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Lord Jim (Routledge Library Editions: Modern Fiction #2)
By John Batchelor. 1988
Published in 1900, Conrad’s Lord Jim can in many ways be seen as the first ‘modern’ novel. This important full…
study of the book, originally published in 1988, emphasizes the outstanding historical and artistic significance of Conrad’s masterpiece. John Batchelor pursues the ways in which Conrad dramatizes with unprecedented fidelity a relationship between friends and also explores what for Conrad is clearly a central truth about the human condition, namely the inalienable loneliness of man. The book provides a full discussion of the biographical and literary contexts of the novel, making use of the original manuscript and tracing the literary influences and sources of Conrad’s writing. It also considers the novel’s technical innovations, including Conrad’s ‘impressionism’ and its method of dramatization. Further chapters are devoted to a detailed commentary on the text and the book concludes with a study of the novel’s critical reception since its first publication. This volume will be essential reading for all students of literature and particularly for those with an interest in Conrad’s place in the development of modern fiction.First published in 1988, this book looks at the enormous impact Dickens’ writings had on American novelists in the second…
half of the nineteenth century. Dickens dominated not only popular taste but the American novel for sixty years and the author argues that even the most original writers showed themselves again and again to be in ‘conscious sympathy’ with Dickens. Along with Dickens, this book examines four radically different American writers — Mark Twain, William Dean Howells, Henry James and Frank Norris — whose debt to Dickens, the author asserts, is nevertheless clearly evident in their work. This book will be of interest to students of literature.Harold Bloom: Towards Historical Rhetorics (Routledge Revivals)
By Peter De Bolla. 1988
Since the 1960s, the literary critic Harold Bloom has been producing some of the most powerful criticism in the United…
States. This large body of work has, since the publication of The Anxiety of Influence in 1973, increasingly distanced itself from all critical vogues, be they psychoanalytic, post-structuralist or new formalist, in favour of a highly idiosyncratic poetic theory. First published in 1988, this title was the first to engage with this unique approach in order to extend and amplify its most crucial insights about the nature of rhetoric, as it functions both in poetry and in poetic theory. The underlying argument is for a historical conception of rhetoric, for an extension of Bloom’s ‘diachronic rhetoric’ towards historical rhetoric.First published in 1987. Many Victorian novels that considered social problems made extensive use of contemporary source material for their…
descriptions. This book aims to provide a greater acquaintance with this non-literary material — illustrating and exemplifying issues that the authors treated imaginatively. The material is divided into parts dealing with: the industrial north of England, London and the agricultural poor. Extracts from writings that bear directly on the fiction of writers like Dickens and Gaskell are featured, as are Government Blue Books and newspaper reports and articles. This volume also contains articles by Dickens and others, from his magazine, Household Words.Resisting Novels: Ideology and Fiction (Routledge Revivals)
By Lennard J. Davis. 1987
"By making friends with signs", Lennard Davis argues, "we are weakening the bond that anchors us to the social world,…
the world of action, and binding ourselves to the ideological." For the reader, this power of the novel needs to be resisted. But there is a double resistance at work: the novel is also a defensive structure positioning us against alienation and loneliness: the dehumanising symptoms of modern life. While discussions surrounding ideology in novels traditionally concentrate on thematics, in this study – first published in 1987 - Davis approaches the subject through such structural features as location, character, dialogue and plot. Drawing on a wide range of novels from the seventeenth century to the present day, and on psychoanalysis as well as philosophy, Resisting Novels explores how fiction works subliminally to resist change and to detach the reader from the world of lived experience. This controversial critique will engage students and academics with a particular interest in literary theory.Business and the businessman have had a fundamental place in American society since the inception of the nation. This tenet,…
the ‘gospel of wealth’, is a central concern in the novels of Theodore Dreiser and his contemporaries. First published in 1987, this study sets this group of writers in their historical context and shows how they elaborated the idea of wealth as an object of quasi-religious quest. What had previously been associated with disease and darkness, avarice and dishonour, now came to emblematise the virtues of thrift, prudence and diligence. The underlying argument is that the dominant group of a society legitimises its power through the appropriation of the vocabulary of religion, and the American business leaders were successful in doing this both in their own practice and through the more insidious medium of art. A detailed analysis, this reissue will be of particular value to students of American literature with an interest in the relationship between linguistic symbols and social order, and historical attitudes towards wealth in literature.This title, first published in 1987, comprises of three essays which examine Lord Byron’s poetry. Some of Byron’s most famous…
poems are examined, including Don Juan and Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. This title will be of interest to students of literature.Originally published in 1988. The economic changes and the growth of commerce in fourteenth century England precipitated both social changes…
and a preoccupation with material wealth. This book examines Chaucer's treatment of economic and ethical value in The Canterbury Tales within the context of contemporary economic and social change and in relation to the scholastic economic theory that attempted to formulate ethical standards for commercial conduct. The importance of value and its determination and transformation is evident from the two enterprises that Chaucer defines as the motivating principles for his poem. The pilgrimage to St. Thomas's shrine should effect a transformation of their spiritual value. The story-telling competition that produces the tales themselves is established to judge the value of the pilgrims' literary productions. In the Middle Ages, economic value and ethical value were not perceived as unrelated phenomena. Chaucer's concern with the interrelationship of material and moral value is apparent in the number of pilgrims who are interested in material value at the obvious expense of moral value. This book examines this along with a discussion or money's growing importance in the late Middle Ages and the determination of its value.Encyclopedia of American Humorists (Routledge Revivals)
By Steven H. Gale. 1988
First published in 1988, this book contains entries on famous American Humorists. Humor has been present in American literature, from the…
beginning, and has developed characteristics that reflect the American character, both regional and national. Although American literature was, in the past, treated as inferior to British literature, there has always been a large popular audience for the genre, which this book shows. The figures with entries in this encyclopedia not only amuse in their writing, but also aim to enlighten- setting out to expose the foibles and foolishness of society and the individuals who compose it. It is the manner in which these authors try to accomplish this end that determines whether they appear in the volume. Indeed, the book will demonstrate that the best humor has at its base, a ready understanding of human nature.Hamlet's Fictions (Routledge Library Editions: Hamlet)
By Maurice Charney. 1988
"But in a fiction, in a dream of passion..." In an extended commentary on this passage this book offers a…
rationale for the excellence and primacy of this play among the tragedies. Throughout, emphasis is placed on Hamlet's fantasies and imaginations rather than on ethical criteria, and on the depiction of Hamlet as a revenge play through an exploration of its dark and mysterious aspects. The book stresses the importance of Passion and Its Fictions in the play and attempts to explore the very Pirandellian topic of Hamlet's passion and dream of passion. It goes on to examine the organization of dramatic energies in the play - the use Shakespeare makes of analogy and infinite regress and of scene rows, broken scenes and impacted scenes, and the significance of the exact middle of Hamlet. The final section is devoted to conventions of style, imagery, and genre in the play - what is the stage situation of asides, soliloguies, and offstage speech? How is the imagery of skin disease and sealing distinctive? In what sense is Hamlet a comedy, or does it use comedy significantly?John Barth (Routledge Revivals)
By Heide Ziegler. 1987
John Barth represents most completely what has been termed postmodernism, not because his work comprises more postmodernist features than other…
contemporary writers but because, for Barth, "life" and "art" are two sides of the same coin. In this brief study, first published in 1987, Heide Ziegler examines all Barth’s novels. She argues that each pair of novels first "exhausts" and then "replenishes" those literary genres that hinge on a particular world view: the existentialist novel, the Bildungsroman, the Kunstlerroman, or the realistic novel. Through the division of labour between character and author Barth manages to develop a new mode of literary parody which projects itself beyond the mocked literary model and even self-parody into the realm of future fiction. This book is ideal for students of literature and postmodern studies.First published in 1988, the aim of this study is to define the role of religious meaning in the modern…
novel and to demonstrate that the novel can successfully express a religious feeling, but not a religious commitment. Through the analysis of four novels by Faulkner, Dostoyevsky, Werfel and Bernanos, the work explains why novels with a single definite commitment tend to be implausible and lacking in aesthetic unity. This book will be of interest to those studying religion in 19th Century literature.British Post-Structuralism: Since 1968 (Routledge Library Editions: Literary Theory Ser. #7)
By Antony Easthope. 1988
Through this exploration of the relation between Marxism, post-structuralism and the theory of the subject, first published in 1988, Antony…
Easthope contrasts the degree to which post-structuralism has made a radical impact on English and American national cultures. This book reprints an important interview in which Jacques Derrida discusses theWordsworth's Historical Imagination: The Poetry of Displacement (Routledge Revivals)
By David Simpson. 1987
Traditionally, Wordsworth’s greatness is founded on his identity as the poet of nature and solitude. The Wordsworthian imagination is seen…
as an essentially private faculty, its very existence premised on the absence of other people. In this title, first published in 1987, David Simpson challenges this established view of Wordsworth, arguing that it fails to recognize and explain the importance of the context of the public sphere and the social environment to the authentic experience of the imagination. Wordsworth’s preoccupation with the metaphors of property and labour shows him to be acutely anxious about the value of his art in a world that he regarded as corrupted. Through close examination of a few important poems, both well-known and relatively unknown, Simpson shows that there is no unitary, public Wordsworth, nor is there a conflict or tension between the private and the public. The absence of any clear kind of authority in the voice that speaks the poems makes Wordsworth’s poetry, in Simpson’s phrase, a ‘poetry of displacement’.Reading Wordsworth (RLE: Wordsworth and Coleridge #1)
By J. H. Alexander. 1987
First published in 1987, this book is written for those who are encountering Wordsworth for the first time and for…
those familiar with his works that are at a loss to understand his reputation or why his work has impressed them. The strength of the author’s approach is that it unravels the poet’s true meaning and the process by which he all too frequently lost the voice of inspiration — working and reshaping his poems until the original freshness disappeared. It concentrates on helping the reader appreciate Wordsworth’s distinctive and daring way with words and poetic structure. By showing Wordsworth’s failures, the author demonstrates by contrast the achievements of his greatest works.Cinema and Ireland: Film, Culture And Politics (Routledge Library Editions: Cinema)
By John Hill, Luke Gibbons, Kevin Rockett. 1987
This was the first comprehensive study of film production in Ireland from the silent period to the present day, and…
of representations of Ireland and ‘Irishness’ in native, British, and American films. It remains an authority on the topic. The book focuses on Irish history and politics to examine the context and significance of such films as Irish Destiny, The Quiet Man, Ryan’s Daughter, Man of Aran, Cal, The Courier, and The Dead.Published in 1988: Mercurius Rusticans is one in a long series of academic plays, generally in Latin, but occasionally in…
English, which were performed at the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.German and Song 1740 - 1900: 1740 - 1900
By John Smeed. 1987
Originally published in 1987, this volume charts the development of German song across a century and a half, relating it…
both to poetry and to the cultural scene in Germany. By emphasising genre rather than individual composers and while paying heed to acknowledged masterpieces – by quoting extensively from forgotten composers, the book avoids historical over simplification and arrives at a fuller picture of this rich tradition. In so doing, it uncovers much neglected material. The book investigates the relationship between German poets and composers and their native folk tradition. It further explores the interaction between convention and innovation and demonstrates how one poem can be interpreted quite differently by different composers. The book is accessible both to students of literature and music.Nadine Gordimer: A Casebook (Routledge Revivals)
By Judie Newman. 1988
International in her appeal, Nadine Gordimer is an original and accomplished novelist whose works have found literary and popular recognition.…
In this critical study, first published in 1988 and the first by a woman, Judie Newman discusses Gordimer’s novels, including A Sport of Nature. Gordimer’s writing is both political committed and formally innovative, confronting subject matter of great contemporary interest and at the same time seeking out narrative forms that combine European and indigenous culture. Her novels are sensitive to their context, while also offering an important contribution to postmodernist reassessments of narrative poetics, and a challenge to European conceptions of the novel. Judie Newman places particular emphasis on Gordimer’s searching investigation of the relation of gender to genre, and explores other major concerns such as the crisis of liberal values, the nature of historical consciousness, racism, sexual politics, and the psychopathology of power. Her study combines close literary analysis with a wide-ranging exploration of ideas, showing clearly how the artist can contribute to contemporary debate.