Japan's introduction to Western literature came though American literature, as things European were imported to Japan via the United States. Prior to World War II, the Japanese read such writers as Washington Irving, Poe, and Hawthorne, partly to practice their English. Today these writers are less popular in Japan, but younger Japanese scholars are turning more and more attention to Herman Melville. This book is the first English-language volume of Japanese scholarship on Melville. With chapters contributed by the leading scholars in Japan, it presents a variety of attitudes from the traditional to the new.

Following the introduction, the volume opens with a chapter by Kenzaburo Ohashi on Melville's reception in Japan. The next chapter discusses the literary interaction between Hawthorne and Melville after "Moby-Dick," and is followed by two chapters on "Moby-Dick." Chapter 5 discusses Melville's transcendentalism. Additional chapters cover Israel Porter "The Confidence Man,"

Clarel,

Melville's later poetry, and "Billy Budd." The work concludes with a bibliographical essay on Japanese scholarship and includes a full subject index.

This book examines the relationship between Romantic-period writing and the activity that Samuel Taylor Coleridge christened 'mountaineering' in 1802. It argues that mountaineering developed as a pursuit in Britain during the Romantic era, earlier than is generally recognised, and shows how writers including William and Dorothy Wordsworth, Ann Radcliffe, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, and Walter Scott were central to the activity's evolution. It explores how the desire for physical ascent shaped Romantic-period literary culture and investigates how the figure of the mountaineer became crucial to creative identities and literary outputs. Illustrated with 25 images from the period, the book shows how mountaineering in Britain had its origins in scientific research, antiquarian travel, and the search for the picturesque and the sublime. It considers how writers engaged with mountaineering's power dynamics and investigates issues including the politics of the summit view (what Wordsworth terms 'visual sovereignty'), the relationships between different types of 'mountaineers', and the role of women in the developing cultures of ascent. Placing the work of canonical writers alongside a wide range of other types of mountaineering literature, this book reassesses key Romantic-period terms and ideas, such as vision, insight, elevation, revelation, transcendence, and the sublime. It opens up new ways of understanding the relationship between Romantic-period writers and the world that they experienced through their feet and hands, as well as their eyes, as they moved through the challenging landscapes of the British mountains.

"Text World Theory and Keats' Poetry" applies advances in cognitive poetics and text world theory to four poems by the nineteenth century poet John Keats. It takes the existing text world theory as a starting point and draws on stylistics, literary theory, cognitive linguistics, cognitive psychology and dream theories to explore reading poems in the light of their emphasis on states of desire, dreaming and nightmares. It accounts for the representation of these states and the ways in which they are likely to be processed, monitored and understood. "Text World Theory and Keats' Poetry" advances both the current field of cognitive stylistics but also analyses Keats in a way that offers new insights into his poetry. It is of interest to stylisticians and those in literary studies.

The first detailed study on the subject of Victorian unfinished novels, this book sheds further light on novels by major authors that have been neglected by critical studies and focuses in a new way on critically acclaimed masterpieces, offering a counter-reading of the nineteenth-century literary canon.

Essential for students, researchers and fans, this unique set brings together a wide range of hard-to-find writings by relatives and friends of Charles Dickens. Contents include pieces such as "Memoirs of My Father" by Henry F. Dickens K.C.; "A Child's Memoir of Gad's" "Hill" by M.A. Dickens; "Personal Reminiscences of My Father" by Charles Dickens the Younger; and much more.

This book is an interdisciplinary approach to Latin American literatures and ecology. The research spans Latin America, including Brazil, from its beginnings in 1492 up to the present time. Rivera-Barnes and Hoeg analyze the relationship between literature and the environment in both literary and testimonial texts, scrutinizing the ecological implications and the relationship between man and nature, or nature and culture. Some of the questions involved in this approach are: How does a text represent the physical world? What moral questions are raised relative to man's interaction with nature? How does a text bring the reader's awareness to a specific ecosystem? This approach will prove that environmental degradation is a tangible and measurable reality and this book will contribute to the on-going dialogue between the arts and the sciences.

York Notes Advanced have been written by acknowledged literature experts for the specific needs of advanced level and undergraduate students. They offer a fresh and accessible approach to the Study of English literature. Building on the successful formula of York Notes, this Advanced series introduces students to more sophisticated analysis and wider critical perspectives. This enables students to appreciate contrasting interpretations of the text and to develop their own critical thinking. York Notes Advanced help to make the study of literature more fulfilling and lead to exam success. They will also be of interest to the general reader, as they cover the widest range of popular literature titles. Key Features: Study methods - Introduction to the text - Summaries with critical notes - Themes and techniques - Textual analysis of key passages - Author biography - Historical and literary background - Modern and historical critical approaches - Chronology - Glossary of literary terms. General Editors: Martin Gray - Head of Literary Studies, University of Luton; Professor A.N. Jeffares - Emeritus Professor of English, University of Stirling.

This book explores shifting representations and receptions of the arms-bearing woman on the British stage during a period in which she comes to stand in Britain as a striking symbol of revolutionary chaos. The book makes a case for viewing the British Romantic theatre as an arena in which the significance of the armed woman is constantly remodelled and reappropriated to fulfil diverse ideological functions. Used to challenge as well as to enforce established notions of sex and gender difference, she is fashioned also as an allegorical tool, serving both to condemn and to champion political and social rebellion at home and abroad. Magnifying heroines who appear on stage wielding pistols, brandishing daggers, thrusting swords, and even firing explosives, the study spotlights the intricate and often surprising ways in which the stage amazon interacts with Anglo-French, Anglo-Irish, Anglo-German, and Anglo-Spanish debates at varying moments across the French revolutionary and Napoleonic campaigns. At the same time, it foregrounds the extent to which new dramatic genres imported from Europe -notably, the German Sturm und Drang and the French-derived melodrama- facilitate possibilities at the turn of the nineteenth century for a refashioned female warrior, whose degree of agency, destructiveness, and heroism surpasses that of her tragic and sentimental predecessors.

"To meet Oscar Wilde" was an inducement printed by Victorian Society hostesses on soiree invitations. In this fascinating play Oscar Wilde gives a dissertation on his life in a lecture in 1899. Supported by his friend, Lord Evelyn, and an actress, Penelope Dyall - who between them enact all the male and female characters mentioned in the dissertation - we are taken, in a series of short scenes, on a journey through Wilde's life.1 woman, 2 men

Shelley and Vitality reassesses Percy Shelley's engagement with early nineteenth-century science and medicine, specifically his knowledge and use of theories on the nature of life presented in the debate between surgeons John Abernethy and William Lawrence. Sharon Ruston offers new biographical information to link Shelley to a medical circle and explores the ways in which Shelley exploits the language and ideas of vitality. Major canonical works are reconsidered to address Shelley's politicised understanding of contemporary scientific discourse.

York Notes Advanced have been written by acknowledged literature experts for the specific needs of advanced level and undergraduate students. They offer a fresh and accessible approach to the Study of English literature. Building on the successful formula of York Notes, this Advanced series introduces students to more sophisticated analysis and wider critical perspectives. This enables students to appreciate contrasting interpretations of the text and to develop their own critical thinking. York Notes Advanced help to make the study of literature more fulfilling and lead to exam success. They will also be of interest to the general reader, as they cover the widest range of popular literature titles. Key Features: Study methods - Introduction to the text - Summaries with critical notes - Themes and techniques - Textual analysis of key passages - Author biography - Historical and literary background - Modern and historical critical approaches - Chronology - Glossary of literary terms. General Editors: Martin Gray - Head of Literary Studies, University of Luton; Professor A.N. Jeffares - Emeritus Professor of English, University of Stirling.

This book shows how in nineteenth-century Britain, confronted with the newly industrialized and urbanized modern world, writers, artists, journalists and impresarios tried to gain an overview of contemporary history. They drew on two successive but competing conceptual models of overview: the panorama and the compilation. Both models claimed to offer a holistic picture of the present moment, but took very different approaches. This book shows that panoramas (360 Degrees views previously associated with the Romantic period) and compilations (big data projects previously associated with the Victorian fin de siecle) are intertwined, relevant across the entire century, and often remediated, making them crucial lenses through which to view a broad range of genre and forms. It brings together interdisciplinary research materials belonging to different period silos to create new understandings of how nineteenth-century audiences dealt with information overload. It argues for a new politics of distance: one that recognizes the value of immersing oneself in a situation, event or phenomenon, but which also does not chastise us for trying to see the big picture. This book is essential reading for students and scholars of nineteenth-century literature, history, visual culture and information studies.

Forgiveness was a preoccupation of writers in the Victorian period, bridging literatures highbrow and low, sacred and secular. Yet if forgiveness represented a common value and language, literary scholarship has often ignored the diverse meanings and practices behind this apparently uncomplicated value in the Victorian period. "Forgiveness in Victorian Literature" examines how eminent writers such as Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, and Oscar Wilde wrestled with the religious and social meanings of forgiveness in an age of theological controversy and increasing pluralism in ethical matters. In novels, poems, and essays, Richard Gibson here discovers unorthodox uses of the language of forgiveness and delicate negotiations between rival ethical and religious frameworks, which complicated forgiveness's traditional powers to create or restore community and, within narratives, offered resolution and closure. Illuminated by contemporary philosophical and theological investigations of forgiveness, this study also suggests that Victorian literature offers new perspectives on the ongoing debate about the possibility and potency of forgiving.

English Stage Comedy 1490-1990 is a unique and beautifully written study of the comedy of the English stage from the Tudor period to the late twentieth century. Alexander Leggatt demonstrates that an examination of comedy as a 'genre' can tell us much about the relationships between literature and society. English Stage Comedy 1490-1990 surveys five centuries of classic comic drama, focusing on major playwrights such as:
* Shakespeare
* Jonson
* Etherege
* Wycherley
* Congreve
* Vanbrugh
* Goldsmith
* Sheridan
* Wilde
* Shaw
* Coward
* Orton
* Ayckbourn

Lyric Incarnate examines the plays of Aleksandr Blok, the pre-eminent poet of Russian Symbolism and one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century. Blok's plays have received less attention than his poetry in the West, and this book is the first and only English-language monograph devoted to Blok the playwright. In chronological succession, each of Blok's major plays is examined in detail. Special attention is accorded to Blok's relations with the major directors of his time, particularly Meyerhold and Stanislavsky. Blok's role, for instance, in Meyerhold's formulation of the theatre of the grotesque proved to be critical, and his relation to the Moscow Art Theatre just before the October Revolution helped to define the future course of that theatre. Blok's innovative dramatic technique is carefully studied at each stage in his career, from his earliest "lyric dramas," such as A Puppet Show and The Stranger, to his great tragedy The Rose and the Cross.

It is remarkable how persistent a "minor" writer may be. He may lack the large vision and universal message of the great writer, but instead possess a clear, true, intense view of particular places, peoples, and situations that renders his work unique and irreplacable. Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904) is such a figure in American literature. Best known as a scholar of Japanese culture, Hearn was a remarkable journalist, translator, travel writer, and perhaps second only to Poe in the literature of the macabre and supernatural. Hearn's life, as strange and colorful as his work, is brilliantly recounted in Elizabeth Stevenson's sensitive and sympathetic biography. The range of Hearn's writing is reflected in the peripatetic course of his life. The son of an Irish father and a Greek mother, he was born on the Ionian island of Leucadia, was raised in Dublin, and came to America at the age of nineteen. His early career was spent as a journalist. Without a trace of condescension or pity he entered into the lives of the dock workers of Cincinnati, the Creoles of New Orleans and Martinique, and later the common villagers of Japan, describing how they lived and worked and what they believed. No mere seeker after the exotic, Hearn's immersion in Japanese culture following his emigration in 1890 was born of a profound affinity of mind and sensibility. In Japan, the clarity and force of his expression matured. Here Hearn found a beautifully ordered, artistically sensitive society, but one indifferent to individualism. In later years, he saw a society also increasingly susceptible to modern forces of authoritarianism, militarism, and xenophobia. Horrified by the dehumanizing potential of these forces, in East and West alike, Hearn remained acutely sensitive to the most minute experience. His study of Japanese folklore and his retelling of its tales and ghost stories combine insight into the universals of the larger human world with an exquisite appreciation of how small things matter. Elizabeth Stevenson's book is as much about the writer as the man. While giving an accurate measure of the scale of Hearn's achievement, she makes a compelling case for its artistry. Her reading demonstrates that his writings are not mere aids to the understanding of various cultures but ends in themselves. Hearn did not just translate the folklore of other cultures, he recreated it. "The Grass Lark" will interest literary scholars, American studies specialists, and folklorists.

The text is that of the 1813 first edition, accompanied by revised and expanded explanatory annotations. This edition also includes: biographical portraits of Austen by members of her family and, new to the fourth edition, those by Jon Spence (Becoming Jane Austen) and Paula Byrne (The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things). Also included are fifteen critical essays, twelve of them new to the fourth edition, reflecting the finest current scholarship. Contributors include Janet Todd, Jim Collins, Andrew Elfenbein, Felicia Bonaparte and Tiffany Potter, amongst others. "Writers on Austen"-a new section of brief comments by Mark Twain, Virginia Woolf, W. H. Auden and others. A Chronology and revised and expanded Selected Bibliography.

This is the first collection that documents a comprehensive range of material from Marshall's own lifetime. Alfred Marshall is one of the most important figures in the history of economics. Although there are several collections which draw together parts of the vast critical literature that has developed on Marshall in the twentieth century, this extensive set is the first to cover the whole of Marshall's career, and draws on a very wide range of sources, many of which are extremely rare. It includes: * a selection of Marshall's own writings not previously reprinted * press reviews of Marshall's writings, including reviews of both his major and minor books, and review notices of articles and addresses * biographical material from contemporary Who's Who publications and obituaries

Provides essays on the careers, works and backgrounds of the 150 poets and over 1000 poems that are included in the Library of America anthology (1-57958-034-3). It also provides entries on specialized categories of 19th-century verse, such as hymns, folk ballads, spirituals, Civil War songs and Native American poetry. The entries, besides presenting essential factual information, amount to in-depth critical essays. A bibliography at the end of each entry directs readers to other key works by and about the poet. The encyclopaedia is keyed to the contents of the Library of America anthology.

Tennyson is not known for his scepticism. This book argues that he should be. It proposes a revaluation of the way in which his work is read. Tennyson has always been understood as a poet who is committed primarily to endorsing spiritual values. But this study argues that much of his poetry is driven by a metaphysical scepticism that is associated, in part, with rational perspectives deriving from Enlightenment thought. The scepticism in Tennyson's poetry partakes in the complex generation of the modern that was taking place in his era. One of the purposes of the study is to demonstrate that a cultural studies approach to Tennyson trivialises his intellectual subtlety and complexity. Making extensive critical use of Tennyson's manuscript drafts, this study provides close readings of Tennyson's earlier, shorter poems, together with the principal works of his maturity including In Memoriam , Maud and The Lover's Tale , and will be a valuable resource for Tennyson students and scholars worldwide.

Makes available research from international experts
This "Encyclopedia" gathers, for the first time, information not easily found elsewhere without extensive research. The material has been distilled from a variety of sources by over 200-internationally recognized contributors-including such leading Whitman scholars as James E. Miller, Jr., Roger Asselineau, Betsy Erkkila, and Joel Myerson. Writing under the guidance of a distinguished 11-member advisory board, they provide unprecedented access to important information about Whitman.
Comprehensive A-to-Z coverage of more than 750 topics
In all, the volume comprises more than 750 signed entries arranged in convenient alphabetical format. Coverage includes:
*Biographical Information-all names, dates, places, and events important to understanding Whitman's life and career.
*Whitman's Works-essays on all eight editions of "Leaves of Grass," major poems and poem clusters, principal essays and prose works, as well as his more than two dozen short stories and the novel, "Franklin Evans."
*Prominent Themes and Concepts-essays on such major topics as democracy, slavery, the Civil War, immortality, sexuality, and the women's rights movement.
*Significant Forms and Techniques-such as prosody, symbolism, free verse, and humor.
*Important Trends and Critical Approaches in Whitman Studies-including New Historicist and cultural criticism, psychological explorations, and controversial issues of sexual identity.
*Surveys of Whitman's International Impact-as well as an assessment of his literary legacy.
A user-friendly guide
Useful for students, researchers, librarians, teachers, and Whitmandevotees, this volume features extensive cross-references, numerous photographs of the poet, a chronology, a special appendix section tracking the poet's genealogy, and a thorough index. Each entry includes a bibliography for further study.

This three-volume set brings together all that Samuel Richardson himself published on the composition, printing and interpretation of "Clarissa". The various short works reveal Richardson's reactions to the concerns and issues raised by contemporary readers.

Jane Austen is a formative influence on how we think about 'England' and 'Englishness', about class, ideology and gender issues. But the critical convoy for 'Jane', as she is patronizingly styled, aligns her with conservative views which her texts entertain - but don't finally sign up for. In fact, as Edward Neill points out in this devastating new study, it is possible to show that 'Tory Jane' is largely illusion, and that much traditional critical effort has been fundamentally misdirected. This exhilarating book seeks to 'liberate' the reading of Jane Austen by offering a very different critical inflection from those of traditional critical appropriations.

The dream of building Jerusalem in England's green and pleasant land has long been a quintessential part of English identity and culture: but how did this vision shape the Victorian encounter with the actual Jerusalem in the Middle East?
The Holy Land in English Culture 1799-1917 offers a new cultural history of the English fascination with Palestine in the long nineteenth century, from Napoleon's failed Mediterranean campaign of 1799, which marked a new era in the British involvement in the land, to Allenby's conquest of Jerusalem in 1917. Bar-Yosef argues that the Protestant tradition of internalizing Biblical vocabulary--"Promised Land," "Chosen People," "Jerusalem"--and applying it to different, often contesting, visions of England and Englishness evoked a unique sense of ambivalence towards the imperial desire to possess the Holy Land. Popular religious culture, in other words, was crucial to the construction of the orientalist discourse: so crucial, in fact, that metaphorical appropriations of the "Holy Land" played a much more dominant role in the English cultural imagination than the actual Holy Land itself.
As it traces the diversity of "Holy Lands" in the Victorian cultural landscape--literal and metaphorical, secular and sacred, radical and patriotic, visual and textual--this study joins the ongoing debate about the dissemination of imperial ideology. Drawing on a wide array of sources, from Sunday-school textbooks and popular exhibitions to penny magazines and soldiers' diaries, the book demonstrates how the orientalist discourse functions--or, to be more precise, malfunctions--in those popular cultural spheres that are so markedly absent from Edward Said's work: itis only by exploring sources that go beyond the highbrow, the academic, or the official, that we can begin to grasp the limited currency of the orientalist discourse in the metropolitan center, and the different meanings it could hold for different social groups. As such, The Holy Land in English Culture 1799-1917 provides a significant contribution to both postcolonial studies and English social history.