Literature: history and criticism Books

Book SynopsisMy Brilliant Friends is an innovative group biography of three friendships forged in second-wave feminism. Poignant and politically charged, the book is a captivating personal account of the complexities of women’s bonds.Trade ReviewIn this astute, passionate, rigorously honest book about her friendships with three extraordinary women, Miller delineates the mysterious geography of those attachments we are not born into, but choose freely. The longing, pain, confusion, envy, and joy that inhabit the often unarticulated distance between "me” and “you” are so alive on these pages, they are still resonating inside me. I loved reading this book. -- Siri Hustvedt, author of A Woman Looking at Men Looking at WomenIn My Brilliant Friends, Nancy K. Miller depicts the life-altering importance of deep and nourishing friendships between and among women. Through vivid details and Miller’s singular point of view, we witness her transformative relationships with Carolyn Heilbrun, Naomi Schor, and Diane Middlebrook and their enduring love, growth, and collective power. -- Min Jin Lee, author of Free Food for Millionaires and Pachinko, a finalist for the National Book AwardOf Nancy K. Miller's many illuminating books, My Brilliant Friends may be my favorite—for its sculpted lucidity, its lancing details, its interlocking plots, and its virtuoso attention to emotional ambivalence. Like Hilton Als's The Women, Miller's book is a classic triple-decker account of entanglement and rupture. She reminds us, with a witty yet mournful gracefulness, that every friendship is a complex work of art, demanding fastidious analysis and enraptured recounting. -- Wayne Koestenbaum, author of My 1980s & Other EssaysA new book by Nancy K. Miller is always a treat. This compulsively readable triptych of her friendships with Carolyn Heilbrun, Naomi Schor, and Diane Middlebrook will touch, delight, and enlighten anyone who has grown up under the influence of feminism. -- Susan Gubar, author of The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary ImaginationNancy K. Miller writes with shimmering intelligence, grace, courage, and hard-won candor about her friendships with three other significant writers, all feminists, now all dead: Carolyn Heilbrun, Naomi Schor, and Diane Middlebrook. Miller herself is surviving cancer. Both heartbreaking and life-sustaining, My Brilliant Friends proves that death can be the mother of beauty. -- Catharine R. Stimpson, University Professor and Dean Emerita, Graduate School of Arts and Science, New York UniversityNancy K. Miller has a gift for friendship and a mind for memoir. Reflecting on feminism, ambition, competition, and loss in these candid, tender stories of three passionate women intellectuals who died too soon, she has given a gift to readers who know the importance and complexity of female friendship. -- Elaine Showalter, professor emerita of English, Princeton UniversityI loved reading My Brilliant Friends. It’s a fascinating and revealing look at the texture—good and bad—of feminist friendships, and, crucially, academic life for women. It is also an inspiring testament to three remarkable feminists, each operating in her own style. An important book for generations of feminists—those established, and those to come. -- Hillary Chute, author of Graphic Women: Life Narrative and Contemporary ComicsA stunning elegy to the intimacy of friendships among women, and a book in which closeness is felt through the act of thinking. -- Maggie Taft * Booklist (starred review) *The result is a compassionate homage to the book’s three extraordinary subjects. My Brilliant Friends is not memoir as therapy, but memoir as monument....Unlike so many confessional documents, My Brilliant Friends is written in a genuinely exceptional circumstance by a genuinely exceptional person. * Times Literary Supplement *A pellucid and absorbing study on the ambivalent and less frequently explored facets of friendship – the painful coexistence, for instance, of envy, competitiveness, and resentment, on the one hand, and love and admiration, on the other. * Contemporary Women's Writing *Miller is a nimble writer, more than capable of exploring a larger world. And the world of women's friendships contain multitudes. * Women's Review of Books *It really doesn't get much better than this for me. -- Nina Collins * What Would Virginia Woolf Do? *Miller’s book, a brave and beautiful act of storytelling, is itself a gift — to her brilliant friends, to feminism, to friendship, to the literary endeavor, and to all of her readers. -- Jenny McPhee * Los Angeles Review of Books *The book offers contemporary feminist literary scholars an evocative, resonant chance to consider the nature of scholarly friendship, as well as how much has (and has not) changed for women in academe. * Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature *It is a conversation, not only with lost friends, but with the reader. . . Recommended. * Choice *The retrospective look at the fabric of her life as interwoven with the lives of other women is as much an homage to her friends as it is an elegy to friendship itself. * Literature Salon *Valuable to students of literary criticism and feminism as well as history and even psychology. It is such a specific evocation of a particular time and place, and it simultaneously engages the emotions in its reflection on love and loss. * RGWS *Miller recognizes the transformative power and centrality of the nitty-gritty in women’s outer and inner lives, and the vital, enduring friendships they form. * a/b: Auto/Biography Studies *Miller characterizes these friendships as collaborative, competitive, nurturing, and occasionally confounding. * Public Books *Table of ContentsPrelude: The Art of Losing1. Carolyn Heilbrun2. Naomi Schor3. Diane MiddlebrookEndpiecesElegy : Ann Patchett and Lucy GrealyDialogue in a Garden: Patricia YaegerNotes on LossNotesAcknowledgments

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Book SynopsisThe rise of celebrity stage actresses in the long eighteenth century created a class of women who worked in the public sphere while facing considerable scrutiny about their offstage lives. Such powerful celebrity women used the cultural and affective significance of their reproductive bodies to leverage audience support and interest to advance their careers, and eighteenth-century London patent theatres even capitalized on their pregnancies. Carrying All Before Her uses the reproductive histories of six celebrity women (Susanna Mountfort Verbruggen, Anne Oldfield, Susannah Cibber, George Anne Bellamy, Sarah Siddons, and Dorothy Jordan) to demonstrate that pregnancy affected celebrity identity, impacted audience reception and interpretation of performance, changed company repertory and altered company hierarchy, influenced the development and performance of new plays, and had substantial economic consequences for both women and the companies for which they worked. Deepening the fields of celebrity, theatre, and women's studies, as well as social and medical histories, Phillips reveals an untapped history whose relevance and impact persists today.Trade Review"Phillips's most significant contribution is her move to focus on the gravid body and its realities as well as significance(s), something both earlier histories of actresses and cultural histories of maternity have shied away from. The book's dialogues and echoes across and between different case studies – and with our own time – are significant for eighteenth-century, celebrity, and theatre studies."— Elaine McGirr, editor of Stage Mothers: Women, Work, and the Theater, 1660-1830Table of ContentsFigures Acknowledgments Introduction 1 Inheriting Greatness: Susanna Mountfort Verbruggen and Anne Oldfield 2 Pregnant Sensibility: Susannah Cibber and George Anne Bellamy 3 Conceiving Genius: Sarah Siddons 4 Prolific Muse: Dorothy Jordan Conclusion: Celebrity Pregnancy, Then and Now Appendix: Birth and Christening Dates Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisGergana Ivanova explores how The Pillow Book and its author have been read from the seventeenth century to the present. She shows how various ideologies have influenced the text and shaped interactions among its different versions, in the first book-length study in English of the reception history of Sei Shōnagon.Trade Review[A] significant work. . . The only full account in English of The Pillow Book’s changing reception. . . . Ivanova’s Unbinding “The Pillow Book” is more a corrective to the misinformation widespread in the West. -- Claire Kohda Hazelton * Times Literary Supplement *Unbinding The Pillow Book is undoubtedly fascinating and well-constructed. -- Tony Malone * Tony's Reading List *An intelligent and informative study. -- Rivka Galchen * London Review of Books *This is a learned, provocative, and rewarding book. -- Peter Kornicki, Robinson College, Cambridge * Journal of Japanese Studies *The scope of the research underpinning this work is breathtaking, but even more impressive is the lucidity, concision, and accessibility of Ivanova's writing style. The story she tells is fascinating. * Choice *The fresh perspectives brought by Unbinding “The Pillow Book” will certainly keep Sei’s narrative alive by leaving an invigorating mark on future scholarship on The Pillow Book. -- Joannah Peterson, University of Kentucky * Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature *Gergana Ivanova’s Unbinding The Pillow Book: The Many Lives of a Japanese Classic is a welcome addition to a small but growing body of scholarship focusing on the Benjaminian “afterlives” of Japanese literary classics . . . The book, which is extensively noted and comprises a comprehensive bibliography—constituting a quarter of the book—will surely be of immense help to both graduate students and scholars interested in literary reception across disciplines. -- Gouranga Charan PRADHAN * Japan Review: Journal of the International Research Center for Japanese Studies *Meticulously researched and persuasively argued, Unbinding The Pillow Book offers a dynamic portrait of one of the most important works of world literature and of the woman who wrote it more than a millennium ago. The Pillow Book has long been one of my favorite books; now, having read this engaging, wide-ranging exploration of the different meanings it has come to embody in everything from seventeenth-century commentaries to twenty-first-century popular culture, I see it as I have never seen it before. -- Michael Emmerich, University of California, Los AngelesIvanova’s work is a fascinating exploration of the reception, reproduction, and reimagination of Sei Shōnagon’s The Pillow Book over time, focusing in particular on book history and publishing cultures of the seventeenth through early twentieth centuries. -- Keller Kimbrough, University of Colorado, BoulderIn this exceptionally clear and clear-headed work, Ivanova tells us exactly how and why we are able to read The Pillow Book today. Tracing the ways in which the ‘three commentaries’ of the Edo period elevate the work to a genre (while also relegating that genre to the sidelines), she makes a firm case for a much overdue new reading. -- Linda H. Chance, University of PennsylvaniaUnbinding The Pillow Book is an erudite and often entertaining guide to the persona of Sei Shōnagon and her peripatetic text, The Pillow Book. Ivanova elucidates the complex reception of the text as an ongoing dialogue between the irretrievable past and the dynamic present. I cannot think of a better match between a scholar and her subject. It is a dazzling accomplishment. -- Paul Schalow, Rutgers UniversityThanks to [Ivanova], we now understand how we got the text and author that have seduced so many of us. * East Asian Publishing and Society *Ivanova takes us on a fascinating journey through the various incarnations of Sei Shonagon and her book; as she does a reader comes to see the book in so many different ways. * Asian Review of Books *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments1. What Is The Pillow Book?2. (Re)constructing the Text and Early Modern Scholarship3. From a Guide to Court Life to a Guide to the Pleasure Quarters4. The Pillow Book for Early Modern Female Readers5. Shaping the Woman Writer6. New Markets for Japanese ClassicsNotesBibliographyIndex

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Book Synopsis2022 Eisner Award Winner for Best Academic/Scholarly Work Japanese comics, commonly known as manga, are a global sensation. Critics, scholars, and everyday readers have often viewed this artform through an Orientalist framework, treating manga as the exotic antithesis to American and European comics. In reality, the history of manga is deeply intertwined with Japan’s avid importation of Western technology and popular culture in the early twentieth century. Comics and the Origins of Manga reveals how popular U.S. comics characters like Jiggs and Maggie, the Katzenjammer Kids, Felix the Cat, and Popeye achieved immense fame in Japan during the 1920s and 1930s. Modern comics had earlier developed in the United States in response to new technologies like motion pictures and sound recording, which revolutionized visual storytelling by prompting the invention of devices like speed lines and speech balloons. As audiovisual entertainment like movies and record players spread through Japan, comics followed suit. Their immediate popularity quickly encouraged Japanese editors and cartoonists to enthusiastically embrace the foreign medium and make it their own, paving the way for manga as we know it today. By challenging the conventional wisdom that manga evolved from centuries of prior Japanese art and explaining why manga and other comics around the world share the same origin story, Comics and the Origins of Manga offers a new understanding of this increasingly influential artform.Trade ReviewNew Books Network: New Books in Japanese Studies interview with Eike Exner— New Books Network: New Books in Japanese Studies "Its innovative perspective lies above all in the precision of the documentation and the scrupulous study of the phenomena of translation and borrowing as well as in the history of the narrative and auditory device of the comic strip. For all these reasons, it is a book that stands out for its effects of transmission of both knowledge and sound effects!"— Neuvieme Art “I have been waiting many years to see something like Eike Exner’s Comics and the Origins of Manga. Modern Japanese comics, or 'manga,' have enjoyed huge success around the world in the last three decades. So much so that today some fans occasionally seem to think manga—perhaps even all comics—are really a purely Japanese invention. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. In his book, using primary sources from inside and outside Japan, Eike Exner does a wonderful job of cutting through both mist and myths and showing us another reality."— Frederik L. Schodt, author of Dreamland Japan: Writings on Modern Manga "Exner’s work is stunningly rigorous and detailed, surfacing a wealth of examples and specific moments of exchange."— Shawn Gilmore, Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics “...a compelling investigation of an historical 'audio-visual' dialogue between the 'sound images' of comics and manga...this text becomes a meaningful revelation of the unique and multifarious histories of world print and comic cultures.”— Frenchy Lunning, editor of Mechademia "'Comics and The Origins of Manga charts the vital influence of US comic strips in Japan (as early as 1908) and to manga creators' incorporating balloons, sound effects and other audiovisual elements inside their panels."— Derf Backderf, author of Kent State "This is an excellent book that I enjoyed reading immensely. The topic is timely and important and the scholarship is meticulous and comprehensive."— Gennifer Weisenfeld, author of Imaging Disaster: Tokyo and the Visual Culture of Japan’s Great Earthquake of 1923 “Eike Exner has meticulously researched voluminous archival materials transnationally, analyzed them critically and carefully, and, in the process, challenged, contradicted, and corrected the history of manga’s origins. Without any reservation, a history-altering masterpiece!”— John A. Lent, founder/publisher/editor-in-chief, International Journal of Comic Art "Comics and the Origins of Manga is a fascinating, materialist account of the history shared between the Japanese and Euro-American comics traditions. With the rise of manga as a globally dominant idiom, the prewar development of the form has been of increasing interest to artists and researchers alike. Eike Exner’s thorough, elucidating scholarship tracks this history in an engaging manner in what will undoubtedly be an important English-language reference work on the subject for years to come. Highly recommended."— Adam Buttrick, cartoonist "Terrific book by Eike Exner - Comics and the Origins of Manga. A brisk-reading but deeply-researched study of the impact American comic strips had on the development of manga in the early decades of the 20th century. New from Rutgers University Press. 'I recommend it.' -me"— Joe McCulloch, The Comics Journal editor "Through subtle formal analysis and groundbreaking archival research, Comics and the Origins of Manga makes a compelling argument for the strong influence of translated American comics on the development of modern Japanese manga.”— Henry Jenkins, author of Comics and Stuff "Really enjoyed this book. Fascinating examination of how early American comic strips influenced the develop of manga than is generally acknowledged. Highly recommended."— Chris Mautner, The Comics Journal writerTable of ContentsAcknowledgments A Note on Images Foreword Introduction Prologue: The Historical Origins and Changing Meaning of “Manga” up to 1923 Chapter One: “Popular in Society at Large:” the First Talking Manga Chapter Two: “Listen Vunce!” The Audiovisual Revolution in Graphic Narrative Chapter Three: When Krazy Kat Spoke Japanese: Japan’s Massive Importation of Foreign Audiovisual Comics Chapter Four: From Asō Yutaka to Tezuka Osamu: How Manga Made in Japan Adopted the Form of Audiovisual Comics Epilogue: The Myth of Manga as a “Traditional Mode of Expression” Brief Chronology List of Foreign Comics in Japan 1908-1945 List of Illustrations Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisMarjorie Perloff identifies and explores the aesthetic world that emerged from the rubble of Vienna and other former Habsburg territories--an "Austro-Modernism" that produced a major body of drama, fiction, poetry, and autobiography.Trade Review"Always on the cutting edge of whatever she investigates, Perloff throws light on the subtleties and contradictions--inner and outer--of the literary universe of Celan and Canetti, Kraus and Freud, Musil and Roth. She interweaves, as no one else could, the examination of Celan's poetry with his personal life. The majestic coda to her study, dealing with Wittgenstein's fascination with the Christian Gospels and his complicated involvement with his own traces of anti-Semitism, forms a particularly convincing refusal of closure, the enemy of the historical modernism she so brilliantly studies and espouses."--Mary Ann Caws, author of Surprised in Translation "This book takes us into the undiscovered country of Austro-Modernism in all of its historical complexity, and in the process requires us to address in new ways the questions of literary innovation, the sources of authorial identity, and how to read texts whose distinctive language and formal ingenuity confront us with the inadequacies of our received critical concepts and practices. Edge of Irony is without doubt the most impressive achievement of Perloff's distinguished career."--Gerald Bruns, University of Notre Dame "Edge of Irony is a beautifully written account of Austrian modernism. In this important contribution to European literary history, Perloff reveals the rich contexts and surprising contemporaneity of mid-twentieth-century Austrian literature."--Patrick Greaney, University of Colorado Boulder "Most critics have dealt with Austrian modernism--and modernism in general--from a prewar perspective. Perloff rightly sees the aftermath of the war, the breakup of empire, as informing the Austro-Modernists' boldest works. Edge of Irony presents a model for attuning literary study to the political complexities with which writings like these are eternally embroiled."--Thomas Harrison, University of California, Los Angeles

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Book SynopsisWhat is at stake in literature? Can we identify the fire that our stories have lost, but that they strive, at all costs, to rediscover? And what is the philosopher's stone that writers, with the passion of alchemists, struggle to forge in their word furnaces? For Giorgio Agamben, who suggests that the parable is the secret model of all narrative, every act of creation tenaciously resists creation, thereby giving each work its strength and grace. The ten essays brought together here cover works by figures ranging from Aristotle to Paul Klee and illustrate what urgently drives Agamben's current research. As is often the case with his writings, their especial focus is the mystery of literature, of reading and writing, and of language as a laboratory for conceiving an ethico-political perspective that places us beyond sovereign power.

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Brilliant drawings and a powerful translation make Madame d’Aulnoy’s seventeenth-century fairy tales feel just as immediate and necessary as when they were written. . . . Natalie Frank’s stylized drawings work with the text to bring its heartwrenching and gruesome scenes to life, heightening the emotional impact of crucial moments."---George Hajjar, Foreword Reviews"Madame d’Aulnoy’s 17th-century French fairy tales are interpreted by the feminist visual artist Natalie Frank in surreal, contemporary images." * New York Times *"The new illustrations by Natalie Frank are another triumph of this collection, and they heighten the potential for d’Aulnoy’s radical stances. Frank’s women are larger than life; they’re clearly defined in a realist style while surrounded by surreal splashes of color and figures that blend into one another."---Megan Otto, Chicago Review of Books

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Book SynopsisSunny Xiang offers a new way of understanding the American cold war in Asia by tracing aesthetic manifestations of Oriental inscrutability across a wide range of texts. She puts interrogation reports, policy memos, and field notes into conversation with novels, poems, documentaries, and mixed media work.Trade ReviewTonal Intelligence is smart and theoretically sophisticated. The book marks a significant contribution to work in Asian American and Asian studies, studies of twentieth-century literature and culture, theories of form and affect, and transpacific studies of late twentieth-century Asia. -- Denise Cruz, author of Transpacific Femininities: The Making of the Modern FilipinaAt once a profound meditation on method and archive and an important contribution to transpacific and Cold War studies, Tonal Intelligence boldly rethinks race and self-representation by theorizing tone as a way to read racial meaning. Xiang’s ambitious remit and strikingly original conceptualizations offer a powerful reconfiguration of aesthetics, affect, and the geopolitical. -- Jini Kim Watson, author of The New Asian City: Three-Dimensional Fictions of Space and Urban FormTonal Intelligence is an exceptional study of racial formation that tacks between the two ends of the Cold War. Its archive of critical sources is dazzling: Xiang engages and inhabits multiple critical fields and subfields, and she conveys her broad and deep bank of critical knowledge with ease and verve. -- Josephine Park, author of Cold War Friendships: Korea, Vietnam, and Asian American LiteratureIn Tonal Intelligence, Xiang’s achievement lies in how well she reads Asian inscrutability . . . her tonal analyses do much good in feeling out just how facile the rhetoric of racial essentialism truly is. * Los Angeles Review of Books *Tonal Intelligence is remarkably effective in demonstrating what academics and practitioners can gain from reading the archives against the grain. Xiang succeeds in opening an important methodological door. Intelligence scholars should take note. * International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence *Boldly grapples with the slipperiness of terminology about Asians and the inherent messiness of the cold war, pointing out many of the limits of our critical lenses. [. . .] Tonal Intelligence ought to serve as a model for scholars seeking to blend their archives seamlessly. * American Literary History *A necessary challenge to current methods of studying the Cold War and a guide to interpreting archives of intelligence. * H-War, H-Net Reviews *Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Hardly War, Partly History1. The Tone of Intelligence: Unconventional Warfare and Its Archives2. The Tone of Rumors: Imperial Tours and Kazuo Ishiguro’s Critique of Japanese Exceptionalism3. The Tone of the Times: Historical Temperament in the Works of Induk Pahk and Theresa Hak Kyung Cha4. The Tone of Documentation: Combating the Brainwashee’s Drone in Korean War “Testimonies” and “Confessions”5. The Tone of Intimacy: Imperial Brotherhood and Trinh T. Minh-ha’s Cinematic InterviewsCoda—the Tone of Commons: Solidarities Without a SolidNotesBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisExplores libraries, both real and fictional, that have captured our imaginations.

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Book SynopsisSeth Jacobowitz rethinks the origins of modern Japanese language, literature, and visual culture, presenting the first systematic study of the ways that media and inscriptive technologies available in Japan at its threshold of modernization in the late nineteenth to early twentieth century shaped and brought into being modern Japanese literature.

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Book SynopsisA fruitful and insightful study of how language affects how we understand the world, this book is also an indispensable work for all those seeking to retrieve some kind of meaning in uncertain times.Trade Review'The writer's own introduction is a wonderful discourse on the whole state of language and meaning studies as these touch the issue of metaphor; few thinkers are as adept as Ricoeur at placing their own work in the context of that of others, naming the heroes and villains.' - John B. Davis, Philosophical Studies'...the density, acuity, and sheer scope of the argument are impressive.' - Times Literary Supplement'I do not think that anyone would fail to find illumination and challenge in reading him.' - Times Literary Supplement'This is Ricoeur at his pedagogical best - lucid, learned, inspiring. His generous range of reference - from Aristotle and Aquinas to Heidegger and Max Black - is breathtaking.' - Richard Kearney, Author of On Stories'I do not think that anyone would fail to find illumination and challenge in reading him.' - Times Literary SupplementTable of ContentsTranslator's introduction Introduction Study 1/Between Rhetoric and Poetics: Aristotle 1. Rhetoric and Poetics 2. The intersection of the Poetics and the Rhetorics: 'Epiphora of the name' 3. An enigma: metaphor and simile (eikon) 4. The place of exis in rhetoric 5. The place of lexis in poetics Study 2/The decline of rhetoric: Tropology 1. The rhetorical 'model' of tropology Fontainer: the primacy of idea and of word 3. Trope and figure 4. Metonymy, synecdoche, metaphor 5. The family of metaphor 6. Forced metaphor and newly invented metaphorStudy 3/Metaphor and the semantics of Discourse 1. The debate between semantics and semiotics 2. Semantics and rhetoric of metaphor 3. Logical grammar and semantics 4. Literary criticism and semantics Study 4/Metaphor and the Semantics of the word 1. Monism of the sign and primacy of the word 2. Logic and linguistics of denomination 3. Metaphor as 'change of meaning' 4. Metaphor and the Saussurean postulates 5. Between sentence and word: the interplay of meaning Study 5/Metaphor and the new rhetoric 1. Deviation and rhetoric degree zone 2. The space of the figure 3. Deviation and reduction of deviation 4. The functioning of figures: 'semic' analysis Study 6/The work of resemblance 1. Substitution and resemblance 2. The 'iconic' moment of metaphor 3. The case against resemblance 5. Psycholinguistics of metaphor 6. Icon and image Study 7/Metaphor and reference 1. The postulates of reference 2. The case against reference 3. A generalized theory of denotation 4. Model and metaphor 5. Towards the concept of 'metaphorical truth' Study 8/Metaphor and Philosophical Discourse 1. Metaphor and the equivocalness of being: Aristotle 2. Metaphor and analogia entis: onto-theology 3. Meta-phor and meta-physics 4. The intersection of spheres of discourse 5. Ontological clarification of the postulate reference Appendix Notes Works cited Index of authors

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Book SynopsisDiscover Virginia Woolf's informative and erudite critical essays on some of the key novelists and dramatists of the canon from the ancient Greeks to Jane Austen and beyond.Virginia Woolf read, and wrote, as an outsider, denied the educational privileges of her male contemporaries. She was perhaps better able, then, to address a ''common reader'' in this wide-ranging collection of essays. With all the imagination and gaiety that are the stamp of her genius, she turns from medieval England to tsarist Russia, and subjects Elizabethan playwrights, Victorian novelists and modern essayists to her wise, acute and entertaining scrutiny.Essays on Jane Austen, George Eliot, Nancy Mitford, Joseph Conrad, Michel de Montaigne, Daniel Defoe and many others.Trade ReviewHer essays are delightful in the way that serious play is delightful. She is enjoying herself, and reading her gives me that leaping sense of being in excellent company -- Jeanette Winterson * The Times *More like novels than ordinary criticism * New Statesman *Woolf was easily the greatest literary journalist of her age -- James Wood, * Guardian *It is all pure Woolf, so distinctive is her voice - ironic, cool, conversational and playful, shrewd and fantastical by turns -- Literary Review

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Book SynopsisImage Science gathers Mitchell's most recent essays on media aesthetics, visual culture, and artistic symbolism. The chapters delve into such topics as the physics and biology of images, digital photography and realism, architecture and new media, and the occupation of space in contemporary popular uprisings.Trade Review"Ranging widely across the new visual realities of science, art, cinema, and digital media, these essays are conceptually precise, politically engaged, and deeply reflective. They demonstrate why Mitchell has become America's leading philosopher of the image."--Susan Buck-Morss, Graduate Center of the City University of New York "Image Science is fascinating and a wonderful account of a leading scholar's rich research. As always, Mitchell's writing is erudite, engaging, and challenging; his thinking mindful and provocative in equal measure; his arguments dazzling; his insights startling."--Marquard Smith, Kingston University, London "Image Science adds another chapter to Mitchell's long and illustrious intervention in the disciplines of art history and visual studies. Mitchell argues persuasively for a science of the visual that straddles the humanities and the social and natural sciences, one that addresses not only objects but also their perception and role in human experience. This is an exciting and theoretically challenging collection."--Keith Moxey, Barnard College, Columbia University

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Book SynopsisThe adventures of Samak, a trickster-warrior hero of Persia’s thousand-year-old oral storytelling tradition, are beloved in Iran. Translated from the original Persian by Freydoon Rassouli and adapted by Prince of Persia creator Jordan Mechner, this timeless masterwork can now be enjoyed by English-speaking readers.Trade ReviewThis ancient Persian tale of adventure and romance comes to marvelous life in Jordan Mechner’s fluent, fast-paced rendering of Freydoon Rassouli’s modern translation. Epic in its sweep and human passions, it conjures a captivating world of warriors, princesses, renegades, viziers and witches. A treasure of world literature to place beside Gilgamesh, The Odyssey and the Thousand and One Nights. -- Eric Jager, author of The Last Duel: A True Story of Trial by Combat in Medieval FranceThis medieval Persian romance which enjoys enormous popularity in the Persian-speaking world is translated in a very attractive way, following the Persian technique of storytelling. Conveying the spirit of the original, Mechner and Rassouli are an exceptional match to carry out this difficult task. Samak the Ayyar will attract a broad readership with different cultural backgrounds. -- Asghar Seyed-Gohrab, author of Courtly Riddles: Enigmatic Embellishments in Early Persian Poetry[F]ast-paced, exciting narratives which retain the interest of the readers and make them wish for more . . . highly recommended. * Asian Review of Books *The text while being very simple and close to spoken language is of particular interest due to the large number of rare and archaic Persian words. * Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies *The first major English-language rendering of these tales, Samak reveals a charmed world fit for a blockbuster HBO series, but more than that, it shows a sweep of heroism, betrayal, and friendship worthy of Gilgamesh or the Odyssey. -- Kevin Blankinship * Los Angeles Review of Books *Table of ContentsIntroductionPart ISection 1: The Princess of Chin1. The Sun Prince2. The Mystery of the Ring3. The Witch Nurse4. A Minstrel Maiden5. The Witch’s Dungeon6. The Vizier’s Son7. A Fatal BanquetSection 2: The People’s Defenders 8. The Grave Robber9. The Prince of Machin10. Stone Alley11. Surrendering the Princess12. Refuge Among Warriors13. A Clash of Champions14. Samak and Atashak15. The TruceSection 3: Machin 16. An Impregnable Fortress17. Reinforcements18. In the Enemy’s City19. The Brothers20. Enemy Agents21. Rescue from Torture22. New FriendsSection 4: Falaki Fortress23. An Ocean of Warriors24. Victory and Defeat25. The Missing Princess26. A Brave Envoy27. The Wedding Thief28. Sorkhvard’s Secret29. Trail of a Lion30. Massacre in a Canyon31. Lovers ReunitedPart IISection 5: Zafron Plains32. King’s Bargain, Ayyars Dig33. A Royal Marriage34. Samak Fears for His Friends35. Newlyweds Abducted36. Battle of Princes37. A Watchman’s Reward38. Samak Is CapturedSection 6: Twelve Canyons39. An Ayyar’s Daughter40. The Royal Ring41. The Ayyars of Twelve Canyons42. Rescued by Her Rival43. A Clan Divided44. A Double Rescue45. An Army Ambushed46. Wine for a Feast47. A Locked Gate48. Message from a PrincessSection 7: Guran Meadow49. An Ayyar’s Reward50. A Life for a Life51. In the Giant’s Lair52. Death of a Prince53. The Stone Warriors54. A Plate of Halvah55. Head of a HeroTo Be ContinuedGuide to Kingdoms and Characters

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Book SynopsisAn original study of late Enlightenment aesthetics, poetics, and environmental medicine as overlapping ways of comprehending the dislocations of historical existence lodged in the movements of bodies and mindsTrade ReviewWinner of the 2022 Jean-Pierre Barricelli Prize, sponsored by the International Conference on RomanticismShortlisted for the Marilyn Gaull Award from The Wordsworth Circle“In tracing how eighteenth-century pathology and aesthetics registered causal forces beyond our immediate ken, Kevis Goodman offers an electrifying account of the way poetics made abstract historical processes visible at a pivotal moment in global modernity.”—Lynn Festa, author of Fiction Without Humanity“Goodman provides a new way of thinking about human freedom, the imagination, volition, and mobility. This is a richly erudite and theoretically lucid book that anyone working in this period will want to read and reread.”—Alan Bewell, University of Toronto“By bringing together aesthetics and medicine, Goodman offers a new and enthralling description of modernity. Pathologies of Motion also brilliantly vindicates, as it demonstrates, the practice of symptomatic reading.”—Deidre Lynch, Harvard University“Goodman’s elegant, learned work is the entering wedge in a radical rethinking of Romanticism and its predecessors. It reveals a pathological counter-current in tension with the age’s dominant aesthetic quest for harmony.”—Marjorie Levinson, author of Thinking through Poetry “Goodman rediscovers eighteenth-century pathology as a synoptic discipline projecting the material body and the imagination as mutually involved and evolving agents of human behavior and consciousness. Her book thereby offers exciting new readings of reading itself—of the physiological functions of organized sound—as well as of Schiller and the Scottish doctors, of the newly privileged phenomenon of nostalgia, and of some of the best-known Romantic poems.”—David Simpson, author of Engaging Violence

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Book SynopsisIntermediate Irish is a jargon-free workbook examining the most commonly used grammatical structures within the Irish language. Focusing on the repeated use of grammatical patterns, the Grammar develops an understanding of the structures presented, making the forms familiar and automatic for learners.This user-friendly workbook includes: terminology introduced and explained with multiple examples exercises in the grammatical forms introduced in the text translation exercises an exercise key. Table of Contents1. Focus Structures 2. Relative Clauses II 3. Impersonals 4. Verbal Noun Aspectual Constructions 5. Adverbial Clauses 6. Adverbial Predicates 7. Directional Adverbs 8. Directional Adverbs II 9. Comparison of Adjectives 10.Comparison 2 11. Habitual Tenses 12. Conditionals 13. Causative and Inchoative Structures 14. Higher Numbers 15. Word Formation I: Compounding 16. Word Formation II: Prefixes 17. Word Formation III: Suffixes 18. Subjunctive 19. Verbless Clauses 20. Dative Case 21. More Prepositional Pronouns 22. Compound Prepositions 23. Dialect Variation 24. Inflected Verbs 25. Prepositions and Dialect 26. Is/bí Interactions and Alternatives

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Book SynopsisBasic Cantonese introduces the essentials of Cantonese grammar in a straightforward and systematic way. Each of the 28 units deals with a grammatical topic and provides associated exercises, designed to put grammar into a communicative context. Special attention is paid to topics which differ from English and European language structures.This new edition features:â clear, accessible formatâ lively examples to illustrate each grammar pointâ informative keys to all exercisesâ glossary of grammatical termsBasic Cantonese is ideal for students new to the language. Together with its sister volume, Intermediate Cantonese, it forms a structured course of the essentials of Cantonese grammar.Table of ContentsIntroduction 1 Consonants 2 Vowels and diphthongs 3 Tone 4 Pronouns 5 Possession: ge 6 Possession and existence: yáuh 7 Being: haih 8 Noun classifiers 9 Adjectives 10 Adverbs of manner 11 Adverbs of time, frequency and duration 12 Comparison: gwo and dī 13 Prepositions: space and time 14 Negation 15 Verbs of motion: heui and làih 16 Verbs of giving: béi 17 Verbs and particles 18 Actions and events: jó and gwo 19 Activities: gán and jyuh 20 Auxiliary verbs 21 Passives 22 Word order and topicalization 23 Yes/no questions 24 Wh-questions 25 Sentence particles 26 Imperatives 27 Requests and thanks 28 Numbers, dates and times Key to exercises Glossary of grammatical terms

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Book SynopsisThe Poetics of Insecurity turns the emerging field of literary security studies upside down. Rather than tying the prevalence of security to a culture of fear, Johannes Voelz shows how American literary writers of the past two hundred years have mobilized insecurity to open unforeseen and uncharted horizons of possibility for individuals and collectives. In a series of close readings of works by Charles Brockden Brown, Harriet Jacobs, Willa Cather, Flannery O''Connor, and Don DeLillo, Voelz brings to light a cultural imaginary in which conventional meanings of security and insecurity are frequently reversed, so that security begins to appear as deadening and insecurity as enlivening. Timely, broad-ranging, and incisive, Johannes Voelz''s study intervenes in debates on American literature as well as in the interdisciplinary field of security studies. It fundamentally challenges our existing explanations for the pervasiveness of security in American cultural and political life.Trade Review'The Poetics of Insecurity is an impressive and accomplished work that analyzes a range of American narratives from the early Republic to our present moment to show how an interest in and exploration of 'security' has been central to American literature and culture. Voelz makes contributions to multiple fields, including not only American literature broadly construed, but also narrative theory; it also joins a growing body of work exploring the intersections of the literary with non-literary conceptions of security, and contributes to recent work focused on chance and/or accident in American literary history.' Steven Belletto, Lafayette College, Pennsylvania'The strength of Voelz's readings lies in their attentiveness to the ambivalent affective dimensions of insecurity, the intermingling of fear and desire that accompanies the contemplation of an uncertain future.' Deborah Thurman, The Review of English StudiesTable of Contents1. Introduction: security and the uncertain worlds of fiction; 2. The virtue of uncertainty: securing the republic in Arthur Mervyn; 3. Harriet Jacobs's imagined community of insecurity; 4. Willa Cather and the security of radical contingency; 5. Cold War liberalism and Flannery O'Connor's 'The Displaced Person'; 6. In the future, toward death: finance capitalism and security in DeLillo's cosmopolis; Epilogue.

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Book SynopsisIt''s time to pick up your fedora and embark on a philosophical journey through Discworld!Terry Pratchett is world-famous for the narrative verve and surreal humour of his novels. But now meet another Terry Pratchett - a man of serious metaphysical ideas and sophisticated philosophical insights. In Philosophy and Terry Pratchett thirteen professional philosophers survey such key philosophical issues as personal identity, the nature of destiny, the value of individuality, the meaning of existentialism, the reality of universals and the existence of alternative realities. In considering these and many other equally fascinating themes, close reference is made to more than 35 Discworld novels as well as to the ideas of some of history''s greatest philosophers including Aristotle, Hobbes, Rousseau, Kant, Mill, Kierkegaard, Wittgenstein and Rawls.During your journey, you will be surprised by numerous provocative conclusions including the startling claim that the existence of Table of ContentsIntroduction; James B. South PART I: SELF-PERCEPTION, NARRATIVE, AND IDENTITY 1. A Golem is not Born, but Rather Becomes, a Woman: Gender on the Disc; Jacob M. Held 2. 'Nothing Like a Bit of Destiny to Get the Old Plot Rolling:' A Philosophical Reading of Wyrd Sisters ; James B. South 3. 'Feigning to Feign:' Pratchett and the Maskerade; Andrew Rayment 4. 'Knowing things that other people don't know is a form of magic:' Lessons in Headology and Critical Thinking from The Lancre Witch; Tuomas W. Manninen PART II: SOCIAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY 5. Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy on the Discworld; Kevin Guilfoy 6. Plato, the Witch and the Cave: Granny Weatherwax and the Moral Problem of Paternalism; Dietrich Schotte 7. Equality and Difference: Just because the Disc is flat, doesn't make it a Level Playing Field for All; Ben Saunders PART III: ETHICS AND GOOD LIFE 8. Millennium Hand and Shrimp: On the Importance of Being in the Right Trouser Leg of Time; Susanne E. Foster 9. Categorically Not Cackling: The Will, Moral Fictions and Witchcraft; Jennifer Jill Fellows 10. The Care of the Reaper Man: Death, the Auditors, and the Importance of Individuality; Erica L. Neely 11. 'YES, SUSAN, THERE IS A HOGFATHER:' Hogfather and the Existentialism of Søren Kierkegaard; J. Keeping PART IV: LOGIC AND METAPHYSICS 12. On the Possibility of the Discworld; Martin Vacek 13. Pratchett's The Last Continent and the Act of Creation; Jay Ruud

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Language and Power is widely recognised both as a classic and an essential introductory textbook to the field of Critical Discourse Analysis. It focusses on how language functions in maintaining and changing power relations in modern society, the ways of analysing language which can reveal these processes and how people can become more conscious of them, as well as, more able to resist and change them.In this twenty-fifth anniversary edition, Norman Fairclough includes a substantial new introduction and brings the discussion up-to-date. He shows both the importance of the book in the development of critical discourse analysis over the past three decades and how language and power relations have changed due to major socio-economic changes. It remains vital reading for all students of discourse analysis, critical discourse analysis and other related courses.

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Book SynopsisThis new edition of Colloquial Latvian has been completely rewritten to make learning Latvian easier and more enjoyable than ever before! Specially written by experienced teachers for self-study or class use, the course offers a step-by-step approach to written and spoken Latvian. No prior knowledge of the language is required.What makes Colloquial Latvian your best choice in personal language learning? interactive lots of exercises for regular practice clear concise grammar notes practical useful vocabulary and pronunciation guide complete including answer key and reference section. By the end of this rewarding course, you will be able to communicate confidently and effectively in Latvian in a broad range of everyday situations.Audio material to accompany the course is available to download free in MP3 format from www.routledge.com/cw/colloquials. Recorded by natTrade Review"I also found this book very useful. It is criticized on another side as not being tailored to the linguistic neophyte, and that is to some extent true, but how many of those are there out there wanting to learn Latvian? I personally valued the storyline and cultural elements of the dialogues as adding interest and the lack of transactional drills and colorless situational dialogies was more a relief than anything else. An hour a day for a month and it's under your belt - I think that's hard to beat in its genre, and textbooks for much more widely spoken languages often fall far short of this standard.“ Amazon customerReview of the previous edition:'An hour a day for a month and it's under your belt - I think that's hard to beat in its genre, and textbooks for much more widely spoken languages often fall far short of this standard.' Amazon customerTable of ContentsAcknowledgements Introduction How To Use This Book The Sounds of Latvian Abbreviations 1. Hello! 2. Please drive to…! 3. I Have a Reservation 4. Travelling by Train 5. At the Restaurant 6. Family 7. What Do You Do In Your Free Time? 8. Let’s Go Shopping! 9. Let’s Go To The Market! 10. How Do You Spend Your Days? 11. Where Did You Go On Holiday? 12. What’s Wrong With You? 13. The New Flat 14. What Will The Weather Be Like Today? 15. Communications and Mass Media Grammar Summary Key to Exercises Latvian–English Glossary English–Latvian Glossary Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisJudith Still analyses Derrida's late writings on animals, especially his seminars The Beast and the Sovereign, to explore ethical questions of how humans treat animals and how we treat outsiders, from slaves to terrorists.

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Book SynopsisWinner, 2020 Alan Bray Memorial Prize, given by the GL/Q Caucus of the Modern Language AssociationA new understanding of freedom in the black diaspora grounded in the erotic In Frottage, Keguro Macharia weaves together histories and theories of blackness and sexuality to generate a fundamentally new understanding of both the black diaspora and queer studies. Macharia maintains that to reach this understanding, we must start from the black diaspora, which requires re-thinking not only the historical and theoretical utility of identity categories such as gay, lesbian, and bisexual, but also more foundational categories such as normative and non-normative, human and non-human. Simultaneously, Frottage questions the heteronormative tropes through which the black diaspora has been imagined. Between Frantz Fanon, René Maran, Jomo Kenyatta, and Claude McKay, Macharia moves through genrespsychoanalysis, fiction, anthropology, poetryas well as rTrade ReviewFrottage takes you on a journey of mutual pleasure, queer potentials, intimacy, violence, and erotic freedom through the African and Afro-diaspora. Macharia delivers a layered, intellectually expansive, and necessary critical irritation for black queer studies. * zethy Matebeni, curator and co-editor of Reclaiming Afrikan *Frottage is an important and field-changing book. One of Keguro Macharia’s great talents is to guide us to a way to understand, read, and think differently about kinship, about gender, about ‘thinghood,’ and about intimacy. Macharia is a profoundly original thinker and writer and in Frottage he renders and imagines diaspora in ways that attend beautifully to a range of world-making practices, to geo-histories and discontinuities. The final chapter, both meditation and invitation, is a gift. * Christina Sharpe, author of In the Wake *Frottage raises fundamental questions about ways of seeing and living sexual difference – in this case queer sexuality – in a world that by virtue of its language, expectations, actions and general beliefs, tends to homogenise sexuality in a heteronormative sense. [...] Keguro is searching for how to articulate ‘queer’ in an African and Afrodiasporic world that disavows not just the practice but the very word and identity. * Wasafiri Magazine *Frottage is an important addition to theoretical work that makes it possible to think about black and queer subjectivities in Africa and the African diaspora. * Tydskrif vir Letterkunde *

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Book SynopsisA significant new account of emotion in Middle English literature, proposing key methodologies for the analysis of feeling and affect in literary texts. It shows how contemporary audiences learned to understand emotion in themselves and others, through empathetic response, the development of fictionality and the emergence of interiority. -- .

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Book SynopsisOur pagan ancestors knew that every forest has brownies and fairies, every spring its lady, and every river malevolent beings in its depths. They told tales of giants in the hills, dragons in the lakes, marshes swarming with will-o'-the-wisps, and demons and wild folk in the mountains who enjoyed causing landslides, avalanches, and floods. They both feared and respected these entities, knowing the importance of appeasing them for safe travel and a prosperous homestead. Exploring medieval stories, folk traditions, spiritual place names, and pagan rituals of home building and site selection, Claude Lecouteux reveals the multitude of spirits and entities that once inhabited the land before modern civilization repressed them into desert solitude, impenetrable forests, and inaccessible mountains. He explains how, to our ancestors, enclosing a space was a sacred act. Specific rites had to be performed to negotiate with the local spirits and ensure proper placement and protection of a new building. These land spirits often became the household spirit, taking up residence in a new building in exchange for permission to build on their territory. Lecouteux explores Arthurian legends, folk tales, and mythology for evidence of the untamed spirits of the wilderness, such as giants, dragons, and demons, and examines the rites and ceremonies used to gain their good will. Lecouteux reveals how, despite outright Church suppression, belief in these spirits carried through to modern times and was a primary influence on architecture, an influence still visible in today's buildings. The author also shows how our ancestors' concern for respecting nature is increasingly relevant in today's world.Trade Review“What are the ancient mysteries of earth and water? Guided by the sure hand of Claude Lecouteux in this erudite and accessible book, we find keys to the recovery and renewed understanding of indigenous European religious traditions concerning land and water. A valuable book--highly recommended.” * Arthur Versluis, author of Sacred Earth and Religion of Light *“Demons and Spirits of the Land is a scholarly investigation of the spirits present in the traditional landscape of Europe. Claude Lecouteux explains how humans are inseparable from our surroundings: we are not the only intelligent beings, for we cohabit the Earth with other sentient entities. Traditionally, these entities manifest as land spirits who take many forms: giants, dwarves, brownies, fairies, and dragons. Present in the land, they must be dealt with if humans are to live in harmony and well-being. This book details rites and ceremonies of coming to terms with the spirits of tree and forest, spring and mountain, taken from comprehensive documentary and folklore sources, including ancient authors, Arthurian legends, medieval romances, and Norse sagas. If you want to know about the nature of land spirits and how we relate to them, this is essential reading.” * Nigel Pennick, author of The Book of Primal Signs: The High Magic of Symbols *“A superbly written treatise on the folklore of place, showing how the church has demonized once revered and respected land spirits. The setting up of high crosses, statues of saints, and the ringing of bells has been done for two thousand years to repel and control the fairies, elves, dragons, dwarves, and giants our ancestors once placated and venerated. But are we better off for all the church’s civilizing efforts? “We are now at a turning point in human history where we need to come to terms with what we have wrought. The Earth Mother has given us food, healing, and shelter, and we have abused her in return. Reading these pages we learn that the dark path through the wilderness may once again lead us to a sacred space within the forest where in respectful company with the ancient deities, land wight’s, and the fey, we may yet resume our ancient offerings, begin the healing, and return to harmony with all creation.” * Ellen Evert Hopman, author of A Druid’s Herbal of Sacred Tree Medicine and The Secret Medicine *Table of ContentsForeword by Régis Boyer Introduction: We Dwell in a Haunted Place Part One A Haunted Universe 1 Unusual Manifestations 2 The First Inhabitants of the Earth 3 Demons and Fallen Angels 4 Cult Remnants 5 The Local Land Spirits 6 The Underside of Idolatry 7 The Evidence of Place-Names 8 Silvanus and Company 9 The Metamorphoses of Spirits 10 A Provisional Assessment Part Two Conquering and Defending the Land 11 Encountering the Spirits of the Local Land 12 Taking Possession of a Piece of Land 13 Circumambulation: Appropriation, Expropriation, and Protection Rites 14 Boundaries and Their Markers 15 The Enclosed Space Is Sacred 16 The Contract with the Spirits 17 The Circular and the Rectangular: A Hypothesis 18 The Conquest of the Space Part Three Survivals and Transformations 19 Waters, Springs, and Fountains 20 The Forest 21 The Mountain and Its Spirits 22 The Problem of Parédrie 23 A Composite Site: The Dwelling of Grendel and His Mother 24 The Moor 25 The Hybridization of Myths 26 The Return of the Place Spirits Afterword Notes Bibliography Index

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Book Synopsis* * *'Want a beautiful place to collate your thoughts on books? Then take a look at this gorgeous and helpful journal.' LoveReading's Book of the MonthBooks connect us: we rave about our favourites to anyone who will listen, pass on our well-thumbed copies to friends and get together in book clubs to chat through our opinionsThis beautiful guided journal will allow you to gather your thoughts on the books you have read, with 50 templates to fill in. You will also find advice on how to organize a successful book club, pick your discussion topics and make the most of your reading time, plus 200 book recommendations arranged into 20 themed reading lists, carefully curated by Sanne Vliegenthart, book reviewer and creator of hugely popular book videos at Books and Quills.With timeless quotes on the joy of reading peppered throughout, this makes a gorgeous gift, whether for someone else or just for yourself.Find Sanne on Twitter, Instagram and Youtube @booksandquills

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Book SynopsisAn Open Access edition of this book is available on the Liverpool University Press website and through Knowledge Unlatched.The Argentine Jorge Luis Borges, one of the most sophisticated writers of the twentieth century, suffered from sexual impotence. This emotionally overwhelming condition shaped his literary experience in ways that have not been understood. Until now Borges has largely been considered an asexual author who could not read, think, or write about desire and sex, but in this book historian Ariel de la Fuente shows that sexuality was a major preoccupation for him, both as a reader and as an author. De la Fuente has conducted an extensive literary investigation in Borges’s figurative erotic library and presents for the first time a study of the relationship between Borges’s sexual biography, his erotic readings, and the writing of desire and sex in his work. The author explores relevant literary questions while employing a historical method and the book is truly an interdisciplinary study at the intersection of history with Latin American, European, and Eastern literatures, poetry, philosophy, and sexuality. Argued with clarity, Borges, Desire, and Sex offers an unexpected perspective on the literature and figure of a world-wide influential author.Trade Review'It is remarkable that there remains under-explored an area of Borges scholarship, yet the central questions posed here are important, original, and compelling.'William Rowlandson, University of Kent'This is a work of exceptional originality. The historical rather than literary perspective has brought to the fore entirely new readings, both regarding the interplay between Borges’s life and his work, and between his reading and creative output. At the moment it stands almost alone in its approach and methodology. This work will become a mandatory tool in the development of future research.'Evelyn Fishburn, University College London, author of A Dictionary of Borges'The author offers a detailed argument…assembling strong evidence for his case, while opening new avenues of investigation of Borges’s life and works…For [its] novel investigations of key [Borges’s] works, for highlighting the erotic focus of some of Borges’s readings, for offering a timely reminder of the importance of Stoic philosophy in the Argentine writer’s thinking, as well as for its exposition of the sexual dimensions of Borges’s poetry on the arrabal, among other merits, the book is very valuable. In the end, it serves to bring to light the important role that sex and desire played in [Borges’s] life and work.' Bill Richardson (National University of Ireland), Variaciones Borges'De la Fuente makes a compelling argument not merely for the importance of sexuality in Borges’s work, but for its extent. The author marshals his evidence and presents it clearly… Borges, Desire, and Sex makes a major contribution to our better, more complete understanding of the man and his work. I recommend it highly.' Earl Fitz (Vanderbilt University), Estudios Interdisciplinarios de América Latina y El CaribeTable of ContentsIntroductionChapter 1: On Borges’s SexualityChapter 2: Biography in Literature and the Reading of Desire and Sex in BorgesChapter 3: Borges’s Erotic Library: The Poetry ShelfChapter 4: Sir Richard Burton’s Orientalist Erotica: The Thousand Nights and a Night and The Perfumed GardenChapter 5: Schopenhauer and Montaigne, Philosophy and SexChapter 6: Desire and Sex in Buenos Aires: Borges’s Poetry on the ArrabalChapter 7: Stoicism and Borges’s Writing of WomenChapter 8: Emma Zunz: Sex, Virtue, and PunishmentChapter 9: La intrusa: Incest and Gay ReadingsWorks Cited

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Book SynopsisVon den mittelalterlichen Sängern und Epikern über Martin Opitz, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Friedrich Schiller und Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, über Heinrich Heine, Georg Büchner und Bertolt Brecht bis Günter Grass, Martin Walser, Uwe Tellkamp, Herta Müller und Ursula Krechel. Alle namhaften Schriftsteller sind erfasst: Die Literaturgeschichte fängt Lyrik, Roman, Prosa und andere literarische Gattungen und Strömungen im Spiegel der Epochen ein, zeigt die Autorinnen und Autoren, ihr Schaffen und den Literaturbetrieb in enger Verflechtung mit dem gesellschaftlichen, kulturellen und politischen Zeitgeist. Ein lebendiges Nachschlagewerk, das durch die gelungene Verknüpfung von Text und Illustrationen bei Neugierigen und Kennern gleichermaßen für großes Lesevergnügen sorgt. - Die Neuauflage schreibt die Kapitel zur Gegenwartsliteratur und zum Literaturbetrieb fort.Table of ContentsMittelalterliche Literatur.- Humanismus und Reformation.- Literatur des Barock.- Aufklärung.- Kunstepoche.- Vormärz.- Realismus und Gründerzeit.- Die literarische Moderne (1890–1920).- Literatur in der Weimarer Republik.- Literatur im ›Dritten Reich‹.- Die deutsche Literatur des Exils.- Deutsche Literatur nach 1945.- Die Literatur der DDR.- Die Literatur der Bundesrepublik.- Tendenzen in der deutsch sprachigen Gegenwartsliteratur seit 1989​

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Book Synopsis

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