Literature: history and criticism Books

Book SynopsisExploring the question of human agency amidst a world teeming with powerful nonhuman influences, Jane Bennett draws upon Whitman, Thoreau, Caillois, Whitehead, and other poetic writers to link a non-anthropocentric model of self to a democratic pluralism and a syntax and style of writing appropriate to the entangled world in which we live.Trade Review“Jane Bennett has always been interested in reading the ecological from a political point of view and articulating an ecological politics. But this book will be a new moment in how we think about ecology and democracy. For it explains to us not only the possibility of ‘ecological democracy’ but also why a truly democratic personality must be ecological: open and attentive, susceptible to otherness, and welcoming influences. Influx & efflux is a wonderful achievement.” -- Branka Arsic, author of * Bird Relics: Grief and Vitalism in Thoreau *“In this remarkable book Jane Bennett shows us just why a capacious sense of influence matters so much to our efforts to shape the circumstances we find ourselves in. Generous, surprising, and beautifully illustrated, influx & efflux resounds as a compelling affirmation of the value of drawing diverse elements and agencies into new lines of thinking and feeling. This book does nothing less than shift the tone and terms of political theory, offering us a vital poetic vocabulary for making more of the world's participation in the political and ecological stances we take.” -- Derek P. McCormack, author of * Atmospheric Things: On the Allure of Elemental Envelopment *"Arguing for an aspirational rather than a polemical Whitman, Bennett charts a body of work generous, egalitarian, and democratic 'wherein the forces of nonhuman agencies and the ubiquity of stupendous, ethereal influences are acknowledged' (p. 116). Ultimately, she concludes that Whitman’s 'I is creative in that it alters and inflects what is taken in, taken on, taken up' (p. 117). Recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty." -- J. N. Barron * Choice *"Theorists who figure prominently in Bennett’s argument include Gilles Deleuze, Alfred North Whitehead, Harold Bloom, and Michel Serres. This amalgam of influences gives rise to a hybrid style of theorising that blends conventional literary analysis with philosophical and political argument. The result is an exciting and rich intervention in several fields at once." -- Sean Seeger * Green Letters *“Influx and Efflux is a welcome contribution to political theory, and the thoughtful, challenging, and charming approach to things here is one that will be of benefit to any reader.” -- Michael Epp * Political Theory *“Influx & Efflux is an excellent follow-up to Vibrant Matter.... Influx & Efflux manages no easy task: bringing out the vibrancy of Whitman’s poetry as a living political force that needs to be reckoned with in the present.” -- Christian P. Haines * ALH Online Review *“[Influx and Efflux] calls the reader to respond with distinctly spiritual and artistic gestures. . . . Bennett effectively exemplifies that democracy does not come from political policies alone, but from a community that prioritizes a porosity, that allows for an influx of the world into the self, and is committed to the efflux of speaking back out and into the world of human, animal, and vibrant matter.” -- Karah Lain * Religion and the Arts *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii Prologue.Influx and efflux ix 1. Position and Disposition 1 2. Circuits of Sympathy 27 3. Solar Judgment 46 Refrain. The Alchemy of Affects 63 4. Bad Influence 75 5. Thoreau Experiments with Natural Influences 92 Epilogue. A Peculiar Efficacy 113 Notes 119 Bibliography 173 Index 189

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Book SynopsisChristopher Freeburg challenges the imperative to study black social life and slavery and its aftereffects through the lenses of freedom, agency, and domination and instead examines how enslaved Africans created meaning through spirituality, thought, and artistic creativity separate and alongside concerns about freedom.Trade Review“The boldness and ambition of Christopher Freeburg's Counterlife are apparent on every page. Freeburg challenges decades of work on U.S. slavery that highlights either slave resistance or white dominance, but often not more than that. As an alternative, Freeburg insists that we consider the many possibilities of both Black life during slavery and the ways that we now dare to imagine and reference that life.” -- Robert F. Reid-Pharr, author of * Archives of Flesh: African America, Spain, and Post-Humanist Critique *“Christopher Freeburg's theory of counterlife is the refreshing new grammar that breaks out of slavery studies' conscious and unconscious lapses into the binary of social death or social life. Counterlife adds crucial new dimensions to the study of the artistic representation of enslaved Africans. This bold, brilliant study teaches us how to stumble, with uncertainty and vulnerability, into the ever-expanding archive of slavery.” -- Margo Natalie Crawford, author of * Black Post-Blackness: The Black Arts Movement and Twenty-First-Century Aesthetics *“Counterlife is somewhat loosely defined. . . . The virtue of this more speculative approach is that it brings widely ranging works into dialogue with each other and takes seriously the ways in which writers might wish to write against moral and political expectations—not so much resisting slavery as resisting its dominant modes of representation.” -- Colin Harrison * Modern Language Review *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction: Slavery's Hereafter 1. Sambo's Cloak 2. Kaleidoscope Views 3. Sounds of Blackness 4. The Last Black Hero Coda: Chasing Ghosts Notes Bibliography

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Book SynopsisIn Black Aliveness, or A Poetics of Being, Kevin Quashie imagines a Black world in which one encounters Black being as it is rather than only as it exists in the shadow of anti-Black violence. As such, he makes a case for Black aliveness even in the face of the persistence of death in Black life and Black study. Centrally, Quashie theorizes aliveness through the aesthetics of poetry, reading poetic inhabitance in Black feminist literary texts by Lucille Clifton, Audre Lorde, June Jordan, Toni Morrison, and Evie Shockley, among others, showing how their philosophical and creative thinking constitutes worldmaking. This worldmaking conceptualizes Blackness as capacious, relational beyond the normative terms of recognition—Blackness as a condition of oneness. Reading for poetic aliveness, then, becomes a means of exploring Black being rather than nonbeing and animates the ethical question “how to be.” In this way, Quashie offers a Black feminist philosophy oTrade Review“Black studies is a spiritual discipline, one devoted to that dispersed and disseminated gathering of a nonexclusionary black world. Kevin Quashie has helped me think about this and has given me intellectual and theoretical tools and language for this. Black Aliveness is one of the most intellectually stimulating, illuminating, and spiritually moving books I’ve read in a very long time. Its impact will be immediate.” -- J. Kameron Carter, author of * Race: A Theological Account *“Decentering the focus on ‘social death’ in current black studies, Black Aliveness is the first book to push us to the next step when we start with the feeling of aliveness rather than with black death as a way of understanding black life. There is magical thinking and writing in this paradigm-shifting book.” -- Margo Natalie Crawford, author of * Black Post-Blackness: The Black Arts Movement and Twenty-First-Century Aesthetics *"I found great relief in Quashie's formulation of the concept of 'oneness,' which he insists is 'not akin to individualism.'… Quashie's book has shifted decades of denial, distancing, and suppression for me, not by rescuing the I, but by giving me one, the becoming, the relational.… In dealing with my ontological anxieties, I have dreamed of dissolution, a release into the elements of the universe of which we are all made. But even if we mingle with the stars we are still left with particles and forms of relation between these particles. What an aha! moment for me, reading Quashie…. How freeing and wonderful. To relate, to mingle, is not a dissolve, but a proliferation." -- Jayna Brown * Critical Inquiry *"This deeply poetic, rich book may be paradigm shifting. Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers." -- J. A. Kegley * Choice *"Kevin Quashie's book provides a blueprint for alternative methods of reading and studying Black life, Black worldmaking, and Black relationality." -- Daisy Guzman * E3W Review of Books *"Quashie's efforts are triumphant. . . . This work and its tender attention to that which constitutes humanity within these texts of aliveness would retain its magic regardless of the world, 'the episteme,' in which one finds it." -- Erin Tatz * Theory & Event *"One of the most significant contributions of the book as a whole is the quiet but insistent contention that poetry and poetics can do the work of social analysis. It is here, in Quashie’s attention to aesthetic choices and form, that we appreciate the value of Black Aliveness. . . . Quashie has written a field-shifting book that centers aesthetic paths to life in place of restraint in its treatment of Black being." -- Gershun Avilez * Genre *"Quashie’s Black Aliveness is not a blueprint or a definitive answer to his opening question. Rather, the book is more like a gesture and an invitation; it offers a path for studying Black life and world-making through aesthetics. Throughout, Quashie’s prose emulates the beauty, splendor, and energy of the writings that constitute the matrix for his reflections. The reader will appreciate how the author frequently pauses to consider the grandeur of an essay or the rhythm of a poem. Students of Black literature and aesthetics should also praise Quashie’s practice of sitting with Black texts as primary sources for critical thought and ethics." -- Joseph Winters * American Literary History *"Black Aliveness is an important intervention in a conversation that has come to dominate black studies in recent years, under a variety of different names: the question of the human, black ontology, the(im)possibility of black subjectivity, and afropessimism. . . . Quashie’s book offers a loving response to and reorientation of a field that has come to read blackness as synonymous with death, and antiblackness as constitutive of black life." -- Jennifer C. Nash * Cultural Critique *Table of ContentsIntroduction. Aliveness 1 1. Aliveness and Relation 15 2. Aliveness and Oneness 31 3. Aliveness and Aesthetics 57 4. Aliveness in Two Essays 83 5. Aliveness and Ethics 107 Conclusion. Again, Aliveness 141 Acknowledgments 155 Notes 157 Bibliography 219 Permissions 227 Index 229

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Book SynopsisMark Rifkin examines nineteenth-century Native writings by William Apess, Elias Boudinot, Sarah Winnemucca, and Zitkala-Ša to rethink and reframe contemporary debates around recognition, refusal, and resurgence for Indigenous peoples.Trade Review“Mark Rifkin examines important nineteenth-century Native literary figures' engagement with settler publics by laying out a nuanced introspection of their ‘portraits of peoplehood’ during tumultuous contexts and the costs of such representativity that foster tension in the present day. He resituates the discussion of recognition to this earlier period in order to detour from a settler stronghold on political definitions still used to impact the daily life of Indigenous peoples. Delving deep into the political spheres of violence and the nuanced political forms of Indigenous life that emerge, Rifkin gives us further grounds to explore the foundations and formations of slippery recognition politics.” -- Mishuana Goeman, Professor of Gender Studies and American Indian Studies, University of California, Los Angeles“Presenting new, insightful, nuanced, and persuasive readings of four key figures in nineteenth-century Native American literature, Speaking for the People is both timely and poised to become a classic study in Native and Indigenous studies, anthropology, and American literary studies. An interdisciplinary tour de force.” -- Birgit Brander Rasmussen, author of * Queequeg’s Coffin: Indigenous Literacies and Early American Literature *"Speaking for the People is as useful for scholars and students of contemporary indigenous studies as it is for those pursuing the study of 19th-century literature, politics, and indigenous peoples. Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty." -- J. J. Donahue * Choice *"In Speaking for the People Mark Rifkin contributes to the ongoing critical conversation regarding Indigenous recognition. In richly historicized chapters he questions the process of how Indigenous leaders . . . consciously stage the 'legitimacy of their entry' into the discursive frameworks of coloniality." -- Caitlin Simmons * Western American Literature *"Speaking for the People reasserts the usefulness and relevance of literary studies in fashioning Indigenous political theory. Rifkin demonstrates how nineteenth-century Native texts have had to navigate settler worldings to express peoplehood and how their intellectual labor of negotiatedness should inspire present-day scholarship. His demonstration is as compelling as it is unsettling." -- Mathilde Louette * Transatlantica *"Speaking for the People . . . is valuable for literary scholars and Indigenous scholars alike to articulate the complexity of Indigenous activism in a settler state." -- Alison Russell * New England Quarterly *"Speaking for the People has generated a rich set of coordinates and queries for analyzing nineteenth-century Native writing, and Rifkin’s readings model how these questions take us deep into nineteenth-century Native political discussions while resonating in contemporary NAIS scholarship." -- Kelly Wisecup * Native American and Indigenous Studies *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii Introduction 1 1. What's in a Nation? Cherokee Vanguardism in Elias Boudinot's Letters 35 2. Experiments in Signifying Sovereignty: Exemplarity and the Politics of Southern New England in William Apess 77 3. Among Ghost Dances: Sarah Winnemucca and the Production of Paiute Identity 127 4. The Native Informant Speaks: The Politics of Ethnographic Subjectivity in Zitkala-Ša's Autobiographical Stories 176 Coda. On Refusing the Ethnographic Imaginary, or Reading for the Politics of Peoplehood 221 Notes 235 Bibliography 277 Index 301

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Book SynopsisIn this volume experienced and new college- and university-level teachers will find practical, adaptable strategies for designing or updating courses in western American literature and western studies. Teaching Western American Literature features the latest developments in western literary research and cultural studies as well as pedagogical best practices in course development. Contributors provide practical models and suggestions for courses and assignments while presenting concrete strategies for teaching works both inside and outside the canon. In addition, Brady Harrison and Randi Lynn Tanglen have assembled insights from pioneering western studies instructors with workable strategies and practical advice for translating this often complex material for classrooms from freshman writing courses to graduate seminars.Teaching Western American Literature reflects the cutting edge of western American literary study, featuring diverse approaches allied witTrade Review"Harrison (Univ. of Montana) and Tanglen (Austin College) have gathered an impressive selection of essays on teaching western American literature. They focus primarily on pedagogy, ranging from general education classes to writing classes at multiple levels. The exploration of the pedagogical practices can be extended to various courses in a variety of disciplines. The contextual subject matter is as enlightening as the pedagogical. The 13 essays are arranged in four categories: 'Teaching the Literary Wests'; 'Affect, Indigeneity, Gender'; 'Place and Regionality'; and 'Hemispheric/Global Wests.' The investigations are intersectional and include issues relevant to African American studies, American studies, border studies, critical race theory, cultural studies, disability studies, ecocriticism, gender studies, global studies, and, perhaps most important, human rights. The collection is timely in that it uncovers and discovers an American past that has been elided by the popular narratives of Hollywood and television. These narratives form the West in the American imagination as a trope of expansion and accumulation rooted in property and propriety, and manifest in the individual. The 'American West' in this collection is multivalent, with narrative borders beyond imagined walls."—R. T. Prus, Choice“A rich volume. . . . It provides teachers with valuable insight into how classroom teaching is informed by and sometimes advances scholarly conversations about western literature specifically and literary studies more generally, while also providing excellent practical strategies that readers can use to enhance student learning and engagement in their own classrooms.”—Jennifer S. Tuttle, coeditor of Charlotte Perkins Gilman: New Texts, New Contexts“Teaching Western American Literature will appeal to anyone involved in teaching western American literature at the post-secondary level, from the graduate student teaching a course for the first time to the seasoned instructor curious about how their teaching practice fits into the broader landscape or just looking for fresh ideas.”—Victoria Lamont, author of Westerns: A Women’s HistoryTable of ContentsList of Tables Acknowledgments Introduction: Teaching Western American Literature Brady Harrison, University of Montana, and Randi Lynn Tanglen, Austin College Part 1. Teaching the Literary Wests 1. Teaching the Popular Western in the Second-Level Writing Course Chadwick Allen, University of Washington 2. Quirky Little Things and Wilderness Letters: Using Wallace Stegner to Teach Cultural Studies and the Responsibilities of Citizenship Melody Graulich, Utah State University 3. Teaching the Black West Kalenda Eaton, University of Oklahoma, and Michael K. Johnson, University of Maine–Farmington Part 2. Affect, Indigeneity, Gender 4. Gender, Affect, Environmental Justice, and Indigeneity in the Classroom Amy T. Hamilton, Northern Michigan University 5. Teaching Queer and Two-Spirit Indigenous Literatures, or The West Has Always Been Queer Lisa Tatonetti, Kansas State University 6. An Interdisciplinary Approach to Teaching Gender in Western American Literature Amanda R. Gradisek and Mark C. Rogers, Walsh University Part 3. Place and Regionality 7. Moving Beyond the Traditional Classroom and So Far from God: Place-Based Learning in the U.S. Southwest Karen R. Roybal, Colorado College 8. Quotidian Wests: Exploring Regionality through the Everyday Nancy S. Cook, University of Montana 9. Western Writers in the Field O. Alan Weltzien, University of Montana Western 10. Placing the Pacific Northwest on the Literary Map: Teaching Ella Rhoads Higginson’s Mariella, of Out-West Laura Laffrado, Western Washington University Part 4. Hemispheric/Global Wests 11. National, Transnational, and Human Rights Frames for Teaching María Amparo Ruiz de Burton’s The Squatter and the Don Tereza M. Szeghi, University of Dayton 12. Able-Bodies, Difference, and Citizenship in the West: Teaching James Welch’s The Heartsong of Charging Elk in a Global Context Andrea M. Dominguez, DeVry University, San Diego 13. Teaching Western Canadian Literature in the Croatian Context: A Case Study Vanja Polić, University of Zagreb Contributors Index

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Book SynopsisA history and examination of dystopia and angst in popular culture that speaks to our current climate of dread.At the dawn of the 20th century, a wide-ranging utopianism dominated popular and intellectual cultures throughout Europe and America. However, in the aftermathof the World Wars, with such canonical examples as Brave New World and Nineteen-Eighty-Four, dystopia emerged as a dominant genre, in literature and in social thought. The continuing presence and eventual dominance of dystopian themes in popular culturee.g., dismal authoritarian future states, sinister global conspiracies, post-apocalyptic landscapes, a proliferation of horrific monsters, and end-of-the-world fantasieshave confirmed the degree to which the 21st is also a dystopian century.Drawing on literature as varied as H.G. Wells's The Time Machine, Neil Gaiman's American Gods, and Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games, and on TV and film such as TheTrade ReviewWhat better guide could there be than the ever-incisive Tally to this brave new world of gods, monsters, dystopias, apocalypses, tattered maps, gold-bearing rubble, and, well, monsters? Welcome to the Teratocene! * Mark Bould, Professor of Film and Literature, UWE Bristol, UK, and author of The Anthropocene Unconscious: Climate Catastrophe Culture (2021) *From Neil Gaiman and NAFTA to panoptic surveillance in Black Mirror, and from monsters in children's literature to the post-apocalyptic landscapes of modern cinema, Robert T. Tally Jr. in The Fiction of Dread diagnoses the morbid symptoms of contemporary narrative preoccupations. Through attention to dystopian themes, multiplying monsters, and the end of the world, Tally presents a wide-ranging, clearly written, and extremely insightful analysis of the appeal of dreadful things and the kind of critical work they do in helping us attempt to grasp the complexities of our world and imagine other, better possibilities. * Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, Professor of English, Central Michigan University, USA *Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Introduction: Monstrous Accumulation 1. Evoking Dread: The Reality of Possibility 2. Baleful Continuities; or, the Desire Called Dystopia 3. Lost in Grand Central: American Gods, Free Trade, and Globalization 4. The Utopia of the Mirror: The Postmodern Mise en abyme 5. Welcome to the Teratocene: Morbid Symptoms at the Present Conjuncture 6. Teratology as Ideology Critique; or, a Monster Under Every Bed 7. The End-of-the-World as World System 8. In the Deserts of the Empire: The Map, the Territory, and the Heterotopian Enclave Conclusion: Gold-Bearing Rubble Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisTrolling began long before the internet. This accessible history traces the ancestry of its textual and rhetorical strategies, by looking at literature from ancient Greece to the 1980s. Trolling is the most controversial genre of writing to have risen to prominence in the 21st century, with far-reaching consequences for its writers and readers alike. But it is too often regarded as a technological problem, confined to the internet. This book takes a very different approach: it regards trolling as a cultural problem with a long and venerable literary history. Taking in the contrarianism of Lord Byron, the wit of Oscar Wilde, insult trading in Shakespeare, Jonathan Swift's disaster trolling, Martin Luther's dissemination of heresy through a public discussion forum, the grotesquely misogynistic abuse hurled in Archilochus's poetry, the taunting provocations of avant-garde manifestos, and not forgetting public humiliations in Beowulf, David Rudrum demonstrates that trolls' rhetorical sh

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Book SynopsisSaikat Majumdar is Professor of English & Creative Writing at Ashoka University, India. He is the author of a monograph, Prose of the World (2013) and five novels, including The Firebird/Play House (2015/2017), and The Remains of the Body (2024); and the co-editor of The Critic as Amateur (Bloomsbury, 2019).

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Book SynopsisThe years 19892008 were an era of neoliberal hegemony in US politics, economy, and culture. Post*45 scholar Adam Kelly argues that American novelists who began their careers during these yearsspecifically the post-baby boom generation of writers born between the late 1950s and early 1970sresponded to the times by developing in their fiction an aesthetics of sincerity. How, and in what way, these writers ask, can you mean what you say, and avow what you feel, when what you say and feel can be bought and sold on the market? What is authentic art in a historical moment when the artist has become a model for neoliberal subjectivity rather than its negation? Through six chapters focused on key writers of the periodincluding Susan Choi, Helen DeWitt, Jennifer Egan, Dave Eggers, George Saunders, Dana Spiotta, Colson Whitehead, and David Foster Wallacethe book explores these central questions while intervening critically in a set of debates in contemporary literary studies concerning aesthe

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Book SynopsisPerhaps no period better clarifies our current crisis of digital information than the nineteenth century. Self-aware about its own epochal telecommunications changes and awash in a flood of print, the nineteenth century confronted the consequences of its media shifts in ways that still define contemporary responses. In this authoritative new work, Paul Fyfe argues that writing about Victorian new media continues to shape reactions to digital change. Among its unexpected legacies are what we call digital humanities, characterized by the self-reflexiveness, disciplinary reconfigurations, and debates that have made us digital Victorians, so to speak, struggling again to resituate humanities practices amid another technological revolution. Engaging with writers such as Thomas De Quincey, George Eliot, George du Maurier, Henry James, and Robert Louis Stevenson who confronted the new media of their day, Fyfe shows how we have inherited Victorian anxieties about quantitative and mac

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Book SynopsisWhat distinguishes fiction from ordinary experience is not a lack of reality but a surfeit of rationality – this was the thesis of Aristotle’s Poetics. The rationality of fiction is that appearances are inverted. Fiction overturns the ordinary course of events that occur one after the other, aiming to show how the unexpected arises, happiness transforms into unhappiness and ignorance into knowledge. In the modern age, argues Rancière, this fictional rationality was developed in new ways. The social sciences extended the model of causal linkage to all spheres of human action, seeking to show us how causes produce their effects by inverting appearances and expectations. Literature took the opposite path. Instead of democratizing fictional rationality to include all human activity in the world of rational knowledge, it destroyed its principles by abolishing the limits that circumscribed a reality peculiar to fiction. It aligned itself with the rhythms of everyday life and plumbed the power of the “random moment” into which an entire life is condensed. In the avowed fictions of literature as well as in the unavowed fictions of politics, social science or journalism, the central question is the same: how to construct the perceptible forms of a shared world. From Stendhal to João Guimarães Rosa and from Marx to Sebald, via Balzac, Poe, Maupassant, Proust, Rilke, Conrad, Auerbach, Faulkner and some others, this book explores these constructions and sheds new light on the constitutive movement of modern fiction, the movement that shifted its centre of gravity from its traditional core toward those edges in which fiction gets confronted with its possible revocation.Trade Review‘A probing and scintillating new book on the meaning, rationality and politics of literary fiction. Rancière illuminates the surprising connection between the logic of tragedy, in which ignorance leads to misfortune, and explanation in the modern social sciences. He interrogates how that paradigm slowly unwinds into the democratizing tumult of modernism. An invaluable addition to our understanding of a topic Rancière has made his own: the aesthetic conditions of political reason.’J.M. Bernstein, The New School for Social ResearchTable of ContentsAcknowledgements Introduction Doors and Windows Behind the Windows The Eyes of the Poor What Voyeurs See Window with a Street View The Threshold of Science The Commodity’s Secret Causality’s Adventures The Shores of the Real The Unimaginable Paper Landscapes The Edge of the All and the Nothing The Random Occurrence Two Stories of Poor People The Mute’s Speech The Measureless Moment

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Book SynopsisFree Black woman, poet, novelist, essayist, speaker, and activist, Frances Watkins Harper was one of the nineteenth century’s most important advocates of Abolitionism and female suffrage, and her pioneering work still has profound lessons for us today. In this new book, Utz McKnight shows how Harper’s life and work inspired her contemporaries to imagine a better America. He seeks to recover her importance by examining not only her vision of the possibilities of Emancipation, but also her subsequent role in challenging Jim Crow. He argues that engaging with her ideas and writings is vital in understanding not only our historical inheritance, but also contemporary issues ranging from racial violence to the role of Christianity. This lucid book is essential reading not only for students of African American history, but also for all progressives interested in issues of race, politics, and society.Trade Review"It's rare to read a book that both recovers a brilliant political thinker who has long been neglected, and is filled with luminous insights about contemporary racial politics, but Utz McKnight has achieved just this. This is one of the best books I've read in a long time."Alex Zamalin, University of Detroit-Mercy"Utz McKnight brings to light Frances Ellen Watkins Harper as a visionary. Read this book to discover the incomparable life and penetrating thought of one of the nineteenth century’s most important public intellectuals. Absorb its lessons because, as McKnight so elegantly shows, Harper’s aspirations for our democracy remain necessary and timeless."Martha S. Jones, Johns Hopkins UniversityTable of ContentsPreface Chapter One – Frances Harper�s Poetic Journey Chapter Two – Iola Leroy: Social Equality Chapter Three – Trial and Triumph: The Public Demand for Equality Chapter Four – Sowing and Reaping: Personal Solutions and Conviction Chapter Five – Minnie�s Sacrifice and the Poetic License Chapter Six – Conclusion: Of Poems and Politics References

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Book SynopsisAimé Césaire’s work is foundational for decolonial and postcolonial thought. His Discourse on Colonialism, first published in 1955, influenced generations of scholars and activists at the forefront of liberation struggles in Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean and it remains a classic of anticolonial thought. This unique volume takes the form of a series of interviews with Césaire that were conducted by Françoise Vergès in 2004, shortly before his death. Césaire’s responses to Vergès’ questions cover a wide range of topics, including the origins of his political activism, the legacies of slavery and colonialism, the question of reparation for slavery and the problems of marrying literature to politics. The book includes a substantial postface by Vergès in which she situates Césaire’s work in its intellectual and political context. This timely book brings Césaire back into the present-day conversation on race, slavery and the legacy of colonialism. His penetrating insights on these matters should appeal to scholars and students throughout the humanities and social sciences as well as to the general public.Trade Review“Whether it be his poetry, plays, essays, or speeches, Aimé Césaire's writing has remained a canonical essential for over 50 years, but only with the arrival of Resolutely Black can we now enjoy the kinds of detailed insights and commentary worthy of his stature. The interviews with Françoise Vergès further underscore the unnerving prescience of Césaire when it comes to racial politics while also providing much-needed context, depth and texture. A ‘must’ for all students and scholars who study power, diaspora, culture, identity and belonging in the modern world.”Michelle Wright, Emory University“Resolutely Black offers English language readers a fascinating series of primarily political conversations [Françoise] Vergès had with Martinican poet, playwright, and politician Aimé Césaire late in his long life, just four years before he died at age ninety-four in 2008. […] Vergès’s framing of these interviews and the incisive writings around them in both her preface and postface to the book are crucial for getting at the complexities of Césaire’s legacies. […] The translator of Resolutely Black, Matthew B. Smith […] is an experienced translator who enables readers of this book to hear the source text in the translation, something only very talented translators can do.”Katerina Gonzalez Seligmann, Simone de Beauvoir StudiesTable of ContentsNote on the translation Preface by Françoise Vergès Interviews Postface by Françoise Vergès Works by Aimé CésaireNotes

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Book SynopsisPost-apartheid South Africa still struggles to overcome the past, not just because the material conditions of apartheid linger but because the intellectual conditions it created have not been thoroughly dismantled. The system of 'petty apartheid', which controlled the minutia of everyday life, became a means of dragooning human beings into adapting to increasingly mechanized forms of life that stifle desire and creative endeavour. As a result, apartheid is incessantly repeated in the struggle to move beyond it. In Undoing Apartheid, Premesh Lalu argues that only an aesthetic education can lead to a future beyond apartheid. To find ways to escape the vicious cycle, he traces the patterns created by three theatrical works by William Kentridge, Jane Taylor, and the Handspring Puppet Company – Faustus in Africa, Woyzeck on the Highveld, and Ubu and the Truth Commission – which coincided with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of apartheid. Through the analysis of these works, Lalu uncovers the roots of modern thinking about race and affirms the need to revitalize a post-apartheid reconciliation endowed with truth – if only to keep alive the rhyme of hope and history.Trade Review“Undoing Apartheid offers an unexpected, unorthodox, and deeply rewarding read.”South African Journal of Science“The book raises many questions about post-apartheid and postcoloniality, as well as showing in an original way how to address these issues with a different approach and method in addition to existing approaches in the literature.”African Studies Quarterly "In this stunningly original work of intellectual and aesthetic history, Premesh Lalu offers a powerful theory of petty apartheid as a process of deindividuation and objectification through the manipulation of the senses. By excavating the psychotechnics of a century-long biological racism and its revelation in contemporary object-theatre, Lalu’s book illuminates a path towards an aesthetic education from which a post-apartheid world can emerge. An extraordinary achievement by South Africa’s leading historian and humanist."Debjani Ganguly, University of Virginia“I read Undoing Apartheid over the weekend – what a fantastic discussion. I’ve been inspired by it – not only how it reads Seamus Heaney’s The Cure at Troy but the insights into so many other works (the Danby painting included). Building it around the trio of performances works brilliantly: I could understand not only the petty apartheid thesis but also the crucial segue of grand apartheid into techno-capitalism. And I am already borrowing from the discussion of slapstick from the Ubu and the Truth Commission section. It reflects pertinently on the genres which have responded to the parallel situation in Northern Ireland. Abdullah Ibrahim too…superb.”Professor Eve Patten, Director of the Trinity Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Research Institute, Trinity College“[A]n important book, beautifully written, challenging and rewarding.”John K. Noyes in Freund Humanus“Brilliant and necessary. In this luminous book, Premesh Lalu uncovers the brutal legacies of apartheid’s assault on sensual and perceptual life. Only an aesthetic education, he argues, can open up the true hope of post-apartheid future. Written with astute theoretical attentiveness, and with poetry at its heart, Undoing Apartheid is an inspiring blueprint for the aesthetic education it urges. In an era when attacks on the arts and humanities across the world are blatant, Lalu suggests where criticism and creativity might begin again: in Athlone, Cape Town, and in all the other communities across the world where partition and violence have wreaked their worst.”Lyndsey Stonebridge, author of Placeless People: Writing, Rights, and Refugees“a wonderfully provocative and fascinating read”Garth Stevens, Afrika focus “Occasionally, an intellectual product sees the light of day which forces the reader to rethink many of their cherished assumptions, thereby providing a new perspective on an old problem. Premesh Lalu’s Undoing Apartheid is such a book.”Journal of Asian and African Studies“What politics of knowledge, form of study, mode of education, will get us to the substantive work of undoing apartheid in the present? This is Premesh Lalu’s abiding and forceful question. To get there, we must go back, and deeper, into histories less of grand than of petty apartheid, newly alert now to how the latter both wedged itself in the circuits of sense and perception, he avers. These circuits left little room for escape or desire and found substantive contestation, one we would do well to harness today, Lalu suggests, in a cinematic consciousness, forged from the bioscopes of Athlone in 1985, growing behind the catch-all sociologies of ‘school boycott’ and ‘mass movement’. It was there, via the interval or gap of film form, that thought emerged and forged a mode of freedom to come. This was a sensibility of the after apartheid that, Lalu contends counter-intuitively, was closer to hand than what followed in its aftermath. In this desire was a redistribution of the senses that pointed, and points still, to an education, a form of study, that is able to charge and create the conditions for a freedom which cannot be known in advance. Lalu finds in object theatre a radical play of modes of racialization and freedom that give form to other futures surpassing the circularities of apartheid logics. Although questions of the post-apartheid and of non-racial futures have come under duress in recent critiques, Lalu offers a recalibration of how we might approach aftermath and regeneration and what we might need in order to hear and see their minor keys, potentialities, and entanglement with future time.”Professor Sarah Nuttall, Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research [WISER], University of WitwatersrandTable of ContentsAcknowledgements Chapter 1: Introduction: The Double-binds of Apartheid Chapter 2: Apartheid’s Mythic Precursors Chapter 3: The Return of Faust: Hyenas, Rats and other Miscreants Chapter 4: Woyzeck and the Secret Life of Apartheid’s Things Chapter 5: Post-apartheid Slapstick Chapter 6: The Double Futures of Post-apartheid Freedom Notes Bibliography

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Book SynopsisFollowing the killing of George Floyd in 2020, a moral panic gripped the US and UK. To atone for an alleged history of racism, statues were torn down and symbols of national identity attacked. Across universities, fringe theories became the new orthodoxy, with a cadre of activists backed by university technocrats adopting a binary worldview of moral certainty, sin and deconstructive redemption through Western self-erasure. This hard-hitting book surveys these developments for the first time. It unpacks and challenges the theories and arguments deployed by ‘decolonisers’ in a university system now characterised by garbled leadership and illiberal groupthink. The desire to question the West’s sense of itself, deconstruct its narratives and overthrow its institutional order is an impulse that, ironically, was underpinned by a more confident and assured Western hegemony, which is now waning and under great strain. If its light continues to dim, who or what will carry the torch for human freedom and progress?Trade ReviewA TLS Book of the Year 2023 ‘incisive, humane and brave’Times Literary Supplement ‘Doug Stokes's book forensically dissects the ideas and practices concerning race, equality, identity and grievance, which are having such an explosive impact on our intellectual and cultural life. Whatever one's sentiments and sympathies, this is a concise and lucid guide to what lies behind the “culture war”.’Robert Tombs, University of Cambridge‘A highly insightful and persuasive contribution to the ongoing global debate about race, equality and decolonisation, going far beyond the walls of academia into wider institutions and the international world order.’Munira Mirza, former head of the No. 10 Policy Unit and CEO of Civic Future‘Doug Stokes’s incisive analysis of the threat posed by critical theory to wider society, particularly the universities, should stand at the top of every reading list about racism, gender and attempts to “decolonise” the curriculum.’David Abulafia, University of Cambridge‘Perhaps books like this one will encourage more academics to summon up the courage to resist the bullying and to challenge the new conformity. Not everyone will agree with them. But everyone who truly cares about truth will welcome the opening up of a debate which the universities have largely foreclosed.’Jonathan Sumption, The Spectator‘Stokes has just struck a match; the result may well be explosive.’The Critic‘an excellent book that can shock as well as inspire’Graeme Kemp, The Equiano ProjectTable of ContentsIntroduction1. Identity politics, decolonisation and social theory2. Racism on campus3. Moral panic and illiberalism in Universities4. History reclaimed5. Accounting for WokeryConclusion: the future of the West?

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Book SynopsisAs a writer, poet, musician and dissident, Liao Yiwu is one of the most important chroniclers and analysts of contemporary China. In his books, he draws on his own experiences of imprisonment and mistreatment at the hands of the Chinese state to criticise abuses of power and give a voice to the downtrodden and disenfranchised. In this powerful memoir, Liao Yiwu reflects on his own journey from imprisonment in Sichuan to his current life in Berlin, where he now works as a full-time writer. As China's presence and influence on the international stage grows, this small book is a poignant reminder of the human cost of authoritarianism and of the power of the written word to bear witness to evil.

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Book SynopsisIn Corrosive Solace, Daniel O’Quinn argues that the loss of the American colonies instantiated a complex reorganization in sociability and politics in the British metropole that has had long-lasting effects on British national and imperial culture, which can be seen and analyzed within its performative repertoire. He examines how the analysis of feeling or affect can be deployed to address the inchoate causal relation between historical events and their mediation. In this sense, Corrosive Solace’s goals are twofold: first, to outline the methodologies necessary for dealing with the affective recognition of historical crisis; and second, to make the historically familiar strange again, and thus make visible key avenues for discussion that have remained dormant. Both of these objectives turn on recognition: How do we theorize the implicit affective recognition of crisis in a distant historical moment? And how do we recognize what we, in our present moment, cannot discern? Corrosive Solace addresses this complex cultural reorientation by attending less to “new” cultural products than to the theoretical and historical problems posed by looking at the transformation of “old” plays and modes of performance. These “old” plays—Shakespeare, post-Restoration comedy and she-tragedy—were a vital plank of the cultural patrimony, so much of O’Quinn’s analysis lies in how tradition was recovered and redirected to meet urgent social and political needs. Across the arc of Corrosive Solace, he tracks how the loss of the American War forced Britons to refashion the repertoire of cultural signs and social dispositions that had subtended its first empire in the Atlantic world in a way more suited to its emergent empire in South Asia.Trade Review"The significance of O’Quinn’s argument is its ability to link the everyday and the personal with the social, the political, and the cultural. At the level of both form and content, O’Quinn attempts to understand the implications and potentialities of affective recognitions, aesthetic mediations, formal transformations, and generic innovations in all their urgency and topicality, as a response to a cultural need to adapt to a period of turbulent transition instigated by historical crises. The argument progresses from issues of embodiment to questions of consciousness to transformations in processes of socialization to explain the emergence of systemic norms. It effectively reconciles phenomenological investigations with structuralist manifestations, offering a forensic cultural analysis of affect and affective sociability. " * Studies in Romaticism *"Corrosive Solace represents an authoritative statement on the importance of the theatre to what Daniel O’Quinn characterizes as the ‘post-American condition,’ i.e., how society, politics, and culture in Britain dealt with the loss of the American colonies and within a few short years, a new imperial dispensation, looking toward India and the threat of Napoleon in Europe. The book traces in fine detail ‘what it feels like’ to experience the pressure of historical change without being able to articulate or fully encompass what that change means. It is thoroughly and admirably interdisciplinary, seamlessly integrating approaches from theatre history, performance studies, cultural studies, affect theory, and social and political history to produce concentrated but still lucid readings of a number of key texts, performers, and events. Together these readings make for a new history of the 1780s and 1790s, especially in relation to the history of the broader politico-cultural role of the patent theatres, that will radically alter how we view these crucial decades." * —Gillian Russell, University of York *

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Book SynopsisSurrealist women’s writing: A critical exploration is the first sustained critical inquiry into the writing of women associated with surrealism. Featuring original essays by leading scholars of surrealism, the volume demonstrates the extent and the historical, linguistic, and culturally contextual breadth of this writing. It also highlights how the specifically surrealist poetics and politics of these writers’ work intersect with and contribute to contemporary debates on, for example, gender, sexuality, subjectivity, otherness, anthropocentrism, and the environment.Drawing on a variety of innovative theoretical approaches, the essays in the volume focus on the writing of numerous women surrealists, many of whom have hitherto mainly been known for their visual rather than their literary production. These include Claude Cahun, Leonora Carrington, Kay Sage, Colette Peignot, Suzanne Césaire, Unica Zürn, Ithell Colquhoun, Leonor Fini, Dorothea Tanning, and Rikki Ducornet.Trade Review'This book does not attempt to impose a harmonious, all-encompassing feminist perspective that would gloss over the complexities of being a ‘woman writer’ within the grand scheme of surrealism, but looks, rather, to highlight differences and ambivalences, enriching the discourse surrounding this literature. An enthralling and intensely intellectual investigation into surrealist women’s writing, this study is of critical importance for literary scholars and admirers of surrealism as it offers a profound reconsideration of these ten authors.'French Studies'The 11 essays in the collection look at the work of Claude Cahun, Lenora Carrington, Ithell Colquhoun, Colette Peignot, Kay Sage, and Unica Zürn, among others. Beyond examining the women’s literary work, the essays show how these writers’ work informs contemporary discussion of gender, sexuality, ecocriticism, the Other, and the Anthropocene. Wetz’s excellent introduction frames the questions and concerns surrealist women writers explored in their work.'CHOICE(Reprinted with permission from Choice Reviews. All rights reserved. Copyright by the American Library Association.) -- .Table of ContentsIntroductionAnna Watz1 ‘The dung beetle’s snowball’: the philosophic narcissism of Claude Cahun’s essay-poetryFelicity Gee2 Identity convulsed: Leonora Carrington’s The House of Fear and The Oval LadyAnna Watz3 Recasting the human: Leonora Carrington’s dark exilic imaginationJeannette Baxter4 Colette Peignot: the purity of revoltMichael Richardson5 Suzanne Césaire’s surrealism: tightrope of hope Kara M. Rabbitt6 Kay Sage alive in the worldKatharine Conley7 Outside-in: translating Unica ZürnPatricia Allmer8 Ithell Colquhoun’s experimental poetry: surrealism, occultism, and postwar poetryMark S. Morrisson9 Leonor Fini’s abhuman familyJonathan P. Eburne10 ‘Open sesame’: Dorothea Tanning’s critical writingCatriona McAra11 Magic language, esoteric nature: Rikki Ducornet’s surrealist ecologyKristoffer NohedenBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisBest known for a trilogy of historical novels set in the fictional town of Gilead, Iowa, Marilynne Robinson is a prolific writer, teacher, and public speaker, who has won the Pulitzer Prize and was awarded the National Humanities Medal by Barack Obama. This collection intervenes in Robinson’s growing critical reputation, pointing to new and exciting links between the author, the historical settings of her novels, and the contemporary themes of her fictional, educational, and theoretical work. Introduced by a critical discussion from Professors Bridget Bennett, Sarah Churchwell, and Richard King, Marilynne Robinson features analysis from a range of international academics, and explores debates in race, gender, environment, critical theory, and more, to suggest new and innovative readings of her work.Table of ContentsIntroduction – Rachel Sykes, Jennifer Daly, and Anna Maguire ElliottRobinson in context: A critical discussion – Sarah Churchwell, Richard H. King, Bridget BennettWriting, form, and style1 ‘It might be better to burn them’: Archive fever and the Gilead novels of Marilynne Robinson – Daniel King2 ‘One day she would tell him what she knew’: Disturbance of the epistemological conventions of the marriage plot in Lila – Maria Elena Carpintero Torres-Quevedo3 Robinson’s triumphs of style – Jack BakerGender and environment4 The female orphan and an ecofeminist ethic-of-care in Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping and Lila – Anna Maguire Elliott5 Souls all unaccompanied: Enacting feminine alterity in Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping – Makayla Steiner6 The domestic geographies of grief: Bereavement, time and home spaces in Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping and Home – Lucy ClarkeImagined histories: Race, religion, and rights7 Domesticating political feeling, affect and memory in Marilynne Robinson’s Home – Christopher Lloyd8 ‘Onward Christian liberals’: Marilynne Robinson’s essays and the crisis of mainline Protestantism – Alexander Engebretson9 Presence in absence: The spectre of race in Gilead and Home – Emily Hammerton-BarryRobinson and her contemporaries10 ‘Everything can change’: Civil rights, civil war and radical transformation in Home and Gilead – Tessa Roynon11 ‘A great admirer of American education’: Robinson as professor and defender of ‘America’s best idea’ – Steve Gronert Ellerhoff and Kathryn E. Engebretson12 Acknowledging a numinous ordinary: Marilynne Robinson and Stanley Cavell – Paul JennerEpilogue – ‘A little different every time’: Accumulation and repetition in Jack – Rachel Sykes

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Book SynopsisEvery Siddal poem is close read alongside works by Rossetti, Swinburne, Ruskin, Tennyson and Keats and with reference to prevailing cultural, political and religious contexts to give the most comprehensive analysis yet of this enigmatic, previously undervalued poetic voice. -- .

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Book SynopsisThe book demonstrates how cultural and emotional knowledge, made salient in aesthetic drone imaginaries, can provide an understanding of the effects of drone technology on human communities. Each chapter raises questions about the political function of art that engages with drone technology surveillance and automation, as well as drone warfare. -- .

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Book SynopsisFrom 'Best of the Booker' winner Salman Rushdie, an incisive and inspiring collection of non-fiction essays, criticism and speeches that takes readers on a thrilling journey through the evolution of language and culture.'One of the greatest writers of our age' Neil GaimanAcross a wide variety of subjects, Rushdie delves into the nature of storytelling as a deeply human need and what emerges is a love letter to literature itself. Throughout, he shares his personal encounters, on the page and in person, with storytellers from Shakespeare to Toni Morrison and revels in the creative lines that can join art and life. Rushdie considers, too, the nature of truth and looks afresh at migration, multiculturalism and censorship.'Essential reading... Powerful' Financial Times'Rushdie is vital, expansive, the critic as storyteller, championing his subjects with gusto' TLSTrade ReviewSalman Rushdie is one of the greatest writers of our age; he is a giant of literature. -- Neil GaimanRushdie is vital, expansive, the critic as storyteller, championing his subjects with gusto... Rushdie is a still a writer to be reckoned with. -- Claire Lowdon * Times Literary Supplement *Powerful... Languages of Truth feels like essential reading in this time, reminding us that the stories we have told each other over millennia are universal, even if this shared heritage is often lost or forgotten in today's angry, fractured world. -- Nilanjana Roy * Financial Times *Probably the best nonfiction he [Rushdie] has written in years... Rushdie is happy to record just what he sees and feels. You sense that he has arrived somewhere new...a sign of good things to come. -- Abhrajyoti Chakraborty * Guardian *Rushdie's writing is erudite and full of sympathy, brimming with insight and wit . . . Fans will be delighted . . . [A] mesmerizing collection. * Publishers Weekly (starred review) *

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Book Synopsis''Witty and scholarly''JONATHAN BATE, SUNDAY TELEGRAPH''Thrilling''GUARDIAN''Illuminating . . . as vital and provocative as the character herself''LITERARY REVIEW''Buoyant''TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT''An astonishing tour-de-force''MARION TURNER, author of The Wife of Bath: A BiographyWho is Juliet Capulet?Daughter of VeronaLovestruck TeenagerRomantic IconTragic HeroineRebelSearching for Juliet takes us from the Renaissance origin stories behind Shakespeare''s child bride to enslaved people in the Caribbean, Italian fascists in Verona, and real-life lovers in Afghanistan. From the Victorian stage to 1960s cinema, Baz Luhrmann, and beyond. Drawing on rich cultural and historical sources and new research, Sophie Duncan shows us why Juliet is for now, for ever, for everyone.

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a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

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a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

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Book Synopsis "...spare, psalmlike poems....Together, the poems in this beautifully translated selection...provide us with the autobiography of a poet who felt most at home during winter, in solitude. Hauge deserves a larger American readership, and this book may summon it." —Publishers Weekly "(Hauge''s) poetry is miniaturist, pictorial, and ruminative; personal in that his experience, cognitive and sensual observations, and intentions are everywhere in it. Yet it isn''t at all confessional or self-assertive....He is a man who knows where he is and helps us feel that we can know where we are, too."—Booklist “If you have a tiny farm, you need to love poetry more than the farm. If you sell apples, you need to love poetry more than the apples.”—Robert Bly, from the introduction Olav H. Hauge, one of Norway’s most beloved poets, is a major figure of twentieth-century European poetry. This generous bilingual edition—introduced by Robert Bly—includes the best poems from each of Hauge’s seven books, as well as a gathering of his last poems. Ever sage and plainspoken—and bearing resemblance to Chinese poetry—Hauge’s compact and classically restrained poems are rooted in his training as an orchardist, his deep reading in world literatures, and a lifetime of careful attention to the beauties and rigors of the western fjordland. His spare imagery and unpretentious tone ranges from bleak to unabashedly joyous, an intricate interplay between head and heart and hand. The rose has been sung about.I want to sing of the thorns,and the root—how it gripsthe rock hard, hardas a thin girl’s hand. During a writing career that spanned nearly fifty years, Olav H. Hauge produced seven books of poetry, numerous translations, and several volumes of correspondence. A largely self-educated man, he earned his living as a farmer, orchardist, and gardener on a small plot in the fjord region of western Norway.

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Book SynopsisThe 1590s were black years for England. The queen was old, the succession unclear, and the treasury empty after decades of war. Amid the rising tension, William Shakespeare published a pair of poems dedicated to the young Earl of Southampton: Venus and Adonis in 1593 and The Rape of Lucrece a year later. Although wildly popular during Shakespeare's lifetime, to modern readers both works are almost impenetrable. But in her enthralling new book, the Shakespearean scholar Clare Asquith reveals their hidden contents: two politically charged allegories of Tudor tyranny that justified--and even urged--direct action against an unpopular regime. The poems were Shakespeare's bestselling works in his lifetime, evidence that they spoke clearly to England's wounded populace and disaffected nobility, and especially to their champion, the Earl of Essex.Shakespeare and the Resistance unearths Shakespeare's own analysis of a political and religious crisis which would shortly erupt in armed rebellion on the streets of London. Using the latest historical research, it resurrects the story of a bold bid for freedom of conscience and an end to corruption which was erased from history by the men who suppressed it. This compelling reading situates Shakespeare at the heart of the resistance movement, and sees him correctly identifying the factors that would before long plunge the country into civil war.

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Book SynopsisHistorian Jeremy Black is comprehensive, as ever, but in his treatment of the British Gothic novel his greatest service is the preservation of the detail––namely, the human impetus behind art that is often undervalued. Gothic novelists were purposeful, thoughtful, and engaged questions and feelings that ultimately shaped a century of culture. Black notes that the Gothic novel is also very much about "morality and deploying history accordingly." The true interest of the Gothic novel is more remarkable than it is grisly: the featured darkness and macabre are not meant to usurp heroism and purity, but will fall hard under the over-ruling hand of Providence and certainty of retribution. Black's understanding of the Gothic writer is a remarkable contribution to the legacy of British literature and the novel at large. Once again, in Black thoroughness meets fidelity and the reader is overcome with his own insights into the period on the merit of Black's efforts. In The Weight of Words Series, Black is devoted to the preservation of the memory of British literary genius, and in so doing he is carving out a niche for himself. As in the Gothic novel where landscapes give quarter to influences that seem to interact with the human fates that freely wander in, reading Black is an experience of suddenly finding oneself in possession of an education, and his allure takes a cue from the horrific Gothic tempt.

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Book SynopsisWritten by the renowned British historian who has been described as both utterly thorough and humanely delicate, Jeremy Black offers a guided tour through the mind of Agatha Christie and life during the Great World Wars. His incomparable treatment of literary craft developing alongside global military engagement nearly overshadows the natural draw of the crime drama that is the subject of his book. Indeed, the “prurience and sensationalism” of crime is not as exciting as Black’s aptitude for drawing the reality from the fiction (and periphery sources), giving Christie a much louder voice than she might ever have dreamed. If Christie is also moralist and mirror to her times, Black here plays his part as the detective and reveals layers of previously unmined truths in her stories. Hercule Poirot as a character is masterfully imagined, but Black shows us how he is inseparable from Christie’s turbulent and changing world. He also illuminates significant social commentary in Christie’s fiction, and in so doing Black often uses his authority to vindicate Christie’s work from hastily, at times stupidly, applied labels and interpretations. He is especially magnificent in his chapters, “Xenophobia” and “The Sixties.” Black nevertheless gives due recognition to Christie’s critics when they have something relevant and reasonable to say, and hence the reader finds yet another service in Black’s comprehensive review of the reviewers over the expanse of Christie’s writing career. For all this, Black proves himself to be a worthy history-teller because he can aptly ‘detect’ the meaning of stories that seeks to answer the past and guide the present. His erudition runs much deeper than his ability to navigate the stores of resources available on the subject, and the reader gets a glimpse of this early on when in the introduction he proffers his own defense for writing about the importance of a Hercule Poirot. Black writes, “the notion of crime had a moral component from the outset, and notably so in terms of the struggle between Good and Evil, and in the detection of the latter. Indeed, it is this detection that is the basis of the most powerful strand of detection story, because Evil disguises its purposes. It has to do so in a world and humanity made fundamentally benign and moral by God.” The Golden Age of detective novels represents much more than a triumph of a literary genre. It is in its own right a story of how the challenge to address the problem of evil was accepted. Its convergence with the plot-rich narrative of the twentieth century in the modern age renders Black’s account a thrilling masterpiece, seducing historians to read fiction and crime junkies to read more history.

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Book Synopsis★ Publishers Weekly starred review A Best Book of 2018 in Religion, Publishers Weekly Reading great literature well has the power to cultivate virtue, says acclaimed author Karen Swallow Prior. In this book, she takes readers on a guided tour through works of great literature both ancient and modern, exploring twelve virtues that philosophers and theologians throughout history have identified as most essential for good character and the good life. Covering authors from Henry Fielding to Cormac McCarthy, Jane Austen to George Saunders, and Flannery O'Connor to F. Scott Fitzgerald, Prior explores some of the most compelling universal themes found in the pages of classic books, helping readers learn to love life, literature, and God through their encounters with great writing. The book includes end-of-chapter reflection questions geared toward book club discussions, original artwork throughout, and a foreword by Leland Ryken. The hardcover edition was named a Best Book of 2018 in Religion by Publishers Weekly. "[A] lively treatise on building character through books.'"--Publishers Weekly (starred review)Table of ContentsContentsForeword by Leland RykenIntroduction: Read Well, Live WellPart One: The Cardinal Virtues1. Prudence: The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling by Henry Fielding2. Temperance: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald3. Justice: A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens4. Courage: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark TwainPart Two: The Theological Virtues5. Faith: Silence by Shusaku Endo6. Hope: The Road by Cormac McCarthy7. Love: The Death of Ivan Ilych by Leo TolstoyPart Three: The Heavenly Virtues8. Chastity: Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton9. Diligence: Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan10. Patience: Persuasion by Jane Austen11. Kindness: "Tenth of December" by George Saunders12. Humility: "Revelation" and "Everything That Rises Must Converge" by Flannery O'ConnorDiscussion Questions

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Book SynopsisThis volume considers the challenges and opportunities of online literature classes and gives instructors tools to ensure students are engaged in the virtual classroom. The ideas shared here are grounded in research, practice, critical self-reflection, and collaboration. Reflecting a diverse collection of practical tips and experiences from colleagues teaching at a variety of institutions, the essays offer readers the chance to inhabit others' classrooms. Contributors discuss building an interactive and inclusive classroom and using hypertext, video lectures, and other asynchronous and synchronous tools in classes whose subjects include, among others, Shakespeare, the Chinese novel, early American literature, speculative fiction, and contemporary American poetry.Trade ReviewAn excellent collection of essays offering a wealth of thoughtful reflections and practical advice." —Glenda Hudson, California State University, Bakersfield

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Book SynopsisOne of the world''s foremost writing teachers invites readers on a joyful journey into the reading and origins of haiku A haiku is three simple lines. But it is also, as Allen Ginsberg put it, three lines that ''make the mind leap.'' A good one, he said, lets the mind experience ''a small sensation of space which is nothing less than God.'' As many spiritual practices seek to do, the haiku''s spare yet acute noticing of the immediate and often ordinary grounds the reader in the pure awareness of now. Natalie Goldberg is a delightfully companionable tour guide into this world. She highlights the history of the form, dating back to the seventeenth century; shows why masters such as Basho and Issa are so revered; discovers Chiyo-ni, an important woman haiku master; and provides insight into writing and reading haiku. A fellow seeker who travels to Japan to explore the birthplace of haiku, Goldberg revels in everything she encounters, including food and family, painting and fashion, frogs and ponds. She also experiences and allows readers to share in the spontaneous and profound moments of enlightenment and awakening that haiku promises.

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Book SynopsisA History of Ecology and Environmentalism in Spanish American Literature undertakes a comprehensive ecocritical examination of the region’s literature from the foundational texts of the nineteenth century to the most recent fiction. The book begins with a consideration of the way in which Argentine Domingo Faustino Sarmiento’s views of nature through the lens of the categories of “civilization” and “barbarity” from Facundo (1845) are systematically challenged and revised in the rest of the century. Subsequently, this book develops the argument that a vital part of the cultural critique and aesthetic innovations of Spanish American modernismo involve an ecological challenge to deepening discourses of untamed development from Europe and the United States. In other chapters, many of the well-established titles of regional and indigenista literature are contrasted to counter-traditions within those genres that express aspects of environmental justice, “deep ecology,” the relational role of emotion in nature protectionism and conservationism, even the rights of non-human nature. Finally, the concluding chapters find that the articulation of ecological advocacy in recent fiction is both more explicit than what came before but also impacts the formal elements of literature in unique ways. Textual conventions such as language, imagery, focalization, narrative sequence, metafiction, satire, and parody represent innovations of form that proceed directly from the ethical advocacy of environmentalism. The book concludes with comments about what must follow as a result of the analysis including the revision of canon, the development of literary criticism from novel approaches such as critical animal studies, and the advent of a critical dialogue within the bounds of Spanish American environmentalist literature. A History of Ecology and Environmentalism in Spanish American Literature attempts to develop a sense of the way in which ecological ideas have developed over time in the literature, particularly the way in which many Spanish American texts anticipate several of the ecological discourses that have recently become so central to global culture, current environmentalist thought, and the future of humankind.Trade Review[R]eaders will find that DeVries possesses a thorough understanding of ecological criticism and environmentalism, exemplified by the book's introduction, where he establishes the theoretical framework for his study. For the benefit of those readers who do not have advanced proficiency in reading Spanish he provides an English translation of all Spanish quotations, including definitions of commonly employed Spanish American cultural and literary terminology. Readers who are unacquainted with Spanish American literature, beyond internationally known giants such as Gabriel García Márquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, or Pablo Neruda, will appreciate the sweeping scope of the author's work. DeVries has managed to deal in a cohesive fashion with a two-hundred year period—the post-independence literary production of the nineteen countries of the western hemisphere in which Spanish is an official language—unfolding 'the tradition of an ecological literature from Mexico to Patagonia and from Puerto Rico to Easter Island'. Those who are already familiar with Spanish American literature will value his insights into ecocriticism as well as his examination of the canon from a fresh perspective. As is the case with most groundbreaking studies, DeVries's work suggests myriad possibilities for future scholarship. * ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction Part One: Foundations, Aesthetics, Ecology One: Foundations of Environment: Literary Political Ecologies of 19th Century Southern Cone Literature Two: Foundations from Topography: Literary Political Ecologies of 19th Century Andean, Amazonian, Caribbean, and Central American Literature Three: Green Modernism Part Two: Land, People, Ecology Four: Swallowed: Environmentalism in the Spanish American novela de la selva Five: Other Lands: Ecology in the Spanish American novela de la tierra Six: Ruin: The Precedents of Ecological Destruction in Early and Canonical indigenista Novels Seven: Indigenous Land: Place, then Space Part Three: Literature, Environmentalism, Ecology Eight: Nature after the “Boom”: Ecology and Environmentalism in Late 20th Century Spanish American Fiction Nine: Eco-Satire: Green Humor, Contaminated Imagery, and Environmental Language in Recent Spanish American Fiction Ten: Paradise Trashed: Utopian and Dystopian Ecological Scenarios in Gioconda Belli’s Waslala and Fernando Raga’s Gaia Trilogy Conclusions Bibliography Index About the Author

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Book SynopsisA masterful translation of one of the most-loved classics of Japanese literature—part travelogue, part haiku collection, part account of spiritual awakeningBashō (1644–1694)—a great luminary of Asian literature who elevated the haiku to an art form of utter simplicity and intense spiritual beauty—is renowned in the West as the author of Narrow Road to the Interior, a travel diary of linked prose and haiku recounting his journey through the far northern provinces of Japan. This edition, part of the Shambhala Pocket Library series, features a masterful translation of this celebrated work. It also includes an insightful introduction by translator Sam Hamill detailing Bashō’s life and the art of haiku, three other important works by Bashō—Travelogue of Weather-Beaten Bones, The Knapsack Notebook, and Sarashina Travelogue—and two hundred and fifty of his finest haiku, making this the most complete single-volume collection of Bashō’s writings.The Shambhala Pocket Library is a collection of short, portable teachings from notable figures across religious traditions and classic texts. The covers in this series are rendered by Colorado artist Robert Spellman. The books in this collection distill the wisdom and heart of the work Shambhala Publications has published over 50 years into a compact format that is collectible, reader-friendly, and applicable to everyday life.

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Book SynopsisA collection of classical Japanese haiku selected and translated by one of America''s premier poet-translators.Haiku is one of the most popular and widely recognized poetic forms in the world due to its brevity, emotion, and astounding ability to capture the unique experience of a single moment. This collection, beautifully translated by Sam Hamill, compiles over two hundred haiku from classic Japanese literature written by masters of the genre like Bashō, Buson, and Issa. Based on images from nature, these poems express themes of joy, temporality, beauty, wonder, loneliness, and loss, inviting the reader to participate in the authentic experiences of these poets.

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Book SynopsisA deep and radically original exploration of Taoist and Ch''an (Zen) Buddhist wisdom through the lens of the life and work of Tu Fu, widely considered China''s greatest classical poet.What is consciousness but the Cosmos awakened to itself? This question is fundamental to the Taoist and Ch''an (Zen) Buddhist worldview that shapes classical Chinese poetry. A uniquely conceived biography, Awakened Cosmos illuminates that worldview through the life and work of Tu Fu (712-770 C.E.), China''s greatest classical poet. Tu Fu''s writing traces his life from periods of relative normalcy to years spent as an impoverished refugee amid the devastation of civil war. Exploring key poems to guide the reader through Tu Fu''s dramatic life, Awakened Cosmos reveals Taoist/Ch''an insight deeply lived across the full range of human experience.Each chapter presents a poem in three stages: first, the original Chinese; then, an English translation in Hinton''s masterful style; and finally, a lyrical essay that discusses the untranslatable philosophical dimensions of the poem. The result is nothing short of remarkable: a biography of the Cosmos awakened to itself in the form of a magisterial poet alive in T''ang Dynasty China.Thirty years ago, David Hinton published America''s first full-length translation of Tu Fu''s work. Awakened Cosmos is published simultaneously with a newly translated and substantially expanded version of that landmark translation: The Selected Poems of Tu Fu: Expanded and Newly Translated (New Directions).

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Book SynopsisA new anthology from the editor of the bestselling Poetry of Impermanence, Mindfulness, and Joy.Explorations on a journey through the darkest and brightest moments of our lives, the poems gathered here are explorations of loss, of thanksgiving, of transformation. Some show a path forward and others simply acknowledge and empathize with where we are, but all are celebrations of poetry’s ability to express what seemed otherwise inexpressible, to touch deep inside our hearts—and also pull ourselves out of our selves and into greater connection with the world around us. Includes poems by Rainer Maria Rilke, Robert Frost, Elizabeth Bishop, Czeslaw Milosz, Seamus Heaney, Billy Collins, Joy Harjo, Danusha Lameris, Ada Limon, Kevin Young, Arthur Sze, Ellen Bass, Li-Young Lee, Natasha Trethewey, and many more. The editor also includes an essay on appreciative attention and links to guided meditations for select poems, offering us a

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Book SynopsisInherited through the line of the berserker Angantýr and his war-loving daughter Hervor, the ever-lethal, shining sword Tyrfing and its changes of hands frame the uncanny story of The Saga of Hervor and Heiđrek. A second heroic saga, Hrólf Kraki and His Champions, recounts the daring deeds of the members and entourage of the ancient Danish house of Skjoldung. Passed down orally in pre-Christian Norse times, transmitted in writing in medieval Iceland, and here wielded by the hand of Jackson Crawford, the tales told in this volume retain their sharp edges and flashes of glory that never fail to slay.

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Book SynopsisChosen by Louise Glück for the Max Ritvo Poetry Prize, this engrossing debut interrogates history, identity, and the power of poetry to elucidate both.Motherlands opens with a child drawn early to poetry. “In summer I write. Two lines at a time, two vying souls / running up the wall.” The collection follows this speaker-poet through a childhood in post-Maoist China and an eventual move to the United States, laying bare cultural and linguistic tensions in both historical and modern settings. He cites Chinese laborers toiling in American factories—an echo of the brutalities endured by those who constructed the Transatlantic Railroad—and speaks to anxieties around belonging, assimilation, and identity. “If I forget one character a day,” he writes. “I will have forgotten Chinese / by the end of 2042.”In these attentive, imaginative poems, Weijia Pan questions the artist’s duty—hi

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Book SynopsisInsightful and provocative letters by a great twentieth-century poet to his artist wife about life and, revealingly, his own writing. An intimate look at this canonical poet''s process, mental health, and quotidian moments during the early 1950s.One of the most significant European poets of the twentieth century, Paul Celan came from an Eastern European Jewish family and lost his parents to the death camps of World War II. Transplanted to Paris, he produced a body of work that was an ongoing confrontation with that history of loss and with the German language. His poems, anguished and unsleeping, have by now been translated into many languages, becoming a touchstone for poets, writers, and philosophers.Letters to Gisèle presents the letters Celan wrote to his wife, the French visual artist Gisèle Celan-Lestrange, over the course of close to twenty years, along with letters to the couple?s son, Eric, and letters from Gisèle to Paul. They provide an intimate view of his literary career and troubled life, which was marked by repeated stays in psychiatric clinics. They also provide an unparalleled glimpse into Celan?s poetic workshop, including his own word-for-word renderings from German into French of more than a dozen of his poems. These he addressed to Gisèle as an ongoing, informal German lesson. They figure too as messages from the heart. Presented here trilingually, these overlapping versions of Celan?s poems open up new dimensions of his famously hermetic poetry, as dazzling as it is dark.

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Book SynopsisThe first comprehensive English-language collection of one of the most important voices in contemporary Ukrainian literature, a collection of poems about the region''s history of violence as seen through geography, myth, and city life. Yuri Andrukhovych is one of the most compelling and influential contemporary Ukrainian writers, the author of a body of work that ranges from the novel to the essay to poetry and that stands out in every genre for being thoughtful, playful, free-spirited, and astonishingly new. His career took off in the waning years of the Soviet Union, when underground artists and writers and the rumbles of rock music coming from abroad all helped to bring the walls of the sclerotic Communist empire tumbling down.Set Change draws on the poetry Andrukhovych wrote in the eighties and nineties, before he turned his attention to prose. The collection shows him beginning on a quest to represent and do justice to Ukraine''s long history of violence. He explores the overlapping and shifting borders of Eastern Europe while also venturing into realms of fantasy and myth. Again and again, he returns to the idea of the city as a space of carnivalesque disguise and discovery. Drawing on the rich resources of Ukrainian literature, from the amplitude of the baroque to the austerely powerful configurations of the lost modernist generation, Andrukhovych''s poems are ironic and elegiac, witty and allusive, lyrical, experimental, and political. As translated into English by John Hennessy and Ostap Kin, they offer readers a powerfully transformative vision of the place of poetry in a fractured world.

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Book SynopsisNew poems from 100 of the world?s brightest contemporary poets, all about a common subject: the Louvre?exploring the many pleasures, provocations, and surprises that the museum and its collection inspire.Of the world''s great museums, the Louvre is the most encompassing, a sumptuous collection that includes not only some of the most celebrated works of art of all time, but fascinating, perplexing, splendid, and beautiful objects of all kinds, all housed in a building, itself monumental, that was once the seat of the kings of France. In the grand corridors and multiplying backrooms of the Louvre, the history of the world and the history of art and the history of how we look and think about art and its place in our lives challenge and delight us at every corner. Few other public spaces are at once so haunted and so alive.A unique collaboration between New York Review Books and the Louvre Museum, At the Louvre presents a hundred poems, newly commissioned exclusively for this volume, by a hundred of the world''s most vibrant poets. They write about works from the museum''s collection. They write about the museum and its history. They write what they see and feel, and together they take us on a tour of the museum and its galleries like no other, one that is an irresistible feast for the ear and mind and eye.Some of the poets in At the Louvre: Simon Armitage; Barbara Chase-Riboud;Hélène Dorion; Jon Fosse; Fanny Howe; Kenneth Goldsmith; Lisette Lombé; Tedi López Mills;Precious Okoyomon;Charles Pennequin; Blandine Rinkel; Yomi Sode;Krisztina Tóth; Jan Wagner; Elizabeth Willis.

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