Literary theory Books

Book SynopsisApocalyptic Ruin and Everyday Wonder in Don DeLillo's America is a fresh and engaging study of last things in Don DeLillo's worksthings like death, mourning, and the decline of the American empire, but then also the apocalypse, the last judgment, and the end of the world more generally. Michael Naas untangles complex themes in short, witty chapters that highlight and celebrate DeLillo's inventive and playful writing, employing a novel approach to literary criticism. Making no use of secondary sources, the book is entirely a discussion of DeLillo''s work, accessible to any level of readership while maintaining a firm grasp of the theory necessary to make this unique argument.And yet, this book is also about all the things that double or shadow those last things in the very same works, like the wonder of language or the radiance of everyday events. From Americana (1971) up through Zero K (2016) and The Silence (2020), and perhaps like no other American author,Trade ReviewMichael Naas's Apocalyptic Ruin and Everyday Wonder in Don DeLillo's America displays a thorough knowledge and an impressive thematic cartography of Don DeLillo's oeurve. This invaluable synthesis, which consider's DeLillo's work through the lens of contrabanding, illuminates the contradictions that make America what it is and confirms DeLillo's magisterial and uninterrupted examination of America as a country and as an idea. * Karim Daanoune, Associate Professor in American Literature, Université Paul Valéry-Montpellier, France *In Apocalyptic Ruin and Everyday Wonder in Don DeLillo’s America, Michael Naas artfully delineates the dense web of thematic crosscurrents and connections that run through DeLillo’s entire oeuvre. Naas foregrounds the pleasure of reading DeLillo, allowing the humour of the works to be reflected in his own distinctive and accessible writing style. Naas reads DeLillo’s fiction as a body of theoretical enquiry in itself rather than applying existing theory and criticism, making this an innovative and necessary addition to scholarship. * Rebecca Harding, Independent Scholar, UK *Table of ContentsAbbreviations of Works by Don DeLillo Preface: Last Things 1. Countermovements America…New York, New York…“USA! USA! USA!”…The West, the Desert, and, Inevitably, California…Automobiles…Airplanes…Beyond America 2. Countercurrents Sports, Games, Sports Gaming…Academia…Philosophy…Technologies of Life and Death 3. Counterproductions Empire, Capital, the Corporation…Money…Advertising…Consumerism and Waste 4. Counterhistories American History 2.0…Terrorism…9-11, The Twin Towers…Creation and Ruin…War and Peace 5. Countermeasures Self and Others…The Individual and the Crowd…Prophylactics and Purifications...The Shit, the Shower, the Shave, and the Haircut 6. Counterforces Life and Death…Mourning…The Afterlife…The Apocalypse…The Omega Point, the Death Drive 7. Counterworlds Space…Time…Space-Time…Religion… Miracles…The Everyday…Earth, Moon, Sun…Radiance Conclusion: Silent Mode (The Future of Contraband) Acknowledgements

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Book SynopsisAuthors and the World traces how four core modes of authorship' have developed and inflect one another in modern Germany through a series of twenty different case studies, including the work of Thomas Mann, Günter Grass, Anna Seghers, Walter Höllerer, Felicitas Hoppe and Katja Petrowskaja, and original interview material with contemporary writers Ulrike Draesner, Olga Martynova and Ulrike Almut Sandig. Modes of authorship' are attitudes taken towards being an author that can be seen both in what an individual author does and in how a particular literary tradition or trend is perceived and mediated by others both within and beyond Pierre Bourdieu's literary field. Consequently, they deliberately straddle questions of literary production and reception. Rebecca Braun sets out how the commemorative, celebratory, utopian and satirical modes interact with one another to produce a number of models of authorship that carry either foundational or otherwise normative force for society. InTrade ReviewRebecca Braun's amazingly varied study of authorship shifts the view from the lives of writers to the practice of authorship – the crafted persona of a whole social environment. Along the way, Braun shakes up our understanding of the contemporary German literary scene. Moving quickly past the familiar male gatekeepers of Grass, Enzensberger and Walser, she brings us face-to-face with neglected literary mavericks from the East and new voices of women immigrants from Russia, Romania and Serbia. A very original study in which 'place' becomes a fleeting ideological Heimat. * Timothy Brennan, Professor of Comparative Literature and English, University of Minnesota, USA *Rebecca Braun’s Authors and the World represents an important foray into a new contemporary typology of authorship that will benefit scholars in literary studies and beyond. With a focus on German-speaking literature, this investigation of celebratory, commemorative, utopian and satirical modes of authorship provides the reader with pertinent insights into the post-war literary industry and its modes of self-representation and brings into focus female writers marginalized in recent canonization processes. * Birgit Lang, Professor of German, University of Melbourne, Australia *Highly original and immensely readable, Rebecca Braun’s impressive study provides us with a new model for understanding literary authorship and the contexts and factors that shape it in the twentieth century and beyond. The result is both a brilliant reading of cultural history and an important theoretical re-evaluation of known concepts of authorship. Through detailed interpretations of a stunning variety of cultural texts and archives (novels, journalistic writings, poetry, films and documentaries, social networks, places, and objects), Braun develops four distinct modes of performative authorship (celebratory, commemorative, utopian, satirical) and shows how they can overlap, coalesce, and inflect one another. She uses this innovative framework to read of some of the most important texts of the German-language canon in East and West Germany; she moves from the writing of the “literary giants” of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Thomas Mann to the contemporary, transnational texts of Olga Martynova and Katja Petrowskaja. Conversations with three female authors round out this remarkable book and illustrate in practice Braun’s central argument that authorship is a co-creative, iterative process. Authors and the World will be an indispensable reference in German Studies on contemporary literary authorship. I loved reading it! * Anke S. Biendarra, Associate Professor of European Languages and Studies, University of California, Irvine, USA *Table of ContentsList of Figures Acknowledgements Note on Translations Introduction: Rethinking Goethe’s World Literature through Questions of Authorship 1. Four Modes of Authorship across the German Twentieth Century 2. The Exemplary Creator: Modelling Authorship in Post-War West Germany 3. The Exemplary Pedagogue: Alternative Foundations for Belonging in the GDR 4. Mediating Authorship in Berlin and Frankfurt, 1959-1989 5. After the Death of the Author: The Rise of the Utopian Mode, 1988-2018 6. New Collaborations: Models of Transnational Authorship in Contemporary German-speaking Europe In Conversation: Ulrike Draesner: On Creating Contexts for Literature In Conversation: Olga Martynova on Living in Multiple Literary Worlds In Conversation: Ulrike Almut Sandig on Collaborating across Media, Genres, and Countries Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisEscape, Escapism, Escapology: American Novels of the Early Twenty-First Century identifies and explores what has emerged as perhaps the central theme of 21st-century American fiction: the desire to escapefrom the commodified present, from directionless history, from moral deathat a time of inescapable globalization. The driving question is how to find an alternative to the world within the world, at a time when utopian and messianic ideals have lost their power to compel belief. John Limon traces the American answer to that question in the writings of some of the most important authors of the last two decadesChabon, Diaz, Foer, Eggers, Donoghue, Groff, Ward, Saunders, and Whitehead, among othersand finds that it always involves the faux utopian freedom and pseudo-messianic salvation of childhood.When contemporary novelists feature actual historical escape, pervasively from slavery or Nazism, it appears in their novels as escape envy or escape nostalgiTrade ReviewIf you haven’t yet encountered John Limon’s work, you have some exhilarating surprises ahead: it’s witty, keenly idiosyncratic, beautifully adroit at drawing unexpected connections, and spectacularly attuned to the evocative possibilities of both paradox and pathos. Escape, Escapism, Escapology: American Novels of the Early Twenty-First Century is a savvy examination of crucial obsessions in some of our most ambitious and canonical contemporary fictions, helping us through the problem of conceiving not only what we’re escaping from but also what we’re escaping to. The result is an argument that will compel both the ornithologists and the birds: one that our Michael Chabons will find as illuminating as our Stanley Cavells. * Jim Shepard, author of The Book of Aron *Limon's bleakly funny and effortlessly learned study examines novels for which this, the world now before us, is ‘as good as it gets.’ That equivocal and confounding prospect, it turns out, haunts contemporary fiction in previously unimaginable ways. This is literary criticism at its very best. * Michael Szalay, Professor of English, Film, and Media, University of California, Irvine, USA *John Limon’s Escape, Escapism, Escapology will stand as a landmark study of the early twenty-first century Anglophone novel. Its elaboration of escapism offers a brilliantly original and suggestive framework for a widescale reconsideration of the force and interest of contemporary fiction. I can think of very few recent works of criticism that can match its interpretive verve and its contagious curiosity. It is thrilling to read such an intellectually forceful engagement with aesthetic culture of the present moment. * Deak Nabers, Associate Professor of English, Brown University, USA *Table of ContentsIntroduction Part I: Escape, Escapism, Escapology 1. Notes from Neverland 2. I Flit, I Float, I Fleetly Flee, I Fly [on The Sound of Music] Part II: Family Likenesses 3. The Escapist [on Michael Chabon] 4. Mellon [on Junot Diaz] 5. Bath and Bathos [on Dave Eggers and Jonathan Safran Foer] 6. The Beauty! The Horror! [on Emma Donoghue] 7. Et in Nobis Arcadia [on Lauren Groff] 8. The Ethics of Immortality [on Colson Whitehead] 9. The Songs of Murdered Souls [On Jesmyn Ward and George Saunders] Part III: Foreign Correspondents 10. Choice and the Chosen [on David Grossman] 11. Categorical Denial [on Arundhati Roy] Part IV: Prequel 12. The Tunnel Out [on William H. Gass] Acknowledgments References Index

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Book SynopsisRandy Malamud is Regents' Professor of English at Georgia State University, USA. He is the author of 12 books, including the influential Reading Zoos: Representations of Animals and Captivity (1998), The Importance of Elsewhere: The Globalist Humanist Tourist (2018), and Strange Bright Blooms: A History of Cut Flowers (2021). He writes about film, travel, ecocriticism, and culture for the Chronicle of Higher Education, Times Higher Education, Film Quarterly, Senses of Cinema, Film International, Common Knowledge, Salon, Huffington Post, The Conversation, and truthout. He has been interviewed about his books on NPR, BBC, CNN, and numerous podcasts. He is a Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics.

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Book SynopsisMargaret H. Freeman is Co-Director of the Myrifield Institute for Cognition and the Arts, MA, USA. Professor Freeman's past publications include The Poem as Icon: A Study in Aesthetic Cognition (2020).Trade ReviewFreeman's book is not just an engagingly learned re-introduction to Emily Dickinson but a provocation to consider how contemporary scholarship on embodied cognition may serve as a means of building a more complete understanding of Dickinson's poetic art. * Ryan Cull, Associate Professor of English, New Mexico State University, USA *Drawing on the insights of cognitive science, Margaret Freeman demonstrates that understanding a poem, even before any attempt at interpretation, is to cognitively experience it, allowing it to reveal itself by what it is saying and doing. Her subtle and meticulous analyses illustrate how those “animate organisms” work, and they are thus true eye-openers as well as an enormous gain for all lovers of Dickinson’s poems, academics and general readers alike. * Gudrun Grabher, Professor Emerita of American Studies, University of Innsbruck, Austria *Margaret Freeman's new book challenges our preconceptions not only about Emily Dickinson but also about the rapidly growing field of cognitive literary studies. She works scrupulously with all levels of Dickinson's poems, descrying impalpable nuances of poetic language while never losing sight of the final analysis and sense of indefinable but alluring artistic work. Freeman's book applies cognitive science findings and heuristics to literary studies and proffers a holistic view of the ways we read a poem, accompanied by step-by-step comments and striking readings. * Denis Akhapkin, Associate Professor of Languages and Literature, Smolny College, Russia *Table of ContentsPreface Acknowledgments 1. Demure as Dynamite: Dickinson and Cognition 2. Everything Counts: Reading the Manuscripts 3. The Manuscript Markings 4. Measuring Time in Meter and Rhythm 5. Affective Prosody 6. The Life of Words 7. Bringing a Poem to Life 8. Intimate Discourse 9. Grounded-Self Spaces 10. The Presence of Self 11. The Way We Map 12. Intentional Mapping 13. Conceiving a Universe 14. A Transformative Poetics 15. Dickinsonian Cognition Appendix References Index of First Lines Subject Index

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Book SynopsisA Pulitzer Prize-winning historian revisits Marcel Proust's masterpiece in this essay on literature and memory, exploring the question of identity.

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Book SynopsisObject Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. We are born into blankets. They keep us alive and they cover us in death. We pull and tug on blankets to see us through the night or an illness. They shield us in mourning and witness our most intimate pleasures. Curious, fearless, vulnerable, and critical, Blanket interweaves cultural critique with memoir to cast new light on a ubiquitous object. Kara Thompson reveals blankets everywhere--film, art, geology, disasters, battlefields, resistance, home--and transforms an ordinary thing into a vibrant and vital carrier of stories and secrets, an object of inheritance and belonging, a companion to uncover. Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.Trade ReviewThere is nothing trivial about this little book. It addresses one ostensibly ordinary object – a blanket – but quickly turns your ideas on their heads … Author Kara Thompson traverses a continent of meanings and implications, focusing on various artworks that use some type of blanket motif, or actual blankets, to illustrate metaphorical blankets, especially ones that deal with death. You will appreciate her brilliant analysis of these artworks and their synthesis with themes of colonialism, subjugation, memory, and survival, which is sensitive and detailed. Entwined through the story is a very personal and vulnerable story, in which Thompson wraps these blankets’ abstraction into her individual experience. The book will stay with you for a long time. * Seattle Book Review *Thompson has contributed a fine addition to the Object Lessons series and provided some interesting starting points from which scores of other ideas can be explored. * PopMatters *The gift of these volumes is how they tease out the unexpected associations and implications of their subjects, and Kara Thompson’s Blanket is no exception … Thompson weaves together in her Blanket dichotomous ideas about blankets—art versus utility, hard shells versus soft wraps, infection versus protection—to illuminate the ways in which these may all be different sides of the same thing … Kara Thompson continues through her “unfoldings” to educate and surprise readers with new threads to follow and contemplate long after the small, but densely woven Blanket ends. * New York Journal of Books *Liquid brilliance blankets this book, making its forays endlessly moving—and often surprising. Simply exquisite in all its folds. * Kathryn Bond Stockton, Distinguished Professor of English, University of Utah, USA, and author of The Queer Child, or Growing Sideways in the Twentieth Century (2009) *Kara Thompson’s Blanket is an elegant, nearly seamless weaving through Native politics and histories, American violence, personal loss and remembrance, psychoanalysis and healing, geology, artworks and literature--varied stitches and detail toward the greater themes and design of comfort, protection, trauma, loss, and the disparate turnings of human living. Kara Thompson has stirred a deep desire in me to understand. . . to understand what? I ask myself. It is not the what, so much as the what is not: What is not seen, but within the folds. What is not often considered, but like a blanket, felt with 'a kind of muscle memory [. . .] the trace of habitation.' What is rarely accounted for in language, signifiers and terms, such as the 'affect, kinship, ceremony, inheritance, story' that imbue anything with real meaning. This book draws unexpected connections and links from one subject to the next. And in the spaces between those connections, there is a magic I have, until now, only known to exist in poetry. From one paragraph to the next, I discover something more of myself, hidden or maybe even protected, both grieving and comforted, tightly threaded within all these blankets. * Layli Long Soldier, author of Whereas (2017), winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry *Table of ContentsA Note to the Reader Preface: Convolute Unfold 1 1. Witness Unfold 2 2. Folds Unfold 3 3. Transmission, Extraction Unfold 4 4. Security Unfold 5 5. Under Cover Unfold 6 6. Carriers Unfold 7 Acknowledgments Bibliography List of Figures Index

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Book SynopsisObject Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Hair, a primary marker of our mammalian nature, is an extraordinary indicator of economic and social standing, political orientation, religious affiliation, marital status, and cultural leanings, among other things. The meanings of hair are deep, powerful, and so strongly embedded in cultural conditioning that they are usually understood unconsciously (and all the more strongly for that). In untangling its myriad meanings, Scott Lowe reveals just how little we control our hair, no matter the style: each and every passer-by decides on its significance anew. From Hittites to hippies and Pentecostals to porn stars, Hair combs through a ubiquitous personal yet public object, a charged and carefully managed dead thing. Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.Trade ReviewThe profundity of Hair is intertwined with its sheer simplicity. Scott Lowe has deconstructed a subject that defies deconstruction. This is a global, biological, socio-cultural consideration of a reality we all intuitively understand, yet rarely admit: Haircuts explain people. Which could come across as pedantic, were it not for the fact that Lowe is also effortlessly funny. Unless you're a barber, this is the only book on hair you need to read. * Chuck Klosterman, author of Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs *Hair is a hilarious, informative, and provocative look at the significance of hair in human culture. Part of Bloomsbury Academic’s Object Lessons, 'a book series about the hidden lives of ordinary things,' this short volume considers the biology, removal, styling, and fetishizing of hair as practiced by people around the world. It discusses the variety of religious reasons, and methods, for depilation and for hair cultivation. Scott Lowe was the perfect author for such a book, writing in his characteristic wit … This book would make an excellent addition to a course on material religion. * Nova Religio *An informative, often hair-raising (excuse the pun) journey about how the great religions of today as well as those that have faded away, or cultures, modern and old, have dealt with hair, or lack or length or style of it, both as a unifying, defining symbol as well as differentiating one, or of conformity. But Lowe, who tempers his insights with wit, is always respectful and non-judgmental … Above all, Lowe’s is a sobering account of how we can use something we have no control over naturally but can only manipulate to so many purposes. * BDC News *Table of ContentsI. Introduction II. Biology of Hair III. Responses to It Removal Covered Uncut Manipulated Magical Hair Cutting as Civilization, Control, and Marker of Domination Hair and Mourning IV. Conclusions: What Does It All Mean? Index

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Book SynopsisObject Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. The phone booth exists as a fond but distant memory for some people, and as a strange and dysfunctional waste of space for many more. Ariana Kelly approaches the phone booth as an entity that embodies diverse attitudes about privacy, freedom, power, sanctuary, and communication in its various forms all around the world. Through portrayals of phone booths in literature, film, personal narrative, philosophy, and religion, Phone Booth offers a definitive account of an object on the cusp of obsolescence. Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.Trade ReviewAn entertaining and enlightening exploration of the cultural history of the phone booth and a lament for the loss of these spaces. * WPR: BETA *In this delightful set of mini-essays, Ariana Kelly has created a paen, rather than an elegy, in celebration of the many dimensions of the vanishing phone booth. Her text gleans images and sensations from our collective memory of the once (if briefly) ubiquitous structure. Site of superhero transformations, crimes, communications, quick changes, and other coins of the social realm, the phone booth and the kiosk served as small theaters of intimate activity in full view of the public eye, a curious combination of enclosed and exposed space. She shifts scale from the minutiae of physical observation—hanging wires and scratched glass—to the larger cultural issues of communication and longing, mixing personal experience with historical, literary, and film references throughout. * Johanna Drucker, Professor of Information Studies, University of California, Los Angeles, USA *Fascinated and attuned, I was cabled into Phone Booth. Ariana Kelly replenishes the work on speculative telephony in an altogether compelling way. * Avital Ronell, University Professor in the Humanities, New York University, USA, and author of The Telephone Book *[Phone Booth] inclines us towards nostalgia, toward urgent questions of what remains when objects disappear, of re-use, and shelter. If phone booths today have receded into the interstices of our built worlds… then that freeing of the object from its use enables Arianna Kelly to tell a different story, a story about what these telephonic leftovers might become, what they now are and what they anchor. -- Julian Yates * Los Angeles Review of Books *Table of Contents1. Disconnected 2. Hermit’s Hut 3. Our Speed 4. The Phantom Phone Booth 5. Say Anything 6. Fortress of Solitude 7. Significant Portals 8. A Fine and Private Place 9. Glass Case of Emotion 10. The God Booth 11. Only Connect Acknowledgements Notes Index

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Book SynopsisObject Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. It may be responsible for a greater improvement in human diet and longevity than any other technology of the last two thousand years—but have you ever thought seriously about your refrigerator? That box humming in the background displays more than you might expect, even who you are and the society in which you live. Jonathan Rees examines the past, present, and future of the household refrigerator with the aim of preventing its users from ever taking it for granted again. No mere container for cold Cokes and celery stalks, the refrigerator acts as a mirror—and what it reflects is chilling indeed. Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.Trade ReviewDoes life exist without refrigerators? For most of us, the answer is no. How this common kitchen appliance achieved its indispensable status in less than a century is an amazing tale filled with surprising twists and unexpected connections. Refrigerator is a delight to read. Bravo! * Andrew F. Smith, Editor-in-Chief of The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America *Allow Jonathan Rees to re-introduce you to the most underappreciated appliance in your kitchen: the refrigerator. Despite its recent and as yet patchy arrival on the world stage, the humble fridge has transformed how and what we eat, for better and for worse. This concise overview should be required reading for the 99.5 percent of Americans who own a refrigerator. * Nicola Twilley, author of Edible Geography and contributing writer at The New Yorker *Jonathan Rees’s Refrigerator offers a meticulously observed history of the ‘cold chain’ of industrialized food webs, explains how refrigeration works; and goes so far as to imagine life with and without it. Beyond this mini-historical account, the real heft to this title lies in the implied ecological impact of what doing without refrigeration might mean for those in the West for whom it has become taken for granted. -- Julian Yates * Los Angeles Review of Books *Object Lessons’ describes themselves as ‘short, beautiful books,’ and to that, I'll say, amen. … [I]t is in this simplicity that we find insight and even beauty. … In Refrigerator, historian Jonathan Rees asks us to look again at an object many of us take for granted as it hums away in our kitchens. When's the last time you looked at that thing? Did you contemplate how the refrigerator may have done more to extend the human lifespan than any other piece of technology? … If you read enough ‘Object Lessons’ books, you'll fill your head with plenty of trivia to amaze and annoy your friends and loved ones — caution recommended on pontificating on the objects surrounding you. More importantly, though, in the tradition of McPhee's Oranges, they inspire us to take a second look at parts of the everyday that we've taken for granted. These are not so much lessons about the objects themselves, but opportunities for self-reflection and storytelling. They remind us that we are surrounded by a wondrous world, as long as we care to look. * Chicago Tribune *Table of ContentsIntroduction Chapter One: How Refrigerators Work Chapter Two: How to Make Your Refrigerator Stand Out Chapter Three: Are the Benefits of Refrigeration Worth the Costs? Chapter Four: Waste and Wants Chapter Five: Freezing and Freezers Conclusion Notes Index

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Book SynopsisMakers of Worlds, Readers of Signs charts the aesthetic and political formation of neoliberalism and globalization in Israeli and Palestinian literature from the 1940s to the present. By tracking literature's move from making worlds to reading signs, Cohen Lustig proposes a new way to read theorize our global contemporary. Cohen Lustig argues that the period of Israeli statism and its counterpart of Palestinian statelessness produced works that sought to make and create whole worlds and social time - create the new state of Israel, preserve collective visions of Palestinian statehood. During the period of neoliberalism, the period after 1985 in Israel and the 1993 Oslo Accords in Palestine, literature became about the reading of signs, where politics and history are now rearticulated through the private lives of individual subjects. Here characters do not make social time but live within it and inquire after its missing origin. Cohen Lustig argues for new ways to track the subjectivities and aesthetics produced by larger shifts in production. In so doing, he proposes a new model to understand the historical development of Israeli and Palestinian literature as well as world literature in our contemporary moment. With a preface from Fredric Jameson.Trade ReviewIt is refreshing to read an analysis of Israeli and Palestinian literatures that centers not on identity - national, religious, ethnic, or gender - but rather on the effects of capitalism on politics and culture. -- Danielle Drori * Los Angeles Review of Books *Cohen Lustig has identified a historical trend, and he presents a solid analysis supporting his argument. The historical-theoretical undertaking in this book is both thorough and a joy to read. This work is a worthy and novel contribution to the library of Palestinian historical and literary studies. * Journal of Palestine Studies *

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Book SynopsisIt is commonplace to regard many great works of literature—poems, dramas, works of fiction—as in some sense philosophical. Yet ever since Plato, there has been a tension between the kind of abstract theorizing that goes on in philosophy and the focus on concrete particulars that occurs in poetry and fiction. Beyond Words: Philosophy, Fiction, and the Unsayable elaborates on and addresses this Platonic tension, asking in what sense, if any, literature in the form of poetry, drama, short stories, and novels can contribute significantly to our philosophical understanding. Timothy Cleveland suggests there is something in certain poems, novels, and stories that makes them especially suited to expanding our awareness and understanding into the nature of things otherwise unsayable and unconceived. Such literary works show us something that a theoretical—scientific or philosophical—discourse cannot literally say.Trade ReviewIn a wide-ranging discussion that focuses on the relationship between philosophy and literature, Cleveland argues that some works of fiction can point readers toward what is unsayable. Against Plato, the author claims there is a sense in which literature can be philosophical by providing an enhanced awareness of the world, but trying to put this into words risks losing it. Among other reflections, Cleveland offers an extended account of T. S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” to show how the poem works as a kind of performance that provides a strong sense of the self’s fragmentation in the modern world. It may seem paradoxical to say that one can talk about the unsayable, but poetry, novels, negative theology, and Zen Buddhist koans can get beneath the surface level of meaning to transform one from within. Cleveland describes his work as “a philosophical prolegomena to fiction and the unsayable” (p. 4). He does not get bogged down in theory but offers insights and a thoughtful discussion concerning philosophical aspects of literature “that cannot be articulated, only shown” (p. 22). Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. * Choice Reviews *I recommend the book to everyone interested in questions regarding literature and philosophy that issue from the ancient quarrel. Cleveland writes clearly and pushes his arguments forward through a maze of different philosophical disciplines. As he himself states, this book was written primarily in order to honor two of his great loves, literature and philosophy, and the result is a book that invites a similar degree of enthusiasm and dedication. Concerned with the unsayable, the book, almost paradoxically, manages to say (and show!) how inspiring philosophy can be, when it is done from the heart. Most importantly perhaps, in the age when literacy is rapidly declining and fewer and fewer people read, with the STEM-areas trumping the humanities all around the world, Cleveland’s book is a much-needed reminder that certain things just are beyond theoretical grasp: they can only be shown to us by art. One can only hope that its messages will resonate with those who fail to acknowledge the social, cultural, and educational values of the arts and philosophy. * Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews *What can be shown but not said? Where and how can something of surpassing interest or importance be shown but not said? A picture, for example, can be worth a thousand words. These questions arise when we ponder what can be shown and not said. In this book, Timothy Cleveland, a philosopher who can see deeply and broadly, shows himself able to not only see but also say much of great interest about such questions. -- Ernest Sosa, Rutgers University

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Book SynopsisA thrilling and vivid work of history, Class War weaves together literature and politics to chart the making and unmaking of social class through revolutionary combat. In a narrative that spans the globe and more than two centuries of history, Mark Steven traces the history of class war from the Haitian Revolution to Black Lives Matter.Surveying the literature of revolution, from the poetry of Shelley and Byron to the novels of Émile Zola and Jack London, exploring the writings of Frantz Fanon, Che Guevara, and Assata Shakur, Class War reveals the interplay between military action and the politics of class, showing how solidarity flourishes in times of conflict. Written with verve and ranging across diverse historical settings, Class War traverses industrial battles, guerrilla insurgencies, and anticolonial resistance, as well as large-scale combat operations waged against capitalism's regimes and its interstate system.In our age of economic crisis, ecological catastrophe, and planetary unrest, Steven tells the stories of those whose actions will help guide future militants toward a revolutionary horizon.Trade ReviewA survey of the literature of revolution, Mark Steven's history of global class war considers work by writers from Byron to Assata Shakur. It feels more crucial than ever to study the work of writers who practiced solidarity, and this book promises to be a vital contribution to the revolutionary canon. -- Most Anticipated Books of 2023 * Lit Hub *Class war is everywhere and in every era. And yet it is not in all places and times the same; it is the stuff of history, and history is what changes. In any regard it is war, and there will be no chance of winning if we do not reckon carefully with its transformations into the present and along the branching paths of the future. It is this movement, a real movement, that Mark Steven sets out to capture, making use of literature's necessary capacity for figuring both the broadest and most delicate social formations in motion. Here he offers a crystallography of veiled relations; there he summons the most explicit jeremiads. Louverture to LeGuin, this book is a wonder in its reach and attention, breathing vitality into core concepts while outmaneuvering the staid orthodoxies hobbling all too much class discourse in the 21st century. Like all the best history: a way forward. -- Joshua Clover, author of Riot. Strike. RiotBeautifully written and conceived, Class War is a history as absorbing as any nineteenth-century novel. Part literary criticism, part political theory, part polemic, it is also an act of recovery; Steven has written a necessary book. -- Anahid Nersessian, author of Keats's Odes: A Lover’s DiscourseWritten with verve and ranging across diverse historical settings, Class War traverses industrial battles, guerrilla insurgencies, and anticolonial resistance, as well as large-scale combat operations waged against capitalism's regimes and its interstate system. An exceptional and impressive work of history. -- Able Greenspan * Midwest Book Review *Literature and politics go hand in hand in this survey of revolutionary literature from the Haitian Revolution to Black Lives Matter, including the writing of Che Guevara, Frantz Fanon and Assata Shakur. * The New York Times Book Review *University lecturer Steven states boldly in the introduction that 'this book is intended as a guide to class war.' He then paints a wide canvas, writing about revolutions in Haiti, Cuba, Russia, and elsewhere, spanning centuries to prepare us for a class war that, he argues, is already happening. -- Leland Cheuk, The best new books for summer 2023 * The Boston Globe *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Class War Now1. The Burning South2. Army of Redressers3. Defend the City4. School of War5. Towards a Red Army6. Protracted Peoples' Wars7. For Complete Disorder8. The Armed Nucleus9. Fighting after Fascism10. Army of the WrongedPostscript: No War But Class War

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Book SynopsisIn Marx's Literary Style, the Venezuelan poet and philosopher Ludovico Silva argues that much of the confusion around Marx's work results from a failure to understand his literary mode of expression. Through meticulous readings of key passages in Marx's oeuvre, Silva isolates the key elements of his style: his search for an "architectonic" unity at the level of the text, his capacity to express himself dialectically at the level of the sentence, and, above all, his great gift for metaphor. Silva's unique sensitivity to Marx's literary choices allows him to illuminate a number of terms that have been persistently, and fatefully, misunderstood by many of Marx's most influential readers, including alienation, reflection, and base and superstructure. At the heart of Silva's book is his contention that we we cannot hope to understand Marx if we treat him as a scientist, a philosopher, or a literary writer, when he was in fact all three at once. Originally published in 1971, this is a key work by one of the most important Latin American Marxists of the twentieth century. This edition, which marks the first appearance of one of Silva's works in English, features an introduction by Alberto Toscano.Trade ReviewWe've waited a long time for an English-language edition of this brilliant, agenda-setting work. The book is indispensable. To read it is to learn how inadequate it is to describe any metaphor - and certainly any of Marx's - as "mere" ever again. -- China MiévilleSilva demonstrates with wonderful clarity that Marx's literary style - especially his metaphors and his irony - is not merely ornamental but absolutely essential to his argument. -- Michael Hardt, author of The Subversive SeventiesIn this lively, compact, and refreshingly unpretentious study, Ludovico Silva shows how attention to Marx's style not only enhances our pleasure in reading him, but also sharpens our theoretical understanding of his texts. Silva's early analysis of Marx's way of making his thinking "plastically perceived" through the rhythm, tone, and careful patterning of his writing helps us more clearly distinguish Marx's metaphors from his concepts, and in doing so, better understand the dialectical play between them. Marx's Literary Style is a recovered classic. -- Sianne Ngai, author of Theory of the Gimmick: Aesthetic Judgment and Capitalist FormTranslated with gusto by Paco Brito Núñez, to whose initiative anglophone readers owe a debt of gratitude, Marx's Literary Style is one of those short little books that packs a punch far in excess of its diminutive size...It is impossible to read Marx's Literary Style and not emerge with a very different understanding of the literary to that with which one began. -- Daniel Hartley * Jacobin *In 1971 the little booklet of a Venezuelan author, Ludovico Silva, Marx, appeared, published in Italian in 1973 by Bompiani. I believe it can no longer be found and it would be worthwhile to reprint it. Referring to the history of Marx's literary formation (few know that he also wrote poems, albeit very bad ones, in the opinion of the few who have read them), Silva meticulously analyzed all of Marx's work. -- Umberto EcoSilva's long-overdue English debut offers another view on the full, resonant brilliance of Marx's work: how masterfully he harmonized modes of language that ranged from positivist to poetic, and how urgently he sought to identify what hinders our realizing the world of which he dreamed. -- Sam Russek * Protean Magazine *Silva's book, rich with insight regarding Marx's prose, also provides insight into the nature of Marx's economic and political analysis. The reader is able to think dialogically and dialectically along with him. At the same time, he helps the reader do the same with Marx, who Silva convincingly argues is a great stylist. -- Michael Principe * Marx & Philosophy Review of Books *

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Book SynopsisTheories of memory and fictional recreations of the remembering mind have occupied a central place in French literature since Montaigne. The author investigates the shifting relation between cognitive or "scientific" memory and emotional or spiritual recollection in a series of major writers from the 16th to the 20th centuries. Her study focuses on the 18th century, where the interplay between memory and imagination and the link between self-knowledge and self-presentation are shown to be exceptionally fertile. The philosophical, scientific and fictional writings of Diderot and the novels and autobiographical works of Rousseau are central to this ground-breaking work, which should be of interest to all readers concerned with the specificity of the French literary tradition.Table of ContentsIntroduction 1 Breaking the Mould 2 Eighteenth-Century Histoires 3 Recording and Rewriting 4 Diderot: The Limits of Experience 5 Rousseau: Person and Memory 6 The Soul and the Self , Conclusion

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Book SynopsisJourneys of RemembranceTable of ContentsJourneys of Remembrance

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Book SynopsisPre-histories and Afterlives: Studies in Critical MethodTable of ContentsPre-histories and Afterlives: Studies in Critical Method

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Book SynopsisRetrospectives: Essays in Literature, Poetics and Cultural HistoryTable of ContentsRetrospectives: Essays in Literature, Poetics and Cultural History

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Book SynopsisContemporary Scottish fiction is vigorous, vivid and diverse, eschewing the straitjackets of genre and resisting categorisation as either ''mainstream'' or ''literary''. Meanwhile, Scotland itself refuses to conform to external notions of what it is, and what it can become. The literature of this post-devolution nation comes in a multitude of voices. The Space of Fiction examines how Scottish writers have responded to, and been affected by, the nation''s ongoing political discourse. Examining in detail the works of Des Dillon, Anne Donovan, Michel Faber, Laura Hird, Alison Miller, Ewan Morrison, James Robertson, Suhayl Saadi, Zoe Strachan and their contemporaries, The Space of Fiction traces their multifarious approaches to a post-national, cosmopolitan, multicultural and even globalised Scotland, and explores their notions of space, of place, and of the impact of fiction on the nature of identity.

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Book SynopsisCentral to the creative process of the Romantic poets that followed him, Wordsworth’s Preface to the Lyrical Ballads has been both a gift and a thorn in the side of critics for over a century. Readers find themselves drawn back to the essay repeatedly as they seek to untangle the ideas and contradictions within it. The Preface is a statement of Wordsworth’s poetic vision and offers an explanation of the poetic process behind the poems, which fused the rusticity of the ballad form with the psychological introspection of modernity. But to the generation of Romantic writers that emerged in its wake, the Preface announced a new understanding of the creative process and of the high purposes of poetry: to reveal the human condition, and to awaken in its readers the profoundest emotions and the most enduring truths of existence.Table of ContentsWays in to the Text Who was William Wordsworth? What does Preface to the Lyrical Ballads Say? Why does Preface to the Lyrical Ballads Matter? Section 1: Influences Module 1: The Author and the Historical Context Module 2: Academic Context Module 3: The Problem Module 4: The Author's Contribution Section 2: Ideas Module 5: Main Ideas Module 6: Secondary Ideas Module 7: Achievement Module 8: Place in the Author's Work Section 3: Impact Module 9: The First Responses Module 10: The Evolving Debate Module 11: Impact and Influence Today Module 12: Where Next? Glossary of Terms People Mentioned in the Text Works Cited

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Book SynopsisIncluding poems from five collections, this bilingual collection highlights the complexity and beauty of Brandt's 'thought-experiment' poems.

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Book Synopsis1. Introduction.- 2. Anthropocene Poetry.- 3. The World in a Glance': Ted Hughes, Anthropocene Scales and Environmental Cosmopolitanism.- 4. Seamus Heaney's Environmental Poetry: Conservation Causes, Deep Time, Shifting Scales and Climate Change.- 5. Alice Oswald: Voyaging in Anthropocene Waters.- 6. Pascale Petit: Entanglement, Animals and the Anthropocene Extinction'.- 7. Kei Miller: Ecopoetics of Relation, Resistance and Grief.- 8. Seasonal Disturbances: Environment, Migration, Science and an Anthropocene Poetics of Relation in Karen McCarthy Woolf's Work.- 9. Coda: Everyday poems from the anthropocene and the Anthropocene Issue.

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Book SynopsisThis volume marks the launch of "Revisionen", a projected series of some eight volumes on basic concepts of literary theory. The series aims to reflect on central concepts of literary studies which have become questionable or problematic in the coarse of debates and to open up new perspectives on them in order to make them available for research in a new manner. Such concepts include, for example, "meaning", "literature", "interpretation". The papers in the individual volumes are derived from specialist international conferences and present systematic and complete compendia of the different aspects of the various concepts. With its structured framework, detailed contextual introduction and index, each volume forms a problem-orientated handbook. The series takes an interdisciplinary approach, drawing not only on literary theory but also on art history, music, philosophy, linguistic and psychology.Table of ContentsF. Jannidis / G. Lauer / M. Martínez / S. Winko: Die Bedeutung der Regeln. Eine Einleitung I. Sprachliche und sprachanalytische Aspekte der Bedeutung EinleitungW. Strube: Über verschiedene Arten sprachlicher BedeutungL. Dolezel: The Role of Counterfactuals in the Production of MeaningU. Fix: Grammatik des Wortes. Semantik des Textes. Freiräume und Grenzen für die Herstellung von Sinn?A. Linke: Bedeutung - Form - kultureller Mehrwert von SprachgebräuchenR. Sell: Literary PragmaticsR. Zymner: Metaphorische und uneigentliche Bedeutungen in der LiteraturA. Bühler: Interpretieren - Vielfalt oder Einheit?D. Thürnau: Nelson Goodman II. Literatur- und kulturwissenschaftliche Konzepte von 'Bedeutung' EinleitungT. Kindt / H.-H. Müller: Wieviel Interpretation enthalten Beschreibungen? Überlegungen zu einer umstrittenen Unterscheidung am Beispiel der NarratologieM. Sutrop: Das Imaginäre: Wolfgang Isers BedeutungskonzeptionK. Weimar: Zur Bedeutung literarischer TexteS. Winko: Über Regeln emotionaler Bedeutung in und von literarischen TextenC.-M. Ort: Von der (Un)Möglichkeit systemtheoretischer TextinterpretationK. Hurlebusch: EditionsphilologieA. Hornung: Cultural StudiesU. Schaffers: Interkulturelle BedeutungM. u. H. Willems: Soziologie der literarischen Bedeutung III. Mediale Konstitution von Bedeutung EinleitungR. Finnigan: Oral PoetryU. Christmann / M. Schreier: Kognitionspsychologie der Textverarbeitung und Konsequenzen für die Bedeutungskonstitution literarischer TexteF. Jannidis: Polyvalenz - Konvention - AutonomieM. Martínez: SchemaliteraturA. Mahler: PerformanzL. Kramer: Der seltsame Fall von Beethovens "Coriolan". Romantische Ästhetik, moderne Subjektivität und der Shakespeare-KultA. Lohmeier: FilmhermeneutikG. Lauer: Die zwei Schriften der Hypertexts IV. Historische Aspekte literarischer Bedeutung EinleitungK. Eibl: Vom Nutzen unnützer Erzählungen. Die evolutionäre Psychologie und die LiteraturP. Strohschneider: Bedeutungsnähe - Bedeutungsferne. Literaturhistorische Anmerkungen zu Schriftpraxen in der religiösen Literatur des 12. und 13. JahrhundertsB. F. Scholz: Zur frühmodernen Genese des BedeutungsbegriffsL. Dannenberg: "Besserverstehen": Zur Analyse und Entstehung einer hermeneutischen MaximeR. v. Heydebrand: 'Gender' als Faktor in der Bedeutungskonstitution von literarischen TextenE. Schön: Historische Leserforschung

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Book Synopsis Cyclical-serial narratives are an anthropological cultural constant. The social circles in one of the central genres of German literature since Goethes ‘Conversations among German émigrés’ – the framework cycle – tell stories in order to create social identity and counteract death. Using analyses of individual cycles, a comprehensive corpus of the genre is created, and an analysis given of the socio- and mediahistorical preconditions for their widespread reception in the age of almanac culture. In a broad mediahistorical sweep and in the context of an intermedial narratology, the course of ‘narrated narrative’ is then followed comparatistically from Sherezade and the narrative circles in the literature of the English, German and the Romance languages (Tieck, Hoffmann, Hauff, Brentano, Kleist etc.), via the magazine serial right up to cinema, radio and TV series, above all the soap opera. By focussing on the contents of the frameworks, a need is met from research into the novella, and in the same way the TV series becomes visible in its literary tradition. Narration reveals itself as an anthropological cultural constant, as narration for social identity and against death.

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Book SynopsisReaching into the depths of the collective unconscious, A Sense of Apocalypse explores and re-interprets one of the West’s primordial fears, namely that of the apocalyptic closure of both cultural praxis and individual experience. Yet, in contrast to popular connotations of the term, apocalypse is viewed here in terms of a transitional narrative locating the subject at the intersection of technological determinism, pop-cultural imagination, postmodern urbanism and digital textuality. All these form the components of a new post-apocalyptic landscape, which not only produces a new identity informed by dissolving post-Enlightenment paradigms, but also conjures up hints at a large number of existential possibilities triggered by late-capitalist technologies and their cultural consequences.Table of ContentsContents: Apocalypse – Technology – Science Fiction – Cultural Studies – Literary Theory – Postmodernism – Rene Descartes – Jean Baudrillard – Guy Debord – Scott Bukatman – Postindustrialism – Popular Cinema – Terminal Culture – Cyberspace – Posthumanism – Textual Spaces and Spatial Textualities – Identity and Its Discontents.

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Book SynopsisVorstellungen von Absenz wirken in der Gegenwart auf breiter Basis – auch in der Literatur. Doch wie sind diese medial vermittelt? Geht man davon aus, dass Absenz-Phänomene sich nicht in einer primordialen Leere ereignen, sondern dass ihnen eher mit Vorstellungen vom Unbestimmten, Unverfügbaren und Möglichen beizukommen ist, rücken Verräumlichungsformen in den Fokus, die bewegungslogisch zu erklären sind. Um das intrikate Verhältnis von Möglichkeitsformen und ‚Wirklichkeit‘ innerhalb der Grenzen des Sagbaren zu verhandeln, begegnen ihm Thomas Bernhards und Christoph Ransmayrs Erzähltexte mit Verfahren der Verräumlichung. Aus der Perspektive einer Ästhetik der Absenz poetisieren diese Erzähltexte Wahrnehmungsschwellen, indem sie Abwesendes textphänomenal verräumlichen, es jedoch nicht im (topo-)graphischen containment absichern, sondern eine Topologie eröffnen, die auf Strategien des displacement setzt. Die Studie führt raumtheoretische Ansätze unter einer differenztheoretischen Perspektive mit einem Konzept von Virtualität zusammen, um literarische Verfahren der Verräumlichung von Absenz in Erzähltexten von Bernhard und Ransmayr zu untersuchen. Table of ContentsEinleitung.- Vom ›leeren‹ Raum zur Medialität der Absenz: Konturen eines Diskursproblems.- Texturen der Absenz: Räumlichkeit zwischen Horror Vacui und Möglichkeitsdenken.- Displacement: Zur literarischen Verräumlichung der Absenz.- Die »organisierte Form des Verschwindens« – Wüste als Experimentalraum in Christoph Ransmayrs Strahlender Untergang. Ein Entwässerungsprojekt oder Die Entdeckung des Wesentlichen.- »die Zeichen auf meinen Karten bedeuten Sperrgebiet« – ›Weiße Flecken‹ durchmessen mit Christoph Ransmayrs Die Schrecken des Eises und der Finsternis.- »Schwarzer Schnee?« – Zur Virtualität der Leerstelle in Christoph Ransmayrs Der fliegende Berg.- Im white cube: Den ›leeren‹ Raum verhören mit Thomas Bernhards Das Kalkwerk.- »Korrektur der Korrektur der Korrektur der Korrektur« – Zur Architextur der Absenz in Thomas Bernhards Korrektur.- »..., sondern vielmehr das, was drum herum oder darin ist«: Zur epistemologischen und ästhetischen Dimension der Absenz.

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Book SynopsisEinleitung.- Gattungsbegriff ›Novelle‹: sprachanalytische Eingrenzung.- Das Meer in ›abendländischer‹ Literatur und Kultur.- Die literarische ›Entdeckung‹ der deutschen Küste im 19. Jahrhundert.- Gattungsfamilie ›Nordseenovelle‹.- Theodor Mügge (1802 oder 1805/6–1861).- C. P. Hansen (1803–1879).- Ernst Willkomm (1810–1886).- Theodor Storm (1817–1888).- Fazit.- Ausblick.

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Book SynopsisEinleitung.- Intersektionalität.- Transgression.- Intersektional-orientierte Analysen der Erzählungen Thomas Manns.- Narrative Konstruktionen von Außerordentlichkeit.- Transgression und Strafe.- Transgressionsphänomene.- Fazit: Thomas Manns Erzählungen aus intersektional-orientierter Perspektive.

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Book SynopsisEinlietung.- Strukturen.-Bezüge.-Diskurse.

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