Literary Criticism

The essays in this volume boldly map the historically resonant intersections between Jewishness and queerness, between homophobia and anti-Semitism, and between queer theory and theorizations of Jewishness. With important essays by such well-known...

How rhyme became entangled with debates about the nature of liberty in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English poetryIn his 1668 preface to Paradise Lost, John Milton rejected the use of rhyme, portraying himself as a revolutionary freeing English...

These original essays mean to provoke rather than reassure, to challenge rather than codify. Instead of summarizing existing knowledge after the fashion of the now-ubiquitous literary 'companions,' these essays aim at opening fresh discussion; instead of...

Konstantin Mochulsky's critical biography is, in the words of George Gibian, "the best single work in any language about Dostoevsky's work as a whole." Through its close and insightful analysis of individual writings, relating them to his personal life...

The short story has been integral to the development of Caribbean literature, and continues to offer possibilities for invention and reinvigoration. As the most comprehensive study of its kind, this important and timely volume explores the significance...

J. M. Coetzee: Truth, Meaning, Fiction illuminates the intellectual and philosophical interests that drive Coetzee's writing. In doing so, it makes the case for Coetzee as an important and original thinker in his own right. Whilst looking at Coetzee's...

War writing is an ancient genre that continues to be of vital importance. Times of crisis push literature to its limits, requiring writers to exploit their expressive resources to the maximum in response to extreme events. This Companion focuses on...

A Companion to Greek Architecture provides an expansive overview of the topic, including design, engineering, and construction as well as theory, reception, and lasting impact. Covers both sacred and secular structures and complexes, with particular...

A Choice Outstanding Academic BookThe "Homeric Question" has vexed Classicists for generations. Was the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey a single individual who created the poems at a particular moment in history? Or does the name "Homer" hide the...

Permanence and Change was written and first published in the depths of the Great Depression. Attitudes Toward History followed it two years later. These were revolutionary texts in the theory of communication, and, as classics, they retain their...

We traditionally assume that the `meaning' of each of Shakespeares plays is bequeathed to it by the Bard. It is as if, to the information which used to be given in theatrical programmes, `Cigarettes by Abdullah, Costumes by Motley, Music by Mendelssohn',...

Shakespeare lived in a world of absolutes-of claims for the absolute authority of scripture, monarch, and God, and the authority of fathers over wives and children, the old over the young, and the gentle over the baseborn. With the elegance and verve for...

Four previously untranslated plays for the World Classics series Here are four characteristic and hugely important dramas by one of the most famous and influential European writers of the last two hundred years, translated into English for the first...

During a week in January 1981, poets Allen Grossman and Mark Halliday met for a series of conversations exploring "the meanings for us as poets arising from the difference between us-- differences of generation and education as well as of temperament and...

Born in Syria in 1930, Adonis later moved to Lebanon and became a pivotal figure in the new poetry of the late 1960s. With the publication of Mihyar of Damascus: His Songs in 1963-widely viewed as a watershed moment in Arabic poetry-Adonis forged a new...

Specially commissioned to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Southwark Playhouse, Samuel Adamson's new version of A Doll's House brings zest to this classic play. Thus, the story of Nora, the delicate and over-protected wife of Torvald Helmer, who bravely...

This volume, first published in 1999, contains all of Patrick Branwell Bronte's known writings, excluding his letters, from 1834 to 1836. This title primarily focuses on the creation of Angria, and on the growing conflict between Alexander Percy, Earl of...

This title explores the myriad decisions directors and actors make to produce a version of Shakespeare's play. It's full discussions of eighteen productions from the UK, Italy, Japan and the US empower readers to appreciate the many choices Shakespeare's...

Descartes's Fictions traces common movements in early modern philosophy and literary method. Emma Gilby reassesses the significance of Descartes's writing by bringing his philosophical output into contact with the literary treatises, exempla, and debates...

Shakespeare's Late Work is a detailed reading of the plays written at the end of Shakespeare's career, centring on Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest. Unlike many previous studies it considers all the late work, including Henry VIII,...

Airportness takes the reader on a single day's journey through all the routines and stages of an ordinary flight. From curbside to baggage, and pondering the minutes and hours of sitting in between, Christopher Schaberg contemplates the mundane world of...

Middlemarch is the prime example of George Eliot's dictum that "interpretations are illimitable," and in this collection of new essays Middlemarch is re-examined as an open text responsive to gaps and fissures, and as resistant to authority as...

In Beyond Reformation? An Essay on William Langland's Piers Plowman and the End of Constantinian Christianity, David Aers presents a sustained and profound close reading of the final version of William Langland's Piers Plowman, the most searching...

The Cambridge Companion to Ralph Waldo Emerson provides a critical introduction to pastor and poet, Ralph Waldo Emerson, author of Nature and The Conduct of Life. The tradition of American literature and philosophy as we know it at the end of the...

Since the first edition of Approaches to Greek Myth was published in 1990, interest in Greek mythology has surged. There was no simple agreement on the subject of "myth" in classical antiquity, and there remains none today. Is myth a narrative or a...

2006 - Soeurette Diehl Fraser Award for Best Translation of a Book, Texas Institute of Letters This is the ninth volume in the Oratory of Classical Greece. This series presents all of the surviving speeches from the late fifth and fourth centuries BC in...

Originally published in 1991. Collecting together commentary and critique on 'the Scottish play', this book showcases varied discussions of the text and the theatrical productions. From Samuel Johnson's brief 1765 comment to the editor's own piece on the...

Alternative approaches have emerged which have radically altered our understanding of Tennyson's poetry and his relationship to the Victorian age. This text covers the most significant areas of new work on Tennyson, effectively linking feminist and...

Set in the tumultuous political world of Tsarist repression and revolutionary intrigue in St Petersburg and Geneva, Under Western Eyes (1911) renders with searing intensity the psychological torment of its Russian protagonist, a university student who,...

Frank Kermode returns to the literature of his youth to ask why we appear to have forgotten how urgent and powerful it seemed in a time of economic crisis and imminent world war. The general questions suggested by the title are answered first by a study...

This Companion provides an engaging and expansive overview of gustation, gastronomy, agriculture and alimentary activism in literature from the medieval period to the present day, as well as an illuminating introduction to cookbooks as literature...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780226796062Author Karla MalletteFormat PaperbackPage Count 264Imprint University of Chicago PressPublisher University of Chicago PressWeight(grams) 152g

Four hundred years after his birth, John Milton remains one of the greatest and most controversial figures in English literature. The Oxford Handbook of Milton is a comprehensive guide to the state of Milton studies in the early twenty-first century,...

Winner of the 2016 Shakespeare's Globe Book AwardThe first comprehensive study of Shakespeare's storms. Whether the apocalyptic storm of King Lear or the fleeting thunder imagery of Hamlet, or the thunderbolt of Pericles, there is an instance of storm in...

A moving tribute to phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty in the wake of his early death. Iconic French novelist, playwright, and essayist Jean-Paul Sartre is widely recognized as one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century, and his...

Children's responses to literature are equally fascinating from the psychological and the literary point of view. Nicholas Tucker's exploratory study traces the relationship between the child and the book using both these perspectives, from the baby's...

This highly acclaimed critical exploration of modern drama begins with Buchner and Ibsen and then discusses the major playwrights who have shaped modern theater-Strindberg, Chekhov, Pirandello, Brecht, Beckett, and Handke. A new introduction by the...

This volume spans five centuries of post-Conquest literature, written at a time in which enormous social, political and linguistic changes transformed life in Britain. Medieval genres such as Arthurian romance, lyrics, dream narratives and mystery plays...

This is a thorough re-evaluation of the drama written and performed in the decade leading up to the Civil War, the most seriously neglected period of English theatre. Martin Butler overturns long-held assumptions about the nature of Caroline theatre, its...

An innovative study of how the Victorians used books, portraits, fairies, microscopes, and dollhouses to imagine miniature worlds beyond perception In 1856, Elizabeth Gaskell discovered a trove of handmade miniature books that were created by Charlotte...