Literary theory Books

Book SynopsisA pioneering study of women poets exploring the four laureate roles of the United Kingdom and Ireland.Trade Review"At once tracing the poets' careers and their self-inscription into exclusionary poetic traditions, Varty's timely book examines?their advances for literary and cultural democracies. It deftly?details?how, individually and collectively, these women reconfigure national identities while destabilising nationalisms, and how they infiltrate school curricula when sceptical of educational policies." -Dr Jane Dowson, De Montfort University, author of Carol Ann Duffy: Poet for Our Times

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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

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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.

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Book SynopsisThis book brings to light Derrida's rich and thought-provoking discussions of Shakespearean drama.

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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)

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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

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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

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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

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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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