This is the first book-length study of best-selling writer John Saul's psychological and supernatural thrillers. Author Paul Bail compares John Saul's novels to a cocktail: (mix) one part, one part "The Exorcist," a dash of "Turn of the ScreW," blend well, and serve thoroughly chillingly. Bail traces John Saul's literary career from his 1977 debut novel "Suffer the Children"--the first paperback original ever to make the New York Times best seller list--to his most recent novel, "Black Lightning" (1995). It features detailed analyses of eleven of his novels. The study includes never-before-published biographical information, drawing an original interview with John Saul, and a chapter on the history of tales of horror and the supernatural and how these genres have influenced Saul's fiction.

Each chapter in this study examines an individual novel. The novels are analyzed for plot structure, characterization, thematic elements, and their relationship to prior and later novels by Saul. In addition, Bail defines and applies a variety of theoretical approaches to the novels--feminist, deconstructionist, Freudian, Jungian, and sociopolitical--to widen the reader's perspective. Bail shows how John Saul enlarged his repertoire from stories of supernatural possession to science-fiction based horror. A complete bibliography of John Saul's fiction and a bibliography of reviews and criticism complete the work. Because of John Saul's great popularity among teenagers and adults, this unique study is a necessary purchase by secondary school and public libraries.

This book explores why crime fiction so often alludes to Shakespeare. It ranges widely over a variety of authors including classic golden age crime writers such as the four 'queens of crime' (Allingham, Christie, Marsh, Sayers), Nicholas Blake and Edmund Crispin, as well as more recent authors such as Reginald Hill, Kate Atkinson and Val McDermid. It also looks at the fondness for Shakespearean allusion in a number of television crime series, most notably Midsomer Murders, Inspector Morse and Lewis, and considers the special sub-genre of detective stories in which a lost Shakespeare play is found. It shows how Shakespeare facilitates discussions about what constitutes justice, what authorises the detective to track down the villain, who owns the countryside, national and social identities, and the question of how we measure cultural value.

It is a feat to demystify decadence genially while dealing with unsavory material usually presented complicitously. But Whissen achieves even more. He is not looking at counterculture literature but at mainstream literature in which the reader either senses something decadent in the writer's attitude or identifies some rhetorical device associated with the decadence. . . . He focuses chiefly on authors who have been studied from other perspectives (e.g., Gide, Mann, James, Dinesen) or who have hardly been studied at all (e.g., Maugham, Firbank, Capote, Suesskind, Stephen King). Choice As a distinct literary movement, decadence made its brief appearance in the last two decades of the nineteenth century. As a theme and a philosophical posture, however, it continues to maintain a hold on the Western literary imagination. The first writer to examine the pervasive influence of decadence on modern literature, Whissen approaches the decadent vision as an attempt to come to terms with a world in decline, rather than as a transient literary fad. He explores the ways in which decadence functions not only in modern literature but in modern life, arguing that if we fail to notice the elements of decadence in literature, it is because they are now such an accepted part of our reality that we do not recognize them as decadent. Whissen discusses two major strains of decadence that originated in Oscar Wilde's day and have continued to influence modern literature. One is the decadent work, a narrative infused with a conscious, committed self-indulgence that serves both as solace and as a form of rebellion against the perceived ugliness and hypocrisy of the modern world. The other strain includes works that have decadence as their theme, such as Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray. In an analysis of the prototypic French decadent novel, Huysmans' Against Nature, the author identifies the primary elements that make up the decadent temper: narcissism, masochism, irony, alienation, sophistication, vanity, sensitivity, nihilism, and a taste for uncommon or intense experience. He traces the development of these elements in works by Wilde, Henry James, Andre Gide, Thomas Mann, and Isak Dinesen, as well as two contemporary writers--Patrick Suskind and Paul Rudnick. A significant contribution to literary scholarship and criticism, this book will be of interest for courses or studies in modern and contemporary Western literature, humanities, social history, and social psychology.

This is a feminist study of a recurring character type in classic British detective fiction by women - a woman who behaves like a Victorian gentleman. Exploring this character type leads to a new evaluation of the politics of classic detective fiction and the middlebrow novel as a whole.

Andrei Bely's 1913 masterwork Petersburg is widely regarded as the most important Russian novel of the twentieth century. Vladimir Nabokov ranked it with James Joyce's Ulysses, Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis, and Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time. Few artistic works created before the First World War encapsulate and articulate the sensibility, ideas, phobias, and aspirations of Russian and transnational modernism as comprehensively. Bely expected his audience to participate in unraveling the work's many meanings, narrative strains, and patterns of details. In their essays, the contributors clarify these complexities, summarize the intellectual and artistic contexts that informed Petersburg's creation and reception, and review the interpretive possibilities contained in the novel. This volume will aid a broad audience of Anglophone readers in understanding and appreciating Petersburg.

A disturbing but ultimately discredited strain in American thought, eugenics was a crucial ideological force in the early twentieth century. Luczak investigates the work of writers like Jack London and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, to consider the impact of eugenic racial discourse on American literary production from 1900-1940.

This book argues for the necessary and further examination of the sacred as it is ritualized within Chicana fiction. It suggests that religious, spiritual, linguistic and political symbolisms reveal rites that structure narrative performances of coping with and healing from trauma. Helane Androne examines these rites of spirit, service, and story as they occur in Ana Castillo's So Far From God, Denise Chavez's Face of An Angel, and Sandra Cisneros' Caramelo. Beginning with the implications of Gloria Anzaldua's spiritual vision of Chicana identity alongside structural principles of ritual criticism, this study extends the discourse about the impact of the sacred in Chicana fiction. an>

This novel, published for the first time in English, is one of the most important statements about the Duvalier regime in Haiti, written by a Haitian who played a prominent role in the revolutionary movement that brought down the Lescot regime in January 1946. Depestre's ironic note denying historical origins for the novel does not obscure the scathing caricature of Papa Doc Duvalier and the bloodbath that he visited on his own country, which is called "Zacharyland" after the fictionalized President-for-life Zoocrates Zachary.

Gender and Prestige in Literature: Contemporary Australian Book Culture explores the relationship between gender, power, reputation and book publishing's consecratory institutions in the Australian literary field from 1965-2015. Focusing on book reviews, literary festivals and literary prizes, this work analyses the ways in which these institutions exist in an increasingly cooperative and generative relationship in the contemporary publishing industry, a system designed to limit field transformation. Taking an intersectional approach, this research acknowledges that a number of factors in addition to gender may influence the reception of an author or a title in the literary field and finds that progress towards equality is unstable and non-linear. By combining quantitative data analysis with interviews from authors, editors, critics, publishers and prize judges Alexandra Dane maps the circulation of prestige in Australian publishing, addressing questions around gender, identity, literary reputation, literary worth and the resilience of the status quo that have long plagued the field.

This book represents a shift in postcolonial literary criticism by bridging postcolonial studies in Britain with the wider postcolonial world through the concept of 'the postcolonial country', a term which collectively represents the English countryside and Britain as nation, but also rural spaces all across the ex-colonies. Drawing on a range of contemporary writers as diverse as W.G. Sebald, V.S. Naipaul, David Dabydeen, Mahasweta Devi, Amitav Ghosh and Jamaica Kincaid, The Postcolonial Country in Contemporary Literature assesses the contemporary legacies of the vast rural networks of empire that once connected rural England to the hinterlands of the British colonies. This book argues that these legacies manifest themselves as a celebration of Britain's rural heritage industry in the 1980s on the one hand, and on the other, they also contribute to the persistent and exploitative processes of neocolonial globalization in the postcolonial countryside.

The most successful African-American playwright of his time, August Wilson is a dominant presence on Broadway and in regional theatres and college drama courses throughout the country. In little more than a decade, his work has earned him two Pulitzer Prizes, two Tonys and six New York Drama Critics Circle Awards. In this book Joan Herrington, traces the roots of Wilson's drama to visual artists like Romare Bearden and to the jazz musicians who inspire and energise him as a dramatist. She goes on to analyse his process of playwriting, how he brings his experiences and his ideas to stage life.

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.

In America, the long 1950s were marked by an intense skepticism toward utopian alternatives to the existing capitalist order. This skepticism was closely related to the climate of the Cold War, in which the demonization of socialism contributed to a dismissal of all alternatives to capitalism. This book studies how American novels and films of the long 1950s reflect the loss of the utopian imagination and mirror the growing concern that capitalism brought routinization, alienation, and other dehumanizing consequences. The volume relates the decline of the utopian vision to the rise of late capitalism, with its expanding globalization and consumerism, and to the beginnings of postmodernism.

In addition to well-known literary novels, such as NabokoV's "Lolita, " Booker explores a large body of leftist fiction, popular novels, and the films of Alfred Hitchcock and Walt Disney. The book argues that while the canonical novels of the period employ a utopian aesthetic, that aesthetic tends to be very weak and is not reinforced by content. The leftist novels, on the other hand, employ a realist aesthetic but are utopian in their exploration of alternatives to capitalism. The study concludes that the utopian energies in cultural productions of the long 1950s are very weak, and that these works tend to dismiss utopian thinking as na DEGREESDive or even sinister. The weak utopianism in these works tends to be reflected in characteristics associated with postmodernism.

Reading literary and cinematic events between and beyond American and Persian literatures, this book questions the dominant geography of the East-West divide, which charts the global circulation of texts as World Literature. Beyond the limits of national literary historiography, and neocolonial cartography of world literary discourse, the minor character Parsee Fedallah in Herman Melville's Moby-Dick (1851) is a messenger who travels from the margins of the American literature canon to his Persian literary counterparts in contemporary Iranian fiction and film, above all, the rural woman Mergan in Mahmoud Dowlatabadi's novel Missing Soluch (1980). In contention with Eurocentric treatments of world literatures, and in recognition of efforts to recast the worldliness of American and Persian literatures, this book maintains that aesthetic properties are embedded in their local histories and formative geographies.

This new book examines how a range of authors today perpetuate Virginia Woolf's literary legacy, by creating new forms adapted to their new ages and audiences. Addressing questions about the current penchant for refashioning our canon in order to update, this book will be valuable reading for both students and scholars of Woolf.

This vivid biography is a study of the life and times of the Italian poet-activist, Lauro de Bosis. Remarkably productive as a poet, cultural diplomat, and political subversive, de Bosis founded and lead an underground resistance group, the National Alliance for Liberty. His actions culminated in a dramatic solo flight over Rome in October 1931, showering the city with protest leaflets against the Fascist dictatorship before plunging to his death. This feat brought world attention to the existence of anti-Fascism, much to Mussolini's chagrin and rage.

De Bosis's story, told against the backdrop of Rome's politics in the 1920s, is at once personal, national, and international. World figures --- from Mussolini, Croce, Ezra Pound, to Walter Lippmann, Thornton Wilder, and his lover, the actress Ruth Draper --- were all within de Bosis's compass. Gifted, quirky, original, and impulsive but principled to the point of giving up both personal love and family for his cause, his life shows how Mussolini's regime systematically cleared out the cream of Italy's young liberal intellectuals. Based on previously untapped archival resources, this is the first biography of a young, gifted Italian poet who dared to challenge the power of a totalitarian state with his practical idealism and fierce determination to protect Italy's fragile democracy from il Duce.

This book examines a wide range of contemporary Russian writers whose work, after the demise of Communism, became more authoritative in debates on Russia's character, destiny, and place in the world. Unique in his in-depth analysis of both playful postmodernist authors and fanatical nationalist writers, Noordenbos pays attention to not only the acute social and political implications of contemporary Russian literature but also literary form by documenting the decline of postmodern styles, analyzing shifting metaphors for a "Russian identity crisis," and tracing the emergence of new forms of authorial ethos. To achieve this end, the book builds on theories of postcoloniality, trauma, and conspiracy thinking, and makes these research fields productively available for post-Soviet studies.

This book uses the uniquely positioned culture of East African Asians to reflect upon the most vexing issues in postcolonial literary studies today. By examining the local histories and discourses that underpin East African Asian literature, it opens up and reflects upon issues of alienation, modernity, migration, diaspora, memory and nationalism.

Modernist Nowheres explores connections in the Anglo-American sphere between early literary modernist cultures, politics, and utopia. Foregrounding such writers as Conrad, Lawrence and Wyndham Lewis, it presents a new reading of early modernism in which utopianism plays a defining role prior to, during and immediately after the First World War.

Roger Whitlow demonstrates that the negative criticism about the women characters in Ernest Hemingway's fiction is often misguided, perhaps entirely wrong. He argues that most of Hemingway's female characters have strengths that have been consistently overlooked by critics prejudiced by earlier Hemingway criticism or influenced in their evaluations by the male characters with whom Hemingway's women often associate. For example, Catherine Barkley in A Farewell to Arms and Maria in For Whom the Bell Tolls have been uniformly typed "passive sex kittens," when, in fact, each is engaged in a serious struggle to retain her mental balance. Whitlow reexamines Hemingway's critically acclaimed "bitches" such as Brett Ashley and Margot Macomber. He ends his reassessment with a chapter devoted to the "minor" women in Hemingway's "Up in Michigan" series and other short stories.

Ancient Greek Myth in World Fiction since 1989 explores the diverse ways that contemporary world fiction has engaged with ancient Greek myth. Whether as a framing device, or a filter, or via resonances and parallels, Greek myth has proven fruitful for many writers of fiction since the end of the Cold War. This volume examines the varied ways that writers from around the world have turned to classical antiquity to articulate their own contemporary concerns. Featuring contributions by an international group of scholars from a number of disciplines, the volume offers a cutting-edge, interdisciplinary approach to contemporary literature from around the world. Analysing a range of significant authors and works, not usually brought together in one place, the book introduces readers to some less-familiar fiction, while demonstrating the central place that classical literature can claim in the global literary curriculum of the third millennium. The modern fiction covered is as varied as the acclaimed North American television series The Wire, contemporary Arab fiction, the Japanese novels of Haruki Murakami and the works of New Zealand's foremost Maori writer, Witi Ihimaera.

The first book length study of this genre, Collective Identity and Cultural Resistance in Contemporary Chicana/o Autobiography facilitates new understandings of how people and cultures are displaced and reinvent themselves. Through the examination of visual arts and literature, Juan Velasco analyzes the space for self-expression that gave way to a new paradigm in contemporary Chicana/o autobiography. By bringing together self-representation with complex theoretical work around culture, ethnicity, race, gender, sex, and nationality, this work is at the crossroads of intersectional analysis and engages with scholarship on the creation of cross-border communities, the liberatory dimensions of cultural survival, and the reclaiming of new art fashioned against the mechanisms of violence that Mexican-Americans have endured.

The year 1988 was notable for being the centennial of playwright Eugene O'Neill's birth and a time of unprecedented democratization in the People's Republic of China and rapprochement with the West. In this optimal climate, a remarkable festival and conference devoted to O'Neill was held in Nanjing, China, orchestrated mainly by Haiping Liu, who secured the funds and cooperation necessary to lure noted O'Neill scholars and theatre artists from around the world. Liu selected and edited papers for publication after the conference, but he realized that this would be a difficult task conducted from China. At his invitation Lowell Swortzell, a conference participant, became co-editor, and in the dark days following the political upheaval in China in 1989, Swortzell assumed much of the burden of editing, organizing, clearing rights, and generally readying the final volume. The essays included capture the intellectual and artistic stimulation of the conference. Organized in divisions similar to the order in which the papers were delivered, they explore the major areas of O'Neill scholarship by some of the most renowned scholars from the United States, Western and Eastern Europe, Japan, and China. They emphasize O'Neill's international reputation and productions, particularly in Asia. Included is an open forum discussion of the festival productions, as well as photographs. The circumstances of the festival and conference are a story unto themselves, and in their individual introductions, the co-editors relate some of the background and convey some of the flavor of the events--providing insights into the continued appeal of O'Neill in China and the world.

This book considers how and why German authors have used the child's viewpoint to present the Third Reich. Given the popularity of this device, this study asks whether it is an evasive strategy, a means of gaining new insights into the era, or a means of discovering a new language. This raises issues central to the post-war German aesthetic.