Literary Criticism

A passionate, wry, and personal book about how the greatest works of literature illuminate our livesWhy do we read literature? For Arnold Weinstein, the answer is clear: literature allows us to become someone else. Literature changes us by giving us...

This comprehensive anthology brings together a diverse collection of dramatic writing from the late fourteenth century to the onset of the Renaissance. The volume presents for the first time the key plays of the period in their entirety, alongside more...

The 12 original and two classic essays offer a dialectic on performance and structure, and substantially advance our knowledge of this seminal playwright. The commentaries examine feminism, pernicious nostalgia, ethnicity, the mythological land motif,...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781538766767Author Philomena CunkFormat HardbackPage Count 304Imprint Grand Central PublishingPublisher Little, Brown & CompanyWeight(grams)...

"[Mitchell] undertakes to explore the nature of images by comparing them with words, or, more precisely, by looking at them from the viewpoint of verbal language. . . . The most lucid exposition of the subject I have ever read."-Rudolf Arnheim, Times...

The Dispossessed has been described by political thinker Andre Gorz as 'The most striking description I know of the seductions-and snares-of self-managed communist or, in other words, anarchist society.' To date, however, the radical social, cultural,...

Like every other play in the Cambridge School Shakespeare series, Measure for Measure has been specially prepared to help all students in schools and colleges. This version of Measure for Measure aims to be different from other editions of the play. It...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781565125131Author Aaron LanskyFormat PaperbackPage Count 328Imprint Algonquin BooksPublisher Algonquin BooksWeight(grams) 272gDimensions(mm) 208mm * 137mm...

Detective fiction and philosophy3/4moral philosophy in particular3/4may seem like an odd combination. Working within the framework offered by neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics, this book makes the case that moral philosophers ought to take murder mysteries...

In satire, evil, folly, and weakness are held up to ridicule - to the delight of some and the outrage of others. Satire may claim the higher purpose of social critique or moral reform, or it may simply revel in its own transgressive laughter. It exposes...

From the exemplary to the notorious to the obscure, this comprehensive and innovative encyclopedia showcases the worthy women of early modern England. Poets, princesses, or pirates, the women of power and agency found in these pages are indeed worth...

The Babylonian flood story of Atra-hasis is of vital importance to ancient Near Eastern and biblical scholars, as well as students of history, anthropology, and comparative religion. Professors Lambert and Millard provide the reader with a detailed...

One of Choice's Significant University Press Titles for Undergraduates, 2010-2011 A necessary cultural and historical discussion on the stigma of fatness To be fat hasn't always occasioned the level of hysteria that this condition receives today and...

As one of the leading proponents of the nouveau roman, Nathalie Sarraute is often remembered for her novels, including "The Golden Fruits", which earned her the Prix international de litterature in 1964. But her carefully crafted and evocative memoir...

This volume presents the only English translation of the prayers of Japan's indigenous religious tradition, Shinto. These prayers, norito, are works of religious literature that are basic to our understanding of Japanese religious history. Locating...

This is the second volume of Vonnegut's autobiographical writings - a collage of his own life story, snipped up and stuck down alongside his views on everything from suicidal depression to the future of the planet and Andrew Lloyd Webber. Honest, dark,...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781883642389Author Karen McCoskerFormat PaperbackPage Count 496Imprint Steerforth PressPublisher Steerforth PressWeight(grams) 573gDimensions(mm) 229mm *...

Post-Celtic Tiger Ireland and Contemporary Women's Writing: Feminist Interventions and Imaginings analyzes and explores women's writing of the post-Tiger period and reflects on the social, cultural, and economic conditions of this writing's production...

In this third Why I Write volume, Eileen Myles addresses the social, political, and aesthetic conditions that shape their work "A sharply etched, unvarnished self-portrait."-Kirkus Reviews "[Myles] has a good time journeying through Hell, and like a...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781910566893Author Harry BordenFormat HardbackPage Count 112Imprint Hoxton Mini PressPublisher Hoxton Mini Press

Herrnstein & Murray's The Bell Curve is a deeply controversial text that raises serious issues about the stakes involved in reasoning and interpretation.The authors' central contention is that intelligence is the primary factor determining social...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780143131731Author William ShakespeareFormat PaperbackPage Count 160Imprint Penguin ClassicsPublisher Penguin Putnam IncWeight(grams) 130gDimensions(mm)...

Montaigne called it a ramble; Chesterton the joke of literature; and Hume an ambassador between the worlds of learning and of conversation. But what is an essay, and how did it emerge as a literary form? What are the continuities and contradictions...

A collection of daring short essays on topical themes, including politics, economics, religion, society. Hans Magnus Enzensberger takes the title for this collection not from Jeremy Bentham's famous prison but from a mid-1930s Cabinet of Curiosities...

Because Thomas Hardy is so closely associated with the rural Wessex of his novels, stories, and poems, it is easy to forget that he was, in his own words, half a Londoner. Focusing on the formative five years in his early twenties when Hardy lived in the...

'A sublime piece of literary detective work that shows us once and for all how to be precisely the sort of reader that Austen deserves.' Caroline Criado-Perez, GuardianAlmost everything we think we know about Jane Austen is wrong. Her novels don't...

Today, more than 70 years after its publication, The Great Gatsby seems as fresh and pertinent to American life as it did in the 1920s. The social, cultural, and historical milieu of the 1920s reflected in its pages is not so very different from our own...

Witty, inspiring, and charismatic, Oscar Wilde is one of the Greats of English literature. Today, his plays and stories are beloved around the world. But it was not always so. His afterlife has given him the legitimacy that life denied him. Making Oscar...

When an essay is due and dreaded exams loom, here's the lit-crit help students need to succeed! SparkNotes Literature Guides make studying smarter, better, and faster. They provide chapter-by-chapter analysis, explanations of key themes, motifs, and...

In the last fifty years, folklorists have amassed an extraordinary corpus of contemporary legends including "the Choking Doberman," "the Eaten Ticket," and "the Vanishing Hitchhiker." But what about the urban legends of the past? These legends and tales...

Thirty leading Victorianists from around the world collaborate here in a multidimensional analysis of the breadth and sweep of modern Britain's longest, unruliest literary epoch.About the AuthorHerbert F. Tucker is Professor of English at the University...

Shakespeare and Digital Performance in Practice explores the impact of digital technologies on the theatrical performance of Shakespeare in the twenty-first century, both in terms of widening cultural access and developing new forms of artistry. Through...

Over a decade in the making, Medieval Folklore offers a wide-ranging guide to the lore of the Middle Ages--from the mundane to the supernatural. Definitive and lively articles focus on the great tales and traditions of the age and includes information on...

The Owl and the Nightingale is one of the first and greatest long comic poems in the English language and one of the best-known and most accomplished of all medieval literary texts. By turns both gleefully trivial and allusively serious, it has been...

Menander was the greatest writer of Attic New Comedy. He wrote prolifically in the late fourth century BC, and nearly one hundred titles of his plays are known. Due to the plays' exclusion from the Greek school curriculum in the fifth century AD and...

From the recipient of the National Jewish Book Award for Lifetime Achievement, a "hugely entertaining and irreverent" (Adam Gopnik, New Yorker) account of the art of translating the Hebrew Bible into EnglishIn this brief book, award-winning biblical...

The letters of Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin mirror the relationship of a remarkable literary couple. The correspondence collected here covers the period from July 13, 1796, to August 30, 1797, when "their friendship turned to romance, their...

The identity of Shakespeare, the most important poet and dramatist in the English language, has been debated for centuries. This historical work investigates the role of Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, establishing him as most likely the...

This accessible edition for students brings the Agamemnon, Aeschylus' opening play in the Oresteia trilogy, to life for first-time readers. A hugely popular play in antiquity and with a rich reception history to the present day, this is an essential play...

The Life of Mr Richard Savage was the first important book by a then-unknown Grub Street hack, Samuel Johnson. Richard Savage (1697-1743) was a poet, playwright, and satirist who claimed to be the illegitimate son of a late earl and to have been denied...