Literary Criticism

A selection of the writer's greatest nature poetry, selected by Tom Paulin, published in a beautiful new edition by Faber.At once a voice arose among The bleak twigs overheadIn a full-hearted evensong Of joy illimited;An aged thrush, frail, gaunt,...

A splendid new translation of an extraordinary work of modern literature-featuring facing-page commentary by Kafka's acclaimed biographerIn 1917 and 1918, Franz Kafka wrote a set of more than 100 aphorisms, known as the Zurau aphorisms, after the...

Postcolonialism explores the political, social, and cultural effects of decolonization, continuing the anti-colonial deconstruction of western dominance. This Very Short Introduction discusses both the history and key debates of postcolonialism, and...

A luminous memoir from the prize-winning poet - a story of love, heartbreak and coming of age, and a tender exploration of queer identity.'Beautiful' Colm Toibin'Rapturous' New York Times'Extraordinary' Observer'Stunning' Sunday TimesWhen Sean meets...

In this book Honeyman looks at manifestations of youth agency (and representations of agency produced for youth) as depicted in fairy tales, childlore and folk literature, investigating the dynamic of ideological manipulation and independent resistance...

Nick Flynn met his father when he was twenty-seven years old, working as a caseworker in a homeless shelter in Boston. As a teenager he'd received letters from this mystery father - self-proclaimed poet (and greatest American novelist since Mark Twain),...

'Unremittingly glorious. I and the world demand more and we shall thump our tin mugs on the table demanding it until we are satisfied.'Stephen FryLoveable... Dreadful... Amazing... Learned... Baroque... Exquisite... Utterly wonderful... Uplifting.....

Is it ever possible to know 'the truth' about Sylvia Plath and her marriage to Ted Hughes, which ended with her suicide? In The Silent Woman, renowned writer Janet Malcolm examines the biographies of Sylvia Plath, with particular focus on Anne...

In this classic text, the distinguished poet and critic John Hollander surveys the schemes, patterns, and forms of English verse, illustrating each variation with an original and witty self-descriptive example. In new essays for this revised edition, J...

A Theory of Adaptation explores the continuous development of creative adaptation, and argues that the practice of adapting is central to the story-telling imagination. Linda Hutcheon develops a theory of adaptation through a range of media, from film...

A Sunday Times Top 10 Bestseller In this remarkable memoir of love, loss and literature, acclaimed biographer Claire Tomalin turns her eye to another fascinating literary life: her own. She tells of a wartime childhood, Cambridge friendships and an early...

Steve Gerber (1947-2008) is among the most significant comics writers of the modern era. Best known for his magnum opus Howard the Duck, he also wrote influential series such as Man-Thing, Omega the Unknown, The Phantom Zone, and Hard Time, expressing a...

Shortlisted for the BMA Book Awards and Macavity Awards 2016 Fourteen novels. Fourteen poisons. Just because it's fiction doesn't mean it's all made-up ... Agatha Christie revelled in the use of poison to kill off unfortunate victims in her books;...

Since the book's first publication in 1988, Alain Badiou's Being and Event has established itself of one of the most important and controversial works in contemporary philosophy and its author as one of the most influential thinkers of our time. Being...

In these extraordinary poems, using multiple viewpoints - from Darwin himself, to his beloved wife Emma, and even, at one point, the orangutang at London Zoo - Ruth Padel illuminates the development of Darwin's thought, the drama of the discovery of...

This book introduces a method for determining the authorship of Renaissance plays. Based on the rapid rate of change in English grammar in the late sixteenth- and early-seventeenth centuries, socio-historical linguistic evidence allows us to distinguish...

The Book of John Mandeville has tended to be neglected by modern teachers and scholars, yet this intriguing and copious work has much to offer the student of medieval literature, history, and culture. [It] was a contemporary bestseller, providing readers...

Published posthumously in 1964, A Moveable Feast remains one of Ernest Hemingway's most beloved works. Since Hemingway's personal papers were released in 1979, scholars have examined and debated the changes made to the text before publication. Now this...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781611808315Author Maureen MurdockFormat PaperbackPage Count 176Imprint Shambhala Publications IncPublisher Shambhala Publications Inc

A Guest at the Feast uncovers the places where politics and poetics meet, where life and fiction overlap, where one can be inside writing and also outside of it.From the melancholy and amusement within the work of the writer John McGahern to an...

To the extent that she is popularly known, Katherine Parr (1512-48) is the woman who survived King Henry VIII as his sixth and last wife. She merits far greater recognition, however, on several other fronts. Fluent in French, Italian, and Latin, Parr...

The definitive biography of the poet who was almost as notorious for his 'rock 'n' roll' lifestyle as his artistic workDylan Thomas was a romantic and controversial figure; a poet who lived to excess and died young. An inventive genius with a gift for...

'I am beginning to realize that taking the self out of our essays is a form of repression. Taking the self out feels like obeying a gag order - pretending an objectivity where there is nothing objective about the experience of confronting and engaging...

'Fierce. Game-changing. Urgently necessary. Brilliant, brilliant and did I say brilliant?' EMMA THOMPSON 'Pacy, vivid, compelling and very, VERY funny ... it will help so many' MARIAN KEYES 'A fucking classic. Required reading for all women and...

In Wild Things Jack Halberstam offers an alternative history of sexuality by tracing the ways in which wildness has been associated with queerness and queer bodies throughout the twentieth century. Halberstam theorizes the wild as an unbounded and...

"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...

A GUARDIAN, NEW STATESMAN, SPECTATOR, AND IRISH TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR A new, feminist translation of Beowulf by the author of the acclaimed novel The Mere Wife. Nearly twenty years after Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf - and fifty years after...

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 this study, the author offers new interpretations of Shakespeare's works in the context of two major contemporary notions of collectivity: the crowd and rumour. The plays illustrate that rumour and crowd are mutually dependent; they also betray a...

The ten chapters of this exemplary monograph cover every major aspect of the book in traditional Japan: its place in Japanese history; books as material objects; manuscript cultures; printing; the Edo period book trade; authors and readers; importation...

Beginning theory has been helping students navigate through the thickets of literary and cultural theory for over two decades. This new and expanded fourth edition continues to offer readers the best single-volume introduction to the field. The...

What was Shakespeare's attitude to Semitism? The Introduction to this edition of The Merchant of Venice opens by addressing this vital issue raised by the play, and goes on to study the sources, background, and date, includuing a discussion of Sigmund...

This extraordinary collection celebrates the dazzling worldbuilding of Iain M. Banks, one of the most important and influential writers in modern science fiction.Faithfully reproduced from notebooks he kept in the 1970s and 80s, these annotated original...

Since the publication of Visions of Excess in 1985, there has been an explosion of interest in the work of Georges Bataille. The French surrealist continues to be important for his groundbreaking focus on the visceral, the erotic, and the relation of...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781894574013Author Marie-Louise Von FranzFormat PaperbackPage Count 128Imprint Inner City BooksPublisher Inner City Books

Besides the celebrated Praise of Folly, Robert M. Adams has included the political "Complaint of Peace," the brutal antipapal satire "Julius Excluded from Heaven," two versions of Erasmus's important preface to the Latin translation of the New Testament,...

This volume includes a helpful selection of early criticism as well as modern contributions on The Winter's Tale from Donald Stauffer, E.M.W. Tillyard, Ernest Schanzer, Inga-Stina Ewbank, S.L. Bethell, G. Wilson Knight, Harold S. Wilson, Derek Traversi,...

It is New Year at Camelot and a mysterious green knight appears at King Arthur's court. Challenging the knights of the Round Table to a Christmas game, he offers his splendid axe as a prize to whoever is brave enough to behead him with just one strike...

An outstanding and moving essay on the Palestinian struggle and the power of narrative from the Women's Prize for Fiction-shortlisted author of Enter Ghost'Combines intellectual brilliance with moral clarity and profound resoluteness of purpose' SALLY...

This Christmas discover the greatest writer in the English language as told by actor Dame Judi Dench in SHAKESPEARE The Man Who Pays The Rent :- a witty, insightful journey through the plays and tales of our beloved bard'Wonderfully inspiring. A...