Literary Criticism

The sense of touch had a deeply uncertain status in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It had long been seen as the most certain and reliable of the senses, and also as biologically necessary: each of the other senses could be relinquished, but to...

A GUARDIAN AND INDEPENDENT BEST MUSIC BOOK OF THE YEAR 'At last an expert classicist gets to grips with Bob Dylan' Mary Beard 'Thomas's elegant, charming book offers...

Hayden White probes the notion of authority in art and literature and examines the problems of meaning - its production, distribution, and consumption-in different historical epochs. In the end, he suggests, the only meaning that history can have is the...

"It is to the Greeks that we turn when we are sick of the vagueness, of the confusion, of our own age."-Virginia WoolfDiscover a new passion for a very old language, a language that can express what can't be said in any other, and thrillingly relevant to...

This work offers an edition and translation of some 30 poems by the trobairitz, a remarkable group of women poets from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, who composed in the style and language of the troubadours. Introductory essays and notes by...

She sees, coming up a second time, earth from the ocean, eternally green; the waterfalls plunge, an eagle soars above them, over the mountain hunting fish. After the terrible conflagration of Ragnarok, the earth rises serenely again from the ocean,...

Freudian thought permeates virtually every aspect of 20th century life. To understand Freud is to explore not only his scientific papers but also his vivid writings on art, literature, politics, religion and culture. The Freud Reader is the first...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780262544887Author Lauren FournierFormat PaperbackPage Count 320Imprint MIT PressPublisher MIT Press Ltd

Writing for art is a concise introduction to the subject of ekphrasis, and the first study to offer a useful general survey of the larger philosophical and theoretical questions arising from the encounter of literary texts and artworks. Stephen Cheeke...

'Invigorating ... engaging ... thrilling' Samantha Ellis, GUARDIAN'An astonishing tour-de-force . . . Juliet has found the biographer she deserves' Marion TurnerA cultural, historical, and literary exploration of the birth, death, and legacy of the...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780140446890Author Christine de PizanFormat PaperbackPage Count 336Imprint Penguin ClassicsPublisher Penguin Putnam IncWeight(grams) 249gDimensions(mm)...

'War, the bringer of tears...' For 2,700 years the Iliad has gripped listeners and readers with the story of Achilles' anger and Hector's death. This tragic episode during the siege of Troy, sparked by a quarrel between the leader of the Greek army...

From the author of The Handmaid's Tale and Dearly I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed and that necessary.Eating Fire brings together three of Margaret's Atwood's key poetry collections: Poems...

A much-loved author brings the world of literature alive for all ages This 'little history' takes on a very big subject: the glorious span of literature from Greek myth to graphic novels, from The Epic of Gilgamesh to Harry Potter. John Sutherland is...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781681375892Author Hannah ArendtFormat PaperbackPage Count 272Imprint NYRB ClassicsPublisher The New York Review of Books, Inc

Exploring Religion in Ancient Egypt offers a stimulating overview of the study of ancient Egyptian religion by examining research drawn from beyond the customary boundaries of Egyptology and shedding new light on entrenched assumptions. Discusses the...

Mahmud Darwish, Samih al-Qasim and Adonis are amongst the leading poets in the Arab world today. Victims of a Map presents some of their finest work in translation, alongside the original Arabic, including thirteen poems by Darwish never before published...

This reader remains the only major new reader of Old English prose and verse in the past forty years. The second edition is extensively revised throughout, with the addition of a new 'Beginning Old English' section for newcomers to the Old English...

A relation of cruel optimism exists when something you desire is actually an obstacle to your flourishing. Offering bold new ways of conceiving the present, Lauren Berlant describes the cruel optimism that has prevailed since the 1980s, as the...

Shortlisted for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award and the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the EssayA blazingly intelligent first collection of essays from the award-winning author of Open City and Every Day Is for the Thief.With these pieces...

Ecocriticism explores the ways in which we imagine and portray the relationship between humans and the environment across many areas of cultural production, including Romantic poetry, wildlife documentaries, climate models, the Hollywood blockbuster The...

John Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost (1667) is a literary landmark. His reworking of Biblical tales of the loss of Eden constitutes not only a gripping literary work, but a significant musing on fundamental human concerns ranging from freedom and fate...

How the idea of the author was born in the battleground of genderWhen Sappho sang her songs, the only word that existed to describe a poet was a male one-aoidos, or "singer-man." The most famous woman poet of ancient Greece, whose craft was one of words,...

The beginnings of the anti-colonial struggle in Jamaica coincided with the childhood and early adolescence of Sylvia Wynter, providing the motivation for this, the first phase of her important body of work. The essays and articles collected here go...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780143131809Author James RallisonFormat PaperbackPage Count 240Imprint Penguin USAPublisher Penguin Putnam Inc

From its origins in the folk tale, through its evolution in response to changing social and political conditions to its current form, the Irish short story has retained its own distinct and unique form. The finest writers of their time are represented...

With a history stretching back nearly 1,500 years, Japanese literature is infused from its beginnings with written traditions from around the globe, while ever evolving in its own particular expressive modes and vision. This Very Short Introduction...

'A revelation ... as well as being sympathetic to the plight of children, it is hilarious' A. N. WilsonThe hero of Dickens's flamboyantly exuberant novel, Nicholas Nickleby, is left penniless after his father's death and forced to make his own way in the...

A.C. Bradley put Shakespeare on the map for generations of readers and students for whom the plays might not otherwise have become "real" at all' writes John Bayley in his foreword to this edition of Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello,...

An innovative new edition of nine classic short stories from one of the greatest writers of the Victorian era."I cannot think other than in stories," Oscar Wilde once confessed to his friend Andre Gide. In this new selection of his short fiction, Wilde's...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781617757600Author Adam MansbachFormat HardbackPage Count 32Imprint Akashic Books,U.S.Publisher Akashic Books,U.S.Weight(grams) 85gDimensions(mm) 17mm *...

A TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT BOOK OF THE YEAR 2020'Lovers of word games and literary puzzles will relish this indispensable anthology' The Guardian 'At times, you simply have to stand back in amazement' Daily Telegraph'An exhilarating feat, it takes its...

The Strange Tales of Pu Songling (1640-1715) are exquisite and amusing miniatures that are regarded as the pinnacle of classical Chinese fiction. With their elegant prose, witty wordplay and subtle charm, the 104 stories in this selection reveal a world...

Desmond M. Clarke presents new translations of three of the first feminist tracts to support explicitly the equality of the sexes. The alleged inferiority of women's nature and the corresponding roles that women were (in)capable of exercising in society...

TThe Oxford Handbook to European Romanticism brings together leading scholars in the field to examine the intellectual, literary, philosophical, and political elements of European Romanticism. The book focuses on the cultural history of the period...

A biography of Vergil, Rome's greatest poet, by the acclaimed translator of the Aeneid "Ms. Ruden has converted the writer of the Aeneid from a noble and stodgy 'ancient' into our contemporary . . . persuasively re-imagined [as] a sympathetic,...

The Indo-Europeans, speakers of the prehistoric parent language from which most European and some Asiatic languages are descended, most probably lived on the Eurasian steppes some five or six thousand years ago. Martin West investigates their traditional...

T. S. Eliot is not only one of the most important poets of the twentieth century; as literary critic and commentator on culture and society, his writing continues to be profoundly influential. Every student of English must engage with his writing to...

Did possessing and killing amount to the same thing deep within the dark recesses of the human beast? La Bete humaine (1890), is one of Zola's most violent and explicit works. On one level a tale of murder, passion and possession, it is also a...

Phaedrus is widely recognized as one of Plato's most profound and beautiful works. It takes the form of a dialogue between Socrates and Phaedrus and its ostensible subject is love, especially homoerotic love. This new translation is accompanied by an...