These twelve essays analyze the complex pleasures and problems of engaging with James Joyce for subsequent writers, discussing Joyce's textual, stylistic, formal, generic, and biographical influence on an intriguing selection of Irish, British, American, and postcolonial writers from the 1940s to the twenty-first century.

Famed and outspoken Russian poet, Maximilian Voloshin's notoriety has grown steadily since his slow release from Soviet censorship. For the first time, Landa showcases his vast poetic contributions, proving his words to be an overlooked solution both to the political and cultural turmoil engulfing the Soviet Union in the early twentieth century.

This is the first book in English to survey the Eastern German literary trend of employing humor and satire to come to terms with experiences in the German Democratic Republic and after the fall of the Berlin Wall. As sophisticated attempts to make sense of socialism's failure and a difficult unification process, these contemporary texts help define Germany today from a specific, Eastern German perspective. Grounded in politics and history, ten humorous and satirical novels are analyzed for their literary aesthetics and language, cultural critiques, and socio-political insights. The texts include popular novels such as Thomas Brussig's Helden wie wir, Ingo Schulze's Simple Storys, and Jens Sparschuh's Der Zimmerspringbrunnen, as well as lesser-known but equally relevant works like Schlehweins Giraffe by Bernd Schirmer and Katerfruhstuck by Erich Loest. A broad spectrum of humor and satire theories is applied to probe texts from various angles and suggest multi-layered answers to the question of how these literary modes function in postwall Germany to construct a specifically Eastern German identity. Interviews the author conducted with five of the satirists are appended as primary sources and contribute to the interpretation of the texts.

Who was the early twentieth-century masculine middlebrow reader? How did his reading choices respond to his environment? This book looks at British middlebrow writing and reading from the late Victorian period to the 1950s and examines the masculine reader and author, and how they challenged feminine middlebrow and literary modernism.

Prosecuted for obscenity in her novel Monsieur Venus, Marguerite Eymery (pen name Rachilde), an apparently genteel young woman from a provincial bourgeois family, burst onto the French literary scene in 1884 amid scandal. This story of a sadistic transvestite and her pretty male lover was the first in a long series of novels, plays and stories dealing often in the most macabre and sensationalistic terms with sadism, gender inversion, and sexual desire.
At the heart of the French literary world, Rachilde's life and writing defied patriarchal rules, particularly in relation to female sexuality, but she consistently and vehemently rejected feminism. Her extraordinary life and work, including a vast output as a literary reviewer, offer a prism through which to view the vibrant social and cultural history of France from the belle epoque to the Second World War. This book is the first serious critical study of Rachilde's work. Exploring the interwoven themes of French naturalism, modernism, decadence and feminism, it will be essential reading for anyone interested in French culture, literature and sexuality at the turn of the twentieth century.

Metatheater and Modernity: Baroque and Neobaroque is the first work to link the study of metatheater with the concepts of baroque and neobaroque. Arguing that the onset of European modernity in the early seventeenth century and both the modernist and the postmodernist periods of the twentieth century witnessed a flourishing of the phenomenon of theater that reflects on itself as theater, the author reexamines the concepts of metatheater, baroque, and neobaroque through a pairing and close analysis of seventeenth and twentieth century plays. The comparisons include Jean Rotrou's The True Saint Genesius with Jean-Paul Sartre's Kean and Jean Genet's The Blacks; Pierre Corneille's L'Illusion comique with Tony Kushner's The Illusion; Gian Lorenzo Bernini's The Impresario with Luigi Pirandello's theater-in-theater trilogy; Shakespeare's Hamlet with Pirandello's Henry IV and Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead; Moliere's Impromptu de Versailles with "impromptus" by Jean Cocteau, Jean Giraudoux, and Eugene Ionesco. Metatheater and Modernity also examines the role of technology in the creating and breaking of illusions in both centuries. In contrast to previous work on metatheater, it emphasizes the metatheatrical role of comedy. Metatheater, the author concludes, is both performance and performative: it accomplishes a perceptual transformation in its audience both by defending theater and exposing the illusory quality of the world outside.

John Banville's Narcissistic Fictions is an exploration of Banville's novels from the point of view of various psychoanalytic understandings of the concept of narcissism. It presents this increasingly central figure in contemporary fiction as a writer for whom narcissism is both an essential truth of selfhood and a fundamental aspect of the writing of fiction. Though it deals with a number of theoretical concepts, it does so in a straightforward and highly accessible manner. The book is not simply a reading of a single, isolated aspect of Banville's work; rather, it presents narcissism as the key to understanding this writer, and as a way of bringing together the various disparate strands - thematic, stylistic and formal - of his complex and enigmatic oeuvre.

Italian scholar, novelist, journalist, and philosopher Claudio Magris is among the most prominent of living European intellectuals. This study is the first comprehensive critical analysis of Magris's corpus for an English-speaking audience and addresses the crucial question of the return to humanism that is moving literature and theory forward.

Analyzing ninety professional women's autobiographies from 1900-1920, the first part of this book concentrates on the endeavours of groups such as headmistresses, doctors, nurses, artists and writers to record their own lives, while the second part examines frontispiece photos, prefatory marginalia and the role of silences in autobiography.

For too long Sarah Orne Jewett (1849-1909) was dismissed as a timid New England local colorist, known principally for her novels and short stories based in her native state of Maine. But in addition to her fiction, she also wrote poetry, plays, and essays. She enjoyed an extensive acquaintance with most of the established writers of her time and was on friendly terms with many lesser-known women of her era. With the publication of a selection of her letters in 1956, scholarly books and articles soon followed. And with the advent of the women's movement came a renewal of interest in Jewett's life and writings. She is now recognized as a uniquely sharp, compassionate observer of women and their lives in 19th-century New England.

Included in this reference book are alphabetically arranged entries for Jewett's writings, characters, family members, friends, acquaintances, and professional associates and admirers. Entries on the most important works and persons include brief bibliographies. The volume begins with a concise introductory essay, and a chronology highlights the chief events in Jewett's life and career. The book closes with a general bibliography of works about Jewett. Given Jewett's complex characterizations and her subtle crafting of plots and settings, this book will be a valuable guide both for those approaching Jewett's works for the first time and for more advanced readers.

A full account of Lawrence, ranging from his talent as a young writer to the continuing genius of his later work, and concentrating on his exceptionally acute powers of observation, both human and natural.

Cosmopolitanism and Place considers the way contemporary Anglophone fiction connects global identities with the experience in local places. Looking at fiction set in metropolises, regional cities, and rural communities, this book argues that the everyday experience of these places produces forms of wide connections that emphasize social justice.

The central themes of this collection of essays are the mystery of time past, present and future, and the problem of redemption. They are concerned with modern literature, with the threat of meaninglessness in the postmodern condition, and with the possibility of salvation. In an age of deferral and difference, this book addresses itself to eschatology and apocalypse, and redemption in, through, but particularly of, time itself. Hell and madness are never far away, yet the refiguration of time and the breaking in of the transcendent continue to suggest theological possibilities beyond the wastelands of the twentieth century. To those possibilities we look in hope.

What does the modern era look like to those labeled "not modern" or "traditional"? Refuting claims that their art was "old world" and "primitive," African, Native, and Jewish American writers in the early twentieth century instead developed experimental strategies of self-representation that reshaped the very form of the novel itself. Uncovering the connections and confrontations among three ethnic groups not often read in relation to one another, Kent maps out the historical contexts that have shaped ethnic American writing in the Modernist era, a period of radical dislocation from homelands and increased migration for these three ethnic groups. Rather than focus on the ways others have represented these groups, Kent restores the voices of these multicultural writers to the debate about what it means to be modern.

"A remarkable study, one that I recommend to any reader fascinated by the shaping of culture and the power of the psyche."
&3151;"The Forward"

How typical of his generation was T.S. Eliot when he complained that Hitler made an intelligent anti-semitism impossible for a generation? In her new book, Loathsome Jews and Engulfing Women, novelist and critic, Andrea Freud Loewenstein examines the persistent anti-semitic tendencies in modernist, British intellectual culture. Pursuing her subject with literary, historical, and psychological analyses, Loewenstein argues that this anti-semitism must be understood in terms of its metaphorical link with misogyny.

Situated in the context of the history of Jews in Britain, Loathsome Jews and Engulfing Women begins by questioning the widespread belief that the British government was a friend to the Jews in the 30s and 40s. Loewenstein shows that, as evident in the hypocrisy of many British governmental policies prior to and during WWII, Britain actively collaborated in the Jews' destruction. Against the backdrop of this tragic complicity in the Holocaust, Loewenstein evaluates Jewish stereotypes in the works of three representative twentieth-century British thinkers and writers. Her analysis provides a revealing critique of British modernism.

In a larger sense, Loathsome Jews and Engulfing Womenexplores the riddle of prejudice. Loewenstein argues that anti-semitism is nurtured in an environment populated by other hatreds --misogyny, homophobia, and racism. To explain the interaction of these prejudices, she develops an investigative model grounded in object relations theory and informed by the works of such theoretically diverse authors as Virginia Woolf, Kate Millett, and Alice Miller. Loewenstein lucidly argues within an autobiographical framework, insisting on the need for critics to . . . look within ourselves for 'that terrible other' rather than to complacently assume that we ourselves exist outside the ideology of power.

This well-written and readable book will be of interest to many people, ranging students of British history to psychoanalysts, from historians of Jewish culture to anyone interested in feminist and literary theory.

Brian Friel is Ireland's foremost living playwright, whose work spans fifty years and has won numerous awards, including three Tonys and a Lifetime Achievement Arts Award. Author of twenty-five plays, and whose work is studied at GCSE and A level (UK), and the Leaving Certificate (Ire), besides at undergraduate level, he is regarded as a classic in contemporary drama studies. Christopher Murray's Critical Companion is the definitive guide to Friel's work, offering both a detailed study of individual plays and an exploration of Friel's dual commitment to tradition and modernity across his oeuvre.Beginning with Friel's 1964 work "Philadelphia, Here I Come ," Christopher Murray follows a broadly chronological route through the principal plays, including "Aristocrats," "Faith Healer," "Translations," "Dancing at Lughnasa," "Molly Sweeney" and "The Home Place." Along the way it considers themes of exile, politics, fathers and sons, belief and ritual, history, memory, gender inequality, and loss, all set against the dialectic of tradition and modernity. It is supplemented by essays from Shaun Richards, David Krause and Csilla Bertha providing varying critical perspectives on the playwright's work.

How can the most silent member of the family carry the message of subversion against venerated institutions of state and society? Why would two playwrights, writing 300 years apart, employ the same dramatic methods for rebelling against the establishment, when these methods are virtually ignored by their contemporaries? This book considers these and similar questions. It examines the historical similarities of the eras in which Shakespeare and Shaw wrote and then explores types of father-daughter interactions, considering each in terms of the existing power structures of society.

These two dramatists draw on themes of incest, daughter sacrifice, role playing, education, and androgyny to create both active and passive daughters. The daughters literally represent a challenge to the patriarchy and metaphorically extend that challenge to such institutions as church and state. The volume argues that the father-daughter relationship was the ideal dramatic vehicle for Shakespeare and Shaw to advance their social and political agendas. By exploring larger issues through the father-daughter relationship, both playwrights were able to avoid the watchful eyes of censors and comment on such topics as the divine right of kings, filial bonds of obedience, and even regicide.

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

What did Britain look like to the Muslims who visited and lived in the country in increasing numbers from the late eighteenth century onwards? This book is a literary history of representations of Muslims in Britain from the late eighteenth century to the eve of Salman Rushdie's publication of The Satanic Verses (1988).

This volume looks at the shifting role of aesthetics in Latin American literature and literary studies, focusing on the concept of 'ethical responsibility' within these practices. The contributing authors examine the act of reading in its new globalized context of postcolonial theory and gender and performance studies.

Salman Rushdie's writing is engaged with translation in many ways: translator-figures tell and retell stories in his novels, while acts of translation are catalysts for climactic events. Covering his major novels as well as his often-neglected short stories and writing for children, "Salman Rushdie and Translation" explores the role of translation in Rushdie's work. In this book, Jenni Ramone draws on contemporary translation theory to analyse the part translation plays in Rushdie's appropriation of historical and contemporary Indian narratives of independence and migration.

This study of selected literary and cinematic works by Michael Ondaatje investigates the political potential of the Canadian authors aesthetics. Contributing to current debates about affect and representation, ideology critique and the artwork, trauma and testimony, this book uses the concept of the haptic to demonstrate how Ondaatjes multisensory, fluid and historically inflected writing can forge an enabling relationship between audience, author and text. This is where Ondaatjes micropolitics, often misconstrued as ideologically suspect aestheticism, emerges: a praxis that intimates how one can write and read politically with a difference.

Shaped by the experiences of the Iranian Revolution, Iranian-American autobiographers use this chaotic past to tell their current stories in the United States. Wagenknecht analyzes a wide range of such writing and draws new conclusions about migration, exile, and life between different and often clashing cultures.

In "The Public Intellectualism of Ralph Waldo Emerson and W.E.B. Du Bois," Ryan Schneider shows how and why two of America's most influential public intellectuals--writing from opposite sides of the color line--defined race not only in biological and geo-cultural terms but also as an emotional phenomenon. Drawing on and advancing recent work in Cognitive Literary Studies, Critical Race Theory, and the History of Emotions, Schneider comparatively examines the range of feelings Emerson and Du Bois attribute to the experience of racial difference; his innovative close readings reveal the surprising extent to which they conceive of race reform as an emotive process and how expressions of personal feeling underwrite their public commitments to re-imagining black-white relations.

This study considers the recent surge of science fiction narratives from the postcolonial Third World as a utopian response to the spatial, political, and representational dilemmas that attend globalization.