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Showing 101 - 120 of 26278 items
By Gregory Phipps. 2016
This book examines the interdisciplinary foundations of pragmatismfrom a literary perspective, tracing the characters and settings that populatethe narratives of…
pragmatist thought in Henry James's work. Cultivated during apostwar era of industrial change and economic growth, pragmatism emerged in thelate nineteenth century as the new shape of American intellectual identity. Charles Peirce, William James, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. were closefriends who founded different branches of pragmatism while writing on a vastarray of topics. Skeptical about philosophy, William James's brother, Henry,stood at the margins of this group, crafting his own version of pragmatism throughhis novels and short stories. Gregory Phipps argues that James's fiction weavestogether the varied depictions of individuality, society, experience, and truthfound in the works of Peirce, Holmes, and William James. By doing so, Jamesbrings to narrative life a defining moment in American intellectual andmaterial history.By Curtiss Hoffman. 1999
From the white stag to the green knight, The Seven Story Tower examines how myth colors our perception of history,…
nature, and ourselves. Organized around seven key myths-representing the Irish, Greek, Sumerian, Indonesian, Amazonian, and Inuit cultures, as well as the fantasy world of J. R. R. Tolkien-this book is the perfect intro-duction to the common themes found in world mythology. Curtiss Hoffman, a noted archaeologist and anthropologist, takes us beyond the entertaining stories and uses insights from cultural anthropology and analytical psychology to analyze the many common themes found throughout. In particular, he examines the significance of names, numbers, plants, animals, the heavenly bodies, and the human body. The Seven Story Tower will enhance the reader's appreciation of myth's power today over our lives and cultures.By Karl Miller. 2011
Karl Miller is one of the greatest literary critics of the last fifty years, the founder of the London Review…
of Books and Lord Northcliffe Professor of Modern English Literature at University College, London. In this last book of essays he turns his attention to appreciate certain writers of the English-speaking modern world. Most of them are inhabitants of the North Sea archipelago once known as Great Britain, who are here seen as tribally distinct, as Scottish, English, Irish or Welsh, and as a single society. A new ruralism has come to notice in this country, and the book is drawn to country lives as they have figured in the literature of the last century. b bAn introductory essay is centred on the Anglo-Welsh borderlands. Journeys taken with Seamus Heaney and Andrew O'Hagan to this countryside, and others, are threaded throughout the book. The poets Heaney and Ted Hughes are discussed, together with the fiction of Ian McEwan, the Canadian writer Alistair Macleod, the Irish writer John McGahern and the Baltimorean Anne Tyler. Scotland is a preoccupation of the later pieces, including the letters of Henry Cockburn, a lifelong interest of the author, who is also interested here in foxes and their current metropolitan profile.By Thomas Guthrie Marquis, Clara Thomas, Douglas Lochhead, John George Bourinot, Camille Roy. 1973
These three works, displaying marked differences in purpose, tone, and effect, are all classics of Canadian literary and cultural criticism.John…
George Bourinot was a man of letters, an Imperialist, and a biculturalist, who was confident of his knowledge of the Canadian identity and felt it to be his public mission to align reality with his own personal vision. Writing in 1893 to the élite represented by the members of the Royal Society, he described his work as 'a monograph on the intellectual development of the Dominion,' describing 'the progress of culture in a country still struggling with the difficulties of the material development of half a continent.'Two decades later, Thomas Guthrie Marquis and Camille Roy wrote what were, in contrast, specialized assignments, contributions to the compendium history, Canada and Its Provinces (1913). Addressing a far larger audience, and treating a vastly enlarged body of Canadian literature, their work comes much closer to contemporary scholarship, with greater clarity, organization, and sheer bulk of information, but with the loss of some of the charm and assurance of Bourinot's wide sweep. In further contrast to Bourinot's determined biculturalism and will to unity, Roy and Marquis' essays display vivid differences in the emotional allegiances and convictions of the founding cultures. Marquis starts by asking the question, 'Has Canada a voice of her own in literature distinct from that of England?'; Roy treats French-Canadian literature in its Roman Catholic contexts.By Jack Kerouac Edited by Todd Tietchen. 2014
In late 1944, under rather mysterious circumstances, aspiring writer Jack Kerouac lost a novella-length manuscript titled The Haunted Life. …
Set in Galloway, a fictionalized version of Kerouac's hometown of Lowell, Massachusetts, the coming-of-age story of Peter Martin--a character based on the author's recently departed friend Sebastian Sampas--tackles the pressing issues of the day. At home in the working-class town the summer before his sophomore year at Boston College, Peter finds himself conflicted. Like many Americans, Peter is unsure, suspended between the economic crisis of the previous decade and the impending US entry into World War II. In The Haunted Life, Peter struggles to define what he believes to be intellectually true and worthy of his life and talents. Skillfully edited by Todd F. Tietchen, assistant professor of English at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell,The Haunted Life is rounded out by sketches, notes, and reflections Kerouac kept during the novella's composition as well as a revealing selection of correspondence with his father, Leo.By Justin Martin. 2014
In the shadow of the Civil War, a circle of radicals in a rowdy saloon changed American society and helped…
set Walt Whitman on the path to poetic immortality. Rebel Souls is the first book ever written about the colorful group of artists-- regulars at Pfaff's Saloon in Manhattan--rightly considered America's original Bohemians. Besides a young Whitman, the circle included actor Edwin Booth; trailblazing stand-up comic Artemus Ward; psychedelic drug pioneer and author Fitz Hugh Ludlow; and brazen performer Adah Menken, famous for her Naked Lady routine. Central to their times, the artists managed to forge connections with Ralph Waldo Emerson, Mark Twain, and even Abraham Lincoln. This vibrant tale, packed with original research, offers the pleasures of a great group biography like The Banquet Years or The Metaphysical Club. Justin Martin shows how this first bohemian culture--imported from Paris to a dingy Broadway saloon--seeded and nurtured an American tradition of rebel art that thrives to this day.By Lamonte Aidoo, Daniel F. Silva. 2016
The first book-length edited collection on Machado de Assis, this volume offers essays on Machado de Assis' work that offer…
new critical perspectives not only Brazilian literature and history, but also to social, cultural, and political phenomena that continue to have global repercussions.By Shaul Bassi. 2016
Shaul Bassi is AssociateProfessor of English and Postcolonial Literature at Ca'Foscari University ofVenice, Italy. His publications include Visionsof Venice in…
Shakespeare, with Laura Tosi, and Experiences of Freedom in Postcolonial Literatures and Cultures, with Annalisa Oboe.By Jan Van der Dussen. 2016
This volume is divided into three parts. The first explores various aspects of Collingwood's philosophy of history, offering a follow-up…
to themes discussed in the author's revised edition of History as a Science. The Philosophy of R. G. Collingwood(Springer, 2012). After a general introduction to Collingwood's philosophy of history, his manuscript The Principles of History of 1939 is discussed. This manuscript was considered 'lost' for some time but has been rediscovered in 1995. Other topics dealt with are Collingwood's philosophy of history in the year of his An Autobiography(1939), the philosophical context of his re-enactment theory, his views on the notions of process, progress, and civilization, as well as his unusual claim that history is a science. The following four essays of the second part deal with various aspects relating to the study of history and historiography. As regards the latter subject, attention is paid to the works of Herodotus and Toynbee, who correspond in having a wide scope and having been under debate. With respect to the study of history, the crucial notion of evidence is addressed, while a critical appraisal is made of the way the idea of a 'real' past is dealt with by Ankersmit. The third part of the volume discusses issues related to Western civilization and culture, and topics that are of global relevance. Both are dealt with from a historical and philosophical perspective. The first two essays focus on the rupture that occurred in Europe since the end of the eighteenth century as regards the relationship between past, present, and future, resulting in a loss of historical consciousness, and feelings of disorientation and crisis. The last three essays address the global issues of the responsibility for future generations and universal human rights, as well as the more general theme of the relationship between the West and the non-Western world.By Charlotte Mathieson. 2016
Sea Narratives: CulturalResponses to the Sea, 1600-Present explores the relationship between the sea and culturefrom the early modern period to…
the present. The collection uses the concept ofthe 'sea narrative' as a lens through which to consider the multiple ways inwhich the sea has shaped, challenged, and expanded modes of culturalrepresentation to produce varied, contested and provocative chronicles of thesea across a variety of cultural forms within diverse socio-cultural moments. Sea Narratives provides a uniqueperspective on the relationship between the sea and cultural production: itreveals the sea to be more than simply a source of creative inspiration,instead showing how the sea has had a demonstrable effect on new modes andforms of narration across the cultural sphere, and in turn, how these formshave been essential in shaping socio-cultural understandings of the sea. Theresult is an incisive exploration of the sea's force as a cultural presence.By Raphaël Ingelbien. 2016
This book analyses travel texts aimed at the emergent Irish middle classes in the long nineteenth century. Unlike travel writing…
about Ireland, Irish travel writing about foreign spaces has been under-researched. Drawing on a wide range of neglected material and focusing on selected European destinations, this study draws out the distinctive features of an Irish corpus that often subverts dominant trends in Anglo-Saxon travel writing. As it charts Irish participation in a new 'mass' tourism, it shows how that participation led to heated ideological debates in Victorian and Edwardian Irish print culture. Those debates culminate in James Joyce's 'The Dead', which is here re-read through new discursive contextualizations. This book sheds new light on middle-class culture in pre-independence Ireland, and on Ireland's relation to Europe. The methodology used to define its Irish corpus also makes innovative contributions to the study of travel writing.By Pamela Robertson Wojcik. 2016
In our current era of helicopter parenting and stranger danger, an unaccompanied child wandering through the city might commonly be…
viewed as a victim of abuse and neglect. However, from the early twentieth century to the present day, countless books and films have portrayed the solitary exploration of urban spaces as a source of empowerment and delight for children. Fantasies of Neglect explains how this trope of the self-sufficient, mobile urban child originated and considers why it persists, even as it goes against the grain of social reality. Drawing from a wide range of films, children's books, adult novels, and sociological texts, Pamela Robertson Wojcik investigates how cities have simultaneously been demonized as dangerous spaces unfit for children and romanticized as wondrous playgrounds that foster a kid's independence and imagination. Charting the development of free-range urban child characters from Little Orphan Annie to Harriet the Spy to Hugo Cabret, and from Shirley Temple to the Dead End Kids, she considers the ongoing dialogue between these fictional representations and shifting discourses on the freedom and neglect of children. While tracking the general concerns Americans have expressed regarding the abstract figure of the child, the book also examines the varied attitudes toward specific types of urban children--girls and boys, blacks and whites, rich kids and poor ones, loners and neighborhood gangs. Through this diverse selection of sources, Fantasies of Neglect presents a nuanced chronicle of how notions of American urbanism and American childhood have grown up together.By Will Tosh. 2016
Male Friendship and Testimonies of Love in Shakespeare's England reveals the complex and unfamiliar forms of friendship that existed between men…
in the late sixteenth century. Using the unpublished letter archive of the Elizabethan spy Anthony Bacon (1558-1601), it shows how Bacon negotiated a path through life that relied on the support of his friends, rather than the advantages and status that came with marriage. Through a set of case-studies focusing on the Inns of Court, the prison, the aristocratic great house and the spiritual connection between young and ardent Protestants, this book argues that the 'friendship spaces' of early modern England permitted the expression of male same-sex intimacy to a greater extent than has previously been acknowledged.By Thomas E Peterson. 2016
Petrarch's Rerum vulgarium fragmenta, a collection of lyric poems on sacred and profane love and other subjects, has traditionally been…
viewed as reflecting the conflicted nature of its author. However, award winning author Thomas E. Peterson argues that Petrarch's Fragmenta is an ordered and coherent work unified by narrative and theological structures.By concentrating on the poem's reliance on Christian tenets and distinguishing between author, narrator and character, Peterson exposes the underlying narrative and theological unity of the work. Building on recent Petrarch scholarship and broader studies of medieval poetics, poetic narrativity, and biblical intertextuality, Peterson conducts a rigorous examination of the Fragmenta's poetic language. This combination of stylistic and philological analysis recasts Petrarch's poetry in a new light revealing its radically innovative and liberating character.By Carlos M. Amador. 2016
This book argues for a new reading of the political and ethical through the literatures of Argentina, Chile, and Paraguay…
from 1970-2000. Carlos Amador reads a series of examples from the last dictatorship and the current post-dictatorship period in the Southern Cone, including works by Augusto Roa Bastos, Roberto Bolaño, Ceferino Reato, Horacio Verbitsky, Nelly Richard, Diamela Eltit, and Willy Thayer, with the goal of uncovering the logic behind their conceptions of belonging and rejection. Focusing on theoretical concepts that make possible the formation of any and all communities, this study works towards a vision of literature as essential to the structure of ethics.By Elizabeth Mannion. 2016
Irish detective fiction has enjoyed an international readership for over a decade, appearing on best-seller lists across the globe. But…
its breadth of hard-boiled and amateur detectives, historical fiction, and police procedurals has remained somewhat marginalized in academic scholarship. Exploring the work of some of its leading writers--including Peter Tremayne, John Connolly, Declan Hughes, Ken Bruen, Brian McGilloway, Stuart Neville, Tana French, Jane Casey, and Benjamin Black--The Contemporary Irish Detective Novel opens new ground in Irish literary criticism and genre studies. It considers the detective genre's position in Irish Studies and the standing of Irish authors within the detective novel tradition. Contributors: Carol Baraniuk, Nancy Marck Cantwell, Brian Cliff, Fiona Coffey, Charlotte J. Headrick, Andrew Kincaid, Audrey McNamara, and Shirley Peterson.By Ben Davies. 2016
Combining close readings of literature and theory, Sex, Time, and Space in Contemporary Fiction opens up new ways to consider…
the sex-time-space nexus. In an exciting and compelling contribution to contemporary literary studies, this book takes the concept of 'exceptionality' as its point of departure as developed through an exploration of Giorgio Agamben's theory of the state of exception and the work of theorists including Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault. Through an analysis of a range of widely read contemporary fiction, including On Chesil Beach, Gertrude and Claudius, The Act of Love and Room, Ben Davies provides a rigorous exploration of narrative form and offers original theories of the prequel, narrative relations in terms of set theory, and the practice of reading itself.By Leif Sorensen. 2016
During the 1930s, ethnic literary modernists played a crucial role in the development of what we now recognize as multiethnic…
literature in the United States. Presenting a new view of the history of multicultural literature, Ethnic Modernism and the Making of US Multiculturalism focuses on the remarkable careers of four ethnic fiction writers: Younghill Kang, D'Arcy McNickle, Zora Neale Hurston, and Américo Paredes. The first part of the book situates these authors within the modernist era to provide an alternative, multicultural vision of American modernism. The second part examines the complex reception histories of these authors' works, showing how they have been claimed or rejected as ancestors for contemporary multiethnic writing. Combining the approaches of modernist studies and ethnic studies, the book presents a new model of twentieth-century American literary history.By Jonathan Bate. 2015
Ted Hughes, Poet Laureate, was one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. He was one of Britain's most…
important poets, his work infused with myth; a love of nature, conservation, and ecology; of fishing and beasts in brooding landscapes.With an equal gift for poetry and prose, and with a soul as capacious as any poet in history, he was also a prolific children's writer and has been hailed as the greatest English letter-writer since John Keats. His magnetic personality and insatiable appetite for friendship, love, and life also attracted more scandal than any poet since Lord Byron. His lifelong quest to come to terms with the suicide of his first wife, Sylvia Plath, is the saddest and most infamous moment in the public history of modern poetry.Hughes left behind a more complete archive of notes and journals than any other major poet, including thousands of pages of drafts, unpublished poems, and memorandum books that make up an almost complete record of Hughes's inner life, which he preserved for posterity. Renowned scholar Jonathan Bate has spent five years in the Hughes archives, unearthing a wealth of new material. His book offers, for the first time, the full story of Hughes's life as it was lived, remembered, and reshaped in his art. It is a book that honors, though not uncritically, Hughes's poetry and the art of life-writing, approached by his biographer with an honesty answerable to Hughes's own.By Arthur G. Kimball. 1973
This book is intended to encourage the reading, study, and appreciation of contemporary Japanese fiction and, through it, an understanding…
of Japan and Japanese culture. The various chapters, including the Syllabus at the end, aim to stimulate and encourage general readers and students to deepen their knowledge of the available literature. The Syllabus in particular aims to encourage the teaching of Japanese literature in the classroom, at both high school and university level, by supplying the teacher and student with study aids. The book is based on an important and much-discussed contemporary theme, that of identity.