In Dostoevsky as Suicidologist, Amy D. Ronner illustrates how self-homicide in Fyodor Dostoevsky's fiction prefigures Emile Durkheim's etiology in Suicide as well as theories of other prominent suicidologists. This book not only fills a lacuna in Dostoevsky scholarship, but provides fresh readings of Dostoevsky's major works, including Notes from The House of the Dead, Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, Demons, and The Brothers Karamazov. Ronner provides an exegesis of how Dostoevsky's implicit awareness of fatalistic, altruistic, egoistic, and anomic modes of self-destruction helped shape not only his philosophy, but also his craft as a writer. In this study, Ronner contributes to the field of suicidology by anatomizing both self-destructive behavior and suicidal ideation while offering ways to think about prevention. But most expansively, Ronner tackles the formidable task of forging a ligature between artistic creation and the pluripresent social fact of self-annihilation.

American Lit Remixed identifies a new sound in literature emerging after the digital revolution. It reads works by Jennifer Egan, Sherman Alexie, and others through the lenses of remix theory -- the term Eduardo Navas coined to describe the remix as a form of artistic and cultural discourse -- and the music industry's preoccupations with nostalgia and authenticity, arguing that digital-age fiction, poetry, and drama remix the music and technology of the past to offer new modes of connecting to self, others, and place. Musical features such as references to popular songs, structural similarities to music recordings, and thematic treatment of the riffing and borrowing endemic within popular music lend a retro sound, feel, and structure to contemporary American texts, even when they refer to life in the digital era. Through engaging with the musical past, literature resists nostalgia and remixes the twenty-first century's dystopian, disconnected ethos to find possibility and hope for the future. Critics often focus on technology's negative impact on the music industry, but American Lit Remixed emphasizes music as a source of creative potential in twenty-first-century literature, including new ways of storytelling and relating.

This book examines diverse literary writings in Bangla related to crime in late nineteenth and early twentieth century colonial Bengal, with a timely focus on gender. It analyses crime-centred fiction and non-fiction in the region to see how actual or imagined crimes related to women were shaped and fashioned into images and narratives for contemporary genteel readers. The writings have been examined within a social-historical context where gender was a fiercely contested terrain for publicly fought debates on law, sexual relations, reform, and identity as moulded by culture, class, and caste. Both canonized literary writings (like those of Bankim Chatterji) as well as non-canonical, popular writings (of writers who have not received sufficient critical attention) are scrutinised in order to examine how criminal offences featuring women (as both victims and offenders) have been narrated in early manifestations of the genre of crime writing in Bangla. An empowered and thought-provoking study, this book will be of special interest to scholars of criminology and social justice, literature, and gender.

This study examines contemporary Spanish dystopian literature and films (in)directly related to the 2008 financial crisis from an urban cultural studies perspective. It explores culturally-charged landscapes that effectively convey the zeitgeist and reveal deep-rooted anxieties about issues such as globalization, consumerism, immigration, speculation, precarity, and political resistance (particularly by Indignados [Indignant Ones] from the 15-M Movement). The book loosely traces the trajectory of the crisis, with the first part looking at texts that underscore some of the behaviors that indirectly contributed to the crisis, and the remaining chapters focusing on works that directly examine the crisis and its aftermath. This close reading of texts and films by Ray Loriga, Elia Barcelo, Ion de Sosa, Jose Ardillo, David Llorente, Eduardo Vaquerizo, and Ricardo Menendez Salmon offers insights into the creative ways that these authors and directors use spatial constructions to capture the dystopian imagination.

A History of Central European Women's Writing offers a unique survey of literature from the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Croatia, Slovakia, and Slovenia. It illustrates the development of women's writing in the region from the middle ages to the present day, placing individual writers in their social and political context and showing how processes shaping their lives are reflected in their works.

Comparative Postcolonialism in the Works of V.S. Naipaul and Toni Morrison: Fragmented Identities begins with an overview of its theoretical framework, highlighting the intersectional relationship between postcolonial literature and comparative literature. Tracing selected novels by Naipaul and Morrison, the book takes, as a starting point, Fanon's three-phase journey of the decolonizing process. In the first phase of mimicry, Naipaul's and Morrison's earlier novels represent the assimilation of indigenous people into dominant hegemonic cultures. The second phase is envisioned as the re-narration or re-interpretation of the past and old legends of indigenous culture. Morrison succeeds in asserting that her ancestors' past is the only way to celebrate a cultural identity, but Naipaul tends to criticize and neglect his past and his original, indigenous culture. The third phase marks the emergence of a revolutionary literature, in which Naipaul and Morrison guide their people to hybridity as a new way of becoming and resisting the hegemonic dichotomies in dominant societies.

Mass-Market Fiction and the Crisis of American Liberalism, 1972-2017 tracks the transformation of liberal thought in the contemporary United States through the unique lens of the popular paperback. The book focuses on cultural shifts as they appear in works written by some of the most widely-read authors of the last fifty years: the idea of love within a New Economy (Danielle Steel), the role of government in scientific inquiry (Michael Crichton), entangled political alliances and legacies in the aftermath of the 1960s (Tom Clancy), the restructured corporation (John Grisham), and the blurred line between state and personal empowerment (Dean Koontz). To address the current crisis, this book examines how the changed character of American liberalism has been rendered legible for a mass audience.

Gordon Merrick and the Great Gay American Novel is the first biography of Gordon Merrick, the most commercially successful writer of gay novels in the twentieth century. This book shows how Merrick's novels were largely based on his own life and time as a Princeton theater star, a Broadway actor, a New York reporter, an OSS spy, and the friend of countless artists and celebrities as an expatriate in France, Greece, and Sri Lanka. He lived much of his life as an openly gay man with his longtime partner, Charles Hulse. His 1970 novel, The Lord Won't Mind, broke new ground by showing that an affirming, explicitly gay novel could be a bestseller. His subsequent gay novels were both a cultural phenomenon and a lightning rod for literary critics. This book also examines the complex, often conflicting responses to Merrick's novels by gay readers and critics, and it thus recovers the early post-Stonewall debates over the definition of "gay literature." By reconstructing Merrick's life and critical fortunes, this book expands our understanding of what it means to be a gay man in the twentieth century.

The first collection of environmental writing about the Gulf South region, this volume features a diverse array of voices from the past 100 years. The work of these writers and artists enriches how we understand and represent the relationship between people and the rapidly changing ecology of the Gulf.Reaching from Texas to Florida, this anthology presents pieces from a variety of genres, from journalism to poetry to memoir to a graphic nonfiction book. It comprises renowned authors such as Natasha Trethewey, Jesmyn Ward, and E. O. Wilson alongside strong but lesser-known writers and emerging writers. The subjects include natural and human-made disasters, the impact of industry, influential historical events, personal encounters with the environment, and a deep love for the land and water by the people who live there. Reflecting a range of different landscapes and their inhabitants, and emphasizing the human voice and condition throughout, The Gulf South brings to light a region whose influence on American commerce and culture reaches far beyond its geographical boundaries. This volume encourages readers to consider how we choose to characterize the environment and its degradation through language, and how these accounts affect our thinking and planning for the future.

The Monstrous Feminine is one of the most influential books to emerge in the early 90s In this new edition, Creed does it again, recontextualizing the conception of the monstrous-feminine to track many of the evolutions in the horror genre This updated edition includes an entirely new section examining contemporary feminist horror films in relation to nonhuman theory Barbara Creed’s classic remains as relevant as ever

In recent years, the material circumstances governing the production of African literature have been analyzed from a variety of angles. This study goes one step further by charting the trajectories of a corpus of francophone African (sub-Saharan) narratives subsequently translated into English. It examines the role of various institutional agents and agencies-publishers, preface writers, critics, translators, and literary award committees-involved in the value-making process that accrues visibility to these texts that eventually reach the Anglo-American book market. The author evinces that over time different types of publishers dominated, both within the original publishing space as in the foreign literary field, contingent on their specific mission-be it commercial, ideological or educational-as well as on socioeconomic and political circumstances. The study addresses the influence of the editorial paratextual framing-pandering to specific Western readerships-the potential interventionist function of the translator, and the consecrating mechanisms of literary and translation awards affecting both gender and minority representation. Drawing on the work by key sociologists and translation theorists, the author uses an innovative interdisciplinary methodology to analyze the corpus narratives.

Interactive Media for Sustainability presents a conceptually rich, critical account of the design and use of interactive technologies to engage the public with sustainability. Treating interactive technologies as forms of mediation, the book argues that these technologies advance multiple understandings of sustainability. At stake are the ways sustainability encodes the complexity of interrelated social and natural systems, and how it conveys the malleability of the future. The book's argument is anchored in a diverse set of theoretical resources that include contemporary work in human-computer interaction (HCI), social theory, media studies, and the philosophy of technology, and is animated by a variety of examples, including interactive simulations, persuasive apps, digital games, art installations, and decision-support tools.

New readings of 20th-century literary cinematic texts are presented here in historical context, informed by cultural theory. New readings of literary and cinematic texts are presented here in historical context, informed by cultural theory. In her survey of the history of Spanish cinema in the dictatorship and democratic periods, the author argues thatstudies of adaptations must simultaneously address questions of 'text' - formal issues central to the study of film and literature - and 'context' - ideological concerns crucial to late twentieth-century Spain. She examines threethemes of particular importance to contemporary Spanish culture - the recuperation of history, the negotiation of the rural and the urban, and the representation of gender - and considers the related stylistic issues of the affinities between cinematic expression and nostalgia, the city and phallocentrism. The study concludes with an analysis of the formal question of the narrator in film and literature, through an assessment of Bunuel's previously unacknowledged stylistic debt to Galdos as manifested in his adaptations of Nazarin and Tristana. SALLY FAULKNER is Lecturer in Hispanic Studies at the University of Exeter.

The John Rylands Library houses one of the finest collections of rare books, manuscripts and archives in the world. The collections span five millennia and cover a wide range of subjects, including art and archaeology; economic, social, political, religious and military history; literature, drama and music; science and medicine; theology and philosophy; travel and exploration. For over a century, the Bulletin of the John Rylands Library has published research that complements the Library's special collections. The editors invite the submission of articles in these fields and welcome discussion of in-progress projects. -- .

This book is the first full-length study of the development of Irish political print culture from the Glorious Revolution of 1688-9 to the advent of the Hanoverian succession in 1714. Based on extensive analysis of publications produced in Ireland during the period, including newspapers, sermons and pamphlet literature, this book demonstrates that print played a significant role in contributing to escalating tensions between tory and whig partisans in Ireland during this period. Indeed, by the end of Queen Anne's reign the public were, for the first time in an Irish context, called upon in printed publications to make judgements about the behaviour of politicians and political parties and express their opinion in this regard at the polls. These new developments laid the groundwork for further expansion of the Irish press over the decades that followed.

This edited volume explores different meanings of media convergence and deconvergence, and reconsiders them in critical and innovative ways. Its parts provide together a broad picture of opposing trends and tensions in media convergence, by underlining the relevance of this powerful idea and emphasizing the misconceptions that it has generated. Sergio Sparviero, Corinna Peil, Gabriele Balbi and the other authors look into practices and realities of users in convergent media environments, ambiguities in the production and distribution of content, changes to the organization of media industries, the re-configuration of media markets, and the influence of policy and regulations. Primarily addressed to scholars and students in different fields of media and communication studies, Media Convergence and Deconvergence deconstructs taken-for-granted concepts and provides alternative and fresh analyses on one of the most popular topics in contemporary media culture. Chapter 1 is available open access under a CC BY 4.0 license at link.springer.com

In the twenty-first century, American culture is experiencing a profound shift toward pluralism and secularization. In Fairy Tales in Contemporary American Culture: How We Hate to Love Them, Kate Koppy argues that the increasing popularity and presence of fairy tales within American culture is both indicative of and contributing to this shift. By analyzing contemporary fairy tale texts as both new versions in a particular tale type and as wholly new fairy-tale pastiches, Koppy shows that fairy tales have become a key part of American secular scripture, a corpus of shared stories that work to maintain a sense of community among diverse audiences in the United States, as much as biblical scripture and associated texts used to.

Thinking About Stories is a fun and thought-provoking introduction to philosophical questions about narrative fiction in its many forms, from highbrow literature to pulp fiction to the latest shows on Netflix. Written by philosophers Samuel Lebens and Tatjana von Solodkoff, it engages with fundamental questions about fiction, like: What is it? What does it give us? Does a story need a narrator? And why do sad stories make us cry if we know they aren’t real? The format of the book emulates a lively, verbal exchange: each chapter has only one author while the other appears spontaneously in dialogues in the text along the way, raising questions and voicing criticisms, and inviting responses from their co-author. This unique format allows readers to feel like they are a part of the conversation about the philosophical foundations of some of the fictions in their own lives. Key Features Draws on a wide range of types of narrative fiction, from Harry Potter to Breakfast of Champions to Parks and Recreation. Explores how fiction, despite its detachment from truth, is often best able to teach us important things about the world in which we live. Concludes by asking in the final chapter whether we all might be fictions. Includes bibliographies and suggested reading lists in each chapter

Thinking About Stories is a fun and thought-provoking introduction to philosophical questions about narrative fiction in its many forms, from highbrow literature to pulp fiction to the latest shows on Netflix. Written by philosophers Samuel Lebens and Tatjana von Solodkoff, it engages with fundamental questions about fiction, like: What is it? What does it give us? Does a story need a narrator? And why do sad stories make us cry if we know they aren’t real? The format of the book emulates a lively, verbal exchange: each chapter has only one author while the other appears spontaneously in dialogues in the text along the way, raising questions and voicing criticisms, and inviting responses from their co-author. This unique format allows readers to feel like they are a part of the conversation about the philosophical foundations of some of the fictions in their own lives. Key Features Draws on a wide range of types of narrative fiction, from Harry Potter to Breakfast of Champions to Parks and Recreation. Explores how fiction, despite its detachment from truth, is often best able to teach us important things about the world in which we live. Concludes by asking in the final chapter whether we all might be fictions. Includes bibliographies and suggested reading lists in each chapter

Uses literature to understand and remake our ethics regarding nonhuman animals, old human beings, disabled human beings, and cloned posthumans Literary Bioethics argues for literature as an untapped and essential site for the exploration of bioethics. Novels, Maren Tova Linett argues, present vividly imagined worlds in which certain values hold sway, casting new light onto those values; and the more plausible and well rendered readers find these imagined worlds, the more thoroughly we can evaluate the justice of those values. In an innovative set of readings, Linett thinks through the ethics of animal experimentation in H.G. Wells's The Island of Doctor Moreau, explores the elimination of aging in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, considers the valuation of disabled lives in Flannery O'Connor's The Violent Bear It Away, and questions the principles of humane farming through reading Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. By analyzing novels published at widely spaced intervals over the span of a century, Linett offers snapshots of how we confront questions of value. In some cases the fictions are swayed by dominant devaluations of nonnormative or nonhuman lives, while in other cases they confirm the value of such lives by resisting instrumental views of their worth-views that influence, explicitly or implicitly, many contemporary bioethical discussions, especially about the value of disabled and nonhuman lives. Literary Bioethics grapples with the most fundamental questions of how we value different kinds of lives, and questions what those in power ought to be permitted to do with those lives as we gain unprecedented levels of technological prowess.

Literature from the Peripheries: Refrigerated Culture and Pluralism is a collection of chapters dealing with multiple minority cultures from all over the world. The book examines the status of several less known cultures or cultural communities which exist in the peripheries of space and time. In addition to this, the arguments and the discourses running through chapters prove the need of cultural diversity and pluralism. This well-thought and critically written book is a clarion call for humanity to look over the shoulder and see the ghost of civilization receding farther away. The book will interest the readers, scholars, practitioners, and activists who like to explore several cultures and cultural conflicts.

Autobiography of Sir Walter Besant (1902) is a posthumously published autobiography by Walter Besant. Although he is more widely known for his works of fiction and book-length studies of the city of London, Besant was also a gifted autobiographer whose unique sense of self and rich memories make for an entertaining, informative read. "I am supposing that [man] has the choice offered him, together with an outline of the future-not a future of fate laid down with Calvinistic rigour, but a future of possibility. And as time, past or future, does not exist in the other world, I am supposing that a man can be born in any age that he pleases." The son of a merchant, Walter Besant would combine ambition with wit to become one of Victorian England's leading intellectual figures. His autobiography is not just the portrait of a man, but a record of a century that saw empires rise and fall, industry outpace agriculture, and the life of humanity change forever, for better or worse. Unsatisfied with the success and fame he found in his literary work, Besant dedicated himself to social causes and was a true champion of the poor in London and around the world. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Walter Besant's Autobiography of Sir Walter Besant is a classic of English literature reimagined for modern readers.

Paul Laurence Dunbar: Poet Laureate of the Negro Race (1914) is a pamphlet on American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar. Published nearly a decade after Dunbar's untimely death, Paul Laurence Dunbar: Poet Laureate of the Negro Race contains three essays on his life, his legacy, and his importance to American literature. Born in Dayton, Ohio, Dunbar was the son of parents who were emancipated from slavery in Kentucky during the American Civil War. In 1893, he published Oak and Ivy, a debut collection of poetry blending traditional verse and poems written in dialect. Over the next decade, Dunbar wrote ten more books of poetry, four collections of short stories, four novels, a musical, and a play. In his brief career, Dunbar became a respected advocate for civil rights, participating in meetings and helping to found the American Negro Academy. His lyrics for In Dahomey (1903) formed the centerpiece to the first musical written and performed by African Americans on Broadway, and many of his essays and poems appeared in the nation's leading publications, including Harper's Weekly and the Saturday Evening Post. Diagnosed with tuberculosis in 1900, however, Dunbar's health steadily declined in his final years, leading to his death at the age of thirty-three while at the height of his career. Alice Dunbar-Nelson, in her essay, reflects on the man her husband was, a "true poet" who "reached out and groped for the bigness of the out-of-doors, divining all that he was afterwards to see." In his piece, classical scholar William S. Scarborough argues for Dunbar's importance to African American history as "the first among ten million," as a man who "did not inherit, [but] originated." To close the collection, Reverdy C. Ransom briefly eulogizes a poet whose loss was a blow to a people and a nation, whose name must be spoken in the same breath as Wheatley, Browning, Shelley, Burns, Keats, and Poe. More than anything, Paul Laurence Dunbar: Poet Laureate of the Negro Race cements his reputation as an artist with a powerful vision of faith and perseverance who sought to capture and examine the diversity of the African American experience. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Paul Laurence Dunbar: Poet Laureate of the Negro Race is a classic of African American literature reimagined for modern readers.

This volume showcases innovative research on dialectal, vernacular, and other forms of "oral," speech-like writing in digital spaces. The shift from a predominantly print culture to a digital culture is shaping people's identities and relationships to one another in important ways. Using examples from distinct international contexts and language varieties (kiAmu, Lebanese, Ettounsi, Shanghai Wu, Welsh English, and varieties of American English) the authors examine how people use unexpected codes, scripts, and spellings to say something about who they are or aspire to be. This book will be of particular interest to students and scholars interested in the impact of social media on language use, style, and orthography, as well as those with a broader interest in literacy, communication, language contact, and language change.