Literary Criticism

First published in 2001, this is an accessible, wide-ranging and informed introduction to Shakespeare's comedies and romances. Rather than taking each play in isolation, the chapters trace recurring issues, suggesting both the continuity and the variety...

Women in Victorian England wore jewelry made from each other's hair and wrote poems celebrating decades of friendship. They pored over magazines that described the dangerous pleasures of corporal punishment. A few had sexual relationships with each...

Anger is found everywhere in the ancient world, starting with the very first word of the Iliad and continuing through all literary genres and every aspect of public and private life. Yet it is only recently, as a variety of disciplines start to devote...

In J. R. R Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit and The Silmarillion, Middle-earth endured cataclysmic wars and critical battles, causing great men, women and mystical creatures to arise, influence and shape the course of its history. Here in this...

From the Royal Shakespeare Company - a modern, definitive edition of Shakespeare's magical late play. With an expert introduction by Sir Jonathan Bate, this unique edition presents a historical overview of Cymbeline in performance, takes a detailed look...

Here, at last, is the astonishing sequel to Alan Bennett's classic Writing Home, updated for paperback. Untold Stories contains significant previously unpublished work, including a poignant memoir of his family and of growing up in Leeds, together with...

In 1910, when Kunio Yanagita (1875-1962) wrote and published The Legends of Tono in Japanese, he had no idea that 100 years later, his book would become a Japanese literary and folklore classic. Yanagita is best remembered as the founder of Japanese...

Who said "Neither a lender or borrower be", who loved "not wisely but too well" and whose "salad days" are now behind her? If you have ever struggled to remember a Shakespeare quote, this is the book for you. It has over 3,000 quotes from single lines to...

Alexander Pope (1688-1744) is regarded as the most important poet of the early eighteenth century. An invalid from infancy, Pope devoted his energies towards literature and achieved remarkable success with his first published work at the age of 21...

Michael Longley has been called 'one of the finest lyric poets of our time'. In assembling the work of forty years, his Collected Poems displays a brilliantly sustained achievement whose depth, beauty and wit can now be fully appreciated. Longley's...

This authoritative edition was originally published in the acclaimed Oxford Authors series under the general editorship of Frank Kermode. It brings together a unique combination of Browning's poetry and prose chosen from the whole range of his career to...

A vital, engaging, and hugely enjoyable guide to poetry, from ancient times to the present, by one of our greatest champions of literature--selected as the literature book of the year by the London Times "[A] fizzing, exhilarating book."-Sebastian...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781250121028Author Scaachi KoulFormat PaperbackPage Count 256Imprint Picador USAPublisher Picador USAWeight(grams) 204gDimensions(mm) 208mm * 137mm * 20mm

When it was first published in 1947, The Age of Anxiety--W. H. Auden's last, longest, and most ambitious book-length poem--immediately struck a powerful chord, capturing the imagination of the cultural moment that it diagnosed and named. Beginning as a...

'The most compelling, original, charismatic and poetic guide to poetry that I can remember. A handbook written from the heart by one of the true modern masters of the craft.' Simon Armitage A collection of short essays and reflections on poetry from...

A key figure in British literary circles following the French Revolution, novelist and playwright Thomas Holcroft promoted ideas of reform and equality informed by the philosophy of his close friend William Godwin. Arrested for treason in 1794 and...

This volume contains Harold Pinter's first six plays, including The Birthday Party.The Birthday PartyStanley Webber is visited in his boarding house by two strangers, Goldberg and McCann. An innocent-seeming birthday party for Stanley turns into a...

"Hold tight. The way to go mad without losing your mind is sometimes unruly." So begins La Marr Jurelle Bruce's urgent provocation and poignant meditation on madness in black radical art. Bruce theorizes four overlapping meanings of madness: the lived...

In this original and trenchant work, Christina Sharpe interrogates literary, visual, cinematic, and quotidian representations of Black life that comprise what she calls the "orthography of the wake." Activating multiple registers of "wake"-the path...

Thirteen leading actors take us behind the scenes, each recreating in detail a memorable performance in one of Shakespeare's major roles. * Brian Cox on Titus Andronicus in Deborah Warner's visceral RSC production * Judi Dench on being directed by...

This book reads the highly descriptive impressionist writings of Hardy and Conrad together in the light of a shared attention to sight and sound. With a focus on nature and the environment, Hugh Epstein analyses thirteen of these powerful works in the...

Jacques Derrida's revolutionary approach to phenomenology, psychoanalysis, structuralism, linguistics, and indeed the entire European tradition of philosophy-called deconstruction-changed the face of criticism. It provoked a questioning of philosophy,...

The Liber Manualis is a distinctive guidebook to conduct and survival in tumultuous times written by a Carolingian mother for her adolescent son. This edition provides a complete translation in English, accompanied by the Latin original. Advancing views...

A beautiful and inspiring collection of poetry by Maya Angelou, author of I KNOW WHY THE CAGED BIRD SINGS and 'a brilliant writer, a fierce friend and a truly phenomenal woman' (BARACK OBAMA).'I write about being a Black American woman, however, I am...

An unrivaled compendium of ancient Roman knowledge.Pliny the Elder, Gaius Plinius Secundus (AD 23-79), a Roman of equestrian rank of Transpadane Gaul (N. Italy), was uncle of Pliny the letter writer. He pursued a career partly military in Germany, partly...

In Burning Questions Atwood aims her constant curiosity and impish humour at our world and reports back to us on what she finds.In it she seeks answers to Burning Questions such as:Why do people everywhere, in all cultures, tell stories?How can we live...

'It was at the time when I was wandering around hungry in Kristiania, that strange city no one leaves before it has set its mark on them...' Hunger is the first-person story of a young man desperately trying to establish himself in the city as a...

An amazing guide to some of the most beloved, original, inspiring, hysterical, heart-warming, compelling, rude and downright scary books that have enchanted children the world over. In 100 Children's Books That...

From its very first frame, the Star Wars series created a compelling universe, with complex characters and engaging storytelling. In advance of the highly anticipated new movie, Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens, this essay collection offers a...

There are no fewer than seventeen manuscripts of The Prelude in the Wordsworth library at Grasmere. Working with these materials, the editors have prepared an accurate reading version of 1799 and have newly edited from manuscripts the texts of 1805 and...

'Martin Amis is a seriously good writer, and never on better form than now. Experience, the book of his life, may be the book of his life' Daily Telegraph **ONE OF THE GUARDIAN'S 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE 21st CENTURY** In this remarkable work of...

The ""Young American"" critics -- Randolph Bourne, Van Wyck Brooks, Waldo Frank, and Lewis Mumford -- are well known as central figures in the Greenwich Village ""Little Renaissance"" of the 1910s and in the postwar debates about American culture and...

Ovid's Metamorphoses has entranced audiences for two thousand years, from Rome under Augustus to humanities classrooms today. Borrowing liberally from Greek and Roman mythology, the poem tells hundreds of stories that share one essential theme: each tale...

Children's literature takes many forms - works adapted for children in antiquity, picture books and pop-ups - and now includes the latest online games and eBooks. This vast and amorphous subject is both intimately related to other areas of literary and...

Could it be that the more we know about the world, the less we understand it? Could it be that, while everything has been explained, nothing has meaning? Extending the ideas presented in his book In The Dust of This Planet, Eugene Thacker explores these...

This book provides new insights into how theatre responded to changing economic practices and structures. It reviews discourses on household management and commerce to create a rich context for the discussion of socio-economic actions and transactions in...

John Clare (1793-1864), the 'peasant poet', worked as an agricultural labourer in Northamptonshire until a deterioration in his mental health saw him committed to an insane asylum. He published four volumes of verse, including Poems, Descriptive of Rural...

La Dame aux Camelias still has the power to cast the spell that has fascinated generations of readers. Dumas's marvellously beautiful, intelligent, and vibrant heroine lives on in revivals of the stage version, in film and television adaptations, and...

'The Tongue Set Free is so beautifully written. It begins wtih an extraordinary image, Canetti's earliest memory. He comes out of a room. A man makes him stick out his tongue; if he talks he will cut it off. Years later Canetti realises that this was his...

Since its first publication in English in 1985, Mieke Bal's Narratology has become an international classic and the comprehensive introduction to the theory of narrative texts, both literary and non-literary. Providing insights into how readers interpret...