When Henry David Thoreau died in 1862, friends and admirers remembered him as an eccentric man whose outer life was continuously fed by deeper spiritual currents. But scholars have since focused almost exclusively on Thoreau's literary, political, and scientific contributions. This book offers the first in-depth study of Thoreau's religious thought and experience. In it Alan D. Hodder recovers the lost spiritual dimension of the writer's life, revealing a deeply religious man who, despite his rejection of organized religion, possessed a rich inner life, characterized by a sort of personal, experiential, nature-centered, and eclectic spirituality that finds wider expression in America today. At the heart of Thoreau's life were episodes of exhilaration in nature that he commonly referred to as his ecstasies. Hodder explores these representations of ecstasy throughout Thoreau's writings-from the riverside reflections of his first book through Walden and the later journals, when he conceived his journal writing as a spiritual discipline in itself and a kind of forum in which to cultivate experiences of contemplative non-attachment. In doing so, Hodder restores to our understanding the deeper spiritual dimension of Thoreau's life to which his writings everywhere bear witness.

The essays in Yeats Annual No 7 are dedicated to the memory of Richard Ellmann, one of the great pioneer critics of W.B.Yeats. They have been contributed by distinguished colleagues and friends of Richard Ellmann, chosen on his advice. The volume also contains much new material by Yeats himself - a new and virtually complete early draft of his novel The Speckled Bird, here entitled 'The Lilies of the Lord' and two new poems from The Flame of the Spirit manuscript book, given to Maud Gonne in 1981.

This valuable compilation of articles offers original, historical, biographical and literary perspectives on the works of Stendhal. Eleven essays plunge the reader into Stendhal's mythological universe, providing new insights into the network of symbols, images and obsessional themes that run through his works. This multi-faceted collection examines Stendhal as the problematic subject for a biography, as autobiographer in his own right, as journalist, novelist, and innovator in the realm of fictional devices, and as the great representative of that literature of ideas first acclaimed by Balzac. Topics addressed include the writer's own enigmatic persona, his autobiographical writings, his encounter with George Sand, and his journalistic career in Italy, as well as the structure imposed on his novels by an Oedipal conflict he himself perceives in pre-Freudian terms, his experiments with multiple narrative point of view, and a feminist perspective on his use of the epistolary form as a device to enhance the plot.

This volume examines the literature and culture of nineteenth century America, covering genres such as the early American novel, realist fiction and historical romance.

Given their pedagogical nature, many Victorian novels are highly politicized; their narratives are filtered through the value schemes, social views, and conscious purposes of their authors. Victorian women were largely expected to dedicate themselves to the social and moral betterment of their families. Women were expected to be soft, meek, quiet, modest, submissive, gentle, patient, and spiritual; men were supposed to be aggressive, assertive, resilient, disciplined, and competitive. These expectations were repeatedly endorsed through the conduct books of the period, which encouraged people to adhere to "proper" behavior. The Victorian era also viewed fiction as a didactic tool and as a means to propagate morality. Thus novels of the period typically present women as subordinate to men and as angels of the home. Women who conform to the social norms are usually rewarded in these fictitious worlds, whereas women who violate society's standards are often penalized. Certainly the novels of Charles Dickens fall into the larger didactic trend of Victorian fiction, and like other works of the period, his novels overtly support the conventional values of Victorian society. Dickens typically uses descriptive detail to register approval or disapproval of certain women, and these women are rewarded or chastized through his plots. But on a less obvious level, Dickens also challenges the prevailing Victorian attitude toward women. A close look at his works shows that patriarchs do not automatically deserve the respect they command from their privileged social positions. Women--however virtuous--are unable to produce moral or social change, and many women succeed outside the constraints ofdomesticity. This book provides a penetrating analysis of how Dickens' novels ultimately fail to promote the conventional Victorian behavioral ideal for women and discusses how his works subvert the domestic ideology of the nineteenth century.

The Victorians, having once been seen as 'them', the age responsible for the mistakes of the past, were transformed by the new theatrical forms of the 1960s into 'us', a metaphor for what the nation thinks (and fears) about itself. And, since the 1980s and the rise of new biographical forms in the theatre, the emphasis has shifted further, from 'we' to 'me': plays about individuals, great and small, and their struggles for personal validation. This study argues powerfully that the stage portrayal of the Victorians in recent times is a key reference point in understanding notions of Britishness, heritage and nostalgia, and the profound politicisation of national identity over the last four decades. Using many examples drawn from theatre archives, and throwing new light on works by canonical playwrights like Bond, Edgar, and Churchill, it charts the decline in class-based narratives of the British people and the move towards plays reflecting a more atomised, individuated society, preoccupied with identity and the past but no longer able to provide a convincing account of itself as a nation.

A true tour de force, this book documents the transformation of one Indian literature, Tamil, under the impact of colonialism and Western modernity. Ebeling tackles a host of issues pertinent to Tamil elite literary production and consumption during the 19th century.

This the first sustained study of the interest of John Ruskin in the theatre of his time. It examines Ruskin's active engagement with and influence on the Victorian popular theatre. Ruskin was an enthusiastic and catholic theatre-goer, enjoying pantomime as much as Shakespeare. Through the lens of Ruskin's discussions of pantomime, melodrama, Shakespearean tragedy, and painting and the stage, Newey and Richards offer a new view of the late Victorian stage focusing on London's West End in its heyday.

"An ambitious study, the fruit of sustained work over many years. Professor Carter's book deploys a stunning knowledge of Proust and places Carter among the first line of Proust scholars in the country."
--Roger Shattuck, Boston University

"The Proustian Quest" is the first full-length study that explores the influence of social change on Proust's vision. "In Remembrance of Things Past," Proust describes how the machines of transportation and communication transformed fashion, social mores, time-space perception, and the understanding of the laws of nature. Concentrating on the motif of speed, Carter establishes the centrality of the modern world to the novel's main themes and produces a far- reaching synthesis that demonstrates the work's profound structural unity.

This book studies literary epiphany as a modality of character in the British and American novel. Epiphany presents a significant alternative to traditional models of linking the eye, the mind, and subject formation, an alternative that consistently attracts the language of spirituality, even in anti-supernatural texts. This book analyzes how these epiphanies become "spiritual" and how both character and narrative shape themselves like constellations around such moments. This study begins with James Joyce, 'inventor' of literary epiphany, and Martin Heidegger, who used the ancient Greek concepts behind 'epiphaneia' to re-define the concept of Being. Kim then offers readings of novels by Susan Warner, George Eliot, Edith Wharton, Virginia Woolf, and William Faulkner, each addressing a different form of epiphany.

"This dictionary brings together in one volume information on Byron's work, life and times. Areas covered include his poetry and prose; authors and works known to him; genres, forms, styles; his life, biographers and incarnations on stage and screen; manuscripts and editions; historical, social and cultural contexts; and his influence on other art"--Provided by publisher.

"Poetics en passant" presents a "cross-channel" poetics that redefines the relationship between "Victorian" and "modern" poetry by understanding Christina Rossetti's poetics of "stealth" as an important counterpart to Baudelairean "shock."

First published in 1979, this is a very welcome reissue of Kathleen Raine's seminal study of William Blake - England's only prophet. He challenged with extraordinary vigour the premises which now underline much of Western civilization, hitting hard at the ideas of a naive materialist philosophy which, even in his own day, was already eating at the roots of English national life. In his insistence that ?mental things are alone real?, Blake was ahead of his time. Materialist views are now challenged from various quarters; the depth psychologies of Freud and Jung, the study of Far Easter religion and philosophy, the reappraisal of myth and folk lore, the wealth of psychical research have all prepared the way for an understanding of Blake's thought. We are ready to acknowledge that in attacking ?the sickness of Albion? Blake penetrated to the inner worlds of man and explored them in a way that is quite unique.

Dr Raine, who has made a long study of Blake's sources, presents him as a lonely powerful genius who stands within the spiritual tradition of Sophia Perennis, ?the Everlasting Gospel?. From the standpoint of this great human Norm, our immediate past described by W.B. Yeats as ?the three provincial centuries?, is a tragic deviation; catastrophic, as Blake believed, in its spiritual and material consequences. Only now do we possess the necessary knowledge to understand William Blake and the ever-growing number of people who turn to him surely justifies his faith in the eternal truths he strove to communicate.

This book offers a comprehensive interpretation of the entire range of Tennyson's poetry, with emphasis on the great period up to and including In Memoriam, but also with chapters on Maud, the Idylls of the King, and the best of the later poems. Taking the view that every poem contains its own literary history, Dwight Culler traces Tennyson's evolving image of himself as a poet and the relation of this image to changing literary structures. He particularly emphasizes the "frame" device by which Tennyson first mediated between himself and the world and then, inverting it, placed himself in the world. He also explores the longer "composted" poem by which Tennyson declared himself a Victorian Alexandrian. Eschewing the autobiographical emphasis of recent years, Culler provides readings of Maud, Locksley Hall, The Palace of Art, Tithonus, and the Idylls of the King that depart significantly from previous interpretations. His sympathy for the Victorian element in Tennyson also recovers for modern taste several neglected areas of the poetry: the English Idylls, the civic poem, and the poems of social converse. Culler sees Tennyson's faith in the magical power of the word as the source of his gift and, when he loses that faith, the reason for its decline.

Joel Chandler Harris was internationally famous in his own time and has a surprisingly broad scholarly and popular following in ours. His portraits of slaves and former slaves, particularly Uncle Remus and Free Joe, poor whites, and Brer Rabbit, the archetypal trickster hero, have influenced many other writers, including Mark Twain, Charles Chesnutt, William Faulkner, Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison, and a wide array of children's authors from Beatrix Potter to A. A. Milne. Harris also left a lasting mark on popular culture, most clearly manifested through Disney's ^ISong of the South^R and at Disney World attractions featuring versions of Harris's characters. He singlehandedly preserved and made internationally famous the Brer Rabbit folktales, the largest body of African American oral folklore that the world has ever known. Additionally, Harris was a major New South journalist who accelerated the process of reconciliation between North and South and promoted racial tolerance after the Civil War. This reference book is a complete bibliographic guide to the scholarly response to Harris during the last two decades. The introduction explores such issues as Harris's renderings of black dialect, Southern character, and folklore, and his influence on popular culture. The first part is a supplement to Bickley's earlier bibliography of Harris, which covered the period 1862-1976. The second part provides more than 300 entries for books, articles, and dissertations about Harris published after 1976. Entries are grouped in sections according to year of publication, and then alphabetically within each section. Each entry is fully annotated, and a detailed index concludes the volume.

'Don't scold me, Livy - let me pay my due homage to your worth; let me honor you above all women; let me love you with a love that knows no doubt, no question - for you are my world, my life, my pride, my all of earth that is worth the having'. These are the words of Samuel Clemens in love. Playful and reverential, jubilant and despondent, they are filled with tributes to his fiancee Olivia Langdon and with promises faithfully kept during a thirty-four-year marriage. The 188 superbly edited letters gathered here show Samuel Clemens having few idle moments in 1869. When he was not relentlessly 'banged about from town to town' on the lecture circuit or busily revising "The Innocents Abroad", the book that would make his reputation, he was writing impassioned letters to Olivia. These letters, the longest he ever wrote, make up the bulk of his correspondence for the year and are filled with his acute wit and dazzling language. This latest volume of "Mark Twain's Letters" captures Clemens on the verge of becoming the celebrity and family man he craved to be. This volume has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities and by a major donation to the Friends of The Bancroft Library from the Pareto Fund.

Adapting Poe collects new interdisciplinary essays by leading scholars that combine the latest work in adaptation theory with fresh discussions of Edgar Allan Poe, his work, and popular culture. The book examines a range of genres and media into which Poe has been adapted, such as film, comic art, music, literary criticism, promotional campaigns, television, and internet videos. Each essay re-evaluates Poe's influence not only on popular culture today, but also as a significant figure in its development. As a whole, this collection demonstrates Poe's pervasive and continuing relevance to the images and ideas of contemporary culture.

Honorable Mention for the 2014 MLA Alan Bray Memorial Award Finalist for the 2013 LAMBDA LGBT Studies Book Award In nineteenth-century America-before the scandalous trial of Oscar Wilde, before the public emergence of categories like homo- and heterosexuality-what were the parameters of sex? Did people characterize their sexuality as a set of bodily practices, a form of identification, or a mode of relation? Was it even something an individual could be said to possess? What could be counted as sexuality? Tomorrow's Parties: Sex and the Untimely in Nineteenth-Century America provides a rich new conceptual language to describe the movements of sex in the period before it solidified into the sexuality we know, or think we know. Taking up authors whose places in the American history of sexuality range from the canonical to the improbable-from Whitman, Melville, Thoreau, and James to Dickinson, Sarah Orne Jewett, Harriet Jacobs, Frederick Douglass, and Mormon founder Joseph Smith-Peter Coviello delineates the varied forms sex could take in the lead-up to its captivation by the codings of "modern" sexuality. While telling the story of nineteenth-century American sexuality, he considers what might have been lostin the ascension of these new taxonomies of sex: all the extravagant, untimely ways of imagining the domain of sex that, under the modern regime of sexuality, have sunken into muteness or illegibility. Taking queer theorizations of temporality in challenging new directions, Tomorrow's Parties assembles an archive of broken-off, uncreated futures-futures that would not come to be. Through them, Coviello fundamentally reorients our readings of erotic being and erotic possibility in the literature of nineteenth-century America.

The Latino Continuum and the Nineteenth-Century Americas argues that the process of recovering Latina/o figures and writings in the nineteenth century does not merely create a bridge between the US and Latin American countries, peoples, and literatures, as they are currently understood. Instead, it reveals their fundamentally interdependent natures, politically, socially, historically, and aesthetically, thereby recognizing the degree of mutual imbrication of their peoples and literatures of the period. Largely archived in Spanish, it addresses concerns palpably felt within (and integral to) the US and beyond. English-language works also find a place on this continuum and have real implications for the political and cultural life of hispanophone and anglophone communities in the US. Moreover, the central role of Latina/o translations signal the global and the local nature of the continuum. For the Latino Continuum embeds layered and complex political and literary contexts and overlooked histories, situated as it is at the crossroads of both hemispheric and translatlantic currents of exchange often effaced by the logic of borders-national, cultural, religious, linguistic and temporal. To recover this continuum of Latinidad, which is neither confined to the US or Latin American nation states nor located primarily within them, is to recover forgotten histories of the hemisphere, and to find new ways of seeing the past as we have understood it. The figures of the Felix Varela, Miguel Teurbe Tolon, Eusebio Guiteras, Jose Marti and Martin Morua Delgado serve as points of departures for this reconceptualization of the intersection between American, Latin American, Cuban, and Latinx studies.

Paying attention to the historically specific dimensions of objects such as the photograph, the illustrated magazine and the collection, the contributors to this volume offer new ways of thinking about nineteenth-century practices of reading, viewing, and collecting, revealing new readings of Wordsworth, Shelley, James and Wilde, among others.

Filling a critical void, this book examines French women dramatists of the nineteenth-century who staged works prior to the lifting of censorship laws in 1864. Though none staged overtly feminist drama, Sophie de Bawr, Sophie Gay, Virginie Ancelot, and Delphine Girardin questioned patriarchal dominance and reconstructed ideals of womanhood.

This timely book treats Hardy's recurring use of one of the major informing myths of Western culture--that of a collision between a solar god and an earth goddess. Stave uses a chronological examination of Hardy's Wessex novels to highlight the author's evolving consciousness of the connections among patriarchy, Christianity, sexism, and classism. From the gentle affirmation of Far From the Madding Crowd to the grim Jude the Obscure, Stave paints a world in which the goddess figures die out, displaced by messianic gods, and a Pagan worldview gives way to a world devoid of spiritual meaning.

Part I of this authoritative handbook offers systematic essays, which deal with major historical, social, philosophical, political, cultural and aesthetic contexts of the English novel between 1830 and 1900. The essays offer a wide scope of aspects such as the Industrial Revolution, religion and secularisation, science, technology, medicine, evolution or the increasing mediatisation of the lifeworld. Part II, then, leads through the work of more than 25 eminent Victorian novelists. Each of these chapters provides both historical and biographical contextualisation, overview, close reading and analysis. They also encourage further research as they look upon the work of the respective authors at issue from the perspectives of cultural and literary theory.

This book studies the reception history of Western literature in China from the 1840s to the present. Qi explores the socio-historical contexts and the contours of how Western literature was introduced, mostly through translation and assesses its transformative impact in the cultural, literary as well as sociopolitical life of modern China.

To what extent did Charles Dickens see himself as a medium of forces beyond his conscious control? What did he think such subconscious mechanisms might be, and how did his thoughts on the subject play out in his writings? "Sensation and Sublimation in Charles Dickens" traces these questions through three Dickens novels: "Oliver Twist," "Dombey and Son," and "Bleak House." It is the first book-length study to approach Dickensian psychology from the vantage point of what the speculations of Dickens's--rather than of our own--had to say about mental phenomena, both normal and abnormal.