Children's Literature : A Reader's History, From Aesop to Harry PotterThe only single-volume work to capture the rich and diverse history of children's literature in its full panorama, this extraordinary book reveals why J. R. R. Tolkien, Dr. Seuss, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Beatrix Potter, and many others, despite their divergent styles and subject matter, have all resonated with generations of readers.
Children's Literature in ContextChildren's Literature in Context is a clear, accessible and concise introduction to children's literature and its wider contexts. It begins by introducing key issues involved in the study of children's literature and its social, cultural and literary contexts.
Disturbing the Universe : Power and Repression in Adolescent LiteratureTrites argues that the development of the genre over the past thirty years is an outgrowth of postmodernism, since YA novels are, by definition, texts that interrogate the social construction of individuals. Drawing on such nineteenth-century precursors as Little Women and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Disturbing the Universe demonstrates how important it is to employ poststructuralist methodologies in analyzing adolescent literature, both in critical studies and in the classroom.
From Little Houses to Little Women : Revisiting a Literary ChildhoodA typical travel book takes readers along on a trip with the author, but a great travel book does much more than that, inviting readers along on a mental and spiritual journey as well. This distinction is what separates Nancy McCabe's From Little Houses to Little Women from the typical and allows it to take its place not only as a great travel book but also as a memoir about the children's books that have shaped all of our imaginations.
Language, Gender and Children's FictionThis is an original, scholarly yet accessible contribution to the field of children's fiction. It focuses on gender in relation to children's fiction and the role that language plays in this relationship. Girls 'and boys 'reading itself is looked at, as well as the books that they encounter - including the Harry Potter series, Louis Sachar's prizewinning Holes, fairy tales and school reading schemes.
Literary Conceptualizations of Growth : Metaphors and Cognition in Adolescent LiteratureLiterary Conceptualizations of Growth explores those processes through which maturation is represented in adolescent literature by examining how concepts of growth manifest themselves in adolescent literature and by interrogating how the concept of growth structures scholars' ability to think about adolescence.
Multicultural Children’s Literature : A Critical Issues ApproachThis book is designed to prepare K-12 preservice and inservice teachers to address the social, cultural, and critical issues of our times through the use of multicultural children's books. It will be used as a core textbook in courses on multicultural children's literature and as a supplement in courses on children's literature and social studies teaching methods. It can also be used as a supplement in courses on literacy, reading, language arts, and multicultural education.
Telling Children's Stories : Narrative Theory and Children's LiteratureThe most accessible approach yet to children's literature and narrative theory, Telling Children's Stories is a comprehensive collection of never-before-published essays by an international slate of scholars that offers a broad yet in-depth assessment of narrative strategies unique to children's literature.
Twain, Alcott, and the Birth of the Adolescent Reform NovelTrites argues that Twain and Alcott wrote on similar topics because they were so deeply affected by the Civil War, by cataclysmic emotional and financial losses in their families, by their cultural immersion in the tenets of Protestant philosophy, and by sexual tensions that may have stimulated their interest in writing for adolescents,
What Do We Tell the Children? : Critical Essays on Children's LiteratureThis peer-reviewed collection of critical essays on children's literature addresses contemporary debates regarding what constitutes “suitable” texts for young audiences. The volume examines what adult writers “tell” their child readers with particular focus on the following areas: the representation of sexuality, gender and the body; the treatment of death and trauma; concepts of race, prejudice and national identity; and the use of children's literature as a tool for socializing, acculturating, politicizing and educating children.
Words About PicturesA pioneering study of a unique narrative form, Words about Pictures examines the special qualities of picture books--books intended to educate or tell stories to young children. Drawing from a number of aesthetic and literary sources, Perry Nodelman explores the ways in which the interplay of the verbal and visual aspects of picture books conveys more narrative information and stimulation than either medium could achieve alone
Drama
Short History of English Renaissance Drama, AIn her sparkling new book, Helen Hackett explores the historical contexts of English Renaissance drama by situating it in the wider history of ideas. She traces the origins of Renaissance theatre in communal religious drama, civic pageantry and court entertainment and vividly describes the playing conditions of Elizabethan and Jacobean playhouses.
Collected Papers on Greek TragedySir Charles Willink's work on Greek tragedy and metre is among the most important of the last fifty years. This volume collects all his mature papers, including three new articles on Euripides and additions and corrections to his earlier work.
Contemporary British DramaThis book provides a critical assessment of dramatic literature since 1995, situating texts, companies and writers in a cultural, political and social context.
Doomed by Hope : Essays on Arab TheatreDoomed by Hope is a beautifully presented collection of essays by writers and artists which traces the history of contemporary Arab theatre and its relationship to social change. With contributors from Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, Palestine, Kuwait and Yemen, this book includes both academic discussions and personal narratives, alongside a number of specially commissioned portraits of contemporary Arab theatre artists.
Dramas of Distinction : Plays by Golden Age WomenNow in Dramas of Distinction, Teresa Scott Soufas offers the first book-length critical study of five important women playwrights: Angela de Azevedo, Ana Caro Mallen de Soto, Leonor de la Cueva y Silva, Feliciana Enriquez de Guzman, and Marfa de Zayas y Sotomayor.
Greek Tragedy : Suffering Under the SunThis is an invaluable introduction to ancient Greek tragedy which discusses every surviving play in detail and provides all the background information necessary for understanding the context and content of the plays. Edith Hall argues that the essential feature of the genre is that it always depicts terrible human suffering and death, but in a way that invites philosophical enquiry into their causes and effects,
Modern European Tragedy : Exploring Crucial Plays‘Modern European Tragedy' examines the consciousness of this era, drawing a picture of the development of the tragic through an in-depth analysis of some of the twentieth century's most outstanding texts.
Performance in Greek and Roman TheatreDrawing on insights from various disciplines (philology, archaeology, art) as well as from performance and reception studies, this volume shows how a heightened awareness of performance can enhance our appreciation of Greek and Roman theatre.
Reading Modern DramaExploring the relationship between dramatic language and its theatrical aspects, Reading Modern Drama provides an accessible entry point for general readers and academics into the world of contemporary theatre scholarship. This collection promotes the use of diverse perspectives and critical methods to explore the common theme of language as well as the continued relevance of modern drama in our lives
Rhetoric and Power : The Drama of Classical GreeceThrough Rhetoric and Power, Nathan Crick dramatizes the history of rhetoric by explaining its origin and development in Classical Greece beginning the oral displays of Homeric eloquence in a time of kings following its ascent to power during the age of Pericles and the Sophists, and ending with its transformation into a rational discipline with Aristotle in a time of literacy and empire. Crick advances the thesis that rhetoric is primarily a medium and artistry of power, but that the relationship between rhetoric and power at any point in time is a product of historical conditions, not the least of which is the development and availability of communication media.
Shakespearean Representation: Mimesis and Modernity in Elizabethan TragedyHoward Felperin explores the question of modernity in literature. He directs his attention toward several older poets and examines Shakespeare in particular to show how literary modernity depends, not on chronological considerations, but on the process of mimesis, or imitation, that art has traditionally claimed for itself. In analyzing Shakespeare's major tragedies,
Narrative Is the Essence of History : Essays on the Historical NovelThe historical novel has had a very interesting history itself. During the 19th century the historical novels of Scott, Hugo, Thackeray, Dickens, Tolstoy and a host of other writers enjoyed both popular success and critical admiration. Success has never really died out, but admiration has been another matter.
The American Essay in the American CenturyThe American Essay in the American Century is a compelling, highly readable book that illuminates the history of a secretly beloved literary genre. A work that will appeal to fiction readers, scholars, and students alike, this book offers fundamental insight into modern American literary history and the intersections of literature, culture, and class through the personal essay.
Tracing the Essay: Through Experience to TruthIn Tracing the Essay, G. Douglas Atkins embraces the very qualities that have moved others to accord the essay second-class citizenship in the world of letters.Drawing from the work of Montaigne and Bacon and recent practitioners such as E. B. White and Cynthia Ozick, Atkins shows what the essay means--and how it comes to mean.
Cultural Capital : The Problem of Literary Canon FormationJohn Guillory challenges the most fundamental premises of the canon debate by resituating the problem of canon formation in an entirely new theoretical framework. The result is a book that promises to recast not only the debate about the literary curriculum but also the controversy over 'multiculturalism' and the current 'crisis of the humanities.
Epic Traditions in the Contemporary World : The Poetics of CommunityThe epic tradition has been part of many different cultures throughout human history. This noteworthy collection of essays provides a comparative reassessment of epic and its role in the ancient, medieval, and modern worlds, as it explores the variety of contemporary approaches to the epic genre.
History, Politics, Identity : Reading Literature in a Changing WorldThe beginning of the twenty first century is an appropriate time to repay careful attention to these issues. Understanding how our perception of the Other changes with the concept of the world we inhabit, we want to emphasize the rising importance of fostering cultural pluralism and global understanding.
Literature in SocietyThe essays in this volume focus on the text-world dichotomy that has been a pivotal problem since Plato, implicating notions of mimesis and representation and raising a series of debatable issues. Do literary texts relate only to the fictional world and not to the real one? Do they not only describe but also perform and thus create and transform reality? Is literature a mere reflection/expression of society, a field and a tool of political manipulations, a playground to exercise ideological and social power?
Literature, Life, and ModernityRichard Eldridge explores the ability of dense and formally interesting literature to respond to the complexities of modern life. Beyond simple entertainment, difficult modern works cultivate reflective depth and help their readers order and interpret their lives as subjects in relation to complex economies and technological systems.
Off the Books : On Literature and CultureHead Off the Books in this collection of newspaper columns, where J. Peder Zane uses classic and contemporary literature to explore American culture and politics. The book review editor for the Raleigh, North Carolina News & Observer from 1996 to 2009, Zane demonstrates that good books are essential for understanding ourselves and the world around us.
Antonio Candido: On Literature and Society : On Literature and SocietyHere Howard Becker makes available for an English-speaking audience a collection of the provocative work of Antonio Candido, one of the leading men of letters in Brazil. Trained as a sociologist, Candido conceives of literature as a social project and is equally at home in textual analyses, discussions of literary theory, and sociological, anthropological, and historical argument.
The City of WordsWith wit and erudition, Manguel looks at what visionaries, poets, novelists, essayists, and filmmakers have to say about building societies. From Cassandra to Jack London, the Epic of Gilgamesh to the computer Hal in 2001: A Space Odyssey, Don Quixote to Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner, Manguel draws fascinating and revelatory parallels between the personal and political realities of our present-day world and those of myth, legend, and story.
The Ethnography of ReadingThe essays move well beyond the simple rubric of 'literacy' in its traditional sense of evolutionary advancement from oral to written communication. Some investigate reading in exotically cross-cultural contexts. Some analyze the long historical transformation of reading in the West from a collective, oral practice to the private, silent one it is today, while others demonstrate that in certain Western contexts reading is still very much a social activity.
The Imaginary Library: An Essay on Literature and SocietyIn this speculative treatment of literature as a social institution, Alvin B. Kernan explores the inability of contemporary writers and critics to maintain a literary vision in a society that denies their values and methods
A Biocultural Approach to Literary Theory and InterpretationCombining cognitive and evolutionary research with traditional humanist methods, Nancy Easterlin demonstrates how a biocultural perspective in theory and criticism opens up new possibilities for literary interpretation. Easterlin maintains that the practice of literary interpretation is still of central intellectual and social value.
Across Literary and Linguistic Diversities : Essays on Comparative LiteratureComparative literary studies increasingly is restricted by conventional notions of comparativism born in the era of nationalism and colonialism. However, scholars are now provoked to rethink these notions as a result of the social, economic and political forces that drive the contemporary world, which simultaneously draw it into an ever tighter global network and create new, or reassert persisting, lines of division
Key Terms in Literary TheoryThis book provides precise definitions of terms and concepts in literary theory, along with explanations of the major movements and figures in literary and cultural theory and an extensive bibliography. It is designed for the student who needs to know what a particular term means, how it is used, and where it comes from, enables them to apply the terms and concepts to their own investigations.
Literature, Geography, Translation : Studies in World WritingThe present volume connects three academic fields that share central concerns but remain surprisingly isolated from each other: world literature studies, postcolonial studies, and translation studies. It approaches translation not as a vague metaphor but as a distinct and socially embedded practice that connects literatures.
Narrative, Interrupted : The Plotless, the Disturbing and the Trivial in LiteratureRecent postclassical narratology has constructed top-down reading models that often remain blind to the frame-breaking potential of individual literary narratives. Narrative, Interrupted goes beyond the macro framing typical of postclassical narratology and sets out to sketch approaches more sensitive to generic specificities, disturbing details and authorial interference. Unlike the mainstream cognitive approaches or even the emergent unnatural narratology, the articles collected here explore the artifice involved in presenting something ordinary and realistic in literature
The Classic Short Story, 1870-1925 : Theory of a GenreThis expanded and updated translation of Florence Goyet's influential La Nouvelle, 1870-1925: Description d'un genre à son apogée (Paris, 1993) is the only study to focus exclusively on this classic period across different continents
The Critical Pulse : Thirty-six Credos by Contemporary CriticsThis unprecedented anthology asks thirty-six leading literary and cultural critics to elaborate on the nature of their profession. With the humanities feeling the pinch of financial and political pressures, and its disciplines resting on increasingly uncertain conceptual ground, there couldn't be a better time for critics to reassert their widespread relevance and purpose.
The Limits of Literary HistoricismThe Limits of Literary Historicism is a collection of essays arguing that historicism, which has come to dominate the professional study of literature in recent decades, has become ossified. By drawing attention to the limits of historicism—its blind spots, overreach, and reluctance to acknowledge its commitments—this provocative new book seeks a clearer understanding of what historicism can and cannot teach us about literary narrative.
Theory of Mind and LiteratureTheory of Mind is what enables us to “put ourselves in another's shoes.” It is mindreading, empathy, creative imagination of another's perspective: in short, it is simultaneously a highly sophisticated ability and a very basic necessity for human communication.
National, Regional, and Indigenous Literatures
2000 Years of Mayan LiteratureMayan literature is among the oldest in the world, spanning an astonishing two millennia from deep pre-Columbian antiquity to the present day. Here, for the first time, is a fully illustrated survey, from the earliest hieroglyphic inscriptions to the works of later writers using the Roman alphabet. Dennis Tedlock—ethnographer, linguist, poet, and award-winning author—draws on decades of living and working among the Maya to assemble this groundbreaking book, which is the first to treat ancient Mayan texts as literature.
A Concise History of Chinese LiteratureAdopting new theoretical perspectives and using updated research, this book by a leading Chinese scholar seeks to provide a coherent, panoramic description of the development of premodern Chinese literature and its major characteristics.
History of Histories of German Literature, 1835-1914Batts analyses the kinds of predisposition, or bias, displayed by the authors of these works, and accounts for the persistence of certain biases over a long period of time. Histories of German literature published in other western European countries, Britain, and North America are also evaluated to determine to what extent, if any, a particular (i.e., non-German) attitude towards German literature is characteristic of a given country.
A New History of Medieval French LiteratureIs it legitimate to conceive of and write a history of medieval French literature when the term 'literature' as we know it today did not appear until the very end of the Middle Ages? In this novel introduction to French literature of the period, Jacqueline Cerquiglini-Toulet says yes, arguing that a profound literary consciousness did exist at the time.
African Rhythms : New Approaches to LiteratureWith new integrative and indigenous approaches to literary affairs the focus of this volume is on the influence of tradition in African writing. Using the work of Chinua Achebe two scholars from outside Africa offer insight on oratorical devices in modern African fiction, two chapters follow which, by fusing traditional elements in transitional societies, illustrate the cultural awareness that touch on the exalted role of the artist in their communities.
American Literature's Aesthetic DimensionsIn these diverse essays, leading critics recast the place of aesthetics in the production and consumption of literature. Rethinking the category of aesthetics in light of recent developments in literary theory and social criticism, contributors showcase the interpretive possibilities available to those who bring politics, culture, ideology, and conceptions of identity into their critiques.
Australian Literature : Postcolonialism, Racism, TransnationalismThe Oxford Studies in Postcolonial Literatures series offers stimulating and accessible introductions to definitive topics and key genres and regions within the rapidly diversifying field of postcolonial literary studies in English. In a provocative contribution to the series, Graham Huggan presents fresh readings of an outstanding, sometimes deeply unsettling national literature whose writers and readers just as unmistakably belong to the wider world.
Consuming Visions : Cinema, Writing, and Modernity in Rio De JaneiroConsuming Visions explores the relationship between cinema and writing in early twentieth-century Brazil, focusing on how the new and foreign medium of film was consumed by a literary society in the throes of modernization. Maite Conde places this relationship in the specific context of turn-of-the-century Rio de Janeiro, which underwent a radical transformation to a modern global city, becoming a concrete symbol of the country's broader processes of change and modernization.
Culture, Politics, and National Identity in Mexican Literature and Film, 1929-1952This work contrasts constructions of national identity in some of the most renowned literary works of the period with those in some of the most popular films, revealing their distinct functions within the nationalist project. It demonstrates that in spite of their striking dissimilarities, articulations of a Mexican consciousness in these two mediums were complementary within the framework of nationalism, as they satisfied and shaped the interests and desires of distinct sectors of Mexican society.
Dante and the Origins of Italian Literary CultureIn this book, Teodolinda Barolini explores the sources of Italian literary culture in the figures of its lyric poets and its three crowns: Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. Barolini views the origins of Italian literary culture through four prisms: the ideological/philosophical, the intertextual/multicultural, the structural/formal, and the social.
Global Chinese Literature : Critical EssaysPresenting an array of cutting edge perspectives on modern Chinese literature in different Sinophone contexts, this volume of essays offers a wide range of critical approaches to the study of an emerging interdisciplinary field.
India in Translation Through Hindi Literature : A Plurality of VoicesWhat role have translations from Hindi literary works played in shaping and transforming our knowledge about India? In this book, renowned scholars, translators and Hindi writers from India, Europe, and the United States offer their approaches to this question.
Italian Literary IconsFocusing on nineteenth- and twentieth-century Italian literature, Gian-Paolo Biasin explores a series of challenges posited for literary criticism by the success of semiotics, testing theoretical concepts not so much on theoretical grounds as in their practical application to literary texts from the high Romantic lyric of Ugo Foscolo
Japan and the Culture of the Four Seasons : Nature, Literature, and the ArtsElegant representations of nature, explicitly the four seasons, fill a wide range of Japanese genres and media—from poetry and screen painting to tea ceremony, flower arrangement, and annual observances. Haruo Shirane shows, for the first time, how, when, and why this occurred and explicates the richly encoded social, religious, and political meanings these representations embodied.
Lectures on American LiteratureThe third edition strives to emphasize this aspect while expanding and deepening the general overview as well as including other important movements and authors. The exposition of the 20th century underwent major changes: the scholars added new texts while supplementing the older ones to comply with the development of critical and academic approaches. corresponding with the ambition to present and explain the development of one of the most interesting world literatures to university students.
Modern American LiteratureAn incisive study of modern American literature, casting new light on its origins and themes.Exploring canonical American writers such as Ezra Pound, Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner alongside less familiar writers like Djuna Barnes and Susan Glaspell, the guide takes readers though a diverse literary landscape.
New Readings in the Literature of British India, C. 1780-1947The contributions to this book amply demonstrate the richness, vitality, and complexity of the colonial transactions between Britain and India over the last two centuries, and they do so by approaching the topic from a specific perspective: by interpreting the rubric 'new readings 'as broadly, creatively, and productively as possible. They cover a wide range of literary responses and genres: eighteenth-century drama, the gothic novel, verse, autobiography, history, religious writing, journalism, women's memoirs, travel writing, popular fiction, and the modernist novel
Pacific Islands Writing : The Postcolonial Literatures of Aotearoa/New Zealand and OceaniaThe Oxford Studies in Postcolonial Literatures series offers stimulating and accessible introductions to definitive topics and key genres and regions within the rapidly diversifying field of postcolonial literary studies in English. The first book of its kind, Pacific Islands Writing offers a broad-ranging introduction to the postcolonial literatures of the Pacific region.
Reading Contemporary African Literature : Critical PerspectivesReading Contemporary African Literature brings together scholarship on, critical debates about, and examples of reading African literature in all genres – poetry, fiction, and drama including popular culture. The anthology offers studies of African literature from interdisciplinary perspectives that employ sociological, historical, and ethnographic besides literary analysis of the literatures.
Spanish Literature : A Very Short IntroductionA multilayered history of exile has produced a transnational literary production, while writers in Spain have engaged with European cultural trends. This Very Short Introduction explores this rich literary history, which resonates with contemporary debates on transnationalism and cultural diversity.
Taking Back Our Spirits : Indigenous Literature, Public Policy, and HealingTaking Back Our Spirits traces the link between Canadian public policies, the injuries they have inflicted on Indigenous people, and Indigenous literature's ability to heal individuals and communities. Episkenew examines contemporary autobiography, fiction, and drama to reveal how these texts respond to and critique public policy, and how literature functions as “medicine” to help cure the colonial contagion.
The Columbia Anthology of Chinese Folk and Popular LiteratureIn The Columbia Anthology of Chinese Folk and Popular Literature, two of the world's leading sinologists, Victor H. Mair and Mark Bender, capture the breadth of China's oral-based literary heritage. This collection presents works drawn from the large body of oral literature of many of China's recognized ethnic groups including the Han, Yi, Miao, Tu, Daur, Tibetan, Uyghur, and Kazak and the selections include a variety of genres.
The Edinburgh Introduction to Studying English LiteratureThe essential guide for students of literature Extensively tested at the University of Edinburgh, this introduction to the tools required for literary study provides all the skills, background and critical knowledge which students require to approach their study of literature with confidence.
The Global Remapping of American LiteratureThis book charts how the cartographies of American literature as an institutional category have varied radically across different times and places. Arguing that American literature was consolidated as a distinctively nationalist entity only in the wake of the U.S. Civil War, Paul Giles identifies this formation as extending until the beginning of the Reagan presidency in 1981.
The Invention of Modern Italian Literature : Strategies of Creative ImaginationDespite its undeniable impact on modern literature, there are very few comprehensive studies of literary works produced in Italy from the end of the eighteenth- to the twentieth century. The Invention of Modern Italian Literature examines the methods of select Italian writers and considers their impact on the literary world.
The Making of the English Literary Canon : From the Middle Ages to the Late Eighteenth CenturyAn indigenous canon of letters, Ross argues, had been both the hope and aim of English authors since the Middle Ages. Early authors believed that promoting the idea of a national literature would help publicize their work and favour literary production in the vernacular. Ross places these early gestures toward canon-making in the context of the highly rhetorical habits of thought that dominated medieval and Renaissance culture, habits that were gradually displaced by an emergent rationalist understanding of literary value. He shows that, beginning in the late seventeenth century, canon-makers became less concerned with how English literature was produced than with how it was read and received.
Tribal Theory in Native American Literature : Dakota and Haudenosaunee Writing and Indigenous WorldviewsThis book raises the provocative issue of how Native languages and knowledges were historically excluded from the study of Native American literature and how their encoding in early Native American texts destabilized colonial processes. Cogently argued and well-researched, Tribal Theory in Native American Literature sets an agenda for indigenous literary criticism and invites scholars to confront the worlds behind the literatures that they analyze.
Crafting Novels & Short Stories : The Complete Guide to Writing Great FictionThis comprehensive book on the art of novel and short story writing is packed with advice and instruction from best-selling authors and writing experts like Nancy Kress, Elizabeth Sims, Hallie Ephron, N.M. Kelby, Heather Sellers, and Donald Maass, plus a foreword by James Scott Bell.
Epic and the Russian Novel : From Gogol to PasternakEpic and the Russian Novel from Gogol to Pasternak examines the origin of the nineteen- century Russian novel and challenges the Lukács-Bakhtin theory of epic. By removing the Russian novel from its European context, the authors reveal that it developed as a means of reconnecting the narrative form with its origins in classical and Christian epic in a way that expressed the Russian desire to renew and restore ancient spirituality.
Myth and Subversion in the Contemporary NovelThis bilingual work identifies and explains the subversive rewriting of ancient, medieval and modern myths in contemporary novels. The book opens with two theoretical essays on the subject of subversive tendencies and myth reinvention in the contemporary novel. From there, it moves on to the analysis of essential texts.
Reading Circles, Novels and Adult Reading DevelopmentThis book explores adult reading development, novel reading and reading circles in the context of a wider examination of reading pedagogies and practices in the English-speaking world. It discusses reading as both an individual and a communal act and investigates the relationship between literature and literacy development, practice and pedagogy (including a reassessment of the controversial approaches of reading aloud and phonics for adults
Recognizing the Romantic Novel : New Histories of British Fiction, 1780-1830The British Romantic era was a vibrant and exciting time in the history of the novel. Yet, aside from a few iconic books —Pride and Prejudice, Frankenstein—it has been ignored or dismissed by later readers and critics. Bringing this rich but neglected body of works to the fore, Recognizing the Romantic Novel: New Histories of British Fiction, 1780-1830 challenges us to rethink our ideas of the novel as a genre, as well as our long-held assumptions about the literary movement of Romanticism
States of Exception in the Contemporary Novel : Martel, Eugenides, Coetzee, SebaldIn the aftermath of the September 11 terror attacks, the political situation in both the United States and abroad has often been described as a 'state of exception': an emergency situation in which the normal rule of law is suspended. In such a situation, the need for good decisions is felt ever more strongly. This book investigates the aesthetics, ethics, and politics of various decisions represented in novels published around 9/11
The Dream of the Great American NovelThe first book in many years to take in the full sweep of national fiction, The Dream of the Great American Novel explains why this supposedly antiquated idea continues to thrive. It shows that four G.A.N.'scripts'are keys to the dynamics of American literature and identity--and to the myth of a nation perpetually under construction.
The NovelThe 700-year history of the novel in English defies straightforward telling. Encompassing a range of genres, it is geographically and culturally boundless and influenced by great novelists working in other languages. Michael Schmidt, choosing as his travel companions not critics or theorists but other novelists, does full justice to its complexity.
The Novel After TheoryNovels began to incorporate literary theory in unexpected ways in the late twentieth century. Through allusion, parody, or implicit critique, theory formed an additional strand in fiction that raised questions about the nature of authorship and the practice of writing. Studying this phenomenon provides fresh insight into the recent development of the novel and the persistence of modern theory beyond the period of its greatest success. In this book, Judith Ryan opens these questions to a range of readers, drawing them into debates over the value of theory. Ryan investigates what prompted fiction writers to incorporate and respond to theory nearly thirty years ago.
The Victorian Novel in ContextThis book introduces students to the Victorian novel and its contexts, teaching strategies for reading and researching nineteenth-century literature. Combining close reading with background information and analysis it considers the Victorian novel as a product of the industrial age by focusing on popular texts including Dickens's Oliver Twist, Gaskell's North and South and Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge.
Time and the Novel: The Genealogical ImperativeFormalist criticism of the modern novel has concentrated on its spatial aspects. Patricia Tobin focuses, instead, on the modern novel's temporal structure. She notes that the 'genealogical imperative' that dominated the nineteenth-century novel, in which one event gave birth to another, has broken down in the twentieth-century novels she studies.
Poetry
Contemporary Poetry: A Retrospective From the 'Quarterly Review of Literature'Here in one volume is some of the most exciting poetry written during the last thirty years, culled from the pages of one of America's foremost literary magazines. The Quarterly Review of Literature has been among the first to present many significant poets of our time.
On Modern Poetry : From Theory to Total CriticismThe themes discussed in the first part of the book include tradition, voice, rhyme, rhetoric, and objects, bringing in critics such as Eliot, Heidegger, Empson, Blackmur, and De Man. Thesecond part examines texts by Tennyson, Symons, Hopkins, Larkin and Prynne. An original exploration of poetry and its criticism
The Poetry DictionaryThe Poetry Dictionary a unique anthology of the art. It's a guide to the poetry of today and yesterday, with intriguing hints as to what tomorrow holds. Author/poet John Drury focuses on those terms that are useful to students and teachers. These are words you need to effectively discuss the craft concepts that will broaden and stimulate your own creative processes. Drury's from-experience viewpoint and spirited voice keep The Poetry Dictionary relevant, immediate and not only easy to read, but hard not to.
Poetry in AmericaPoetry in America offers extravagantly formed lyric and narrative poems that function like works of social realism for our times: hard times, wartime, divorce, times of downturn and dissipated resources. Where, in such times, can poetry emerge, the book asks—and answers—again and again. Largely set in rural places and small towns, these poems are politically committed but deeply sensuous, emotionally complex and compassionate. They take up the everyday in meaningful ways, and deliver it with blunt force, yet not without hope or bright humor.
The Life and Death of Poetry : PoemsWinner of the 2013 L. E. Phillabaum Poetry AwardIn her ninth collection of poetry, Kelly Cherry explores the domain of language. Clear and accessible, the poems in The Life and Death of Poetry examine the intricacies and limitations of communication and its ability to help us transcend our world and lives.
The Poetry LessonThe Poetry Lesson The Poetry Lesson is a hilarious account of the first day of a creative writing course taught by a 'typical fin-de-siècle salaried beatnik'--one with an antic imagination, an outsized personality and libido, and an endless store of entertaining literary anecdotes, reliable or otherwise.
Theory of the LyricWhat sort of thing is a lyric poem? An intense expression of subjective experience? The fictive speech of a specifiable persona? Examining ancient and modern poems from Sappho to Ashbery, Jonathan Culler reveals the limitations of these two models—the Romantic and the modern—and challenges the assumption that poems exist to be interpreted.
Short Stories
Short Story Theories : A Twenty-first-century PerspectiveShort Story Theories: A Twenty-First-Century Perspective problematizes different aspects of the renewal and development of the short story. The aim of this collection is to explore the most recent theoretical issues raised by the short story as a genre and to offer theoretical and practical perspectives on the form. Centering as it does on specific authors and on the wider implications of short story poetics, this collection presents a new series of essays that both reinterpret canonical writers of the genre and advance new critical insights on the most recent trends and contemporary authors.
The Hemingway Short Story : A Study in Craft for Writers and ReadersIn The Hemingway Short Story: A Study in Craft for Writers and Readers, Robert Paul Lamb delivers a dazzling analysis of the craft of this influential writer. Lamb scrutinizes a selection of Hemingway's exemplary stories to illuminate the author's methods of construction and to show how craft criticism complements and enhances cultural literary studies.
The Short Story : An IntroductionThis new general introduction emphasises the importance of the short story to an understanding of modern fiction. In twenty succinct chapters, the study paints a complete portrait of the short story - its history, culture, aesthetics and economics.
Time and the Short StoryThe essays included in the present volume deal with short stories belonging to various literatures in English (and not only), and focus on time, which is looked at from different angles: as the theme, or motif, of a text; as a narrative structure which can be approached in narratological terms, with neat distinctions between the time of story and the time of discourse, between writing time and reading time; as history, merging into memory and myth.
Related Subjects
See also Communication, English, and Linguistics in the Subject Guide