General

This collection of essays was first published in 1978. They commemorate the 150th anniversary of Tolstoy's birth in 1828. The range in subject matter is great and includes a reconsideration of the problems of translating Tolstoy into English, fresh...

This 1981 text is a study of the narrative techniques in two important thirteenth-century German romances: one by Wolfram von Eschenbach, considered by many as the greatest poet of medieval Germany; the other by a lesser-known but highly skilled follower...

Originally published in 1981, this critical survey of Rimbaud's work was intended mainly for the student and the general reader, but the specialist will also find in it fresh and illuminating comments. While taking into account the 'two Rimbauds', the...

This book is a comprehensive study of the nineteenth-century German poet Heinrich Heine. Anthony Phelan examines the complete range of Heine's work, from the early poetry and 'Pictures of Travel' to the last poems, including personal polemic and...

This volume consists of original papers first read at Kings College, Cambridge, in 1969 at the International Conference on Classical Influences. The contributors are distinguished in a wide range of academic disciplines but all are concerned in one way...

Nathalie Sarraute (1900-99) is regarded as one of the major French novelists of the twentieth century. Initially hailed as a leading theorist and exemplar of the nouveau roman, she has come to be regarded as an important author in her own right with her...

In this study of vernacular French narrative from the twelfth century through the later Middle Ages, first published in 2000, Donald Maddox considers the construction of identity in a wide range of fictions. He focuses on crucial encounters, widespread...

This 1998 study serves as a contribution to both reception history, examining the medieval response to Chretien's poetry, and genre history, suveying the evolution of Arthurian verse romance in French. It describes the evolutionary changes taking place...

This study provides a fresh assessment of Spanish Romanticism through a sympathetic appraisal of its literary theory and criticism. It identifies the origins of Spanish Romantic thought in the theories of German Romantic thinkers, in particular Herder's...

If the rise of modernism is the story of a struggle between the burden of tradition and a desire to break free of it, then Rilke's poetic development is a key example of this tension at work. Taking a sceptical view of Rilke's own myth of himself as a...

Thomas O. Beebee examines epistolary fiction as a major phenomenon in Europe from the Renaissance to the mid-nineteenth century. His study is the first to consider epistolary fiction as a pan-European form of importance to all major European languages...

This book casts new light on the life and work of Francois Villon, one of the most famous but least understood poets of the later Middle Ages. Traditionally Villon has been viewed by scholars as an alienated outsider in his own time, whose work was in...

This original study investigates the role played by literature in Sigmund Freud's creation and development of psychoanalysis. Graham Frankland analyses the whole range of Freud's own texts from a literary-critical perspective, providing a comprehensive...

The Frenchman Juan de Grimaldi was instrumental in the development of the Spanish theatre in the 1820s and 30s, at a time when censorship, repression, and economic chaos had left it in a state of stagnation. As impresario and stage director, he trained...

A major study of the Divine Comedy, this book offers an interesting perspective on Dante's representation of the afterlife. Alison Morgan departs from the conventional critical emphasis on Dante's place in relation to learned traditions by undertaking a...

English metaphysical poetry, from Donne to Marvell, is notoriously witty. In this 1992 book, A. J. Smith seeks the reason for the central importance of wit in the thinking of the metaphysical poets and argues that metaphysical wit is essentially...

The Italian Renaissance produced a new type of stage comedy, experimental and even revolutionary in its time, by copying and updating the dramatic formats of Plautus and Terence from ancient Rome. These scripted comedies, first written and performed for...

In this 1995 book, which includes a substantial introduction, Jeffrey Mehlman confronts the politically devastating resonances in the work of several leading French writers. The essays focus on the series of enigmas surrounding the 'Blanchot affair' - a...

This 1994 book offers insights into the rich and varied Dutch literature of the Middle Ages. Sixteen essays written by top scholars consider this literature in the context of the social, historical and cultural developments of the period in which it took...

This major collection of essays on the Marquis de Sade, first published in 1995, encompasses a wide range of critical approaches to his uvre, including some of the most celebrated texts in Sade scholarship. It focuses on several distinctly contemporary...

This 1992 book studies the importance of typographic shapes in French Renaissance literature in the context of psychoanalysis and of the history of printed writing. Focusing on the poetry of Clement Marot, Rabelais's Gargantua, Ronsard's sonnets and the...

This study explores the problems faced by writers of the Enlightenment, who attempted to demystify all previous forms of knowledge by applying rationalist critiques that can in turn be applied to examine their own critical work. It focuses on the works...

This study of Baudelaire's writings applies the principles of schizoanalysis to literary history and cultural studies. By resituating psychoanalysis in its socio-economic and cultural context, this framework provides an illuminating approach to the...

This is a comprehensive study of a group of avant-garde Soviet writers active in Leningrad in the 1920s and 1930s who styled themselves OBERIU, 'The Association for Real Art'. Graham Roberts re-examines commonly held assumptions about OBERIU, its...

This book is the first detailed history of the Russian Symbolist movement, from its initial hostile reception as a symptom of European decadence to its absorption into the mainstream of Russian literature, and eventual disintegration. It focuses on the...

Dr Scott argues that only by attending to the precise locations of words in line or stanza, and to the specific value of syllables, or by understanding the often conflicting demands of rhythm and metre, can the reader of poetry acquire a real grasp of...

Often regarded as the greatest German poet of the twentieth century, Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) remains one of the most influential figures of European modernism. In this Companion, leading scholars offer informative and thought-provoking essays on...

Throughout the Middle Ages, the number of female readers was far greater than is commonly assumed. D. H. Green shows that, after clerics and monks, religious women were the main bearers of written culture and its expansion. Moreover, laywomen played a...

The history of twentieth-century visual arts can no longer be written as a succession of avant-garde movements, contends eminent art historian Bernard Smith in this stimulating book. He argues that a return to the concept of period style is inevitable...

This volume brings together three little-known works by key playwrights from the late sixteenth-century golden age of English drama. All three convey the public theatre's fascination with travel and adventure through the popular genre of heroic romance,...

Professor Prawer's new book documents Heinrich Heine's lifelong involvement with England and the English. It shows him to have been a witty and intelligent observer of English men and women, institutions and politics, and books and journals of his own...

Sublime Coleridge focuses on the role of the Opus Maximum in explaining Samuel Taylor Coleridge's ideas about religion, psychology, and the sublime. This book is an introduction, a reader's guide, and an interpretation of this central text in British...

Edward M. Wilson's reputation as a scholar of Calderon, and of classical Spanish literature in general, is almost unrivalled. He was also an expert in English works of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and in the popular literature of both...

Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time, 1913-27) changed the course of modern narrative fiction. This Introduction provides an account of Proust's life, the socio-historical and cultural contexts of his work and an assessment of...

This highly original study is concerned with the theory of knowledge. It approaches the subject in a new way by exploring the recurrent paradox which equates pure ignorance with perfect knowledge, twin ideals free from the impurities and imperfections of...

Over the past two decades since the appearance in the West of Mikhail Bakhtin's study of Rabelais and popular culture, Rabelais's work has been a focus of debate in contemporary literary and cultural criticism. The subjects under discussion include...

When the famous Anglo-Saxon scholar AElfric wrote the first grammar in a European vernacular, he used as his direct source the Excerptiones de Prisciano excerpts from major curriculum authors of the medieval schools, including Donatus, Isidore and...

Audrey Bely was one of the most innovative prose writers in Russian in the twentieth century. This book traces the development of his technique as a novelist from the early experimental Symphonies (1902-8) to the last novel, Masks, published in 1932. In...

This book is the first detailed history of the Russian Symbolist movement, from its initial hostile reception as a symptom of European decadence to its absorption into the mainstream of Russian literature, and eventual disintegration. It focuses on the...

In the sixteenth century, a period of proliferating transatlantic travel and exploration, and, latterly, religious civil wars in France, the ship is freighted with political and religious, as well as poetic, significance; symbolism that reaches its...