Literary theory Books
Edinburgh University Press Gothic Film
Book SynopsisThis anthology explores the resilience and ubiquity of the Gothic in cinema from its earliest days to its most contemporary iterations.
£90.25
Edinburgh University Press Renaissance Personhood
Book SynopsisUnfolding as a series of materially oriented studies ranging from chairs, machines and doors to trees, animals and food, this book retells the story of Renaissance personhood as one of material relations and embodied experience, rather than of emergent notions of individuality and freedom.
£85.50
Edinburgh University Press Towards Romantic Periodical Studies
Book SynopsisThis book pioneers a subfield of Romantic periodical studies, distinct from its neighbours in adjacent historical periods.
£85.50
Edinburgh University Press Irish Drama and the Other Revolutions
Book SynopsisIrish Drama and the Other Revolutions 'shows how Irish playwrights mediated between the sexual and the socialist revolutions, and traces their impact on left theatre in Europe and America from the 1890s to the 1960s.
£27.54
Edinburgh University Press Is Shylock Jewish
Book SynopsisIs Shylock Jewish' studies Shakespeare's extensive use of stories from the Hebrew Bible in 'The Merchant of Venice', and argues that Shylock and his daughter Jessica draw on recognizably Jewish ways of engaging with those narratives throughout the play.
£27.54
Edinburgh University Press Hieroglyphic Modernisms
Book SynopsisHieroglyphic Modernisms' explores this conjunction of hieroglyphs and modernist fiction and film, revealing how the challenge of new media spurred a fertile interplay among practitioners of old and new media forms.
£27.54
Edinburgh University Press Queer Communism and the Ministry of Love
Book SynopsisQueer Communism and the Ministry of Loveseeks to transform current narratives of midcentury literary, cultural, and intellectual history from a queer Marxist perspective.
£22.79
Edinburgh University Press Modernism and Still Life
Book SynopsisThis book takes an original approach to still life in modern literature and the visual arts by examining the potential for movement and transformation in the idea of stillness and the ordinary.
£90.25
Edinburgh University Press Lyotard and Politics
Book SynopsisStuart Sim explores how Lyotard's brand of pragmatism can provide a focus for political theory and action in our cultural climate, especially in light of the dramatic resurgence of right-wing extremism.
£80.75
Edinburgh University Press Lyotard and Politics
Book SynopsisStuart Sim explores how Lyotard's brand of pragmatism can provide a focus for political theory and action in our cultural climate, especially in light of the dramatic resurgence of right-wing extremism.
£26.59
Edinburgh University Press On Literature and Consolation
Book SynopsisProvides a deeper understanding of the comforts of reading literature
£90.25
Edinburgh University Press The Edinburgh Companion to Irish Modernism
Book SynopsisThe Edinburgh Companion to Irish Modernism presents a fresh perspective on received understandings of Irish modernism.
£153.00
Edinburgh University Press D. H. Lawrence and the Literary Marketplace
Book SynopsisExamines how D. H. Lawrence established a professional writing career.Trade Review"Grice provides a finely-tuned assessment of how Lawrence shaped his identity as a writer early on, through strategies and negotiations, and assistance from professional and social networks. For a comprehensive account of how Lawrence developed his talents and attained legitimacy in the literary marketplace, this book is key." -Judith Ruderman, Duke University
£18.99
Edinburgh University Press The Poetics of Friendship in Early Modern Spain
Book SynopsisThis book shows how the AristotelianCiceronian notion of perfect male friendship operates as an independent poetic force within the development of Spanish literature in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.
£85.50
Edinburgh University Press The Modernist Exoskeleton
Book SynopsisFocusing on the writing of Wyndham Lewis, D. H. Lawrence, H.D. and Samuel Beckett, this book uncovers a shared fascination with the aesthetic possibilities of the insect body its adaptive powers, distinct stages of growth and swarming formations.
£90.25
Edinburgh University Press Elizabeth Bowen
Book SynopsisFrom experiments in language and identity to innovations in the novel, the short story and life narratives, the contributors discuss the way in which Bowen's work straddles, informs and defies the existing definitions of modernist and postmodernist literature which dominate twentieth-century writing.
£85.50
Edinburgh University Press The Ideas in Stories
Book SynopsisArgues against the repeated emphasis on literary form and for the artistic importance of literary content
£90.25
Edinburgh University Press Writing Shame
Book SynopsisThrough readings of an array of recent texts literary and popular, fictional and autofictional, realist and experimental this book maps out a contemporary, Western, shame culture.
£90.25
Edinburgh University Press Beckett and Embodiment
Book SynopsisThis book argues that the abject, decrepit body in Beckett does not signal the impossibility of agency but demands its reconceptualisation. Analysing the representation of the body in relation to the environment in Beckett?s work, the author interrogates the power to do and act. Separating dynamic interaction from willed intention, Amanda Dennis shows how Beckett?s oeuvre refashions subjectivity in dialogue with a disintegrating environment. The book provides a phenomenological reading of Beckett to argue that sensation and embodiment support our interactions with our material world, enabling possibilities for embodied agency in collaboration with our physical and linguistic surroundings.Trade Review"Attending to the meaning-making potential of the body in space," Amanda Dennis demonstrates the continuing value of Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology for an understanding of Beckett's posthuman ecology. Beckett and Embodiment is a timely and important study written with a keen and critical intelligence."" -Professor Jonathan Boulter, Western University
£19.94
Edinburgh University Press Samuel Beckett and Technology
Book SynopsisThis collection of essays is the first comprehensive discussion of the role technology plays in shaping Beckett's trademark aesthetics.Trade Review"Beckett's oeuvre is probably unique in exploring the question concerning technology across so many different genres and media: fiction, drama, poetry, radio, television and film. Collecting together contributions from a diverse range of scholars, this excellent volume illuminates Beckett's use of established and new technologies to probe the shapes and limits of human experience. It also shows how the latest technologies are playing their part in developing new understandings of both the historicity and ongoing contemporaneity of Beckett's work. " -Laura Salisbury, University of Exeter
£24.69
Edinburgh University Press Reading Dylan Thomas
Book SynopsisReading Dylan Thomas attends in detail to the problems and pleasures of deciphering Thomas in the twenty-first century, teasing out his debts and effects, tracing his influence on later artists, and suggesting ways to understand his own idiosyncratic reading practices.
£26.59
Edinburgh University Press Rural Modernity in Britain
Book SynopsisRural Modernity in Britain argues that the rural areas of Britain were impacted by modernisation just as much if not more than urban and suburban areas.
£24.69
Edinburgh University Press Material Poetics in Hemispheric America
Book SynopsisThis book examines poets and artists in the Americas during the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries to show how they worked to make language into material objects and material objects into language.
£85.50
Edinburgh University Press The Readers Joyce
Book SynopsisRethinks the relationships between author, reader, and text in literature and criticism, through a study of James Joyce.
£18.99
Edinburgh University Press Alison Light Inside History
Book SynopsisA collection of thought-provoking essays spanning thirty-five years of Alison Light's work.
£18.99
Edinburgh University Press NeoAvantGardes
Book SynopsisA systematic transnational investigation of post-war literary experiments in Europe and the Americas.Trade Review"Neo-Avant-Gardes provides nuanced critical perspectives on the resurgent avant-gardes active in Europe and elsewhere globally during the long 1960s". With particular focus on literary intermedia and experimental writing, the authors set out new directions in the theory and history of the neo-avant-gardes, beyond previous dismissals and defenses."" -Tyrus Miller, University of California, Irvine
£28.49
Edinburgh University Press Counterpoetics of Modernity
Book SynopsisProvides a new approach to contemporary Irish poetry.
£127.44
Edinburgh University Press Counterpoetics of Modernity
Book SynopsisProvides a new approach to contemporary Irish poetry.Trade Review"The new things that happen happen somewhere, not nowhere, and that which is counter, is counter to some specific set of circumstances. Lloyd's great strength here is to bring out into the light of critical examination the specifics of a distinctly Irish counterpoetics. in a book that I believe will be seen as a key moment in our understanding of what is most vital in Irish poetry." -Billy Mills
£18.99
Edinburgh University Press Postcolonial Fiction and Colonial Time
Book SynopsisPostcolonial Fiction and Colonial Time reveals the fundamental, constitutive role of the temporal dimensions of waiting in colonial regimes of time, as well as in postcolonial framings of time, history and agency.Trade Review"In this theoretically invigorating study, Amanda Lagji offers comparative close readings of work by authors from Conrad to Ishmael Beah, Armah to Coetzee (amongst others), that presses reset on our tendency to read waiting as stasis, instead recasting apparent impasse as productively disruptive to hegemonic temporalities. A timely and important work." -Andrew van der Vlies, University of Adelaide
£80.75
Edinburgh University Press Postcolonial Fiction and Colonial Time
Book SynopsisPostcolonial Fiction and Colonial Time reveals the fundamental, constitutive role of the temporal dimensions of waiting in colonial regimes of time, as well as in postcolonial framings of time, history and agency.
£18.99
Edinburgh University Press Derrida Reads Shakespeare
Book SynopsisThis book brings to light Derrida's rich and thought-provoking discussions of Shakespearean drama.
£24.69
Edinburgh University Press Beastly Modernisms
Book SynopsisThe intersection of modernist studies and critical animal studies is a new, progressive field that raises crucial questions about what it means to live with animals in modernity. Beastly Modernisms gathers essays from leading figures in the field alongside emerging scholars who, together, revisit canonical figures and decentre the canons and geographies of modernism. Grounded in interdisciplinary approaches, the contributions work with cultural history and theoretical frameworks to unearth the multispecies dynamics of twentieth-century literature and culture. The chapters in Beastly Modernisms present a diverse range of approaches and topics, exploring dogs in Virginia Woolf to Republican China, animals and gender in surrealism to African-American texts, Sámi reindeer to rat propaganda, modernist jellyfish to metamodernist beasts, 1940s poetry to Indian Partition stories, charting the current and future state of modernist animal studies.
£23.74
Edinburgh University Press Blanchot Ecology and Contemporary Fiction
Book Synopsis
£18.99
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Cigarette Lighter
Book SynopsisObject Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Smokers, survivalists, teenagers, collectors. The cigarette lighter is a charged, complex, yet often entirely disposable object that moves across these various groups of people, acquiring and emitting different meanings while always supplying its primary function, that of ignition. While the lighter may seem at first a niche objectonly for old fashioned cigarette smokersin this book Jack Pendarvis explodes the lighter as something with deep history, as something with quirky episodes in cultural contexts, and as something that dances with wide ranging taboos and traditions. Pendarvis shows how the lighter tarries with the cheapest ends of consumer culture as much as it displays more profound dramas of human survival, technological advances, and aesthetics.Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.Trade ReviewI didn’t realize how much I needed this book. It brought back terrible memories of an uncle dead in Vietnam, nothing but his Zippos to imagine him by, and the beautiful boy who broke my heart, leaving me with a carpenter pencil and a tiny lighter I could hang from my keychain (though I never did; that would have been much too painful). And that’s just the start! Cigarette Lighter is worth it for the index alone, but there's so much more. Like this gem: 'Your cigarette lighter represents your soul, so you get drunk and give it away to your pal, or your pal steals it without compunction. Either way, you can’t hang onto it forever.' Ah, such is life. * Mary Miller, author of The Last Days of California *This book is a Zippo fueled by the remarkable mind of Jack Pendarvis. A blend of histories—movies and TV, war and cars—Cigarette Lighter is so good I took up smoking. * Chris Offutt, author of My Father, the Pornographer *Cleverly disguising itself as a Rabelaisian account of the cigarette lighter in our films and in our lives, this raucous object lesson takes as its real subject, the indefatigable Ted Ballard—octogenarian, curator of the former National Lighter Museum in Guthrie, Oklahoma, collector, misanthrope, raconteur, and consummate charmer—and becomes, in the end, a sly meditation on impermanence, wherein, in the words of Jack Pendarvis, the lighter finds out what the match already knows. * Pam Houston, author of Contents May Have Shifted *Table of ContentsPrologue 1. Taming Fire 2. Age of the Lighter 3. Lighter vs. Match 4. Cars 5. The Lighter in Literature and Popular Culture 6. Romance and Death: Cigarette Lighters Today Index
£9.49
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Eye Chart
Book SynopsisObject Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Desert nomads tested their vision by distinguishing a pair of stars. But we have since created more disquieting ways to test the strength of the eyes.Reading the eye chart is an exercise in failure, since it only gets interesting when you cannot read any further. It is the opposite of interpretative reading, like one does with literature. When you have finished reading an eye chart, what exactly have you even read? From a Spanish cleric's Renaissance guide to testing vision, to a Dutch ophthalmologist's innovation in optical tech, to the witty subversion of the eye chart in advertising and popular culture, William Germano's Eye Chart lets people see the eye chart at last.Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.Trade ReviewGermano’s style is conversational yet also deeply informative. He manages to turn font design and typography into a fascinating history about the diagnosis of vision. * Times Higher Education *I can see people in the ocular industry finding much that's new on these pages, and as for the average reader ... they have a veritable bijou box of delights ... It's a great little read about something you wouldn't expect to find fun in the exploration of. * The Bookbag *William Germano’s Eye Chart is a surprisingly compelling and at times quite poetic examination of this now ubiquitous technological innovation … Germano begins his exploration of the eye chart with a simple question: “What can you see?” Soon, though, the reader understands that things are more complex than simply providing a concrete response to a clear question. It’s not just about identifying objects near and far. It’s also about why we see, when we see, how clearly we see, and what we understand about the things we see … If this medical innovation has ever been intimidating, or a measure of increasing failure as you slip into your final years, Germano’s Eye Chart should be a graceful reminder that the art of vision has many levels. * PopMatters *As one who has failed countless eye tests, I had no idea that my condition was metaphysical. Then I read William Germano’s comprehensive and witty history of this amazing object. There it is, at the crossroads of vision and blindness, clarity and obscurity, scientific objectivity and subjectivity. Germano shows that the humble eye chart is everywhere, a central object, image, and text in the world of visual culture. His book is a feast of learning, precision, and humor. * W. J. T. Mitchell, Professor of English and Art History, University of Chicago, USA, and author of What Do Pictures Want? *Table of ContentsList of Figures Acknowledgments 1. What can you see? 2. Reading stars, reading stones 3. How to choose eyeglasses (circa 1623) 4. The persistence of memory 5. Eleven lines, nine letters 6. Reading close up 7. Looking for trouble 8. Eye terror 9. Eye poetry 10. Optical allusions 11. The bottom line Notes Index
£9.49
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Jet Lag
Book SynopsisChristopher J. Lee is Associate Professor of History at Lafayette College, USA. He has published four previous books and travels frequently.Trade ReviewLee has a gift for making surprising yet apposite associations ... He is best, though, when contemplating the "global capitalist spectacle" of airports, with their unifying corporate flags for individual airlines and the ubiquitous brands displayed down polished corridors. * Times Literary Supplement *In this beguiling book, Christopher J. Lee opens up the whole panorama of jetting off, arriving, and sleeping it off. From T. S. Eliot to Dalí, from Chaplin to Lost in Translation, he shows how jet lag is the deep dark symptom of modern life's struggle with time. Jet Lag is a profound and witty meditation on a key secret of modernity. * Enda Duffy, Arnhold Presidential Department Chair, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA, and author of The Speed Handbook *Jet Lag is a revelatory and compelling meditation on the temporal and affective dislocations of global capitalism. Christopher J. Lee lucidly maps the dissonant incompatibility between human beings and technological acceleration but he also insists on the importance of our imaginative cultural and aesthetic responses to the many systemic derangements of individual experience. * Jonathan Crary, Meyer Schapiro Professor of Modern Art and Theory, Columbia University, USA, and author of 24/7 *Jet Lag goes beyond the expected, leaving behind the simple science of this curious phenomenon to explore intriguing tangents inspired by the subject. A philosophical musing on the importance of sleep, a short essay exploring our relationship with flying, and even a musing upon jet lag as not only a physical phenomenon but a spiritual one as well…. Lee manages to encompass quite a lot in less than 200 pages, delving into the consequences of modern convenience … Jet Lag is no mere trivia book or brief primer on the subject; it’s one man pondering the relationship between humanity, gravity, time, and space. Four stars. * Tulsa Book Review *Table of ContentsIntroduction: The Esperanto of Jet Lag 1. The Romantic Machine 2. Babel's Clock 3. Circadian Rhythm and Blues 4. Heaven Up Here Conclusion: Jet Lag as a Way of Life Acknowledgments List of Illustrations Notes Index
£9.49
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Burger
Book SynopsisCarol J. Adams is the author of numerous books, including the seminal The Sexual Politics of Meat (Bloomsbury Revelations). She is the co-editor of several path-breaking anthologies, including most recently Ecofeminism: Feminist Intersections with Other Animals and the Earth (co-edited with Lori Gruen, Bloomsbury, 2014) and The Carol J. Adams Reader (2016). Her work is the subject of two recent anthologies, Defiant Daughters: 21 Women of Art, Activism, Animals, and The Sexual Politics of Meat and The Art of the Animal: 14 Women Artists Explore The Sexual Politics of Meat, in which a new generation of feminists, artists, and activists respond to Adams' groundbreaking work. www.caroljadams.comTrade ReviewBurger draws on an accessible combination of history and pop culture to reconsider America’s obsession with the molded-ground-beef sandwich … [It] explore[s] alternative modes of offering cultural critique, pushing against traditional divisions between academic and popular writing, and between history and critique, in search of new, more palatable forms of packaging the unsettling stories behind the Anglo-American diet. * Humanimalia *Adams provides more fascinating details and insights in this compact monograph than most readers can digest in one reading … Ultimately, Burger is a work of advocacy as well as literature and cultural analysis. * New Orleans Review *Best known for her groundbreaking The Sexual Politics of Meat, Adams would seem the least likely person to write about hamburgers with her philosophically lurid antipathy to carnivory. But if the point is to deconstruct this iconic all-American meal, then she is the woman for the job. * Times Higher Education *Burger is a small book with a big punch … Adams approaches her topic as an animal rights advocate as well as a feminist. She reminds us what the ‘everyday object’ of a hamburger really is: ‘The burger — minced, macerated, ground — is the renamed, reshaped food product furthest away from the animal.’ In this way, taking into account the lives of cows, as well as women, Adams convincingly explores the ‘violence at the heart of the hamburger.' * NPR: 13.7 Cosmos and Culture *It's tempting to say that Burger is a literary meal that fills the reader's need, but that's the essence of Adams' quick, concise, rich exploration of the role this meat (or meatless) patty has played in our lives. No matter our predilections or the political implications that often go with what we choose to consume, it's important to understand all sides of the matter … The Object Lessons series … continues to provide great food for thought. The burger … [is] an adaptable and rich subject that Adams handles with energy, expertise, and good humor. * PopMatters *Burger offers a thoughtful homage to the unsustainable modernist solution to protein delivery. Adams does not lose sight of the cultural importance of the burger’s traditional glory, but she does offer an adventurous reckoning with its impact on the planet. As the climate changes, what will take the place of ground beef in our hearts and minds? Among other things, books like this. * James Hamblin, MD, senior editor at The Atlantic and the author of If Our Bodies Could Talk: A Guide to Operating and Maintaining a Human Body *Carol J. Adams has written a penetrating meditation on the bronze monument of all American food icons, the burger. Keenly observed, richly annotated, and sometimes fierce, this book examines the identity of the hamburger, along the way unraveling a fascinating tangle of American capitalism, environmental policy, and cultural assimilation—nothing less than the messy, scratch-and-kick pursuit of collective American hungers. Adams shows how food is never just food; it always has a beating symbolic heart. * Amy Thielen, chef, TV cook, and author of The New Midwestern Table and Give a Girl a Knife *Feminist Carol J. Adams – the luminary behind The Sexual Politics of Meat – is changing the social justice landscape once again with Burger … Burger provides a long-overdue analysis of everything from the misogynistic roots of this iconic American meal to the future of the burger (spoiler: it’s vegan). * VegNews *This little book … will be treasured by its readers. Highly recommended. * The Peaceable Table *Based on meticulous, and comprehensive, research, Adams has packed a stunning, gripping expose into these few pages – one that may make you rethink your relationship with this food. Five stars. * San Francisco Book Review *Table of Contents1. Citizen Burger 2. Hamburger 3. Cow Burger 4. Woman Burger 5. Creutzfeldt-Jakob Burger and Other Modernist Hamburger Identity Crises 6. Veggie Burger 7. Moon Shot Burger Afterword: Slippage Acknowledgments List of Illustrations Notes Index
£9.49
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Doctor
Book SynopsisObject Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. A 3-year-old asks her physician father about his job, and his inability to provide a succinct and accurate answer inspires a critical look at the profession of modern medicine. In sorting through how patients, insurance companies, advertising agencies, filmmakers, and comedians misconstrue a doctor's role, Andrew Bomback, M.D., realizes that even doctors struggle to define their profession. As the author attempts to unravel how much of doctoring is role-playing, artifice, and bluffing, he examines the career of his father, a legendary pediatrician on the verge of retirement, and the health of his infant son, who is suffering from a vague assortment of gastrointestinal symptoms. At turns serious, comedic, analytical, and confessional, Doctor offers an unflinching look at what it means to be a physician today.Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in Trade ReviewThis little gem should be required reading included in all medical schools as a reference for lessons in empathy for first- and last-year medical students, and for anyone who watches and is wary of the changes that are taking place in healthcare. Five stars. * Manhattan Book Review *Sweetly composed … As much a tribute to the legacy of his pediatrician father as it is an examination of the healing arts … Bomback covers a lot of territory in this small volume … It's a quick and understandable read that offers doorways to many other avenues worthy of deeper exploration. * PopMatters *With intelligence and humor, Andrew Bomback shows how human beings cope with issues of power and vulnerability. Doctor is an insightful read for anyone who's been on either end of the stethoscope. * Amy Fusselman, author of Idiophone (2018) and The Pharmacist's Mate (2001) *A disarming, candid, precise meditation on the inescapable role that 'complication' or 'luck'—otherwise known as 'fate'—plays in the life of any doctor or patient or, indeed, any human. * David Shields, author of The Thing About Life Is That One Day You’ll Be Dead (2008) *Table of ContentsIntroduction 1. The Fourth Wall 2. My Favorite Types of Patients 3. I Have Good News and Bad News 4. You Get Better Because We Are Better 5. Doctors at Home 6. Texters and Emailers and Tweeters 7. What Are Their Names? 8. Highly Attentive Medicine 9. It’s Complicated 10. And It Will Last Forever 11. The Business of Medicine 12. A Diagnosis (Something to Do) 13. Everything You Say Is Important to Me 14. Harp Lies 15. The Longer You Stay, the Longer You Stay 16. The Future Is Already Here 17. History and Physical 18. Don’t Worry Acknowledgments Notes Index
£9.49
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Gin
Book SynopsisObject Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Gin tastes like Christmas to some and rotten pine chips to others, but nearly everyone familiar with the spirit holds immediate gin nostalgia. Although early medical textbooks treated it as a healing agent, early alchemists (as well as their critics) claimed gin's base was a path to immortalityand also Satan's tool. In more recent times, the gin trade consolidated the commercial and political power of nations and prompted a social campaign against women. Gin has been used successfully as a defense for murder; blamed for massive unrest in 18th-century England; and advertised for as an abortifacient. From its harshest proto-gin distillation days to the current smooth craft models, gin plays a powerful cultural role in film, music, and literatureone that is arguably older, broader, and more complex than any other spirit. Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay seriTrade ReviewIn this expansive volume, Shonna Milliken Humphrey traces the history of gin, exploring the ways it’s been imbibed and the other uses it’s had throughout human history — some of which may surprise you. * Inside Hook *The book is far from a staid account – strange history, trivia, recipes and anecdotes abound, and Humphrey weaves autobiographical episodes throughout, making for an engaging read. * Portland Press Herald *I loved this book even more than I love gin, which is saying a lot. William Blake found a world in a grain of sand, but here Shonna Milliken Humphrey finds the whole universe in a juniper berry. By turns erudite and hilarious, thoughtful and provocative, Shonna shows us the history of the spirit, and—at times—her own heart. One of the most delightful books I’ve ever read. * Jennifer Finney Boylan, Author of Good Boy and She's Not There *This book is written in a light and fun way. Humphrey does a good job of giving you a quick overview to the history of gin, its origins, and evolution ... as a quick intro, and potential stocking filler this book works well. * Irish Tech News *This riveting little pocket-sized book about gin provides excellent rumination for the festive season. * The Australian Women's Weekly *Table of Contents1. Gin and Juice: An Introduction 2. A Potent Three-Letter Etymology 3. The Basics: Juniper 4. The Basics: Distillation 5. Class and Type 6. The Great Style Divide 7. Dutch Courage and the British Navy 8. The British Gin Craze 9. Ice Harvest, American Style 10. Gincidents 11. Portraiture and Visuals 12. Lyrics and Verse 13. Film and Literature 14. Ginaissance Acknowledgments Index
£9.49
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Bird
Book SynopsisObject Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Hope, as Emily Dickinson famously wrote, is the thing with feathers. Erik Anderson, on the other hand, regards our obsession with birds as too sentimental, too precious. Birds don't express hope. They express themselves. But this tension between the versions of nature that lodge in our minds and the realities that surround us is the central theme of Bird. This is no field guide. It's something far more unusual and idiosyncratic, balancing science with story, anatomy with metaphor, habitat with history. Anderson illuminates the dark underbelly of our bird fetish and offers a fresh, alternative vision of one of nature's most beloved objects.Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.Trade ReviewAnderson follows the trail of fallen tail feathers across the grid, articulating his findings with an undeniable personal touch, and a philosophical sting that leaves you wondering, ‘what made us fall so deeply in love with birds? Why did it stick? What is beauty?’ among other considerations. Anderson is the lead explorer in a journey that, for many, is long overdue. Before we know it, the journey extends farther than bird-watching and observation, and we are left looking at nature with the absence of our human goggles. * 433 Magazine *“In his engaging writing style, Anderson skillfully introduces the reader to the spectacular world of birds…” * San Francisco Book Review *From tiny corpses to obsessive scientists, hot sauce on the Gulf and tears in the Hall of Asian Animals, Bird is at once a quirky natural history and a personal journey, one that says as much about humanity as about the feathered creatures we have eaten, shot, studied, extincted, protected, and, sometimes, watched. As I write these words, science tells us North American bird populations have declined by a third. Reading this book is one of the steps we can take toward giving birds back to the air that belongs, first, to them. * Christopher Cokinos, Associate Professor of English, University of Arizona, USA, and author of Hope Is the Thing with Feathers: A Personal Chronicle of Vanished Birds (2009) and Bodies, of the Holocene (2013) *Table of Contents1 Put a Bird on It 2 The Hater’s Guide to Birds 3 The Buoy Bird 4 The Hater’s Guide to Birds 5 What a Name Can Do 6 The Hater’s Guide to Birds 7 There Never Was a Bird Acknowledgments Index
£9.49
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Recipe
Book SynopsisObject Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.Recipe reveals the surprising lessons that recipes teach, in addition to the obvious instructions on how to prepare a dish or perform a process. These include lessons in hospitality, friendship, community, family and ethnic heritage, tradition, nutrition, precision and order, invention and improvisation, feasting and famine, survival and seduction and love. A recipe is a signature, as individual as the cook's fingerprint; a passport to travel the world without leaving the kitchen; a lifeline for people in hunger and in want; and always a means to expand one's worldview, if not waistline.Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.Trade ReviewFascinating. . . . [Bloom] explains how recipes unite us, contain lessons about hospitality, and can be a signature as individual as fingerprints. * Globe and Mail *Lynn Bloom’s Recipe celebrates the complications and contradictions, the serious and play, the bounty and scarcity, represented by the simple instructions that put food on the table. This book, like the object itself, 'exists as much in the imagination' as on the plate, a satisfying examination of the marvelous 'process and promise' of the humble recipe. * Karen Babine, author of All the Wild Hungers: A Season of Cooking and Cancer and Water and What We Know: Following the Roots of a Northern Life *A really great read. * Randomly Yours, Alex *Table of ContentsIntroduction: The Secret Life of Recipes 1. “First, Turn and Face the Stove.” The Recipe as an Instruction Guide 2. “You say toma¯to, I say tomahto”: The Recipe as Conversation 3. A Taste of Home: The Recipe for Comfort Cooking in Tough Times 4. Joys of Cooking—and Eating: The Great American Thanksgiving Celebration Recipe 5. “Please, sir, I want some more.” The Recipe as a Manifestation of Power, Politics Poverty, and Punishment 6. Play With Your Food, the Recipe as Jazz Lagniappe: The Best Blueberry Pie Index
£9.49
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Perfume
Book SynopsisObject Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.Our sense of smell is crucial to our survival. We can smell fear, disease, food. Fragrance is also entertainment. We can smell an expensive bottle of perfume at a high-end department store. Perhaps it reminds us of our favorite aunt. A memory in a bottle is a powerful thing. Megan Volpert''s Perfume carefully balances the artistry with the science of perfume. The science takes us into the neurology of scent receptors, how taste is mostly smell, the biology of illnesses that impact scent sense, and the chemistry of making and copying perfume. The artistry of perfume involves the five scent families and symbolism, subjectivity in perfume preference, perfume marketing strategies, iconic scents and perfumers, why the industry is so secretive, and Volpert''s own experiments with making perfume. Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic<Trade ReviewFascinating. * Zoomer *Perfume is an enthusiastic exploration worthy of its complex subject, pointing to mysteries related to the art and science of fragrance and welcoming newcomers to revel in them — with the understanding that some may never be solved. * Elizabeth Barrial, Founder and Head Perfumer, Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab *A well-researched delight. * Glam Adelaide *Table of ContentsIntroduction 1. Science 2. Literature 3. Space 4. Time 5. Technology 6. Performance 7. Self 8. Other Selected Bibliography Index
£9.49
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Theodor Fontane
Book SynopsisWhat happens when fashionable forms of unserious speech prove to be contagious, when they adulterate and weaken communicative spheres that rely on honesty, trust, and sincerity? Demonstrating how the tension between irony and avowal constitutes a central conflict in Fontane's works, this book argues that his best-known society novels play out a struggle between the incompatible demands of these two modes of speaking. Read in this light, the novels identify an irreconcilable discrepancy between word and deed as both the root of emotional discord and the proximate cause of historical and political upheaval. Given the alarm since 2016 over unreliability, falsehood, and indifference to truth, it is now easier to perceive in Fontane's novels a profound concern about language that is not sincere and not meant to be taken literally. For Fontane, irony exemplifies a discrepancy between language and meaning, a loosening of the ethical bond between words and the things to which they refer. HTrade Review[Theodor Fontane] suggests intriguing critical and theoretical reorientations. * The German Quarterly *An original and invigorating approach to the social novels of Theodor Fontane, this sensitive study examines how Fontane’s use of language traverses the gradations between avowal and irony. Tucker reveals that this 19th-century German novelist was a sharp observer and critic of the ‘Berlin idiom’ and its historical consequences. He demonstrates that, in the end and despite all his ironic play with language, Fontane seeks accuracy and reliability in human conversation, a ‘tighter . . . connection between words and things.’ Tucker’s insightful parsing of Fontane’s brilliant engagement with language inspires us to read these novels anew amid the delusions and confusions of our own ‘post-truth’ moment. * Lynne Tatlock, Hortense and Tobias Lewin Distinguished Professor in the Humanities and Director of Comparative Literature, Washington University in St. Louis, USA *In this important study, Brian Tucker examines the tension between serious and ironic language in Theodor Fontane’s work. By showing how Foucault’s concept of avowal can serve as an antidote to corrosive irony, Tucker demonstrates the ways in which Fontane’s fiction exposes the corruption of language in his contemporary Prussian society. Tucker develops his argument through lucid readings of Fontane’s major novels, challenging along the way the common assumption that linguistic decadence is the inevitable byproduct of historical change. The book makes a major contribution to Fontane scholarship and shows why Fontane’s writings continue to resonate deeply today. * Todd Kontje, Distinguished Professor and Professor of German and Comparative Literature, University of California at San Diego, USA *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Note on Editions and Translations Introduction 1. The Dilemma of Choice in Irrungen, Wirrungen 2. The Broken Word: On the Rhetoric of Trust and Honor in Schach von Wuthenow 3. Graf Petöfy and the Empty Vow 4. L’Adultera, Adulteration, and Avowal 5. Unwiederbringlich, or the Impotence of Being Earnest 6. Haunting Ambivalence: The Rhetorical Education of Effi Briest 7. All Talk: In Lieu of a Conclusion, Stechlin Bibliography Index
£28.99
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Understanding Nancy Understanding Modernism
Book SynopsisOver the past three decades, Jean-Luc Nancy has become one of the most celebrated contemporary philosophers. His remarkably diverse body of work, which deals with such topics as post-Heideggerian ontology, Christian painting, the experience of drunkenness, heart transplants, contemporary cinema and the problem of freedom, is entirely immersed in modernity, as he puts it. Within this plural framework, art which he explicitly defines as a modern construct plays a singular role in that it is the very prism through which he explores the problems of sense and feeling in general, particularly as they relate to our experience of modernity. The contributors to Understanding Nancy, Understanding Modernism fully delve into the heretofore under-acknowledged and under-explored modernism of Nancy's writings on philosophy and the arts through close readings of his key works as well as broader essays on the relationship between his thought and aesthetic modernity. In addition to an intervieTrade ReviewThis is a stunning collection that will be a priceless resource for readers of Nancy’s work. The essays are deeply knowledgeable and together they chart remarkably clear paths through all the major features of Nancy’s world and his thinking of 'world.' * Peggy Kamuf, Professor Emerita of French and Italian and Comparative Literature, University of Southern California, USA *The texts included here demonstrate in incisive ways not only how Nancy's writings open onto understanding modernity but also how questions of modernity offer new and compelling paths for reading Nancy. It is a wonderfully impressive volume. * Philip Armstrong, Professor of Comparative Studies, The Ohio State University, USA *This volume is a timely and much-needed contribution to scholarship specifically on the critical pertinence of Jean-Luc Nancy’s thinking to modernism. What makes this volume additionally delightful is that it brings together experts on Nancy’s thought alongside up-and-coming scholars committed to advancing his thinking further into the future. * Irving Goh, Associate Professor of Literature, National University of Singapore, and author of The Reject: Community, Politics, and Religion after the Subject (2014), L’Existence Prépositionnelle (2019), and The Deconstruction of Sex (2021, with Jean-Luc Nancy) *Table of ContentsIntroduction (Cosmin Toma, University of Oxford, UK) Part I – Conceptualizing Nancy 1.“Jean-Luc Nancy’s Expectation: Rephrasing ‘Philoliterature’” (Ginette Michaud, Université de Montréal) 2. “Fort-pflanzung: The Literary Absolute’s Botanic Afterlife” (Stefanie Heine, University of Copenhagen) 3.“Back to The Muses: a Di-versation on the World and the Arts” (Nicholas Cotton-Lizotte, Princeton University / Collège Édouard-Montpetit) 4.“After Listening: Music, Musicians and Modernity” (Sarah Hickmott, Durham University) 5.“Fabula, Bucca, Humanitas: On Ego Sum” (Andrea Gyenge, University of Toronto) 6.“From Dis-Enclosure to Adoration: Literature and the Deconstruction of Christianity” (Schalk Gerber, Stellenbosch University / Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) Part II – Nancy and Aesthetics 1.“From the Abyss” (Jean-Luc Nancy, Université de Strasbourg; trans. Mike Holland, University of Oxford / St Hugh’s College) 2. “Close Relations: Nancy and the Question of Psychoanalysis” (Jean-Michel Rabaté, University of Pennsylvania) 3.“Noli me operare: Reading Nancy (Re)reading Blanchot” (Aukje van Rooden & Andreas Noyer, University of Amsterdam) 4. “Streams of Consciousness: River Poetry from Heidegger to Nancy and Lacoue-Labarthe” (John McKeane, University of Reading) and “Altus” (Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Université de Strasbourg) 5.“The Regime of Technique: Nancy, Science and Modernism” (Ian James, Cambridge University) 6.“Le fond du film: Worlds, Images, and the Machining of Grounds (or: Blanchot Not/Beyond Nancy)” (Jeff Fort, University of California, Davis) 7.“The Poetics and Politics of Disenclosure: Nancy, Mbembe” (Michael Krimper, New York University) 8.“Nancy(’s) Surfaces” (James Martell, Lyon College) 9.“Between Modernism and Modernité: An Interview with Jean-Luc Nancy” (Jean-Luc Nancy, Université de Strasbourg & Cosmin Toma, St Hugh’s College) Part III – Glossary of Key Terms “Art” (John McKeane, University of Reading) “Body” (Juan Manuel Garrido Wainer, Universidad Alberto Hurtado) “Excription” (John Ricco, University of Toronto) “Globalization” (Barney Norman, independent scholar) “Sense” (Isabelle Perreault, Université du Québec à Rimouski) “With” (Jérôme Lèbre, ENS Lyon)
£85.50
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Secrecy and Community in 21stCentury Fiction
Book SynopsisSecrecy and Community in 21st-Century Fiction examines the relation between secrecy and community in a diverse and international range of contemporary fictional works in English. In its concern with what is called ''communities of secrecy'', it is fundamentally indebted to the thought of Jacques Derrida, Jean-Luc Nancy and Maurice Blanchot, who have pointed to the fallacies and dangers of identitarian and exclusionary communities, arguing for forms of being-in-common characterized by non-belonging, singularity and otherness.Also drawing on the work of J. Hillis Miller, Derek Attridge, Nicholas Royle, Matei Calinescu, Frank Kermode and George Simmel, among others, this volume analyses the centrality of secrets in the construction of literary form, narrative sequence and meaning, together with their foundational role in our private and interpersonal lives and the public and political realms. In doing so, it engages with the Derridean ethico-political value of secrecy and Derrida'sTrade ReviewThe secret as index of ineradicable opacity rather than hidden knowledge to be disclosed; the forms of community that come from honoring the singularity and inviolability of others; and literature as an especially revelatory location for both of these operations – these are among the insights provided by this well-conceived, eclectic collection. Secrecy and Community highlights the urgency of recasting our sense of the present through the medium of Derrida’s late work. It is an impressive and moving achievement, and a welcome addition to contemporary thought. * Greg Forter, Professor of English, University of South Carolina, USA, and author of Critique and Utopia in Postcolonial Historical Fiction: Atlantic and Other Worlds (2018) *This much-needed volume of essays extends Derridean theory through close readings of a wide range of 21st-century narrative texts, thus demonstrating the complex interrelationship between secrets and community, identity politics and literature. * Leslie W. Lewis, Susan D. Morgan Distinguished Professor of English, Goucher College, USA, and author of Telling Narratives: Secrets in African American Literature (2017) *Many anthologies on secrecy exist, but only a few include cutting-edge essays and vivid empirical studies. In this timely book, the studies compiled by María J. López and Pilar Villar-Argáiz explore the link between secrecy, community, democracy and literature with admirable articulacy and precision. This volume attests to the intersectional articulation of these elements, and will contribute much to research on the different dimensions of literary secrecy. * Eduardo Barros Grela, Professor of English Studies, University of A Coruña, Spain, and co-editor of American Secrets: The Politics and Poetics of Secrecy in the Literature and Culture of the United States (2011) *Table of ContentsNotes on contributors Foreword Joseph Hillis Miller (University of California, Irvine, USA) Acknowledgements Introduction: Secrecy and community in twenty-first-century fiction María J. López (University of Córdoba, Spain) Part One. SECRECY, LITERARY FORM AND THE COMMUNITY OF READERS 1. Secrecy and community in ergodic texts: Derrida, Ali Smith and the experience of form Derek Attridge (University of York, UK) 2. Protective mimicry: Reflections on the novel today Nicholas Royle (University of Sussex, UK) 3. ‘Where all is known and nothing understood’: Narrative sequence and textual secrets in Toni Morrison’s Love Paula Martín-Salván (University of Córdoba, Spain) 4. Challenging stereotypes of femininity through secrets in Alice Munro’s fiction Mercedes Díaz Dueñas (University of Granada, Spain) 5. Zoë Wicomb and the secrets of the canon Liani Lochner (Université Laval, Canada) Part Two. COMMUNITIES OF SECRECY 6. Cryptaesthetic resistance and community in Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Lowland María Luisa Pascual Garrido (University of Córdoba, Spain) 7. Queering the Maori crypt: Community and secrecy in Witi Ihimaera’s The Uncle’s Story Gerardo Rodríguez-Salas (University of Granada, Spain) 8. Secrecy, invisibility and community in Jeanette Winterson’s The Daylight Gate Juan L. Pérez-de-Luque (University of Córdoba, Spain) 9. Novel mediums: The art of not speaking in (and of) Hilary Mantel’s Beyond Black Hannu Poutiainen (Tampere University, Finland) Part Three. SECRECY, POSTCOLONIALISM AND DEMOCRACY 10. Shame and the idea of community in Ian Holding’s Of Beasts and Beings and What Happened to Us Mike Marais (Rhodes University, South Africa) 11. ‘Whilst our souls negotiate': Secrets and secrecy in Jonathan Franzen’s Purity Jesús Blanco Hidalga (University of Córdoba, Spain) 12. Conversing with spectres: Secrets and ghosts in Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Refugees Kim L. Worthington (Massey University, New Zealand) Index
£29.99
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Theory in the Post Era
Book SynopsisShortlisted for the AATSEEL 2022 Award for Best Edited Multi-Author Scholarly Volume (AATSEEL is The American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages) Theory in the Post Era brings together the work and perspectives of a group of Romanian theorists who discuss the morphings of contemporary theory in what the editors call the post era. Since the Cold War''s end and especially in the third millennium, theorists have been exploring the aftermath - and sometimes just the after - of whole paradigms, the crisis or passing of anthropocentrism, the twilight of an entire ontological and cultural condition, as well as the corresponding rise of an antagonist model, of an anti, meta, or neo alternative, with examples ranging from posthumanism and post-postmodernism to post-aesthetics, postanalog interpretation or digicriticism, post-presentism, post-memory, post- or neo-critique, and so forth. It is no coincidence, the contributors to this volume argTrade ReviewTheory in the “Post” Era manages to assemble a heterogenous collection of interventions which capture the essential cultural gestures and ethical reflexes of “an era that seems at once epistemologically insurgent and blasé” (173). In doing so, it lays the lexical groundwork for its envisioned projects of communal futurity. * Metacritic Journal for Comparative Studies and Theory *What Theory in the Post Era, as a collective manifesto – for a new age, a “post” age of literary theory – excels at is finding new and functional alternatives to an otherwise overused and exhausted set of working notion for the study of literary and critical phenomena in and from the margins and deliver them to the world. More than that, there are several concepts introduced for the very first time (at least in a similarly ambitious editorial project) that could feasibly form the basis for a new “communality” in Eastern European literary theory and that could rapidly enter the world theory system. * Philologica Jassyensia *Even readers annoyed by the proliferation of constructions in “post-“ will discover much to engage and provoke in this lively collection by a group of Romanian scholars. Writing from the periphery of Europe yet well-versed in contemporary Western critical thought, they offer original, estranging perspectives on issues of the moment, whether proposing an Easthetics, a Constructuralism, or literary criticism as diplomacy. * Jonathan Culler, Class of 1916 Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Emeritus, Cornell University, USA *Just as there is ‘World Literature,’ this book urges us to consider ‘World Theory.’ While we often tout the globalism of theory, its history typically focuses on Western Europe and the US. Reminding us that the story of theory is a travel narrative, this collection features work arising from Romania’s Critical Theory Institute, whose members have been investigating the various possibilities of theory in the new millennium. One way to think of theory is as the genre that allows us to speak critically across various national, disciplinary, and temporal borders, and Theory in the ‘Post’ Era works to create a contemporary intellectual commons. * Jeffrey Williams, Professor of Literary and Cultural Studies, Carnegie Mellon University, USA, and co-editor of The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism *This group of inspired Romanian 'post' theorists decisively shows two things. First, theory is no thing. You cannot be for or against it. It is rather the ubiquitous fabric of our global conversation on politics, culture, science, and art. Second, theory is no longer (and never really was) an elite discourse promulgated in Paris, New York, New Haven, and Irvine. It is a radically decentered interrogation that is elaborated in both Cluj and Greensboro, in Walla Walla and Taipei. It is alive and well and living on the periphery! * Paul Allen Miller, Carolina Distinguished Professor at the University of South Carolina, USA *Boldly recasting theory as World Theory, this timely volume makes a compelling case for 'theory commons,' for what we as theorists translate and share as an open-ended, transnational community, a community—needed by theory and in need of theory—invested in thinking inventively and comparatively the plethora of “posts” endemic to our infinitely interconnected planetary condition. * Zahi Zalloua, Cushing Eells Professor of Philosophy and Literature, Whitman College, USA *‘Romania,’ amid the planetary turbulence of 2021, is every bit as a propos as the more customary ‘deconstruction’ or ‘Cultural Studies’ in denoting that interstitial zone (or lab) where new modalities of critical reception, theoretical investigation, and cultural mapping, prompted by turbulent developments, get generated. Romanian intellectuals have routinely coped with their country’s historical placement in a multicultural ‘outskirts’ of European culture, with its World War II suppression under Nazism, followed by the singularly cruel abuses and meltdown of its Communist regime. It is no accident that we turn to an ‘A-team’ of Romanian commentators assembled by the editors of Theory in the ‘Post’ Era in our own efforts to process distortion effects now entrenched but particularly rampant since 2016, with no end in sight. In treating the periphery as a theoretical phenomenon on a planetary scale in its own right; in registering the inroads made by such factors as science, systems theory, cybernetics, design, geography, and diplomacy into contemporary cultural deliberation, the collective authorship of Theory in the ‘Post’ Era casts luminous insight on present-day impasses, while crystallizing the vision necessary for addressing the future. * Henry Sussman, Professor Emeritus, Comparative Literature, University at Buffalo, USA *Table of ContentsPreface and Acknowledgments Introduction: Toward a “Post” Vocabulary-- A Lab Report Alexandru Matei, Transilvania University of Brasov, Romania; Christian Moraru, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, USA; and Andrei Terian, Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, Romania Part I: Aesthetics 1. Constructualism: Literary Evolution as Multiscalar Design Teodora Dumitru, G. Calinescu Institute of Literary History and Theory of the Romanian Academy, Bucharest, Romania 2. Post-Aesthetics: Literature, Ontology, and Criticism as Diplomacy Alexandru Matei, Transilvania University of Brasov, Romania 3. Eastethics: The Ideological Shift in Narratology Alex Goldis, Babes-Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca, Romania 4. Metapolitics: Recommitting Literature in the Populist Aftermath Ioana Macrea-Toma, Central European University of Budapest, Hungary 5. Communality: Un-Disciplining Race, Class, and Sex in the Wake of Anti-“PC” Monomania Andrei Terian, Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, Romania 6. Anarchetype: Reading Aesthetic Form after “Structure” Corin Braga, Babes-Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca, Romania Part II: Temporalities 7. Post-Synchronism: “Cultural Complex,” or Critical Theory’s Unfinished Business Carmen Musat, University of Bucharest, Romania 8. Post-Presentism: The Past, the Passed, and “Now” as Critical Operator Bogdan Cretu, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iasi, Romania 9. Postfuturism: Contemporaneity, Truth, and the End of World Literature Christian Moraru, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, USA 10. Post-Memory: The Labor of Critical Remembrance after Communism Andreea Mironescu, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iasi, Romania 11. Biofiction: Metamorphoses of Life-Writing across Criticism, Theory, and Literature Laura Cernat, Independent Scholar Part III: Critical Modes 12. Geocritique: Siting, Poverty, and the Global Southeast Stefan Baghiu, Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, Romania 13. Neocritique: Sherlock Holmes Investigates Literature Mihai Iovanel, G. Calinescu Institute of Literary History and Theory of the Romanian Academy, Romania 14. Digicriticism: Profession On(the)Line Adriana Stan, Sextil Puscariu Institute of Linguistics and Literary History of the Romanian Academy, Cluj-Napoca, Romania 15. Somatography: Writing as Incorporated Cognition, or the Body Knows More Caius Dobrescu, University of Bucharest, Romania 16. Post-Canonicity: Curating World Literary Archives after Postmodernism Cosmin Borza, Sextil Puscariu Institute of Linguistics and Literary History of the Romanian Academy, Cluj-Napoca, Romania Bibliography Contributors Index
£28.99
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Circular Narratives in Modern European Literature
Book SynopsisBreaking with linearity the ruling narrative model in the Jewish-Christian tradition since the ancient world many 20th-century European writers adopted circular narrative forms. Juan Luis Toribio Vazquez shows this trend was not a unified nor conscious movement, but rather a series of works arising sporadically in different countries at different times, using a variety of circular structures to express similar concerns and ideas about the world. This study also shows how the renewed understanding of narrative form leading to this circular trend was anticipated by Nietzsche's critiques of truth, knowledge, language and metaphysics, and especially by his related discussions of nihilism and the eternal recurrence. Starting with an analysis of the theory and genealogy of linear narrative, the author charts the emergence of Nietzsche's idea of eternal return, before then turning to the history of the circular narrative trend. This history is explored from its inception, in the works of Trade ReviewIn this groundbreaking work, Juan Luis Toribio Vazquez retraces the teleological view of literature through a wide expanse of texts, both narrative and of literary criticism – from Homer to Aristotle, Tasso and Schiller – before delineating how certain authors of modern literature rejected linearity in favour of circular forms of narrative. Built on Nietzschean philosophy, particularly on his idea of eternal recurrence, the book’s close engagement with writers and dramatists, ranging from Strindberg to Nabokov, Joyce, Borges and Calvino, radically reconfigures the aesthetics grounding these texts. This brilliant account adds an important dimension to the evolution of the Western narrative. * Thirthankar Chakraborty, Assistant Professor of English, Indian Institute of Technology Bhilai, India, and co-editor of Samuel Beckett as World Litertature *Far from a mere typology, Circular Narratives in Modern European Literature is both ambitious in scope and quite original in dealing with its central premise. Toribio Vazquez offers a personal attempt to present and understand the many different circular alternatives probed by the 20th-century writers under the spell of Nietzsche’s negative philosophy, a milestone for the contemporary collapse of linearity. His close readings compose an engaging picture of modernism(s) in Europe, sensitive to singularities and also particularly attentive of non-canonical names, such as Azorín and Kharns. A fine, comprehensive study, theory and analysis concerned. * Fábio de Souza Andrade, Professor of Literary Theory and Comparative Literature, University of São Paulo, Brazil *In this wide-ranging comparative study Toribio Vazquez extends our understanding of post-Nietzschean poetics. His corpus of canonical and non-canonical 20th-century writers exploit structures of circularity for a variety of purposes, from the axiological and psychological to the existential and self-referential. This is an ambitious and impressive piece of work. * Duncan Large, Professor of European Literature and Translation, University of East Anglia, UK *Table of ContentsForeword by Shane Weller (University of Kent, UK) Acknowledgements 1. Introduction: The Genealogy of Linearity 2. Nietzsche’s Bequest: Buddha’s Shadow and the ‘Greatest Burden’ 3. The Birth of Circularity: Strindberg, Stein and Azorín 4. ‘Vivir es Volver’: Queneau, Nabokov and Kharms 5. Circulus Vitiosus Litterae: Joyce, Borges and the Theatre of the Absurd 6. Circular Echoes: Robbe-Grillet, Calvino, Cortázar and Blanchot 7. Conclusion: Circular Narratives in Modern European Literature References Index
£80.75
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Beyond English
Book SynopsisHonorable Mention, Harry Levin Prize, 2022 (American Comparative Literature Association)Beyond English: World Literature and India radically alters the debates on world literature that hinge on the model of circulation and global capital by deeply engaging with the idea of the world and world-making in South Asia. Tiwari argues that Indic words for world (vishva, jagat, sansar) offer a nuanced understanding of world literature that is antithetical to a commodified and standardized monolingual globe. She develops a comparative study of the concept of world literature (vishva sahitya) in Rabindranath Tagore's works, the desire for a new world in the lyrics of the Hindi shadowism (chhayavaad) poets, and world-making in Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai's Chemmeen (1956) and Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things (1997). By emphasizing the centrality of literature (sahitya) through a close reading of texts, Tiwari orients world literatureTrade ReviewTiwari has written a lively riposte to “world literature” mongering that is also a wide-ranging introduction to aspects of twentieth century Indian literature in various languages. Engaging the work of well-known writers like Rabindranath Tagore as well as of writers who should be better known, like the Hindi-language Chhayavaad poet Mahadevi Varma, Tiwari boldly changes the terrain over which the “world literature” debate is conducted by bringing to the fore critical terms through which the non-Anglophone writers that she examines themselves understood this debate. Through this decolonizing move she takes us not just beyond English but beyond “world literature” to what she intriguingly calls a “worldly comparative literature.” * S. Shankar, Chair and Professor, Department of English, University of Hawai'i at Manoa, USA, and author of Ghost in the Tamarind: A Novel *Beyond English is a highly original and insightful analysis of world literature from a perspective deeply embedded in a major world literature. Refusing the hegemony of English still evident in many studies of global literature and focusing on Indian texts that invoke and imagine the world in far-reaching and provocative ways, Tiwari truly vernacularizes the concept of world literature to offer a fresh take on postcolonial studies, literary studies, and South Asian letters. * Ulka Anjaria, Professor of English, Brandeis University, USA, and author of Reading India Now: Contemporary Formations in Literature and Popular Culture *Beyond English is an important contribution to the ongoing recalibration of relations among comparative, postcolonial, and world literary studies. Attending to the politics and poetics of translation within and across Indian languages, Bhavya Tiwari advances a worldly comparative literature that is open to the poetics of different worlds, as we savor ‘the sap’ of literary works both in the original and in translation. Exemplifying its own theme, Beyond English is itself a highly original translation across the conflictual worlds of literary studies today. * David Damrosch, Ernest Bernbaum Professor and Chair, Department of Comparative Literature, Director, Institute for World Literature, Harvard University, USA *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Note on Translation Introduction: Beyond English 1. Why World Literature? Vishva Sahitya Universalism, Sahitya, and Sahit Translation and Vishva Sahitya 2. Here Is World Literature The World-making of the English Gitanjali Tagore’s Translations, World-making, and Gitanjali in Prose-poems World-making of Gitanjali in Spanish 3. The World Is in the Lyrics The World in Lyrics The World-making of Chhayavaad World vs. Vishva Sahitya in Hindi 4. (Woman) Author and the World World-making vs. Vishva Varma’s Sahitya and Vishva 5. World in Translation, World in the Original Chemmeen’s Vishva in India and Beyond To Compare, To World World-making of Small Things India in the Original, India in Translation Coda: World Literature and India Endnotes Bibliography Index
£28.99
