Recovering History through Fact and Fiction
This collection reclaims the histories of figures forgotten by time and offers fresh perspectives on those distorted by fame, including Mary Shelley, Judy Garland, and J.R.R. Tolkien. It provides a needed snapshot of new research on biography and its many variations.
Auden, master of metre, remains a mystery. This book uses a revolutionary theory of poetic rhythm—placing rhythm before meaning—to unlock his formal art. It revives interest in Auden’s poetry and his urgent questions: What is poetry? What is its use?
Ngongkum’s innovative reading of Dennis Brutus’ poetry underlines its concern for suffering humanity in the apartheid context and beyond. She brings to the fore the different motifs, strategies and artistry with which Brutus succeeds in initiating revolt through art.
South African Literary Cultural Nationalism—Abalobi beSizwe eMzansi—1918-45
Creary’s intellectual history uses Amílcar Cabral’s theory of the “return to the source” to examine Sol Plaatje’s Mhudi, Vilakazi’s poetry, and Jordan’s The Wrath of the Ancestors within the broader context of African cultural nationalisms in the early twentieth century.
The Homeric Epics and the Chinese Book of Songs
The Homeric epics and the Book of Songs are not just the fountainheads of the Western and Chinese literary traditions; for centuries they played a central role in education and communal life. This title presents the first systematic comparison of the two corpora.
Das examines the theories of nation and national identity in both the West (according to the theories of Benedict Anderson and Salman Rushdie) and in the East (in the light of the works of Jawaharlal Nehru) as they apply to the novels of Arundhati Roy and Kiran Desai.
A History of the Bildungsroman
Golban establishes a vector of methodology in approaching the English Bildungsroman (the novel of identity formation). His wide-ranging critical perspectives will be useful to anyone concerned with perspectives of modern fiction studies and European and English novelistic genres.
Culture and Society in Crete
The papers here explore original aspects of the Cretan cultural and historical tradition, offering unique insights into already established fields. As a result, they will appeal to scholars of modern Greek studies, Renaissance Studies and comparative literature, among others.
In a world turned upside-down, this essay collection shows the vital role of the humanities. It explores how societies have historically coped with distressing change to address today’s crises—from climate change and racism to the worldwide crisis of democracy.
This edited volume investigates Alice Munro’s art as a storyteller and the processes she performs on the contemporary short story genre in her creative anatomical theatre from a variety of different critical perspectives ranging from post-structuralism to cultural studies.
The contributions here bear witness to the fact that belonging is a multi-faceted concept that necessitates different and shifting idioms of expression. Informed by current debates, they propose new critical directions in understanding national and transnational belonging.
Elizabeth I’s controversial marriage proposal angered courtiers Philip Sidney and Edmund Spenser, who used their writing to express their dissent. This book interweaves history and literature to analyze the workings of gender, desire, politics, and poetics in her reign.
To challenge Europe’s dominant aesthetics, 18th-century Britain forged a new ‘Northern’ identity. This book explores the roots of British Romanticism in a celebrated past of Celtic heroes, King Arthur, and the fantasy world of myth.
This book explores the cultural and psychological resonances in John B. Keane’s masterpiece, The Field. Applying psychological and post-colonial filters, it analyzes representations of gender and history to encourage a re-appraisal of this often overlooked Irish playwright.
Dumitrașcu explores the intricate manifestations of contemporary power and the “resistance” and reaction to the dominant discourse in Jonathan Coe’s political fiction, covering the dismantling of the British social-democratic consensus, up to the new ideology of “Globalism.”
Urban Monstrosities
The contributors here show how artists and writers across the past two hundred years figure the monster as a barometer of changing urban patterns. Here, monstrosity becomes the herald of embryonic social forms and marginalized populations in portrayals of cities across media.
Thomas brings together the oral histories of those who have lived in the Mexican State of Sonora and the corresponding territory in the US, using these voices to paint the revolution in economics, culture, and drug trade that the area has witnessed in gripping, personal terms.
Girlhood in British Coming-of-Age Novels
Šnircová discusses a selection of coming-of-age narratives that offer a revisiting of the classic Bildungsroman heroine and present her developments in postwar and postmillennial British literature, drawing on the work of various feminist critics.
Signs of Identity
This volume rethinks identity from a communicational and comparative perspective, linking it to performativity. Contributions cover diverse periods and genres, from Medieval clothing to postcolonial narratives, for all those involved in the reevaluation of this central term.
Contested Spaces in Contemporary North American Novels
Tabur discusses the ways in which the work of Toni Morrison, Dionne Brand, Jhumpa Lahiri and Carolyn See engage with the physical, ideological, and socially constructed “real-and-imagined” spaces of colonialism, justice, diaspora, and risk.