This book challenges the traditional image of Conrad as writer of the sea, a man in a man's world. It re-establishes the importance of significant women in his life, and his engagement with women's writing and the female readers of his fiction. Rethinking received views of Conrad as a modernist writer, it explores the experimentation of his later, less familiar works, first published in the women's pages of popular journals.

In Rewriting Womanhood, Nancy LaGreca explores the subversive refigurings of womanhood in three novels by women writers: La hija del bandido (1887) by Refugio Barragan de Toscano (Mexico; 1846-1916), Blanca Sol (1888) by Mercedes Cabello de Carbonera (Peru; 1845-1909), and Luz y sombra (1903) by Ana Roque (Puerto Rico; 1853-1933). While these women were both acclaimed and critiqued in their day, they have been largely overlooked by contemporary mainstream criticism. Detailed enough for experts yet accessible to undergraduates, graduate students, and the general reader, Rewriting Womanhood provides ample historical context for understanding the key women's issues of nineteenth-century Mexico, Peru, and Puerto Rico; clear definitions of the psychoanalytic theories used to unearth the rewriting of the female self; and in-depth literary analyses of the feminine agency that Barragan, Cabello, and Roque highlight in their fiction.

Rewriting Womanhood reaffirms the value of three women novelists who wished to broaden the ruling-class definition of woman as mother and wife to include woman as individual for a modern era. As such, it is an important contribution to women's studies, nineteenth-century Hispanic studies, and sexuality and gender studies.

James A. Michener is one of the most widely read American authors of the 20th century. He worked as a social studies teacher and as an editor, and went on to write such memorable works as Tales of the South Pacific and Centennial. He also wrote numerous scattered short pieces. Though a popular writer, Michener's importance to the American literary, educational, social, and political scene is now slowly being recognized, and his writings are being used as guides and touchstones for study in American schools. This volume contains a checklist of Michener's major novels and his scattered minor writings, along with an extensive annotated bibliography of works about him. The first part is a checklist of his works, while the second is an annotated listing of books and articles published on Michener from the 1920s to the 1990s. The volume also contains a selected list of reviews of Michener's major works. Two reviews for each work have been selected at random, and they provide an overview of the critical response to Michener's writings over the years.

This exploration of author Laurell K. Hamilton's work examines the many novels of her series and shows how her writing has been a major influence on contemporary visions of the vampire-an ideal reference text for book club leaders. Long before Twilight achieved epic levels of popularity, Laurell K. Hamilton was reshaping the image of the vampire with her own take on the vampire mythos in her Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter fantasy novel series. While Hamilton's work draws on traditional vampire and fairy lore, her interpretation of these subjects brought new dimensions to the genres, influencing the direction of urban fantasy over the past two decades. Reading Laurell K. Hamilton focuses upon Hamilton's two bestselling series, the Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series and the Merry Gentry series. The volume is intended as a resource for leaders of book clubs or discussion groups, containing chapters that examine Hamilton's role in the current vampire literature craze, the themes and characters in her work, and responses to Hamilton on the Internet. The book also provides a brief overview of Hamilton's life. Presents a chronology of major milestones in vampire literature and film Contains images of Hamilton's book covers Provides a bibliography of Hamilton's works, secondary sources, and websites, as well as a detailed "What Do I Read Next" listing of other writers who may be of interest to Hamilton's fans Includes a glossary of terms and major characters for each of Hamilton's two major series

This compelling study explores the inextricable links between the Nobel laureate s aesthetic practice and her political vision, through an analysis of the key texts as well as her lesser-studied works, books for children, and most recent novels. * Offers provocative new insights and a refreshingly original contribution to the scholarship of one of the most important contemporary American writers * Analyzes the celebrated fiction of Morrison in relation to her critical writing about the process of reading and writing literature, the relationship between readers and writers, and the cultural contributions of African-American literature * Features extended analyses of Morrison s lesser-known works, most recent novels, and books for children as well as the key texts

By broadening the focus beyond classic English detective fiction, the American hard-boiled crime novel and the gangster movie, Crime Cultures breathes new life into staple themes of crime fiction and cinema. Leading international scholars from the fields of literary and cultural studies analyze a range of literature and film, from neglected examples of film noir and true crime , crime fiction by female African American writers, to reality TV, recent films such as Elephant, Collateral and The Departed, and contemporary fiction by J. G. Ballard, Kazuo Ishiguro, and Margaret Atwood. They offer groundbreaking interpretations of new elements such as the mythology of the hitman, technology and the image, and the cultural impact of senseless murders and reveal why crime is a powerful way of making sense of the broader concerns shaping modern culture and society.

The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries saw the rise of the "Home Tour," with travelers drawn to Scotland, the less explored regions of England and North Wales, and, increasingly, to Ireland. Although an integral part of the United Kingdom from 1800, Ireland represented for many travellers a worryingly unknown entity, politically intractable and unstable, devoutly Catholic, and economically deprived. This book examines British responses to the "Sister Isle" throughout a period of significant cultural and historical change, and examines the varied means through which Ireland was represented for a predominantly British audience.

This comprehensive biography of prolific critic, essayist, historian, and novelist Edmund Wilson (1895-1972) posits, quite successfully, that the subject lived a life as romantic and chaotic as his friend F. Scott Fitzgerald's. Wilson suffered a nervous breakdown and the tragic death of his second wife (he was married four times, among them, Mary McCarthy); had affairs with numerous beautiful women, including Edna St. Vincent Millay; and was friend to literary giants such as John Dos Passos, Vladimir Nabakov, and W.H. Auden.

The locked room mystery is one of the iconic creations of popular fiction. Michael Cook's critical study reveals how this archetypal form of the puzzle story has had a significant effect in shaping the immensely popular genre of detective fiction. The book includes analysis of texts from Poe to the present day.

Although war memoirs constitute a rich, varied literary form, they are often dismissed by historians as unreliable. This collection of essays is one of the first to explore the modern war memoir, revealing the genre's surprising capacity for breadth and sophistication while remaining sensitive to the challenges it poses for scholars. Covering conflicts from the Napoleonic era to today, the studies gathered here consider how memoirs have been used to transmit particular views of war even as they have emerged within specific social and political contexts.

Defining narrativity as the enabling force of narrative, this is the first full-length exploration of the concept in fiction in English. It develops the notion of a "logic of narrativity," and by this means tries to contribute a new critical strategy to the field of narrative theory. The book also takes issue with a number of critical approaches that have in recent years acquired near-orthodox status in the matter of textual interpretation. Most prominent among these approaches are deconstruction and a particular form of Marxist criticism. The author's own theoretical claims are substantiated by readings of major twentieth-century novels by Conrad, Joyce, Flann O'Brien, and Arthur Koestler, and the book concludes with an analysis of an earlier narrative, Maria Edgeworth's Castle Rackrent, which illustrates the wider premises of the theory and its applications.

Contributing to the growth in plagiarism studies, this timely new book highlights the impact of the allegation of plagiarism on the working lives of some of the major writers of the period, and considers plagiarism in relation to the emergence of literary copyright and the aesthetic of originality.

In 16th and 17th century England conversation was an embodied act that held the capacity to negotiate, manipulate and transform social relationships. Early Modern Women in Conversation illuminates the extent to which gender shaped conversational interaction and demonstrates the significance of conversation as a rhetorical practice for women.

Take Note for Exam Success! York Notes offer an exciting approach to English literature. This market leading series fully reflects student needs. They are packed with summaries, commentaries, exam advice, margin and textual features to offer a wider context to the text and encourage a critical analysis. York Notes, The Ultimate Literature Guides.

Starting with the history of apocalyptic tradition in the West and focusing on modern Japanese apocalyptic science fiction in manga, anime, and novels, Apocalypse in Contemporary Japanese Science Fiction shows how science fiction reflected and coped with the devastation in Japanese national identity after 1945. The structure of apocalyptic science fiction reveals what is at stake in Japanese society - cultural continuity, tradition, politics, ideology, reality, communities, and interpersonal relationships - and suggests ways to cope with these crises and visions for the future, both positive and negative. By looking at the postwar period, Motoko Tanaka observes how Japanese apocalyptic discourse has changed in its role as a tool according to the zeitgeists of various decades.

This book fills a gap in both literary and feminist scholarship by offering the first major study of femme fatales in hardboiled crime fiction. Maysaa Jaber shows that the criminal literary figures in the genre open up powerful spaces for imagining female agency in direct opposition to the constraining forces of patriarchy and misogyny.

The complex nature of globalization increasingly requires a comparative approach to literature in order to understand how migration and commodity flows impact aesthetic production and expressive practices. This special issue of Symbolism: An International Journal of Critical Aesthetics explores the trans-American dimensions of Latina/o literature in a trans-Atlantic context. Examining the theoretical implications suggested by the comparison of the global North-global South dynamics of material and aesthetic exchange, this volume highlights emergent Latina/o authors, texts, and methodologies of interest in for comparative literary studies. In the essays, literary scholars address questions of the transculturation, translation, and reception of Latina/o literature in the United States and Europe. In the interviews, emergent Latina/o authors speak to the processes of creative writing in a transnational context. This volume suggests how the trans-American dialogues found in contemporary Latina/o literature elucidates trans-Atlantic critical dialogues.

This title introduces the work of James Joyce, the literary, historical and political contexts in which he wrote and his critical reception up to the present day. James Joyce stands at the forefront of modernism - a writer whose work has gained a unique status in modern Western culture. This book offers an introduction to reading and studying Joycean texts and surveys the key contexts - literary, historical, political, philosophical and compositional - which shaped and determined them. By identifying and engaging with Joyce's writing methods and style, the book opens up strategies and approaches for reading his complex texts. It also introduces the critical reception of Joyce and his work, from the early structuralist and 'myth' critics, through deconstruction, to recent developments including historical criticism and genetic criticism.

Generations of readers and movie viewers have been drawn to the spirited heroines of DEGREESUSense and Sensibility " and DEGREESUEmma." Prepared especially for students, this full-length critical study of Jane Austen covers her six most beloved works, including the two novels DEGREESUNorthanger Abbey" and DEGREESUPersuasion, "published posthumously. Young readers will enjoy the vivid biographical account of how Austen herself was just a teenager when she took up the pen and began to write in guarded secrecy. Austen scholar Debra Teachman has a historian's eye for detail as she describes Austen's homelife in the English countryside and the social environment that were so much a part of Austen's stories. Teachman examines each novel, relating how historical context influenced the characters, events and themes that Austen developed. Teachman eloquently points out, for example, that while Austen does not overtly preach feminism in any of her novels, the lack of legal protection for women is a vital societal theme in DEGREESUSense and Sensibility. "Her discussion of the economic realities at the core of Austen's novels will help readers appreciate that works like the best-selling "Pride and Prejudice" are more than just charming stories.

In addition to analyzing the literary elements in each work of fiction by Jane Austen, this Companion also gives students an overview of Austen's literary heritage. Discussing first the novel itself as a genre, this useful chapter then identifies each sub-genre that influenced Austen: epistolary writing, the adventure novel, the gothic form, and Women's Rights novels. An extensive bibliography directs readers to biographical materials, historical documents, reviews, criticism and numerous other accessible sources that will enhance their further study of Austen's writings. For students of classic fiction, this well written critical study aids in the enjoyment and understanding of the life and works of Jane Austen.

J.R.R. Tolkien delved into the Middle Ages to create a critique of the modern world in his fantasy, yet did so in a form of modernist literature with postmodern implications and huge commercial success. These essays examine that paradox and its significance in understanding the intersection between traditionalist and counter-culture criticisms of the modern. The approach helps to explain the popularity of his works, the way in which they continue to be brought into dialogue with twenty-first century issues, and their contested literary significance in the academy.

This new volume in the "Author Chronology "series illuminates the writing of Edith Wharton by detailing her experiences and placing her in her social context. Edith Wharton was a prolific as well as a many-sided writer, who created not only novels, novellas, short stories, and poems, but also a notable series of travel writings, and did translations, pieces for the theatre, and essays on other writers and their works, as well as on the creation and criticism of fiction.This account of Wharton's personal and professional life provides an invaluable insight into an important American woman writer of the twentieth century.

Using a cognitive approach to literature, Self-Consciousness in Modern British Fiction uncovers representations of self-consciousness in selected modern British novels, exposing it as complicating character development. This innovative study offers new readings of works by Conrad, Joyce, Lawrence, Woolf, and Lessing to demonstrate the emergence of a self who feels split from the world. Readings of individual novels are informed by early twentieth century British psychology and philosophy, and by contemporary scholarship in embodied cognition and narrative identity. The models of self-consciousness rendered visible by this analysis improve our understanding of modernist technical experiment with stream-of-consciousness and free indirect discourse.

After their parents divorced in the 1970s, Andre Dubus III and his three siblings grew up with their overworked mother in a depressed Massachusetts mill town saturated with drugs and everyday violence. Nearby, his father, an eminent author, taught on a college campus and took the kids out on Sundays. The clash between town and gown, between the hard drinking, drugging, and fighting of "townies" and the ambitions of students debating books and ideas, couldn t have been more stark. In this unforgettable memoir, acclaimed novelist Dubus shows us how he escaped the cycle of violence and found empathy in channeling the stories of others bridging, in the process, the rift between his father and himself."