Literary studies: general Books

Literary Advertising and the Shaping of British Romanticism investigates the entwined histories of the advertising industry and the gradual commodification of literature over the course of the Romantic Century (17501850). In this well-written and...

In The Fairy Way of Writing, Kevin Pask seeks to explain the origins and popularity of enchantment in Shakespeares plays. Writers John Dryden and Joseph Addison originated the phrase the 'fairy way of writing' to define the concept of an English creative...

For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we are just able to bear, and we wonder at it so because it calmly disdainsto destroy us." --Rilke Beginning with Rilke's 1910 novel, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, The Beginning of Terror...

How is life possible in a world of evil, suffering, and chaos? Christians have historically been inept at offering adequate answers as to why people's lives are derailed by sudden chaos and, even worse, at equipping people to live in the throes, or...

In Romantic Interactions Susan J. Wolfson examines how interaction with other authors -- whether on the bookshelf, in the embodied company of someone else writing, or in relation to literary celebrity -- shaped the work of some of the best—known (and...

"For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we are just able to bear, and we wonder at it so because it calmly disdains to destroy us." --Rilke Beginning with Rilke's 1910 novel, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, The Beginning of...

The Neural Sublime brings recent work in cognitive neuroscience to bear on some famously vexed issues in British Romantic studies. In exciting and unprecedented ways, Alan Richardson demonstrates how developments in the neurosciences can transform the...

The Neural Sublime brings recent work in cognitive neuroscience to bear on some famously vexed issues in British Romantic studies. In exciting and unprecedented ways, Alan Richardson demonstrates how developments in the neurosciences can transform the...

In The Practice of Satire in England, 1658-1770, Ashley Marshall explores how satire was conceived and understood by writers and readers of the period. Her account is based on a reading of some 3,000 works ranging from one-page squibs to novels. The...

Styles of Enlightenment argues that alongside its democratic ideals and its efforts to create a unified public sphere, the Enlightenment also displayed a tendency to erect rigid barriers when it came to matters of style and artistic expression. The...

"The Proustian Quest" is a full-length study that explores the influence of social change on Proust's vision. "In Remembrance of Things Past", Proust describes how the machines of transportation and communication transformed fashion, social mores,...

The migration of American artists and intellectuals to Europe in the early twentieth century has been amply documented and studied, but few scholars have examined the aftermath of their return home. Writing Back focuses on the memoirs of modernist...

Although credited with the rise of domesticity, eighteenth-century British culture singularly lacked narratives of good mothers, ostensibly the most domestic of females. With startling frequency, the best mother was absent, disembodied, voiceless, or...

Nearly half of all Americans believe in existence of extraterrestrials, and many are also convinced that aliens have visited Earth at some point in history. Included in such popular beliefs is the notion that so-called ancient astronauts (visitors from...

What is the fascination that decollation holds for us, as individuals and as a culture? Why does the idea make us laugh and the act make us close our eyes? Losing Our Heads explores in both artistic and cultural contexts the role of the chopped-off head...

What is the fascination that decollation holds for us, as individuals and as a culture? Why does the idea make us laugh and the act make us close our eyes? Losing Our Heads explores in both artistic and cultural contexts the role of the chopped-off head...

This book celebrates the emergence in Australia of a range of contemporary women's writing which challenges conventional expectations of fiction. It also gives a sense of the energy behind that writing as it critically breaks down the boundaries between...

George Eliot has been widely praised both for the richness of her prose and the universality of her themes. In this compelling study, Peggy Fitzhugh Johnstone goes beyond these traditional foci to examine the role of aggression in Eliot's fiction and to...

Illuminating the central struggle in The Lord of the Rings to deepen understanding of the whole of Tolkien's legendarium In this remarkable work of close reading and analysis, Thomas P. Hillman gets to the heart of the tension between pity and the desire...

Close reading and analysis of Hemingway's most ambitious posthumous novel Published in 1986, Ernest Hemingway's novel The Garden of Eden is a literary landmark. Hemingway periodically worked on the novel from 1946 until his death in 1961, and the result...

Psychoanalytic Books George Eliot has been widely praised both for the richness of her prose and the universality of her themes. In this compelling study, Peggy Fitzhugh Johnstone goes beyond these traditional foci to examine the role of aggression in...

The first full biography of Warren Lewis, brother and secretary of C. S. LewisDetailing the life of Warren Hamilton Lewis, author Don W. King gives us new insights into the life and mind of Warren's famous brother, C. S. Lewis, and also demonstrates how...

Using a philosophical lens to more deeply examine, appreciate, and understand C. S. Lewis's writings Drawing on C. S. Lewis's essays, sermons, and fiction, The Lion's Country offers a comprehensive exploration of Lewis's understanding of...

The first full biography of Warren Lewis, brother and secretary of C. S. LewisDetailing the life of Warren Hamilton Lewis, author Don W. King gives us new insights into the life and mind of Warren's famous brother, C. S. Lewis, and also demonstrates how...

Exploring women's narratives from an innovative feminist perspective, Female Stories, Female Bodies combines theory and textual commentary in a wide-ranging interrogation of representation and identity, gender and genre. Cultural critic Lidia Curti takes...

Exploring women's narratives from an innovative feminist perspective, Female Stories, Female Bodies combines theory and textual commentary in a wide-ranging interrogation of representation and identity, gender and genre. Cultural critic Lidia Curti takes...

The topic of incest began to emerge in the early 1990s, producing a spate of television specials and providing the material for a surging industry of talk shows as well as an anti-feminist campaign against incest survivors and their therapists. The...

The topic of incest began to emerge in the early 1990s, producing a spate of television specials and providing the material for a surging industry of talk shows as well as an anti-feminist campaign against incest survivors and their therapists. The...

This serene meditation on the special bond between cat lovers and their aloof, playful, adorable, and intelligent objects of affection captures in words and pictures the many quiet pleasures that only cats can provide. Pamela Wallin eloquently shares her...

One of the more exciting ways to grapple with important philosophical questions, positions, and arguments, is through philosophical fiction. Accessible and lively, such fiction can be as enlightening as it is entertaining. It is an especially valuable...

What sorts of cultural criticism are teachers and scholars to produce, and how can that criticism be "employed" in the culture at large? In recent years, debates about the role and direction of English departments have mushroomed into a broader...

What sorts of cultural criticism are teachers and scholars to produce, and how can that criticism be "employed" in the culture at large? In recent years, debates about the role and direction of English departments have mushroomed into a broader...

Thomas Kinsella began writing in the early 1950s when Irish poets were struggling to emerge from what he identified as the ""double shadow of Yeats and English verse"". Throughout his career, Kinsella has sought to establish his identity as an Irish poet...

Not only does Tyndale's Answer (1531) provide the missing link between St. Thomas More's Dialogue Concerning Heresies (1529, 1531) and Confutation of Tyndale (1532, 1533), but its newly minted phrases and biblical images, its attack on the Donation of...

The last two decades have seen a resurgence of critical and popular attention to Virginia Woolf's life and work. Such traditional institutions as The New York Review of Books now pair her with William Shakespeare in promotional advertisements; her face...

The last two decades have seen a resurgence of critical and popular attention to Virginia Woolf's life and work. Such traditional institutions as The New York Review of Books now pair her with William Shakespeare in promotional advertisements; her face...

Author of five volumes of poetry, Parnok was the only openly lesbian writer during the "Silver Age" of Russian letters. Despite her contribution to modern Russian lyricism, Parnok's life and work have up to now essentially been forgotten. Diana Burgin's...

Approaches Dostoevsky psychoanalytically, not as a patient to be analyzed, but as a fellow psychoanalyst, someone whose life and fiction are intertwined in the process of literary self-exploration.

A Treasury of Virtues is a collection of sayings, sermons, and teachings attributed to 'Ali ibn Abi Talib (d. 40/661), the cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad, the first Shia Imam and the fourth Sunni Caliph. An acknowledged master of Arabic...

Fyodor Dostoevsky, Walker Percy, and the Age of Suicide is a study of the phenomenon of suicide in modern and post-modern society as represented in the major fictional works of Fyodor Dostoevsky and Walker Percy. In his study, suicide is understood in...

Emilia Pardo Bazan (1851-1921), the most important female author of Spain's nineteenth century, was a prolific writer of novels, short stories, critical articles, chronicles of modern life, and plays. Active in the age of Catholic social teaching...

Winner, PROSE Award, Classics, Association of American Publishers (AAP), 2018 Writing down the epic tales of the Trojan War and the wanderings of Odysseus in texts that became the Iliad and the Odyssey was a defining moment in the intellectual history of...

AftYer a long period of comparative neglect, starting almost immediately upon his death in 1900, John Ruskin began to attract, from the 1960s onwards, a remarkable degree of critical interest. Although the formidably ample Library Edition of Ruskin's...

Mark Twain's (1835-1910) witty vision of what heaven "is really like" is told from the point of view of the recently deceased Captain Stormfield. In a folksy narration peppered with sailor's jargon, the amiable, altogether down-to-earth merchant marine...

Huguccio was an important lawyer of the medieval church, bishop of Ferrara, and one of the greatest representatives of twelfth-century scholasticism. In this book-length study of this influential figure, Wolfgang P. Mueller provides a critical account of...

We are often amazed by the wide-eyed innocence and boundless curiosity of children and the questions they ask. And letters to and from children are always appealing, especially so when they are written to someone famous. In "Dear Professor Einstein",...

A series of essays examining two of Dostoevsky's masterworks, Notes from Underground and The Brothers Karamazov.

Secret Histories claims that the history of the nation is hidden -- in plain sight -- within the pages of twentieth—century American literature. David Wyatt argues that the nation's fiction and nonfiction expose a ''secret history'' that cuts beneath the...