Literature: history and criticism Books

Book SynopsisIn What Is a World? Pheng Cheah draws on accounts of the world as a temporal process from Hegel, Marx, Heidegger, Arendt, and Derrida, and analyzes several postcolonial novels to articulate a normative theory of world literature's capacity to open up new possibilities for remaking the world.Trade Review"Drawing from four critical philosophies–idealism, Marxist materialism, phenomenology, and deconstruction–theorist Pheng Cheah invites the reader to reconsider the presuppositions that underpin contemporary theories about world literature. Works from luminaries Amitav Ghosh, Michelle Cliff, and Timothy Mo, among others, providethe reader with concrete examples of Cheah’s theories in action." * World Literature Today *"[T]hrow[s] an intriguing new light on why and how 'world literature' succeeds in generating plurality and disruption rather than falling back into a flattening familiarity." -- Caroline Levine * Public Books *"Cheah strategically broadens the notion of world literature beyond its most common reference points, which too often constrain literatures and the worlds they offer to their spatial geographies and global circulations." -- David W. Hart * Postcolonial Text *"Pheng Cheah has contribued an eloquent volume that stands out in the crowd and belongs on the bookshelf of anyone interested in the field." -- Thomas O. Beebee * Comparative Literature Studies *"As with Cheah’s earlier work, it is a magisterial study, written in his characteristically scrupulous and teacherly prose. There is much to learn from What Is a World? at the levels of its intervention into the field of world literature, its case for postcolonial literature as an exemplary modality of world literature, and Cheah’s own interpretive style as a reader and critic." -- Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan * Qui Parle *"Beautifully written and eloquently constructed, What Is a World? will transform the landscape of world literature studies in the coming years by posing new questions about how the world is and should be conceived." -- César Domínguez * Recherche Littéraire *"Pheng Cheah’s What Is a World? On Postcolonial Literature as World Literature makes a powerful intervention in current debates on world literature, arguing for the literary text to be seen as an ethico-political force in the world rather than just a commodity whose global trajectory is best understood in terms of existing networks of influence and exchange." -- Ira Raja and Roanna Gonsalves * New Literatures *"What is a World? challenges scholars of world literature and postcolonial literature to reconsider and possibly to expand the definition of their fields. It is a thoughtful, theoretical work that further challenges all of us to reconsider the role literature plays in the world(s) around us and to assess our inclusion of literature beyond the Western tradition. Undoubtedly, this book will play an important role in the ongoing dialogue over what world literature really is." -- Gregory R. Jackson * Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature *"Cheah’s compelling and acute study ultimately proposes a radical and complex reassessment of the notion of world itself as temporal object, to better explore some of the long-ignored intersections—or what he calls “missed encounters”—between cosmopolitanism, world literature, and postcoloniality. In doing so, the book makes a significant intervention in the ongoing scholarly debates dedicated to these topics. . . . The book [also] constitutes a critical response to the pressing questions raised today by the uneven process of (capitalist) globalization." -- Emmanuel Bruno Jean-François * Comparative Literature *"In bridging the postcolonial and the world, Cheah offers a powerfully refreshing account of the category of the 'world,' which arbiters in the world-literary field tend to take for granted." -- Kelly Yin Nga Tse * Interventions *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii Introduction. Missed Encounters: Cosmopolitanism, World Literature, and Postcoloniality 1 Part I. The World of World in Literature in Question 1. The New World Literature: Literary Studies Discovers Globalization 23 2. The World According to Hegel: Culture and Power in World History 46 3. The World as Market: The Materialist Inversion of Spiritualist Models of the World 60 Part II. Worlding and Unworlding: Worldliness, Narrative, and "Literature" in Phenomenology and Deconstruction 4. Worlding: The Phenomenological Concept of Worldliness and the Loss of World in Modernity 95 5. The In-Between World: Anthropologizing the Force of Worlding 131 6. The Arriving World: The Inhuman Otherness of Time as Real Messianic Hope 161 Part III. Of Other Worlds to Come 7. Postcolonial Openings: How Postcolonial Literature Becomes World Literature 191 8. Projecting a Future World from the Memory of Precolonial Time 216 9. World Heritage Preservation and the Expropriation of Subaltern Worlds 246 10. Resisting Humanitarianization 278 Epilogue. Without Conclusion: Stories without End(s) 310 Notes 333 Select Bibliography 369 Index 383

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Book SynopsisTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Viii A Note On The Texts Ix Preface To The Third Edition X Introduction 1 Brief Lives 13 Chronology 22 Maps 31 Anonymous 33 The Noble Triumphant Coronation Of Queen Anne, Wife Unto The Most Noble King Henry The VIII Richard Mulcaster 43 The Queen’s Majesty’s Passage George Gascoigne 61 The Princely Pleasures At The Court At Kenilworth Sir Philip Sidney 89 The Lady Of May Thomas Kyd 99 The Spanish Tragedy John Lyly 149 Gallathea Anonymous 187 The Tragical History Of Thomas Of Woodstock Christopher Marlowe 243 The Tragical History Of D. Faustus Anonymous 277 Arden Of Faversham Christopher Marlowe 321 The Troublesome Reign And Lamentable Death Of Edward The Second George Peele 375 The Old Wives’ Tale Mary Sidney, Countess Of Pembroke 401 The Tragedy Of Antony Thomas Dekker 441 The Shoemakers’ Holiday John Marston 485 The Malcontent Anthony Munday 543 The Triumphs Of Re-United Britannia Thomas Heywood 557 A Woman Killed With Kindness Francis Beaumont 597 The Knight Of The Burning Pestle Ben Jonson 647 Volpone Or The Fox Ben Jonson 717 The Masque Of Queens Ben Jonson 735 Epiocene, Or The Silent Woman Thomas Middleton 815 A Chaste Maid In Cheapside Elizabeth Cary 863 The Tragedy Of Mariam John Webster 905 The Duchess Of Malfi Anonymous 967 The Barriers William Rowley, Thomas Deckker, And John Ford 977 The Witch Of Edmonton Thomas Middleton And William Rowley 1033 The Changeling John Ford 1081 ’Tis Pity She’s A Whore Margaret Cavendish 1129 The Convent Of Pleasure: A Comedy Index 1157

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Book SynopsisA quarter of a century on from its original publication, Literary Theory: An Introduction still conjures the subversion, excitement and exoticism that characterized theory through the 1960s and 70s, when it posed an unprecedented challenge to the literary establishment. Eagleton has added a new preface to this anniversary edition to address more recent developments in literary studies, including what he describes as the growth of a kind of anti-theory, and the idea that literary theory has been institutionalized. Insightful and enlightening, Literary Theory: An Introduction remains the essential guide to the field. 25th Anniversary Edition of Terry Eagleton's classic introduction to literary theory First published in 1983, and revised in 1996 to include material on developments in feminist and cultural theory Has served as an inspiration to generations of students and teachers Trade Review"Before Literary Theory, there had been no textbooks for English. There had been guides to particular authors, and even periods, but no single one book that could claim to be "essential reading".... Eagleton's book—which clearly understands the discipline and institutions of English—offered this." (Times Literary Supplement, April 2009) "This book shaped the reception of theory in Britain for a generation." (Times Higher Education Supplement) Praise for the First Edition of Literary Theory “Literary Theory has the kind of racy readability that one associates more often with English critics who have set their faces resolutely against theory ... It's not just a brilliant polemical essay, it's also a remarkable feat of condensation, explication, and synthesis ... Stimulating and entertaining.” (Sunday Times) “This concise and lucid volume offers a satisfying survey of all the major theories, from structuralism in the 1960s to deconstruction today, that have made academic criticism both intriguing and off-putting to the outsider.” (New York Times Book Review) “A polemical, amusing and very informative introduction ... indispensable.” (Jonathan Culler) "The best handbook to those arcane ics and isms, both for academy members and for any civilians who, having heard the distant roar of professorial cannons, might wonder what the skirmishing is about." (Voice Literary Supplement) Table of ContentsPreface to the Anniversary Edition. Preface to the Second Edition. Preface to the First Edition. Introduction: What is Literature?. 1. The Rise of English. 2. Phenomenology, Hermeneutics, Reception Theory. 3. Structuralism and Semiotics. 4. Post-Structuralism. 5. Psychoanalysis. Conclusion: Political Criticism. Afterword. Notes. Bibliography. Index

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Book SynopsisNow Tintinologists have the opportunity to better understand the complex and sometimes dark personality of Tintin's creator and his carefully crafted public persona.Trade ReviewIn this enthralling, deeply considered synthesis, brimming with anecdotes and perceptions, [Peeters] has enhanced our understanding and appreciation of the creator, the creation, and above all, the man. -- Paul Gravett The Comics Journal Model of economy and grace, mixing meticulous detail and stylized tableaux in perfect proportion so that the story is neither generic nor bogged down by excessive rendering. Slate Verdict: Carefully researched (there are extensive endnotes) and well written and translated, this fine study is most appropriate for sophisticated readers or dedicated Tintin fans. Library Journal Herge is a granular biography that pingpongs back and forth between the artist and his art, looking to build bridges of epiphany and exposition between the ideas expressed and the life lived. Washington Post Well, Blistering Barnacles!, as Captain Haddock would say. The great merit of Herge, Son of Tintin is that Georges Remi is allowed to emerge in three dimensions as what he in fact was: not an intellectual, not an activist, not a saint, but an ordinary man of his times. -- Cullen Murphy New York Times Book Review A 'must' for any TinTin or Herge fan. Midwest Book Review Why should readers consider another book on Georges Remi (Herge), the creator of Tintin? Because this one was written by a comics writer himself, a man who knows the medium from both its theory and practice, who interviewed Herge and those close to him, and who had access to a trove of vital letters, papers, and notebooks. ChoiceTable of ContentsIntroductionPart I: Georges Remi1. White2. Gray3. BlackPart II: Le Petit Vingtième4. The Doorway to Le Vingtième Siècle5. The Birth of Tintin6. A Young Man on the Page7. The Conqueror8. Under the Sign of Kih-OskhPart III: Chinese Ink (1934-1940)9. Another World10. Learning the Story11. Counterfeit Money12. History on the Spot13. The West, Always the WestPart IV: Spoils of War (1940– 1944)14. The Street-Singer's Career15. Here We Are, Captain!16. An Unlucky Star17. The Color War18. This Castle Is No Longer for Sale19. AnxietiesPart V: Intermittences (1944– 1953)20. The Hangover21. The Launch of Tintin22. The Forty-Year Alarm23. The Terrible Year24. Hergé Has Disappeared!25. Asking for the Moon26. A Black Hole27. ChillsPart VI: The Boss (1953– 1959)28. The Middle Years29. Fanny30. "International Tintin"31. The Demon of PurityPart VII: Monsieur Hergé (1960– 1983)32. The Final Bouquet33. The Studio Trap34. Another Life35. Building the Myth36. A Time of Pretenses37. The Alpha and the OmegaEpilogue: An Impossible LegacyAppendix: Character Names in French and EnglishNotesBibliographyIndex of NamesIndex of Works by Hergé

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Book SynopsisHer afterword serves as a decisive intervention in the ongoing discussions in and about the field.Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction: The Wound and the Voice1. Unclaimed Experience: Trauma and the Possibility of History (Freud, Moses and Monotheism)2. Literature and the Enactment of Memory (Duras, Resnais, Hiroshima mon amour)3. Traumatic Departures: Survival and History in Freud (Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Moses and Monotheism) 4. The Falling Body and the Impact of Reference (de Man, Kant, Kleist) 5. Traumatic Awakenings (Freud, Lacan, and the Ethics of Memory)Afterword: Addressing Life: The Literary Voice in the Theory of Trauma NotesIndex

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Book SynopsisLa Marr Jurelle Bruce ponders the presence of “madness” in black literature, music, and performance since the early twentieth century, showing how artist ranging from Kendrick Lamar and Lauryn Hill to Nina Simone and Dave Chappelle activate madness as content, form, aesthetic, strategy, philosophy, and energy in an enduring black radical tradition.Trade Review“This lyrical and profound tour de force explores the intersection of race and derailment, or ‘madness as methodology.’ We know that the traumatic discordance of slavery's enduring legacy manifests as both private sorrow and public health emergency. Yet that unyielding stress is sometimes also the forge of a radical black creativity vividly exceeding the shapeshifting states of un-Reason into which raced and nonnormative bodies are too relentlessly imagined and compressed. La Marr Jurelle Bruce has given a gift in this powerful recontextualization of black creative ‘madness’ as liberatory demand for expressive life—to wit, an aesthetic practice by which, ultimately, ‘what is stolen is returned, and what is unwritten is at last inscribed.’” -- Patricia J. Williams, columnist for "Diary of a Mad Law Professor" in The Nation"The sheer range of academic discourses that Bruce engages—from disability studies and psychoanalysis to affect theory and black studies—is impressive enough. What Bruce does within their intersections, however, is create a kind of poetics of black madness—a way of looking that is itself a way a making; or maybe it’s the converse—a way of making that is itself a way of looking. . . I can’t predict the future, but it’s so obvious to me that scholars will long be grateful for Bruce’s expansive imagination and the careful attention paid to radical black creativity in this wildly astute and socially and emotionally conscious work." -- Dawn Lundy Martin * 4Columns *"Bruce’s deft and thoughtful touch invites readers to dream loudly among a compendium of radical Black artists that few others would think about collectively. With subjects that range from early-twentieth-century jazz cornet player Buddy Bolden to contemporary rapper and composer Lauryn Hill (and many in between), Bruce’s archive reflects the mindful mayhem at the center of his methodology. . . . Bruce’s work closes with [this] imperative direction: 'Now let go.' But letting go of a book that feels both so present and so prescient may prove impossible." -- Omari Weekes * Bookforum *"In La Marr Jurelle Bruce’s How to Go Mad Without Losing Your Mind, we find ourselves in a dance with the mad. . . . [The] book is an analysis of praxis, a snap, a click, a break, an opening, a closing, the middle, the beyond, the here, the now, the then, and the there." -- Michael Cordov * E3W Review of Books *"A paradigm-shaping book for future scholarship around mental difference. Bruce’s book not only helps announce the emergence of [mad studies] but significantly advances the analytic, cultural, historical, and theoretical sophistication of mad scholarship...As a result, How to Go Mad is a must-read for those of us engaged in the intersectional politics and scholarship of difference." -- Bradley E. Lewis * Journal of Medical Humanities *"Bruce articulates understandings of madness that encompass the lived experiences of Black, queer, and disabled people, putting forth a 'mad methodology' that capsizes dominant notions of social, political, economic normalcy, and ethics, and invites, for me, a new possibility of Afrofuturistic imagining. . . . [A] dynamic critical analysis of madcrazyBlackness that spans genre, medium, and epoch." -- Victoria R. Collins * Electric Literature *"This melodic volume explores relationships between the surreal, impossible conditions (and conditions of impossibility) experienced by Black people and our radical, imaginative 'mad Black creativity.' Showing us 'lessons [we can] learn from those who make homeland in wasteland' as blueprints for freedom dreaming, Bruce picks apart the self-obscuring cultural and political forces that shape understandings of madness to disempower, disenfranchise, and control Black life and Being...It is ratchet. It is unruly. It is gorgeous." -- Kia Darling-Hammond * Nonprofit Quarterly *"With a Walt Whitman-style expansiveness, Bruce wraps his arms around a multitude of creative genres and Black artists and then pulls us into his project of 'radical compassion' with mad subjects. Bruce’s writing is both critical and compelling, analytical and yet intimate. . . . How to Go Mad without Losing Your Mind invites readers to sit with madness for a while, to explore its radical liberatory potential, and to become mad methodologists with radical compassion. Hold tight. Let go. And let this book take you there.” -- Elizabeth Donaldson * Disability Studies Quarterly *"How to Go Mad is a love story, a potent reflection on a few of the many Black creative minds who have innovated art forms and fashioned the trajectory of history, while having their 'sanity' called into question by normative, white, anti-Black, anti-Mad audiences and institutions." -- Liz Miller * Lateral *“How to Go Mad will undoubtedly influence conversations in black studies, science and technology studies, disability studies, and other fields. It is a lyrical, nuanced model of how radical care produces new approaches beyond the rehearsal of pathology.” -- Jacob Hood * Catalyst *"If we imagine Black studies to be a space of creativity where Black scholars break from disciplinary strictures and form, then this text is an exemplary practice...The writing is evocative and accessible for any of us who have felt searing rage and those whose waking hours are haunted by madness." -- Hugo ka Canham * The Black Scholar *"One cannot read this work without also assembling its madness with the mad blue notes of Buddy Bolden, the crazy blues of Bessie Smith, the 'good at' madness of Ntozake Shange’s Hyacinthe, the maddening black genius of Ms. Lauryn Hill, the unruly madness of Kanye West, or the 'mad real world' of Dave Chappelle. Bruce is not simply using these creative artists as case studies of madness dipped in black, but is presenting a terrain where the expanse of madness and blackness can only be read together—in this push and push, the fracture of Reason is revealed." -- Dana Francisco Miranda * Blog of the APA *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix 1. Mad Is a Place 1 2. "He Blew His Brains Out through the Trumpet": Buddy Bolden and the Impossible Sound of Madness 36 Interlude. "No Wiggles in the Dark of Her Soul": Black Madness, Metaphor, and "Murder!" 71 3. The Blood-Stained Bed 79 4. A Portrait of the Artist as a Mad Black Woman 110 5. "The People inside My Head, Too": Ms. Lauryn Hill Sings Truth to Power in the Key of Madness 139 6. The Joker's Wild but That Nigga's Crazy: Dave Chappelle Laughs until It Hurts 172 7. Songs in Madtime: Black Music, Madness, and Metaphysical Syncopation 201 Afterword. The Nutty Professor (A Confession) 231 Notes 239 Bibliography 303 Index 333

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Book SynopsisBeginning theory has been helping students navigate through the thickets of literary and cultural theory for over two decades. This new and expanded fourth edition continues to offer readers the best single-volume introduction to the field. The bewildering variety of approaches, theorists and technical language is lucidly and expertly unravelled. Unlike many books which assume certain positions about the critics and the theories they represent, Beginning theory allows readers to develop their own ideas once first principles and concepts have been grasped. The book has been updated for this edition and includes a new introduction, expanded chapters, and an overview of the subject ('Theory after "Theory"') which maps the arrival of new 'isms' since the second edition appeared in 2002 and the third edition in 2009.Trade Review'There is no other book that offers such a comprehensive account of the field, combined with thoughtful, detailed exposition of the theoretical approaches under discussion. Far from being a modest survey of contemporary literary theory, it has had a vital role in shaping the way that theory is taught in Britain and North America.'English Association Newsletter‘In the fourth edition of his popular introduction to literary theory, Barry (emer., Aberystwyth Univ., Wales) amends and updates earlier versions (1995, 2002, 2009) and adds sections on newer theories such as consilience and posthumanism. The book is written explicitly for students of English literature, and in citing examples Barry tends to stick to the canonical—Wordsworth, Austen, Shakespeare, et al.—which renders the book less useful than it might be for students of other literatures and languages. Nevertheless, Barry’s readable text focuses helpfully on putting students at ease and giving them tools to think through difficult concepts and theories. In addition, practical exercises familiarize students new to the discipline with different ways of using theory to analyze literature. Most of the changes to the new edition are insubstantial, and some newer theories and practices, such as those relating to technology, are given short shrift. The majority of the references and suggestions for further reading are also the same as those used in earlier versions. Even so the book provides an approachable, understandable introduction to literary theory and would be useful to those not already in possession of the third edition.’M. Anderson, Southern Oregon University, Choice connect, Vol. 56, No. 2, October 2018 -- .Table of ContentsPreface to the fourth editionIntroduction1 Theory before 'theory'2 Structuralism 3 Post-structuralism and deconstruction 4 Postmodernism 5 Psychoanalytic criticism 6 Feminist criticism7 Queer theory8 Marxist criticism 9 New historicism and cultural materialism 10 Postcolonial criticism 11 Stylistics 12 Narratology 13 Ecocriticism14 Literary theory – a history in ten events15 Theory after 'Theory'AppendicesWhere do we go from here? Further readingIndex

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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.Trade Review"Hervarar saga and Hrólfs saga kraka are among the best of the Icelandic mythical heroic sagas and are both highpoints of medieval literature. Jackson Crawford’s new translation is eminently readable and with its accompanying Introduction and notes will serve as an excellent introduction to this fascinating material." —M. J. Driscoll, Professor of Old Norse Philology, University of Copenhagen"Jackson Crawford’s devoted readership will welcome this new translation of two lesser-known sagas, which in every way lives up to the standards his previous translations from Old Norse have set. These vivid 'sagas of ancient times,' or fornaldar sǫgur, will be of particular interest to teachers and students of Beowulf." —Martin Chase, Professor Emeritus of English, Fordham University"The two sagas of the title, Hervor and Heidrek and Hrolf Kraki and His Champions, need little comment here: while perhaps not well-known among sagas of the mythical type, they feature all the characteristics that make sagas entertaining and engaging reading, and also afford the reader a glimpse into the complexities of medieval family life, political rivalries, and the overall landscape of a still largely pre-Christian society. The quality of the translation, which successfully captures the poetry of the prose and the alliteration of its verse, is a testament to Dr. Crawford’s careful crafting of the original Old Norse into highly readable English, with the meticulous attention and skill evident in all his translations. Of at least equal interest to the reader, however, is Dr. Crawford’s Introduction to the texts. Without entering deeply into literary interpretation or analysis, Dr. Crawford provides a commentary the breadth and scope of which truly attests to his vast and comprehensive knowledge of not only the language and original texts, but also of the culture, history, values, and unique character of medieval Norse society. The Introduction identifies parallel texts and additional source materials, and includes a helpful list of resources for further reading; the notes on the language provide adequate explanation so as to be accessible to readers with no background in Old Norse, and the pronunciation guide is a useful addition. Overall, the Introduction is thorough in its information, covering a wide range of topics from observations about representations of women in the sagas to a commentary on poetic meter and stanzaic structure. While the sagas can be read and enjoyed without the benefit of reading the Introduction, the background and insight the reader gains through it serves to enrich the experience of reading the sagas, and is a valuable resource as an introduction to Old Norse sagas in general. With its fine balance of an informative Introduction and two exceptional saga translations, Two Sagas of Mythical Heroes: Hervor and Heidrek and Hrolf Kraki and His Champions is a publication that will appeal to both the novice and the experienced reader of Old Norse sagas." —Vicki J. Grove, Teaching Professor of Distinction, Russian and Nordic Programs, University of Colorado Boulder"[T]his accessible and affordable edition with its useful front and back matter offers a great introduction to the world of the fornaldarsögur. It is my hope that other, similarly accessible publications will follow."—Rebecca Merkelbach, University of Tübingen, in The Medieval Review "Jackson Crawford's works present Norse literature in a way that is engaging, approachable, and worth rereading multiple times . . . I highly recommend.” —Phillip Fitzsimmons, Southwestern Oklahoma State University, in Mythlore

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Book Synopsis?You know how, very occasionally in your life, there?s a ?before and after? reading experience? Well, reading War and Peace with Tolstoy Together has been that for me?a milestone not just in reading but in living.??Michael LanganFrom the acclaimed author of Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life, a book about the art of reading. In Tolstoy Together: 85 Days of War and Peace, Yiyun Li invites you to travel with her through Tolstoy?s novel?and with fellow readers around the world who joined her for an online book club and an epic journey during a pandemic year.?I?ve found that the more uncertain life is,? Yiyun Li writes, ?the more solidity and structure War and Peace provides.? Tolstoy Together expands the epic novel into a rich conversation about literature and ways of reading, with contributions from Garth Greenwell, Elliott Holt, Carl Phillips, Tom Drury, Sara Majka, Alexandra Schwartz, and hundreds of fellow readers.Along with Yiyun Li?s daily reading journal and a communal journal with readers? reflections?with commentary on craft and technique, historical context, and character studies, Tolstoy Together: 85 Days of War and Peace includes a schedule and framework, providing a daily motivating companion for Tolstoy?s novel and a reading practice for future books.

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Book SynopsisA glorious treasury of literary curiosities for every night of the year. Bedside Companion for Book Lovers contains an eclectic mix of fact and fiction, letters, diaries, essays and dedications, all suffused with the joys of books and reading. The perfect gift for the bibliophile in your life, it contains snippets from some of the greatest writers and book collectors from throughout history, including: Charles Dickens on the smell of books Maya Angelou on the pleasures of reading aloud Virginia Woolf on finding space for writing Nick Hornby on reading for pure enjoyment and much more. Along the way, you’ll find advice on how to look after your most precious volumes, what to do when books start taking over your home, and where to find the most atmospheric libraries and bookshops around the world. Keep this beautifully illustrated book by your bedside and wander into a magical world of books every night of the year.Trade Review‘This would be a much-loved and treasured gift for bookworms! From fact and fiction, to letters and diaries, be greeted by the beauty of the written word’ Love Reading ‘The perfect gift for any book lover, with a mix of letters and diaries, both fact and fiction’ Prima ‘This is the perfect book for any bookworm… a real classic in the making’ Miranda Mills YouTubeTable of ContentsJanuary: An Illimitable Choice 10February: Frivolous and Idle Books 46March: A Stroke of the Pen 78April: Something Sensational to Read 112May: Encouraging Early Bookishness 146June: The Poet and the Dreamer 182July: I Always Took a Book 216August: Bibliomania, or Book-madness 252September: In an Elbow-chair at Ease 288October: The Art of Bookbinding 324November: An Abundant Library 358December: The Craft of Genius 394Index: 430Acknowledgements 444

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Book SynopsisThis extensive selection of Tanikawa Shuntaro's poetry reflects the full depth and breadth of his work, from his appearance as a fresh new voice to the mastery of his later poetry. It traces his artistic development and his shift in focus from man's cosmic destiny to the pathos of everyday life and a more internalized struggle with the nature of human expression. Lovers of poetry will find the experience exhilarating. The only such collection in English, this volume will prove indispensable to students and scholars of Japanese literature, as it opens a valuable new perspective on postware Japanese literature. The Introduction clarifies the social and artistic background of Tanikawa's extraordinary work and career, illuminating major themes as his poetry evolves over time.

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Book SynopsisAs early as the eighteenth century, white Americans and Europeans believed that people of African descent could not experience nostalgia. As a result, black lives have been predominately narrated through historical scenes of slavery and oppression. This phenomenon created a missing archive of romantic historical memories. Badia Ahad-Legardy mines literature, visual culture, performance, and culinary arts to form an archive of black historical joy for use by the African-descended. Her analysis reveals how contemporary black artists find more than trauma and subjugation within the historical past. Drawing on contemporary African American culture and recent psychological studies, she reveals nostalgia’s capacity to produce positive emotions. Afro-nostalgia emerges as an expression of black romantic recollection that creates and inspires good feelings even within our darkest moments. Original and provocative, Afro-Nostalgia offers black historical pleasure as a remTrade Review"Part Afrofuturistic, part academic, this book will make you rethink how you understand Black history and storytelling." --BookRiot"Essential." --Ms. Magazine"Author Badia Ahad-Legardy finds unique ways to explore the beauty, positivity, and triumph of people descended from Africa, creating an archival collection of visual art and culture, literature and performance to demonstrate how the Black experience is not just a depressing string of incidents that drives us through our lives. " --New York Amsterdam News"If you’ve been waiting for a book that steps out of trauma-time and the perpetual present of slavery clear-eyed and with its critical faculties alight, you’ve found it. Badia Ahad-Legardy breathes gentle and sweet smelling fresh air into stale corners in her book on Afro-Nostalgia, which cogently analyzes and affectively affirms Black cultural producers and chefs who treat the past less as an ongoing traumatic wound and more as a surrealistic space of black historical regenerative possibility and happiness. A gem."--Avery Gordon, author of Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination"An important dissection of looking beyond the traumas of the past to find the happiness that existed (and exists) within the Black community. " --Library Journal"This thoroughly researched book seeks and sheds light on the spaces where Black joy can live and flourish. Though its tone is academic, its insights reach far beyond the classroom.... a worthy addition to any multicultural studies library and to readers interested in American culture." --Museum of Americana"Afro-Nostalgia does an excellent job of making visible the operation of Afro-nostalgia in contemporary Black culture as a counter to the negative affect produced by Black history as trauma." --American Literary HistoryTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction. Ten Thousand Recollections: Afro-Nostalgia and Contemporary Black Aesthetics 1. (Nostalgic) RETRIBUTION: The Power of the Petty in Contemporary Narratives of Slavery 2. (Nostalgic) RESTORATION: Utopian Pasts and Political Futures in the Music of Black Lives Matter 3. (Nostalgic) REGENERATION: Absent Archives and Historical Pleasures in Contemporary Black Visual Culture 4. (Nostalgic) RECLAMATION: Recipes for Radicalism and the Politics of Soul (Food) Postscript: A Future of Black Nostalgia Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisFirst published in 1939, These Poor Hands was an instant best-seller, catapulting its author, B. L. Coombes, to the front rank of proletarian writers. Coombes was born in England, but he lived for decades in the Vale of Neath in south Wales, and as the economic problems of the 1930s deepened, he turned to writing as a way to spread the word about the plight of miners and their communities to a wider world. Presenting the daily lives of miners in documentary fashion, with special attention to the damaging lockouts of 1921 and 1926, These Poor Hands retains the power to astonish readers with its description of the ways that unfettered capitalism can lay waste to human potential.Trade Review'The re-publication of this classic volume is to be warmly welcomed ... For this new edition, two of the most prominent of the younger generation of Welsh historians, Professor Chris Williams of the University of Glamorgan and Dr Bill Jones of Cardiff, join forces to provide the text with a most valuable, highly readable introduction and explanatory glossary notes which are genuinely helpful.' www .gwales.com

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Book SynopsisThis edition of a novel inspired by the Spanish Civil War, offers notes and an introduction, which have been compiled in the light of recent socio-political, topic-based syllabuses and communications studies courses.Table of Contents"Contraataque"; "Requiem per un campesino espanol"; the major novels of Sender; "Requiem por un Campesino Espanol".

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Book SynopsisText in Danish.

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Book SynopsisIntellectual history linking philosophy to National Socialism, focusing on Irrationalism. Lukasc's insightful analysis with some Leninist influence. Explores German philosophy's role in shaping Nazi ideology. Compares Germany's philosophical justifications to USA's raw power display during Cold War.

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Book SynopsisHas Tanya finally done it...!? The cushy office desk job assignment she's been waiting for at the Military University is finally hers to enjoy. That is...until there's a hiccup in her assignment!

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Book SynopsisThe classic of literary criticism from one of the world''s greatest novelists.In seven independent, but closely related chapters, Milan Kundera presents his personal conception of the European novel, which he describes as ''an art born of the laughter of God''.''Invigoratingly suggestive . . . Kundera''s map of the development of the European novel is outlined with the reckless brevity of the man who knows exactly what and where the salient points are.'' London Review of Books''Kundera is the saddest, funniest and most loveable of authors.'' The Times

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Book SynopsisAs much as dogs, cats, or any domestic animal, horses exemplify the vast range of human-animal interactions. Horses have long been deployed to help with a variety of human activitiesfrom racing and riding to police work, farming, warfare, and therapyand have figured heavily in the history of natural sciences, social sciences, and the humanities. Most accounts of the equine-human relationship, however, fail to address the last few centuries of Western history, focusing instead on pre-1700 interactions. Equestrian Cultures fills in the gap, telling the story of how prominently horses continue to figure in our lives, up to the present day. Kristen Guest and Monica Mattfeld place the modern period front and center in this collection, illuminating the largely untold story of how the horse has responded to the accelerated pace of modernity. The book's contributors explore equine cultures across the globe, drawing from numerous interdisciplinary sources to show how horses have unexpectedl

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewOdd Girls reverberates with the powerful voices of people speaking for themselves... Faderman empowers her subject; instead of allowing lesbian lifestyles to be defined from the outside, her voice and those of other women transcend destructive stereotypes and misconceptions. Odd Girls offers a lucidly written and moving narrative of lesbian culture and community during its formative years. The Village Voice Fascinating... poignant and moving... Odd Girls is full of facts and wonderful details that readers may not have encountered, things that are a pleasure to learn and that seem valuable to know. Los Angeles Times Book Review One has to respect the tenacity of Lillian Faderman for making sense of the evolution of lesbian life in twentieth-century America... This is a remarkable social history... Her study attains the depth and evenhandedness of a scholarly classic. -- Susan Brownmiller The Washington Post Book World An important and challenging work for lesbians and heterosexuals alike... Odd Girls is a key work, the point of reference which all subsequent studies of twentieth-century lesbian life in the United States will begin. San Francisco Examiner Faderman's sweeping, mesmerizing prose accentuates the magnificent scholarship in this definitive account of lesbian life in the past 100 years... Faderman has combined her talent and experience to accomplish this wonder. -- Barbara Grier Lambda Book Report Nothing odd about Odd Girls--it combines clear prose with meticulous research. This book is an important contribution to understanding America and its people in our time. -- Rita Mae Brown, author of Rubyfruit Jungle A grand narrative synthesis of the cultural, social, and political history of lesbian life since the late nineteenth century... Engaging and deeply moving stories. New York Times Book Review A splendid, uplifting achievement. The IndependentTable of ContentsContents Introduction 1. "The Loves of Women for Each Other": "Romantic Friends" in the Twentieth Century 2. A Worm in the Bud: The Early Sexologists and Love Between Women 3. Lesbian Chic: Experimentation and Repression in the 1920s 4. Wastelands and Oases: The 1930s 5. "Naked Amazons and Queer Damozels": World War II and Its Aftermath 6. The Love that Dares Not Speak Its Name: McCarthyism and Its Legacy 7. Butches, Femmes, and Kikis: Creating Lesbian Subcultures in the 1950s and '60s 8. "Not a Public Relations Movement": Lesbian Revolutions in the 1960s Through '70s 9. Lesbian Nation: Creating a Women-Identified-Women Community in the 1970s 10. Lesbian Sex Wars in the 1980s 11. From Tower of Babel to Community: Lesbian Life in the 1980s Epilogue: Social Constructions and the Metamorphoses of Love Between Women Notes Index

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewJulia Kristeva's book is a memorable source of reflections on the temptation and quest of being... -- Kerrin A. Jacobs Metapsychology successful in carrying over to the English-speaking public the contemporary tonalities of Kristeva's voice. -- Marios Constantinou and Maria Margaroni Years Work in Critical and Cultural TheoryTable of ContentsForeword, by Pierre-Louis Fort I. Worlds 1. Thinking About Liberty in Dark Times 2. Secularism: "Values" at the Limits of Life 3. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity and ... Vulnerability II. Women 4. On Parity, Again; or, Women and the Sacred 5. From Madonnas to Nudes: A Representation of Female Beauty 6. The Passion According to Motherhood 7. The War of the Sexes Since Antiquity 8. Beauvoir, Presently 9. Fatigue in the Feminine III. Psychoanalyzing 10. The Sobbing Girl; or, On Hysterical Time 11. Healing, a Psychical Rebirth 12. From Object Love to Objectless Love 13. Desire for Law 14. Language, Sublimation, Women 15. Hatred and Forgiveness; or, From Abjection to Paranoia 16. Three Essays; or, the Victory of Polymorphous Perversion IV. Religion 17. Atheism 18. The Triple Uprooting of Israel 19. What Is Left of Our Loves? V. Portraits 20. The Inevitable Form 21. A Stranger 22. Writing as Strangeness and Jouissance VI. Writing 23. The "True-Lie," Our Unassailable Contemporary 24. Murder in Byzantium; or, Why I "ship myself on a voyage" in a Novel Notes Notes on the Origins of the Texts Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisIn the aftermath of World War II, a Japanese youth raised in the puppet state of Manchuria struggles to return home to Japan. What follows is a wild journey involving drugs, smuggling, chases, and capture. Beasts Head for Home is an acute novel of identity, belonging, and the vagaries of human behavior from an exceptional modern Japanese author.Trade ReviewAbe Kobo is one of the most respected postwar Japanese fiction writers and internationally recognized for the unique style, philosophical depth, and experimental quality of his fiction. Although Beasts Head for Home is not one of Abe's most well-known works, readers will be eager to see how he wrote about an important historical moment from an essentially realist perspective. An excellent translation of a novel in need of an English-language version. -- Travis Workman, author of Imperial Genus: The Formation and Limits of the Human in Modern Korea and Japan The earliest work by one of Japan's foremost writers to appear in English, Beasts Head for Home tells the story of a young Japanese man who undertakes a harrowing journey in an attempt to reach Japan after the collapse of the Japanese Empire. The story is particularly affecting to read in this historical moment with so much forced migration all over the world. Calichman's translation is flawless. -- J. Keith Vincent, translator of Devils in Daylight by Junichiro Tanizaki Calichman's superb translation of Abe's semiautobiographical novel brings us a Kafkaesque world of displacement where settlers of Manchuria undergo the loss of home, identity, and belonging after the collapse of the Japanese empire. Beasts Head for Home is a haunting and gripping story and an indispensable read for anyone interested in postcolonial studies, settler colonial studies, and the history of empire. -- Katsuya Hirano, author of The Politics of Dialogic Imagination: Power and Popular Culture in Early Modern Japan With subtle echoes of a samurai classic, Abe's autobiographical novel is a memorable portrait of statelessness, exile, and wandering. Kirkus Reviews This novel is an excellent entry point into Abe's writing, with much of his signature tone and style. He is a master of controlling the reader's emotional investment while crafting an increasingly suffocating atmosphere of dread, resulting in a devastating reading experience. Publishers Weekly (starred review)Table of ContentsIntroduction Beasts Head for Home

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Book SynopsisMari Ruti combines theoretical reflection, cultural critique, feminist politics, and personal anecdotes to analyze the prevalence of bad feelings in everyday life. Proceeding from a playful engagement with Freud’s idea of penis envy, Ruti fans out to a broader consideration of neoliberal pragmatism and a trenchant critique of gender relations.Trade ReviewI returned to university as an adult to audit a course by Mari Ruti, as I have long been a fan of her writing. This book returns me to the joys of being her student, of hearing her lecture, of her lucid and lively intelligence which is grounded in lived experience and is open and probing in its analysis. I always left her classes with a renewed and expansive feeling about life and the human situation, and this book gives me the same feelings of liberty, outrage, excitement, and possibility. -- Sheila Heti, author of How Should a Person Be?Mari Ruti is a treasure—equal parts learned, generous, and wise. Whether diagnosing and naming American culture’s ‘gender obsession disorder’ or unpacking its absurd fixation on marriage, she puts the unspoken ailments of our everyday into words, and brings us that much closer to finding a cure. -- Kate Bolick, New York Times bestselling author of Spinster: Making a Life of One's OwnMari Ruti's Penis Envy and Other Bad Feelings is truly a unique book. Seamlessly weaving important concerns from recent queer and feminist theory into a quasi-autobiographical, quasi‐polemical fabric, it addresses crucial issues that permeate our daily lives in the twenty-first century. Ruti's book moves from the large‐scale to the intimate and back again, engaging both Western societies in general and specific instances of discomfort within their confines. -- Gail M. Newman, Williams CollegeMari Ruti’s Penis Envy and Other Bad Feelings brings the reader into an intimate conversation with its author, eliciting outright laughter, deep compassion, even heartbreak, and many wincing nods of oh yeah, #MeToo recognition. Fueled by a spirited appreciation of bad feelings and an affirming love of Lacan and language, Ruti deftly turns penis envy on its head into a feisty, feminist source of political agency. -- Jill Gentile, author of Feminine Law: Freud, Free Speech, and the Voice of DesireThrough an intimate portrait of Mari Ruti’s emotional landscape we encounter the phallic predicaments of everyday life. Why the penis, we may ask? This book moves through psychoanalytic theory like fire in grass. Her ethical hope is that in taking on the full range of bad feelings, we may finally know what can be enough! -- Jamieson Webster, author of The Life and Death of Psychoanalysis[Ruti] rescues penis envy from Freud's ludicrous literalism and feminism's merry spoofing. Readers versed in critical theory, a field renowned for its obscurantist prose, will find her book remarkably lucid. -- Carol Tavris * Times Literary Supplement *This is a gutsy, original foray into feminist theory, at once memoirish, polemical and even self-helpful, just the book for anyone up for an intellectual bone to gnaw on. -- Sarah Murdoch * The Toronto Star *A delightful book that spills over with insights into the everyday suffering that these neoliberal times produce in so many of us. * Hypatia *Ruti’s Penis Envy might resonate particularly with young women who are caught up in the groundswell of the #metoo movement, and also set somewhat adrift by it. -- Ronjaunee Chatterjee * ASAP/J *Ruti offers lived experiences as well as cogent readings of Sigmund Freud, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Lacan, to make her case for how feelings of inadequacy are culturally reproduced, rather than biologically determined. . . .[Penis Envy and Other Bad Feelings] invites discussion among men and women, the repressed and the celebrated, as a way of correcting fetishistic acceptance of phallic primacy. * Library Journal *Ruti interweaves theoretical insight, cultural critique, feminist politics, and personal experience to lift the lid on the prevalence of bad feelings in contemporary everyday life. Emanating from a playful engagement with Freud’s idea of penis envy, Ruti’s autotheoretical commentary fans out to a broader consideration of neoliberal pragmatism. * Public Seminar *Table of ContentsIntroduction1. The Creed of Pragmatism2. The Rationalization of Intimacy3. The Obsessions of Gender4. The Reinvention of Heteropatriarchy5. The Specificity of Desire6. The Age of AnxietyConclusionAcknowledgmentsNotesIndex

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Book SynopsisA compelling collection of original essays on influence that restore a feminist avant-garde that includes women of colour, queer, and trans women.

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Book SynopsisIntroducing the English-language audience to the work of one of France’s leading contemporary dramatists—winner of seven Molières, the Pulitzer Prize of France—these plays offer vivid insights into French Jewish life in post-Holocaust Europe.Trade ReviewAll three plays in this volume are infused by the tragedy of the broken family, and Grumberg masterfully deploys comedy in his dialogue as a way of dealing with tragic memories that defy expression. Grumberg effectively invented the genre of post-war French Jewish theatre, fusing the French language and the Jewish experience in a strange and innovative way, and giving voice to a French Jewish identity that goes beyond the traditional Republican prescription. -- Natasha Lehrer * Times Literary Supplement *Table of Contents Acknowledgments Three French Jewish Plays of Jean-Claude Grumberg: A Theatre of Memory and Accommodation Jean-Claude Grumberg: A Timeline of Key Works and Life Events The Plays The Workplace On the Way to the Promised Land: A Dental Tragedy Mama’s Coming Back, Poor Orphan An Interview with Jean-Claude Grumberg Selected Bibliography

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Book SynopsisAn accessible exploration of how diverse cultures have explained humanity’s origins through narratives about the natural environmentTrade Review“Anthony Aveni has produced an absolutely amazing survey that fully documents Creation stories from multiple civilizations. His achievement is staggering, the fruit of decades of research.”—Simon Mitton, University of Cambridge "Tony Aveni has given us a unique survey of origin stories in many ancient societies written with eloquent skill. This important book will appeal to experts and general readers alike."—Brian Fagan, author of Fishing: How the Sea Fed Civilization“TonyAveni shares imaginative stories of violent struggles to create an orderly universe, of our landscapes' emerging, transforming and metamorphosing, in humanity’s timeless search for meaning and purpose: an anthological gem!”—Ian Mursell, co-founder and director of Mexicolore “Whether there was first darkness on the face of the deep, a void of nothing between fire and ice, or an optically opaque primordial chaos, Anthony Aveni takes us on a worldwide expedition illuminating the mysteries of Creation.”—Dr. E.C. Krupp, Director, Griffith Observatory “In this fascinating book Anthony Aveni turns his forensic gaze to the ultimate question of existence: where do we come from? Exploring creation stories from across the world, this book opens new perspectives on our relationship with time and space.”—Nicholas Campion, author of Astrology and Cosmology in the World’s Religions

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Book SynopsisNATIONAL BESTSELLER • In his final years, one of America’s greatest writers envisioned a book about his three assassinated friends, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King. His deeply personal notes for the project had never been published before acclaimed filmmaker Raoul Peck mined them to compose his Academy Award-nominated documentary.“Thrilling…. A portrait of one man’s confrontation with a country that, murder by murder, as he once put it, ‘devastated my universe.’” —The New York TimesPeck weaves these texts together, brilliantly imagining the book that Baldwin never wrote with selected published and unpublished passages, essays, letters, notes, and interviews that are every bit as incisive and pertinent now as they have ever been. Peck’s film uses them to jump through time, juxtaposing Baldwin’s private words with his public statements, in a blazing examination of the tragic history of race in America.This edition contains more than 40 black-and-white images from the film.

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