Critical Essays on William Faulkner compiles scholarship by noted Faulkner studies scholar Robert W. Hamblin. Ranging from 1980 to 2020, the twenty-one essays present a variety of approaches to Faulkner's work. While acknowledging Faulkner as the quintessential southern writer-particularly in his treatment of race-the essays examine his work in relation to American and even international contexts. The volume includes discussions of Faulkner's techniques and the psychological underpinnings of both the origin and the form of his art; explores how his writing is a means of "saying 'no' to death"; examines the intertextual linkages of his fiction with that of other writers like Shakespeare, Twain, Steinbeck, Warren, and Salinger; treats Faulkner's use of myth and his fondness for the initiation motif; and argues that Faulkner's film work in Hollywood is much better and of far greater value than most scholars have acknowledged. Taken as a whole, Hamblin's essays suggest that Faulkner's overarching themes relate to time and consequent change. The history of Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha stretches from the arrival of the white settlers on the Mississippi frontier in the early 1800s to the beginnings of the civil rights movement in the 1940s. Caught in this world of continual change that produces a great degree of uncertainty and ambivalence, the Faulkner character (and reader) must weigh the traditions of the past with the demands of the present and the future. As Faulkner acknowledges, this process of discovery and growth is a difficult and sometimes painful one; yet, as Hamblin attests, to engage in that quest is to realize the very essence of what it means to be human.

Multimedia Modernism explores the complex effects of a new media environment on avant-garde literary production in the early twentieth century. During this period, the likes of Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound and Louis Zukofsky wrote works which, in one way or another, attest to the immense effect that photography, cinematography, mechanical print technology and visual advertising had on the established arts. Re-reading modernism's technological origins through the lens of media theory, this innovative study proposes a serious new methodological approach to modernism in general. Examining a wide range of literature that includes Gertrude Stein's contributions to Camera Work, Louis Zukofsky's groundbreaking poem 'A' and Wyndham Lewis's celebrated Blast, this book embeds literary revolution within media evolution to show that literary criticism and media history have a lot to learn from each other.

Monteath examines the international literature of the Spanish Civil War across the entire range of the political spectrum, from anarchism to nazism. Utilizing this approach he is able to highlight the extraordinary creative potential of a period in which political and aesthetic practice were almost inseparable. It is widely recognized that there was an extraordinarily high level of political commitment in the literature of the 1930s in general, and of the Spanish Civil War in particular. Writers as well as the general public seemed to interpret the world very much in political terms, and they sought in political ideologies, such as fascism and communism, the answers to the pressing problems of the age. Monteath examines the fiction, non-fictional prose texts, poetry, and drama of the period across the entire range of the political spectrum to assess the impact of political commitment on literature. While an opening chapter establishes the political background to the war, subsequent chapters are structured around the question of the relationship between literature and a particular political ideology, moving from Right to Left across the spectrum. Monteath confirms the inadequacy of the notion that the Spanish Civil War was simply a war between two sides. He shows that there are a number of themes which transcend political boundaries. Beyond those, however, it is evident that the substantive interests expressed in the literature of the war vary not only from one side of the political spectrum to the other, but also within the two opposing camps, and in particular within the Left. Monteath examines these variations and the politically based reasons for their existence in detail. An important work for all students and scholars of the Spanish Civil War and the literature of the twentieth century.

Melvin Burgess has made a powerful name for himself in the world of children's and young adult literature, emerging in the 1990s as the author of over twenty critically acclaimed novels. This collection of original essays by a team of established and new scholars introduces readers to the key debates surrounding Burgess's most challenging work, including controversial young adult novels Junk and Doing It. Covering a variety of critical and theoretical perspectives, the volume also presents exciting new readings of some of his less familiar fiction for children, and features an interview with the author.

Despite an outpouring in recent years of history and cultural criticism related to the Holocaust, Italian women's literary representations and testimonies have not received their proper due. This project fills this gap by analyzing Italian women's writing from a variety of genres, all set against a complex historical backdrop.

In the years since World War II, what began in the United States as a shift from a wartime to a peacetime economy soon led to a massive outpouring of new commercial offerings of consumer products and services accompanied by unprecedented efforts to market these commodities. How, Monroe Friedman asks, did these extraordinary commercial developments change the American people over the course of the postwar period? He offers the beginnings of an answer to this, and many other related questions, by bringing together the individual components of a recently completed series of studies on changes in language used in the popular literature of the United States since 1945. The studies ask how literature has been influenced by commercial developments. Brand names were used as the indicator of linguistic influence, and detailed content analyses were conducted to examine trends in the use of brand names in popular literature contexts. The first chapter provides background information for the individual studies and the last chapter attempts to make sense of their aggregate findings. Several intervening chapters examine the results of content analyses of popular novels, plays, and songs of the postwar era. Additional chapters look at the use of brand names in newspaper reporting of non-business stories, as well as the symbolic communication functions of brand names in both humorous and non-humorous writings. The penultimate chapter uses test data from Consumer Reports to analyze the quality of the consumer products whose brand names are used frequently in the popular literature of the postwar era. Friedman offers a unique and important combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches to an extremely large and diverse set of popular culture materials. His findings, which shed light on significant commercial developments of the postwar period, cut across many disciplines including American studies, history, literature, journalism, drama, linguistics, marketing, advertising, mass communications, sociology, psychology, and popular culture.

Contemporary American Literature and Excremental Culture: American Sh*t analyzes post-1960 scatological novels that utilize representations of human waste to address pressing issues, including pollution of waterways, environmental racism, and militarism. Primarily examining postmodern parody, the book shows the value of aesthetic renderings of sanitary engineering for composting ideologies that fuel a ruinous impact on the world. Drawing on late twentieth-century psychoanalytic thinkers Norman O. Brown, Frantz Fanon, and Leo Bersani, American Sh*t shows the continued relevance of psychoanalytic interpretations of contemporary fiction for understanding post-45 authors' engagement with waste. Ultimately, the monograph reveals how novelists Ishmael Reed, Jonathan Franzen, Gloria Naylor, Don DeLillo, and Samuel R. Delany critique subjects who abnegate their status as waste-producing beings and bring readers back to embrace Winner of the 2019 Northeast Modern Language Association Book Award for Literary Criticism of English Language Literature

A descriptive bibliography of the science fiction works of L. Sprague de Camp, including both foreign and English language publications.

This work attempts to provide a portrait of Joyce from many viewpoints, aiming at selecting those interviews and recollections that have not been reprinted as well as those that are not readily accessible. James Joyce was a self-centred man. Unlike Wilde and Behan, who were too busy living to write, Joyce, like O'Casey and Yeats, gave the totality of his life to his art. He did not find his diversion in his friends because of the exigencies of his work. However, he was not unsociable - he was capable of strong friendships and the number of people who knew him was enormous, as this collection tries to reflect.

This volume offers an interdisciplinary approach to six examples of West Indian fiction, combining symbolic anthropology with traditional literary criticism. Focusing on works by George Lamming and Wilson Harris, two vastly dissimilar Caribbean writers, Joyce Jonas identifies an emerging West Indian aesthetic, stressing the conflict between oral and written communication, and between folk culture and imperialist domination. By applying post-modernist literary theories to the texts, Dr. Jonas explores colonization as a key metaphor for exploitation of gender, class, race, and environment. The six novels surveyed all describe a "plantation landscape" within which the action takes place, and which provides a context for a study of the polarized world of colonizer and colonized. Two icons are employed in the analysis: the Great House, a colonial world view of binary oppositions, and Anancy, a trickster-figure of West Indian folklore. The first of the three essays focuses on the collision between imperialist culture and the submerged folk heritage. The second explores the phenomenon of exile through the artist-in-the-text, a feature common to all six novels that places the artist at the crossroads of a colonized world. Finally, the third essay blends the anthropological concept of liminality with a feminist perspective, widening the discussion to embrace all types of oppressive exploitation. With its subtle literary readings and its philosophical commentary, this volume will be a significant resource for courses in West Indian and Third World literature, literature and culture, and race and gender in literature. It will also be an important addition to academic and public libraries.

For nearly a decade, writers' collectives such as "Kwani Trust" in Kenya and "Femrite," the Ugandan women writers' association, have dramatically reshaped the East African literary scene. "Women's Literature in Kenya and Uganda: ""The Trouble with Modernity" extends the purview of postcolonial literary studies by providing the long overdue critical inquiry that these writers so urgently deserve." "Marie Kruger demonstrates that the writers' simultaneous interest in gender dynamics within local communities and in social exchanges between two neighboring East African nations allows for a unique examination of the relationship between modernity, gender, and the complex cultural and political networks of the region.

From the early 20th century to the present, Southern literary talent has flourished. The newer poets, dramatists, essayists, and novelists of this region often use their writings to explore the changing social values of the South, while also drawing upon traditional Southern values and culture. This reference work is a guide to the writings of 50 contemporary Southern poets, dramatists, essayists, and novelists. Many of the authors profiled in this volume have established themselves as writers of lasting significance. However, the book also profiles the careers and work of authors who are emerging only now as masters of their art. Each chapter in this book is devoted to a single author, and arranged alphabetically for the reader's convenience. Each is written by an expert on the author, and includes a biographical sketch, a discussion of major themes, a survey of criticism, and a bibliography of works by and about the author. An introductory essay overviews modern Southern writing, and a selected, general bibliography concludes the work.

This is the first inter-group and gender inclusive collection of scholarship in U.S. Latino literary criticism that begins with the assumption that the literature written by U.S. Latinos is as important an object of scholarship as U.S. Latino/a history, sociology, and culture, fields that have dominated previous inter-group anthologies. Some of the most important and insightful Latino and Latina literary scholars in the field write on authors from the four major Latino/a groups-- Cuban American, Dominican American, Mexican American, and Puerto Rican American. The anthology evaluates the state of U.S. Latino/a literary study and projects a vision of that study for the twenty-first century. This book is divided into four major areas of literary inquiry: analyses of the psychic relations between the Latino/a subject and its mimetic others; explorations of the complexities of race and Afro-Latino/a poetics; studies of the representation of labor in the Latino/a literary imagination; and genealogical and archival assessment of U.S. Latino literature's relationship with American, Caribbean, and Latin American literatures and histories.

The Trickster Figure in American Literature provides a new framework to look at the richness that is American literature and culture. Trickster stories allow readers to experience vicariously another culture's deepest discontent. They supply a laugh but more importantly, their stories reflect contemporary dilemmas being played out in fiction. Using the trickster figure as an entry-point into African American, American Indian, Euro-American, Asian American, and Latino/a stories, Winifred Morgan examines the oral roots of each racial/ethnic group to reveal how each group's history, frustrations, and aspirations have molded the tradition. Ultimately, this compelling study shows that in a country such as the United States of America, tricksters remind listeners and readers that the ideals espoused by the law and traditions have not been achieved.

The fully-lived, yet tragically ended life of Ernest Hemingway has attracted nearly as much attention as his extensive canon of writings. This critical study introduces students to both the man and his fiction, exploring how Hemingway confronted in his own life the same moral issues that would later create thematic conflicts for the characters in his novels. In addition to the biographical chapter which focuses on the pivotal events in Hemingway's personal life, a literary heritage chapter overviews his professional developments, relating his distinctive style to his early years as a journalist. With clear concise analysis, students are guided through all of Hemingway's major works including "The Sun Also Rises" (1926), "A Farewell to Arms" (1929), "For Whom the Bell Tolls" (1940), and "The Old Man and the Sea" (1952). Full chapters are also devoted to examining his collections of short fiction, the African Stories, and the posthumous works.

Each chapter carefully examines the major literary components of Hemingway's fiction with plot synopsis, analysis of character development, themes, settings, historical context, and stylistic features. Alternate critical readings are also given for each of the full length works. An extensive bibliography citing all of Hemingway's writings as well as biographical sources, general criticism, and contemporary reviews will help students understand the scope of Hemingway's contributions to American Literature.

Rona Munro's 1991 play Bold Girls is a tale of four Belfast women during the Troubles, exploring personal and communal history, and what it means when aspects of a community - ideologies, relationships, and spaces, for example - are threatened. Despite being set in a very specific time and place, the themes are universal: how societies are warped by male violence, dominance, and social privilege, and female subservience to that behaviour. Bold Girls is a case-study of the victims - rather than the perpetrators - of conflict: an unsentimental portrait of women's lives under psychological siege. Gillian Sargent's Scotnote Study Guide provides a comprehensive overview to the characters and themes of Munro's play, as well as its artistic and cultural influences, and is an excellent guide for senior school pupils and teachers alike.

Asked in 2006 about the philosophical nature of his fiction, the late American writer David Foster Wallace replied, "If some people read my fiction and see it as fundamentally about philosophical ideas, what it probably means is that these are pieces where the characters are not as alive and interesting as I meant them to be.""Gesturing Toward Reality" looks into this quality of Wallace's work--when the writer dons the philosopher's cap--and sees something else. With essays offering a careful perusal of Wallace's extensive and heavily annotated self-help library, re-considerations of Wittgenstein's influence on his fiction, and serious explorations into the moral and spiritual landscape where Wallace lived and wrote, this collection offers a perspective on Wallace that even he was not always ready to see. Since so much has been said in specifically literary circles about Wallace's philosophical acumen, it seems natural to have those with an interest in both philosophy and Wallace's writing address how these two areas come together.

Packed full of analysis and interpretation, historical background, discussions and commentaries, York Notes will help you get right to the heart of the text you're studying, whether it's poetry, a play or a novel. You'll learn all about the historical context of the piece; find detailed discussions of key passages and characters; learn interesting facts about the text; and discover structures, patterns and themes that you may never have known existed. In the Advanced Notes, specific sections on critical thinking, and advice on how to read critically yourself, enable you to engage with the text in new and different ways. Full glossaries, self-test questions and suggested reading lists will help you fully prepare for your exam, while internet links and references to film, TV, theatre and the arts combine to fully immerse you in your chosen text. York Notes offer an exciting and accessible key to your text, enabling you to develop your ideas and transform your studies!

Packed full of analysis and interpretation, historical background, discussions and commentaries, York Notes will help you get right to the heart of the text you're studying, whether it's poetry, a play or a novel. You'll learn all about the historical context of the piece; find detailed discussions of key passages and characters; learn interesting facts about the text; and discover structures, patterns and themes that you may never have known existed. In the Advanced Notes, specific sections on critical thinking, and advice on how to read critically yourself, enable you to engage with the text in new and different ways. Full glossaries, self-test questions and suggested reading lists will help you fully prepare for your exam, while internet links and references to film, TV, theatre and the arts combine to fully immerse you in your chosen text. York Notes offer an exciting and accessible key to your text, enabling you to develop your ideas and transform your studies!

A wonderfully helpful survey of the drama of Sam Shepard. It is bound to find many eager readers among those who are either intrigued or baffled--or both--by the plays of this still-young playwright whom many think contemporary America's finest. Choice America's most highly acclaimed contemporary playwright continues to puzzle critics, even as his reputation grows and his imagination seeks new creative channels. Finding the dramatist difficult to classify, critics and scholars continue to search for the central direction of Shepard's creative development. Lynda Hart's study, which focuses on ten representative plays, is the first book to examine Shepard's growth and development as a dramatist within and against the historical tradition. Offering a unified critical perspective, the author considers the plays from both a literary standpoint and as texts for performance. Resources include a bibliography that offers the most complete listing of relevant critical writings.

Sublime Woolf was written in a burst of enthusiasm after the author, Daniel T. O'Hara was finally able to teach Virginia Woolf's modernist classics again. This book focuses on those uncanny visionary passages when in elaborating 'a moment of being,' as Woolf terms it, supplements creatively the imaginative resonance of the scene.

This study examines the ways in which the relationships between the creative power of revolutionary people and the revolutionary power of creative artists, especially writers, are evident in the on-going Arab uprisings. Bringing together literature, cultural geography, and human rights discourse, it explores a range of recent novels and memoirs from Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Syria. These works sought to unravel the political geographies of injustice and popular discontent and thus 'anticipated' or imaginatively envisioned as well as participated in some of the major current upheavals in their particular national contexts. By revealing socio-economic divisions and spatial injustice, disappearances and political prisons, surveillance and exile as well as the revolutionary spirit of oppressed populations and the dangers of counter-revolutionary forces, civil strife, and fundamentalism, they variously re-imagine the realities that triggered the transformations we are now witnessing.

Mexican figures like La Virgen de Guadalupe, la Malinche, la Llorona, and la Chingada reflect different myths of motherhood in Mexican culture. For the first time, Melero examines these instances of portrayed motherhood as a discursive space in the political, cultural, and literary context of early twentieth century Mexico.

This bold intervention into the debate over the memory and post-memory of the Holocaust both scrutinises recent academic theories of post-Holocaust trauma and provides a new reading of literary and architectural memory texts related to the Holocaust.