Literary Criticism

The Hebrew Bible, or Christian Old Testament, contains some of the finest literature that we have. This biblical literature has a place not only in the synagogue or the church but also among the classics of world literature. The stories of Jacob and...

AN OBSERVER BOOK OF THE YEAR From the acclaimed author of The Information and Chaos, a mind-bending exploration of time travel: its subversive origins, its evolution in literature and science, and its influence on our...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780473591335Author Timothy HicksonFormat PaperbackPage Count 262Imprint Tim HicksonPublisher Tim HicksonWeight(grams) 336gDimensions(mm) 216mm * 140mm * 15mm

"The Arabian Nights" has become a synonym for the fabulous and the exotic. Every child is familiar with the stories of Aladdin, Sinbad the Sailor and Ali Baba. Yet very few people, even specialists in oriential literature, have a clear idea of when the...

The third edition of The Oxford Companion to Classical Literature is the complete and authoritative reference guide to the classical world and its literary heritage. It not only presents the reader with all the essential facts about the authors, tales,...

From the Royal Shakespeare Company - a definitive, fresh new look at Shakespeare's most compelling villain. With an expert introduction by Sir Jonathan Bate, this unique edition presents a historical overview of Richard III in performance, takes a...

The authoritative text has been fully annotated and makes available a perennially popular novel, one that has often been mistaken for an actual eyewitness account of the last great plague in England. "Backgrounds" encourages comparison of 1665 documents...

Maurice Blanchot, the eminent literary and cultural critic, has had a vast influence on contemporary French writers-among them Jean Paul Sartre and Jacques Derrida. From the 1930s through the present day, his writings have been shaping the international...

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 Beginner's Guide to Critical Reading brings literature to life by combining a rich selection of literary texts with original and lively commentary. Unlike so many introductions to literary studies, it vividly demonstrates how criticism and theory can...

What do we mean by 'Scottish literature'? Why does it matter? How do we engage with it? Bringing infectious enthusiasm and a lifetime's experience to bear on this multi-faceted literary nation, Alan Riach, Professor of Scottish Literature at the...

Developed in cooperation with the IB, this student-friendly, concept-based Course Book has been comprehensively updated to support all aspects of the new English A: Literature syllabus, for first teaching in September 2019. With in-depth coverage of the...

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. ...

This volume brings together specially commissioned essays by some of the world's leading experts on the life and work of W. H. Auden, one of the major English-speaking poets of the twentieth century. The volume's contributors include a prize-winning...

A trenchant analysis of sacrifice as the foundation of the modern, as well as the ancient, social order The modern conception of sacrifice is at once cast as a victory of self-discipline over desire and condescended to as destructive and archaic...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780679642329Author Rainer Maria RilkeFormat HardbackPage Count 128Imprint Modern Library IncPublisher Random House USA IncWeight(grams) 210gDimensions(mm)...

In the first days of spring in his eighty-second year, Gerald Murnane - perhaps the greatest living writer of English prose - began a project that would round off his strange career as a novelist. He would read all of his books in turn and prepare a...

Alternative Masculinities in Feminist Speculative Fiction: A New Man traces efforts within American feminist utopias to imagine healthier conceptions of manhood. As this analysis illuminates, feminist works envisioning the improved society and its...

This work, by the greatest living authority on medieval palaeography, offers the most comprehensive and up-to-date account in any language of the history of Latin script. It also contains a detailed account of the role of the book in cultural history...

Whether fashionable or unfashionable, which of us don't use proverbs all the time? They are an indispensable vehicle of popular wisdom and a lively contributor to educated speech. Proverbs are forever evolving. This gathering of Italian proverbs is...

From the Royal Shakespeare Company - a modern, definitive edition of Shakespeare's drama of the conflict between one man's ambition and the good of the state. With an expert introduction by Sir Jonathan Bate, this unique edition presents a historical...

Medusa, literally, petrifies: her face turned the ancients to stone. For Perseus and his patriarchal culture she was a dangerous female monster that had to be destroyed; for Dante she was the erotic power that could destroy men; Freud saw in her hair a...

From one of our most eminent and accessible literary critics, a groundbreaking account of how the Greek and Roman classics forged Shakespeare's imaginationBen Jonson famously accused Shakespeare of having "small Latin and less Greek." But he was...

Michael Gorra asks provocative questions in this historic portrait of William Faulkner and his world. He explores whether William Faulkner should still be read in this new century and asks what his works tell us about the legacy of slavery and the...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781870206907Author Jane AaronFormat PaperbackPage Count 288Imprint Honno LtdPublisher Honno LtdWeight(grams) 352g

"I am the product of priests", Lacan once said of himself. Educated by the Marist Brothers (or Little Brothers of Mary), he was a pious child and acquired considerable, personal knowledge of the torments and cunning of Christian spirituality. He was...

A brilliant new anthology that shows how fiction was reinvented in the twelfth century after an absence of hundreds of years. Essential for all students of medieval literature, Early Fiction in England includes extracts by Geoffrey of Monmouth, Wace,...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781912788040Author Brewster ChamberlinFormat PaperbackPage Count 248Imprint Colenso BooksPublisher Colenso BooksWeight(grams) 149g

This volume is a comprehensive collection of critical essays on The Taming of the Shrew, and includes extensive discussions of the play's various printed versions and its theatrical productions. Aspinall has included only those essays that offer the most...

Exam Board: AQALevel & Subject: GCSE 9-1 English Language, GCSE 9-1 English LiteratureFirst teaching: September 2015Next exams: June 2023 Develop your students' skills in English Literature and English Language as you study A Christmas Carol. ...

This is the best and most authoritative edition of Tender Buttons, a major fixture in the modernist canon, featuring facsimiles of Stein's corrections, in her own handwriting. Our edition comes out on the centennial of its original publication, and...

Simone de Beauvoir's 1949 book The Second Sex is a masterpiece of feminist criticism and philosophy. An incendiary take on the place of women in post-war French society, it helped define major trends in feminist thought for the rest of the 20th century,...

This is the first introduction to rhythm and meter that begins where students are: as speakers of English familiar with the rhythms of ordinary spoken language, and of popular verse such as nursery rhymes, song and rap. Poetic Rhythm builds on this...

'Restlessly curious, insightful, and quirky, David Damrosch is the perfect guide to a round-the-world adventure in reading' Stephen GreenblattA transporting and illuminating voyage around the globe, told through eighty classic and modern books'It is...

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. What can underground pipes tell us about human eating habits and the spread or containment of disease, such as COVID-19? Why are sewers spitting...

Marjorie Perloff, among our foremost critics of twentieth-century poetry, argues that Ludwig Wittgenstein provided writers with a radical new aesthetic, a key to recognizing the inescapable strangeness of ordinary language. Taking seriously...

W. H. Auden, T. S. Eliot, William Golding, Elizabeth Jennings, C. S. Lewis, Flannery O'Connor, Stevie Smith . . . These are some of the great poets and novelists whose struggles with faith find expression in their works, and who demonstrate the...

Beckett's first 'literary landmark' (St Petersburg Times) is a wonderfully savoury introduction to the Nobel Prize-winning author. Written in 1932, when the twenty-six-year-old Beckett was struggling to make ends meet, the novel offers a rare and...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781915316073Author Chris AlexanderFormat PaperbackPage Count 150Imprint HeadpressPublisher Headpress

Hilarious and trenchant, Reliable Essays collects the most memorable works of criticism and travel writing from well-loved author and broadcaster, Clive James. With an introduction by Julian Barnes.'[An] intellectual as well as a joker, a wise man as...