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Subject Area: Literary Studies - Thematic
Abrams, Barbara Lise2009 0-7734-4663-X 168 pages
This book examines the background of our modern concept of marginality by focusing on Diderot’s materialist philosophy and his search for the origins of genius, and locating it within the French Enlightenment quest for truth.
Millington, Mark I.
1993 0-7734-9340-9 220 pages
Presents a comprehensive analysis drawing on concepts from psychoanalytical theory and paying particular attention to the representation of gender. After an exploration of the main theoretical concepts deployed, the emerging thematic and textual features in the early stories are defined. The study then concentrates on the stories of the 1950s and 1960s. A repeating pattern in the analyses is the elaboration of a reading and then the discovery of how the coherence of that reading unravels as the stories' textuality disrupts any simple desire to `make sense'. The reading process itself is problematized via concepts drawn from psychoanalysis which help to elucidate the non-transparency of the texts and transferential effects in reading. The final chapter considers the nature of repetition in Onetti: the fact that the stories return again and again to certain ideas is viewed as disabling of a final resolution of the gender problems which are implicit in the stories. Conversely, the fact that these problems are not resolved is also enabling of further writing and invention.
Brown, Kellie D.
2005 0-7734-6158-2 360 pages
Since the earliest civilizations, a connection has existed between music and the literary arts. From the Old Testament and ancient Greek poets to the great operatic masterpieces of the nineteenth century, music and words have forged an inseparable bond. This relationship is not only seen in musical genres but in a prolific output of novels for adults and children that contain musical themes, characters, and/or settings.
This book is the result of many years of research into fiction that has this musical connection. Focusing on novels mainly from the twentieth century, this volume contains an extensive annotated list featuring works for adult, young adult and juvenile audiences and also represents a wide range of musical genre from classical to jazz to rap. Following the annotations, this book provides a comprehensive listing of all titles sorted by reading level and by musical genres to assist librarians, educators, and readers in finding the precise book for a given need or interest.
Heaney, Peter
1995 0-7734-9026-4 244 pages
After an introductory essay on the history of Grub Street, there follows works on the subject by Ned Ward, Daniel Defoe, Tom Brown, Jonathan Swift, John Arbuthnot, Alexander Pope, Richard Savage, Leonard Welsted, Colley Cibber, and several anonymous writers. The volume includes both familiar works (Swift's A Modest Proposal. . . and Pope's The Dunciad [Book II]), as well as more obscure and hard-to-find works.
Wye, Margaret
2009 0-7734-4769-5 280 pages
This is the first sustained analysis of Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park in conjunction with her two Bath novels, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion. It is a careful examination of the organization and background of these interconnected worlds and demonstrates the importance of the Palladian influence on Austen’s Bath, and her awareness of the significance of her brothers’ Naval careers. This book contains fifteen color photographs.
Dewan, Pauline
2010 0-7734-3762-2 412 pages
This book examines the fairy-tale as a significant influence on place in the literature. The rapid development of children’s fiction in the nineteenth century occurred shortly after the widespread circulation of fairy tales. Fairy tales are a particularly concrete, visual, and cinematic form of writing, a genre in which place plays a significant role. Children’s authors use fictional landscapes in a variety of traditional and innovative ways to create compelling, powerful texts.
Klein, Holger
1994 0-7734-9114-7 408 pages
These nineteen essays take a comparative approach, dealing with committed texts as literary works of art. Spanning three decades, they also contain theoretical reflections on the conditions of committed writing and on approaches and methods appropriate to their study by literary critics. Some are broadly theoretical, some offer surveys of larger areas, but most study a few significant texts, demonstrating ways in which literature that offers things besides aesthetic enjoyment may be fruitfully analyzed and appraised.
Harada, Hiroko
2000 0-7734-7865-5 264 pages
Against the background of post-war literary developments in Germany and Japan, this study compares several representative dramas. These playwrights attempt to come to terms with military defeat, betrayal by leaders, wartime atrocities, holocaust, blindness, passivity, guilt, collective and individual responsibility.
Rothman, Irving N.
2017 1-4955-0595-2 836 pages
From the author's "Headnote": The abundance and quality of barber literature recommends the publication of various anthologies on the barber as a sub-genre of modern culture. ...This study provides and illustrative account of the barber in literature, as published in verse, in prose fiction, in the popular essay, in photography, and in art surveying, as well, the barber in commonplace news reports and in newspaper cartoon strips." This bibliography is organized by historical period (from the 1700s- 2016) and contains author and subject indexes.
Losada, Jose Manuel
1997 0-7734-8450-7 236 pages
This bibliography provides a wide range of references under three principal headings: 1.) Versions; 2.) Critical Studies (books and articles); 3.) Translations. It pays particular attention to the significant authors in the field: Tirso de Molina, Sorrilla, Molière, Mozart, Byron, Shaw, etc. It takes account of all the latest artistic and critical works in the fields. It limits itself strictly to the different versions of the Don Juan myth (i.e., there are no entries on other seducers such as Casanova or Lovelace). The bibliography also provides a list of translations from around the Western world.
Molina-Gavilán, Yolanda
2002 0-7734-7270-3 244 pages
This study examines science fiction written originally in Spanish. It reviews the general state of the genre in the Hispanic world and then concentrates on analyzing key novels and short stories from Argentina, Cuba, Mexico and Spain. Authors examined include Carlos Saiz Cidoncha, Ángel Torres Quesada, Rafael Marín Trechera, Tomás Salvador, Magdalena Mouján Otaño, Angélica Gorodischer, Alejandro Vignatti, Daína Chaviano, Miguel Mihura, Alberto Vanasco, Eduardo Goligorsky, Domingo Santos, Rosa Montero, Elia Barceló, Gabriel Bermúdez Castillo, Pablo Capanna, Carlos María Carón. In Spanish.
McCaslin, Susan
2001 0-7734-3424-0
These poems string from a tradition of mystical contemplation, asking such questions as: How can one sustain an interior life in the midst of a material culture? How can a person bring the fruits of that interior awakening back into the world? The book moves freely between the unified polarities of contemplation and action, utilizing both free verse and metrical experimentation.
Ceia, Carlos
2003 0-7734-7008-5 184 pages
George, Emery E.
2003 0-7734-3432-1 156 pages
The diapason of the present volume is joy and hope in our new century and millennium. The one hundred poems explore the formal as well as mimetic possibilities of the villanelle. Among subjects, music and art are prominent. There are cycles of poems in homage to Bach, Mozart, the renaissance German sculptor Tilman Riemenschneider, the late Joseph Brodsky, and one of the startling minds of our century, Arthur Koestler. The poems aim at being an experience in sound, but they also invite us to think. Problems of perception are broached, and social and political comment is by no means absent. Song and comment reach one of their peaks in “Exemplary Tale” (no. 67), a poem on two young people in love, one a Croat, the other a Serb, talented opera singers and both dedicating themselves to working toward a more peaceful future.
Bartelt, Guillermo
2016 1-4955-1236-3 208 pages
"...One may consider Cheyenne Autumn primarily as literary discourse, in which defamiliarization plays a crucial stylistic role. In applying this technique, familiar language structures that are taken for granted, and hence automatically perceived, become disturbed to the point of oddness and estrangement. ...By deftly appropriating fragments of Cheyenne culture from the ethnographic literature, Sandoz compels the reader to a hightened awareness of artistic process" -Dr. Guillermo Bartelt
Lawson, Jacqueline
1994 0-7734-9978-4 200 pages
For the novelist of the 18th century, the narrative preoccupation with domestic life was expressed through the image of the ill-governed family. The complications arising from courtship, marriage, sexual relationships, adolescence and domestic strife provided the writers of that era with the perfect vehicle for inculcating moral precepts governing family conduct. This explains, in part, the overly didactic nature of the novel in which readers are exhorted to correct improprieties in their own households.
Yanes-Fernandez, Inti
2023 1-4955-1088-3 624 pages
"The argument of the book demonstrates not only how Iberian and British authors adapt these two key historical figures as paradigmatic Christian heroes of historical importance. It also argues that both legends draw on tales and images of earlier iconic figures from the Greco-Roman tradition, the military saints of Byzantium." -Jennifer Goodman Wollock (Foreword)
Davis, Maria
2012 0-7734-3063-6 468 pages
While writers such as Cervantes or Moliere could have written their works with humorous intentions, critics have a tendency to offer complex interpretations of their work that negate some of the fun they have. Nevertheless, there has been a trend in the last few years that authors previously considered pessimistic and tragic have been reimagined as comic writers. Márquez falls into this category, which depicts a difficult Latin American reality with humor and irony. He does this because he cannot fathom the continents actual historical events being portrayed using a realistic approach. As they say, fiction is far more interesting than reality. Because of this he employs hyperbole, employed through his famous technique of “magical realism”, which uses humor to create a release, or catharsis in the readers.
Intemann, Marguerite DiNonno
1994 0-7734-2293-5 240 pages
Studies the novels and short stories of post-Franco Spain writer Soledad Puértolas, examining the dominant and unifying theme of solitude and loneliness. Literal and visual correspondences are established with the "realistic" paintings of Edward Hopper and other contemporary artists. Puértolas's fiction exposes the social and moral ills of her country and of all men confronting the solitude of their lives at the end of the twentieth century. Indifference and the lack of communication are constant themes, conveyed in a style that is often lyrical. In Spanish
Aramu, Paola
2009 0-7734-3896-3 360 pages
This work analyzes, in a significant corpus of narrative and theatrical works, the several and chief manifestations of the maternal figure referable to the Great Mother’s images, also by using important studies about Psychoanalysis, Sociology and History of the religions.
Stacey, Sarah Alyn
2002 0-7734-6919-2 220 pages
At the heart of the collection are the sporting links between Ireland and France, and the question of what constitutes sporting heroism. The approach adopted is innovative in its diversity: contributors include not only historians, but also literary critics, sporting administrators, a psychologist, and a prominent cyclist and sports writer, and each brings his or her orientation to bear on the subjects treated.
Koloze, Jeff
2005 0-7734-5964-2 396 pages
Religiously-based ethical aspects of the abortion issue have not been addressed in literary criticism; thus, determining the ethical content of twentieth-century American fiction concerning abortion will assist students of literature and those interested in this controversial issue. Specifically, the author identifies six ethical aspects of the abortion issue discussed in Judaism, Catholicism, and Protestantism. The first ethical aspect concerns the lex talionis passage in Exodus. Second, the concepts of “health” and “life” are considered. The study then examines whether the unborn child can be viewed as an aggressor against his or her mother. Determining whether the unborn child possesses “potential” or “actual” life constitutes the fourth ethical aspect, followed by the closely related categories of “formed” and “unformed” fetuses. The last ethical aspect concerns ensoulment. The study conducts close readings of abortion passages in canonical works by Dreiser, Hemingway, Dos Passos, Faulkner, Brautigan, and Irving. Incorporating biographical criticism and other tools of literary research, the author concludes that canonical works do not address these ethical aspects. Finally, the study addresses the six ethical aspects in other twentieth-century non-canonical works.
Hagen, Lisa Hall
2010 0-7734-1466-5 424 pages
This book fills a gap created when overtly politicized and polarized writing on abortion is removed. It seeks to explore the ways in which theater can serve as a particularly useful place to explore abortion.
Lichtman, Susan A.
1996 0-7734-8796-4 88 pages
This collection of essays about women's novels and poetry demonstrates the signs and symbol structures inherent in women's writings and what those systems can mean in identifying a mega-myth for women and women's psychological and physical development. Using Professor Lichtman's earlier book, Life Stages of Woman's Heroic Journey, as the theoretical basis for interpretation, it covers such diverse authors and poets as Christina Rossetti, Zora Neale Hurston, Ellen Glasgow, Dame Edith Sitwell, Virginia Woolf, and the Mabinogion
Rosales Herrera, Raúl
2012 0-7734-2588-8 304 pages
This book considers Cuban diaspora novels written since 1980, critically examining the autobiographical elements of the works and the authors who wrote them. Incorporating autobiographical theories and Cuban exile history across literary generations, the study analyzes different approaches to fictional self-figuration. It underscores how the autobiographical within fictional discourses does not conceal, but instead reveals more flexible outlets for authorial and diasporic self-representation.
From the beginning the author defines the difference between diaspora and exile. The text then studies three periodic phases in the first-person fictional novels of Cuban writers outside the island, taking into consideration the writers’ own displacement and the nature of the dynamics between exile and adopted country. The author discovers a commonality in all of the novels: strong parallels between history and fiction and overlapping characteristics of the novels’ authors and their narrating protagonists – both displaced subjects. The text represents an important contribution to autobiographical studies and to the study of both Cuban and Latino literature in the United States, but especially to the studies of one of the newest routes of Cuban literature in the world.
Lei, Christine
2024 1-4955-1273-8 240 pages
This is an 8.5 x 11 in. softcover book. "It is necessary to expose thoroughly the traumatic effects of past POW experiences of minorities such as Asian Canadians in Canada so that no other minorities may suffer the same fate in the future. This is my main reason for initiating this research of Japanese-Canadian children's internment experiences in Canada. ...I have limited the fictional narratives in this study to Canadian literature, including two children's books and three adult novels. These five texts offer children's psychological traumatization from their POW experiences during World War II, as well as their cultural traumatization from legacies of the internment after the war.
Lei, Min
2024 1-4955-1273-8 240 pages
This is an oversize (8.5 x 11 inch), softcover book. "This thesis investigates the traumatic internment experiences of Japanese-Canadian children during World War II in Canadian fictional writings. Specifically, this thesis examines the trauma these children have suffered as represented in three adult novels: Joy Kogawa's Obasan (1981), Kerri Sakamoto's The Electrical Field (1998), and Frances Itani's Requiem (2011) and two children's books: Shizuye Takashima's A Child in Prison Camp (1971) and Kogawa's Naomi's Road (2005)." -Dr. Min Lei
McCulloch, Fiona
2004 0-7734-6451-4 233 pages
This book studies canonical children’s literature during what is perceived to be the first Golden Age of this genre. Building upon critical studies, such as Jacqueline Rose’s The Case of Peter Pan, the instability at the heart of children’s literature is examined. The notion that children’s fiction promotes a discursive innocence is resisted by analyzing texts written specifically for a child readership. Textual tensions and desires inscribed from adult culture’s penmanship, and the subversion of childhood’s mythopoeic status are unveiled through critical analysis, highlighting the complex imbalance between adult narrator and child character.
Just as childhood and its connotations of innocence are a cultural adult production, so must children’s fiction incorporate an element of adult masquerade, where the child character embodies a performative dimension of the adult narrator’s psyche. A critical metaphor, ‘textual pedophilia’ encapsulates the literary and discursive desire for innocence ruptured by the adult palimpsest of a postlapsarian authorial presence. The title refers to the imaginative preoccupations of childhood as transfixed by a performative adult creativity hiding behind a fraudulent mask of pristine innocence. Ultimately, it is a playful genre that, far from promoting idealized innocence, often questions such discourses and subverts them.
Kennedy, George A.
2005 0-7734-6251-1 324 pages
Some of the greatest writers of fiction have introduced imaginary novelists as characters in their novels and short stories, sometimes including extended examples or descriptions of the character's work, in a few instances building whole smaller works into the larger structure of their novels. The present study, addressed to the general reader of fiction, is concerned for the first time with collecting and examining these fictional creations by some of the most famous French, English, and American writers, including Balzac, Thackeray, Dickens, Hawthorne, Trollope, James, Proust, Wolfe, Murdock, Updike, Roth, and Byatt, and also introducing readers to striking instances by lesser known writers. Imaginary fiction is often entertaining and readable in itself; in addition it can perform important literary functions for the plot and themes of the work in which it occurs, it provides both imaginary and real author opportunities for literary criticism and social satire, and it can also perform psychological and therapeutic purposes for the writer.
Hollard, Thoron
2012 0-7734-2592-6 644 pages
Here for the first time, the various French treatments of Dido’s tragic story in both drama and music, most of which are little known today, are brought together, examined, compared, and evaluated. In Virgil’s Aeneid, the evocation of Dido’s great and fateful passion had an impact that has continued to reverberate over two millennia. Among the vast array of artistic creations that Dido has inspired are a number of French tragedies and musical works from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries. This study embraces different genres and spans several centuries, demonstrates the commonalities between the works, and reveals the individuality and uniqueness of each interpretation. This study first looks at the broader European context before the French dramas, cantatas and operas are each analyzed in detail. What emerges is that there is indeed a myriad of ways to tell and interpret a story. The various interpretations show an intriguing and sometimes surprising degree of individuality on the part of these writers and composers.
Lippe, George B von der
1996 0-7734-8791-3 204 pages
This volume is a comprehensive treatment of the relationship of a society to its most powerful and controversial national symbol. Beginning with the heroic figure presented in the late 19th-century Festspiel, the study delineates the transformation of the literary projection of the Luther figure from Wilhelminian, through Weimar, into Third Reich cultural and political domains. The polarity which characterizes Luther depiction in the first half of the century is reflected in Luther as the cultural idol of the mainstream right and as archetypal symbol of betrayal and repression to the opposition and left intelligentsia. The study then traces the metamorphosis of Luther objectification in the divided German of the second half of the 20th century, characterized by an intense love-hate relationship in the GDR/East and more distanced, analytical relationship in the FRG/West; focal points include Thomas Mann's treatment of the Luther figure, Leopold Ahlsen's psycho-drama Der Arme Mann Luther, Dieter Forte's irreverent satire Martin Luther und Thomas Münzer, oder die Einführung der Buchhaltung, and Lutherjahr 1983 (Luther's 500 birthday) in East and West. Finally, the study considers the Luther figure in the context of German reunification - whether the Luther figure is a viable cultural symbol for Germans at the end of their most tumultuous century. This work targets an audience of Germanists and theologians, as well as those with a general interest in German cultural history. The text is in English, with English translation (by the author) and original German text for cited passages.
Stone, Rob
2004 0-7734-6429-8 312 pages
This study explores the meaning and importance of flamenco in the works of two of the most important and influential figures in twentieth-century Spanish culture, the poet and playwright Federico García Lorca and the film-maker Carlos Saura. Lorca and Saura shared a fascination for flamenco as a medium for the existential ideology of the marginalized and disenfranchised and this work evaluates the development of these themes through a close, contextual study of their works, which are linked explicitly by Saura’s film adaptation of Lorca’s Bodas de sangre and, more profoundly, by their use of flamenco to express ideas of sexual and political marginalization in pre- and post-Francoist Spain respectively. The study demonstrates that an understanding of the symbolism, visual style, characters, themes and performance system of flamenco is key to a greater understanding of the social, sexual, political and existential themes in the works of Lorca and Saura, and that this in turn allows for an original and revealing analysis of the evolution of flamenco and the development of modern Spain.
Bement, Peter
1974 0-7734-0450-3 294 pages
This essay in interpretation concentrates on Chapman's tragic themes, in the light of their development from his earliest poems though to his mature tragedies, as a key to the total meaning and significance of the plays.
Rogal, Samuel J.
2006 0-7734-5560-4 504 pages
This work shows the sheer quantity of fictional characters that emerge from the novels, short stories and the occasional play of Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951), which contribute significantly to the character, quality and art of American fiction during the first half of the twentieth century. In addition to the summary of each character’s description and function, this guide includes a seventy-page listing of actual persons who are contemporaries of Lewis, and figures from history, literature, science, and philosophy, whose names Lewis felt should be mentioned in a variety of contexts or who were assigned cameo roles. A summary of each novel, short, story or play is included.
Hadomi, Leah
1992 0-7734-9578-9 196 pages
This study begins with an examination of the "archi-pattern" of the Prodigal Son, then analyses the analogies and differences between this "archi-pattern" and its post-figuration in modern dramatic discourse as influenced by changes in the socio-cultural code. Six modern plays are represented: Ibsen's Ghosts, O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night, Miller's Death of a Salesman, Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Pinter's The Homecoming, and Shepard's Buried Child.
Dewan, Pauline
2004 0-7734-6462-X 312 pages
This study examines the function and significance of houses in children’s literature, concentrating on a close reading of a large number of representative texts. The houses that children live in, move to or visit in these novels are especially striking and unforgettable. Throughout the fiction the house is a dominant setting, occupying a prominent place and producing a powerful imaginative impact upon the reader. This book addresses the need for a comprehensive examination of the symbolic and structural patterns of domestic settings in children’s literature. It was written especially for those who would like to see children’s literature placed in the same context and judged by the same criteria as its adult counterpart.
Tipper, Karen Sasha Anthony
2016 1-4955-0518-9 64 pages
Examines the parallel lives, beliefs, and artistic principles of Charles Baudelaire and Edgar Allan Poe, with an analysis of representative verse of Poe from the viewpoint of Baudelaire as he undertook the task of artistic comparison. There is no denying, however, that both men did indeed possess superior analytical minds, extensive knowledge, and an extraordinary vocabulary, and in describing Poe Baudelaire could have been describing himself.
Heidt, Edward R.
1995 0-7734-9084-1 172 pages
Examines, through a close reading of wide-range texts, how the image of the religious minister and religion is mirrored. Authors include Chaucer, Shakespeare, George Eliot, James Joyce, Trollope, Morris West, Graham Greene, Bernanos, and others. The book also distinguishes itself in terms of genres considered and non-canonical texts studied: Fitzgerald's short story "Absolution"; Chapter 7 of John Henry Newman's only semi-autobiographical novel; Edmund Gosse's unique text; and Ralph Waldo Emerson's text from the essay genre combined with his various journal entries and letters. An interdisciplinary effort, this volume is well-documented and researched, yet still accessible to non-academic readership.
Ledgerwood, Mikle Dave
1997 0-7734-8462-0 232 pages
This study deals with the development of different 19th and 20th century views of the Western-Hemisphere "Indian". Pays special attention is paid to Brazilian, Peruvian, French, and English Canadian literatures, and the genre of the novel as well as the historical background of these myths. It includes a discussion of what a literary myth is, how it may be derived from a series of microtexts, and how these texts may be compared by the creation of tables detailing semiotically certain semantic attributes of the native New-World inhabitant.
Nascimento dos Santos, Daiana
2012 0-7734-2590-X 168 pages
This book analyzes the influence and importance of the political convictions from the Brazilian writer Jorge Amado in the most representative phase of his literary career. The works presented in this book deal with social and political themes found within Amado’s novels from 1930-1950. More explicitly the book examines how Amado was influenced by communist ideology and employed literary strategies to legitimize his thought. In addition the book compares Amado’s representations of Brazilian people’s lives with political speeches during Getulio Vargas’ Estado Novo while providing a lumpenproletariat interpretation of socialist thought.
Madureira, Luis
2007 0-7734-5483-7 316 pages
This study interrogates a series of utopian projections that have informed Portuguese and Luso-African letters and culture since the Renaissance. Concentrating on the three crucial historical moments – Portugal’s tenuous hegemony in the Asian seas in the sixteenth century, the collapse of its colonial empire in the mid-1970s, and the post-independence period of re-evaluating nationalisms in Africa – the study examines the familiar “long narrative” which casts the Portuguese Discoveries as an inaugural and enabling event in Europe’s conquest of the world. In the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century texts, a sense of belatedness and danger in the face of a vast commercial network which preceded by several centuries Portugal’s arrival in Asia undercuts this account. The narratives about Portugal’s colonial wars in Africa negate the Salazarist project to restore the mythologized age of discoveries and seek simultaneously to converge with anti-colonial guerrilla movements. The work of António Lobo Antunes eschews this trend, insisting instead upon the incommensurability between the liberation struggles and Portugal’s April Revolution. Concomitantly, recent Lusophone African literature pictures the struggle of liberation as a cancellation of historicity, and underscores the “differend” between official constructions of nationhood and the future imagined from below.
Brotemarkle, Diane
1993 0-7734-2214-5 176 pages
Seeks elements of self-definition in Keats's work, the quest for the poetical character. From both his poems and letters, an aesthetic emerges which locates the poetical character in terms of a responsible role in a creative process: a transcendent Imagination infuses Beauty into the material world; these particulars become a source of inspiration for the artist, the foundation of "the simple imaginative Mind." The readings of Keats's poems depend on these stages, on the two kinds of imagination and the mediation between them. This study is the first to yield this particular synthesis, and the importance of historicism to Keats's aesthetic has not before been weighted.
Jordan-Finnegan, Ryder
2006 0-7734-5753-4 288 pages
This study examines two primary plays: After the Fall by Arthur Miller and The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark by William Shakespeare, using a Jungian Analytical Psychological approach. By focusing on certain components of Jung’s theories of individuation, the development of personality, and the power of evil, the study provides evidence that the two main characters, Quentin and Hamlet, respectively, come to a place of moral differentiation.
This book emphasizes the components of the human condition and provides examples from the dramatic works of Shakespeare and Miller as evidence of the possibilities available to humanity. Significantly, the use of Jung’s ideas on individuation with Miller’s plays bring to the world of literary scholarship a contribution of understanding the work that Miller was doing and how vitally important his plays are to humanity as a touchstone of human development. The analytical bridge created between Jung and Shakespeare represents a clear statement of the importance of original and pioneering scholarship between two writers who seemingly have no reason to be connected.
This study will appeal to scholars in Renaissance and modern literary studies, as well as those interested in psychology and religion. The work provides a look into realms of literature, psychology, philosophy, and religion, which not only points to the theoretical analysis provided in scholarship but also to the more serious and eternal questions concerning evil and personality.
Coe, John R.
2024 1-4955-1231-2 236 pages
This book explores the devil as a traditional subject and theme in the area of religious studies. The authors also offer a history of treatments and representations of the devil across literary works.
Lin, Yu-chen
2002 0-7734-7035-2 216 pages
Derayeh, Minoo
2023 1-4955-1066-2 508 pages
"[This book] conveys how quest for justice daad is intertwined with patriotism (mihan doosti or parasti [love for the homeland]) and religions. I further show how this is depicted by Abulqasem Ferdowsi in stories since the establishment of the earliest mythological and historical dynasties in Iranshahr. Ferdowsi (tenth-eleventh century CE), the great Iranian poet, depicts many colorful stories of this nature in his everlasting epic the Shahnameh (The King's Letter). These stories have become a generative force for Persian literature." -From the author's introduction
Cheng, William Joaquín
2007 0-7734-5377-6 200 pages
This book examines the ways in which contemporary novelists from Venezuela and Colombia have treated one of the most prominent nineteenth-century historical figures of South America, Simón Bolívar, the “Liberator”—also known as the founding father of their nations. The novels examined at length are Sinfonía desde el Nuevo Mundo (1990) by Germán Espinosa, Manuel Piar, caudillo de dos colores (1987) by Francisco Herrera Luque, El general en su laberinto (1989) by Gabriel García Márquez, La ceniza del Libertador (1989) by Fernando Cruz Konfly, and El insondable (1997) by Álvaro Pineda Botero. This book focuses primarily on the different kinds of fictional representation of this Latin American icon and the roles these modes of portrayal play in the ideologies at the end of the twentieth century. In Spanish
Zavala-Garrett, Itzá
2017 1-4955-0537-5 224 pages
An intellectual history of the divisions and debates that arose among elite scholars in response to the tragedy of 1968. Work details the different literary genres that intellectuals have used to reflect on this event and its consequences. Written in Spanish.
Jubb, Margaret
2000 0-7734-7686-5 284 pages
This is the first modern study of the image and legend of Saladin in Western sources from the 12th to the 20th century. It examines the gradual transformation in the portrayal of the Muslim enemy from demonized villain into adoptive hero. The extraordinary variety of stories which coalesced about his person, detailing inter alia his entirely fictional journeys to the West and his amorous adventures, frequently bear very little relation to historical reality, yet are shown to be of undeniable historical interest. Their significance lies in what they reveal about political, cultural and ideological climates in different countries and in different ages, for Western writers marked their appropriation of Saladin by constantly recreating him as hero in their own image to point a message for their own age glorifying values which they themselves espoused.
Selinger, Bernard
1988 0-7734-2006-1 185 pages
Synthesizes the work of "identity-theorists" such as Norman N. Holland, Heinz Lichtenstein, Bruno Bettelheim, Hans Loewald, and Margaret Mahler in an attempt to formulate a non-essentialist theory of identity formation that can be fruitfully applied to literature. The working conclusion of the synthesis is that the artist constantly works creative variations on a kind of identity theme that was established during the autistic phase of childhood development. The book then melds identity theory with more contemporary critical theory. Theorists such as Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida, and Julia Kristeva are clearly summarized and flexibly applied to Le Guin's major fictional works, yielding fresh insights into LeGuin's work and the nature of fiction in general. This book dramatically changes the direction of scholarship on LeGuin - moves the criticism away from the usual mythological, Jungian, and thematic readings to readings which focus much more closely on the texts, aided by contemporary critical theory.
Whitehouse, Roger
2000 0-7734-7487-0 212 pages
Edited and with an Introduction by Roger Whitehouse “The book ranges widely and covers both some of the more expected topics and subjects (e.g. James Joyce and Michael Ondaatje) as well as some more unusual ones especially related to writers from the former Soviet bloc. . . . this variety will appeal to different types of reader and is a refreshing change from the relentlessly abstracted theorisation that often marks work on this kind of topic.” – Professor John Simons
Cameron, Keith
1996 0-7734-8786-7 144 pages
The nine essays in this volume explore some aspects of the passions and explore the role of the passions in various contexts: in ancient Greek society and in the concept of tragedy; in the Arabian Nights; in Petrarch; in seventeenth-century France; in Pushkin; in Gide's assessment and reappraisal of French Classical Tragedy; in the poet Guillevic's interpretation of the Breton landscape; and within the theology of the Christian church.
Vlad, Florian
2022 1-4955-1040-9 168 pages
"This volume examines post-9/11 literary texts having a direct relation to that event.... [It] places the chosen literary texts in what are thought to be relevant contexts offered by historical, political and geopolitical coordinates, as well as by theoretical frameworks meant to shed light on the problematics of the characters themselves and on what they represent in the real world for real readers in real environments." -from the Author's "Introduction"
Eisold, Kenneth
1973 0-7734-0339-6 193 pages
Shows the underlying pattern of duality in Wordsworth's thought. Wordsworth used ideas as he used language and perception in order to manipulate contradictory needs, to adjust and maintain the inner conflict between total autonomy and restraining reality, an inner conflict which, in the last analysis, he chose not to resolve.
Vogelzang, Marianna E.
1992 0-7734-9538-X 328 pages
This book is one of the first collections of studies on a defined problem in Mesopotamian Literature. The broad topic of a possible oral or aural character of Akkadian and Sumerian epic poetry and its implications is treated in a number of ways, including a confrontation with traditional Oral-Formulaic Theory, an overview of Sumerian literary types which contrasts putative oral literature with historical literacy, a detailed analysis of the phonic features, and concentrations on specific structural features of Sumerian compositions in order to detect possible markers of either oral origins or aural performance and transmissions. Treating one of the very earliest literary systems mankind ever evolved, it will be of use to literary scholars and specialists in early literatures, as well as assyriologists.
Asker, D. B. D.
1996 0-7734-8908-8 212 pages
Taking Darwin's publication of Origin of Species as a significant point of departure, it discusses such key authors as Hardy, Lawrence, Kipling, Wells, Orwell, and others, arguing that the variety and richness of this literature represents a revival in the fortunes of Bestiary literature. In the Middle Ages, much animal literature was written and its burden was instruction of a moral kind. This study shows that modern British writers have turned to the world of animal nature, realistically, figuratively or fantastically, to find an alternative orientation to the world -- to find a more satisfactory view of man's place in nature. The modern Bestiarists represent a wide variety of fictional technique and an equally extensive range of thematic interest.
Hye, Allen E.
1996 0-7734-8869-3 232 pages
This study includes chapters on European, American and British drama and bibliographic reference to many other plays about the scientists. While it is based on study of the original texts, it employs citations from English translations to make the material accessible to the English-speaking reader. It focuses on the moral dilemmas of the scientist and society but goes beyond the political and ethical discussion of atomic weapons that dominates most other studies. The plays discussed explore scientific experimentation with human subjects, utopian social science, the threat of irresponsible engineering and technology, creationism vs. evolution, and the abuses of psychiatry. The plays link these modern issues with eternal themes of human existence: the inquiring nature of mankind, the drive for knowledge and certainty, questions about God, human uniqueness and identity, a desire for and concern about progress. Dramas include: Goethe's Faust and "The Sorcerer's Apprentice"; Büchner's Woyzeck; Hauptmann's Before Daybreak; Kaiser's Gas-trilogy; Brecht's A Man's a Man, The Ocean Flight/The Baden Didactic Play of Agreement, and Life of Galileo; Kipphardt's In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer; Dürrenmatt's The Physicists; Lawrence and Lee's Inherit the Wind; and Barnes' The Ruling Class.
Smith, Evans Lansing
2003 0-7734-6700-9 380 pages
This book presents the most comprehensive study currently available of the myth of the descent to the underworld in postmodern literature. It develops a theory of necrotypes – archetypal images consistently evoked by the myth of the nekyia – and applies it to close readings of selected works by major authors of the period, from Alejo Carpentier and Octavo Paz to Thomas Pynchon and Ken Kesey. In addition, the study shows how these works exemplify the postmodern practice of ludic syncretism, the playful fusion of materials from a wide variety of multicultural sources, including Classical, Biblical, Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Native American, Nordic, Celtic, and Hermetic mythologies. Finally, it shows how ludic syncretism evolved from High Classical Modernism, in a manner analogous to the evolution of Hellenistic from Classical art, or of Baroque from that of the High Renaissance.
Mythic Hero's Appearance in the Twelve Seasons of Nature: His Dramatic Action in Literature and Film
Eriksson, Edward2012 0-7734-4082-8 172 pages
The hero in literature and film is an expression of seasonal occurrence. His behavior exhibits, symbolically, the relationship of the sun to the earth in twelve phases. It begins at the March equinox and proceeds through the natural year. He assumes, then, twelve distinct characterizations. His conflicts and successes reflect the natural conditions of Early Spring, Mid-Spring, Late Spring, and so on. It creates an aesthetic development that primarily converts traditional mythic dynamics (based in agriculture) into story lines. His character in a given season suggests the dynamism of that season in a modern cultural context. As all works of literature and film either indicate or suggest a seasonal moment, all heroes as will be shown by reference to over a hundred novels, plays, short stories, and films, are characterized by the force of aesthetic sublimation in sympathy with their seasonal set.
Stuchebrukhov, Olga A.
2007 0-7734-5478-0 228 pages
Contributes greatly to the study of two important authors from the 19th century, Fyodor Dostoevsky and Charles Dickens. Acknowledging the radically different national traditions that influenced Dostoevsky’s and Dickens’ novels, such studies failed to make a serious attempt to define this difference or to place it within the proper historical context. The historical significance of “national” is usually overlooked. In the 19th century, reference to “National” is highly charged with special meaning since many nations as we know them now appeared during this period and so nationalism was a major influence both in the political and literary arenas of the time. This study examines the impact of nationalism on the content and form of Dostoevsky’s and Dickens’ novels.
Kenning, Douglas
1998 0-7734-8347-0 428 pages
This work takes another look at the old and vexed question of freewill and determinism and the way they define our ethics. Especially interesting is how they form the frame of those great works where literature and religion merge. This study traces a clear and fascinating narrative through the thought of the major British Romantic poets, from its rise in Wordsworth and Coleridge, through Shelley and Keats, to its decline with Byron. Chapter Headings include: Preface; Definitions; Mechanical Necessity; Freedom as Liberty; Teleological Necessity; The Liberty of Obedience; Separateness.
Milman, Yoseph
1992 0-7734-9701-3 152 pages
A comparative cross-cultural and cross-generic study which examines the works of Robbe-Grillet, Pinter, and Zach, in reference to the basic principles of the poetics of the Absurd as set out by Sartre and Camus. The assumption underlying this approach is that in modern literature as a whole, the opacity of the text is often an intentionally-achieved effect, which is the result of a rich and sophisticated rhetorical-stylistic apparatus. The unintelligibility of the text constitutes an essential part of its impact, merging into the thematics and, to a great degree, fashioning the very meaning of the work.
Percy Bysshe Shelley's Poetic Science: His Visionary Enterprise and the Crisis of Self-Consciousness
Protopapas, Argyros2012 0-7734-3060-1 384 pages
An epistemologically oriented analysis of Shelley’s verse explores the poet’s visionary enterprise and the emergence of the Shelleyan self. Shelley, once a candidate to become a physician, gave scientifically sound descriptions of the workings of the eyes and nervous system.
The author, after surveying the literature, gives descriptions of Shelley’s psychological and physiological features recorded by the poet himself. The operations of the poet’s eyesight are seen to be linked to his imagery and use of language.
Johnson, Charles
1992 0-7734-9915-6 744 pages
This study examines several traditional philosophical problems as they are presented in works of literature and cinema. Instead of wading through dry, classical discourse, the joy and intrigue of reading and doing philosophy is gained by examining the same philosophical topics in dramatic settings. Works include Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass and The Hunting of the Snark, Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow-Up, and Joseph Heller's Catch-22.
Nijibayashi, Kei
2003 0-7734-6544-8 232 pages
The two Romantic poets have such similar biographies that most comparative studies of them draw heavily on the few biographical differences and neglect a careful analysis of how their actual work differs. He aspires to correct the imbalance and so offer a general appreciation of these authors.
Sobkowska-Ashcroft, Irina
1991 0-7734-9870-3 328 pages
Life styles and quality of life of the elderly are described and analyzed, as well as the physical and psychological traits associated with them. Discusses the possible influence of the gender and background of the authors on their portrayal. Contains a synopsis of each novel, showing the role of the elderly along with pertinent information about the author and publication of the work, and two extensive indices.
Kim, Ji-hyun Philippa
2011 0-7734-1512-2 448 pages
This collection of essays examines the various representations of medicine in French Literature, from the Middle Ages to the present. It addresses questions of how we have developed, authorized and dealt with the concept of being studied and treated as scientific subjects. The study also investigates how we negotiate being patients, doctors, and spectators in defining the concept and the field of medicine.
Gorton, Kristyn
2007 0-7734-5559-0 236 pages
This book explores the concept of desire through psychoanalytic theory, namely in the work of Freud and Lacan, in Feminist theory and in contemporary critical theory and literature. Wide ranging in its pursuits, the book examines what Gorton terms ‘critical scenes of desire’ in literary and artistic examples in order to argue that desire, as a concept, allows for moments of production and transformation. Unlike theorisations that situate desire as ‘lack’, Gorton argues that desire can be reconceived as progressive and multiple. She also suggests that there is a desire on the part of the reader or critic which creates a second ‘scene of desire’ in which the reader tries to ‘solve’ the enigma of the text. In other words, there is a tendency on the part of the critic and reader to want to fill in the gaps that desire creates in the narrative. This book does not seek to be comprehensive in its theorisation of the concept of desire, nor does it attempt to offer a history of the concept within cultural theory. Instead, it examines the way we read for desire and argues that the concept of desire can be found in these readings as progressive and transformative.
Converse, Terry John
1999 0-7734-8207-5 268 pages
In addition to a comprehensive Jungian analysis of the play, this study provides a psychological definition of the grotesque which may be used as a critical model for other literary works that involve a grotesque vision.
Coffin, Arthur
1991 0-7734-9903-2 340 pages
Fulfills the need for a carefully selected group of supplementary readings in the study of Tragedy. Begins with the premise that any reading of tragedy can be stimulated and enriched by supplementary critical texts which have been selected for precisely those qualities that would enhance one's response to tragedy. Attempts a reconstruction of the canon of the criticism of tragedy through a critical overview of traditional classical commentary, Russian Formalism, Reader Response Theory, Structuralism, Post-Structuralism, Deconstructionism, and Marxist criticism. Includes selections from the writings of Aristotle, Hegel, Nietzsche, Georg Lukacs, Arthur Miller, Karl Jaspers, Max Sheler, Laurence Michel, Henry Alonzo Myers, Northrop Frye, Albert C. Outler, and others. Arranged chronologically, supplemented by selective bibliography.
Evans, Charlene T.
2023 1-4955-1056-5 696 pages
Erickson, Leslie Goss
2006 0-7734-5911-1 260 pages
This study explores the concept of every man and every woman as hero. Using three models of the heroic journey, this book identifies and delineates female and male heroes in a variety of works and genres of postmodern American culture. Joseph Campbell’s thesis as set forth in The Hero With a Thousand Faces (1949) maintains that regardless of manifestation, the heroic journey is one core myth describing venturing human beings as they progress through levels of consciousness to individuation, self-actualization, and enlightenment. Exploring that assertion, the study also uses two post-Campbell models, Carol S. Pearson’s archetypal model The Hero Within: Six Archetypes We Live By (1986) and Susan A. Lichtman’s gender specific model, Life Stages of Woman’s Heroic Journey: A Study of the Origins of the Great Goddess Archetype (1991). These theories are applied to twentieth-century works from various cultures – Latin American, African American, and Anglo-American – and various genres – literature, film and drama. This work will appeal to scholars in a variety of areas including those researching identity, psychological development, and consciousness evolution in literary characters and how that development is influenced by the cultures and systems within which those characters live.
Nordin, Irene Gilsenan
2009 0-7734-4831-4 160 pages
This is the first full-length study of Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin. The work, using as its starting point the ideas of theorists such as Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida in relation to the unspeakable other, demonstrates how poetry can give voice to the existential experience of being.
Hermansson, Casie
2001 0-7734-7394-7 332 pages
This study offers a new theory for feminist intertextuality based on strategies at work in rewritings of the Bluebeard fairy tale. The book asserts that feminist intertextuality revises one coercive intertext in particular: that of intertextuality theory itself. Rewritings of the fairy tale accordingly can be seen to privilege either the embedded narrative or the escape from it, subscribing either to monologic or dialogic intertextuality. The work examines the original Bluebeard tale group (Perrault, Grimm, variants); historical and modern Bluebeards; and then other writers, including Jane Austen, William Godwin, Margaret Atwood, John Fowles, Peter Ackroyd, Kurt Vonnegut, Angela Carter, Gloria Naylor, Emma Cave, Max Frisch, Stephen King, Méira Cook, and Donald Barthelme.
Oakley, Helen
2002 0-7734-7013-1 236 pages
Rizzoli, Renato
1999 0-7734-1253-0 212 pages
This study analyzes a characteristic feature of some Jacobean plays, the serialization of coup de théâtre, by first tracing back and theoretically reconstructing its pattern in Aristotle’s Poetics and later in the Italian literary debate and experiments on tragicomedy of the late Renaissance. The adoption of the larger European perspectives allows the study to document the peculiar, original solutions adopted by the Jacobean dramas, where this pattern is not only integrally reproduced in the case of Beaumont and Fletcher’s tragicomedy, but also inventively used in a critical way by dramatists such as Tourneur, Middleton and Webster in order to create highly problematical and radical tragedies.
Dacey-Groth, Camilla E.
2009 0-7734-4739-3 184 pages
This study discusses representations of slavery in post-civil-rights fiction and film as reflections of public policy and opinion concerning race in the United States. These texts and films are used to discuss the twentieth-century historiography of slavery, tying together popular culture and historical studies to important political and cultural events and trends.
Lippman, Carlee
1994 0-7734-9394-8 196 pages
Examines texts from a range of cultures, exploring differences in technique and point of view in the presentation and valuation of innocence. It explores eight texts and arrays them on a scale of increasing complexity. Texts include: an untitled Manx tale by Neddy Beg Hom Ruy; a Navaho autobiography, Son of Old Man Hat; Grahame's The Wind in the Willows; Mediz Bolio's La tierra del Faisán y del Venado; Kafka's Elf Söhne; Diderot's Neveu de Rameau; and Gombrowicz's Pornografia.
Tutein, David W.
1997 0-7734-8519-8 272 pages
This bibliography will make available to Frost scholars and others a list of the books Frost kept in his personal library, and gathers in one place unpublished information about his reading, gleaned from letters in the archives of American universities. This work provides solid support for previous speculations on Frost's influences, and provides a clearer portrait of Frost the man and poet. It is an alphabetical listing by surname, or magazine/newspaper title of books and articles read, with dates of the reading where possible, and, most importantly, Frost's recorded opinion.
Siegl, Karin
1996 0-7734-4210-3 86 pages
Examines Defoe's Robin Crusoe as prototype, then compares the Ballantyne and Golding novels. Includes short examinations of the lives of the authors.
Courtney, Julia
2006 0-7734-5574-4 268 pages
This book features the efforts of a group of academics from diverse disciplines that have been working together to highlight the presence of the parrot in selected texts across the centuries. Their common purpose is to demonstrate that fictional parrots invariably function as more than decoration, comedy or badges denoting the eccentricity of their human owners. These versatile and talented birds function as markers for subtle literary techniques. Using the parrot as an interpretative tool the focus is on a range of narrative strategies and metaphorical meanings employed by the authors in question and argue that these are embodied in the attributes of the speaking bird who figures significantly in each work.
Ginger, Andrew
2000 0-7734-7506-0 344 pages
These essays offer an interdisciplinary approach to the figure of Don Juan, exploring the developing and different responses to him over the centuries, also across genres and media. It addresses the key formulation of the character in 17th century Spain, traces his development through the opera up to and beyond Mozart, and, finally, surveys his destiny in the Modern Period of literature.
Makolkin, Anna
1992 0-7734-9570-3 260 pages
Examines the fictional worlds of Chekhov and Maugham (with their enormous resistance to abandoning the traditional myths about women) as symbolic responses to the changing culture. The purpose of this semiotic enterprise is to disclose the regrettably simplistic interpretation of the Other and the potential for violence that the seemingly innocent fictional signs carry. It is also to challenge the pervasiveness of the dangerous myth that involves interpreters of culture, myth and song.
Moriarity, Michael E.
1996 0-7734-8776-X 340 pages
This exegetical survey of world literature from a Saussurean point of view contributes to the application of general semiotics to the study of literature by presenting a critical interpretation of selected passages in the history of world literature. The premise is that paradigmatic and syntagmatic considerations help to define the values and themes of the episteme of a literary period. Although a diachronic approach predominates in traditional studies of world literature with an emphasis on the Western tradition, this work takes a global approach that recognizes the importance of diversity and multicultural studies in fostering a mature semiotics of literature that includes Asian and African literary products as well as European and American texts. Thus, it presents an effort to synthesize and interpret selected literary texts from the preliterate pictorial representations of a cultural episteme to the contemporary representations about postmodern dilemmas such as the AIDS epidemic.
Senaha, Eijun
1996 0-7734-2276-5 167 pages
Defining pain and pleasure as synonyms to describe woman's condition in nineteenth-century England, this study closely examines poems by both well and lesser-known poets as representatives. The study asserts that women, in both Romantic and Victorian poems, tend to seek pleasure as their remedy for physical as well as mental pain in their caged environment. Along with references to Mary Wollstonecraft, Caroline Norton, Florence Nightingale, and John Stuart Mill, the comprehensive discussion includes William Blake, Sara Coleridge, Lady Caroline Lamb, Maria Logan, Henrietta O'Neill, Anna Seward, Isabella Lickbarrow, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Robert Browning, and Christina Rossetti. Several critical methods, such as source as well as biographical studies, the Foucauldian interpretation of social history, and Freudian analysis of individual symbols and imageries are applied to throw light on woman's culture in 19th-century Britain.
Carter, Margaret L.
1987 0-7734-1984-5 132 pages
The first full-length study to explore connections among narrative viewpoint, fictional characters' belief or disbelief in the supernatural, and attitudes toward nonmaterial reality in the society to which the author belongs. Themes of uncertainty and madness dominate these works. The protagonist and the implied reader are forced to question the entire spiritual realm and the nature of reality. This study shows how these conflicts mirror cultural attitudes, from the rationalism of the eighteenth century to the skepticism and scientific preoccupations of the nineteenth.
Milner, Joseph O.
2001 0-7734-7354-8 180 pages
This study argues that children’s literature has a pronounced rhetoric which can be perceived as forming dichotomies within each of the eight classic genres of the field. Each chapter explores central dichotomies within a genre found in several important texts of that genre. Genres are: Science Fiction; Historical Fiction; Survival Fiction; Ethnic Fiction; Fantasy; Mystery; Contemporary Realism; Animal Stories. “. . . contributes significantly to theory and scholarship in the field of children’s and young adult literature. . . . Milner’s construct is thoughtfully and precisely developed. . . . it is undeniably a most valuable resource for academics and teachers alike.” – Wendy K. Sutton
Saur, Pamela S
2015 1-4955-0358-5 228 pages
Addresses Adalbert Stifter's view of human relationship to material substances as well as proper ownership and use of possessions in individuals of the middle and higher classes. It builds on past scholarship in two main areas, namely Stifter and nature and the domestic ideal of the "Biedermeier" movement with which he is identified.
Thimmes, Pamela
1992 0-7734-9939-3 237 pages
Examines the use of the ancient compositional device known as the type-scene, in particular the sea-storm type-scene as used by the Hebrew and Christian biblical writers. Explores the theme of the sea in ancient and classical Mediterranean literature including epic, romance, drama, travelogue, and poetry as the literary tradition from which the biblical use of the sea-storm type-scene emerged.
Young, William H.
1996 0-7734-8918-5 552 pages
This is the first book-length study to investigate the phenomenon of this enormously popular genre. Employing hitherto closed access to the histories of several pioneering publishing companies, the book initially chronicles the rather chaotic rise (and fall) of small enterprises that saw the commercial potential in such an approach to fiction. Focusing first on the innovative creations of author Don Pendleton, the text traces the remarkable achievement of his thirty-eight book series, The Executioner. It examines the continuing success of the series under a growing number of writers, and includes a running commentary on the many Mack Bolan imitators that have sprung up. This book fills a gap in contemporary literary criticism on a genre that warrants extended analysis.
Flores, Ralph
1996 0-7734-8792-1 264 pages
This study moves against the grain of both traditional allegories and contemporary critical theory. The first section proposes hypotheses about existing theoretical work in the field. It shows how Pali Buddhist texts context 'metaphysics' many centuries before Nietzsche and Derrida, providing a distinct outlook on the problem of figurative language. The second section examines four texts, ranging from Plato to Dante, to indicate the difficult assumptions of 'life-giving' allegory. The third section deals with texts from Spenser onward that illustrate ghost-effects in the displacement of medieval allegory. The various chapters examine differing yet related inflections: economics in Plato, theatricality in the Buddha's texts, failing communication in Augustine, 'unreading' in the Roman de la Rose, marginality in Dante, doubtful signatures in Spenser, decapitation in Hawthorne, blindness in Baudelaire. The study is culturally far-reaching, and takes issue with the relatively truncated theories of allegory in our time. By scrutinizing other texts than the usual, it discloses new possibilities for investigation.
MacEwen, Sally
2006 0-7734-5776-3 576 pages
“A hero is someone who looks like a hero,” says film critic Robert Warshow, but in fact, we do not know who looks heroic to viewers other than ourselves. This study uses theories of affect and spectatorship to show how dramatic productions arouse pre-cognitive responses, such as pity and fear. These responses are tied to ideological frameworks: viewers root for Spiderman, but not for his arch-nemesis, the Green Goblin. In that case, affects arise from the value constructs of their cultures, and a comparison of heroes, modern films from Shane to Spiderman with stories of ancient Greek superheroes such as Antigone and Achilles, shows that each culture maintains a stereotype within which a range of responses to heroes can be defined. An ancient spectator, therefore, would not be concerned about whether Spiderman could save every innocent victim, for example, while a modern spectator does not admire Achilles when he demands respect before he saves his community. This study examines primary texts like the Iliad and Cryopaedia to set the viewing parameters of Athenian ideology, then considers how heroes, for example, like Oedipus and Iphigenia, might “look like heroes” to their original audience. This “affective hero,” unlike the structuralist hero, reflects the audience’s self-image back at itself and reveals surprising insights into culture.
Bose, Mandakranta
1980 0-7734-0352-3 71 pages
Reider, Noriko T.
2002 0-7734-7095-6 200 pages
Coe, John R.
2024 1-4955-1232-0 288 pages
This book is a thematic study offering a history of representations of the antichrist in religious thought and literature. "The malevolent figure of the Antichrist has endured for more than two millennia as both a religious and secular character. Its spectral figure has cast a powerful shadow over events during these ages. For two thousand years the Antichrist has appeared as the evil antagonist against Jesus Christ in the cosmic dual between good and evil." -The Authors
Mehrabian, Houman
2024 1-4955-1196-0 176 pages
"In this book, I draw insights from textbooks in the history of rhetoric to analyze the diverse applications of amplification, with a specific emphasis on the rhetorical figures of meiosis and paradiastole. I investigate the mechanism and relevance of these applications in the context of William Shakespeare's tragedies, illustrating how Shakespeare dramatizes his understanding of these rhetorical strategies through plot and character." -Dr. Houman Mehrabian
MacQuarrie, Charles W.
2004 0-7734-6382-8 481 pages
This book is one of the few works that examines the roles of Manannán mac Lir, one of the most fascinating characters in Irish literature, in Gaelic, Manx and Anglo-Irish literature. The author brings together and examines the various roles Manannán plays in Irish and Anglo-Irish literature and determines both the consistency and diversity in the ways he is portrayed in these stories. These representations are presented as a literary “biography: for Manannán with emphasis on both the invariant aspects of his character and his impressive adaptability. In addition, the author also demonstrates and seeks to explain the popularity and incredible longevity of Manannán in Irish and Anglo-Irish literature from Immram Brain to Finnegan’s Wake.
Moorman, Charles W.
1993 0-7734-9332-8 176 pages
This book attempts to define a genre, called the literature of defeat, in a context made up of its various historical geneses, characteristic style, individual forms, sustaining symbols and motifs, prevailing themes, and relationship to the mainstream. Its existence seems dependent first of all upon the historical circumstance of a military defeat or civil violation of a culture, and the withdrawal of that culture into itself as a way of life, a set of attitudes, a manner of visualizing things. This study also maintains that the literature of defeat is the chief mode of the insular Celts, who never suffered their defeat and occupation by the English gracefully; but carried with them into their secret places their icons and signs and sacraments, all of which shaped their visual art and writings. This book is an account of the writings, past and present, in Wales and Ireland.
Gauss, Aaron Valdis
2022 1-4955-1041-7 544 pages
(8x10 softcover, 2-volume set) From the Author's Introduction: "The primary objective [of this study] is to anthologize and collate the first-ever comprehensive mythography of the Formosan deluge Myths. This includes the creation of a corpus with multiple variations of the flood myths sourced from all of Taiwan's officially recognized tribes. [This study also] classifies the deluge myths according to narrative theme. ...[It] offers a comparative exploration of the deluge texts by classifying the salient themes and motifs of the Formosan oral flood literatures. ...Volume II of this work represents the first of its kind to offer hundreds of texts collected by ethnographers, linguists, missionaries, government agency-appointed investigators, and adventurers since the turn of the twentieth century."
Schlig, Michael
2004 0-7734-6190-6 180 pages
Mirrors that appear as motifs in the visual arts and literature abound throughout the history of all cultures of the world. Given its universality, the mirror often has served has a metaphor for introspection, self-contemplation and even autobiography, and has symbolized the structuring of works of fiction and drama. This study specifically examines the figurative mirrors that not only call attention to some aspect of the content of the work in which they appear, but also to the aesthetics with which that content is expressed. As such, it follows in the tradition of works such as M.H. Abrams's landmark study of the transition from Neoclassicism to Romanticism in England The Mirror and the Lamp and Marguerite Iknayan's The Concave Mirror: From Imitation to Expression in French Esthetic Theory: 1800–1830, but differs in that it seeks to incorporate theoretical and historical considerations of visual representation to the study of the mirror analogy in writing. Most importantly, and to the best of my knowledge, no such study exists that examines the mirror metaphor of representation in the literary tradition of Spain.
While the mirror metaphor is such a commonplace throughout the centuries of artistic and literary aesthetics, surprisingly little more than the two above-mentioned studies exist that explore the motivations underlying use of the mirror analogy. This study incorporates contemporary theories of semiotics and reader response along with more eclectic and traditional approaches to aesthetics in order to address the theoretical implications raised by the appearance of the metaphor in evolving contexts (i.e., across artistic movements and periods). In light of this, the theoretical and comparative considerations throughout the study could also be of interest to scholars and students of French, English and comparative literatures in spite of the focus on the Spanish tradition.
Brockington, Mary
2008 0-7734-4999-X 320 pages
A re-examination “the Separating Sword” that demonstrates the complexity of intertextual influences across linguistic and cultural boundaries.
Johnston, Philip G.
2002 0-7734-7113-8 268 pages
Jha, Smita
2024 1-4955-1183-9 288 pages
This book has been awarded the Adele Mellen Prize for its distinguished contribution to scholarship. "It is rather difficult, indeed delicate, to think of and to try to consider the theme of self-perpetuation in the novels of E.M. Forster, for we come across several other themes in them, ones more prominent, more attractive and more interesting. Nevertheless, this theme of self-perpetuation has a kind of subtlety that is challenging in nature." -Dr. Smita Jha
Potter, Martin
2009 0-7734-3854-8 320 pages
The only study to focus on these three novels. The argument departs from previous scholarship by emphasizing the ambivalence and even, to some extent, hostility, evinced by each of the authors to aspects of modern social conditions, and by examining their discontents in detail. Also shows a portrayal by the authors of a gradual increase in the tensions they detect in social and artistic conditions during the modern period.
Studniarz, Slawomir
2016 1-4955-0459-X 323 pages
Monograph focuses on the poetic output of Edgar Allan Poe offering a new approach to his verse, whereby his poems are treated as unique phono-semantic structures, requiring specific interpretative procedures that bring to light the close correspondence between the phonetic orchestration and the semantic dimension in Poe’s poetry.
Danow, David
2003 0-7734-6552-9 242 pages
This study opens with an extensive introductory essay focused on the concept that there is no story without some kind of transformation. It ranges over centuries and across literatures in order to document clearly and concisely how this omnipresent feature of narrative actually works. Various aspects of transformation are investigated and elaborated, including problems of ontology and teleology, progression and regression, discovery and recovery, physical and psychological change, literal and figural formulations, truth and lie, physics and metaphysics. Eight principal chapters are devoted to classic works: the Iliad, Odyssey, Aeneid, Decameron, Canterbury Tales, Tom Jones, Jacques the Fatalist, Anna Karenina, and Ulysses. A centrally situated essay treating Don Quixote links the first four chapters with the second four. Profound shifts, changes, and reversals of plot find their place here in a wide-ranging discussion aimed also to evoke a focused sense and reminiscence of selected masterworks of world literature.
Chishty-Mujahid, Nadya Q.
2023 1-4955-1070-0 100 pages
For this book, I decided to focus on a pithier and more concentrated set of books than I had used formerly, specifically in order to highlight how much stereotyping of twins is done on both the macro level of popular culture and even the micro level of family dynamics. -Nadya Q. Chishty-Mujahid
McCormick, Kathleen
1991 0-88946-493-6 196 pages
The first critical study to link recent reader-response theory, cognitive analysis, psychoanalysis, and ideological theory to a complex modernist text. Combines theory and practical application in the areas of modernist literature, specifically James Joyce's Ulysses, and literary theory, particularly theories of reading.
MacEwen, Sally
1991 0-88946-627-0 128 pages
Six essays by five classicists describing a number of ancient and modern works which have Clytemnestra as a central character. Combines classical philology, modern psychology, feminist theory, and a variety of other critical techniques to analyze old views of Clytemnestra and arrive at new ones ranging from that of a fearful monstrosity to that of a mater dolorosa. Includes many one-of-a-kind museum photos.
Manista, Frank C.
2006 0-7734-5522-1 240 pages
This book is a study of the weaving and unweaving of particular subject positions within James Joyce’s major works (Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses, and Finnegan’s Wake) through representations of voice, which necessarily negotiates identity, authority, and subjectivity. In the narrowest sense, voice reveals itself as a portion of the narrative which in turn stands as part of the discourse of a particular work. A movement to a more broadly conceived view of voice has it supersede the narrative and function throughout the discourse. Permutations of these concepts locate voice at nearly all levels of Joyce’s fiction. This work explores the myriad of ways that Joyce portrays and negotiates identity through voice and the conceptualization of boundaries that exist “in between” different and distinct subjectivities. The author explores those negotiative identities and subjectivities from within the conceptualization and representation of voice. More often than not, however, a study of voice reveals the inevitability of specific identities to merge and flow into one another, despite futile attempts to retain individuality. The space existing between two seemingly distinct voices blurs in Joyce’s fiction in the din of conversation and in the fuzziness of representation.
Breining, Daniel
2010 0-7734-1301-4 288 pages
This book explains the fundamentals of semiotic theory (the study of signs), and applies it to more than twenty works by a dozen Latin American and Mexican American authors. Using a post-modernist interpretation of signs, Breining makes the point that there exists a relationship of the privileged and disenfranchised within Latin America and Chicano literature. Covering a span of more than five hundred years, from pre-Hispanic times to the late twentieth century, Breining demonstrates how the signs found with the literature of each period of Latin American history, define social interactions, cultural anomalies, and political situations.
Rogal, Samuel J.
2024 1-4955-1249-5 212 pages
"In justifying the placement of William Ellery Channing within the ranks of early nineteenth-century literary figures, editors, literary critics, and literary historians generally cite the two prominent qualities associated with Channing's name--first, his notion of a national literature as "the expression of a nation's mind in writing"' second, his influence upon such eastern American writers as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, Oliver Wendell Holmes the elder, and Willian Cullen Bryant." -Samuel J. Rogal In addition to biographical information about the Channings, this volume includes William Ellery Channing's Remarks on National Literature in its literary and historical context.