in Literary Studies at Eugene Lang College, The New School for Liberal Arts, New York, USA. He is the author of three books, the most recent of which is Mario Vargas Llosa: Public Intellectual in Neoliberal Latin America (2011). He is the co-editor of The Contemporary Spanish-American Novel (2013).Trade ReviewAfter a substantial introduction by Birns and De Castro, Roberto Bolaño as World Literature proceeds with eleven refreshing critical readings of Bolaño’s works in light of the notion of world literature. … [M]any of the engaged essays it contains offer innovative perspectives. Reading the articles together provides significant insights into both Bolaño’s works and the very concept of world literature. One of the common strengths of the articles lies in their critical approach to some of the most well-known theories of world literature (e.g. those elaborated by Franco Moretti, Pascale Casanova and David Damrosch) and their simultaneous exploration of new understandings of world literature construed as a literary category and a creative or critical practice. Thus, this book follows a chiastic pattern: it reads Bolaño through world literature and world literature through Bolaño. … Some of the best essays in this collection are ‘political,’ not in an ideological way but in the sense that they investigate the system underlying world literature. In this way, they strive to understand how an oeuvre like Roberto Bolaño’s both is world literature and constitutes a radical challenge to it. * Karen-Margrethe Simonsen, Aarhus University, Denmark, Recherche littéraire/Literary Research (Fall 2020) *Arguably, Roberto Bolaño as World Literature is the most significant book in the series up to now. ... The Introduction, ‘Fractured Masterpieces’ not only sets up the subject of the book in all its complexity, it could also be seen as a model for how to articulate the individual subjects and the wider, theoretical interests of World Literature. ... More than in any other volume so far, this one shows how in every single chapter a questioning of World Literature through a consideration, even close reading, of Bolaño’s works, was made into a key directive and focus. Throughout the volume questions of politics, ethics and aesthetics constantly intersect, and even though each essay on its own is worth reading, the collected volume is certainly more than just the sum of its various parts. * Journal of European Studies *Twelve chapters comprise the anthology, including the exemplary Introduction. It is the best Bolaño critical ensemble since Bolaño Salvaje (2006). * Comparative Literature Studies *Not and world literature, but as world literature, and here resides this volume's decisive and effective critical intervention. Not world literature (the tired substitute for a sociology of markets, prizes, and canonizing institutions), but rather literature as world, or rather, literature as non-world, the void that sits where the reassuring presence of the world used to be: Bolaño as the topological writer of the traumatic wound that splits totalizing imaginaries, unworlds a world turned against itself, and dislocates the very possibility of universal emancipation as the horizon for political and aesthetic agency. This urgent book is a crucial contribution to the collective process of redefining the critical and theoretical scope of world literature as a concept and a practice in need to be rescued from itself. * Mariano Siskind, Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures and Comparative Literature, Harvard University, USA *This timely collection of essays on the place of Bolaño’s oeuvre in world literature explores the Chilean author’s vision of history, his literary worlds, and the reception he has had worldwide. Essays by renowned experts analyze, through the analysis of some of Bolaño’s main works, his cosmopolitanism, the global framework in which his plots take place, and the reasons behind his impressive success as a writer that embodies Latin American literature after the Boom. Ultimately, the author emerges as a figure beyond one particular nation, political inclination, or cause. * Ignacio López-Calvo, Professor of Latin American Literature, University of California, Merced, USA *Expertly assembled and introduced by the editors, this collection offers incisive explorations of Roberto Bolaño’s politics and of his place on the complex map of world literature. Indispensable reading for anyone interested in the great Chilean author’s work, and in the cosmopolitan dimension of Latin American literature. * Maarten van Delden, Professor of Latin American Literature, University of California, Los Angeles, USA *Birns (NYU) and De Castro (Eugene Lang College, New School) present the 11 essays in this collection in three parts: "Bolan~o and World History," "Bolan~o's Literary Worlds," and "Bolan~o's Global Readers." The contributors are from the US, Ireland, Germany, China, and Chile, a geographic range that reflects the title. In the introduction, "Fractured Masterpieces," the editors write that they find Bolan~o (1953–2003) difficult to characterize politically and artistically but not canonically—that is, as globally significant. In her essay, Oswaldo Zavala describes Bolan~o's work as taking "a subversive approach to Western literary modernity as it intersects the Latin American intellectual difference." Birns notes that Bolan~o shares affinities with Melville and, even more strikingly, Twain. Noting the irony of a writer whose posthumously commodified works explore "geometries of power and economy that shape capitalist modernity," Sharae Deckard explicates Bolan~o's "paradoxical relation to world literature." Bolan~o's distaste for marketing practices did not prevent the writer from becoming profitable for the marketers. These essays will encourage readers to visit Bolan~o again or for the first time. Summing Up: Recommended. * CHOICE *Some of the best essays in this collection are “political,” not in an ideological way but in the sense that they investigate the system underlying world literature. * Recherche Littéraire *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Fractured Masterpieces Nicholas Birns (College of New Rochelle, USA) and Juan E De Castro (Eugene Lang College, The New School for Liberal Arts, USA) I. Bolaño and World History 1. On Fascism, history and evil in Roberto Bolaño Federico Finchelstein (The New School, USA) 2. “More Culture!”: The Rules of Art in Roberto Bolaño’s By Night in Chile Thomas Beebee (Pennsylvania State University, USA) 3. Politics and Ethics in Latin America: On Roberto Bolaño Juan E. De Castro (The New School,USA) 4. The Repolitization of the Latin American Shore: Roberto Bolaño and the Dispersion of “World Literature” Oswaldo Zavala (City University of New York, USA) II. Bolaño’s Literary Worlds 5. Bolaño, Ethics, and the Experts Will H. Corral (Independent Scholar) 6. Considerations on the Real and Reality in Juan Luis Martínez’s La nueva novela and in Roberto Bolaño’s The Savage Detectives Patricia Espinosa H. (Instituto de Estética, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile) 7. Global Bolaño: Reading, Writing and Publishing in a Neoliberal World José Enrique Navarro (Wichita State University, USA) III. Bolaño’s Global Readers 8. Mocking World Literature and Canon Parodies in Roberto Bolaño’s Fiction Benjamin Loy (University of Köln, Germany) 9. On Depoliticized Politics: Roberto Bolaño’s Reception in China Teng Wei (South China Normal University, China) 10. Black Dawn: Roberto Bolaño as (North) American Writer Nicholas Birns (College of New Rochelle, USA) 11. Roberto Bolaño and the Remapping of World-Literature Sharae Deckard (University College Dublin,UK) Index

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Book SynopsisAnat Matar is Senior Lecturer of Philosophy at Tel Aviv University, Israel. She is the author of From Dummett's Philosophical Perspective (1997) and Modernism and the Language of Philosophy (2006), and co-editor (with Anat Biletzki) of The Story of Analytic Philosophy: Plot and Heroes (1998) and (with Abeer Baker) of Threat: Palestinian Political Prisoners in Israel (2011).Trade ReviewThis original, high-caliber collection explores the grammar of twentieth century 'modernism' from James to Schoenberg to Greenberg, using Wittgenstein as a lens. The themes are timely and deep: radical self-criticism as method; inevitable tensions facing phenomenological attentiveness to form in logic, psychology, and the 'ordinary'; philosophy’s relation to literature, poetry, theatre and music; mysticism, pessimism, and certainty. * Juliet Floyd, Professor of Philosophy, Boston University, USA *Analytic purists, with whom he has been associated, will be sceptical about drawing connections between Wittgenstein's philosophy – and 20th century philosophy in general – and the artistic modernism of his time. From diverse perspectives informed both by philosophy and the arts, contributors to this volume refute that scepticism. They elucidate the tantalising relationships that arise from Wittgenstein's radical self-criticism, his concern with language and the arts, and the intensified development of the Enlightenment project that modernism represents. * Andy Hamilton, Professor of Philosophy, Durham University, UK *Table of ContentsList of Contributors Abbreviations Series Preface Introduction: Giving the Viewer an Idea of the Landscape Anat Matar (Tel Aviv University, Israel) Part I – Conceptualizing Wittgenstein 1. Language, Expressibility and the Mystical John Skorupski (University of St. Andrews, UK) 2. Modernism and Philosophical Language: Phenomenology, Wittgenstein and the Everyday Oskari Kuusela (University of East-Anglia, UK) 3. Wittgenstein and 'Ordinary Language Philosophy' Hans-Johann Glock (University of Zurich, Switzerland) and Javier Kalhat (University of Zurich, Switzerland) 4. Wittgenstein's Modernist Political Philosophy Thomas Wallgren (University of Helsinki, Finland) 5. Too Cavellian a Wittgenstein: Wittgenstein’s Certainty, Cavell’s Scepticism Danièle Moyal-Sharrock (University of Hertfordshire, UK) Part II – Wittgenstein and Aesthetics 6. Wittgenstein, Musil and the Austrian Modernism Pierre Fasula (Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, France) 7. 'We should be Seeing Life Itself': Back to the Rough Ground of the Stage Élise Marrou (Paris Sorbonne University, France) 8. A Confluence of Modernisms: Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigation and Henry James’s Literary Language Garry L. Hagberg (Bard College, USA) 9. Modernism with Spirit: Wittgenstein and the Sense of the Whole Antonia Soulez (University Paris-8 St. Denis, France) 10. Wittgenstein and the Art of Defamiliarization David Schalkwyk (Queen Mary, University of London, UK) Part III – Glossary Logic Sebastian Sunday Grève (Queen’s College, University of Oxford, UK) Picture Stefan Brandt (University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, Gremany) Grammar Phil Hutchinson (Manchester Metropolitan University, UK) and Rupert Read (University of East Anglia, UK) Use Harvey Cormier (State University of New York at Stony Brook, USA) Psychological Concepts Yuval Lurie (Ben-Gurion University, Israel) Ethics Ben Ware (University of London and Kingston University, UK) Art David Macarthur (University of Sydney, Australia) Index

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