Literature

These essays use cutting-edge scholarship to investigate the evolving values of the modern world, confronting issues like torture, genocide, and environmental apocalypse. Authors essay the ethical dimensions of works from whisky bottles to graphic novels.

This critical study explores J. M. Coetzee’s distinction between “illusionism” (realism) and “anti-illusionism” (self-reflexivity). It demonstrates that these traditions are complementary, analyzing his novels in light of his critical essays.

This text discusses the history and practice of Reader Response criticism and comprises a collection of thirty-eight sonnets responding both critically and creatively to Shakespeare’s works, showing that the creative and the critical need not be separate, exclusive acts.

Chee Lay Tan investigates the poetics of three renowned contemporary Chinese poets—Bei Dao, Yang Lian and Duoduo—exiled from China after the 1989 Tiananmen student movement. The author constructs a hermeneutical system that examines the irregularities and polysemy of these poets.

This volume analyses Daniel Defoe’s non-fictional works. Moving away from his much studied novels, these essays explore the rhetorical strategies and generic inventiveness on display, revealing an author of outstanding skill and energy.

Using close readings of iconic literary texts, this groundbreaking study looks at the evolution of the war novel, tracing the movement from the modernist novel that followed World War I to the postmodernist novel that followed World War II.