On the campaign trail, Barack Obama faced a difficult task-rallying African American voters while resisting his opponents' attempts to frame him as ""too black" to govern the nation as a whole. Obama's solution was to employ what Toni Morrison calls ""race-specific, race-free language," avoiding open discussions of racial issues while using terms and references that carried a specific cultural resonance for African American voters. Stephanie Li argues that American politicians and writers are using a new kind of language to speak about race. Challenging the notion that we have moved into a ""post-racial" era, she suggests that we are in an uneasy moment where American public discourse demands that race be seen, but not heard. Analyzing contemporary political speech with nuanced readings of works by such authors as Toni Morrison, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Colson Whitehead, Li investigates how Americans of color have negotiated these tensions, inventing new ways to signal racial affiliations without violating taboos against open discussions of race.

Jonathan Franzen is one of the most influential, critically-significant and popular contemporary American novelists. This book is the first full-length study of his work and attempts to articulate where American fiction is headed after postmodernism. Stephen Burn provides a comprehensive analysis of each of Franzen's novels - from his early work to the major success of The Corrections - identifying key sources, delineating important narrative strategies, and revealing how Franzen's themes are reinforced by each novel's structure. Supplementing this analysis with comparisons to key contemporaries, David Foster Wallace and Richard Powers, Burn suggests how Franzen's work is indicative of the direction of experimental American fiction in the wake of the so-called end of postmodernism.

The Oxford poets of the 1930s--W. H. Auden, C. Day Lewis, Stephen Spender, and Louis MacNeice--represented the first concerted British challenge to the domination of twentieth-century poetry by the innovations of American modernists such as Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams. Known for their radical politics and aesthetic conservatism, the "Auden Generation" has come to loom large in our map of twentieth century literary history. Yet Auden's voluble domination of the group in its brief period of association, and Auden's sway with critics ever since, has made it difficult to hear the others on their own terms and in their own distinct voices.
Here, rendered in eloquent prose by one of our most distinguished critics of modern poetry, is the first full-length study of the poetry of C. Day Lewis, a book that introduces the reader to a profoundly revealing and beautifully wrought record of his poetry against the cultural and literary ferment of this century. Albert Gelpi explores in three expansive sections the major periods of the poet's development, beginning with the emergence of Day Lewis in the thirties as the most radical of the Oxford poets. An artist who sought through poetry a way of "living in time" without traditional religious assurances, Day Lewis went further than his friends in seeking to forge a revolutionary poetry out of his commitment to Marxism. When Stalinism led to his resignation from the Communist Party, Day Lewis in the forties went on to shape a rich, fiercely perceptive poetry out of the convergence of the wartime crisis with the explosive events of his own inner life, intensified by the erotics of a decade-long affair. Returning to his Irish roots and meditating on the persistent tension between agnosticism and faith in the work of his third and final period, Day Lewis wrote some of the most moving poems in the language about mortality and dying, the limits and possibilities of human striving.
Through the traumatic changes of his life C. Day Lewis came increasingly to depend on the intricacies of poetry itself as a way of living in time. His abiding belief in the psychological and moral functions of poetry impelled him in his critical writings and in his own poetic practice to delineate a modern poetics that presents an effective alternative to the elitist experimentation associated with Modernism. This vital revisionist reading of Day Lewis demonstrates that much of his best work was written after the thirties and establishes him as one of the most significant and accomplished British poets of the modern period.

In the wake of psychoanalysis and the birth of therapy, trauma is a powerful concept in twenty-first century culture. Thomas J. Brennan, S.J. finds roots of the "sensibility of trauma" by returning to the work of Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Eliot. By reading these poets of mourning through the framework of trauma, Brennan reflects on our traumatized moment and weighs two potential responses--the fantasy of transcendence and the ethic of trust.

The essays in Yeats Annual No 7 are dedicated to the memory of Richard Ellmann, one of the great pioneer critics of W.B.Yeats. They have been contributed by distinguished colleagues and friends of Richard Ellmann, chosen on his advice. The volume also contains much new material by Yeats himself - a new and virtually complete early draft of his novel The Speckled Bird, here entitled 'The Lilies of the Lord' and two new poems from The Flame of the Spirit manuscript book, given to Maud Gonne in 1981.

This unique volume provides a bibliography and analysis of American women's literary interpretations of war and peace during the twentieth century. Chapters cover World War I, World War II, the Vietnam War, nuclear war, and fictional interpretations of war and peace that span more than one war or are nonspecific to a certain war. Annotated entries on novels and short fiction provide an analysis of the work's representation of the effect of war on women. Annotations include excerpts from the works themselves and from reviews. The bibliography includes works by such well-known writers as Edith Wharton, Joyce Carol Oates, Cynthia Oick, and Bobbie Ann Mason, as well as many lesser known writers. The work begins with an introductory discussion of women's fiction on war. Each chapter begins with an introductory overview of the war literature in that chapter. In addition to the annotated entries, each chapter concludes with a list of sources of literary criticism and bibliographic resources. The work concludes with author, title, and subject indexes.

Staging the Impossible explores the most recent critical thinking on the relationship between the literary mode of the fantastic and the literary genre of drama with respect to modern theatre. While a few monographs treat a particular dimension of the fantastic in drama, the Gothic or the fairy tale for instance, no other volume provides a critically sophisticated introduction to the diversity of fantastic drama written and performed in this century. The essays here lay to rest the illusion that realism is the only genuine form of theatrical expression and the notion that cinema special effects have rendered science fiction and the stage incompatible. Competing with the realism of the first half of the twentieth century and the "new realism" of the second half have been a range of successful theatrical repertoire, including the absurd, the horrific, the supernatural, the mythic, the dream-vision quest, the postmodern, the hyper-realistic, and the science fictional. Wide ranging in time and space, this volume comprises fourteen essays on the fantastic on the modern stage, assessing dramatic works from the United States, Ireland, England, Western Europe, and the Caribbean. Canonical figures, such as Strindberg, Yeats, Beckett, Ionesco, Cocteau, and Stoppard are studied, along with neglected figures, such as Wassily Kandinsky, better known as an expressionist painter, and Halper Leivick, author of the Yiddish play The Golem, and innovative new performance troupes and individual artists, such as Squat Theatre and Spalding Gray. Concluding essays are devoted to contemporary experimental theatre and postmodern drama. A study of science fiction on stage includes an annotated listing of fortyEnglish-language plays. Concerned with the interstice of theatre and the fantastic, this work will be valuable to students and scholars of both, of genre studies, and of contemporary literature in general.

This book studies literary epiphany as a modality of character in the British and American novel. Epiphany presents a significant alternative to traditional models of linking the eye, the mind, and subject formation, an alternative that consistently attracts the language of spirituality, even in anti-supernatural texts. This book analyzes how these epiphanies become "spiritual" and how both character and narrative shape themselves like constellations around such moments. This study begins with James Joyce, 'inventor' of literary epiphany, and Martin Heidegger, who used the ancient Greek concepts behind 'epiphaneia' to re-define the concept of Being. Kim then offers readings of novels by Susan Warner, George Eliot, Edith Wharton, Virginia Woolf, and William Faulkner, each addressing a different form of epiphany.

The New Atheist Novel is the first study of a major new genre of contemporary fiction. It examines how Richard Dawkins's so-called 'New Atheism' movement has caught the imagination of four eminent modern novelists: Ian McEwan, Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie and Philip Pullman. For McEwan and his contemporaries, the contemporary novel represents a new front in the ideological war against religion, religious fundamentalism and, after 9/11, religious terror: the novel apparently stands for everything freedom, individuality, rationality and even a secular experience of the transcendental that religion seeks to overthrow. In this book, Bradley and Tate offer a genealogy of the New Atheist Novel: where it comes from, what needs it serves and, most importantly, where it may go in the future. What is it? How does it dramatise the war between belief and non-belief? To what extent does it represent a genuine ideological alternative to the religious imaginary or does it merely repeat it in secularised form? This fascinating study offers an incisive critique of this contemporary testament of literary belief and unbelief.

This book is the first study of disability in postcolonial fiction. Focusing on canonical novels, it explores the metaphorical functions and material presence of disabled child characters. Barker argues that progressive disability politics emerge from postcolonial concerns, and establishes dialogues between postcolonialism and disability studies.

The first book to trace the critical reception of the great African American woman writer, attending not only to her fiction but to her nonfiction and critical writings. Toni Morrison (1931-2019) is the most important American novelist since Faulkner, the most significant American woman writer since Dickinson, and the most widely read African American public intellectual of the last half century. Her influence as a writer, critic, editor, teacher, and scholar is profound: she changed the face of literature and literary criticism in the US, if not worldwide. Yet despite the ever-expanding field of Morrison scholarship, no book tracing her critical reception has existed, until now. The book is as much a cultural history of America as a reception history of an American writer. Morrison worked brilliantly in many genres - fiction, of course (novels and short stories); drama/staged performance; poetry; non-fiction on historical, social, and political issues; and critical writings on the work of others and on her own work. She generated a literary-critical methodology that recognizes and embraces rather than ignores the African American presence in US literature, and thus transformed American academics' attitude toward American letters. The story of Morrison's achievement in making a home for herself - and for other women and people of color - in the stony bedrock of "white male" American literature is the subject of this book.

This book looks at a wide range of fiction and film texts, from the 1950s to the present, in order to analyse the ways in which masculinity has been represented in popular culture in Britain and the United States. It covers numerous genres, including spy fiction, science fiction, the Western and police thrillers. Each chapter focuses on key forms of masculinity found in each genre, such as the 'double agent', the 'rogue cop' and the 'citizen-soldier'. Brian Baker takes a broad, contextual approach, placing a detailed discussion of key texts and issues concerning masculinity in their historical and cultural context. Written in a clear, accessible way, it explores the changing representation of men over the last fifty years.

Long before John Barth announced in his famous 1967 essay that late twentieth-century fiction was "The Literature of Exhaustion," authors have been retelling and recycling stories. Barth was, however, right to identify in postmodern fiction a particular self-consciousness about its belatedness at the end of a long literary tradition. This book traces the move in contemporary women's writing from the self-conscious, ironic parodies of postmodernism to the nostalgic and historical turn of the twenty-first century. It analyses how contemporary women writers deal with their literary inheritances, offering an illuminating and provocative study of contemporary women writers' re-writings of previous texts and stories. Through close readings of novels by key contemporary women writers including Toni Morrison, Doris Lessing, Margaret Atwood, Zadie Smith, Emma Tennant and Helen Fielding, and of the ITV adaptation, Lost in Austen, Alice Ridout examines the politics of parody and nostalgia, exploring the limitations and possibilities of both in the contexts of feminism and postcolonialism.

Through examining the work of W. B. Yeats, James Joyce, and Samuel Beckett, Katherine Ebury shows cosmology had a considerable impact on modernist creative strategies, developing alternative reading models of difficult texts such as Finnegans Wake and 'The Trilogy'.

This book, the work of Anglo-Saxon Mauriac scholars, aims at a fresh approach to the work of Francois Mauriac. Four categories cover new readings on Mauriac's work based on anthropological and psycho-critical approaches, a discussion of literary and technical aspects of his writings, a study of themes or periods of formative influence on Mauriac's intellectual and spiritual development and comparative analyses of the work of Claude and Francois Mauriac, and of Mauriac and D.H.Lawrence.

"Sympathetic Sentiments "develops an innovative interdisciplinary framework to explore the implications of living in a 'culture of feeling' that seems ill at ease with itself, one in which 'sentiments' are frequently denounced for being 'sentimental' and self-indulgent. This is traced back to the inheritance of the eighteenth century, enabling us to identify a distinctive 'spectacle of sympathy' in which sympathy seems inherently to entail public forms of expression whereby being 'on show' is both a condition of the authenticity of such affects "and" of their capacity to be masked and simulated - hence stimulating controversy, but also the exploration of the vicarious dimensions of modern experience so central to modern literature, art and culture. The implications of all this are further explored in the context of current debates over the display of trauma as the language of sympathetic engagement, and the alleged prevalence of 'compassion fatigue' in the era of media sensationalism. Overall, the book uncovers the patterns that both reproduce our capacity for 'sympathetic sentiments' while revealing the inherent underlying tensions.

The only book to treat in detail all the plays of contemporary English playwright David Storey, this study focuses on the major themes found in his work: the worlds of madness, work, and the family. Storey's developing technique as a dramatist is closely examined and attention is given to his experimental concerns. In addition, Liebman identifies relationships between Storey's fiction and his drama, highlighting how similar themes and characters appear in both his novels and his plays. The study also includes discussion of contemporary thinking on Storey by scholars, critics, and theatre professionals.

The Reception of British Authors in Europe series includes literary and political figures, as well as philosophers, historians and scientists. Each volume provides new research on the ways in which selected authors have been translated, published, distributed, read, reviewed A pioneering scholarly collection of essays outlining the breadth and significance of H. G. Wells's literary and political impact throughout 20th-century Europe H.G. Wells was described by one of his European critics as a 'seismograph of his age'. He is one of the founding fathers of modern science fiction, and as a novelist, essayist, educationalist and political propagandist his influence has been felt in every European country. This collection of essays by scholarly experts shows the varied and dramatic nature of Wells's reception, including translations, critical appraisals, novels and films on Wellsian themes, and responses to his own well-publicized visits to Russia and elsewhere. The authors chart the intense ideological debate that his writings occasioned, particularly in the inter-war years, and the censorship of his books in Nazi Germany and Francoist Spain. This book offers pioneering insights into Wells's contribution to 20th century European literature and to modern political ideas, including the idea of European union.

The Latino Continuum and the Nineteenth-Century Americas argues that the process of recovering Latina/o figures and writings in the nineteenth century does not merely create a bridge between the US and Latin American countries, peoples, and literatures, as they are currently understood. Instead, it reveals their fundamentally interdependent natures, politically, socially, historically, and aesthetically, thereby recognizing the degree of mutual imbrication of their peoples and literatures of the period. Largely archived in Spanish, it addresses concerns palpably felt within (and integral to) the US and beyond. English-language works also find a place on this continuum and have real implications for the political and cultural life of hispanophone and anglophone communities in the US. Moreover, the central role of Latina/o translations signal the global and the local nature of the continuum. For the Latino Continuum embeds layered and complex political and literary contexts and overlooked histories, situated as it is at the crossroads of both hemispheric and translatlantic currents of exchange often effaced by the logic of borders-national, cultural, religious, linguistic and temporal. To recover this continuum of Latinidad, which is neither confined to the US or Latin American nation states nor located primarily within them, is to recover forgotten histories of the hemisphere, and to find new ways of seeing the past as we have understood it. The figures of the Felix Varela, Miguel Teurbe Tolon, Eusebio Guiteras, Jose Marti and Martin Morua Delgado serve as points of departures for this reconceptualization of the intersection between American, Latin American, Cuban, and Latinx studies.

This book guides readers through these and other important Steinbeck works, particularly those that are most often taught, including "The Pearl" (1945), "The Red Pony" (1933), and significant short fiction. Clear analysis of each work includes discussions of character development, plot and setting, thematic treatment, historical contexts, and alternate critical readings. A biographical chapter, as well as an examination of the author's contributions and career, helps readers gain a sense of Steinbeck the man and his position as one of America's most important writers.

Since the publication of "Tortilla Flat" in 1935, Steinbeck's treatment of American landscapes and themes has struck a chord with readers. His novels "Of Mice and Men" (1937), "The Grapes of Wrath" (1939), and "Cannery RoW" (1945) were instant critical and popular successes. Each went on to become a feature film, which added to Steinbeck's cultural impact. His works have long endured to earn a place in the canon of American Literature. This book guides readers through these and other important Steinbeck works, particularly those that are most often taught, including "The Pearl" (1945), "The Red Pony" (1933), and significant short fiction.

Clear analysis of each work includes discussions of character development, plot and setting, thematic treatment, historical contexts, and alternate critical readings. A biographical chapter, as well as an examination of the author's contributions and career, helps readers gain a sense of Steinbeck the man and his position as one of America's most important writers.

One of America's most distinguished independent artists/intellectuals, Richard Kostelanetz, has written a prescient volume that uses, as a starting point, the philosopher Robin Collingwood's notion that "the historian and the novelist have much in common, for both attempt to define the largest lines of historical development." Aside from the introduction and conclusion, which were specifically written for this publication, these insightful chapters on four outstanding African-American novelists were composed and appeared in journals in the late 1960s. Kostelanetz saw the writing on the wall and told readers about it more than twenty years ago. In his analysis of the novels written by pioneering Black novelists James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938), W. E. B. Du Bois (1868-1963), Richard Wright (1908-1960), and Ralph Ellison (1914-), Kostelanetz culls their political meanings and interprets experience suggestive of political meanings. Kostelanetz places these meanings into a chronological framework that transforms the book from a political or literary history into a history of ideas in literature. This painstaking analysis of fiction--to deduce themes that are then interpreted as intellectual history--is an original scholarly approach to these novels. After presenting a typology of political alternatives for African-America, Kostelanetz looks at the work of writer/diplomat/editor James Weldon Johnson, whose groundbreaking novel, Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, appeared in 1912. Chapter three analyzes the novels of writer/editor/teacher W. E. B. Du Bois, whose work promoted greater understanding of African-Americans. Richard Wright, hailed as the most eloquent spokesman forAfrican-Americans of his generation upon publication of his powerful first novel, Native Son, is considered in the following chapter. Chapter five is devoted to Ralph Ellison whose first novel, The Invisible Man, won the National Book Award and achieved prominence as a primary text on the experience of Blacks in America. This close reading of fiction for political implications closes with an appendix of two essays also written in the 1960s about the figures and issues discussed in this study. The novels treated here retain a kind of "eye-witness account from the front" immediacy that, combined with Kostelanetz's enduring insights, will make Politics in the African-American Novel an important addition to courses in American history, African-American politics, or African-American literature. Informed general readers will also find much to ponder in this book.

Experimental Chinese Literature is the first theoretical account of material poetics from the dual perspectives of translation and technology. Focusing on a range of works by contemporary Chinese authors including Hsia Yu, Chen Li, and Xu Bing, Tong King Lee explores how experimental writers engage their readers in multimodal reading experiences by turning translation into a method and by exploiting various technologies. The key innovation of this book rests with its conceptualisation of translation and technology as spectrums that interact in different ways to create sensuous, embodied texts. Drawing on a broad range of fields such as literary criticism, multimodal studies, and translation, Tong King Lee advances the notion of the translational text, which features transculturality and intersemioticity in its production and reception.

This volume explores the ways in which the complicated revolution in British newspapers, the New Journalism, influenced Irish politics, culture, and newspaper practices. The essays here further illuminate the central role of the press in the evolution of Irish nationalism and modernism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

This book presents critical readings of eight contemporary German novels which feature historically documented women as their main protagonist, and which reconstruct women's lives by combining source material and invention. Protagonists include Cornelia Goethe, Caroline Schlegel-Schelling, Karoline von Guenderrode and Charlotte Corday. Through a thorough examination of these novels, the wider complexities of female identity, feminism, literary technique and historiography are illuminated and discussed. The author examines how historical events are used to substantiate ideological positions and how the narrators consider this problematic aspect of their project.