Literary Criticism

While speculation has always been crucial to biography, it has often been neglected, denied or misunderstood. This edited collection brings together a group of international biographers to discuss how, and why, each uses speculation in their work;...

The Oxford Classical Texts, or Scriptorum Classicorum Bibliotheca Oxoniensis, are renowned for their reliability and presentation. The series consists of a text without commentary but with a brief apparatus criticus at the front of each page. There are...

Spanning the period from Elizabeth I's reign to Charles II's restoration, this study argues the garden is a primary site evincing a progressive narrative of change, a narrative that looks to the Edenic as obtainable ideal in court politics, economic...

The double, doppelganger, is mostly understood as a peculiar figure that emerged in nineteenth-century Romantic and gothic literature. Far from being a merely esoteric entity, however, this book argues that the double, although it mostly goes unnoticed,...

What is a hangover? How does it feel to suffer from one? What can hangovers tell us about the way attitudes to alcohol have developed over time? In the humanities, why have we neglected the subject of the hangover in our critical discussions of...

A study of Dafydd ap Gwilym's verse in the light of the traditions of courtly and popular poetry and with consideration of the European influences on his work.About the AuthorHelen Fulton is Professor of English at the University of Wales Swansea.Book...

Illuminates how selected great works of literature arose, leading to deepened understanding of the works and harking back to what we still call the humanities. This monumental study seeks the roots of great literary works and the processes by...

These essays by senior scholars in medieval studies celebrate the career of J.J. Anderson, editor, critic, and co-founder of the Manchester Medieval Literature and Culture series, who taught in medieval studies at the University of Manchester for forty...

Tim Conley's Useless Joyce provocatively analyses Joyce's Ulysses and Finnegans Wake and takes the reader on a journey exploring the perennial question of the usefulness of literature and art. Conley argues that the works of James Joyce, often thought...

Literature and Emotion not only provides a defining overview of the field but also engages with emerging trends. Answering key questions such as 'What is emotion?' and 'Why emotion and literature today?,' Patrick Colm Hogan presents a clear and...

An Introduction to Poetic Forms offers specimen discussions of poems through the lens of form. While each of its chapters does provide a standard definition of the form in question in its opening paragraphs, their main objective is to provide readings of...

"A rich resource for readers interested in the study of American culture."--'South Atlantic Review. '"The essays are noteworthy in their own right, and the collection overall is unified and coherent...'Reading in America' shows a field in its early...

Terror and the Postcolonial is a major comparative study of terrorism and its representations in postcolonial theory, literature, and culture. A ground-breaking study addressing and theorizing the relationship between postcolonial studies, colonial...

"This is the book we've been waiting for: a distinguished collection that demonstrates how revisions of Modernist definitions might proceed. . . . The Gender of Modernism . . . will be nothing less than an absolutely necessary text for Modernist studies...

The term "modernism" is central to any discussion of twentieth-century literature and critical theory. Astradur Eysteinsson here maintains that the concept of modernism does not emerge directly from the literature it subsumes, but is in fact a product of...

This early example of a spiritual diary incorporating the visions of a female mystic offers a glimpse of religious women's daily life and spiritual practices. Agnes Blannbekin was from an Austrian farming family, but as a Beguine lived an urban life:...

This book introduces readers to the ancient rhetorical tradition by investigating key questions about the origins, nature and importance of rhetoric. Explores the role of the orator, especially the two greatest figures of the tradition, Demosthenes and...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780375709708Author Mark StrandFormat PaperbackPage Count 160Imprint Random House USA IncPublisher Random House USA IncWeight(grams) 159gDimensions(mm) 191mm...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781802360547Author Rosemary RileyFormat PaperbackPage Count 170Imprint Straightforward PublishingPublisher Straightforward Publishing

Science always raises more questions than it can contain. These acclaimed and challenging essays explore how ideas are transformed as they come under the stress of unforeseen readers. Using a wealth of material from diverse nineteenth- and...

This book examines the manifestations of materiality across different gothic media to show the inhuman at the heart of literature, film and contemporary media, outlining a philosophy of horror that deals with the horror of the nonhuman, the machine and...

Henri Bergson has been the subject of keen interest within French philosophy ever since being championed by Gilles Deleuze and others. Yet his influence extends well beyond European philosophy, especially within Africa and South Asia. Postcolonial...

Responding to a critical need for greater perspectives on transgender life in the United States, Genny Beemyn and Susan (Sue) Rankin apply their extensive expertise to a groundbreaking survey--one of the largest ever conducted in the U.S.--on gender...

Readers have long responded to Samuel Beckett's novels and plays with wonder or bafflement. They portray blind, lame, maimed creatures cracking whips and wielding can openers who are funny when they should be chilling, cruel when they should be tender,...

Published in the year 1981, Reflections of Women in Antiquity is a valuable contribution to the field of Performance.Book InformationISBN 9782881245763Author FoleyFormat PaperbackPage Count 440Imprint Gordon & Breach Science Publishers SAPublisher Gordon...

In the last decades of the twentieth century, French poststructuralist 'theory' transformed the humanities; it also met with resistance and today we frequently hear that theory is 'dead'.In this brilliantly argued volume, Colin Davis:*reconsiders key...

Since its publication in 1951, The Catcher in the Rye has been a cultural phenomenon, not only as an assigned text for English courses, but as a touchstone for generations of alienated youth. As the focus of recent major films and a successful...

The Shape of the Signifier is a critique of recent theory--primarily literary but also cultural and political. Bringing together previously unconnected strands of Michaels's thought--from "Against Theory" to Our America--it anatomizes what's...

Mikhail Bulgakov's novel The Master and Margarita, set in Stalin's Moscow, is an intriguing work with a complex structure, wonderful comic episodes and moments of great beauty. Readers are often left tantalized but uncertain how to understand its rich...

A wide-ranging exploration of the creative power of literary tradition, from Chaucer to the presentIn literary and cultural studies, "tradition" is a word everyone uses but few address critically. In Reading Old Books, Peter Mack offers a wide-ranging...

There have been many great and enduring works of literature by Caribbean authors over the last century. The Caribbean Contemporary Classics collection celebrates these deep and vibrant stories, overflowing with life and acute observations about society.A...

Though Achilles the character is bound by fate and by narrative tradition, Achilles's poem, the Iliad, was never fixed and monolithic in antiquity-it was multiform. And the wider epic tradition, from which the Iliad emerged, was yet more multiform. In...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780856760389Author Raymond DyerFormat PaperbackPage Count 109Imprint Josef Weinberger PlaysPublisher Josef Weinberger Plays

In the Aeneid men, women, gods, and goddesses are characterized by the speeches assigned to them far more than by descriptions of their appearance or behavior. Most of the speeches are highly emotional and individualized, reminding us of the most...

Published anonymously in 1554, Lazarillo de Tormes upset all the strict hierarchies that governed art and society during the Renaissance. It traces the adventures not of a nobleman or ancient hero, but rather of an ordinary man who struggles for survival...

The festival of the Panathenaia, held in Athens every summer to celebrate the birthday of the city's goddess, Athena, was the setting for performances of the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey by professional reciters or "rhapsodes." The works of Plato are our...

Manuscript Poetics explores the interrelationship between the material features of textual artifacts and the literary aspects of the medieval Italian texts they preserve. This original study is both an investigation into the material foundations of...

The Anthropocene concept draws attention to the various forms of entanglement of social, political, ecological, biological and geological processes at multiple spatial and temporal scales. The ensuing complexity and ambiguity create manifold challenges...

"Quite simply: these are seminal essays. . . . Distinguished scholarship, erudite, and full of innovative ways of interpreting Arabic and Persian poetry." -Omar Pound"[This book] reads Arabic and Persian poetry in a refreshingly new and significant way. ...

Did William Shakespeare ever meet Queen Elizabeth I? There is no evidence of such a meeting, yet for three centuries writers and artists have been provoked and inspired to imagine it. Shakespeare and Elizabeth is the first book to explore the rich...