Edward Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, published in three instalments from 1776 to 1788, is widely regarded as the greatest work of history in the English language. Starting with the accession of the Roman Emperor Commodus in the late second century CE, Gibbon's work traverses thirteen centuries, encompassing the rise of Christianity and of Islam, the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West, and the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453. This Companion provides a comprehensive overview of the intellectual roots, contemporary European contexts, literary style and thematic scale of Gibbon's achievement. Alongside the History, it gives an introduction to Gibbon's other works, including the Memoirs he left unfinished at his death and previously unpublished material. Leading international scholars in the fields of classics, geography, history and literature provide a comprehensive account of Gibbon's monumental account of decline, fall and global historical tra
In this first full-length study of the war veteran in literature, Kate McLoughlin draws new critical attention to a figure central to national life. Offering fresh readings of canonical and non-canonical works, she shows how authors from William Wordsworth to J. K. Rowling have deployed veterans to explore questions that are simultaneously personal, political, and philosophical: What does a community owe to those who serve it? What can be recovered from the past? Do people stay the same over time? Are there right times of life at which to do certain things? Is there value in experience? How can wisdom be shared? Veteran Poetics features veterans who travel in time, cause havoc with their reappearances, solve murders, refuse to stop talking about the wars they have been in, and refuse to say a word about them. Through this last trait, they also prompt consideration of possible critical responses to silence.
The figures of Michael Robartes and Owen Aherne appear throughout the writing of the great Irish poet W.B. Yeats, featuring in his poems, short fictions, dialogues and as authorities in notes to his w
An instant success in its own time, Daniel Defoe's The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe has for three centuries drawn readers to its archetypal hero, the man surviving alone on an island. This Companion begins by studying the eighteenth-century literary, historical and cultural contexts of Defoe's novel, exploring the reasons for its immense popularity in Britain and in its colonies in America and in the wider European world. Chapters from leading scholars discuss the social, economic and political dimensions of Crusoe's island story before examining the 'after life' of Robinson Crusoe, from the book's multitudinous translations to its cultural migrations and transformations into other media such as film and television. By considering Defoe's seminal work from a variety of critical perspectives, this book provides a full understanding of the perennial fascination with, and the enduring legacy of, both the book and its iconic hero.
This book explores how a modern English literary identity was forged by its notions of other traditions and histories, in particular those of China. The theorizing and writing of English literary modernity took place in the midst of the famous quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns. Eun Kyung Min argues that this quarrel was in part a debate about the value of Chinese culture and that a complex cultural awareness of China shaped the development of a 'national' literature in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England by pushing to new limits questions of comparative cultural value and identity. Writers including Defoe, Addison, Goldsmith, and Percy wrote China into genres such as the novel, the periodical paper, the pseudo-letter in the newspaper, and anthologized collections of 'antique' English poetry, inventing new formal strategies to engage in this wide-ranging debate about what defined modern English identity.
How is a poem made? From what constellation of inner and outer worlds does it issue forth? Sarah Kennedy's study of Eliot's poetics seeks out those images most striking in their resonance and recurrence: the 'sea-change', the 'light invisible' and the 'dark ghost'. She makes the case for these sustained metaphors as constitutive of the poet's imagination and art. Eliot was haunted by recurrence. His work is full of moments of luminous recognitions, moments in which a writer discovers both subject and appropriate image. This book examines such moments of recognition and invocation by reference to three clusters of imagery, drawing on the contemporary languages of literary criticism, psychology, physics and anthropology. Eliot's transposition of these registers, at turns wary and beguiled, interweaves modern understandings of originary processes in the human and natural world with a poet's preoccupation with language. The metaphors arising from these intersections generate the imaginativ
What can I do? To what degree do we control our own desires, actions, and fate - or not? These questions haunt us, and have done so, in various forms, for thousands of years. Timothy Rosendale explores the problem of human will and action relative to the Divine - which Luther himself identified as the central issue of the Reformation - and its manifestations in English literary texts from 1580–1670. After an introduction which outlines the broader issues from Sophocles and the Stoics to twentieth-century philosophy, the opening chapter traces the theological history of the agency problem from the New Testament to the seventeenth century. The following chapters address particular aspects of volition and salvation (will, action, struggle, and blame) in the writings of Marlowe, Kyd, Shakespeare, Ford, Herbert, Donne, and Milton, who tackle these problems with an urgency and depth that resonate with parallel concerns today.
This critical study of John Banville’s major work considers the manner in which his fiction intersects with a variety of ideas relating to art. It also proposes that Banville’s fiction rep
This collection establishes the term ‘medical paratexts’ as a useful addition to medical humanities, book history, and literary studies research. As a relatively new field of study, little critical at
Victorian Literary Cultures: Studies in Textual Subversion is an anthology featuring leading critical voices, including such figures as Nancy Henry, Julian Wolfreys, Ira Nadel, Joseph Wiesenfarth, and
Relations and Networks in South African Indian Writing explores recent writing by a variety of South African authors of Indian descent. The essays highlight the sociality and patterns of connectedness
To refine a critical understanding of early modern acting styles, Shakespeare’s Dramatic Persons explores how the classical rhetorical tradition would inform an actor’s personation of character.
From one of the greatest Shakespeare scholars of our time, Harold Bloom presents Othello’s Iago, perhaps the Bard’s most compelling villain—the fourth in a series of five short books
An original take on literary history that uses visual satire to explore literature’s importance to eighteenth-century political culture The first in-depth analysis of the relationship between li
Perceptions of the Great War have changed significantly since its outbreak and children's authors have continually attempted to engage with those changes, explaining and interpreting the events of 191
David Jones – author of In Parenthesis, the great epic poem of World War I – is increasingly recognised as a major voice in the first generation of British Modernist writers. Acclaimed by the likes of
This landmark book - entirely unobtainable for several years - is the single essential study of how the best-known Bronte novels - Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights - achieved their world-wide fame.
The desire to engage and confront traumatic subjects was a facet of Irish literature for much of the twentieth century. Yet, just as Irish society has adopted a more direct and open approach
The desire to engage and confront traumatic subjects was a facet of Irish literature for much of the twentieth century. Yet, just as Irish society has adopted a more direct and open approach
As an aging, tenacious Elizabeth I clung to power, a talented playwright probed the social causes, the psychological roots, and the twisted consequences of tyranny. In exploring the psyche (and psycho
