The first study of its kind, this collection explores Beowulf’s extensive impact on contemporary culture. Topics range from film, television, and video games to graphic novels and children’s literature, demonstrating the epic poem’s continuing cultural power.
Elemental Encounters in the Contemporary Irish Novel
Reading is touching. Words pierce flesh like a knife. Storytelling breathes with air, fire, earth and water. This book explores how novels by Irish authors John Banville and Mary Morrissy revitalise these elements with sensual, social, and tactile textures.
This collection of essays examines dystopian fiction in literature, TV, and games. Capturing the dilemmas of our precarious epoch, it offers new interpretations of classics like Orwell and Atwood and pop culture phenomena like The Hunger Games and Fallout.
This study explores the work of feminist authors who responded to the Italian Risorgimento (1799-1861). Through novels, poetry, and political analyses, women from Mary Shelley to Cristina Belgiojoso championed democracy, civic justice, and gender equality.
Two of the world’s most wicked writers, decadent poets Viereck and Crowley, formed an alliance in 1915 New York. Viereck was the editor of a pro-German magazine; Crowley was his new hire. But was Crowley a British secret agent sent to spy on the German network?
Contemporary Crime Fiction
This book presents nine compelling essays on contemporary crime fiction, bringing fresh perspectives to the vibrant genre. Topics range from domestic noir and historical crime to race and ethnicity, examining authors like Gillian Flynn, Ian Rankin, and Tana French.
This book details the unique 20th-century alliance between small Albania and giant China. Based on specific interests, this relationship unfolded from initial optimism to sworn animosity, cracking when China established a new affinity with the USA.
Molecular structure is fundamental to chemistry, yet no one has ever seen it, nor can it be derived from quantum mechanics. Is what chemists take to be molecular structure real? This book addresses this head-on, exploring the grounds of a core concept of chemistry.
Despite criticism, a continuing affection for Enid Blyton’s work is apparent. This book places her work in its cultural and historical context, examining recurring themes of childhood, class, and fantasy, and asks whether she was as reactionary a writer as she appeared.
Towards a Theory of Whodunits
This volume follows the evolution of detective fiction from the late eighteenth century to its contemporary multi-media expressions. Tackling well-known and forgotten authors, classic texts, and films, the book explores the impact of whodunits on highbrow and popular culture.
Cultural Politics in Derek Walcott’s Prose and Poetry
This book offers a new reading of Derek Walcott, introducing him as a postcolonial theoretician by focusing on his neglected essays. It singles out concepts that parallel and precede seminal views in postcolonial theory, wedding theory to practice by applying them to his poems.
These critical essays on Mirza Ghalib explore key themes in his poetry and letters, from his obsession with death to comparisons with Shakespeare. The book highlights the myriad shades of meaning in Ghalib’s vision of life—one that details life in all its horror and glory.
Neoliberalism, Oligarchy and Politics of the Event
This book shows that today’s oligarchic politics result from the fall of mass movements. The rule is reversed into a cybernetic market where transnational corporations control states, rendering sovereignty an illusion and threatening the very essence of society.
This book explores human universals in literature, cinema, and language. Scholars reveal how shared practices and concerns—from myth and trauma to identity—form a basis for intercultural communication, bridging gaps of misinformation across spatial and temporal boundaries.
The Lake Poets in Prose
Focusing on their prose, this collection challenges assumptions about the Lake Poets. Far from idealistic dreamers or “Jacobins,” they consistently challenged the government, defended democratic impulses, and argued from a complex and surprising religious standpoint.
This series of critiques explores three literary forums. “Modern Sonneteers” shows that the sonnet thrives still. “Homage to Hilary Mantel” offers new analyses of the pre-eminent novelist. “Critical Letters” gathers pensees on literature written during the COVID-19 pandemic.
This book provides a comparative study of the Sartrean no-self and the Deleuzean rhizomic self, tracing the shift from Sartre’s nihilistic self in modernist fiction to the celebratory Deleuzean self in postmodernism, which may be a possible alternative for survival in crisis.
The Cultural and Historical Heritage of Colonialism
Decades after independence, why do many African nations still mimic the West at their own culture’s expense? This book presents a bold challenge: to build a humane society by grounding it in local experience and synthesizing the best of indigenous and foreign values.
Uncovering the hidden history of Shi’ism in North Africa and al-Andalus, this book offers the first English translations of Morisco traditions. It reveals their original works, study of diverse Shi’ite sources, and a vibrant faith that rewrites the region’s history.
Encounters in Greek and Irish Literature
Literary experts and novelists explore the relationships between Greek and Irish writing. Through fiction, self-reflective essays, and discussions, this volume considers two literatures at the edges of Europe. Selected works are presented in both Greek and English.