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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewThomas H. Johnson and the Belknap Press of the Harvard University Press have brought out in three big volumes, noted, chronologically arranged, and accurate to the last variant, misspelling, and grammatical error, The Poems of Emily Dickinson… This is, truly, a marvelous book: the reader finishes speechless, and laughing, and shaking his head in helpless wonder… All the absolutes and intensives and eccentricities of an absolutely intense eccentric have passed over him like a train of avalanches, and left him a couple of hundred feet deep in Knowledge… [Dickinson’s] poetry is the diary or autobiography—though few diaries or autobiographies compare with it for intentional and, especially, unintentional truth—of an acute psychologist, a wonderful rhetorician, and one of the most individual writers who ever lived, one of those best able to express experience at its most nearly absolute. -- Randall Jarrell * Harper’s *A scholarly miracle… [This work], in three volumes, includes ‘variant readings critically compared with all known manuscripts’… [The editor] has brought sympathy and insight to bear in an illuminating way on several major Dickinsonian enigmas… The work comprises seventeen hundred and seventy-five poems, of which forty-one are known to be unpublished, in whole or in part. * New Yorker *The appearance of Thomas H. Johnson’s three-volume compilation of ‘The Poems of Emily Dickinson,’ the first authentic and really Complete Poems, is a major publishing event. A carefully collated and scholarly text has been awaited, demanded, and needed for years. The present publication is a cumulative response to that demand. It is far more than an important revision; it is a rediscovery. -- Louis Untermeyer * Saturday Review *

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Awards, Criticism Category""A New Yorker Best Book We've Read This Year""A Seminary Co-Op Notable Book of the Year""Dames considers the nature of the chapter, a subjective division that nonetheless organizes our understanding of life and literature. . . . For Dames, form begets function—and neither is above scrutiny." * New Yorker *"Dames shows exactly why chapters are worth our attention. . . . A pleasing investigation." * Kirkus Reviews *"[Dames] transforms the chapter into an extraordinarily revealing object of both literary analysis and cultural history. . . . Although Dames doesn’t claim to have written a comprehensive history of the chapter in every kind of book, one can hardly imagine a fuller record of the tradition that led to their use in the modern novel. . . . One comes away from The Chapter with a new appreciation for the technical challenges of long fictions."---Catherine Gallagher, Chronicle of Higher Education"This fascinating study causes the reader to reflect on narrative sequences in time, and on the flow of time in reading and life." * Paradigm Explorer *

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the Year""Winner of the McKay Award, Vergilian Society""Thoroughly researched. . . . Highly recommended." * Choice Reviews *"A highly engaging, well-written, and thought-provoking take on the Aeneid, which will become an indispensable guide both to Virgil’s text and to the long and rich tradition of scholarship on the poem."---Anke Walter, Greece and Rome"Juno’s Aeneid is a landmark work that should be essential reading on Vergil’s relation to Homer.—Tedd A. Wimperis, Classical Journal"

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

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Book SynopsisA groundbreaking new history of urban cruising through the lenses of urban poets The Poetics of Cruising explores the relationship between cruising, photography, and the visual in the work of leading poets, from Walt Whitman in the nineteenth century to Eileen Myles in the twenty-first. What is it that happens, asks Jack Parlett, and what is it that is sought, in this often transient moment of perception we call cruising, this perceptual arena where acts of looking between strangers are intensified and eroticized? Parlett believes that this moment is not only optical in nature but visual: a mode of looking that warrants comparison with the ways in which we behold still and moving images. Whether it’s Whitman’s fixation with daguerreotypes, Langston Hughes’s hybrid photographic works, or Frank O’Hara’s love of Hollywood movie stars, argues Parlett, the history of poets cruising abounds with this intermingling between the verbal and the visual, the passing and the fixed. To look at someone in the act of cruising, this history suggests, is to capture, consider, and aestheticize, amid the flux and instantaneity of urban time. But it is also to reveal the ambivalence at the heart of this erotic search, where power may be unevenly distributed across glances, and gendered and racialized bodies are marked. Thus, in identifying for the first time this confluence of cruising, poetry, and visual culture, Parlett concludes that the visual erotic economy associated with gay cruising today, exemplified by the photographic grid of an app like Grindr, is not a uniquely contemporary phenomenon. Innovative, astute, and highly readable, and drawing on compelling archival material, The Poetics of Cruising is a must for scholars of queer and LGBTQ literature and culture, modern and contemporary poetry, visual studies, and the history of sexuality.Trade Review"The Poetics of Cruising is a thoughtfully researched and rigorous examination of the literary pleasures of sex in public across two centuries. Jack Parlett examines the poetics and politics of cruising, a queerly ekphrastic practice, at the intersections of gender, race, and class. Moving between past and present, words and images, close reading and close looking, The Poetics of Cruising explores the enduring appeal of cruising without nostalgia."—Fiona Anderson, author of Cruising the Dead River: David Wojnarowicz and New York’s Ruined Waterfront"The Poetics of Cruising is an innovative, astute, and highly readable account of the intersections of gay life, visuality, and poetics in the work of important gay writers from Walt Whitman to David Wojnarowicz. Analyzing unpublished materials alongside literary texts, The Poetics of Cruising—a model of how to combine history, theory, and close reading—is a fascinating and beautifully written account of cruising as a practice, aesthetic, and methodology."—Christopher Castiglia, Pennsylvania State UniversityTable of ContentsIntroduction: A Look1. Passing Strangers2. Walt Whitman, Looking at You3. Looking for Langston Hughes4. Frank O’Hara’s Moving Pictures5. David Wojnarowicz’s PortraitsCoda: A ClickAcknowledgmentsNotesIndex

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Book SynopsisIn this illuminating dialogue, the authors who gave us James Bond and Jules Maigret discuss (among other things) their approaches to the craft of writing, the origins of their characters' names, and the critical reception of their novels

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Book SynopsisA follow-up publication to the Handbook of Medieval Studies, this new reference work turns to a different focus: medieval culture. Medieval research has grown tremendously in depth and breadth over the last decades. Particularly our understanding of medieval culture, of the basic living conditions, and the specific value system prevalent at that time has considerably expanded, to a point where we are in danger of no longer seeing the proverbial forest for the trees. The present, innovative handbook offers compact articles on essential topics, ideals, specific knowledge, and concepts defining the medieval world as comprehensively as possible. The topics covered in this new handbook pertain to issues such as love and marriage, belief in God, hell, and the devil, education, lordship and servitude, Christianity versus Judaism and Islam, health, medicine, the rural world, the rise of the urban class, travel, roads and bridges, entertainment, games, and sport activities, numbers, measuring, the education system, the papacy, saints, the senses, death, and money.

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the Year""[A] beautiful book. . . . An exquisite work of art in its own right. . . . [The Tale of Genji] is a fascinating way to immerse oneself not only in Genji’s world but also in the refined culture of 16th-century Japan, through both words and pictures."---Lesley Downer, Literary Review"Written in the 11th century by the Japanese noblewoman Murasaki Shikibu, The Tale of Genji is a masterpiece of prose and poetry that is widely considered the world’s first novel. This stunning compendium combines discussions of all 54 of its chapters with paintings and calligraphy from the Genji Album (1510) in the Harvard Art Museums, the oldest dated set of Genji illustrations known to exist, here fully reproduced for the first time. English and Japanese transcriptions of the album’s calligraphy are included." * Publishers Weekly *"[Tale of Genji: A Visual Companion] serves equally well as a thorough introduction to a work of great literary and art-historical importance, and a deep dive into the book’s cultural and narrative subtleties for those who are already students of The Tale of Genji. . . . McCormick’s elucidation of the sprawling, dramatic, and beautiful Tale of Genji makes this book an educational experience for those of us without access to a Harvard survey course on the subject." * Hyperallergic *"McCormick here provides a condensed version of the novel ….[Her] commentary provides not only synopses of the corresponding chapters in the original novel, but also an interpretation of the album’s calligraphy, which often includes some symbolic meaning….McCormick also analyses the paintings, all of which are phenomenal works of art."---Claire Kohda Hazelton, Times Literary Supplement

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Book SynopsisWinner, 2021 Gloria E. Anzaldúa Book Prize, given by the National Women''s Studies AssociationWinner, 2021 Harry Levin Prize, given by the American Comparative Literature AssociationWinner, 2021 Lambda Literary Award in LGBTQ StudiesArgues that Blackness disrupts our essential ideas of race, gender, and, ultimately, the humanRewriting the pernicious, enduring relationship between Blackness and animality in the history of Western science and philosophy, Becoming Human: Matter and Meaning in an Antiblack World breaks open the rancorous debate between Black critical theory and posthumanism. Through the cultural terrain of literature by Toni Morrison, Nalo Hopkinson, Audre Lorde, and Octavia Butler, the art of Wangechi Mutu and Ezrom Legae, and the oratory of Frederick Douglass, Zakiyyah Iman Jackson both critiques and displaces the racial logic that has dominated scientific thought since the EnlighteTrade ReviewThis is a demanding, complex, and highly significant contribution to the literature on the nature of the moral and philosophical distinctions between human and nonhuman creatures...The implications for theological anthropology are, undoubtedly, shattering. * Literature and Theology *Within Western philosophy, Zakiyyah Iman Jackson shows, Black people historically have been 'animalized.' In examining these limitations of Western philosophy, Becoming Human shows that the fundamental idea of 'humanity' that has gained widespread credence in the West is flawed … Jackson makes an intervention by firmly placing Black literary and visual culture into philosophy. * Public Books *Jackson’s scholarship has been critical to my recent curatorial work. This groundbreaking book considers how Blackness can coincide with notions of the nonhuman and animality through imaginative and emancipatory modes of being, invoking a future that breaches contemporary ideas of humanism through thoughtful research and cultural references that center Black women as a site of origin. * Artforum, "Best of 2021" *Rewriting the pernicious, enduring relationship between Blackness and animality in the history of Western science and philosophy, Becoming Human: Matter and Meaning in an Antiblack World breaks open the rancorous debate between Black critical theory and posthumanism [...] What emerges is a radically unruly sense of a being, knowing, feeling existence: one that necessarily ruptures the foundations of 'the human. * Black Perspectives *Jackson states that real change will require “revolutionizing” the human body, and her prescription for freeing oneself from the limitations of gender and species requires the same “plasticity" by which Blackness and anti-Blackness continue to be defined. * CHOICE *The book presents a compelling argument and offers worthwhile suggestions. I will certainly have my undergraduates wrestle with some of this material in upcoming semesters. * Religions Journal *The sheer beauty, force, and ingenuity of Zakiyyah Iman Jackson's aesthetic strategies and gestures are on display as she performs the very risks and rewards she conjures. Offering a brilliant intervention into questions of the human, each of Jackson’s readings profoundly unsettle our presumed relations and prevailing ontologies. She reads western philosophy and science through African diasporic literatures, theories, and visual art to open us up to what is made—what might be made—in excess of the matrix of antiblackness and its constitutive forms of the human, animal, gender, and matter. In the book’s range of knowledges, reach, and scope, no field nor discipline would not benefit from a real and sustained engagement with the work that Jackson undertakes here. -- Christina Sharpe, author of In the WakeBrilliantly reframes the relation between blackened life and the category of the human, by shifting the terms of the debate. She maintains that neither dehumanization nor exclusion are sufficient to explain antiblackness and its descending scale of life. In so doing, Jackson's ‘ontological plasticity’ reveals the controlled depletion that produces the liquidity of life and fleshly existence, and enables blackened life to be anything, which is also to say nothing at all. Jackson’s rigorous and sustained meditation is relentless in exploring the possibilities for a generative disordering of being, inhabiting other senses of the world, and imagining the field of relation in ceaseless flux and directionless becoming. -- Saidiya Hartman, author of Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments

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Book SynopsisDiscover everything you ever wanted to know about the world''s greatest novels.From medieval romances and tales of chivalry found in the realist novels of the 19th century, to experimental modernist works and today''s explorations of the self, Great Novels explores the finest novels from around the world and through time.Tilt at windmills with Don Quixote, experience heartbreak with Tolstoy, discover the society in which Jane Austen lived, and delve into the complex rites of passage experienced by characters in modern novels. Find out what inspired writers to create their masterpieces, what their aims were, and how they set about writing them.Dive deep into the pages of this inspiring book to discover:- Paintings, photographs, and artefacts that tell the story of each novel and what inspired their authors- Superb images of first editions and manuscripts- The flavour of each novel through quotations and extended extracts - Ch

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Book SynopsisThe New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice • In his centenary year, this volume of the Pulitzer Prize winner and former poet laureate’s poems celebrates the indispensable artistry of a writer who faced the history of his era with a “clear-eyed mercy toward human weakness” (The New York Times Book Review) and was hailed in his day as “the best poet writing in English” (Joseph Brodsky).This volume brings together for the first time all of the poems that appeared in Anthony Hecht’s seven trade collections, from A Summoning of Stones of 1954 through to The Darkness and the Light of 2001; it adds the remarkable work contained in his posthumously issued Interior Skies: Late Poems from Liguria of 2011; and it rounds this out with the best of the many poems which were left uncollected at the time of his death in 2004, the earliest dating from 1950 and the latest from 2001. Including the w

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

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Book SynopsisKyla Schuller unearths the forgotten, multiethnic sciences of impressibility—the capacity to be affected—to expose the powerful workings of sentimental biopower in the nineteenth-century United States, uncovering a vast apparatus of sensory regulation that aimed to shape the evolution of the national population.Trade Review"[Schuller's] terminology here may act as a springboard for additional theorizations of race. . . . An ambitious, conscientious history." -- Joshua Falek * Cultural Studies *"The importance of this book to nineteenth-century studies cannot be understated: it fundamentally rewrites the history of sentimentalism, an affective and cultural formation that dominated norms of comportment and embodiment across the period. . . . " -- Kyla Tompkins * American Quarterly *"The Biopolitics of Feeling takes a refreshingly head-on approach to the historical entanglement of race and sex in the United States. . . Stunningly convincing . . . Readers will find an abundant resource of theoretically informed readings of postbellum and Progressive Era science and literature throughout the study, but they will be also unable to ignore Schuller’s urgent warning about feminism’s embeddedness in the machinations of biopower." -- Britt Rusert * Catalyst *"Impressibility and sentimentalism combine in this book to form a rubric assessing a broad and fascinating archive. . . . Schuller offers a broad view of how nineteenth-century Americans were given repeated exposure to the logic of impressibility and affective fitness, to the point where both became unconscious components of civic life." -- Sheila Liming * Legacy *"An impressive synthesis of historical and theoretical work. . . . A well-documented critique of society and valuable contribution to scholarship on biopolitics that addresses persistent issues that can spark intellectual discussions. The book would be useful for scholars across disciplines such as Philosophy, Health Studies, Critical Race Studies, Ethnic Studies and Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies." -- Rosemary Onyango * Journal of International Women's Studies *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction. Sentimental Biopower 1 1. Taxonomies of Feeling: Sensation and Sentiment in Evolutionary Race Science 35 2. Body as Text, Race as Palimpsest: Frances E. W. Harper and Black Feminist Biopolitics 68 3. Vaginal Impressions: Gyno-neurology and the Racial Origins of Sexual Difference 100 4. Incremental Life: Biophilanthropy and the Child Migrants of the Lower East Side 134 5. From Impressibility to Interactionism: W. E. B. Du Bois, Black Eugenics, and the Struggle against Genetic Determinisms 172 Epilogue. The Afterlives of Impressibility 205 Notes 215 Bibliography 247 Index 271

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Stach often does quietly brilliant work connecting known details of Kafka's youth to the older Kafka, so the reader can see how events appear (or don't) in the specific subjectivity of Kafka's recollection."--Rivka Galchen, London Review of Books "Stach's book crowns a definitive biographical trilogy 18 years in the making... Kafka: The Early Years, along with its two siblings--all three volumes impeccably translated from the German by Shelley Frisch--often feels like biography plotted as a novel. Stach's relish for detail is marshaled to the sensibility--if not the omniscience or imaginative license--of the novelist... [T]he heft of Stach's research is balanced by interpretive tact and a discerning eye."--Benjamin Balint, Wall Street Journal Praise for the previous volumes: "This is one of the great literary biographies, to be set up there with, or perhaps placed on an even higher shelf than, Richard Ellmann's James Joyce, George Painter's Marcel Proust, and Leon Edel's Henry James... [A]n eerily immediate portrait of one of literature's most enduring and enigmatic masters."--John Banville, New York Review of Books Praise for the previous volumes: "Resplendent."--Gary Giddins, Wall Street Journal Praise for Reiner Stach's biography of Kafka, winner of the 2015 Bavarian Book Prize: "One discovers a new, a different Dr. Franz Kafka of Prague in Reiner Stach's monumental, three-volume biography, which concludes triumphantly with Kafka: The Early Years: Kafka--a techie, a lady-killer, friend, the inventor of 3-D movies, and the prospective author of a series of low-priced travel guides for Europe. Reiner Stach proves that biography can be a literary art form and gives definitive shape to our contemporary image of Kafka."--Bavarian Book Prize jury statement Praise for the previous volumes: "[This] will surely be the definitive biography of one of the 20th century's most mysterious artists. Stach's declared aim is to find out what it felt like to be Kafka, and he succeeds."--John Banville, Irish Times Praise for the previous volumes: "The very best of which the genre is capable. This book is itself a novel."--Imre Kertesz, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature Praise for the previous volumes: "Superbly tempered... Shelley Frisch, Stach's heroic American translator, movingly reproduces his intended breadth and pace and tone."--Cynthia Ozick, New Republic Praise for the previous volumes: "A definitive biography of a rare writer... [M]asterful."--The Economist Praise for the previous volumes: "Stach aims to tell us all that can be known about [Kafka], avoiding the fancies and extrapolations of earlier biographers. The result is an enthralling synthesis, one that reads beautifully... I can't say enough about the liveliness and richness of Stach's book... Every page of this book feels excited, dynamic, utterly alive."--Michael Dirda, Washington Post Book World Praise for the previous volumes: "Stach's is a splendid effort and will be hard to surpass."--William H. Gass, Harper's Magazine Praise for the previous volumes: "[Stach] has a deep understanding of the world that Kafka came from and this is matched by an intelligence and tact about the impulse behind the work itself."--Colm Toibin, Irish Independent Praise for the previous volumes: "Stach's book succeeds brilliantly at clearing a path through the thick metaphysical fog that has hung about Kafka's work almost since his death... [I]lluminating... Between them, [Frisch] and Stach have produced a superbly fresh imaginative guide to the strange, clear, metaphor-free world of Kafka's prose."--Tim Martin, Telegraph Praise for the previous volumes: "Magnificent."--John Carey, Sunday Times Praise for the previous volumes: "Flawlessly translated... [A] wonderfully intelligent and perceptive portrait of a uniquely powerful writer."--P. D. Smith, Guardian "Magisterial... [Reiner Stach's] portrait of the artist is intimately knowing... [Kafka: The Early Years] completes an indispensable work about a key figure in 20th-century modernism."--Kirkus Reviews "Kafka's eerie short stories and novels have electrified readers for generations, but Stach's portrait of the young Kafka contradicts the legend of their source in an alienated, detached enigma. Readers meet instead a likable, brilliant young insurance lawyer with, as Stach puts it, abundant perfectionism and self-doubt... [A]ll Kafka devotees will find this biography's insights deeply fulfilling."--Publishers Weekly "What Mr. Stach uncovers in this volume--written last because of a long struggle over access to documents--are the formative experiences of a Kafka who becomes new and surprisingly relevant... Even those immersed in the specialist work benefit from the illumination that Mr. Stach's detailed digging brings... In today's age of backlash against globalisation, the arc that Mr. Stach draws between 'The Early Years' and Kafka's later life takes on a new significance."--The Economist "Reiner Stach presents exhaustive details about the young author's life, which, rather than demystifying Kafka, actually have the effect of augmenting his complexity."--Mene Ukueberuwa, New Criterion "Reiner Stach's monumental three-volume Kafka ... looks set to be the definitive biography for the foreseeable future. Here we have something new: a credible and sympathetic human Kafka... The narrative sections of the book are masterly: Stach has a novelist's feel for atmosphere and psychology. He fixes important characters (not just Kafka, but his parents and his teachers, Brod, and several others) to the page in a few deft strokes. And he is truly excellent on Kafka's work, which is the most important thing of all. The central question of any serious literary biography should be: how did this person come to write these books? Stach answers it more fully and persuasively than any previous biographer of Kafka, by revealing in meticulous detail his feelings of personal insignificance and his dread of authority."--Edmund Gordon, Sunday Times "The best thing a biographer of Franz Kafka can do is bring the famed author back to earth. Not as regards his reputation, which is justifiably lofty. But to humanize Kafka and save him from our collective idea of him as some otherworldly creature who spent a mere 40 years on this earth, suffering much and publishing little. Reiner Stach accomplishes just this with the third and final volume of his magnificent biography... [He] strips away the myths and tells the story of how Kafka helped drag literature into the modern era."--John Winters, WBUR's ARTery blog "Stach's account of Kafka becoming Kafka is dotted with unlikely epigraphs (Laurie Anderson, Devo, the Human League) and written with pace and dry wit... Stach is an alert reader of the work, continuously on the prowl for aspects of Kafka's life that may shed light on his preoccupations... Stach's book succeeds because it concentrates less on reducing Kafka to psycho-biographical truisms than on ushering us into his company."--Tim Martin, Prospect "Belongs in the company of the masterpieces of literary biography... [C]omprehensive but raised above mere competency through astonishing architectural beauty. Thanks to the superb work of Stach's translator, Shelley Frisch, the trilogy also stands out in English at the sentence level, for the unbroken clarity, verbal ingenuity, and unflagging momentum of its prose."--Open Letters Monthly "One of the most engaging and persuasive features of [Kafka: The Early Years] ... is the way in which Stach goes far beyond the all-too-familiar neurotic, angst-ridden [Kafka] by presenting us with a variety of lesser-known 'Kafkas.'"--Mark Harman, Los Angeles Review of Books "Superbly translated from German by Shelley Frisch... Illuminating facts and intelligent commentary... The three volumes are so carefully composed and densely woven--blending history, literary analysis, psychological insights, quotes and commentary from others--that it would be practically impossible to produce an abridged version in a single volume."--Alexander Adams, Spiked Review "Stach's whole project is a wonder to behold."--Gregory Day, Sydney Morning Herald "If you are a Kafka fan (or just a fan of great literary biographies), the translation of Reiner Stach's enormous, three-part biography is something not to miss. Now that it has been translated into English by Shelley Frisch, the book offered English-language readers unparalleled insight into Kafka's life, his world, his colleagues, his lovers, his family, and of course his writing. As a longtime Kafka devotee, I found this biography exceptional, not just a great book about Kafka but simply a great book to read."--Scott Esposito, Conversational Reading "[Stach's] mastery of complex material, scrupulous examination of evidence, illuminating portrayal of the historical and intellectual background ranks with Joseph Frank's superb five-volume life of Dostoyevsky."--Jeffrey Meyers, Commonweal "We can trace, through Stach's measured narrative, the full course of Kafka's brief life... The result is not merely a biography of painstaking thoroughness but a piece of psychological investigation and literary detective work without clear parallel. It gives its readers a new Kafka. It explains much that has long seemed obscure; yet, by paradox, the more its author-hero is grounded in his context, and the more we grasp of the initial sources of his imagination, the more unfathomable his gifts become. The haze clears; he stands alone."--Nicolas Rothwell, AustralianTable of ContentsTranslator's Preface ix 1 Nothing Happening in Prague 1 2 The Curtain Rises 7 3 Giants: The Kafkas from Wosek 26 4 Julie Lowy 38 5 Losing Propositions 46 6 Thoughts about Freud 58 7 Kafka, Franz: Model Student 77 8 A City Energized 90 9 Elli, Valli, Ottla 113 10 Latin, Bohemian, Mathematics, and Other Matters of the Heart 122 11 Jewish Lessons 150 12 Innocence and Impudence 171 13 The Path to Freedom 184 14 To Hell with German Studies 204 15 Friend Max 222 16 Enticements 236 17 Informed Circles: Utitz, Weltsch, Fanta, Bergmann 248 18 Autonomy and Recovery 268 19 The Interior Landscape: "Description of a Struggle" 284 2 Doctor of Law Seeking Employment 302 21 Off to the Prostitutes 325 22 Cafes, Geishas, Art, and Cinema 335 23 The Formidable Assistant Offi ial 350 24 The Secret Writing School 370 25 Landing in Brescia 391 26 In the Heart of the West 407 27 Ideas and Spirits: Buber, Steiner, Einstein 420 28 Literature and Tourism 437 Acknowledgments 463 Key to Abbreviations 465 Notes 467 Bibliography 531 Photo Credits 549 Index 551

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewFor all of those seeking a positive turn building on the powerful critique that so influenced the academy in recent decades, Rosi Braidotti offers an understanding of philosophy-of thinking-that she views as crucial to creative production. At a time when intellectual discourse is becoming increasingly disciplinary, Braidotti opens a path for broad discussion and debate. -- Elizabeth Weed, director, Pembroke Center, Brown University The second edition of Nomadic Subjects by Rosi Braidotti rightly proves that this book's legacy is well and alive after 15 years of its first publication... An essential read... Beautifully written... Her book in general is full of inspiration for change and a provocative call for feminism to move forward. -- Mujde Kliem Foucault StudiesTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction 1. By Way of Nomadism 2. Context and Generations 3. Sexual Difference Theory 4. On the Female Feminist Subject: From "She-Self" to "She-Other" 5. Sexual Difference as a Nomadic Political Project 6. Organs Without Bodies 7. Images Without Imagination 8. Mothers, Monsters, and Machines 9. Discontinuous Becomings: Deleuze and the Becoming-Woman of Philosophy 10. Envy and Ingratitude: Men in Feminism 11. Conclusion: Geometries of Passion-a Conversation Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisThe Language of Displayed Art, first published in 1994, is a seminal work in the field of Multimodality and one of the few to be entirely dedicated to the analysis and interpretation of works of art. This book explores the grammar of the visual arts of painting, sculpture and architecture, proposing that as viewers we simultaneously read three different kinds of meaning in them: what is represented (Representational meaning) how it engages us (Modal meaning) how it is composed (Compositional meaning). The second edition features: two new chapters; an extended discussion of Chapter 5 Why Semiotics; and an extended version of Chapter 7 with more illustrations of language forms, discourse norms and genres, as well as non-art visual modes. The book is now accompanied by a CD, created by the author and features a virtual gallery of twenty-eight additional paintings with questions to encourage analysis and interpretaTrade Review'Occasionally a book comes along which takes over your whole field of attention and resets the way you look at some aspect of experience. For me "The Language of Displayed Art" was one such book. It opened up the world of painting, architecture and sculpture, bringing out its dimensions and depth of meaning and adding significantly to my understanding- and therefore to my enjoyment- of familiar and not so familiar works of art.' M.A.K. Halliday, Emeritus Professor of Linguistics, University of Sydney, Australia 'My favourite bedtime reading beautifully restored and given a new lease of life... this new colour edition with supporting CD-ROM has at last given this timeless masterpiece of art criticism the limelight it has long deserved. A cultural treasure trove for new acquaintances, for old fans the return of a sorely-missed truly multimodal companion.' Anthony Baldry, University of Messina, Italy Table of Contents1. Semiotics At Work 2. Bodily Perceptions: A Semiotics of Sculpture 3. A Semiotics of Architecture 4. Semiotics Across the Arts

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Book SynopsisTable of ContentsFOREWORD. INTRODUCTION. I.ELEMENTARY RULES OF USAGE. 1.Form the Possessive Singular of Nouns by Adding 's. 2.In a Series of Three or More Terms with a Single Conjunction, Use a Comma after Each Term except the Last. 3.Enclose Parenthetic Expressions between Commas. 4.Place a Comma before a Conjunction Introducing an Independent Clause. 5.Do Not Join Independent Clauses with a Comma. 6.Do Not Break Sentences in Two. 7.Use a Colon after an Independent Clause to Introduce a List of Particulars, an Appositive, an Amplification, or an Illustrative Question. 8.Use a Dash to Set Off an Abrupt Break or Interruption and to Announce a Long Appositive or Summary. 9.The Number of the Subject Determines the Number of the Verb. 10.Use the Proper Case of Pronoun. 11.A Participial Phrase at the Beginning of the Sentence Must Refer to the Grammatical Subject. II.ELEMENTARY PRINCIPLES OF COMPOSITION. 12.Choose a Suitable Sesign and Hold to It. 13.Make the Paragraph the unit of Composition. 14.Use the Active Voice. 15.Put Statements in Positive Form. 16.Use Definite, Specific, Concrete Language. 17.Omit Needless Words. 18.Avoid a Succession of Loose Sentences. 19.Express Coordinate Ideas in Similar Form. 20.Keep Related Words Together. 21.In Summaries, Keep to One Tense. 22.Place the Emphatic Words of a Sentence at the End. III.A FEW MATTERS OF FORM. IV.WORDS AND EXPRESSIONS COMMONLY MISUSED. V.AN APPROACH TO STYLE (WITH A LIST OF REMINDERS). 1.Place Yourself in the Background. 2.Write in a Way That Comes Naturally. 3.Work From a Suitable Style. 4.Write with Nouns and Verbs. 5.Revise and Rewrite. 6.Do Not Overwrite. 7.Do Not Overstate. 8.Avoid the Use of Qualifiers. 9.Do Not Affect a Breezy Manner. 10.Use Orthodox Spelling. 11.Do Not Explain Too Much. 12.Do Not Construct Awkward Adverbs. 13.Make Sure the Reader Knows Who is Speaking. 14.Avoid Fancy Words. 15.Do Not Use Dialect Unless Your Ear Is Good. 16.Be Clear. 17.Do Not Inject Opinion. 18.Use Figures of Speech Sparingly. 19.Do Not Take Shortcuts at the Cost of Clarity. 20.Avoid Foreign Languages. 21.Prefer the Standard to the Offbeat. Afterword. Glossary.

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Book SynopsisExamines the use, evolution, legitimacy, and implications of surveillance with contributions from the fields of literary studies, law, philosophy, sociology, and politics.

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

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Book SynopsisYork Notes Advanced offer a fresh and accessible approach to English Literature. This market-leading series has been completely updated to meet the needs of today's A-level and undergraduate students. Written by established literature experts, York Notes Advanced intorduce students to more sophisticated analysis, a range of critical perspectives and wider contexts.Table of Contents Part 1: Introduction Part 2: The Text Part 3: Critical Approaches Part 4: Critical History Part 5: Background Further Reading Literacy Terms

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Book SynopsisTrade Review" In a masterful synthesis, Matthew Strecher delves deeply into questions of language, religion, mythology, psychology, and the boundaries between literature and journalism to demonstrate with great clarity and concreteness how Murakami belongs in the company of such writers as Pynchon, Eco, and Rushdie." —Jay Rubin, author of Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words"This guide clearly synthesizes the inner world enshrining Haruki Murakami’s characters."—World Literature Today"Strecher’s latest book is erudite without being overly academic. A lively and engaging read."—The Japan Times"Strecher neatly maps out the impression the young Murakami made on the hidebound world of Japanese literature and its overarching literary guild, one entrenched by respect, routine, and what literature ought to do."—Pop Matters"An original and insightful book—a genuine pleasure to read."—H-Net"Useful for providing frames through which to read Murakami and for a detailed overview of his work."—CHOICE"This well-researched monograph not only contributes to deepening our understanding of Murakami’s work, but, more importantly, Strecher reaffirms the bottomless possibilities to enjoy reading this author’s stories."—Asian Studies Review"Like its subject, Strecher’s book does not offer an overall master map to this world but rather presents us with a variety of intriguing ideas to ponder and to provoke us toward our own interpretations of this tantalizing, multifaceted author."—Journal of Japanese StudiesTable of ContentsContentsPrefaceAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: The Power of the “Story” 1. New Words, New Worlds2. Into the Mad, Metaphysical Realm3. Gods and Oracles, Fate and Mythology4. Murakami Haruki as Literary Journalist5. Forbidden Dreams from “Over There”Epilogue: The Roads Not TakenNotesBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisTerry Eagleton looks back across sixty years to an extraordinary critical milieu that transformed the study of literature

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Book SynopsisZombies first shuffled across movie screens in 1932 in the low-budget Hollywood film White Zombie and were reimagined as undead flesh-eaters in George A. Romero’s The Night of the Living Dead almost four decades later. Today, zombies are omnipresent in global popular culture, from video games and top-rated cable shows in the United States to comic books and other visual art forms to low-budget films from Cuba and the Philippines. The zombie’s ability to embody a variety of cultural anxieties—ecological disaster, social and economic collapse, political extremism—has ensured its continued relevance and legibility, and has precipitated an unprecedented deluge of international scholarship. Zombie studies manifested across academic disciplines in the humanities but also beyond, spreading into sociology, economics, computer science, mathematics, and even epidemiology. Zombie Theory collects the best interdisciplinary zombie scholarship from around the world. Essays portray the zombie not as a singular cultural figure or myth but show how the undead represent larger issues: the belief in an afterlife, fears of contagion and technology, the effect of capitalism and commodification, racial exclusion and oppression, dehumanization. As presented here, zombies are not simple metaphors; rather, they emerge as a critical mode for theoretical work. With its diverse disciplinary and methodological approaches, Zombie Theory thinks through what the walking undead reveal about our relationships to the world and to each other.Contributors: Fred Botting, Kingston U; Samuel Byrnand, U of Canberra; Gerry Canavan, Marquette U; Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, George Washington U; Jean Comaroff, Harvard U; John Comaroff, Harvard U; Edward P. Comentale, Indiana U; Anna Mae Duane, U of Connecticut; Karen Embry, Portland Community College; Barry Keith Grant, Brock U; Edward Green, Roosevelt U; Lars Bang Larsen; Travis Linnemann, Eastern Kentucky U; Elizabeth McAlister, Wesleyan U; Shaka McGlotten, Purchase College-SUNY; David McNally, York U; Tayla Nyong’o, Yale U; Simon Orpana, U of Alberta; Steven Shaviro, Wayne State U; Ola Sigurdson, U of Gothenburg; Jon Stratton, U of South Australia; Eugene Thacker, The New School; Sherryl Vint, U of California Riverside; Priscilla Wald, Duke U; Tyler Wall, Eastern Kentucky U; Jen Webb, U of Canberra; Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, Central Michigan U.Table of ContentsContentsIntroduction: Wander and Wonder in ZombielandSarah Juliet LauroPart I. Old Schools: Classic Zombies1. Contagious Allegories: George RomeroSteven Shaviro2. Zombie TV: Late-Night B Movie Horror FestJeffrey Andrew Weinstock3. Viral Cultures: Microbes and Politics in the Cold WarPriscilla Wald4. Slaves, Cannibals, and Infected Hyper-Whites: The Race and Religion of ZombiesElizabeth McAlister5. Slavoj Žižek, the Death Drive, and Zombies: A Theological AccountOla SigurdsonPart II. Capitalist Monsters6. Some Kind of Virus: The Zombie as Body and as TropeJen Webb and Samuel Byrnand7. Ugly Beauty: Monstrous Dreams of UtopiaDavid McNally8. Alien-Nation: Zombies, Immigrants, and Millennial CapitalismJean Comaroff and John Comaroff9. Zombies of Immaterial Labor: The Modern Monster and the Consumption of the SelfLars Bang Larsen10. Abject Posthumanism: Neoliberalism, Biopolitics, and ZombiesSherryl VintPart III. Zombies and Other(ed) People11. Zombie RaceEdward P. Comentale12. Taking Back the Night of the Living Dead: George Romero, Feminism, and the Horror FilmBarry Keith Grant13. Dead and Live Life: Zombies, Queers, and Online SocialityShaka McGlotten14. Dead and Disabled: The Crawling Monsters of The Walking DeadAnna Mae Duane 15. Trouble with Zombies: Muselmänner, Bare Life, and Displaced PeopleJon StrattonPart IV. Zombies in the StreetPreface: In Memoriam: The Toronto Zombie Walk (2003–2015)Sarah Juliet Lauro16. Zombie London: Unexceptionalities of the New World OrderFred Botting17. Spooks of Biopower: The Uncanny Carnivalesque of Zombie WalksSimon Orpana18. The Scene of OccupationTavia Nyong’o19. The Walking Dead and Killing State: Zombification and the Normalization of Police ViolenceTravis Linnemann, Tyler Wall, and Edward GreenPart V. New Life for the Undead20. Nekros: or, The Poetics of Biopolitics Eugene Thacker21. Grey: A Zombie EcologyJeffrey Jerome Cohen22. A Zombie Manifesto: The Nonhuman Condition in the Era of Advanced CapitalismSarah Juliet Lauro and Karen Embry23. “We Arethe Walking Dead”: Race, Time, and Survival in Zombie NarrativeGerry CanavanAcknowledgmentsContributorsPrevious PublicationsFurther ReadingIndex

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Book SynopsisDescribes a love between two women in its totality, experienced as both a physical presence and a sense of infinity. This book also notes the contemporary emphasis on 'fictions of presence'.

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Book Synopsis

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewWritten with warmth, affection, clarity and insight, [The Guide to James Joyce's "Ulysses"] is full of observations and witty asides that remind readers that Ulysses – whatever else it may be – is a comic novel. Hastings's book is thoroughly useable, and many first-time Joyceans will find it indispensable as they embark on the lifelong adventure that is reading Ulysses.—Times Literary SupplementThoroughly reliable.—Terrence Killeen, James Joyce QuarterlyHastings manages to steer his readers between the Scylla of ignorance and the Charybdis of erudition...—Robert Nicholson, James Joyce BroadsheetTable of ContentsPrefaceAbbreviationsIntroduction Episode GuidesChapter 1. "Telemachus" GuideChapter 2. "Nestor" GuideChapter 3. "Proteus" GuideChapter 4. "Calypso" GuideChapter 5. "Lotus-Eaters" GuideChapter 6. "Hades" GuideChapter 7. "Aeolus" GuideChapter 8. "Lestrygonians" GuideChapter 9. "Scylla and Charybdis" GuideChapter 10. "Wandering Rocks" GuideChapter 11. "Sirens" GuideChapter 12. "Cyclops" GuideChapter 13. "Nausicaa" GuideChapter 14. "Oxen of the Sun" GuideChapter 15. "Circe" GuideChapter 16. "Eumaeus" GuideChapter 17. "Ithaca" GuideChapter 18. "Penelope" GuideAcknowledgmentsAppendixesA. A Chronology of Stephen's DayB. A Chronology of Bloom's DayC. Money in UlyssesD. Ulysses SchemaNotesSelected and Annotated BibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisBabyn Yar brings together the responses to the tragic events of September 1941. Presented here in the original and in English translation, the poems create a language capable of portraying the suffering and destruction of the Ukrainian Jewish population during the Holocaust as well as other peoples murdered at the site.Trade ReviewRemind[s] the reading public of not only the necessity of remembering history and taking a stand against evil, but also about the necessity of poetry as witness during a time of great atrocity. -- Nicole Yurcaba * New Eastern Europe *Temporally and stylistically expansive, Babyn Yar keeps company with other recent poetry that confronts the costs of war and genocide: Solmaz Sharif’s Look, Monica Sok’s A Nail the Evening Hangs On, and Ilya Kaminsky’s Deaf Republic. Each poetic work catalogs grief intimately in the aftermath of political violence. That the Russia–Ukraine War is ongoing at the time of this writing infuses the anthology with a terrible urgency. -- Kathryn Savage * World Literature Today *

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Book SynopsisWINNER OF THE 2022 EISNER AWARD FOR BEST COMICS-RELATED BOOK 'Magnificently marvellous' Junot Diaz 'An account of how a motley gang of accidental collaborators created a vernacular mythology out of the dodgiest of commercial occasions ... a revelation' Jonathan Lethem Every schoolchild recognises their protagonists: the Avengers, the X-Men, your friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man. The superhero comics that Marvel has published since 1961 make up the biggest self-contained work of fiction ever created: over half a million pages and counting. Eighteen of the 100 highest-grossing movies of all time are based on it. And not even the people telling the story have read the whole thing. But Douglas Wolk did. In All Of The Marvels, a critic and superfan takes on the epic to end all epics. What he finds is a magic mirror of the past 60 years, from the atomic terrors of the Cold War to the political divides of our present. The result is an irresistible travel guide to the magic mountain at the heart of popular culture.Trade ReviewBrilliant, eccentric, moving and wholly wonderful ... All of the Marvels is magnificently marvelous. Wolk's work will invite many more alliterative superlatives. It deserves them all -- Junot Díaz * New York Times Book Review *For anyone willing to take [a] step into the inconceivably vast and wonderful world that generations of creators have brought to us, issue by issue, month by month, year by year, All of the Marvels is an indispensable handbook. And for anyone seeking an explanation for the enduring popularity of our modern superhero mythology, Wolk has provided as well-informed and well-argued a thesis as you're likely to find * Forbes *A fascinating pop culture journey ... Wolk is a knowledgeable, generous guide, lighting the potentially more confusing corners of the Marvel Universe with enthusiasm, humour and humility -- Martin Gray * Scotsman *The way Wolk makes sense of, finds beauty in, and connects all the different stories and details is masterful ... A must-read for all Marvel fans, from devotees to newbies, All of the Marvels is a colorful and heartfelt journey through the Marvel Universe, and highlights just what makes this epic feat of storytelling so special * Hypable *[a] love letter to Marvel comics ... Wolk is having fun and it communicates -- Teddy Jamieson * Herald Scotland *Douglas Wolk's naked dive into the Marvel source code is a revelation, a tour both electrifying in its weird charisma, and replenishing in its loving specificity. As an account of how a motley gang of accidental collaborators created a vernacular mythology out of the dodgiest of commercial occasions, it's also a testament, and a tribute -- Jonathan LethemWhat sounds like a madman's quest turns out to be a deeply emotional hero's journey. The best work yet from the best writer about the medium of comics -- Brian K. Vaughan, author * Saga *A generous, freewheeling book ... Wolk is a capable guide, wry, friendly and astute [who] can elucidate not just the chemistry between writers and artists but also the underrated role of colourers and letterers -- Dorian Lynskey * Spectator *Some of us are haunted by the memory of a childhood glimpse of some vast evocative dream; others exasperated by the slick iconography that has taken over our screens, wallets, and eyeballs. If you're like me, it's both. For all of us, Douglas Wolk's naked dive into the Marvel source code is a revelation, a tour both electrifying in its weird charisma, and replenishing in its loving specificity. As an account of how a motley gang of accidental collaborators created a vernacular mythology out of the dodgiest of commercial occasions, it's also a testament, and a tribute. Like Greil Marcus in Mystery Train or Manny Farber in Negative Space, Wolk pushes aside paraphrase to free up an encounter with what's been there all along, homegrown art -- Jonathan Lethem

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Book SynopsisAn original collection of work by the great Serbian poet of the twentieth century.Vasko Popa is widely recognized as one of the great poets of the twentieth century, a riddling fabulist, whose work, taking its bearings from the songs and folklore of his native his Serbia and from surrealism, has a dark gnomic fatalistic humor and pathos that are like nothing else. Charles Simic, a master of contemporary American poetry, has been translating Popa’s work for more than a quarter century. This revised and greatly expanded edition of Simic’s Popa is a revelation.

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Book SynopsisThe work of Michel Houellebecq – one of the most widely read and controversial novelists of our time – is marked by the thought of Schopenhauer. When Houellebecq came across a copy of Schopenhauer's Aphorisms in a library in his mid-twenties, he was bowled over by it and he hunted down a copy of his major philosophical work, The World as Will and Representation. Houellebecq found in Schopenhauer – the radical pessimist, the chronicler of human suffering, the lonely misanthrope – a powerful conception of the human condition and of the future that awaits us, and when Houellebecq’s first writings appeared in the early 1990s, the influence of Schopenhauer was everywhere apparent. But it was only much later, in 2005, that Houellebecq began to translate and write a commentary on Schopenhauer’s work. He thought of turning it into a book but soon abandoned the idea and the text remained unpublished until 2017. Now available in English for the first time, In the Presence of Schopenhauer is the story of a remarkable encounter between a novelist and a philosopher and a testimony to the deep and enduring impact of Schopenhauer’s philosophy on one of France’s greatest living writers.Trade Review‘So when I borrowed “Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life” from the municipal library of the seventh arrondissement in Paris (more specifically, its annex in the Latour-Maubourg district), I may have been aged twenty-six, but equally possibly twenty-five, or twenty-seven. In any case, this is very late in life for such a major discovery. At the time, I already knew Baudelaire, Dostoevsky, Lautréamont, Verlaine, almost all the Romantics; a lot of science fiction, too. I had read the Bible, Pascal’s Pensées, Clifford D. Simak’s City, Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain. I wrote poems; I already had the impression I was rereading, rather than really reading; I thought I had at least completed one period in my discovery of literature.’‘And then, in a few minutes, everything dramatically changed.’"In the Presence of Schopenhauer is a profound tribute that illuminates the French novelist’s own work."Times Literary SupplementTable of ContentsPreface by Agathe Novak-Lechevalier Leave childhood behind, my friend, and wake up! Chapter One: The world is my representation Chapter Two: Look at things attentively Chapter Three: In this way the will to live objectifies itself Chapter Four: The theatre of the world Chapter Five: The conduct of life: what we are Chapter Six: The conduct of life: what we have Notes

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Book SynopsisImagine sitting with an esteemed writer on his or her front porch somewhere in the world and swapping life stories. Dr. Wayne Flynt got the opportunity to do just this with Nelle Harper Lee. In a friendship that blossomed over a dozen years starting when Lee relocated back to Alabama after having had a stroke, Flynt and his wife Dartie became regular visitors at the assisted living facility that was Lee’s new home. And there the conversation began. It began where it always begins with Southern storytellers, with an invitation to "Come in, sit down, and stay a while."The stories exchanged ranged widely over the topics of Alabama history, Alabama folklore, family genealogy, and American literature, of course. On the way from beginning to end there were many detours: talks about Huntingdon College; The University of Alabama; New York City; the United Kingdom; Garden City, Kansas; and Mobile, Alabama, to name just a few. Wayne and his wife were often joined by Alice Lee, the oldest Lee sister, a living encyclopedia on the subject of family genealogy, and middle sister Louise Lee Conner. The hours spent visiting, in intimate closeness, are still cherished by Wayne Flynt. They yielded revelations large and small, which have been shaped into Afternoons with Harper Lee. Part memoir, part biography, this book offers a unique window into the life and mind and preoccupations of one of America’s best-loved writers. Flynt and Harper Lee and her sisters learned a great deal from each other, and though this is not a history book, their shared interest in Alabama and its history made this extraordinary work possible.

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Book SynopsisAn accessibly-written survey of the origins and growth of the discipline of medievalism studies. The field known as "medievalism studies" concerns the life of the Middle Ages after the Middle Ages. Originating some thirty years ago, it examines reinventions and reworkings of the medieval from the Reformation to postmodernity,from Bale and Leland to HBO's Game of Thrones. But what exactly is it? An offshoot of medieval studies? A version of reception studies? Or a new form of cultural studies? Can such a diverse field claim coherence? Should it be housed in departments of English, or History, or should it always be interdisciplinary? In responding to such questions, the author traces the history of medievalism from its earliest appearances in the sixteenth century to the present day, across a range of examples drawn from the spheres of literature, art, architecture, music and more. He identifies two major modes, the grotesque and the romantic, and focuses on key phases of the development of medievalism in Europe: the Reformation, the late eighteenth century, and above all the period between 1815 and 1850, which, he argues, represents the zenith of medievalist cultural production. He also contends that the 1840s were medievalism's one moment of canonicity in several European cultures at once. After that, medievalism became a minority form, rarely marked with cultural prestige, though always pervasive and influential. Medievalism: a Critical History scrutinises several key categories - space, time, and selfhood - and traces the impact of medievalism on each. It will be the essential guide to a complex and still evolving field of inquiry. David Matthews is Professor of Medieval and Medievalism Studies at the University of Manchester.Trade ReviewA major new work on medievalism, it deserves to be studied by students or scholars interested in this latest period of a medieval revival. * PARERGON *This book is a highly informative, accessible, and occasionally humorous guide for anyone interested in learning about medievalism on a macro-scale. * TOEBI *Matthews' account of the history and contemporary status of medievalism is both highly readable (he is an elegant stylist) and frequently provocative. . . . [He] offers a fresh overview and compelling meta-commentary on the history and practice of medievalism, focusing on its uneasy relationship with medieval studies. * THE MEDIEVAL REVIEW *In his well-researched book, Medievalism: A Critical History, David Matthews provides a foundational study for the multidisciplinary field of medievalism studies. * MEDIEVALLY SPEAKING *Tracing the history of medievalism from the 16th century to today, the author closely examines significant phases in the development of medievalism studies, paying special attention to the period between 1815 and 1850, which he cogently argues was the apogee of medievalism in European popular culture, and provides the foundation for the relationship between medievalism and medieval studies. Recommended. * CHOICE *Table of ContentsIntroduction How Many Middle Ages? "Welcome to the Current Middle Ages": Asynchronous Medievalism This Way to the Middle Ages: The Spaces of Medievalism On Being Medieval: Medievalist Selves and Societies Wemmick's Castle: The Limits of Medievalism Realism in the Crypt: The Reach of Medievalism Conclusion: Against a Synthesis: Medievalism, Cultural Studies, and Antidisciplinarity Afterword Appendix I: The Survey of Reenactors Appendix II: Key Moments in Medievalism Bibliography

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Book SynopsisWith clear, conversational prose, this is the first book dedicated entirely to Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s writings on translation. Through his many critically acclaimed novels, stories, essays, plays, and memoirs, Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o has been at the forefront of world literature for decades. He has also been, in his own words, “a language warrior,” fighting for indigenous African languages to find their rightful place in the literary world. Having begun his writing career in English, Ngũgĩ shifted to writing in his native language Gikũyũ in 1977, a stance both creatively and politically significant. For decades now, Ngũgĩ has been translating his Gikũyũ works into English himself, and he has used many platforms to champion the practice and cause of literary translations, which he calls “the language of languages.” This volume brings together for the first time Ngũgĩ’s essays and lectures about translation, written and delivered over the past two decades. Here we find Ngũgĩ discussing translation as a conversation between cultures; proposing that dialogue among African languages is the way to unify African peoples; reflecting on the complexities of auto-translation or translating one’s own work; exploring the essential task translation performed in the history of the propagation of thought; and pleading for the hierarchy of languages to be torn down. He also shares his many experiences of writing across languages, including his story The Upright Revolution, which has been translated into more than a hundred languages around the globe and is the most widely translated text written by an African author. At a time when dialogues between cultures and peoples are more essential than ever, The Language of Languages makes an outspoken case for the value of literature without borders. Table of Contents1.Translation: Towards a Global Conversation among Languages and Cultures2.Finding Our Way: Dialogue Among Our Languages is the Way to the Unity of African Peoples3.Translation, Restoration and a Global Culture4.Encounters with Translation: A Globalectic View5.Languages as Bridges6.Preface to Kurdish Translation of Decolonising the Mind7.Archipelago of Treasures8.Adventures in Translation9.The Politics of Translation: Notes Towards an African Language Policy

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Book SynopsisA bold and adventurous work of literature that explores the relationship between reading, writing, sex, and death. The first book in Pascal Quignard's Last Kingdom series, The Roving Shadows can be read as a long meditation on reading and writing that strives to situate these otherwise innocuous activities in a profound relationship to sex and death. Writing and reading can in fact be linked to our animal natures and artistic strivings, to primal forces and culturally persistent fascinations. With dexterity and inventiveness, Quignard weaves together historical anecdotes, folktales from the East and West, fragments of myth, and speculative historical reconstructions. The whole, written in a musical style not far removed from that of Couperin, whose piano composition Les Ombres errantes lends the book its title, coheres into a work of literature that reverberates in the psyche long after one has laid it down. The Roving Shadows is a rare and wondrous tour de force that cements Quignar

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

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Book SynopsisTrade Review“Here is the study of literary critical method we needed—a slim volume capable of displacing shelves of manifestos on the future of the discipline. What do literary critics know, and how do they know it? Criticism and Truth grounds our distinctive epistemology in everyday practices—how we quote and paraphrase our objects of study, share the medium of language with them, and build plot summaries. It captures the brilliance of literary critics everywhere, yet only Jonathan Kramnick could have written this gemlike book.” * Rachel Sagner Buurma, coauthor of "The Teaching Archive" *“In a highly skilled performance of his own, Kramnick discloses the artistry and creativity embedded in routine acts of close reading. Such methodological reflection is long overdue and marks an important step toward making literary critics' tacit values and abilities intelligible to themselves.” * Elaine Auyoung, University of Minnesota *“Criticism and Truth doesn’t just declare a truce in the method wars: it shows that our squabbling has obscured the deeper truth of a shared disciplinary craft. Lavishing his own considerable analytic gifts on the unfairly unloved genre of contemporary criticism, Kramnick beautifully describes—for what feels like the first time—what literary scholars do, and why their everyday virtuosity matters.” * David Kurnick, Rutgers University *“Animated by ardency and urgency, written in pellucid prose, argued with finesse and flair, Criticism and Truth is both beautiful and true. It persuades even as it galvanizes. Kramnick’s taut, elegant book should be read widely, its moral passion a beacon for all of us who care about the fate of literature and the humanities.” * Priscilla Gilman, author of "The Anti-Romantic Child" and "The Critic’s Daughter" *"The authorʼs meticulous analysis offers an eye-opening take on literary criticism as a creative process . . . English scholars will want to take a look." * Publishers Weekly *"[Kramnick] expresses alarm at the prospects of academic literary criticism’s continued existence as a recognized field of study within the contemporary university. . . . Articulating the place of literature in 'collective human flourishing'—or specifying what distinguishes literature from other kinds of written language, for that matter— falls outside Kramnick’s project at hand. Bracketing such questions. . . gives the book its quality of extreme concentration and lucidity in the pursuit of the common element in thriving academic literary criticism: the element that must be preserved, lest the whole discipline disappear. . . . [Criticism and Truth] merits attention beyond its field." -- Scott McLemee * Inside Higher Education *Table of Contents Preface Introduction: Craft Knowledge Chapter 1: Method Talk Chapter 2: Close Reading Chapter 3: Skilled Practice Chapter 4: Interpretation and Creativity Chapter 5: Verification Coda: Public Criticism for a Public Humanities Acknowledgments Notes Index

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Book SynopsisThis new edition of Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus offers the complete 1604 A-text with embedded selections from the 1616 B-text. Its innovative format will make it easier for readers to note differences between these texts and to consider what is gained and lost in viewing them both separately and together. A full Introduction to the play, notes, and a rich selection of related texts further enhance the value of this edition to students of Renaissance drama, Reformation theology, magic, and occult philosophy.Trade Review“This most recent edition of Doctor Faustus is guaranteed to appeal to a fresh, widespread audience of students and scholars. Uniquely combining the full A- and B-texts of the play, the edition offers new possibilities for analysis and interpretation. In addition to a generous introduction, replete with crucial data, the edition supplies readers with a bibliography, notes, and an abundant selection of related texts, including the Faustbook. The range of valuable information will surely attract not only Marlovians and all those interested in Renaissance drama and related, historical contextual matters, but anyone interested in accounting for how Doctor Faustus has achieved its enduring fame.” —Robert A. Logan, Emeritus Professor of English, University of Hartford

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Book SynopsisCompiled in the early tenth century, the Kokinshū is an anthology of some eleven hundred poems that became celebrated as the cornerstone of the Japanese vernacular poetic tradition. This book offers an inviting and immersive selection of roughly one-third of the anthology in English translation.Trade ReviewThese eminently readable and often beautiful translations will appeal to a new generation of readers in Japanese studies and beyond. The accompanying essays survey the genesis and afterlives of the collection and offer significant new insights on the original language of the poems and how to appreciate them in translation. -- Joseph T. Sorensen, author of Optical Allusions: Screens, Paintings, and Poetry in Classical Japan (ca. 800–1200)From the cries of the warbler in spring to the lonely nights of longing for a lover, Duthie offers fresh translations from each book of the Kokinshū, while grounding us in histories of scripts, reading and writing practices, and the power of poetry in premodern Japan. -- Christina Laffin, author of Rewriting Medieval Japanese Women: Politics, Personality, and Literary Production in the Life of Nun AbutsuThis book should appeal to anyone interested in Japanese poetry, both for its evocative rendering of selections from the Kokinshū and for its concisely informative account of the classic waka anthology. -- Gustav Heldt, translator of The Kojiki: An Account of Ancient MattersTable of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroductionPart I. TranslationMana PrefaceSelected Poems from the KokinwakashūKana PrefacePart II. Essays1. Poetry Before the Heian Period2. The Heian Court and Kana Writing3. The Conception and Structure of the Kokinshū4. Topics of Composition5. Prosody and Rhetorical Conventions6. The Kokinshū Prefaces7. The Kokinshū Text and Its Commentarial Tradition8. Translating the KokinshūAppendix: Poets in This BookBibliography and Further ReadingIndex

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Book SynopsisIn Open Admissions Danica Savonick traces the largely untold story of the teaching experience of Toni Cade Bambara, June Jordan, Audre Lorde, and Adrienne Rich at the City University of New York (cuny) in the late 1960s and early 1970s. This period, during which cuny guaranteed tuition-free admission to every city high school graduate, was one of the most controversial in US educational history. Analyzing their archival teaching materials—syllabi, lesson plans, and assignments—alongside their published work, Savonick reveals how these renowned writers were also transformative educators who developed creative methods of teaching their students to navigate and change the world. In fact, many of their methods—such as student-led courses, collaborative public projects, and the publication of student writing—anticipated the kinds of student-centered and antiracist pedagogies that have become popular in recent years. In addition to recovering the pedagogical le

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Book Synopsis

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