Around the turn of the century, the United States was still experiencing the mass migration of millions of Jews and other immigrants escaping oppression and poverty in Europe. Set against this historical backdrop, author Louis Harap examines the development of the Jewish American, as both writer and character, from 1900 to the 1950s. Creative Awakening traces fifty years' development of Jewish American fiction, poetry and humor, as it analyzes fictional portrayals of Jews themselves.

Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe is widely regarded as the most important of the numerous African novelists who gained global attention in the second half of the 20th century. Achebe is certainly the African writer best known in the West, and his first novel, Things Fall Apart, is a founding text of postcolonial African literature and regarded as one of the central works of world literature of the last 50 years. Though best known as a novelist, Achebe is also a critic, activist, and spokesman for African culture. This reference is a comprehensive and authoritative guide to his life and writings. Included are several hundred alphabetically arranged entries. Some of these are substantive summary discussions of Achebe's major works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Other topics include: * All of his major fictional characters and settings * Important concepts and issues central to his writings * Historical persons, places, and events relevant to his works * Influential texts by other writers Entries are written by expert contributors and close with brief bibliographies. The volume also provides a general bibliography and chronology.

Jimi Hendrix, Princess Diana and Syria's Asma Al-Assad rub shoulders with Auden, Eliot and Shelley - and with the Trouser Thief Clive met during ten long weeks locked up in a closed psychiatric ward - in this offbeat and affectionate poetic biography. Since 2010, when Clive was told he had three separate life-threatening conditions, he has poured out a stream of fine poems - sometimes light, witty and paradoxical, sometimes sad, heartfelt and regretful. Some, like `Japanese Maple', an instant Internet sensation, have already made it into the anthologies. Others, like his book-length epic, The River in the Sky, are more demanding. All are packed with the unexpected ideas, inventive imagery and breathtaking wordplay that have helped him achieve his avowed ambition of becoming `a fairly major minor poet'.

Unique in its scope of coverage, this reference work provides students and scholars interested in researching modern American leftist and working-class culture with a convenient starting place for examining American leftist and working-class novels of the past century. The book begins with a brief historical survey of the development of this cultural phenomenon. It then offers brief descriptions of selected critical, historical, and theoretical works that are a useful background to the novels. The bulk of the book comprises detailed alphabetically arranged discussions of more than 170 modern American novels of the Left, along with brief considerations of more than 240 other works.

The novels discussed in detail include a number of works by major American authors, including John Dos Passos, John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway, Theodore Dreiser, and Upton Sinclair. Also covered are works by a number of other writers in the rich but neglected tradition of American leftist literature. These writers naturally include 1930s proletarian novelists such as Mike Gold, Agnes Smedley, Myra Page, Josephine Herbst, Tillie Olsen, Meridel Le Sueur, Jack Conroy, and Thomas Bell. But they also include figures ranging from early twentieth-century socialists such as I. K. Friedman and Leroy Scott, to African American novelists such as Richard Wright and Toni Morrison, to Chicano writers such as Alejandro Morales and Americo Paredes.

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.

Romain Rolland's life coincided closely with the span of the French Third Republic, an age of which he was an acute and critical observer. A mind combining an unusual breadth of sympathies with uncompromisingly lofty values and a novelist's eye for detail, his interests cover a wide range of areas - history, musicology, biography, politics, religion, the East - and his correspondence with both the famous and the obscure, is exceptionally rich. He is remembered for his plays on the French Revolution, his work on Beethoven, his novels, his biographies, his opposition to the First World War, his desperate attempts between the wars to reconcile Gandhism and Leninism and, during the Occupation, his nostalgia for the Catholic faith of his forbears. Drawing on the wealth of the unpublished Archives Romain Rolland, this book offers a fresh perspective on the events of an often turbulent life and traces the changing patterns of his thought, which disconcerted his friends by its constant evolution. Rolland's work is unified by a fierce desire for independence, an insistence that the psychological force of faith is more important than its content, by an obsession with historical process and by a constant musicianly quest for harmony, or the reconciliation of discords within a synthetic whole. The author attempts to do justice to every side of Romain Rolland's output, showing how each of his works in their diverse genres contributes to the overall thrust of his developing thought. Though covering his political thought, the author avoids over-stressing it, as much previous criticism has done, and gives due weight to the work of his last years, which so far has been very imperfectly studied.

Scientific progress is usually seen as a precondition of modern utopias, but science and utopia are frequently at odds. Ranging from Galileo's observations with the telescope to current ideas of the post-human and the human-animal boundary, this study brings a fresh perspective to the paradoxes of utopian thinking since Plato.

Dislocation and the need for radical reorientation are central experiences in 20th-century German history. Much of German culture has also consisted of reflections on and responses to the historical caesurae of 1933, 1945 and 1989-90, and the massive political, social and economic changes that accompanied them. In the first instance, dislocation and reorientation are to be understood in the physical sense, i.e. the loss of their homes in Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia by Jewish and Communist e migre s after 1933, by Germans in Eastern Europe after 1945, and by disaffected individuals leaving the GDR for the West between 1949 and 1989. But they are also ideological, social and cultural experiences. This volume seeks to explore the parallels and differences between the impact on these groups of their sense of loss and their struggle to establish new identities after major upheavals. What their diverse experiences have in common is the sense of social and intellectual dislocation, even amongst those whose physical location did not change for long periods of time. Drawing on the ideas of various social and cultural theorists, and adopting a variety of approaches, our contributors examine how not only dislocation but also reorientation has been articulated, both in political discourse and across the cultural spectrum from fiction to life writing, from poetry to film.

"Utopianism, Modernism, and Literature in the Twentieth Century" considers the links between utopianism and modernism in two ways: as an under-theorized nexus of aesthetic and political interactions; and as a sphere of confluences that challenges accepted critical models of modernist and twentieth-century literary history. An international group of scholars considers works by E. M. Forster, Ford Madox Ford, Wyndham Lewis, Naomi Mitchison, Katharine Burdekin, Rex Warner, Yevgeny Zamyatin, Thomas Pynchon, Elizabeth Bowen, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, and Ernst Bloch. In doing so, this volume's contributors prompt new reflections on key aspects of utopianism in experimental twentieth-century literature and non-fictional writing; deepen literary-historical understandings of modernism's socio-political implications; and bear out the on-going relevance of modernism's explorations of utopian thought. "Utopianism, Modernism, and Literature in the Twentieth Century" will appeal to anyone with an interest in how deeply and how differently modernist writers, as well as writers influenced by or resistant to modernist styles, engaged with issues of utopianism, perfectibility, and social betterment.

Canadian Historical Writing presents an archaeology of contemporary Canadian historical writing within the theory and practice of historiography. Drawing on international debates within the fields of literary studies and history, the book focuses on the roles played by time, evidence, and interpretation in defining the historical.

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.

Examining poetry by Robert Pinsky, Adrienne Rich, and Amiri Baraka, among others, this book shows that leading US poets since 1979 have performed the role of public intellectual through their poetic rhetoric. Gwiazda's argument aims to revitalize the role of poetry and its social value within an era of global politics.

The impact of the Irish Famine of 1845-1852 was unparalleled in both political and psychological terms. In this scholarly new study, Melissa Fegan explores the Famine's legacy to literature, tracing it down to 1919. Dr Fegan examines both fiction and non-fiction, and provides a strong historical framework for the understanding of the contemporary Irish mentality.

Utopia and the Rural in South Asian Literatures provides a searching exploration of twentieth-century literatures of the Indian subcontinent by refocusing attention on works that engage with the village and the rural as a trope. Mohan breathes new life into Michel Foucault's notion of heterotopia and continues a conversation with thinkers of utopia about the need for recuperating the utopian potential in postcolonial writings. The book provides provocative readings of some of the most important works of the 20th century in India and Sri Lanka (in English as well as in translation) and, in its conceptual sweep, presents a novel way of theorizing the intersecting but also distinct literary histories of India and Sri Lanka. Authors examined for their unique visions of the rural include Mohandas Gandhi, Leonard Woolf, Martin Wickramasinghe, O. V. Vijayan, Amitav Ghosh, and Michael Ondaatje. For both the novice and the scholar, this is a book that will truly define the horizons for understanding South Asian literatures and cultures, and their broader significance within postcolonial scholarship.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Part of the New Directions in European Writing series, which aims to present introductory studies of contemporary European writers, this volume offers a systematic study of the controversial Austrian feminist writer, Elfriede Jelinek. It provides a survey and analysis of Jelinek's major texts and a discussion of the literary techniques which characterize the author's writing. Background contextual information on historical and literary developments is given to help the reader gain a better understanding of Jelinek's writing and her place within current international debates on feminism and literary theory.

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.

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.

Tracing the changing conceptions of nationality in the work of traveling writers such as D.H. Lawrence, Gertrude Stein, and Claude McKay, Modernism and Mobility argues that the passport system is an indispensable segue into discussions of literary modernism.

There's more than meets the eye in the fiction of the master of the espionage thriller Robert Ludlum. In a study that examines seventeen of Ludlum's novels in depth, including the latest, The Apocalypse Watch (1995), Macdonald uncovers the serious themes running through the novels: the role of the individual in preserving democracy, the value of competing voices, the failure of educational institutions to preserve ideals, the temptations of power, the importance of personal loyalties in the face of impersonal organizations, and the nature of evil. She shows how Ludlum's novels are valuable in helping us to understand modern paranoia--our fear of conspiracies, terrorism, barbarism, and intolerance. A personal interview granted by Ludlum for this book illuminates the influences on his craft, especially his long experience in the theater, which affects his sense of pacing, characterization, humor, and suspense. After an initial biographical chapter, Macdonald examines Ludlum's literary roots in suspense novels and discusses the genre. Each succeeding chapter examines a group of his novels tied together thematically or, in the case of the Bourne series, by recurring characters. The discussion of each novel is organized into sections on plot and structure, character, and theme, and features an alternate critical interpretation, such as Freudian, Marxist, or reader response criticism, which offers the reader another fresh perspective from which to examine the concerns of the novel. Novels covered in depth are: Trevayne, The Cry of the Halidon, The Scarlatti Inheritance, The Rhinemann Exchange, The Gemini Contenders, The Holcroft Covenant, The Road to Gandolfo, The Road to Omaha, The BourneIdentity, The Bourne Supremacy, The Bourne Ultimatum, The Matarese Circle, The Parsifal Mosaic, The Aquitaine Progression, The Icarus Agenda, The Scorpio Illusion, and The Apocalypse Watch. This critical companion includes an up-to-date bibliography of all of Ludlum's published works, as well as selected reviews of all works examined in this study.