The first comprehensive survey of its kind in English, this book examines the experience of immigration as represented by authors who moved to France from the Caribbean, the Maghreb, sub-Saharan Africa, and Asia after World War II. Essays by expert contributors address the literary productions of different ethnic groups while taking into account generational differences and the effects of class and gender. The focus on immigration, a subject which has moved to the center of many sensitive social and political debates, raises questions related to cultural hybridity, identity politics, border writing, and the status of minority literature within the traditional literary canon, all of which constitute vital areas of research in literary, cultural, and historical studies today.

Included are broad socio-historical chapters on general topics related to immigration, along with chapters providing detailed readings of specific texts and authors. A key objective of the book is to consider the ways in which literary texts by authors of immigrant origin explore what it means to be French, and how these works shape debates about French national and cultural identity. The contributors discuss such issues as cultural hybridity, linguistic identity, and the textualization and theorization of otherness.

This book examines the writing of David Foster Wallace, hailed as the voice of a generation on his death. Critics have identified horror of solipsism, obsession with sincerity and a corresponding ambivalence regarding postmodern irony, and detailed attention to contemporary culture as the central elements of Wallace's writing. Clare Hayes-Brady draws on the evolving discourses of Wallace studies, focusing on the unifying anti-teleology of his writing, arguing that that position is a fundamentally political response to the condition of neo-liberal America. She argues that Wallace's work is most unified by its resistance to closure, which pervades the structural, narrative and stylistic elements of his writing. Taking a broadly thematic approach to the numerous types of 'failure', or lack of completion, visible throughout his work, the book offers a framework within which to read Wallace's work as a coherent whole, rather than split along the lines of fiction versus non-fiction, or pre- and post-Infinite Jest, two critical positions that have become dominant over the last five years. While demonstrating the centrality of 'failure', the book also explores Wallace's approach to sincere communication as a recurring response to what he saw as the inane, self-absorbed commodification of language and society, along with less explored themes such as gender, naming and heroism. Situating Wallace as both a product of his time and an artist sui generis, Hayes-Brady details his abiding interest in philosophy, language and the struggle for an authentic self in late-twentieth-century America.

Willa Cather's novels "Oh Pioneers " and "My Antonia" are at once accurate representations of life on the midwestern prairies in the era of their first settlement and continuations of a literary tradition that stretches back to Virgil and other classical writers who celebrated nature and pondered humanity's place within it. Both novels are given full literary treatment here with close examination of the timeless themes of love, loss, the transience of youth, and the influence of the land itself on people's lives. For readers who want to go beyond the subjects of these novels, to enter the places and eras Cather immortalized in her writing, this casebook also situates the two novels within their historical contexts with a rich array of documentation. Letters and journals from the late 1800s and early 1900s help readers understand the hardships and rewards of everyday life on the plains. Poignant personal accounts as well as government reports document the special challenges women and immigrants faced on the frontier. Readers will also be able to explore how the issues in Cather's novels continue to shape American culture today. Reports from congressional hearings and personal interviews give varied perspectives on the disappearance of the family farm and an USDA timeline chronicles the causes and ongoing ramifications of this important issue.

Students and their teachers will find a wealth of valuable information for their classroom discussions and research projects in this interdisciplinary casebook. Each topic chapter offers ideas for oral and written exploration as well as lists of further suggested readings. Students will not only gain a better understanding of Cather's novels here, but will be able to make connections between their thematic concerns and contemporary social issues.

This book is the first book-length study to explore the sartorial politics of identity in the literature of the South Asian diaspora in Britain. Using fashion and dress as the main focus of analysis, and linking them with a myriad of identity concerns, the book takes the reader on a journey from the eighteenth century to the new millennium, from early travel account by South Asian writers to contemporary British-Asian fictions. Besides sartorial readings of other key authors and texts, the book provides an in-depth exploration of Kamala Markandaya's The Nowhere Man (1972), Hanif Kureishi's The Buddha of Suburbia (1990), Meera Syal's Life Isn't All Ha Ha Hee Hee (1999) and Monica Ali's Brick Lane (2003).This work examines what an analysis of dress contributes to the interpretation of the featured texts, their contexts and identity politics, but it also considers what literature has added to past and present discussions on the South Asian dressed body in Br itain. Endowed with an interdisciplinary emphasis, the book is of interest to students and academics in a variety of fields, including literary criticism, socio-cultural studies and fashion theory.

The poetry of the Great War is among the most powerful ever written in the English language. Unique for its immediacy and searing honesty, it has made a fundamental contribution to our understanding of and response to war and the suffering it creates. Widely acclaimed as an indispensable guide to the Great War poets and their work, Out of Battle explores in depth the variety of responses from Rupert Brook, Ford Madox Ford, Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen, Issac Rosenberg and Edward Thomas to the events they witnessed. Other poets discussed are Hardy, Kipling, Charles Sorely, Ivor Gurney, Herbert Read, Richard Aldington and David Jones. For the second edition of Out of Battle , a substantial new preface has been added together with an appendix on the unresolved problems concerning the Owen manuscripts. An updated bibliography provides useful guidance for further reading.

Published in association with the seminar series of the same name held by the University of Oxford, "Samuel Beckett: Debts and Legacies" presents the best new scholarship addressing the sources, development and ongoing influence of Samuel Beckett's work. Edited by convenors Dr Peter Fifield and Dr David Addyman, the volume presents ten research essays by leading international scholars ranging across Beckett's work, opening up new avenues of enquiry and association for scholars, students and readers of Beckett's work.Among the subjects covered the volume includes studies of: -Beckett and the influence of new media 1956-1960-the influence of silent film on Beckett's work-death, loss and Ireland in Beckett's drama - tracing Irish references in Beckett's plays from the 1950s and 1960s, including" Endgame," "All That Fall," " Krapp's Last Tape" and "Eh Joe"-a consideration of Beckett's theatrical notebooks and annotated copies of his plays which provide a unique insight into his attitude toward the staging of his plays, the ways he himself interpreted his texts and approached theatrical practice.-the French text of the novel "Mercier et Camier," which both biographically and aesthetically appeared at a very significant moment in Beckett's career and indicates a crucial development in his writing-the matter of tone in Beckett's drama, offering a new reading of the ways in which this elusive property emerges and can be read in the relationship between published text, canon and performance

Time, the City, and the Literary Imagination explores the relationship between the constructions and representations of the relationship between time and the city in literature published between the late eighteenth century and the present. This collection offers a new way of reading the literary city by tracing the ways in which the relationship between time and urban space can shape literary narratives and forms. The essays consider the representation of a range of literary cities from across the world and consider how an understanding of time, and time passing, can impact on our understanding of the primary texts. Literature necessarily deals with time, both as a function of storytelling and as an experience of reading. In this volume, the contributions demonstrate how literature about cities brings to the forefront the relationship between individual and communal experience and time.

This collection of essays analyzes global depictions of the devil from theological, Biblical, and literary perspectives, spanning the late Middle Ages to the 21st century. The chapters explore demonic representations in the literary works of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Dante Alighieri, Charles Baudelaire, John Milton, H.P. Lovecraft, and Cormac McCarthy, among others. The text examines other media such as the operas Orfeo and Erminia sul Giordano and the television shows Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, and Mad Men. The Hermeneutics of Hell, featuring an international set of established and up-and-coming authors, masterfully examines the evolution of the devil from the Biblical accounts of the Middle Ages to the individualized presence of the modern world.

Early Modern Black Diaspora Studies brings into conversation two fields-Early Modern Studies and Black Studies-that traditionally have had little to say to each other. This disconnect is the product of current scholarly assumptions about a lack of archival evidence that limits what we can say about those of African descent before modernity. This volume posits that the limitations are not in the archives, but in the methods we have constructed for locating and examining those archives. The essays that make up this volume offer new critical approaches to black African agency and the conceptualization of blackness in early modern literary works, historical documents, material and visual cultures, and performance culture. Ultimately, this critical anthology revises current understandings about racial discourse and the cultural contributions of black Africans in early modernity and in the present across the globe.

What does it mean for a play to be political in the 21st century? Does it require explicit engagement with events and situations with the aim of bringing about change or highlighting social wrongs? Is it purely a matter of content or is it also a matter of structure? The Contemporary Political Play: Rethinking Dramaturgical Structure examines the politics of contemporary 'political' drama. It traces the origins of the contemporary British political play to the emergence of the idea of 'serious drama' in the late 19th century through the work of Bernard Shaw, and argues that a Shavian version of serious drama was inextricably linked to the social and political structures of British society at the time. While political drama is still often thought of as adhering to a Shavian model in which social issues are presented through a dialectical structure, Grochala argues that the different political structures of contemporary Britain give rise to formally inventive dramaturgies that are no less 'serious' or political than their Shavian forebears. Through analysing the experimental dramaturgies of contemporary plays by playwrights including Caryl Churchill, Simon Stephens, Anthony Neilson, debbie tucker green and Mark Ravenhill, among others, it offers a set of new principles for understanding how a play functions politically and reveals how today the dramaturgical structure of a play is as political as its content.

This book examines the representation of dictators and dictatorships in African fiction. It examines how the texts clarify the origins of postcolonial dictatorships and explore the shape of the democratic-egalitarian alternatives. The first chapter explains the 'neoliberal' period after the 1970s as an effective 'recolonization' of Africa by Western states and international financial institutions. Dictatorship is theorised as a form of concentrated economic and political power that facilitates Africa's continued dependency in the context of world capitalism. The deepest aspiration of anti-colonial revolution remains the democratization of these authoritarian states inherited from the colonial period. This book discusses four novels by Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Ahmadou Kourouma, Chinua Achebe and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in order to reveal how their themes and forms dramatize this unfinished struggle between dictatorship and radical democracy.

In such novels as Hotel World and the Whitbread Prize winning The Accidental, Ali Smith has established herself as one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary fiction. Covering her complete oeuvre, from the short stories to her most recent novel There but for the, this is the first comprehensive critical guide to Smith's work. Bringing together leading scholars, Ali Smith: Contemporary Critical Perspectives covers such topics as: * Language, truth and reality * Spectral presences and the uncanny * Gender and sexuality * Cosmopolitanism * Smith's place in the contemporary canon Including a new interview with the author, a chronology of her life and authoritative guides to further reading, this is an essential guide for anyone interested in the best of contemporary fiction.

This book provides a concise and highly readable reassessment of Iris Murdoch's engagement with philosophy throughout her life and proposes that she was, most importantly, a philosophical novelist. By investigating her use of philosophical argument in her fictional writing, it becomes clear that her narratives always depend upon a strong metaphysical underpinning. Leeson proceeds thematically through the philosophical phases of Murdoch's life and develops a clear argument that Murdoch reacts against the philosophies of Sartre, Plato, Nietzsche and Heidegger not only in her philosophical writings but also in her fiction. Indeed, it is in her fiction that her philosophical argument is most persuasive and accessible. This timely study provides new information regarding Murdoch's engagement with Martin Heidegger and also provides a detailed critique of critics who have overlooked Murdoch's engagement with philosophy within her fiction.

This collection of interviews demonstrates that U.S. Latinas/os of South American background have contributed pioneering work to U.S. Latina/o literature and culture in the twenty-first century. In conversation with twelve significant authors of South American descent in the United States, Juanita Heredia reveals that, through their transnational experiences, they have developed multicultural identities throughout different regions and cities across the country. However, these authors' works also exemplify a return to their heritage in South America through memory and travel, often showing that they maintain strong cultural and literary ties across national borders. As such, they have created a new chapter in trans-American history by finding new ways of imagining South America from their formation and influences in the U.S.

Ervin has brought together 16 reviews and 26 essays that chronicle the literary reception of Ann Petry and her three novels in America from 1946 to the present. Collectively and individually, all of the reviews and essays gauge the historical, cultural, social, political, literary aesthetic, and theoretical depths of Petry's novels. While specific essays will offer overviews of Petry's life and works, others will name literary influences, explore and evaluate her style and structure, identify her aesthetic positions as a writer and novelist, and define her positions in larger discussions of the male and female in general and the African American female in particular. Teachers, students, critics, and others will appreciate this volume. Select reviews and essays provide an overview of Petry's life and works, style, and literary position as a novelist, while other reviews and essays present her as a writer of community, cultural traditions, literary traditions, and characters. As a social critic, she speaks for the voiceless and the maligned; her criticism is sympathic, yet frank and honest. She speaks to and for men and women, rich and poor, young and old.

This book offers a radical new reading of the 1950s and 60s American literary counterculture. Associated nostalgically with freedom of expression, romanticism, humanist ideals and progressive politics, the period was steeped too in opposite ideas - ideas that doubted human perfectibility, spurned the majority for a spiritually elect few, and had their roots in earlier politically reactionary avant-gardes. Through case studies of icons in the counterculture - the controversial sexual revolutionary Henry Miller, Beat Generation writers Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs and self-proclaimed 'philosopher of hip', Norman Mailer - Guy Stevenson explores a set of paradoxes at its centre: between romantic optimism and modernist pessimism; between brutal rhetoric and emancipatory desires; and between social egalitarianism and spiritual elitism. Such paradoxes, Stevenson argues, help explain the cultural and political worlds these writers shaped - in their time and beyond.

The literature of the second half of the twentieth century is characterised by a tension between conservatism and innovation. This volume examines the key writers and genres that explore this idea, including the postmodern novels of Julian Barnes, Angela Carter and Graham Swift, the modern lyrics of Philip Larkin, Sylvia Plath and Stevie Smith, and the inventive dramas of Samuel Beckett, Caryl Churchill and Tom Stoppard. Chapters focussing on "Nostalgia and Nationality," "Class and Education" and "Sex and Identity" provide important historical and social context, and combine with a range of key critical approaches to provide an indispensable guide to the era.

This volume of the "York Notes Companions "looks at the literature of our own times, shaped by recent experiences from millennial anxieties to the events of 9/11.

This volume of the "York Notes Companions "looks at the literature of our own times, shaped by recent experiences from millennial anxieties to the events of 9/11.

• Part of the first literature study guides to cover key literary periods and texts and combine them with historical and cultural contexts
• Contains essential information on relevant literary criticism
• Dr Fiona Tolan is an experienced lecturer who has also written extensively in the field
• Contains various helpful features such as extented commentaries, additional notes, timelines and annotated further reading
  

This volume in the "York Notes Companions "series looks back to the origins of Modernism and the traditions that shaped it, examining texts from France, America, England and Ireland to provide a stimulating and original take on this unique movement in literary history.

This volume looks back to the origins of Modernism and the traditions that shaped it, examining texts from France, America, England and Ireland to provide a stimulating and original take on this unique movement in literary history.

• Part of the first literature study guides to cover key literary periods and texts and combine them with historical and cultural contexts
• Contains essential information on relevant literary criticism
• Gary Day is an experienced lecturer who has also written extensively in the field
• Contains various helpful features such as extented commentaries, additional notes, timelines and annotated further reading
  

This title considers four regional writers and their complex relationship with concepts of space and place at a time of seismic social change. By discussing the work of Thomas Hardy, Richard Jefferies, John Cowper Powys and Mary Butts, "Mapping the Wessex Novel" imaginatively maps and excavates various districts of the 'west country' so as radically to redefine the 'parochial'; while being keenly aware of their own status as natives locked into complex histories of self-exile and return, estrangement and ardent identification. Contributing to the growing research on space and place in Victorian and Modernist writing, Radford uses the analysis of these writers as a lens through which to inspect the relationship between rural periphery and metropolitan centre; contested ideologies of 'Englishness' and the form of the national past.

With the publication of her first book, The Little House in the Big Woods (1932), Laura Ingalls Wilder became an almost overnight success as a writer of children's literature. This reference is a comprehensive compilation of works and research done on her from the first appearance of commentary to mid-1995. Citations are included for books, booklets, articles, theses, dissertations, and book reviews, and the annotations discuss the contents of these works. Entries are grouped in chapters devoted to critical works, biographical works, teaching studies and materials, teaching kits, serial publications, and book reviews. A brief introduction overviews the present state of Wilder studies, and detailed indexes conclude the volume. With the publication of her first book, The Little House in the Big Woods (1932), Laura Ingalls Wilder became an almost overnight success as a writer of children's literature. Her series of books consisting of autobiographical fiction have long been considered classics in the United States and have been translated into a large number of languages for their gradual migration into other countries as well. Early book reviews and articles began to comment on the importance and quality of her writings. The amount of criticism has escalated tremendously, and recent research and study have focused on the value of her works for all age groups. Because of Wilder's popularity as a children's author, her works are taught in schools and curriculum units have been designed to incorporate her writings. This reference book provides a comprehensive compilation of works and research done on Wilder from the first appearance of commentary to mid-1995. Included are citations for books, booklets, theses, dissertations, articles, and book reviews, and the annotations discuss the contents of the works. Entries are arranged in several sections to promote useful access to the materials. A brief introduction provides an overview of Wilder studies and indicates some areas where more research is needed, and several indexes enhance the accessibility of the information.

European colonization played a major role in the acquisition, formation, and destruction of different ways of knowing. Recently, many scholars and activists have come to ask: Are there ways in which knowledge might be decolonized? Epistemic Decolonization examines a variety of such projects from a critical and philosophical perspective. The book introduces the unfamiliar reader to the wide variety of approaches to the topic at hand, providing concrete examples along the way. It argues that the predominant contemporary approach to epistemic decolonization leads one into various intractable theoretical and practical problems. The book then closely investigates the political and scientific work of Frantz Fanon and Amilcar Cabral, demonstrating how their philosophical commitments can help lead one out of the practical and theoretical issues faced by the current, predominant orientation, and concludes by forging links between their work and that of some contemporary feminist epistemologists.

Children's literature continues to receive growing scholarly attention, and this is due, in part, to the increased awareness of the complexity of these works and their importance in the curriculum. While some books may become classics and continue to be read long after their publication, others are the product of contemporary society and reflect the changing values of modern American culture. So, too, those titles that have been singled out for recognition reveal the standards of awards committees. This reference is a guide to works of American children's fiction that have won awards between 1995 and 1999.

Some of the books were published before that period, and thus their recent recognition affirms their enduring value. Included are more than 750 alphabetically arranged entries for authors, titles, characters, and settings related to nearly 250 books. Entries for novels provide plot summaries and critical commentary, while those for authors give biographical information. The volume demonstrates the growing number of multicultural novels and books about nontraditional families, while it also shows the continuing importance of historical fiction and the waning appeal of traditional adventure novels. While the volume will be valuable to librarians and teachers and to scholars of children's literature, it will also be useful to anyone interested in these works as a commentary on American culture at the close of the twentieth century.

This volume provides a critical introduction to eight landmark novels in 19th- and 20th-century French literature, including The Plague, Madame Bovary, and The Little Prince. Timeless literary masterpieces-such as Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (1831) and The Miserables (1862), Flaubert's Madame Bovary (1857), and Camus' The Stranger (1942) and The Plague (1947)-have been the subject of copious literary criticism since their publications. This volume has been developed specifically to help students and general readers reach a deeper understanding of eight French novels, enabling them to develop a true appreciation for why the works have been regarded as masterpieces. Lucid yet challenging literary analysis focuses on plot and character development, themes, style, and biographical and historical context. This guide offers a fuller sense of the historical and literary environment in which each author worked. Librarians and educators were consulted in determining which eight novels to include. In addition to those listed above, full treatment is given to Alexandre Dumas' The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo, and the perennially popular tale The Little Prince. These eight works cover a time period of more than 100 years, reflecting the development of the French novel and the literary movements of this era. An introductory essay provides a concise overview of French literature through the 1800's and early 1900's, identifying additional seminal works beyond those fully discussed here. For readers desiring to pursue further research, an extensive bibliography has been compiled, offering sources for additional novels, criticism, reviews from the time of publication, and biographical information.