Literature: history and criticism Books
Transcript Verlag The Ghosts Within – Literary Imaginations of
Book SynopsisThe ghost as a literary figure has been interpreted multiple times: spiritually, psychoanalytically, sociologically, or allegorically. Following these approaches, Janna Odabas understands ghosts in Asian American literature as self-reflexive figures. With identity politics at the core of the ghost concept, Odabas emphasizes how ghosts critically renegotiate the notion of 'Asian America' as heterogeneous and transnational and resist interpretation through a morally or politically preconceived approach to Asian American literature. Responding to the tensions of the scholarly field, Odabas argues that the literary works under scrutiny openly play with and rethink conceptions of ghosts as mere exotic, ethnic ornamentation.
£34.39
Transcript Verlag Fugitive Borders – Black Canadian Cross–Border
Book SynopsisFugitive Borders explores a new archive of 19th-century autobiographical writing by black authors in North America. For that purpose, Nele Sawallisch examines four different texts written by formerly enslaved men in the 1850s that emerged in or around the historical region of Canada West (now known as Ontario) and that defy the genre conventions of the classic slave narrative. Instead, these texts demonstrate originality in expressing complex, often ambivalent attitudes towards the so-called Canadian Promised Land and contribute to a form of textual community-building across national borders. In the context of emerging national discourses before Canada's Confederation in 1867, they offer alternatives to the hegemonic narrative of the white settler nation.Trade Review"'Fugitive Borders' shows how Black cross-border life writing at midnineteenth century speaks of the history of slavery and the experiences of the formerly enslaved and fugitive with idiosyncratic voices. Undoubtedly, readers of 'Fugitive Borders' will want to hear, understand, and learn more from them." Paula von Gleich, American Studies, 65/1 (2020)
£39.99
Transcript Verlag Because of You – Understanding Second–Person
Book SynopsisSecond-person storytelling is a continually present and diverse technique in the history of literature that appears only once in the oeuvre of an author. Based on key narratives of the post-war period, Evgenia Iliopoulou approaches the phenomenon in an inductive way, starting out from the essentials of grammar and rhetoric, and aims to improve the general understanding of second-person narrative within literature. In its various forms and typologies, the second person amplifies and expands the limits of representation, thus remaining a narrative enigma: a small narrative gesture - with major narrative impact.
£31.19
Transcript Verlag History′s Queer Stories – Retrieving and
Book SynopsisCritical analysis of the dramatisation of homosexuality in British fiction about the Second World War is noticeable only by its relative absence from the field. Whereas feminist literary criticism has broadened the canon of war fiction to include narratives by and about women, queer scholars have seldom focused on literary representations of homosexuality during the war. Natalie Marena Nobitz closes a glaring gap in the critical attention of four novels dealing with the disruption of gender roles and institutionalised heteronormativity: Walter Baxter's Look Down in Mercy (1951), Mary Renault's The Charioteer (1953), Sarah Waters' The Night Watch (2006) and Adam Fitzroy's Make Do and Mend (2012).
£33.74
Transcript Verlag Foreign Countries of Old Age – East and Southeast
Book SynopsisThe exploration of what May Sarton calls the "foreign country of old age" usually does not go far beyond the familiar: the focus of aging studies has thus far clearly rested upon North America and Western Europe. This multi-disciplinary essay collection critically examines conditions and representations of old age and aging in Eastern and Southeastern Europe from various perspectives of the humanities and social sciences. By shedding light on these culturally specific contexts, the contributions widen our understanding of the aging process in all its diversity and demonstrate that a shift in perspectives might in fact challenge a number of taken-for-granted positions and presumptions of aging studies.
£40.00
Transcript Verlag An Eclectic Bestiary – Encounters in a
Book SynopsisThe essays, poetry, and visual art collected here consider the more-than-human cultures of our multispecies world. At a time when humanity's impact has put our planet's ecosystems into great jeopardy, the book explores literary, sonic, and visual imaginaries that feature encounters between and across a variety of living creatures: beetles and bisons, people and pigeons, trees and spiderwebs, vegetables and violets, orchards and octopi, vampires and tricksters. Offering a wide range of critical and creative contributions to Human Animal Studies, Critical Plant Studies and the Nonhuman Turn, the volume seeks to foster new ways of imagining a more "response-able" coexistence on our shared Earth.Trade Review"It's an anthology that's got it all: Probably not an easy read for quick reference, but still highly recommended." Ulrike Schwerdtner, http://tierbefreiungsarchiv.de, 8 (2020), translated from German "The volume captivates with its impressive illustrations." Kochen ohne Knochen, 38/1 (2020), translated from German
£35.99
Transcript Verlag Belonging and Narrative – A Theory of the
Book SynopsisWhy did the novel become so popular in the past three centuries, and how did the American novel contribute to this trend? As a key provider of the narrative frames and formulas needed by modern individuals to give meaning and mooring to their lives. Drawing on phenomenological hermeneutics, human geography and social psychology, Laura Bieger contends that belonging is not a given; it is continuously produced by narrative. Against the current emphasis on metaphors of movement and destabilization, she explores the salience and significance of home. Challenging views of narrative as a mechanism of ideology, she approaches narrative as a practical component of dwelling in the world - and the novel a primary place-making agent.
£31.19
Transcript Verlag Stanislaw Brzozowski and the Migration of Ideas –
Book SynopsisAs a writer, critic, and philosopher, Stanisaw Brzozowski (1878-1911) left a lasting imprint on Polish culture. He absorbed virtually all topical intellectual trends of his time, adapting them for the needs of what he saw as his primary mission: the modernization of Polish culture. The essays of the volume reassess and contextualize Brzozowski's writings from a distinctly transnational vantage point. They shed light on often surprising and hitherto underrated affinities between Brzozowski and intellectual figures and movements in Eastern and Western Europe. Furthermore, they explore the presence of his ideas in twentieth-century century literary criticism and theory.
£44.79
Transcript Verlag An Organon of Life Knowledge – Genres and
Book SynopsisCan fiction teach us how to live? This study offers a fresh take on the North American short story, exploring how the genre has engaged in the construction and circulation of 'life knowledge'. Echoing the resurgence of short story scholarship in recent years, it thus contributes a genre-focused perspective to the growing field of 'literature and knowledge' studies. Drawing on stories from the late 19th century to the present by authors such as Henry James, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Eudora Welty, Junot Díaz, and Alice Munro, Michael Basseler examines how knowledge about life and how to live it is generically constituted and, vice versa, how literary genres such as the short story are embedded in broader cultural frameworks of knowledge production.
£31.19
Transcript Verlag Truth and Fiction – Conspiracy Theories in
Book SynopsisSeveral of the most prolific and influential conspiracy theories have originated in Eastern Europe. The far reaching influence of conspiracy narratives can be observed in recent developments in Poland or with regard to the wars waged in Eastern Ukraine and in former Yugoslavia. This volume analyses the history behind this widespread phenomenon as well the role it has played in Eastern European cultures and literature both past and present.
£41.24
Transcript Verlag Fictions of Legibility – The Human Face and Body
Book SynopsisGabriela Stoicea examines how the incidence and role of physical descriptions in German novels changed between 1771 and 1929 in response to developments in the study of the human face and body. As well as engaging the tools and methods of literary analysis, the study uses a cultural studies approach to offer a constellation of ideas and polemics surrounding the readability of the human body. By including discussions from the medical sciences, epistemology, and aesthetics, the book draws out the multi-faceted permutations of corporeal legibility, as well as its relevance for the development of the novel and for facilitating inter-disciplinary dialogue.
£44.79
Transcript Verlag Practices of Speculation – Modeling, Embodiment,
Book SynopsisThis volume offers innovative ways to think about speculation at a time when anticipation of catastrophe in an apocalyptic mode is the order of the day and shapes public discourse on a global scale. It maps an interdisciplinary field of investigation: the chapters interrogate hegemonic ways of shaping the present through investments in the future, while also looking at speculative practices that reveal transformative potential. The twelve contributions explore concrete instances of envisioning the open unknown and affirmative speculative potentials in history, literature, comics, computer games, mold research, ecosystem science and artistic practice.
£37.59
Transcript Verlag The Transformative Potential of Black British an
Book SynopsisThis study investigates power, belonging and exclusion in British society by analysing representations of the mosque, the University of Oxford, and the plantation in novels by Leila Aboulela, Robin Yassin-Kassab, Diran Adebayo, David Dabydeen, Andrea Levy, and Bernardine Evaristo. Lisa Ahrens combines Foucault's theory of heterotopia with elements of Wolfgang Iser's reader-response theory to work out Black British and British Muslim literature's potential for destabilising exclusionary boundaries. In this way, new perspectives open up on the intersections between space, power and literature, intertwining and enriching the discourses of Cultural and Literary Studies.
£35.99
Transcript Verlag Creating Realities – Business as a Motif in
Book SynopsisBusiness is woven into the very fabric of American life, yet rarely surfaces in the nation's literary history. Even in novels about business, it proves an elusive motif that fails to mirror actual business organizations. This book argues that literary representations of business remain ineffable because business serves potential aesthetic functions, subtly yet meaningfully impacting readers. Exploring the complex representation of business in realist, naturalist and modernist works, Erhan Simsek reveals these functions by analyzing how the motif intertwines with social developments, literary movements and author biographies. He thus illuminates the motif itself while highlighting the utility of a focus on the changing functions of literature.
£44.79
Transcript Verlag Imagined Economies–Real Fictions – New
Book SynopsisThe way we conceptualise the economy and ourselves as homo economicus has profound consequences for our lives. The contributions to this anthology take debates about the financial crisis, about recent austerity measures or about the Brexit referendum a step further. A common denominator of these dynamics are underlying ideas of "the economy". Each author identifies a facet of Britain's imagined economies. They connect seemingly separate fields such as finance and fiction in order to better understand current political changes. In addition, the book offers an urgently needed interdisciplinary view on the performative power of economic thought - and in this respect moves far beyond merely British perspectives.
£31.19
Transcript Verlag Post–Apartheid Criticism – Perceptions of
Book SynopsisSouth Africa's post-apartheid narrative is one of democracy and equality - but its flaws run deep, argues Ives S. Loukson. Disclosing prejudices about whiteness, homosexuality and democracy in the "staged society", he claims the concept of relation as an adequate framework for the embodiment of "profane democracy" understood in Agambian terms. Its fluidity is equated to openness and transparency that are relevant dimensions for profane democracy. A demonstration of literary criticism practiced as a fecund interdisciplinary activity, Loukson's study lays the foundation for post-apartheid criticism different from post-colonial criticism.
£41.99
Transcript Verlag Laboring Bodies and the Quantified Self
Book SynopsisThe body has become central to practices of self-tracking. By focusing on the relations between quantification, the body, and labor, this volume sheds light on the ways in which discourses on data collection and versions of the "corporate self" are instrumental in redefining concepts of labor, including notions of immaterial and free labor in an increasingly virtual work environment. The contributions explore the functions of quantification in conceptualizing the body as a laboring body and examine how quantification contributes to disciplining the body. By doing so, they also inquire how practices of self-tracking, self-monitoring, and self-optimization have evolved historically.Table of ContentsIntroduction: Laboring Bodies and the Quantified Self; Command and Control: The Quantified Self and Biomedical Transhumanism; Reconsidering Agency and Choice: The Office, the Wall, and the Tax Code (Herman Melville, "Bartleby" and David Foster Wallace, The Pale King); "To Be Reckoned in the Gross": Corporate Storytelling and Quantified Selves in Joshua Ferris's Then We Came to the End; Racialized Self-Improvement: Advice in Black and White Self-Help of the Interwar Years; The Solipsism of the Quantified Self: Working Bodies in David Foster Wallace's Body of Work; Reading Chick Lit through Numbers: Postfeminist Self-Quantification in Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary and Karyn Bosnak's What's Your Number?; "I Track my Cycle Religiously": Representations of Fertility Tracking and Childlessness in Contemporary Graphic Memoirs; Compulsive Self-Tracking: When Quantifying the Body Becomes an Addiction; The Portable Peoplemeter Initiative: Wearable Sensor Technologies and Embodied Labor; Instant Nerve-Ana: Biofeedback as Quantified Self Avant la Lettre; Contributors.
£35.99
Transcript Verlag Subjects of Substance – Recent American
Book SynopsisRecent U.S. literature has both been informed by, and critically engaged with, materialist conceptions of selfhood. Over the past decades, disciplines like neuroscience and evolutionary biology have increasingly recast the human self as a malleable construct produced by physiological processes. In a parallel development, literary authors have created their own conceptions of somatic subjectivity in conjunction or contrast with scientific and medical discourses. Subjects of Substance examines the forms, functions, and effects of materialist models of mind in selected memoirs and novels. Authors discussed include Michael W. Clune, Don DeLillo, Kay Redfield Jamison, Siri Hustvedt, Richard Powers, Elyn R. Saks, and David Foster Wallace.Table of ContentsIntroduction: Materialist Minds; Key Terms and Concepts; "My wayward brain": Cerebral Subjectivity and Narrative Identity in the Neuro-Memoir; "Just some kind of nerve impulse in the brain": Substances and Subjects in the Novels of Don DeLillo; Between Agency and Automatism: David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest; Neural Narrative: Richard Powers's Galatea 2.2 and The Echo Maker; Conclusion; Works Cited.
£35.99
Transcript Verlag andererseits – Yearbook of Transatlantic German –
Book Synopsisandererseits seeks to provide a forum for unique and exciting research and reflections on topics related to the German-speaking world and the field of German Studies. Works presented in the publication come from a wide variety of genres including book reviews, poetry, essays, editorials, forum discussions, academic notes, lectures, and traditional peer-reviewed academic articles. In addition, contributions by journalists, librarians, archivists, and other commentators interested in German Studies broadly conceived. By publishing such a diverse array of material, we hope to demonstrate the extraordinary value of the humanities in general, and German Studies in particular, on a variety of intellectual and cultural levels.Contributors to this volume: Yvonne Delhey, Andreas Erb, Bernhard Fischer, Rüdiger Görner, Spencer Hawkins, Steffen Kaup, Selim Özdogan, Hugh Ridley, Gertrud Maria Rösch, Peter Stamm, Wim Wenders, and others.
£35.99
Transcript Verlag Are We Comparing Yet? – On Standards, Justice,
Book SynopsisDebates about the possibility of an open culture - or indeed about the possibility of an open debate about the openness of culture - often turn on questions of standards. But since no benchmark can be absolute, judgement is a proliferation of comparisons. Through a series of case studies in everyday and academic comparison (literature, history, politics, philosophy), Haun Saussy calls out the typical vices of comparison and proposes ways to unseat them. For however much it is abused, distorted, and manipulated, comparison retains an essential link to the idea of justice.Table of ContentsThe Problem; The Unique, the Comparative and the Competitive; Reckoning with the Other; The Family of Comparisons; The Elasticity of Substitution; Negative Privilege; Birds of a Feather; Noli me tangere; Near and Far; A Museum Without Walls for Walls Without a Museum; Making Room; Envoi; Acknowledgments.
£20.69
Transcript Verlag Cultures of Economy in South-Eastern Europe:
Book SynopsisThe ubiquitous "cultural turn" of the 1990s did not spare the thinkers of economics - however, at the same time, economic topics have gained a new importance in cultural studies. This volume focuses on cultures of economy in regions of former Yugoslavia as part of South-Eastern Europe, supported by theoretical perspectives. It examines narratives and poetics of economy in literature, film, and art, as well as in public discourse. The contributors spotlight different historical periods: the late 19th and the early 20th centuries, Socialist Yugoslavia and the transitional and neoliberal period since the 1990s.
£999.99
Transcript Verlag Bouncing Back – Queer Resilience in Twentieth–
Book SynopsisLGBTQ people have strategies of resilience at their disposal to help them deal with the challenge that heteronormativity as a power structure poses to their affective lives. This book makes the concept of resilience available to queer literary and cultural studies, analysing these strategies in terms of narration, performance, bodies, and space. Resilience turns out to be a highly interactive mode of being in the world, which can set free creative energy as well as draw inspiration and energy from artistic work. Authors and artists discussed include Katherine Mansfield, Christopher Isherwood, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Jeanette Winterson, Michael Cunningham, and Ian McKellen.Trade Review"Bouncing Back' will be of great interest to queer scholars, with many ideas that can inform further research on LGBTIQ+ literature and cultural studies." -- Noah Riseman, Anglistik, 31/1 (2020), translated from German
£35.99
Transcript Verlag Family in Crisis? – Crossing Borders, Crossing
Book SynopsisIs the family in crisis? Or do crises crystallize in families' lived realities? Families as constitutive units of all social architectures are central to our democracies. In this book, scholars from cultural, gender, and media studies, lawyers, sociologists, and historians discuss how today's rainbow variety of families crosses borders and how cultural texts - films, TV-series, novels, short stories and magazines, from Europe (Germany, Italy, Spain) and the US - (de-)construct, take part in, and mirror family discourses around topics such as father(hood)s, mother(hood)s and parentage, reproductive decisions and adoption, marriage and divorce, poverty and welfare, and the rhetoric of the nuclear family.
£35.99
Transcript Verlag Savage Horrors – The Intrinsic Raciality of the
Book SynopsisThe American Gothic novel has been deeply shaped by issues of race and raciality from its origins in British Romanticism to the American Gothic novel in the twenty-first century. Savage Horrors delineates an intrinsic raciality that is discursively sedimented in the Gothic's uniquely binary structure. Corinna Lenhardt uncovers the destructive and lasting impact of the Gothic's anti-Black racism on the cultural discourses in the United States. At the same time, Savage Horrors traces the unflinching Black resistance back to the Gothic's intrinsic raciality. The African American Gothic, however, does not originate there but in the Black Atlantic - roughly a decade before the first Gothic novel was ever written on American soil.
£40.00
Transcript Verlag Practices of Comparing – Towards a New
Book SynopsisPractices of comparing shape how we perceive, organize, and change the world. Supposedly innocent, practices of comparing play a decisive role in forming categories, boundaries, and hierarchies; but they can also give an impetus to question and change such structures. Like almost no other human practice, comparing pervades all social, political, economic, and cultural spheres. This volume outlines the program of a new research agenda that places comparative practices at the center of an interdisciplinary exploration. Its contributions combine case studies with overarching systematic considerations. They show what insights can be gained and which further questions arise when one makes a seemingly trivial practice - comparing - the subject of in-depth research.
£35.19
Transcript Verlag Home/Fronts – Contemporary War in British
Book SynopsisIn recent years, the US-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq have had an impact on the UK rivalled only by Brexit and the global financial crisis. For people at home, the wars were ever-present in the media yet remained distant and difficult to apprehend. Janina Wierzoch offers an analytical survey of British contemporary war narratives in novels, drama, film, and television that seek to make sense of the experience. The study shows how the narratives, instead of reflecting on the UK`s role as invader, portray war as invading the British home. Home loses its post-Cold War sense of "permanent peace" and is recast as a home/front where war once again becomes part of what it means to be "us".
£40.00
Transcript Verlag From Post–Yugoslavia to Female Continent –
Book SynopsisThis study of contemporary literature from the former Yugoslavia (Post-Yugoslavia) follows the ways in which the feminist writing of gender, body, sexuality, and social and cultural hierarchies brings to light the past of socialist Yugoslavia, its cultural and literary itineraries and its dissolution in the Yugoslav wars. The analysis also focuses on the particularities of different feminist writings, together with their picturing of possible futures. The title of the book suggests an attempt to interpret post-Yugoslav literature as feminist writing, but also a process of conceptualizing a post-Yugoslav literary field, in this study represented by contemporary fiction from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, and Serbia.Trade Review"A book full of detailed descriptions and analyses that are highly relevant to how post-Yugoslavia deals with the future. An insightful read for people who are not interested in easy and ready-made answers." Jasen Philipps, www.kritisch-lesen.de, 13.04.2021, translated from German
£62.39
Transcript Verlag Female Identities in Lesbian Web Series –
Book SynopsisLesbian Web Series narrate female-centred stories, strengthen identity construction, and generate transnational communities beyond cultural barriers. Julia Obermayr explores the first definition of a new format, the first representations of lesbian women in US-American, Canadian, and Spanish web series from 2007 and onward, as well as their reciprocal effects regarding identity construction and community building of their transnational, mainly female, audience.The analyzed corpus comprises scenes taken from Venice the Series (2009) and its backstory "Otalia" on the soap opera Guiding Light (1952-2009), Seeking Simone (2009), Out With Dad (2010), Féminin/ Féminin (2014), Chica Busca Chica (2007) and its cinematic sequel De Chica En Chica (2015), as well as Notas Aparte (2016).Table of ContentsPreface; Introduction; Questions of Methodology; Lesbian Identities; Lesbian Web Series: The Medium; The Lesbian Code; Approaching Female Identities in Lesbian Web Series within Anglo-, Hispano-, and Francophone Contexts; Effects of Lesbian Web Series on their Audiences; Conclusion; Abbreviations; Table of Figures; References.
£44.79
Transcript Verlag The Poetics and Politics of Invective Humor:
Book SynopsisVituperation, disparagement, and debasement seem to have become part of the mainstream discourse in contemporary US-American media culture. Zooming in on a distinct televisual comedy genre, Katja Schulze explores the formal principles, media-specific realizations, and the cultural work of disparagement in contemporary female-led situation comedies. Subsequently, larger patterns of (gender-based) invective strategies and conventions that define the dynamism of this comedic genre come into view. Her study outlines case studies of popular sitcoms, like Parks and Recreation, Mike & Molly, and the revival of hit-sitcom Roseanne, thereby unearthing how the shows are able to stage humor as mass-mediated deprecation - a signifying practice with its own poetics and politics.
£38.99
Transcript Verlag Reading Race Relationally: Embodied Dispositions
Book SynopsisWhat does it mean to write African American literature after the end of legalized segregation? In this study of Colson Whitehead's first six novels, Marlon Lieber argues that this question has permeated the Pulitzer Prize-winning author's writing since his 1999 debut ?The Intuitionist?. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu's relational sociology and Marxist critical theory, Lieber shows that Whitehead's oeuvre articulates the tension between the persistent presence of racism and transformations in the United States' class structure, which reveals new modes of abjection. At the same time, Whitehead imagines forms of writing that strive to transcend the histories of domination objectified in social structures and embodied in the form of habitus.
£40.00
Transcript Verlag Reading »Atmosfears«: The Uncanny Climate of
Book SynopsisWe live in a critical moment in history, often called the ?Anthropocene?, that is defined by unprecedented scales of uncertainty. Natalie Dederichs draws on insights from the new materialisms about the entangled nature of planetary existence and combines them with approaches to aesthetics from fields as diverse as reader-response criticism, phenomenology, Gothic and media studies. She introduces a poetics of atmospheric re(lation)ality as a necessary component of any ecological engagement with fiction that fully embraces literary encounters with the inaccessible and elusive as expressed in uncanny atmospheric reading experiences.
£39.99
ibidem-Verlag, Jessica Haunschild u Christian Schon Holocaust in the Central European Literatures &
Book SynopsisText in English & German. This volume assembles 22 English and German contributions dealing with the literature and culture of the Holocaust in the years since 1989 thereby focussing on Poland, the Czech Republic and Germany. It becomes apparent from these essays that the Nazi genocide continues to be a pivotal issue in literature, theatre and film even at the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century. Included are overviews of the literary and cultural developments of the last decades, comparative studies and numerous analyses of the works of individual authors of the older as well as the middle and younger generation. Among the authors whose works are discussed are R. Klüger, R Ligocka, L Weliczker, A Bart, M Bienczyk, M Tulli, Z Rudzka, O B Kraus, M Uhde, A Goldflam, J Topol, I Dousková, R Denemarková and H Andronikova. The growing use of provocative and taboo-breaking forms of expression turns out to be an important instrument in keeping the memory of the horrible events alive in the collective memory.
£28.04
ibidem-Verlag, Jessica Haunschild u Christian Schon Magical Realism in Postcolonial British Fiction:
Book SynopsisThis study aims at delineating the cultural work of magical realism as a dominant narrative mode in postcolonial British fiction through a detailed analysis of four magical realist novels: Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children (1981), Shashi Tharoor's The Great Indian Novel (1989), Ben Okri's The Famished Road (1991), and Syl Cheney-Coker's The Last Harmattan of Alusine Dunbar (1990). The main focus of attention lies on the ways in which the novelists in question have exploited the potentials of magical realism to represent their hybrid cultural and national identities. To provide the necessary historical context for the discussion, the author first traces the development of magical realism from its origins in European Painting to its appropriation into literature by European and Latin American writers and explores the contested definitions of magical realism and the critical questions surrounding them. He then proceeds to analyze the relationship between the paradigmatic turn that took place in postcolonial literatures in the 1980s and the concomitant rise of magical realism as the literary expression of Third World countries. .
£22.39
ibidem-Verlag, Jessica Haunschild u Christian Schon Dynamics of Distancing in Nigerian Drama: A
Book SynopsisNadia Anwar presents a compelling reading framework for the study and analysis of selected post-independence Nigerian dramas, using the conceptual parameters of metatheatre, a theatrical strategy which foregrounds the process of play-making by breaking the dramatic illusion. She argues that distancing, as a function of metatheatre, creates a balanced theatrical experience and environment in terms of the emotive and cognitive levels of reception of a particular performance. Anwar's book is the first in-depth study of the concept of metatheatre with reference to Nigerian drama including Wole Soyinka's Death and the King's Horseman (1975) and King Baabu (2002), Ola Rotimi's Kurunmi (1971) and Hopes of the Living Dead (1988), Femi Osofisan's The Chattering and the Song (1977) and Women of Owu (2006), Esiaba Irobi's Hangmen Also Die (1989), and Stella 'Dia Oyedepo's A Play That Was Never to Be (1998). The perspectives of Bertolt Brecht (1936), Thomas J Scheff (1963), and other theoreticians of dramatic distancing and metatheatre are used in the analyses and, where required, challenged through appropriate contextual and theoretical adjustments. The book is the first attempt to illustrate how Brechtian approach to the display and generation of emotions can be revised through Scheff's model of emotional balance.Trade Review"I can attest, with unflinching confidence, that Anwar's work is the most thorough, imaginative, fresh and exhaustive new scholarly work on post-independence Nigerian drama in the present. What makes the book so powerful is its scholarly rigor." -- Dr Victor Ukaegbu, Department of Performing Arts and English, University of Bedfordshire"A hugely profound contribution to Nigerian, indeed African, theatre scholarship. A clear strength of this book is the variety of Nigerian plays used as case studies, as well as Anwar's methodical examination of an area of study that is acutely underrepresented in African theatre scholarship.[] a significant and much valued contribution to African theatre and performance scholarship [] a must read for anyone interested in Nigerian drama []." -- Dr Sam Kasule, Professor of Post-Colonial Theatre and Performance, University of Derby
£22.09
ibidem-Verlag, Jessica Haunschild u Christian Schon Recognition & Ethics in World Literature:
Book SynopsisThis is a critical comparative study of contemporary world literature, focused on the importance of the ethical turn (or return) in literary theory. It considers the shape and development of the ethical engagement of the novels of Amitav Ghosh, Chimamanda Adichie, Caryl Phillips, Kazuo Ishiguro, Zadie Smith, and JM Coetzee, exploring the overlaps and divergences between Levinasian/Derridean and Aristotelian ethics as they are brought to bear on literature. The characters' recognitions and emotional responses in these texts are integral to the unfolding of their ethical concerns, and the ethics thus explored is often marked by the complexity and impurity characteristic of the tragic. A view of recognition is advanced that shifts it from the more usual political understanding in the field towards seeing it as a formal device used to unfold an ethical knowledge peculiar to fictional narrative, and particularly suitable for the concerns of world literature authors in its interconnection of the universal and the particular -- a binary that has been crucial in post-colonialism and remains important for the wider field of world literature. The analysis unfolds with a focus on three broad ethical themes -- religion, the memory of violence, and the human-eliciting the novelists' contributions to these debates through the investigation of the functioning of moments of recognition in their novels.Trade Review"Insightful makes a vital contribution to a theoretical debate that urgently requires to be kept alive in our turbulent times. This is an important book that places the ethical in a critical relation to World Literature." -- Premesh Lalu, Professor, Director, Centre for Humanities Research, Faculty of Arts, University of the Western Cape
£23.99
ibidem-Verlag, Jessica Haunschild u Christian Schon From New National to World Literature: Essays &
Book SynopsisFrom New National to World English Literature offers a personal perspective on the evolution of a major cultural movement that began with decolonisation, continued with the assertion of African, West Indian, Commonwealth, and other literatures, and has evolved through postcolonial to world or international English literature. Bruce King's extensive Introduction discusses the personalities, writers, issues, and contexts of what he considers the most important change in culture since Modernism. The Introduction also explains the forty-five essays and reviews he has selected from his publications to illustrate the development, stages, and major national literatures, authors, and themes. Special attention is given to Nigerian, West Indian, Australian, Indian, and Pakistani literature. Topics and issues include: "Derry" Jeffares organising Commonwealth and Anglo-Irish studies, the emergence and aesthetics of African literature, the question of the existence of a "Nigerian literature", the place of the new universities in decolonising culture, the influence of the Rockefeller Foundation, the contrasting models of American and Irish literatures, ethnicity as response , the changing nature of exile and diasporas, the role of Jewish writers, minorities, Muslim objections to free speech, The Satanic Verses controversy, traditionalism versus modernism, the dangers of cultural assertion, and the relationships between nationalism and internationalism. Authors discussed include Chinua Achebe, Ahmed Ali, Margaret Atwood, David Dabydeen, K N Daruwalla, Nissim Ezekiel, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Almagir Hashmi, Attia Hosain, A D Hope, Adil Jussawalla, Arun Kolatkar, Hanif Kureishi, Dom Moraes, Frank Moorhouse, V S Naipaul, Abioseh Nicol, Gabriel Okara, Mike Phillips, Mordechai Richler, Salman Rushdie, Wole Soyinka, Garth St Omer, Kamila Shamsie, Randolph Stow, Jeet Thayil, and Derek Walcott.Trade Review"[Bruce King's] critical gaze, never fashionable, always up close and engaged, can be so penetrating of the text and illuminating of context that all writers wish that gaze were turned more often on their works. His collection of essays, wide ranging and present at the inception of all the important currents in post-colonial thought, is a cause for celebration." -- Fred D'Aguiar, University of California"Impressive in range, scope and insight, these articles are still on the cutting edge of criticism. This collection of essays is a must-read for anyone interested in World English literatures. By mapping the genealogy of a developing body of literature and of its corresponding critical field in the making, it also represents an invaluable contribution to literary history." -- Laetitia Zecchini, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Sciences Humaines, Paris"This is a pioneering book of essays. Dr King could well be the Dr Livingstone of World English Literature." -- Arvind Krishna Mehrotra
£60.74
ibidem-Verlag, Jessica Haunschild u Christian Schon Pop Beckett – Intersections with Popular Culture
Book SynopsisWhen Samuel Becketts work first appeared, it was routinely described, by Adorno amongst others, as a clear example of European high culture. However, this judgement ignored an aspect of Becketts work and its reception that is, arguably, not yet fully understood; the intimate relation between his work and popular culture. Beckett used popular cultural forms; but popular culture has also found a place both for the work and for the man. This collection of essays examines how popular cultural forms and media are woven into the fabric of Becketts works, and how Beckett continues to have far-reaching impact on popular culture today in a host of different forms, in film and on television, from comics to meme culture, tourism to marketing.
£36.00
ibidem-Verlag, Jessica Haunschild u Christian Schon Janet Frame′s World of Books
Book SynopsisThis study investigates how Janet Frame weaves together literary sources from her extensive reading to create a web of intertextual relationships. Patricia Neville traces Frames passion for books beginning with her childhood and earliest published work in the Otago Daily Times. Drawing on new research and through close readings of Frames novels, she discusses the effects of Frames borrowings from the Bible and Shakespeare and from writing from New Zealand, Britain, France, and the USA. A fascinating read not only for scholars, but for all admirers of Janet Frames fiction.
£28.80
ibidem-Verlag, Jessica Haunschild u Christian Schon The Rhetoric of Women′s Humour in Barbara Pym′s
Book SynopsisIn this study of three of Barbara Pyms novels, Naghmeh Varghaiyan, drawing on examinations of womens humour by Eileen Gillooly, Regina Barreca, and others, shows how the humorous female discourse in Some Tame Gazelle, Excellent Women, and Jane and Prudence undermines patriarchal culture and subverts both female and male stereotypes such as that of the spinster and of the Byronic hero. Varghaiyan reveals how the rhetoric of womens humour enables Pyms female characters to survive in the patriarchal culture and to unsettle it.Trade Review"A significant contribution to Pym scholarship, an important and insightful study." Orna Raz, Hebrew University of JerusalemTable of ContentsIntroduction; Characteristics of Womens Humour; Some Tame Gazelle: Construction of Womens Veiled Humour; Excellent Women: Humour of Mildred Regarded as an Excellent Woman; Jane and Prudence: Unconventional Wife and Satisfied Spinster; Conclusion.
£27.00
ibidem-Verlag, Jessica Haunschild u Christian Schon Creative Lives – Interviews with Contemporary
Book SynopsisSouth Asian Diasporic Writing -- poetry, fiction literary theory, and drama by writers from India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka now living in the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the USA -- is one of the most vibrant areas of contemporary world literature. In this volume, twelve acclaimed writers from this tradition are interviewed by experts in the field about their political, thematic, and personal concerns as well as their working methods and the publishing scene. The book also includes an authoritative introduction to the field, and essays on each writer and interviewer. The interviewers and interviewees are: Alexandra Watkins, Michelle de Kretser, Homi Bhabha, Klaus Stierstorfer, Amit Chaudhuri, Pavan Malreddy, Rukhsana Ahmad, Maryam Mirza, Shankari Chandran, Birte Heidemann, Neel Mukherjee, Anjali Joseph, Chris Ringrose, Michelle Cahill, Rajith Savanadasa, Mariam Pirbhai, Maryam Mirza, Mridula Koshy, Sehba Sarwar, Dr Angela Savage, Sulari Gentill.Trade Review"This is an immensely valuable collection of theoretical, political, and personal reflection. Brimming with critical insight, the conversations articulate a richly textured transnational/diasporic sensibility. Highly recommended." -- Avtar Brah, Professor Emerita, Birkbeck College, University of London; Author of Cartographies of Diaspora, Contesting Identities
£25.50
ibidem-Verlag, Jessica Haunschild u Christian Schon Children of Prometheus: Romanticism and Its Lega
Book SynopsisGregory Maertz has written extensively on Romantic and Modern literature, art, and ideas. In these nine related essays, he investigates the expression of Romanticism in literature, philosophy, and cultural politics from the Renaissance to Modernism. The comparative essays in Part One examine the affinity between the religious logic of Sir Thomas Browne and Søren Kierkegaard; Tolstoys enduring attraction to Schopenhauers thought; Rilkes debts to the sculptor Rodin; the identification of an early novel by William Godwin as the chief precursor text to Mary Shelleys Frankenstein; and the corresponding literary projects of Osip Mandelstam, Rilke, and David Jones. In Part Two the essays are clustered around the literary activity of writers and philosophers associated with radicalism in Britain and transcendentalism in America: a reconsideration of the life of William Godwin; the central role played by English radicals in the transmission of German literature; Godwins innovations in travel fiction; and the crystallization of authorial identity around the influence of Goethe in the work of women writers such as Mary Wollstonecraft, Margaret Fuller, and George Eliot.
£24.30
ibidem-Verlag, Jessica Haunschild u Christian Schon The Human Flow. An Adventure Story: Uncovering
Book SynopsisLooking for a gripping and thought-provoking read? Look no further than this captivating book about two journalists, a Tanzanian, Agnes and Jon, an Englishman, who embark on a dangerous journey to report on the trafficking of West African migrants. As they travel from Senegal and Mali through Mauritania, Morocco, Spain, France and eventually to England, Agnes and Jon encounter heart-wrenching tales of hardship and loss. But their own lives are also at risk, as Agnes is kidnapped by traffickers and Jon sets out to rescue her. Along the way, they meet Ana, a journalist from Spain, and later a daring romance develops involving the three of them. Their journey takes them to the slums of Paris and London, where they inspire the BBC to film their story. But their quest for truth comes at a high price, as they are captured by a guerrilla movement in Morocco and ultimately meet a disastrous end in Libya. This fast-paced and gripping story sheds light on the harsh realities of trafficking and the bravery of journalists who risk everything to uncover the truth. Full of danger, excitement, and humanity, this is a book you won't be able to put down.
£23.40
V&R unipress GmbH Archaeologies of Visual Culture: Gazes, Optical
Book SynopsisA redefinition of the boundaries of art history and literary history
£47.69
V&R unipress GmbH Dynamics of Desacralization: Disenchanted
Book SynopsisThe idea of desacralization has become almost commonplace, attributing to the word the rejection of what is sacred. One might think that it is strictly connected to theology and its system, or suppose that it implies the relationship human beings have with anything that can express a denial of the spiritual part of life. The concept of desacralization has numerous meanings, either from a philosophical or a literary viewpoint. The scholars'' investigation of Dynamics of Desacralization has made this collection of essays rich and varied, revealing new worlds the different authors have created. What they do is to narrate various types of desacralization interrogating the nature of novels, poems or works of art; certain aspects of being are revealed through various expressions, engaging the multiple levels and the meaning of desacralization providing an articulation and interpretation of it.
£31.82
V&R unipress GmbH Romantik 2019: Journal for the Study of
Book SynopsisThe study of romantic modes of thought
£21.59
V&R unipress GmbH Rebuilding the Profession: Comparative
Book SynopsisHow has the discipline of Comparative Literature developed in the last two decades? In what way does it differ from the recent configurations of literary studies?
£38.69
V&R unipress GmbH Ambiguity in Charlotte Brontë's Villette
Book SynopsisâœI know notâ â an analysis of the stylistic idiosyncrasies in Villette
£43.19
V&R unipress GmbH Translation and Interpretation: Practicing the
Book SynopsisA Volume in Honor of Angela Locatelli
£41.39
