Literary Criticism

A survey of the rituals of the year in Victorian England, showing the influence of the Middle Ages. What does a maypole represent? Why eat hot cross buns? Did Dick Whittington have a cat? All these questions are related to a larger one that...

By most accounts, immigrant literature deals primarily with how immigrants struggle to adapt to their adopted countries. Its readers have come to expect stories of identity formation, of how immigrants create ethnic communities and maintain ties to...

Archaeologists and anthropologists discover other civilizations; science fiction writers invent them. In this collection of her major essays, Marleen Barr argues that feminist science fiction writers contribute to postmodern literary canons with radical...

A critical account of the idea of intelligence in modern French literature and thoughtIn the late nineteenth century, psychologists and philosophers became intensely interested in the possibility of quantifying, measuring, and evaluating “intelligence,”...

Aime Cesaire's work is foundational for decolonial and postcolonial thought. His Discourse on Colonialism, first published in 1955, influenced generations of scholars and activists at the forefront of liberation struggles in Africa, Latin America, and...

The nineteenth century was seemingly a period of great progress. Huge advancements and achievements were made in science, technology and industry that transformed life and work alike. But a growing pride in modernity and innovation was tainted by a sense...

We are living in the age of the superhero and we cannot deny it. Avengers Assemble! is a vibrant and theoretically informed interrogation of one of the defining and most financially successful film franchises of the new millennium. In the first...

Poetry is often viewed as culturally homogeneous-"stubbornly national," in T. S. Eliot's phrase, or "the most provincial of the arts," according to W. H. Auden. But in A Transnational Poetics, Jahan Ramazani uncovers the ocean-straddling energies of the...

The text of Finnegans Wake is not as monolithic as it might seem. It grew out of a set of short vignettes, sections and fragments. Several of these sections, which James Joyce confidently claimed would "fuse of themselves", are still recognizable in the...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781907869662Author Andrew WhiteheadFormat PaperbackPage Count 280Imprint Five Leaves PublicationsPublisher Five Leaves Publications

An anthology of exemplary readings by some of the twentieth century's foremost literary critics, Close Reading presents a wide range of responses to the question at the heart of literary criticism: how best to read a text to understand its meaning. The...

Shipwreck Modernity engages early modern representations of maritime disaster in order to describe the global experience of ecological crisis. In the wet chaos of catastrophe, sailors sought temporary security as their worlds were turned upside down...

This Companion examines the full range and vigor of the American novel. From the American exceptionalism of James Fenimore Cooper to the apocalyptic post-Americanism of Cormac McCarthy, these newly commissioned essays from leading scholars and critics...

This revised edition of the successful Casebook first published in 1969, has been brought up-to-date with the inclusion of more recent criticism, whilst retaining early comments and critiques. Contributors include A.C.Bradley, A.Wilson Knight, Enid...

The year 2010 marked the 100th anniversary of Mark Twain's death. In celebration of this important milestone and in honor of the cherished tradition of publishing Mark Twain's works, UC Press published "Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1", the first...

As the popularity of William Bennett's Book of Virtues attests, parents are turning more and more to children's literature to help instill values in their kids. Now, in this elegantly written and passionate book, Vigen Guroian provides the perfect...

In this second edition of The Repeating Island, Antonio Benitez-Rojo, a master of the historical novel, short story, and critical essay, continues to confront the legacy and myths of colonialism. This co-winner of the 1993 MLA Katherine Singer Kovacs...

Among Renaissance utopias, "The City of the Sun" is perhaps second in importance only to More's more famous work. There are striking similarities between Campanella's utopia and More's, but also striking differences which reflect both changed historical...

Iliad I provides the commentary and student aids lacking in larger volumes of Homer's work. It contains a full Introduction designed to highlight the most important features of the text. There are sections on the Iliad and its qualities, the Homeric...

Acerbic, precise and very funny, Pamela Crowe's poems explore home life and relationships in a delightfully forthright voice. Secret frustrations and anxieties are aired and private fantasies brought into the light, as odes blur into diatribes and...

This long-awaited anthology celebrates the experience of Native American women and is at once an important contribution to our literature and an historical document. It is the most comprehensive anthology of its kind to collect poetry, fiction, prayer,...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780974968018Author Joao Cabral de Melo NetoFormat PaperbackPage Count 275Imprint Archipelago BooksPublisher Archipelago BooksWeight(grams) 388g

This deluxe edition of Virgil's epic poems, recounting the wanderings of Aeneas and his companions after the fall of Troy, contains an introduction by Allen Mandelbaum and fourteen powerful renderings created by Barry Moser to illustrate this volume...

Kerouac. Ginsberg. Burroughs. These are the most famous names of the Beat Generation, but in fact they were only the front line of a much more wide-ranging literary and cultural movement. This critical history takes readers through key works by these...

A leading critic explains what makes American poetry--a vast genre covering diverse styles, techniques, and form--distinctive. In this short and engaging volume, David Caplan proposes a new theory of American poetry. With lively writing and...

In this innovative series of public lectures at Newcastle University, leading contemporary poets speak about the craft and practice of poetry to audiences drawn from both the city and the university. The lectures are then published in book form by...

An Open Access edition of this book will be made available on publication via the Liverpool University Press website.Steel City Readers makes available, and interprets in detail, a large body of new evidence about past cultures and communities of reading...

A critical analysis of Karl Marx's Capital, which is without question one of the most influential books to be published in the course of the past two centuries. Controversial in its politics, and arriving at conclusions that are passionately debated to...

Students, scholars, and general readers alike will find the New Cambridge Companion to Samuel Johnson deeply informed and appealingly written. Each newly commissioned chapter explores aspects of Johnson's writing and thought, including his ethical grasp...

First published by Peter Owen in 1993, this book brings together Muriel Spark's writings on the Bronte sisters, including a selection of their letters and a selection of Emily Bronte's poems. Perceptively but unsentimentally, Spark considers the Brontes'...

"The finest critical book on Virginia Woolf to date. Alex Zwerdling's large and subtle study places Virginia Woolf's world of class, politics, feminism, pacifism, and the family into firm historical perspective. The book leaves us with renewed...

Who of us could not confess to liking food, sleeping and things that shine - at least sometimes? Or dream about becoming rich? This is also true of Sniff, who is fundamentally sweet-natured and who willingly participates in everything, so long as it...

Thoroughly updated, this book remains the best overall survey of English literature available. Brings this successful book up to date with new material on, among others, Caryl Churchill, Brian Friel, Martin Amis and Graham Swift Very accessible About the...

Activists and politicians have long recognized the power of a good story to move people to action. In early 1960, four black college students sat down at a whites-only lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, and refused to leave. Within a month,...

Subjunctive Aesthetics argues for the importance of ecocritical approaches within the field of Mexican Studies. While environmental historians of Mexico have been leading the charge in terms of foregrounding the nonhuman as a legitimate object of...

Opened in 1837 and inspired by the Pere Lachaise in Paris, West Norwood became known as the Millionaire's Cemetery. But within its opulent grounds there are twelve buried names whose currency is language: these are the dead poets of West Norwood. In the...

This book approaches Ulster Protestantism through its theatrical and cultural intersection with politics, re-establishing a forgotten history and engaging with contemporary debates. Anchored by the perspectives of ten writers - some of whom have been...

An investigation into the remarkable "poetics of the atom" in English literary texts from the mid to late seventeenth century. The early modern "atom" - understood as an indivisible particle of matter - captured the poetic imagination in ways that...

Throughout one of English history's most tumultuous periods, Daniel Defoe (1660-1731) took part in and reported on nearly every major political, religious, and social controversy. This widely acclaimed biography offers a fascinating account of Defoe's...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781910996089Author Christopher SteareFormat PaperbackPage Count 230Imprint Greenwich Exchange LtdPublisher Greenwich Exchange Ltd