Literary Criticism

Historical Fiction Now brings together prominent authors, scholars, and critics of historical fiction to explore the genre's character, fortunes, and potential in the twenty-first century. Gathering together the voices of novelists, critics,...

The Anthropocene is a concept which challenges the foundations of humanities scholarship as it is traditionally understood. It calls not only for closer engagement with the natural sciences but also for a synthetic approach bringing together insights...

This book explains how the brain interacts with the social world-and why stories matter.How do our brains enable us to tell and follow stories? And how do stories affect our minds? In Stories and the Brain, Paul B. Armstrong analyzes the cognitive...

One of Italy's best-known contemporary philosophers and leftists offers a literature-informed take on our contemporary political situation. During the dramatic course of the twentieth century, amid the clash of the titans which marked that era, humanity...

Winner of the 2017 Eisner Award in the Best Academic/Scholarly Work category 2017 Prose Awards Honorable Mention, Media & Cultural Studies Over the last 75 years, superheroes have been portrayed most often as male, heterosexual, white, and...

Suicide and the Gothic is the first protracted study of how the act of self-destruction recurs and functions within one of the most enduring and popular forms of fiction. Comprising eleven original essays and an authoritative introduction, this...

Sentiment analysis has gained widespread adoption in many fields, but not-until now-in literary studies. Scholars have lacked a robust methodology that adapts the tool to the skills and questions central to literary scholars. Also lacking has been...

This 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...

A sweeping history of how writing has preserved cultural practices, traditions, and knowledge throughout human history.In How Writing Made Us Human, 3000 BCE to Now, Walter Stephens condenses the massive history of the written word into an accessible,...

This book takes a look at the arc of the storyline in Harry Potter, digging below the surface to explore ethical, mythological, and religious meanings in J.K. Rowling's best-selling series. Why do we find ourselves so intrigued with the tale of Harry...

The poet of the Odyssey was a seriously flawed genius. He had a wonderfully inventive imagination, a gift for pictorial detail and for introducing naturalistic elements into epic dialogue, and a grand architectural plan for the poem. He was also a...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781594484827Author Ben YagodaFormat PaperbackPage Count 304Imprint Riverhead Books,U.S.Publisher Penguin Putnam IncWeight(grams) 283gDimensions(mm) 208mm *...

Harnessing new enthusiasm for Nan Shepherd's writing, The Living World asks how literature might help us reimagine humanity's place on earth in the midst of our ecological crisis. The first book to examine Shepherd's writing through an ecocritical lens,...

Mock trial-Roman style.The Major Declamations stand out for their unique contribution to our understanding of the final stage in Greco-Roman rhetorical training. These exercises, in which students learned how to compose and deliver speeches on behalf of...

In September 1781, the captain of the British slave ship Zong ordered 133 slaves thrown overboard, enabling the ship's owners to file an insurance claim for their lost "cargo." Accounts of this horrific event quickly became a staple of abolitionist...

In two magnificent and authoritative volumes, Harold C. Goddard takes readers on a tour through the works of William Shakespeare, celebrating his incomparable plays and unsurpassed literary genius.Book InformationISBN 9780226300412Author Harold C...

The celebrated English translation of this classic work of Chinese literature is now available in an updated paperback edition. Written in 1598 by Tang Xianzu, The Peony Pavilion is one of literature's most memorable love stories and a masterpiece of...

This explores the political and poetic understanding of the deconstruction of the 'animal question'. Re-examining how we relate to other animals has far-reaching implications for how we think of ourselves. This textbook reveals how thinkers on...

This book examines the sustained interest in legends of the pagan and peripheral North, tracing and analyzing the use of an 'out-of-Scandinavia' legend (Scandinavia as an ancestral homeland) in a wide range of medieval texts from all over Europe, with a...

"[An important] detailing of the development and evolution of a major institution of the African Diaspora [and] of Brazilian and Afro-Brazilian identity." -Sheila S. WalkerThe Afro-Brazilian religion Candomble has long been recognized as an extraordinary...

The surprising final chapter of a great American life. When the first volume of Mark Twain's uncensored Autobiography was published in 2010, it was hailed as an essential addition to the shelf of his works and a crucial document for our understanding of...

This magisterial work, long awaited and long the subject of passionate speculation, is an unprecedented exploration of modern poetry and poetics by one of America's most acclaimed and influential postwar poets. What began in 1959 as a simple homage to...

Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605) is one of the classic texts of Western literature and the foundation of European fiction. Yet Cervantes himself remains an enigmatic figure. The Cambridge Companion to Cervantes, first published in 2002, offers a...

"Quite simply: these are seminal essays. . . . Distinguished scholarship, erudite, and full of innovative ways of interpreting Arabic and Persian poetry." -Omar Pound"[This book] reads Arabic and Persian poetry in a refreshingly new and significant way. ...

First full-scale account of the use of the Arthurian legend in the long twelfth century. The precedent of empire and the promise of return lay at the heart of King Arthur's appeal in the Middle Ages. Both ideas found fullness of expression in the...

This study charts the evolution of Bishop's poetry, aided by newly discovered diaries, previously unpublished work and early drafts. It focuses on the poet's 20-year residence in Brazil, and attempts to provide a new understanding of Bishop's treatment...

To write this history of the imagination, Le Goff has recreated the mental structures of medieval men and women by analyzing the images of man as microcosm and the Church as mystical body; the symbols of power such as flags and oriflammes; and the...

One of the most common-and wounding-misconceptions about literary scholars today is that they simply don't love books. While those actually working in literary studies can easily refute this claim, such a response risks obscuring a more fundamental...

The Hsu-Tang Library presents authoritative and eminently readable translations of classical Chinese literature, in bilingual editions, ranging across three millennia and the entire Sinitic world. This anthology opens up new religious and poetic...

The preeminent lyric poet of ancient Greece.Of the Greek lyric poets, Pindar (ca. 518-438 BC) was "by far the greatest for the magnificence of his inspiration" in Quintilian's view; Horace judged him "sure to win Apollo's laurels." The esteem of the...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780525575443Author Nina FreudenbergerFormat HardbackPage Count 272Imprint Clarkson PotterPublisher Random House USA Inc

Emily Dickinson wrote a "letter to the world" and left it lying in her drawer more than a century ago. This widely admired epistle was her poems, which were never conventionally published in book form during her lifetime. Since the posthumous discovery...

Focusing on questions of space and locale in children's literature, this collection explores how metaphorical and physical space can create landscapes of power, knowledge, and identity in texts from the early nineteenth century to the present. The...

To The Lighthouse is one of the most important of Virginia Woolf's modernist achievements. Written by leading international scholars of Woolf and modernism, this Companion to To The Lighthouse will be of interest to students and scholars alike...

In a speech given in December 1925, Vladimir Nabokov declared that 'everything in the world plays', including 'love, nature, the arts, and domestic puns.' All of Nabokov's novels contain scenes of games: chess, scrabble, cards, football, croquet, tennis,...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781621387589Author Kathleen RaineFormat PaperbackPage Count 194Imprint Angelico PressPublisher Angelico Press

A sweeping chronicle from Aeneas to Alexander Severus.Dio Cassius (Cassius Dio), circa AD 150-235, was born at Nicaea in Bithynia in Asia Minor. On the death of his father (Roman governor of Cilicia) he went in 180 to Rome, entered the Senate, and...

New National and Post-colonial Literatures provides a comparative and up-to-date introduction to colonial, new national and post-colonial literatures, and related criticism. While free of jargon and intended as an introduction to those new to the...

First published in 1981, this book represents the first comprehensive examination of Victorian society's preoccupation with the 'notion of the gentleman' and how this was reflected in the literature of the time. Starting with Addison and Lord...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781905674121Author Naomi GreeneFormat PaperbackPage Count 144Imprint Wallflower PressPublisher Wallflower PressWeight(grams) 180gDimensions(mm) 217mm *...