Literary Criticism

Is it ever possible to know 'the truth' about Sylvia Plath and her marriage to Ted Hughes, which ended with her suicide? In The Silent Woman, renowned writer Janet Malcolm examines the biographies of Sylvia Plath, with particular focus on Anne...

C.K. Prahalad and Gary Hamel's 1990 The Core Competence of the Corporation helped redefine traditional ideas of management strategy. It did so by focusing companies on one of the key critical thinking skills: evaluation. In critical thinking, evaluation...

Michel Foucault is famous as one of the 20th-century's most innovative thinkers - and his work on Discipline and Punish was so original and offered models so useful to other scholars that the book now ranks among the most influential academic works ever...

A fascinating insight into the vibrant culture of Modernism, and the rich artistic world of Paris's Left Bank, Gertrude Stein's The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas includes an introduction by Thomas Fensch in Penguin Modern Classics.For Gertrude Stein...

"The poems of the Poetic Edda have waited a long time for a Modern English translation that would do them justice. Here it is at last (Odin be praised!) and well worth the wait. These amazing texts from a 13th-century Icelandic manuscript are of huge...

Timothy Morton argues that ecological awareness in the present Anthropocene era takes the form of a strange loop or Moebius strip, twisted to have only one side. Deckard travels this oedipal path in Blade Runner (1982) when he learns that he might be the...

Penelope has been waiting for her husband Odysseus to return from Troy for many years. Little does she know that his path back to her has been blocked by astonishing and terrifying trials. Will he overcome the hideous monsters, beautiful witches and...

'A countryman cleaves earth with his crooked plough. Such is the labour of his life. So he sustains his native land ...' Virgil's affectionate poem of the land does not admit brief excerpts, any more than the labour of the farmer can easily be...

At the Tabard Inn in Southwark, a jovial group of pilgrims assembles, including an unscrupulous Pardoner, a noble-minded Knight, a ribald Miller, the lusty Wife of Bath, and Chaucer himself. As they set out on their journey towards the shrine of Thomas a...

'It is singular, that my having spent a winter with one of the most dissipated women in England should have sobered my mind so completely.' Maria Edgeworth's 1801 novel, Belinda, is an absorbing, sometimes provocative, tale of social and domestic life...

The Greek of 2 Corinthians is some of the most complex of any New Testament text, displaying Paul's full range of rhetorical strategies. Long's analysis of the soaring rhetoric locates Paul's letter within the first-century Mediterranean world, employing...

In this first full-length study of Byron's masterpiece in over thirty years, Richard Cronin boldly presents Don Juan as the epic poem of its age. Impressively illuminating the whole literary nineteenth century through a single work, he asks what kind of...

A collection of essays about language and its constructive role in national culture, history, and identity, that advocates for linguistic decolonization. 'The language of literature', Ngugi writes, 'cannot be discussed meaningfully outside the context...

"Outstanding." - The Sunday Times "Beautifully written." The Times "Superbly adroit." The Spectator "Excellent." BBC History Magazine The Battle of Hastings and its aftermath nearly wiped out the leading families of Anglo-Saxon England - so what...

The text is that of the 1813 first edition, accompanied by revised and expanded explanatory annotations. This edition also includes: biographical portraits of Austen by members of her family and, new to the fourth edition, those by Jon Spence (Becoming...

From the Royal Shakespeare Company - a modern, definitive edition of one of Shakespeare's last plays. With an expert introduction by Sir Jonathan Bate, this unique edition presents a historical overview of The Winter's Tale in performance, takes a...

It is generally agreed that in the early eighteenth century people began to be interested in landscape as something to have a 'taste' for; that they saw landscape through the eyes of the great painters, and that later pictures, poetry and landscape...

Mark Thomas has been touring the country for months, getting audiences to come up with policies aimed at sorting out the country's political chaos and taking back the power for the people. Sick to death of bailing out bankers and subsidising MPs homes,...

Widely regarded as the finest poet of his generation, Seamus Heaney is the subject of numerous critical studies; but no book-length portrait has appeared until now. Through his own lively and eloquent reminiscences, Stepping Stones retraces the poet's...

In this outstanding book Susan Strehle argues that a new fiction has developed from the influence of modern physics. She calls this new fiction actualism, and within that framework she offers a critical analysis of major novels by Thomas Pynchon, Robert...

A complete volume of the writer's poetry and songs includes previously unpublished pieces, draws on extensive scholarship and Burn's own letters, and offers supplemental information about his life, early hardships, political beliefs, and literary...

This authoritative edition was formerly published in the acclaimed Oxford Authors series under the general editorship of Frank Kermode. It brings together a unique combination of Donne's poetry and prose - all the major poems, complemented by rarely...

Stephen Greenblatt's Will in the World is widely recognised to be the fullest and most brilliant account ever written of Shakespeare's life, his work and his age.Shakespeare was a man of his time, constantly engaging with his audience's deepest desires...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780996639439Author Fitz Hugh LudlowFormat HardbackPage Count 378Imprint LogosophiaPublisher LogosophiaWeight(grams) 708gDimensions(mm) 229mm * 152mm * 25mm

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780618126996Author Karen Wynn FonstadFormat PaperbackPage Count 224Imprint Houghton Mifflin (Trade)Publisher Houghton MifflinWeight(grams) 497g

This volume offers a critique of cultural and intellectual life in Greece during the dictatorship of 1967-1974, discussing how Greek playwrights, directors, and actors reconceived the role of culture in a state of crisis and engaged with questions of...

The international bestselling classic from the author of Animal Farm. Winston Smith rewrites history. It's his job. Hidden away in the Record Department of the sprawling Ministry of Truth, he helps the Party, and the omnipresent Big Brother,...

The text of the novel is again based on Hardy's final revision for the 1912 Wessex Edition. The Norton Critical Edition includes: expanded footnotes, further drawing out Hardy's web of allusions and comprehensively indicating the material culture in...

Teddy, a philosophy professor in an American university, brings his wife Ruth to visit his father, uncle and two brothers at his old London home, after years of estrangement. In the intense conflict that follows, it is Ruth who becomes the focus of their...

A moving meditation on recent geopolitical crises, viewed through the lens of ancient and modern tragedy "Spare, elegant and poignant. . . . If there is a single contemporary book that should be pressed into the hands of those who decide issues of war...

Easy to use in the classroom or as a tool for revision, Oxford Literature Companions provide student-friendly analysis of a range of popular A Level set texts. Each book offers a lively, engaging approach to the text, covering characterisation and role,...

Two of our foremost poets provide here a lucid, straightforward primer that "looks squarely at some of the headaches and mysteries of poetic form": a book for readers who have always felt that an understanding of form (sonnet, ballad, villanelle,...

The Poetry Handbook is a lucid and entertaining guide to the poet's craft, and an invaluable introduction to practical criticism for students. Chapters on each element of poetry, from metre to gender, offer a wide-ranging general account, and end by...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781250193421Author Blythe RobersonFormat HardbackPage Count 288Imprint St Martin's PressPublisher St Martin's PressWeight(grams) 363gDimensions(mm) 197mm *...

This major new edition, originally commissioned for the acclaimed Oxford Authors series under the general editorship of Frank Kermode, brings together a unique combination of Shelley's poetry and prose - the lyric poems, plays, longer poems, criticism,...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781561841295Author Anthony PearsellFormat PaperbackPage Count 589Imprint New Falcon Publications,U.S.Publisher New Falcon Publications,U.S.Weight(grams) 778g

The Heinemann Advanced Shakespeare series specifically focuses on preparing students for their exams. Teachers find that the accessible notes and end-of-act activities really help students understand the text and encourage them to develop their own...

Writers like to elude their public, lead them a bit of a dance. They take them down untrodden paths, land them in unknown country where they have to ask for directions.In this personal anthology, Alan Bennett has chosen over seventy poems by six...

Under the pseudonym Myles na Gopaleen, Flann O' Brien wrote a daily column in the 'Irish Times' called 'Cruiskeen Lawn' for over twenty years which hilariously satirised the absurdities and solemnities of Dublin life. With shameless irony and...

The final volume in this brilliant translation destined to take its place among the great English versions of The Divine Comedy. In his translation of Paradise, Mark Musa exhibits the same sensitivity to language and knowledge of translation that enabled...