Literature: history and criticism Books

Book SynopsisMeanings of Antiquity is the first dedicated study of how the oldest Japanese myths, recorded in the eighth-century texts Kojiki and Nihon shoki, changed in meaning and significance between 800 and 1800 CE. Matthieu Felt identifies the geographical, cosmological, epistemological, and semiotic changes that led to new adaptations of Japanese myths.

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Book SynopsisIn 1699, Cotton Mather authored the first Spanish-language text in the English New World: a religious tract aimed at evangelizing readers across the Spanish Americas. Kirsten Silva Gruesz uses Mather's text to explore complex overlaps of race, ethnicity, and language in the early Americas, which continue to govern Latina/o/x belonging today.Trade ReviewIn her revolutionary new book,…Gruesz sets aside Mather the witch hunter to center him instead in a fascinating new story about race…It is Gruesz’s thrillingly literary focus on a single text—spinning out as much significance as she has convincingly shown it deserves—that makes her new consideration of him so rewarding. -- Joseph Rezek * Los Angeles Review of Books *A fascinating expedition into matters of race, language, and religion…That Gruesz can so convincingly link the miniscule actions of a late seventeenth-century printer in Boston with the huge contemporary issue of ethno-racial ambiguity in the US indicates the range and ambition of her book, fully achieved. -- Peter Hulme * American Literary History *As [Gruesz] revisits the life and writings of Mather especially as connected to his La Fe del Christiano, she illustrates that his significance went well beyond the basic religious world of New England, entangling him in the broader, imperial context of the early modern world. -- Richard Bailey * H-Net Reviews *A new narrative about race and ideas, as well as practices, of belonging, with deep and explicit implications for Latina/o/x history today…Gruesz’s ambitious and innovative book—both a macro history of language, ideas, and circulation and a micro history of Mather, his household, and his interactions with Native and Black people—should be widely read. -- Alejandra Dubcovsky * New England Quarterly *Extraordinary…In many ways [Gruesz] expands what the biography of a text can achieve and shows how many aims it can encompass…Every early Americanist, from any discipline, should certainly read the introduction. Most should read the book in full. All will find insightful material to spur further studies. [This book] contains important lessons for us all. -- Abram Van Engen * William & Mary Quarterly *Immersive and eye-opening…Meticulously researched and elegantly written, this is an essential reconsideration of the historical and contemporary place of the Spanish language and ‘Brown identity’ in the U.S. * Publishers Weekly *One of the most exciting and illuminating books I have read this century. Just when our nation’s institutions of historical memory are being called to account for their role in constructing entrenched systems of racialization, Gruesz reminds us that the political status of Latinx people in the United States remains profoundly unclear. Brilliantly combining historical, archival, and literary work, this book shows her to be a singular figure in American Studies today. -- Ramón Saldívar, author of The Borderlands of CultureA stunningly researched and original take on Cotton Mather. Kirsten Silva Gruesz replaces entrenched US origins stories with a transformative account of labor, race, and nation. In so doing, she locates English-speaking America in a series of richly hemispheric new contexts. -- Sarah Rivett, author of Unscripted AmericaKirsten Silva Gruesz has produced a magisterial study that fundamentally reimagines the complex relationship between colonial British North America and colonial Spanish America. Coupling extensive archival research with sensitive readings of multilingual texts, she traces not only the dialogue among criollo elites throughout the Americas, but also the deep imprints of Indigenous and African peoples on linguistic, religious, and material practices that continue to bear on our own lives today. -- John Morán González, author of Border RenaissanceA brilliant, essential, and moving book. In Cotton Mather’s Spanish Lessons, Kirsten Silva Gruesz offers her own enduring lessons on language, translation, and latinidad for a new generation of Americanists. -- Anna Brickhouse, author of The Unsettlement of AmericaThis dazzling book does so much at once. By humanizing the oft-maligned Cotton Mather, it restores the complexity of an important thinker, wrestling with global events at a pivotal moment for America’s identity and his own. In so doing, it also situates New England in a much wider Atlantic world filled with people speaking Spanish and many other languages. Cotton Mather’s Spanish Lessons deepens our history in every imaginable way. -- Ted Widmer, author of Lincoln on the Verge

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Book SynopsisThe sagas of the ancient Narts are to the Caucasus what Greek mythology is to Western civilization. This book presents, for the first time in the West, a wide selection of these fascinating myths preserved among four related peoples whose ancient cultures today survive by a thread. In ninety-two straightforward tales populated by extraordinary charTrade Review"An excellent translation of a rare standard of Eurasian mythology, the work blends annotation and commentary to demystify the complex philosophical text."--Library Journal "A new, important resource for those with a general interest in the lore of the North Caucasus, in comparative mythology, and in linguistics... Colarusso's familiarity with the Indo-European traditions is seen in the copious commentaries and notes accompanying the sagas. Meticulous and at times very detailed, they not only serve as a guide to a better understanding of the sagas themselves, but provide an introduction to the vast field of Eurasian myth... Colarusso is to be congratulated for this splendid contribution to the field, for his scholarship, for his devotion to the subject, and for bringing this collection of Nart sagas to us."--Patricia Arant, Slavic and East European JournalTable of ContentsPreface xiii Introduction to the Paperback Edition xix Symbols and Abbreviations xxv Maps xxx Introduction 1 A Selection of the Circassian Nart Corpus 9 1. If Our Lives Be Short, Let Our Fame Be Great 11 2. The Tale of How Warzameg and Yimis Came to Be 12 3. How Warzameg, Son of Meghazash, Won the Damsel Psatina 17 4. Setenaya and Argwana 34 5. The Blossom of Lady Setenaya 48 6. Why the Sun Pauses on the Horizon at Sunset 49 7. Lady Setenaya and the Magic Apple 50 8. Lady Setenaya and the Shepherd: The Birth of Sawseruquo 52 9. How Setenaya Was Led Astray 55 10. The Childhood of Shebatinuquo 56 11. How Far-Seeing Setenaya Rescued Warzameg 67 12. The Ballad of Warzamegyuquo Shebatinuquo 79 13. Setenaya and the Great Nart Warzameg 85 14. Nart Wazarmeg and His Friends Decide What to Do about a Black Fox 87 15. The Old Age of the Great Nart 91 16. How They Made Tlepsh Fashion the First Sickle 96 17. Tlepsh and Lady Tree 99 18. The One Who Committed One Hundred Sins 104 19. The Lament for Nagura Tlepshuquo 106 20. How Nart Tlepsh Killed Bearded Yamina with the Avenging Sword 107 21. Tlepsh's Gold Cellar 107 22. The Story of Nart Totaresh and the Chinta Leader 109 23. Two Fragments of the Ballad of Sawseruquo 112 24. The Ballad of Sawseruquo 125 25. How the Horse of Setenayuquo Sawseruquo Was Killed 129 26. Lady Nart Sana 129 27. Adif 131 28. Wardana and Chwindizh Dwell in the White-Haired Forest 134 29. Warzamegyuquo Yasheruquo's Search for Courage 138 30. How the Nart Khimish Married and How He Was Killed 139 31. The Ballad of Khimishuquo Pataraz 143 32. How the Narts Sought to Reach the Sky 153 33. How Khimishuquo Pataraz Won the Three Magical Whetstones 154 34. How Pataraz Freed Bearded Nasran, Who Was Chained to the High Mountain 158 35. Bound Nasran 168 36. An Old Man Chained to Elbruz 169 37. A Cyclops Bound atop Wash'hamakhwa 170 38. How Bearded Nasran Visited Ashamaz 171 39. The Ballad of Ashamaz 172 40. Lashyn's Satirical Couplets about the Nart Men 175 41. Hymn to T'haghalej 176 42. The Shiblawuj, a Round Dance to the God of Lightning 177 The Abaza Nart Corpus 179 43. The Time of the Narts 181 44. The Burial Ground of the Narts 182 45. The Golden Apple Tree of the Narts 183 46. Satanaya 184 47. How Sosruquo Was Born 185 48. Satanaya and Bataraz 188 49. Satanaya and Tlepshw 190 50. Sosruquo's Sword 192 51. How Sosruquo Attended the Council of the Narts 196 52. How Sosruquo Brought Fire to His Troops 200 53. How Sosruquo Brought Back the Seeds of the Millet 202 54. Shardan 215 55. How Sosruquo Brought Sana to the Narts 216 56. Sosruquo and the Blind Ayniwzh 219 57. Sosruquo and the Inquisitive Ayniwzh 222 58. Sosruquo and the Giant's Skull 227 59. Sosruquo and Six Men 228 60. Sosruquo and Sotrash 236 61. Sosruquo and Sosranpa 244 62. Qaydukh of the Narts 249 63. Qaydukh Fortress 257 64. The Doom of Sosruquo 259 65. Sosran of the Narts 267 66. The Nanny Goat of the Narts 269 67. Badan and Badanoquo of the Narts 270 68. Badanoquo of the Narts 275 69. How the Barrel of the Narts Was Set to Boiling 277 70. The Dream of Ayniwzh, Nana's Son 279 71. Tataruquo Shaway 281 72. Chwadlazhwiya's Tale 290 73. Nasran and Shamaz 296 74. Khmish and Bataraz of the Narts 302 A Selection of the Abkhaz Corpus 321 75. The Mother of Heroes 323 76. The Birth of the Valiant Sasruquo 329 77. How Sasruquo Plucked Down a Star 335 78. The Ayirgs' Sister, the Sister-in-Law of the Narts 344 79. Sasruquo's Sorrow 352 80. The Light-Giving Little Finger 356 81. How Sasruquo Tamed the Wild Stallion 360 82. How the Narts Cultivated Fruit 361 83. Khozhorpas 364 84. Narjkhyaw 366 85. An Account of the Narts 379 The Ubykh Nart Corpus 385 86. The Birth of Soseruquo 387 87. Another Birth of Soseruquo 397 88. The Death of Soseruquo 399 89. Yarichkhaw 401 90. Three Brothers, Their Sister, and a Nart 406 91. The Adventure of Marchan Shaghy 409 92. A Marvelous Sword 411 Appendix: Specimen Texts 415 A. Kabardian East Circassian 417 B. Bzhedukh West Circassian (Adyghey) 455 C. Ubykh 490 D. Abaza (Tapanta Dialect) ("Northern Abkhaz") 500 E. Bzyb Abkhaz 526 Bibliography 543

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"[A] sharp study. . . . The thorough research—drawn largely from margin annotations, letters, and journals—impresses, illuminating the dynamic ways an expanding readership made sense of Augustan literature. English scholars will find much to ponder." * Publishers Weekly *"Reading It Wrong sounds like a book reviewer’s nightmare, but I’ve come to trust the scholar Abigail Williams. . . . By examining letters, diaries and marginalia, Williams demonstrates that those original ‘imperfect readers’ were awash in ‘a particularly acute sense of puzzlement and confusion.’ But this bafflement wasn’t a bug; it was a feature of dynamic and interactive works of literature."---Ron Charles, Washington Post"[A] brilliantly astute and deeply learned alternative history of early eighteenth-century English literature."---Paul Sabor, Voltaire Foundation"[A] fine history of readerly misprision."---Thomas Keymer, London Review of Books

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Erudite and provocative."---Oliver Balch, Financial Times ​​​​​​​"A book about climate and storytelling that is not only upbeat but downright jaunty."---Aaron Matz, New York Review of Books"A stirring manifesto, and Puchner’s arguments are impressive. He effectively inspires fresh ways of reading, and climate-minded bookworms, especially, will find plenty to savor." * Publishers Weekly *"This cogent, passionate text argues for a comprehensive reenvisioning of our relationship with the natural world to mitigate the accelerating climate crisis.. . . . [Literature for a Changing Planet is a] challenging, important work of literary criticism [that] stretches our ideas of what it is to be human and where we fit in the natural world." * Foreword Reviews *"Martin Puchner’s Literature for a Changing Planet is an urgent call for rereading the stories that have shaped our world. . . . This text will be most useful to teachers of world literature looking to diversify their reading lists and pedagogical practices. It will be useful to literary critics seeking to newly engage with ecocriticism. And it just might prompt a new generation of writers—and spoken-word artists—to create the works that will move us into health and balance with the small blue marvel that is our species’ only home."---Greg Brown, World Literature Today

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Book SynopsisFrom "Mother Earth" to "Mother Nature," women have for centuries been associated with nature. Feminists, troubled by the way in which such representations show women controlled by powerful natural forces and confined to domestic space, have sought to...Trade ReviewUndomesticated Ground explores a dazzling array of feminist texts that endeavour to inhabit and transform nature as a place of feminist possibility. Throughout, Alaimo remains sensitive to the pitfalls of any alliance between women and nature. The texts are grouped chronologically and thematically, and each is carefully considered in relation to its social and historical moment. -- Meredith Criglington * Canadian Literature *Stacy Alaimo challenges essentialized conceptions of nature in Undomesticated Ground, calling for nature's reclamation as feminist space.... Alaimo persuasively asserts that feminism will benefit from a more complex understanding of nature's multiple and, at times, contradictory representations.... Her work importantly lays the groundwork by which we can articulate essentialized notions of nature, disrupt them, and then question the framework of dualisms that guides our inquiry. -- Maureen McKnight, University of Wisconsin * ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and the Environment *Undomesticated Ground is an important and informative book, and it should set the stage for an enlivened discussion of nature and feminism. * Choice *Alaimo's Undmesticated Ground: Recasting Nature as Feminist Space ... takes on the important work of dismantling nature–culture dualisms in which culture is viewed as dynamic and nature as static.... Alaimo offers feminists an alternative path in which boundaries between human and nonhuman nature are permeable but not completely collapsed. -- Shannon Sullivan * Hypatia *Students of nature writing, women's literature, and more familiar forms of imaginary domesticity will find rich insights in Undomesticated Ground. -- Barbara Ryan, University of Missouri * American Literature *Throughout the book, Alaimo shows that women have made subversive use of the particular literary, political, and gender conventions around them to create spaces for and threads of women's liberation that do not rest on a separation from nature.... These insights are complex and generative, and I found Alaimo's analysis to be rich and thought-provoking.... In both form and content, then, this is an important book for ecological scholars of all traditions. Read it with pleasure. -- Catriona Sandilands, York University * Environmental Ethics *

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Book SynopsisOne of the special charms of the Odyssey, according to Charles Segal, is the way it transports readers to fascinating places. Yet despite the appeal of its narrative, the Odyssey is fully understood only when its style, design, and mythical patterns...Trade ReviewCharles Segal offers an insightful and literate commentary that will enable readers to enjoy a fresh and informed appreciation for this classic Hellenic adventure tale.... A welcome addition to the growing body of erudite commentary on the enduringly popular epic poetry of Homer. * The Bookwatch *The essays in this book furnish very astute, unswervingly literary interpretations of key themes in the Odyssey.... Refreshingly straightforward criticism of a consistently high order. * Bryn Mawr Classical Review *

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Book SynopsisIn Lautréamont and Sade, originally published in 1949, Maurice Blanchot forcefully distinguishes his critical project from the major intellectual currents of his day, surrealism and existentialism. Today, Lautréamont and Sade, these unique figures in the histories of literature and thought, are as crucially relevant to theorists of language, reason, and cruelty as they were in post-war Paris.Sade''s Reason, in part a review of Pierre Klossowski''s Sade, My Neighbor, was first published in Les Temps modernes. Blanchot offers Sade''s reason, a corrosive rational unreasoning, apathetic before the cruelty of the passions, as a response to Sartre''s Hegelian politics of commitment.The Experience of Lautréamont, Blanchot''s longest sustained essay, pursues the dark logic of Maldoror through the circular gravitation of its themes, the grinding of its images, its repetitive and transformative use of language, and the obsessive metamorphosis of its mTable of Contents@fmct:Contents @toc4:Preface: What is the Purpose of Criticism? i @toc2:Sade's Reason 00 The Experience of Lautreamont 00 @toc4:Notes 000 Library of Congress Subject Headings for this publication: Lautr eamont, comte de, 1846-1870, Sade, marquis de, 1740-1814

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Book SynopsisHeinrich Wittenwiler's Ring, written in a Swiss dialect and presented in English translation for the first time in this 1956 volume, is a comic-didactic and religious allegory that documents late medieval views on many aspects of literature, history, law and religion.

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Book SynopsisReveals the complex irony in France's last volume of short stories, Les sept femme de la Barbe-Bleue. Diane Wolfe Levy shows how France imbues his narration with paradoxical elements, contrasts full of irony, and complex oppositions. She also reveals the way irony is directed to both the narrator and the fictional characters.

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Book SynopsisExplores the significant impact of this countercultural figure of postwar Japan.Trade Review"Steven C. Ridgely’s Japanese Counterculture is invaluable—a long overdue study of Terayama’s complex oeuvre, carefully researched and brilliantly argued. But Japanese Counterculture offers much more: it proposes to redefine the practice of cultural and countercultural studies, and even more significantly, the very nature of global culture. Therein lie its force, ingenuity, and radicality." —Akira Mizuta Lippit, University of Southern California"Ridgely’s exciting book opens Terayama’s world—his work as a poet, playwright/theater director, radio dramatist, filmmaker—and most importantly conveys the feeling and air of the times, the ‘tactical’ interventions of this fascinating figure within the space of counterculture." —Miryam Sas, University of California, BerkeleyTable of ContentsContents Introduction: Global Counterculture, Visual Counterculture 1. Poetic Kleptomania and Pseudo-Lyricism 2. Radio Drama in the Age of Television 3. Boxing-Stuttering-Graffiti 4. Deinstitutionalizing Theatre and Film 5. The Impossibility of History Conclusion: "Japanese" Counterculture Acknowledgments Notes Index

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Book SynopsisContends that representations of Spain, Spanish America, Spanishness, and Spanish Americanness are integral elements in the evolution of early national and antebellum US literature. John C. Havard argues that Spanish-speaking countries have long held a broad fascination for Americans and that stock narratives regarding these peoples were central to the period's US literature.Trade ReviewHavard significantly expands and enriches the coverage of sources that have been neglected in surveys and monographs on the literature of antebellum America."" - Iván Jaksic, author of The Hispanic World and American Intellectual Life, 1820–1880""Hispanicism and Early US Literature is a well-researched study that explores US literary responses to Spain and Spanish America during an important period of national identity formation."" - Kirsten Silva Gruesz, author of Ambassadors of Culture: The Transamerican Origins of Latino Writing

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Book SynopsisTable of ContentsGeneral Abbreviations | vii Abbreviations for Poets and Poems | ix Acknowledgments | xiii Introduction | 1 Part 1: Making Memories Rök and Ynglingatal | 15 1. Death in Place | 20 2. Forging the Chain | 46 Stone—Stanza—Memory | 72 Part 2: Seeing Things 3. The Viking Eye | 81 4. Seeing, Knowing, and Believing in the Prose Edda | 108 Part 3: Hearing Voices 5. The Noise of Poetry | 135 6. A Poetry Machine | 160 Conclusion | 185 Notes | 193 References | 257 Index | 291 Plates follow page 78

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Book SynopsisThese twenty-five interviews with Joyce Carol Oates from early in her career to the present are the first such collection to be published. In conversations from sources as diverse as major news magazines and small scholarly journals, Oates candidly talks about her work, her concepts of literature, her methods of writing, and many other topics.

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Book Synopsis

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Book SynopsisModernist literature at the end of the British empire challenges conventional notions of homeland, heritage, and community. Finalist of the MSA First Book Prize by The Modernist Studies AssociationThe waning British empire left behind an abundance of material relics and an inventory of feelings not easily relinquished. In The Obsolete Empire, Philip Tsang brings together an unusual constellation of writersHenry James, James Joyce, Doris Lessing, and V. S. Naipaulto trace an aesthetics of frustrated attachment that emerged in the wake of imperial decline. Caught between an expansive Britishness and an exclusive Englishness, these writers explored what it meant to belong to an empire that did not belong to them. Thanks to their voracious reading of English fiction and poetry in their formative years, all of these writers experienced a richly textured world with which they deeply identified but from which they felt excluded. The literary England they imagined, frozen in time and out oTable of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction. The Peripheral Sense of an EndingChapter One. Henry James and the Perversity of EmpireChapter Two. James Joyce and the Negative CommunityChapter Three. Doris Lessing and Late RealismChapter Four. V. S. Naipaul and the Rhetoric of EnchantmentEpilogue. Time of the OtherNotesIndex

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Book SynopsisA fascinating look at a pivotal period in Zora Neale Hurston's life that reimagines her complicated legacy. Zora Neale Hurston, an anthropologist and writer best known for her classic novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, led a complicated life often marked by tragedy and contradictions. When both she and her writing fell out of favor after the Harlem Renaissance, she struggled not only to regain an audience for her novels but also to simply make ends meet. In The Chase and Ruins, Sharony Green uncovers an understudied but important period of Hurston's life: her stay in Honduras in the late 1940s. On the eve of an awful accusation that nearly led to her suicide, Hurston fled to Honduras in search of a lost Mayan ruin. During her yearlong trip south of the US border, she appears to have never found the ruin she was chasing. But by escaping the Jim Crow south to Honduras, she avoided racist violence in the United States while still embracing her privilegeand poweras a US citizen in postwTable of ContentsForewordChapter OneChapter TwoChapter ThreeChapter FourChapter FiveAfterwordBibliographyAcknowledgments

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Book SynopsisIn Disaffected Xine Yao explores the racial and sexual politics of unfeeling—affects that are not recognized as feeling—as a means of survival and refusal in nineteenth-century America. She positions unfeeling beyond sentimentalism''s paradigm of universal feeling. Yao traces how works by Herman Melville, Martin R. Delany, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, and Sui Sin Far engaged major sociopolitical issues in ways that resisted the weaponization of white sentimentalism against the lives of people of color. Exploring variously pathologized, racialized, queer, and gendered affective modes like unsympathetic Blackness, queer female frigidity, and Oriental inscrutability, these authors departed from the values that undergird the politics of recognition and the liberal project of inclusion. By theorizing feeling otherwise as an antisocial affect, form of dissent, and mode of care, Yao suggests that unfeeling can serve as a contemporary political straTrade Review“Just when it seemed there could be nothing more to say about nineteenth-century sentimentalism, Xine Yao comes along with this powerhouse of a book. She exposes sentimentalism’s sly trick: a white supremacy exerted through an appearance of empathy that is actually the policing of feeling itself. Stunningly argued and refreshingly contrarian, Disaffected showcases what is most exciting about nineteenth-century American literary studies today while making important connections to emerging conversations in studies of race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality.” -- Britt Rusert, author of * Fugitive Science: Empiricism and Freedom in Early African American Culture *“Against the affective economy in which white pain demands racialized consolation and white sympathy extorts racialized gratitude and emotional labor, Xine Yao’s original study examines ‘disaffection’ as a powerful practice that refuses the affective obligations of the nineteenth-century liberal social order. To be ‘disaffected’ is more than the absence of feeling—it is rather to feel otherwise, to refuse affective coercion, to stay with the negativity of unfeeling and to interrupt its rehabilitation, and more importantly, to invent counterpractices of sociality and care from below.” -- Lisa Lowe, author of * The Intimacies of Four Continents *"Disaffected is a remarkable achievement that asks readers for 'reciprocity' in the 'mutual, uneven process of knowledge-making, meaning-making, community-building' that emerges from the withholdings and disclosures of unfeeling." -- Benjamin Hulett * Synapsis *"The history of emotions has not seen the likes of this book before and its importance cannot be overstated. At the very least, the introductory chapter should make it on to every syllabus." -- Rob Boddice * Emotions *"One of the marvels of this book is how Yao allows ideas and images to resonate and return across her readings, even as she approaches each text on its own terms. . . . Yao’s broader achievement in Disaffected is to theorize and exemplify a disaffected reading practice that unsettles the assumptions inherited from the tradition of sentimentalism." -- Nicholas Spengler * Leviathan *"This is an excellent, thought-provoking monograph, which is sure to leave its mark on a wide range of disciplines and fields." -- Jonathan D. S. Schroeder * American Literary History *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii Introduction. Disaffected from the Culture of Sentiment 1 1. The Babo Problem: White Sentimentalism and Unsympathetic Blackness in Herman Melville's Benito Cereno 29 2. Feeling Otherwise: Martin R. Delany, Black-Indigenous Counterintimacies, and the Possibility of a New World 70 3. The Queer Frigidity of Professionalism: White Women Doctors, the Struggle for Rights, and the Marriage Plot 107 4. Objective Passionless: Black Women Doctors and Dispassionate Strategies of Uplifting Love 138 5. Oriental Inscrutability: Sui Sin Far, Chinese Faces, and the Modern Apparatuses of U.S. Immigration 171 Coda. Notes toward a Disaffected Manifesto beyond Survival 208 Notes 211 Bibliography 243 Index

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Book SynopsisAssembles texts, performances, and personae from American culture to assert the elemental natureof styleWhile style is equated with fashion or convention in common parlance, Style: A Queer Cosmology defines the term as a mode of expression that makes us more like ourselves and less like everyone else. Taylor Black's interdisciplinary conceptual analysis assembles texts, performances, and personae from American culture that engage in ethical, creative, and performative modes of what he terms abundant revelation. Moving back and forth through time, this book sketches American cosmologies cultivated by iconic and subterranean American artists like Edgar Allan Poe, Flannery O'Connor, Nikki Giovanni, and Bob Dylan. Presiding throughout is the book's conceptual guide: latter-day American and notorious homosexual Quentin Crisp, resurrected here as a philosopher of style.As a scholarly intervention, Style participates in the critical work of revival anTrade Review"A breathtaking and utterly original exploration of a distinctively American style of becoming more and more oneself, that is, as a way cultivating difference. No longer linked to fashion or popularity, style here is an ongoing mode of self-elaboration, of becoming, of making the most of one’s limits. Taylor Black explores unruly stylists who create unique forms of attunement that enable each to become more than themselves, to unleash new forces larger than themselves, to become cosmic. This book is itself stylish, smart, witty, and wise." -- Elizabeth Grosz, author of The Incorporeal: Ontology, Ethics and the Limits of Materialism"Engages in revival, attachment, attunement—opening up reading/writing practices to more intensive forms of aesthetic difference, queer world-making, trans-temporal appreciation. Taylor Black’s approach is playfully profound in exposition, capaciously eclectic, bursting with insights, meandering yet guided by crucial preoccupations, pushing to edges of sonic implication and comprising, in effect, a ‘queer utopic’ of perpetually energized becoming. The style of Style itself is everywhere fresh, learned, engaged, funny, recklessly alive, full of unexpected twists, linkages, and masks: in a word, preternaturally smart." -- Rob Wilson, author of Be Always Converting, Be Always Converted: An American Poetic

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Book SynopsisIn Spenser's famous Flight, Patrick Cheney challenges the received wisdom about the shape and goal of Spenser's literary career. He contends that Spenser's idea of a literary career is not strictly the convential Virgilian pattern of pastoral to epic, but a Christian revision of that pattern in light of Petrarch and the Reformation.Cheney demonstrates that, far from changing his mind about his career as a result of disillusionment, Spenser embarks upon and completes a daring progress that secures his status as an Orphic poet.In October, Spenser calls his idea of a literary career the 'famous flight.' Both classical and Christian culture has authorized the myth of the winged poet as a primary myth of fame and glory. Cheney shows that throughout his poetry Spenser relies on an image of flight to accomplish his highest goal.

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Book SynopsisAt every turn in the development of what we now know as the western, women writers have been instrumental in its formation. Yet the myth that the western is male-authored persists. Westerns: A Women’s History debunks this myth once and for all by recovering the women writers of popular westerns who were active during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when the western genre as we now know it emerged. Victoria Lamont offers detailed studies of some of the many women who helped shape the western. Their novels bear the classic hallmarks of the western—cowboys, schoolmarms, gun violence, lynchings, cattle branding—while also placing female characters at the center of their western adventures and improvising with western conventions in surprising and ingenious ways. In Emma Ghent Curtis’s The Administratrix a widow disguises herself as a cowboy and infiltrates the cowboy gang responsible for lynching her husband. Muriel N

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Book SynopsisThinking is much broader than what our science-obsessed, utilitarian culture often takes it to be. More than mere problem solving or the methodical comprehension of our personal and natural circumstances, thinking may take the form of a poem, a painting, a sculpture, a museum exhibition, or a documentary film. Exploring a variety of works by contemporary artists and writers who exemplify poetic thinking, this book draws our attention to one of the crucial affordances of this form of creative human insight and wisdom: its capacity to help protect and cultivate human freedom. All the contemporary works of art and literature that Poetic Thinking Today examines touch on our recent experiences with tyranny in culture and politics. They express the uninhibited thoughts and ideas of their creators even as they foster poetic thinking in us. In an era characterized by the global reemergence of authoritarian tendencies, Amir Eshel writes with the future of the humanities in mind. He urges the acknowledgment and cultivation of poetic thinking as a crucial component of our intellectual pursuits in general and of our educational systems more specifically. Trade Review"In this beautifully woven book, Eshel demonstrates what twenty-first-century 'thinking without a banister' can be: a life-affirming chance to open up the world poetically and ethically to new and transformative possibilities."—Todd Samuel Presner, University of California, Los Angeles"Poetic Thinking Today should be required reading for defenders of the humanities in our current political moment. Eshel's assiduous research, sensitive readings, and light touch of self-reflection make for a moving, inspiring essay: a testament to the enduring relevance of thinking as freedom, of art as resistance."—Lital Levy, Princeton University"In this beautiful, brilliant, and moving study, Eshel calls attention to poetic thinking as indispensable to understanding the human condition and especially to the challenge of defining freedom without limitations. Itself an enactment of embodied and empowered thinking, reading, and observing, his book offers a guide to a meaningful and responsible life."—Ulrich Baer, New York University"This exciting work asks important questions and defends the significance of the humanities. One of Eshel's inspirations is Arendt's ideal of 'thinking without banisters.' He has the intellectual daring to follow her example. Highly recommended."—B. Almon, CHOICE"Even if knowledge is power, the capacity to judge cannot be entirely subsumed by power but offers a way out of our current dilemmas. It shares this openness with art....Poetic Thinking alerts us to the relevance of our capacity to judge for both art and morality. [Eshel] has written a practical guide to recall and activate our capacity for judgment—and exactly in this heartfelt invitation for us to use our capacity to judge rests its explosive power."—Volkmar Mühleis, DeutschlandfunkTable of ContentsIntroduction 1. Thinking Poems: On Paul Celan and Dan Pagis 2. Thinking Paintings: On Gerhard Richter 3. Thinking Sculptures: On Dani Karavan Coda: Our Poetic Age

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Book SynopsisDo we need to be a "people," populus, in order to embrace democracy and live together in peace? If so, what is a populus? Is it by definition a nation? What exactly do we mean by nationality? In this book, Davide Tarizzo takes up the problem of modern democratic, liberal peoples—how to define them, how to explain their invariance over time, and how to differentiate one people from another. Specifically, Tarizzo proposes that Jacques Lacan's theory of the subject enables us to clearly distinguish between the notion of personal identity and the notion of subjectivity, and that this very distinction is critical to understanding the nature of nations whose sense of nationhood does not rest on any self-evident identity or pre-existent cultural or ethnic homogeneity between individuals. Developing an argument about the birth and rise of modern peoples that draws on the American Declaration of Independence of 1776 and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen of 1789 as examples, Tarizzo introduces the concept of "political grammar"—a phrase that denotes the conditions of political subjectification that enable the enunciation of an emergent "we." Democracy, Tarizzo argues, flourishes when the opening between subjectivity and identity is maintained. And in fact, as he compellingly demonstrates, depending on the political grammar at work, democracy can be productively perceived as a process of never-ending recovery from a lack of clear national identity. Trade Review"A brilliant psychoanalytic exploration of the unconscious communities that undergird the nationalist democracies of our contemporary world." -- John P. McCormick * University of Chicago *"Braving the barricades of theory and vaulting the ramparts of abstraction, Davide Tarizzo battles the inner frontiers that separate beings and subjugate collectivities. A leviathan of a book." -- Peter Goodrich * Cardozo Law *"Reading Lacan extensively, in detail and with a deep commitment to psychoanalysis, inspired Davide Tarizzo to renovate political theory. The resulting opus provides asharp andstrikingly original conceptualization of 'collective subjectivities' that should have an important impact." -- Jacques-Alain Miller * World Association of Psychoanalysis *Table of ContentsIntroduction: The Cartesian Connection 1. The Clinical Approach to Political History 2. Emancipative Grammars: Laclau, Heller, and the People We Are 3. Human Properties; Villey, Macpherson, and Our Right to Be 4. Political Subjects: Lacan and Ordinary Ontologies 5. The Freudian Paradigm of Critical Theory 6. The Two Paths to Modern Democracy 7. From Democracy to Fascism 8. Old and New Fascisms Conclusion: The Politics of Infinite Sets

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Book SynopsisConcentrating on W. H. Auden's work from the late 1930s, when he seeks to understand the poet's responsibility in the face of a triumphant fascism, to the late 1950s, when he discerns an irreconcilable "divorce" between poetry and history in light of industrialized murder, this startling new study reveals the intensity of the poet's struggles with the meanings of history. Through meticulous readings, significant archival findings, and critical reflection, Susannah Young-ah Gottlieb presents a new image and understanding of Auden's achievement and reveals how his version of modernism illuminates urgent contemporary issues and theoretical paradigms: from the meaning of marriage equality to the persistence of fascism; from critical theory to psychoanalysis; from precarity to postcolonial studies. "The muse does not like being forced to choose between Agit-prop and Mallarmé," Auden writes with characteristic lucidity, and this study elucidates the probity, humor, and technical skill with which his responses to historical reality in the mid-twentieth century illuminate our world today. Trade Review"The beauty of Gottlieb's copiously productive engagement with Auden's 'marriage of inconvenience' between the poetic and the historic lies in her refusal to offer us any consolation in the turbulence of meanings or morals. In staying with Auden's anxiety of tone and temper, Gottlieb reveals her own integrity as an impeccable scholarly reader with a fine understanding of the give and take, the ebb and flow, of the performance of poetic justice."—Homi K. Bhabha, Harvard University"Auden and the Muse of History brings new depths to Auden studies, while bringing Auden's work into sharp and revelatory focus. Gottlieb shows how the poems speak forcefully to today's world, while also showing how deeply rooted they were in the world where they were written."—Edward Mendelson, Columbia UniversityTable of ContentsIntroduction: Introduction 1. States of Marriage 2. Poetry, Prose, and a Forgotten Practice 3. "Civilization Must Be Saved" Interlude: Interlude: The Falling Empire 4. Isotopes of Love 5. From Poem to Volume 6. Anthropology, Hell, "Goodbye" Coda: Closing and Opening Thoughts

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Book SynopsisBefore the idea of the Anthropocene, there was the angry planet How might we understand an earthquake as a complaint, or erosion as a form of protest—in short, the Earth as an angry planet? Many novels from the end of the millennium did just that, centering around an Earth that acts, moves, shapes human affairs, and creates dramatic, nonanthropogenic change.In Angry Planet, Anne Stewart uses this literature to develop a theoretical framework for reading with and through planetary motion. Typified by authors like Colson Whitehead, Octavia Butler, and Leslie Marmon Silko, whose work anticipates contemporary critical concepts of entanglement, withdrawal, delinking, and resurgence, angry planet fiction coalesced in the 1990s and delineated the contours of a decolonial ontology. Stewart shows how this fiction brought Black and Indigenous thought into conversation, offering a fresh account of globalization in the 1990s from the perspective of the American Third World, construing it as the era that first made connections among environmental crises and antiracist and decolonial struggles.By synthesizing these major intersections of thought production in the final decades of the twentieth century, Stewart offers a recent history of dissent to the young movements of the twenty-first century. As she reveals, this knowledge is crucial to incipient struggles of our contemporary era, as our political imaginaries grapple with the major challenges of white nationalism and climate change denial.Trade Review "Drawing together timely conversations in new materialism, decolonial theory, and ethnic studies, Angry Planet offers a striking new reading of diverse, defiant novels from the 1990s. In Anne Stewart’s readings of these angry planet fictions, the planet itself rises up alongside antiracist and anticolonial movements against colonial-capitalist terraforming."—Hsuan L. Hsu, author of The Smell of Risk: Environmental Disparities and Olfactory Aesthetics "Brilliantly revealing how planetary rebelliousness surges through the cultural imagination, this study—drawing on Indigenous land-based intelligence and confronting colonialist, capitalist, and racist domination—resounds with the shout of an angry planet to TEAR IT TO THE GROUND! Essential reading for infrastructure studies, ecomaterialism, decolonial environmentalisms, and for anyone called to envision new modes of being human."—Stacy Alaimo, author of Exposed: Environmental Politics and Pleasures in Posthuman Times "Angry Planet offers novel literary pairings and timely critical confrontations for scholars of utopian and decolonial thought, environmentalism and ecocriticism, and American studies. "—Ancillary Review

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Book SynopsisOn Emerging from Hyper-Nation represents Ronald W. Sousa’s attempt to answer the question, “Why do I smile on reading one of Saramago’s ‘historical’ novels?” Why that reaction of emotional release? To answer the “smile question” the book engages in a critical mode that could be described as “discourse analysis.” It combines several critical strains and relies on basic concepts from Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis, Adlerian psychology, and contemporary cognitive psychology for their discourse-analytical value rather than as entrées into psychoanalytical reading per se.The introductory chapter presents some of the concepts that underlie that compound analytical modality and sets out an overview of twentieth-century Portuguese social and economic history. Then, with an eye to answering the “smile question,” the book reads Nobel Laureate José Saramago’s three novels, Baltasar and Blimunda (1982), The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis (1984), and The History of the Siege of Lisbon (1989). Or, better, it seeks to read Sousa’s own reading of the three works, since focus falls on how each novel seeks to construct both its own reading and also Sousa as its reader.The discussion brings to light a number of textual phenomena that bear upon the “smile question.” Among them are that the novels invoke, often subtly, the fascist hermeneutical heritage remaining from before the revolution of 1974 as a constituent part of their communication with the reader; that they summon up historical trauma; that they function as Freudian-style “tendentious jokes”; and that, through these various invocations, they seek to constitute a postrevolutionary Portuguese subject. The reading of Sousa’s reading, then, ends up being a reading of some of the cultural forces at work in postrevolutionary Portugal.

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Book SynopsisTraces literary developments in the German-speaking countries from 1900 to the present. This study of German literature in the past hundred years sets its subject clearly in the artistic and political context of developments in Western Europe during the century. It begins with the turn-of-the-century aestheticism andvisions of decay led by Schnitzler, Hofmannsthal and other Austrian writers, and the quite different explosion of new artistic energy in the Expressionist and Dada movements. These movements are succeeded by the rise of Modernism, culminating in the inter-war years: the poetry of Rilke, Brecht's epic theatre, and novels by Thomas Mann, Kafka, Hesse, Musil, Doblin and Broch; the influence of Nazism on literary production is considered. The study of developments after 1945 reflects the struggle to establish a post-Holocaust literature and to deal with the questions posed by the political division of Germany. Finally, the convergence of East and West German literature after unification is addressed. Ingo R. Stoehr teaches literature at Kilgore College, Texas, and is editor of the bilingual journal of German literature in English translation, Dimension2.Trade ReviewThe author's unique approach offers a refreshing departure from traditional literary histories...There are several benefits to Stoehr's approach, not least of which is the advantage of viewing literary production in the context of discrete decades....That a single author can craft a book of such range and subtlety is truly an admirable task. The book is well written, closely edited, and produced with the quality for which Camden House has become known. * JOURNAL OF ENGLISH AND GERMANIC PHILOLOGY *An outstanding ... work of reference.... Anyone who produces a book as detailed and comprehensive as this has acomplished a superhuman task, covering a wealth of literary movements and an astonishing multitude of aspects, each of which requires considerable expertise.... A useful, stimulating compendium of information on, and evaluations of, the whole of 20th-century German literature. * MODERN LANGUAGE REVIEW *Stoehr has produced an impressive and wide-ranging ... overview of the century and a useful introduction for German undergraduates and beyond. * JOURNAL OF EUROPEAN STUDIES *Table of ContentsThe First Decade of the Twentieth Century: Aestheticism - Impressionism and Symbolism The 1910s: The First Phase of Avant-Garde Literature - Expressionism and Dada The 1920s: High Modernism and the Second Phase of the Avante-Garde - Surrealistic Elements and New Objectivity The Literary Continuum: From Anti-Modern to Modernist Voices The National Socialist Literary Canon: The Uneasy Voice of Reactionary Traditions Modernist Literature: The Many Voices of Defiance 1945-1949: The Immediate Postwar Years - Defining Different Traditions in East and West The 1950s: Modernism or Formalism - Nonconformist Literature in the West vs. Socialist Realism in the East The 1960s: Change in Literary Awareness - Politicization in the West and Emancipation of Subjectivity in the East The 1970s: Increasing Plurality - New Sensitivity in the West and Continuing Emancipation in the East The 1980s: New Confusions - Resurgence of Storytelling and Converging Literatures in East and West The 1990s: A New Order of Things - German Issues and Global Themes in German-Language Literature Works Consulted

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Book SynopsisConversations with W. S. Merwin is the first collection of interviews with former United States Poet Laureate W. S. Merwin (b. 1927). Spanning almost six decades of conversations, the collection touches on such topics as Merwin's early influences (Robert Graves and Ezra Pound), his location within the twin poles of Walt Whitman and Henry David Thoreau, his extraordinary work as a translator, as well as his decades-long interest in environmental conservation. Anticipating the current sustainability movement and the debates surrounding major and minor literatures, Merwin was, and still is, a visionary. At age eighty-eight, he is among the most distinguished poets, translators, and thinkers in the United States. A major link between the period of literary modernism and its contemporary extensions, Merwin has been a force in American letters for many decades, and his translations from the Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, and other languages, have earned him unanimous praise and admiration. Merwin also wrote at the forefront of literature's environmental advocacy and early on articulated concerns about ecology and sustainability. Now, for the first time, Conversations with W. S. Merwin offers insight into the various dimensions of Merwin's thought by treating his interviews as a self-standing category in his oeuvre. More than casual narratives that interpret the occasional poem or relay an occasional experience, they afford literary and cultural historians a view into the larger through-lines of Merwin's thinking.

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Book SynopsisRichly researched and engagingly written, Political Affairs of the Heart traces the emergence of female sentimental travel writing in late eighteenth-century Britain, and posits its centrality to women’s engagement with national and gender politics. This study examines four travel narratives written by women between 1774 and 1795, convincingly arguing that they effectively deploy the discourse of sensibility to engage with debates around Britain’s national identity during the French and American Revolutions. Van Netten Blimke contends that Laurence Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey (1768)—which first introduced sentimental discourse to the travelogue—facilitated women’s gradual inclusion into this previously male-dominated genre, effectively paving the way for women to influence the country’s sociopolitical transformation. These four previously understudied works successfully combine eyewitness authority with the language of sensibility to mount impassioned interventions in their nation’s perception and practice of revolutionary politics, at a time when its national identity was most in flux.Trade Review"Richly researched and elegantly argued, Political Affairs of the Heart recovers the complex contemporary resonances of eighteenth-century sentimental travel writing and demonstrates emphatically how women used the form to make a variety of interventions in political and moral debate."— Carl Thompson, author of The Suffering Traveller and the Romantic Imagination "Van Netten Blimke reveals the many ways in which women travel writers used the language and tropes of sensibility as they explored the lessons of the world-changing events of the French and American Revolutions. Her lively study will be of interest to anyone working in the eighteenth century as it excavates the complex intellectual milieus represented in these widely underrated books."— Katherine Turner, editor of A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy "In Van Netten Blimke’s impressively researched study, four writers from across the political spectrum use sentimental travel to intervene in debates about colonialism, war, and national or imperial identity, significantly advancing our understanding of women writers’ strategies for navigating gender constraints in a literary genre that women had just recently entered." — Elizabeth Bohls, coeditor of Travel Writing 1700-1830: An AnthologyTable of ContentsIntroduction: Critical Contexts: Eighteenth-Century Women’s Travel Writing Part One: Mobile Feelings: Mapping the Sentimental Traveler 1 “Altogether of a Different Cast”: The Development of the Sentimental Traveler Part Two: Divided Sympathies: Female Sentimental Travel Writers and the American Revolution 2 “I Am Sure You Will Share My Feelings”: Janet Schaw’s Journal of a Lady of Quality, Imperial Desire, and the American Revolution 3 The Ties That Bind: Sentimentalizing Colonialism in A Journey to the Highlands of Scotland Part Three: Sensibility in Distress: Female Sentimental Travel Writers and the French Revolution 4 Revitalizing Sensibility: Mary Morgan’s Defense of Emotional Engagement in A Tour to Milford Haven 5 “A Renovation of Existence”: Helen Maria Williams’s A Tour in Switzerland and the Renewal of Political Vision Epilogue: “An Affair of the Heart” Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisTwo of Henry Newbolt’s poems, ‘Vitaï Lampada’ and ‘Drake’s Drum’, became staples of poetry anthologies and were able to be recited by every school-boy. His poetry was also deeply significant in constructing ideas around late Victorian/Edwardian imperial manliness. A consequence of this was that Newbolt became in his own time one of the best known and most popular of writers. However, in the years since his death, his work has fallen into comparative critical neglect and he has been seen as a mouthpiece for the worst aspects of his age. The aim therefore of this new edition is to place the poet’s literary work in a broader context that has hitherto not been addressed as well as offering a fresh appraisal of a significant literary figure. Aside from careful consideration of the poetry, of equal interest is Newbolt’s active public life. He contributed widely to government committees and debates on education, as well as working for the propaganda bureau in the First World War and advising on the Irish question. The links between his poetry - which spanned over three decades - and the socio-economic changes under way in the British Isles at the time are a primary theme of John Howlett’s substantial Introduction to the work. Exploring this wider historical context means that this book is an essential research tool for the field of Victorian and Edwardian poetry but also cultural studies.

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Book SynopsisAlthoughThe History of the Holy Grail opens the Vulgate Cycle, it was added after the events described in Lancelot and The Quest of the Holy Grail were already an established part of the Arthurian story. It is, in Hollywood terms, a `prequel', and relates the story of the Grail from its first appearance at the Crucifixion up to the point where it is placed by Alain, the Fisher King, in the castle of Corbenic, whose inhabitants then await the arrival of the chosen Grail knight. Many points in the narrative are designed to foreshadow or to explain the later adventures connected with the Grail, but it also draws on the stories in the apocryphal gospels and other legends of the crucifixion such as the story of Veronica, as well as unrelated material such as the story of Hippocrates. But it also provides many details about the Grail itself which are not found anywhere else. It is less chivalric in tone from the subsequent books of the Vulgate Cycle, and relatively few copies of the original survive. For a full description of the Vulgate Cycle see the blurb for the complete set.

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Book SynopsisNew edition with facing-page translation of a highly significant and influential Old English text. The Old English Martyrology is one of the longest and most important prose texts written in Anglo-Saxon England; it also represents one of the most impressive examples of encyclopaedic writing from the European Middle Ages.Probably intended as a reference work, it was used and transmitted for over 200 years, providing its readers with information on native and foreign saints, time measurement, the seasons of the year, biblical events, and cosmology. Its lively and engaging vignettes illustrate the importance of miracle stories for the early medieval cult of saints. This new edition presents a revised text, with a facing-page, newly-prepared English translation; they are accompanied by a commentary based on a fresh comparison with some 250 Latin and Old English texts, the first published glossary for this text, and extensive bibliographical information and indices. Dr Christine Raueris a Senior Lecturer in the School of English and the Institute of Mediaeval Studies at the University of St Andrews, Scotland.Trade ReviewWinner of the International Society of Anglo-Saxonists 2015 Publication Prizes: Best Edition * . *Rauer's edition of OEM does what an edition should: combine a clean, reliable text with a clear, literal translation and ancillary materials that review scholarship, deepen understanding, point out problems, and facilitate future work. . . . It is learned, useful, and stimulating, the product of much expert work, and for most purposes should now be the edition of choice. * STUDIES IN MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE TEACHING *This is an important and diligently executed book; and it is arranged to facilitate reference-whatever one is looking for is easy to find. It is a work of reference for martyrology in the first place, and it will be found useful for many other related subjects. * NOTES & QUERIES *Rauer's edition...is an important and welcome contribution, sure to stimulate new research. * MEDIUM AEVUM *Any scholar interested in the Martyrology will need, at least, to refer to this edition. * TOEBI NEWSLETTER *A valuable contribution that will appeal to a range of readers....This will certainly be the standard text to turn to...for at least the next generation of research.... The commentary is excellent. * JOURNAL OF RELIGIOUS HISTORY *Everyone from the most seasoned expert to the total neophyte will be able to benefit from the volume, which should immediately become both an indispensable research tool for the specialist and a stimulating way to introduce undergraduates (and even some members of the general reading public) to a broad range of medieval ideas about saints and sanctity. * THE MEDIEVAL REVIEW *Table of ContentsIntroduction Sigla Text and Translation Commentary Appendices

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Book SynopsisEvidence of Things Not Seen: Fantastical Blackness in Genre Fictions is an interdisciplinary study of blackness in genre literature of the Americas. The “fantastical” in fantastical blackness is conceived by an unrestrained imagination because it lives, despite every attempt at annihilation. This blackness amazes because it refuses the limits of anti-blackness. As put to work in this project, fantastical blackness is an ethical praxis that centers black self-knowledge as a point of departure rather than as a reaction to threatening or diminishing dominant narratives. Mystery, romance, fantasy, mixed-genre, and science fictions’ unrestrained imaginings profoundly communicate this quality of blackness, specifically here through the work of Barbara Neely, Colson Whitehead, Nalo Hopkinson, and Colin Channer. When black writers center this expressive quality, they make fantastical blackness available to a broad audience that then uses its imaginable vocabularies to reshape extra-literary realities. Ultimately, popular genres’ imaginable possibilities offer strategies through which the made up can be made real. Trade Review"Evidence of Things Not Seen is a thoughtful and welcome examination of contemporary Black fantastic literature that expands our understanding of the liberatory ways that Black authors creatively imagine and write against the ongoing perniciousness of global anti-blackness."— Michelle D. Commander, author of Afro-Atlantic Flight: Speculative Returns and the Black Fantastic "With the brilliance of James Baldwin's cultural criticism as a conceptual frame, Frederick's 'fantastical blackness' defies the limitations offered by colonial attempts at diminishing African subjectivities. Instead, Frederick shows us how Black writers of fantastical blackness explore the contours of African identities made possible without the dehumanization of the colonial project. This contribution to scholarship on Black speculative fiction is a tour de force, for sure."— Meredith Gadsby, author of Sucking Salt: Caribbean Women Writers, Migration, and SurvivalTable of ContentsPrologue Introduction 1 First—Mystery: Fantastically Black Blanche White: BarbaraNeely’s Blanche on the Lam 2 Second—Urban Romantica: Making Black and Jamaican Love: Colin Channer’s Waiting in Vain and Romance-ified Diaspora Identities 3 Third—Fantasy: Fantastic Possibilities: Theorizing National Belonging through Nalo Hopkinson’s Brown Girl in the Ring 4 Fourth—Multigenre: Seeing White: Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad 5 Fifth—Fantasy, Short Story: Fantastically Black Woman: Nalo Hopkinson’s “A Habit of Waste” Epilogue Acknowledgments Notes Index

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Book SynopsisA reading of the oeuvre of Toni Morrison—fiction, non-fiction, and other—drawing extensively from her many interviews as well as her primary texts, Toni Morrison: A Literary Life, second edition provides an overview of Morrison’s intellectual growth as an artist. Linda Wagner-Martin aligns Morrison's novels with the works of Virginia Woolf and William Faulkner, assessing her works as among the most innovative, and most significant, worldwide, of the past fifty plus years. The revised edition includes new discussion of God Help the Child, The Origin of Others, and The Source of Self-Regard. These additions present and intensify scholarship on Morrison’s major literary contributions, but also trace her significant role as a public intellectual, bringing to light the consistency of Morrison’s aesthetic and political visions. Table of ContentsIntroduction: Morrison’s Early YearsSong of Solomon: One Beginning of Morrison’s CareerTar Baby and Other Folktales.- Beloved, Beloved, BelovedJazz and Morrison’s Trilogy: New York in the 1920sMorrison as Public IntellectualThe Nobel Prize in Literature and Morrison’s TrilogyMorrison and the Twenty-first Century: Love.- Morrison and Various MerciesMorrison and the Definitions of HomeGod Help the Child.- The Origin of Others and The Source of Self-RegardCoda

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Book SynopsisRichmal Crompton, Author of Just William: A Literary Life celebrates the first two William books, Just William (1922) and More William (1922). As well as a study of her famous character William Brown, this book is an introduction to Richmal Crompton’s less well-known fiction and a story about her writing life. Her multifaceted identity—her deep knowledge of Classical Greek and Latin literature and languages, her life as a disabled writer, and her writing about domestic violence and disability—played a role in her literary persona. Jane McVeigh moves beyond Richmal Crompton’s impact on children’s literature and offers an appraisal of all her writing including her novels and short fiction, her media profile on radio and TV, her impact on her readers—both adults and children—and her international success. Particularly, McVeigh considers Crompton in the context of twentieth century woman writers and the development of crossover fiction for dual audiences. The book argues that as a woman writer pigeon-holed as a writer for children, Crompton’s other novels and short stories have been side-lined and overlooked. More than a century after the first book collection of Crompton’s William stories was published, this biography places Richmal Crompton among other twentieth century women writers.Trade Review“Jane McVeigh has written an informative and comprehensive biography to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the publication of the first two William novels, Just William and More William in 1922, now collector's items worth thousands of dollars. … McVeigh effectively documents the life of one of the best-selling female authors of the 20th century, who, in William Brown, created one of the immortals of children's literature.” (Colin Steele, The Canberra Times, canberratimes.com.au, December 23, 2022)“The books alone were enormously popular, the adaptation of just William for radio, television and film have helped ensure this naughty schoolboy will forever be remembered in post-war British culture. By 1946 the BBC radio plays – many of them written by Crompton herself – were enjoying an audience of nine million.” (Dominic Bliss, Daily Express, express.co.uk, December 16, 2022)“Jane McVeigh’s book celebrates the centenary of the first two William books – Just William and More William, both published in 1922. … The work is attractively produced with many illustrations, and its twenty chapters are extremely well researched with substantial notes and references. What it does, first of all, is to emphasise Richmal’s very rich and full life.” (Dennis Butts, Children’s Books History Society, Newsletter, Issue 133, August, 2022)“This is a model biography for the way it delivers the facts about the life of its subject and analyses the attraction or magic of the stories for subsequent writers, as well as readers across generations. The best praise of this biography is that it will send many readers back to encounter the thrills of reading once more of William’s misadventures.” (Sarah Curtis, TLS The Times Literary Supplement, July 22, 2022)Table of Contents1. Introduction PART I (1890-191122. Edward Lamburn and a Classical Education3. William and Mr Brown 4. Clara Crompton and her Family in Bury5. William, Mrs Brown and Mothers in Crompton’s Fiction PART II (1911-1923)6. Royal Holloway College, the First World War and Women’s Suffrage7. Birth of Auntie and the Story of a Marriage8. Birth of Richmal Crompton and William Brown 9. More than Auntie Richmal, the Spinster10. Polio in Summer 1923 PART III (1924-1938)11. Birth of Violet Elizabeth and Introducing William-Lite Characters 12. Growing Up13. On Stage and in Literary London14. Richmal Crompton, the Wanderer PART IV (1939-1945)15. On the Home Front with William and Richmal16. William, Flawed Hero PART V (1946-1969)17. William Becomes a Postwar Hero on TV and Radio18. Richmal Crompton in Her Own Words PART VI (Fans at Home and Abroad)19. William, At Home and Abroad20. Writers’ Homage to Crompton and William

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Book Synopsis“Karr is a national treasure—that rare genius who’s also a brilliant teacher. This joyful celebration of memoir packs transcendent insights with trademark hilarity. Anyone yearning to write will be inspired, and anyone passionate to live an examined life will fall in love with language and literature all over again. ” — George SaundersCredited with sparking the current memoir explosion, Mary Karr’s The Liars’ Club spent more than a year at the top of the New York Times list. She followed with two other smash bestsellers: Cherry and Lit, which were critical hits as well.For thirty years Karr has also taught the form, winning teaching prizes at Syracuse. (The writing program there produced such acclaimed authors as Cheryl Strayed, Keith Gessen, and Koren Zailckas.) In The Art of Memoir, she synthesizes her expertise as professor and therapy patieTrade Review"Karr is a national treasure-that rare genius who's also a brilliant teacher. This joyful celebration of memoir packs transcendent insights with trademark hilarity. Anyone yearning to write will be inspired, and anyone passionate to live an examined life will fall in love with language and literature all over again. " -- George Saunders "Could have been called 'The Art of Living.'" -- San Francisco Chronicle "Mary Karr has written another astonishingly perceptive, wildly entertaining, and profoundly honest book-funny, fascinating, necessary. The Art of Memoir will be the definitive book on reading and writing memoir for years to come." -- Cheryl Strayed "Should be required reading for anyone attempting to write a memoir, but anyone who loves literature will enjoy it too." -- Wall Street Journal "Terrific and deliciously readable guide." -- Entertainment Weekly, "Must List" "Full of Karr's usual wit, compassion and, perhaps most reassuringly, self-doubt. Her fans should be delighted-and they can't go wrong reading the books she discusses, including her own." -- Washington Post "From a contemporary luminary of the form, Mary Karr's The Art of Memoir examines our enduring drive to make memory speak and to 'wring some truth from this godawful mess of a single life.'" -- Vogue "The Art of Memoir is passionate and irreverent-and reminds us why we love a good memoir." -- Elle "Mary Karr strikes a vein in The Art of Memoir." -- Vanity Fair "Karr is such fun to read-who else would combine the name Nabokov and the phrase "out the wazoo" on her very first page?" -- New Yorker "Engaging." -- Chicago Tribune "A veritable blueprint for the genre... Lovers of the form and aspiring scribblers alike will relish this comprehensive appreciation of and guide to 'writing the real self.'" -- O: The Oprah Magazine "With a trio of notable memoirs ("The Liars' Club," "Cherry," and "Lit"), Mary Karr is exquisitely qualified to write this book, a kind of compendium of advice, warning, and deep insight into what makes a personal history stick in a reader's mind." -- Boston Globe "Karr really is an artist. The Art of Memoir attests to how hard she works at getting her words just right and how deeply she understands the way great writing works." -- Slate "Whip-smart." -- Philadelphia Inquirer "As useful for those of us who want to be better friends and lovers as it is for those of us who want to pen our life story." -- More "A master class on memoir, from a memoirist who pulls no punches." -- Minneapolis Star Tribune "Lots of practical advice, a great reading list, examples you can bite into." -- Houston Chronicle "Karr's own voice is consistent and authentic, as vivid, down-home, smart, profane and self-deprecating as it is in her own memoirs." -- St. Louis Post-Dispatch "A celebration of the creative life." -- Austin American-Statesman "Enlightening...Fresh and heartfelt...Instructs and inspires through example and a love for the art of memoir." -- Library Journal, starred review "Karr write[s] exquisitely...and without pretense, often with raw authenticity...a must-read." -- Publishers Weekly, starred review "Snappy and witty, humorous just when it needs to be, yet plainspoken in the best way." -- Shelf Awareness "Karr's sassy Texas wit and her down-to-earth observations about both the memoir form and how to approach it combine to make for lively and inspiring reading. A generous and singularly insightful examination of memoir." -- Kirkus

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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 SynopsisTrade Review"An authoritative take on the history of the vampire."—New York Times Book Review"Nick Groom concludes this invigorating study of vampires by suggesting that we should try to be a bit more like them. Thankfully this doesn’t entail hanging shiftily around blood donor banks . . . Rather, Groom wants us to think about vampires as a way of re-enchanting the contemporary human condition."—Kathryn Hughes, Guardian (Book of the Day)‘Colossally smart. . . Groom is interested in undead Byron, but he is more interested in the aspects of vampirology that pop culture tends to neglect. . . It is a great relief to meet Groom’s vampire, still icy from the void and unburdened by the aesthetic of Gothic nightingale-lite. When it materializes, on the threshold of a worrisome dream, it looks nothing like what one expected. . ."—Katy Waldman, New Yorker"Groom impressively manages to analyze vampires’ influence on almost every facet of private and public life—social, theological political, medical, cultural, sexual, literary—over the span of four centuries."—Regina Munch, Commonweal“Formidably well-researched study” — Kevin Jackson, Literary Review“With the unflappable pace of a phantom coachman, Groom takes us to year zero - an outbreak of vampire panics stemming from the Serbian communities of the Austrian Empire's newly acquired Balkan marches.” —All About History“Printed with a number of vibrant and shocking illustrations and plates, this is a fascinating work of both cultural history and literary criticism.” —Seán Hewitt, Irish Times“The historical sections of this study are wonderfully nuanced, carefully argued takes on the vampire as a specific monstrous manifestation…Groom’s contention that the vampire cannot and should not be conflated with other monsters and his evidence against an inaccurate history of it as an ancient folkloric superstition are groundbreaking and refreshing.”—Elizabeth Bridgham, Wilkie Collins Journal “In this erudite and engaging history of the vampire Nick Groom explores the blood sucker’s journey through the European Enlightenment and beyond, illuminating broader aspects of religion, medicine and culture on the way. In doing so, Groom provides us with a valuable prehistory of the literary Dracula.”—Owen Davies, author of Grimoires“Groom succeeds in contextualising the vampire thoroughly, for the first time, in the changing cultures of two hundred years of European history: a remarkable achievement.”—Ronald Hutton, author of The Witch“Likely to be the definitive history of the vampire for years to come. In an accessible yet deeply scholarly dive into the archives of medicine, folk-lore, travel writing, theology, politics and literature, Groom produces a compelling account of the vampire as the product of the Enlightenment’s clash with its superstitious Eastern other from the seventeenth century onwards. A blood feast that will sustain every kind of vampirologist, from teen Goth up to Professor Van Helsing.”—Roger Luckhurst, author of Zombies"Our centuries-long fascination with the living dead is given a fresh and welcome consideration by Nick Groom, who mines historical reality—and unreality—with a keen appreciation of cultural meaning and metaphor."—David J. Skal, author of Something in the Blood

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Book SynopsisAntigone, the insurgent from Sophocles's Oedipus, has long been a feminist icon of defiance. This book redefines Antigone's legacy, recovering her significance and liberating it for a progressive feminism and sexual politics. It reconceptualizes the incest taboo in relation to kinship - and open up the concept of kinship to cultural change.Trade ReviewButler is interested in Antigone as a liminal figure between the family and the state, between life and death... but also as a figure, like all her kin, who represents the non-normative family, a set of kinship relations that seems to defy the standard model... one senses in Butler's interest... homage to those who have lived, or have tried to live, and to those who have died 'on the sexual margins.' -- Georgette Fleischer The Nation Antigone's Claim is a work of intricate and detailed analysis of enormously difficult material. Butler masterfully leads us to... a newfound theoretical activism within the political domain. -- Maria Cimitile Hypatia Brief but powerful and provocative nook. -- Shireen R. K. Patell, New York University Signs Thought-provoking and politically provocative... Bulter joins the great philosophical tradition which grapples with the ancient tragedy of Sophocles. -- Ido Geiger Hagar: Studies in Culture Polity IdentitiesTable of ContentsAntigone's Claim Unwritten Laws, Aberrant Transmissions Promiscuous Obedience

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Book Synopsis

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Book Synopsis

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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 Synopsis

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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 SynopsisA revised and expanded edition of the classic introduction to the myths and legends associated with the stars and constellations.Trade Review'In this highly readable Star Tales ... Mr Ridpath has splendidly combined astronomy with the lore of classical mythology. ' Adrian Berry, Daily Telegraph 'There is another way to look at [stars and galaxies] - as the creation of human imagination. ... To help steer us round these wonders, Ridpath has produced Star Tales. ... a pleasant amalgam of sheer fancy and historical and scientific fact. The book will help us appreciate how we reached out present awareness.' Robin McKie, Observer Sunday 'Many readers will welcome this book of tales of the constellations . ... [Ian Ridpath's] list of sources is quite impressive, but the greatest value of the book must lie in the illustrations . ... This is a book to enjoy. It is easily read and does successfully what it sets out to. Ridpath has already earned a reputation as a presenter of the celestial constellations and the real curiosities they contain. ... Now we must see him as an authority on their entertainment value too.' Rosemary Naylor, Federation of Astronomical Societies 'I thoroughly enjoyed reading this beautifully-illustrated book, and it will be a lovely reference book as well. It is meticulously researched and very well written, and I can recommend it to anyone interested in the constellations from a historical or mythological perspective' Robert Connon Smith, The Observatory, vol. 139, no.1269, pp.74-5Table of ContentsPreface Chapter One: Stars and storytellers Chapter Two: Star maps Chapter Three: The celestial eighty-eight Chapter Four: Obsolete constellations Sources and acknowledgements References Glossary of mythological characters Index

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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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