Theories of Memory provides a comprehensive introduction to the rapidly expanding field of memory studies. It is a resource through which students of literature will be able both to broaden their know
This is the first anthology to bring together the key texts of African literary theory and criticism. Brings together key texts that are otherwise hard to locate Covers all genres and critical schoo
In this exploration of the significance of illness in the Victorian literary imagination Miriam Bailin maps the cultural implications and narrative effects of the sickroom as an important symbolic space in nineteenth-century life and literature. Dr Bailin draws on non-fictional accounts of illness by Julia Stephen, Harriet Martineau and others to illuminate the presentation of illness and ministration, patient and nurse, in the fiction of Charlotte Brontë, Charles Dickens and George Eliot. She argues that the sickroom functions as an imagined retreat from conflicts in Victorian society, and that fictional representations of illness serve to resolve both social conflict and aesthetic tension. Her concentration on the sickroom scene as a compositional response to insistent formal as well as social problems yields fresh readings of canonical works and approaches to the constituent elements of Victorian realist narrative.
Kafka and Cultural Zionism is an illumination of the individual Jewish identity of this major modernist German author. Through a thorough examination of Kafka's life, his influences, and his writin
Leading psychologists delve into the world and characters of Harry Potter in this revealing look at J. K. Rowling's constructed universe, using the characters and their puzzling situations to offer i
Philip Larkin became an English institution in his own lifetime. However since his death in 1985, controversy has raged around his character and life. This book takes a fresh look at the poems, leadin
The Edinburgh Companion to Contemporary Scottish Literature examines the ways in which the cultural and political role of Scottish writing has changed since the country's successful referendum on nati
This brief but inclusive biography of Franz Kafka and summary of manyof his works, all illustrated by Crumb, helps us understand the essenceof Kafka and provide insight beyond the cliche "Kafkaesque.
Parker (English, Chinese U. of Hong Kong) explores how writers of autobiographical works place themselves within and shape their narratives by factors--goods, he calls them--that command their respect
In A Gift of the Spirit, Eugene Victor Wolfenstein offers a reading of W. E. B. Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk aimed at demonstrating its organic unity and coherence. He takes as his interpretive k
In no other region of the United States has the notion of authenticity played such an important yet elusive role as it has in the West. Though pervasive in literature, popular culture, and history, as
“As warm and stimulating as a library to which one returns again and again.”—Chicago Tribune (Editor’s Choice)While books contain insights into our selves and the world,
American Narratives takes readers back to the turn of the twentieth century to reintroduce four writers of varying ethnic backgrounds whose works were mostly ignored by critics of their day. With the
Herman Melville's Pierre; or. The Ambiguities has a storied place in the history of American publishing. Melville began writing this follow-up to Moby-Dick in October 1851, thinking that it might prov
Challenging traditional criticism, a provocative study of the literature of the Southern Renaissance of the 1940s and 1950s reveals how six writers of the era address issues of sexuality, gender roles
In Edith Wharton’s works, references to architecture, interior decoration, painting, sculpture, and fashion abound. As these essays demonstrate, art and objects are for Wharton evidence of cultural be
"Facing the Pacific" refers both to westward-looking American expansionist views and to persistent Pacific Island stereotypes. In light of the realities of US imperialism, Geiger (film and American st
Asian North American memoirs of childhood are challenging the construction and performative potential of the national experience, argues Cavis (American and post-colonial literatures, U. of Navarra),
We think of economic theory as a scientific speciality accessible only to experts, but Victorian writers commented on economic subjects with great interest. Gordon Bigelow focuses on novelists Charles Dickens and Elizabeth Gaskell and compares their work with commentaries on the Irish famine (1845–1852). Bigelow argues that at this moment of crisis the rise of economics depended substantially on concepts developed in literature. These works all criticized the systematized approach to economic life that the prevailing political economy proposed. Gradually the romantic views of human subjectivity, described in the novels, provided the foundation for a new theory of capitalism based on the desires of the individual consumer. Bigelow's argument stands out by showing how the discussion of capitalism in these works had significant influence not just on public opinion, but on the rise of economic theory itself.
The Winter's Tale is one of Shakespeare's most varied, theatrically self-conscious, and emotionally wide-ranging plays. This edition provides a newly edited text, a comprehensive introduction that tak
