Literary Criticism

A superbly rich and engrossing exploration of C.S. Lewis' The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Paths in the Snow traces the literary allusions and echoes to be found in this beloved novel, drawing the reader deeper into the magic and meaning of Narnia. ...

Antiquity's satirist supreme.Lucian (ca. AD 120-190), the satirist from Samosata on the Euphrates, started as an apprentice sculptor, turned to rhetoric and visited Italy and Gaul as a successful traveling lecturer before settling in Athens and...

This sourcebook offers an introduction to Thomas Hardy's crucial novel, offering:a contextual overview, a chronology and reprinted contemporary documents, including a selection of Hardy's poemsan overview of the book's early reception and recent critical...

From its first magnificent sentence, "In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing", to the last, "I am haunted by waters", A River Runs Through It is an American classic. Based on Norman Maclean's childhood experiences, A...

What makes Tony Soprano so likeable? Why would we rather leave the cannoli and take the gun? Do we truly want Scarface's Tony Montana to succeed? Is Michael Corleone a misunderstood hero or a despicable villain? In The Mafia: A Cultural History, now...

W. B. Yeats believed that a poet's life should be an experiment in living. His poems fashion into memorable words the sometimes puzzling emotions that hover over important life events. Yeats's remarkable work can clarify our own thinking about similar...

Set in Lombardy during the Spanish occupation of the late 1620s, The Betrothed tells the story of two young lovers, Renzo and Lucia, prevented from marrying by the petty tyrant Don Rodrigo, who desires Lucia for himself. Forced to flee, they are then...

'Facts alone are wanted in life,' exclaims Mr Gradgrind at the beginning of Dickens' Hard Times. Literature is not about facts alone, and - despite two and a half thousand years of arguments - no one can agree on what it is, or how to study it. But,...

The Hermetica are a body of theological-philosophical texts written in late antiquity, but long believed to be much older. Their supposed author, Hermes Trismegistus, was thought to be a contemporary of Moses, and the Hermetic philosophy was regarded as...

'By poetry we - we the masses - mean something vague, something untrue, something uplifting, something beautiful, something so eloquent it isn't for everyday. The word "poetry" is up there with "soul". And I am against it.'My Grandmother's Glass Eye...

Lucid, entertaining and full of insight, How To Read A Poem is designed to banish the intimidation that too often attends the subject of poetry, and in doing so to bring it into the personal possession of the students and the general reader. Offers a...

'You will be made an outlaw, forced always to live in the wilds and to live alone.' A sweeping epic of the Viking Age, Grettir's Saga follows the life of the outlaw Grettir the Strong as he battles against sorcery, bad luck, and the vengefulness of...

This is a short, powerful novel dealing with the complicities and accomodations of power within Italian politics.About the AuthorLEONARDO SCIASCIA (1921-1989) was Sicilian by birth and vocation. Sicily is the fierce locality that focuses his work and, in...

From the recipient of the National Jewish Book Award for Lifetime Achievement, a "hugely entertaining and irreverent" (Adam Gopnik, New Yorker) account of the art of translating the Hebrew Bible into EnglishIn this brief book, award-winning biblical...

Fascinated and often baffled by China, Anglophone writers turned to classics for answers. In poetry, essays, and travel narratives, ancient Greece and Rome lent interpretative paradigms and narrative shape to Britain's information on the Middle Kingdom...

The Everyman Complete Shakespeare will publish the History plays in two volumes. In volume I are contained Shakespeare's first five history plays: HENRY VI parts I, II and II; RICHARD III and KING JOHN. The text of the plays is accompainied by extensive...

E. P. Thompson's long-awaited book on William Blake was published shortly after the historian's death in August 1993. Acclaimed as one of his best and most deeply felt works, it appears now for the first time in paperback. Written with a vivid passion,...

`Her present life appeared like the dream of a distempered imagination, or like one of those frightful fictions, in which the wild genius of the poets sometimes delighted. Rreflections brought only regret, and anticipation terror.' Such is the state...

Peter Ackroyd's marvellous biography is a living attempt to reach into the heart of Shakespeare.He creates an intimate and immediate connection with his subject, so that the book reads like the work of a contemporary - meeting Shakespeare afresh on his...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780375708428Author Anne CarsonFormat PaperbackPage Count 272Imprint Vintage BooksPublisher Random House USA IncWeight(grams) 227gDimensions(mm) 201mm *...

Margaret Cohen's careful editorial revision modernizes and renews Flaubert's stylistic masterpiece. In addition, Cohen has added to the Second Edition a new introduction, substantially new annotations, and twenty-one striking images, including...

The author of the hit parody The Panda, the Cat and the Dreadfully Teddy draws on the simple, idyllic world of Beatrix Potter to shed light on some of the most pertinent issues of our time. Beatrix, a refined and...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780995732384Author Hannah BaldwinFormat PaperbackPage Count 308Imprint SRL PublishingPublisher SRL Publishing

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781904246077Author George Mackay BrownFormat PaperbackPage Count 192Imprint Steve Savage Publishers LimitedPublisher Steve Savage Publishers Limited

Syllabus: CfE (Curriculum for Excellence, from Education Scotland) and SQALevel: BGE S1-3: Third & Fourth LevelsSubject: EnglishFocus specifically on RUAE skills at Third and Fourth Levels with this popular book from Jane Cooper, comprising examples,...

Back in print after two decades, Junglist tells the compelling, comic, stream-of-consciousness story of four young Black men coming of age among the raves and Jungle music scene in London during the 1990s. Layered with poetic verse, prose and...

Newly translated according to a scheme of staggering ambition, an anthology unlike any now availableComposed between the early-agricultural 'song culture' of 800 BCE, when praise poems and dirges mingled in a world peopled with gods and monsters, and the...

Mark Turner makes the revolutionary claim that the basic issue for cognitive science is the nature of literary thinking. Using tools of modern linguistics, the recent work of neuroscientists, and literary masterpieces from Shakespeare, Homer, and Dante,...

Kidnapped - Catriona - The Master of Ballantrae - Weir of HermistonThese four great novels take us deep into Robert Louis Stevenson's imaginative and bitter-sweet relationship with his native country.Kidnapped, and its sequel Catriona, are renowned...

The power of Colette's work comes from its modernist storytelling. Colette was a pioneering, ground-breaking modernist writer, but has not always had her originality and worth recognized in Britain. Her work provocatively uses unstable narratives, gaps,...

'She always had high hopes for him. Did he manage to graduate after his resits?''Him?! He's thick. Would be as useless as a lifeguard in a carwash.'This is a classic collection of the best humour that Scotland has to offer - off-the-cuff and straight...

The Craft of Thought, first published in 1998, is a companion to Mary Carruthers' earlier study of memory in medieval culture, The Book of Memory. This more recent volume examines medieval monastic meditation as a discipline for making thoughts, and...

Hemingway's captivating memoir of living in Paris during the twenties.'If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast'Hemingway's memories of...

The Routledge Reader in Caribbean Literature is an outstanding compilation of over seventy primary and secondary texts of writing from the Caribbean. Locating key writers within a specifically Caribbean framework, the editors Alison Donnell and Sarah...

'I have read all W. Scott's novels at least fifty times,' wrote Byron. '...grand work. Scotch Fielding, as well as great English poet - wonderful man! I long to get drunk with him.' A. N. Wilson's subtle, entertaining and frequently provocative...

This study extends beyond the scope of literature into the psychology of much of our contemporary scene, including fashion, advertising, and propaganda techniques. In considering such aspects, the author goes beyond the domain of pure aesthetics and...

In Out of Time, leading thinker Lynne Segal examines her life and surveys the work and lives of other writers and artists to explore the pleasures and perils of growing old. Following in the footsteps of Simone de Beauvoir-who in her mid-fifties mourned...

Zadie Smith: Critical Essays is a timely collection of critical articles examining how Zadie Smith's novels and short stories interrogate race, postcolonialism, and identity. Essays explore the various ways Smith approaches issues of race, either by...

This book provides an approachable exposition of the rationale of textual editing with special reference to texts from between 1550-1800. The volume explains how manuscript and printed texts were produced, indicating the implications of this for their...

* TOLKIEN * Now a major motion picture Acclaimed as 'the best book about Tolkien', this award-winning biography explores J.R.R. Tolkien's wartime experiences and their impact on his life and his writing of The Hobbit and The Lord of The Rings...