The most supportive, easy-to-use and focussed literature guides to help your students understand the texts they are studying at GCSE and A Level

The 1950s are widely regarded as the golden age of American science fiction. This book surveys a wide range of major science fiction novels and films from the long 1950s--the period from 1946 to 1964--when the tensions of the Cold War were at their peak. The American science fiction novels and films of this period clearly reflect Cold War anxieties and tensions through their focus on such themes as alien invasion and nuclear holocaust. In this sense, they resemble the observations of social and cultural critics during the same period.

Meanwhile, American science fiction of the long 1950s also engages its historical and political contexts through an interrogation of phenomena, such as alienation and routinization, that can be seen as consequences of the development of American capitalism during this period. This economic trend is part of the rise of the global phenomenon that Marxist theorists have called late capitalism. Thus, American science fiction during this period reflects the rise of late capitalism and participates in the beginnings of postmodernism, described by Frederic Jameson as the cultural logic of late capitalism.

By taking as its point of departure the privileged relationship between the crime novel and its setting, this book is the most wide-ranging examination of the way in which Italian detective fiction in the last twenty years has become a means to articulate the changes in the social landscape of the country. Nowadays there is a general acknowledgment of the importance of place in Italian crime novels. However, apart from a limited scholarship on single cities, the genre has never been systematically studied in a way that so comprehensively spans Italian national boundaries. The originality of this volume also lies in the fact that the author have not limited her investigation to a series of cities, but rather she has considered the different forms of (social) landscape in which Italian crime novels are set. Through the analysis of the way in which cities, the "urban sprawl," and islands are represented in the serial novels of eleven of the most important contemporary crime writers in Italy of the 1990s, Pezzotti articulates the different ways in which individual authors appropriate the structures and tropes of the genre to reflect the social transformations and dysfunctions of contemporary Italy. In so doing, this volume also makes a case for the genre as an instrument of social critique and analysis of a still elusive Italian national identity, thus bringing further evidence in support of the thesis that in Italy detective fiction has come to play the role of the new "social novel."

For many artists and intellectuals in East Germany, daily life had an undeniably surreal aspect, from the numbing repetition of Communist Party jargon to the fear and paranoia engendered by the Stasi. Echoes of Surrealism surveys the ways in which a sense of the surreal infused literature and art across the lifespan of the GDR, focusing on individual authors, visual artists, directors, musicians, and other figures who have employed surrealist techniques in their work. It provides a new framework for understanding East German culture, exploring aesthetic practices that offered an alternative to rigid government policies and questioned and confronted the status quo.

Few people are so widely read within Commonwealth literature or are so knowledgeable about so many different cultures as Jean-Pierre Durix. . . . The first part of the book deals with general, theoretical themes (e.g., the writer as teacher), while the second contains studies of single novels by such writers as Patrick White, C.K. Stead, and Salmon Rushdie; here Durix is at his best. Choice Exploring the relationship between the writer and his craft, between the artist and society, between the creator and his conception of creation, this fascinating study takes up various key positions represented by major writers from Africa, Australia, Canada, the Caribbean, India, New Zealand, and the South Pacific, and examines the practice of literature, which is frequently concerned with a search for problematic roots and authenticity in its relation with didacticism, social concern, language and myth. The distinctively comparative approach brings together a series of close textual studies and examines four examples of metafiction from which emerge a number of specific features characteristic of literatures born out of Colonialism and its aftermath. Seen in this perspective, literary scholarship provides an irreplaceable point of view from which to assess the role of the imagination in multi-cultural societies.

Into Woods is an exuberant, profound, and often wonderfully funny account of ten years in the life of author Bill Roorbach. A paean to nature, love, family, and place, it begins with his honeymoon on a wine farm in France's Loire Valley and closes with the birth of his daughter and he and his wife's return to their beloved Maine. These essays blend journalism, memoir, personal narrative, nature writing, cultural criticism, and insight into a flowing narrative of place, a meditation on being and belonging, love and death, wonder and foreboding.

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

This literary guide leads students with advanced knowledge of Russian as well as experienced scholars through the text of Nikolai Gogol's absurdist masterpiece "The Nose". Part I focuses on numerous instances of the writer's wordplay, which is meant to surprise and delight the reader, but which often is lost in English translations. It traces Gogol's descriptions of St. Petersburg everyday life, familiar to the writer's contemporaries and fellow citizens but hidden from the modern Western reader. Part II presents an overview of major critical approaches to the story in Gogol scholarship.

This study provides an alternative to the postmodern tradition of writing about the city by exploring spatialized constructions of gender and spiritual identity through an integrative framework based on insights from Bachelard's topoanalysis, psychogeography, feminist cultural theory and comparative literature and religion.

During the last decade, women's narrative has become a recognized force in Mexican letters. The essays in this collection explore the recent work of nine contemporary Mexican women writers. Many of the works have been translated into English; some, like Laura Esquivel's "Like Water for Chocolate," have become international best sellers. The unprecedented commercial success of these novels has generated mixed reactions: at the same time that the secondary status afforded women's narrative has come to be questioned in many academic circles, some authors are dissociating themselves from women's writing. The essays in this volume address these issues, providing a much needed contribution to the study of women's narrative.

This unique volume examines the evolution of British historical drama from the birth of modern British drama with John Osborne's Look Back in Anger in 1956 to the establishment of the right-wing government of Margaret Thatcher during the early 1980s. The book illustrates how the ruling group within a society establishes a cultural hegemony by which it perpetuates its values as society's norms. Radical Stages demonstrates how historical drama within the period increasingly was employed as a weapon in an assault upon this cultural hegemony. First defining historical drama, Peacock differentiates the historical drama after 1956 from its predecessors as representing a shift from concern with individual psychology to an emphasis upon the socioeconomic context in which personality is formed. The first stage of this development, to 1968, was marked by a populist concern with ordinary people and by an absence of specific political propaganda. Following the defeat of student revolutionary movements in 1968, the gradual change in left-wing political inclination from anarchism to Marxism was treated in historical settings by such dramatists as Howard Brenton, Trevor Griffiths, Edward Bond, and David Edgar. Radical Stages analyzes these movements as reflected in drama and also considers the place of women in the revolutionary movements of the 1960s and in the British theatre and historical drama of the period. The final chapter speculates on the future of British historical drama in the wake of the fall of both the Thatcher government and communist governments in Eastern Europe.

Realistic writers seek to render accurate representations of the world, and their novels contain authentic details and descriptions of their characters and settings. Like Realistic authors, Naturalistic ones similarly try to portray the world accurately, but they tend to depict the darker side of life. Realism was born in Europe in the nineteenth century and soon became popular in the United States, while Naturalism became prominent at the beginning of the twentieth century. Both traditions have continued in one form or another to the present day, and Realistic and Naturalistic novelists include some of America's most significant authors, such as Sherwood Anderson, Saul Bellow, Ambrose Bierce, Willa Cather, Theodore Dreiser, Ralph Ellison, and Jack London. This reference includes biographical and critical entries for more than 120 American Naturalistic and Realistic novelists.

An introductory essay discusses the history of the Realistic and Naturalistic traditions, points to the difficulty of defining them, and surveys the many authors who have been associated with the two movements. The entries that follow are arranged alphabetically to facilitate use. Each includes basic biographical information and a narrative overview of the writer's educational background, professional career, and published works. The writer's works are briefly discussed in relation to the Realistic and Naturalistic traditions. Entries include primary and secondary bibliographies, and the volume closes with a list of works for further reading.

A collection of the work of Uwe Johnson. It includes "Speculations about Jakob," a Faulknerian novel; selections from "Anniversaries: From the Life of Gesine Cresspahl"; Anniversaries II: From the Life of Gesine Cresspahl"; and the writer's essay on the Anniversaries."

An interdisciplinary collection of essays, Reworking Postcolonialism explores questions of work, precarity, migration, minority and indigenous rights in relation to contemporary globalization. It brings together political, economic and literary approaches to texts and events from across the postcolonial world.

York Notes Advanced offer a fresh and accessible approach to English Literature. This market-leading series has been completely updated to meet the needs of today's A-level and undergraduate students. Written by established literature experts, York Notes Advanced intorduce students to more sophisticated analysis, a range of critical perspectives and wider contexts.

In this study of Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnamable, Lawrence Miller traces Beckett's attempt to voice the expressive dilemma that is posed by the assumptions of modernist art and art criticism. A preliminary examination of Beckett's critical writings on literature and painting reveals a growing suspicion of modernist ambitions; it is the trilogy of novels, however, which represents Beckett's most sustained rejection of the feasible aspirations of an expressive theory of art. Still, the goal of expression cannot be abandoned since it represents the essence of the human condition; the compulsion inevitably triumphs over the longing to end.

Africa is known for its multi-faceted immaterial culture, manifested in highly original music, oral texts, artistic performances and sporting events. These cultural expressions are increasingly regulated by intellectual property rights, as orally transmitted stories are written down, traditional songs broadcast and ownership claimed, and sporting activities once part of village life become national media events. This volume brings together an interdisciplinary team of legal experts, anthropologists and literary scholars to explore, from an African point of view, what happens to intangible cultural goods when they are confronted with large-scale commodification and distribution through media technologies, and globalized and divergent judicial systems, institutions and cultural norms. These transformations are observed in contexts that range from Senegalese wrestling contests to beauty pageants in Mali, from Kenyan hip-hop to the Nigerian novel, from the vuvuzela horn to Cameroonian masks. Contributors address the role of the state and the legacy of the European origination of IP laws, as well as the forms of ownership, technologies of mediation and degrees of commercialization that existed pre-colonially in different African societies. Resisting a single narrative of the imposition of a Western legal regime displacing older African modes, a more complex picture is revealed of the intricate interconnections between pirates, artists, communities, governments and international organizations. It is only when local actors embrace technologies and regulations in a specific historical situation that these become influential forces for change. The question raised is not whether international IP norms conform to African practices, nor whether media impose Western styles, but rather what local actors do with these regulations and how both local and Western practices and technologies impact on each other and co-exist. 'Intellectual property (IP) has become central to global governance but we have little idea of how this international legislation plays out on the ground. This pioneering book shows how local actors use IP rather than the other way around. A must-read for anyone interested in intellectual property.' Isabel Hofmeyr, Visiting Global Distinguished Professor, New York University; Professor of African Literature, University of the Witwatersrand 'A deeply engaging and evidence-rich analysis of the worlds into which intellectual property law, specifically copyright law, has entered in Africa and its effect on these worlds. This collection illustrates the best of what edited volumes can do: create a diverse, informed, and compelling conversation about a specific yet complex topic.' Dr. Hauke Dorsch, AMA African Music Archives, Johannes Gutenberg Universitat Mainz

The rediscovery of Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, first published in 1937 but subsequently out-of-print for decades, marks one of the most dramatic chapters in African-American literature and Women's Studies. Its popularity owes much to the lyricism of the prose, the pitch-perfect rendition of black vernacular English, and the memorable characters--most notably, Janie Crawford. Collecting the most widely cited and influential essays published on Hurston's classic novel over the last quarter century, this Casebook presents contesting viewpoints by Hazel Carby, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Barbara Johnson, Carla Kaplan, Daphne Lamothe, Mary Helen Washington, and Sherley Anne Williams. The volume also includes a statement Hurston submitted to a reference book on twentieth-century authors in 1942. As it records the major debates the novel has sparked on issues of language and identity, feminism and racial politics, A Casebook charts new directions for future critics and affirms the classic status of the novel.

English novelist E.M. Forster wrote his last and best-loved work, A Passage to India, both as a paean to his love for India and as a tribute to the relationships he formed with Indians. Forster became entranced by the India of the Raj at a young ape, and his love affair with the sub-continent, its princes, and peoples, was to last all his life. At his most socially transgressive, it was with Indians that Forster chose to connect and with whom he put into effect his belief in man's duty to value friendship over state or ideology. His time in India was undoubtedly when he was at his most human and most vulnerable. At once a contemporary reflection on India's rich history and a biographical retelling of Forster's travels through the country in the early 1900s, Developing the Heart delves into the past to better understand the profound impact certain events and people had on his writing. In doing so, it allows readers to look on as Forster matures and softens over time in his behaviour with others as well as with himself. Often using Forster's own words to evoke a vivid landscape, this is the story of the most dramatic and exotic part of the life of one of England's greatest novelists.

Harold Pinter is universally described as "Britain's leading dramatist." This book evaluates the justification for this appellation. It examines his work in relation to changes taking place in the New British Theatre after the so-called theatrical revolution of 1956, and draws attention to those autobiographical experiences that have been transmuted into his art. Beginning with a look at the nature of British theatre prior to 1956, Peacock then describes Pinter's early life in the East End of London, his career as an actor, and his early writing. The discussion follows Pinter's life and work from The Room in 1957 to his most recent play, Ashes to Ashes in 1996. The author argues that although Pinter has not instigated an aesthetic revolution, he has, more significantly, through his representation of human behavior, provoked a new way of viewing the world.

What can post/colonial studies and their approaches contribute to our understanding of the Austro-Hungarian (k.u.k.) occupation and administration of Bosnia-Herzegovina from 1878 to 1914? This anthology presents some possible answers to this research question which goes back to a workshop held at the University of Antwerp in 2005. Later more researchers were invited from the small international circle of established and emerging experts to contribute to this new perspective on the imperial intermezzo of Bosnia-Herzegovina (which is usually overshadowed by the two World Wars and the Yugoslav Succession Wars of the 1990s). Alternative readings of both Austrian and Bosnian history, literature, and culture are meant to serve as a third way, as it were, bypassing the discursive fallacies of Habsburg nostalgia and nationalist self-victimization. As a result, the essays of this interdisciplinary volume (collected and available in print for the first time) focus on the impact the Austro-Hungarian presence has had on Bosnia-Herzegovina and vice versa. They consider both the contemporary imperialist setting as well as the expansionist desire of the Habsburg Monarchy directed southward. Exploring the double meaning of the German title WechselWirkungen, the authors consider the consequences of occupation, colonization and annexation as a paradigm shift affecting both sides: not only intervention and interaction at a political, economic, social, cultural, and religious level, but also imposed hegemony along with cultural transfer and hybridity. Finally, the imperial gaze at the Balkan region outside of the Habsburg territories is included in the form of three exemplary case studies on Albania and Montenegro.

Navigating Loss in Women's Contemporary Memoir traces the grief process through the lives of contemporary women writers to show how its complex, multi-layered nature can encourage us towards new understandings of loss.