The importance of science fiction to undergraduate literary studies cannot be underestimated. Its capacity to challenge students' social, political and cultural perspectives makes it invaluable in highlighting the contingent nature of contemporary society and the potential for change. "Teaching Science Fiction" is the first book in thirty years to address how science fiction might be taught to this effect. It presents comprehensive treatments of the major phases in the development of the genre including the scientific romance, Golden Age science fiction, the New Wave and science fiction's engagement with the postmodern. The book identifies and explores innovative teaching strategies which will both engage and challenge students whilst providing practical advice on how an sf course can be designed, delivered and evaluated. Sample syllabuses, a detailed chronology, a compact history of the genre and an extensive bibliography make this an invaluable guide for anyone teaching, or considering teaching, science fiction at undergraduate level.

The continuing cultural encounters of the Americas, between European and indigenous cultures, and between scientific materialism and premodern supernaturalism, have originated new narrative forms. While supernatural short fiction of the Americas belongs to the broad category of the fantastic, which is generally approached synchronically, reading audiences of the past 200 years have shifted their beliefs about the supernatural several times. While nineteenth-century readers understood science as real and the supernatural as imaginary, modern audiences recognize both as inaccurate, a shift which allows authors of supernatural fiction to celebrate premodern indigenous beliefs which were once disdained by a materialist culture.

This book situates supernatural short fiction of the Americas within the changing cultural and epistemological contexts of the last 200 years and explores how authors have drawn upon a wealth of indigenous traditions. The book begins with a discussion of theories of the supernatural and the fantastic. It then looks at some of the first encounters of European and Native American supernatural beliefs and points to the common elements of these early traditions. The volume next focuses on American literature of the nineteenth century, which has a complex fusion of materialist biases and metaphysical fascinations. The final portion of the book gives greater attention to Spanish-American literature and the blending of the supernatural with attitudes of nostalgia and uncertainty.

The women's bestseller has become the acknowledged literary phenomenon of the last half-century. Madonne M. Miner takes the first critical look at this development and offers a serious reading of five of the most famous twentieth-century women's bestsellers--Gone with the Wind, Forever Amber, Peyton Place, Valley of the Dolls, and Scruples. She outlines repeated plot structures, image patterns, and thematic concerns. From these Miner constructs a twentieth-century white middle-class American woman's story, suggests ways in which female readers respond to women's bestsellers, and proposes a matrilineal linkage between the novels.

Professor Wheeler's widely-acclaimed survey of the nineteenth-century fiction covers both the major writers and their works and encompasses the genres and "minor" fiction of the period. This excellent introduction and reference source has been revised for this second edition to include new material on lesser-known writers and a comprehensively updated bibliography.

Shanghai in the 1920s and 1930s - "the Paris of the Orient" - was both a glittering metropolis and a shadowy world of crime and social injustice. It was also home to Huo Sang and Bao Lang, fictional Chinese counterparts to Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. The duo lived in a spacious apartment on Aiwen Road, where Huo Sang played the violin (badly) and smoked Golden Dragon cigarettes as he mulled over his cases. Cheng Xiaoqing (1893-1976), "The Grand Master" of twentieth-century Chinese detective fiction, had first encountered Conan Doyle's highly popular stories as an adolescent. In the ensuing years he played a major role in rendering them first into classical and later into vernacular Chinese. In the late 1910s, Cheng began writing detective fiction very much in Conan Doyle's style, with Bao as the Watson-like-I narrator - a still rare instance of so direct an appropriation from foreign fiction. Cheng Xiaoqing wrote detective stories to introduce the advantages of critical thinking to his readers, to encourage them to be skeptical and think deeply, because truth often lies beneath surface appearances. His attraction to the detective fiction genre can be traced to its reconciliation of the traditional and the modern. In "The Shoe," Huo Sang solves the case with careful reasoning, while "The Other Photograph" and "On the Huangpu" blend this reasoning with a sensationalism reminiscent of traditional Chinese fiction. "The Odd Tenant" and "The Examination Paper" also demonstrate the folly of first impressions. "At the Ball" and "Cat's-Eye" feature the South-China Swallow, a master thief who, like other outlaws in traditional tales, steals only from the rich and powerful. "A Summer Night's Tragedy" clearly shows Cheng's strategy of captivating his Chinese readers with recognizably native elements even as he espouses more globalized views of truth and justice.

Forms of Speech in Victorian Fiction examines how Victorian writers used dialogue in the presentation of characters and the relationships between them, and its contribution to the work as a whole. Quoting over a hundred novels of the period, including all the major authors, many fascinating topics are discussed. The book also looks at the conventions which governed the writing and circulation of fiction, imposing certain restraints on the novelists. It also relates the dialogue used in Victorian fiction to evidence from other sources about the actual speech of the period. This book will be of great value to those studying the social history of the period, as well as literature, and will appeal to the general reader interested in Victorian fiction.

Pierre Courtade (1915-1963) was recognised by his peer group to be an independent, sharply intelligent thinker and a talented writer. His principal work consists of journalism -- near daily articles in the Communist press during the late 1940s and 1950s -- six novels (two unpublished) and two volumes of short stories.
This first study of Courtade examines the conflict between his private and public personas and in particular his role as a political commentator and as an artist struggling to reconcile his talent with the demands made by Party ideology. Courtade's life and work is analysed in light of archival material and interviews with people who knew and worked with him. The author assesses Courtade's contribution to French left-wing intellectual life and places him in the context of the evolution of French intellectuals' political commitment in the 20th century. As witness to some of the most critical periods in French history -- the Occupation and the Resistance, the Cold War and French involvement in Indo-China -- Courtade's responses provide fascinating insights and a new perspective on this turbulent time.

Barbara Hepworth sculpted outdoors and Janet Frame wore earmuffs as she worked to block out noise. Kate Chopin wrote with her six children ‘swarming around her’ whereas the artist Rosa Bonheur filled her bedroom with the sixty birds that inspired her work. Louisa May Alcott wrote so vigorously – skipping sleep and meals – that she had to learn to write with her left hand to give her cramped right hand a break.

From Isak Dinesen subsisting on oysters, champagne and amphetamines, to Isabel Allende's insistence that she begins each new book on 8 January, here are the working routines of over 140 brilliant female painters, composers, sculptors, writers, filmmakers and performers.

Filled with details of the large and small choices these women made, Daily Rituals Women at Work is a source of fascination and inspiration.

Africa has long captured the Western imagination as a land shrouded in danger and mystery. British and American novels written before World War II established popular conventions and stereotypes about Africa that have been increasingly challenged by contemporary American novels set in Africa. Kuhne's book overviews the ways in which Africa has been employed as a powerful setting for American novels written since World War II. Kuhne argues that contemporary American novels with African settings are largely didactic, that these novels convey specific lessons about Africa and Africans, and that they compare African and American cultures in order to evaluate and critique the two worlds.

The book begins by summarizing the conventions and themes Westerners have traditionally associated with Africa and by detailing how British and American authors from Aphra Behn to Ernest Hemingway depicted Africa before World War II. It then looks at contemporary American novels set in invented African nations, novels that typically suggest that the problems that trouble actual African nations are the result of colonialism. A separate chapter then examines the African novels of African Americans, which generally aim to correct the historical record, refute stereotypes, and detail the horrors of the slave trade. The volume also looks at genre fiction set in Africa, while a final chapter discusses postcolonial novels with African settings.

A survey of criticism on King's book and Kubrick's film adaptation "The Shining."

This book sheds light on the complex relationship between Hindi and Urdu. Through a detailed reading of a representative set of 20th century short stories in both languages, the author leads the reader towards a clear definition of the differences between Hindi and Urdu. The full translations of the stories have been extensively annotated to point out the details in which the Hindi and Urdu versions differ. An overview of early and contemporary Hindi/Urdu and Hindustani grammars and language teaching textbooks demonstrates the problems of correctly naming and identifying the two languages. This book now offers a detailed and systematic database of syntactic, morphological and semantic differences between the selected Hindi and Urdu stories. A useful tool for all scholars of modern Hindi/Urdu fiction, (socio-)linguistics, history or social sciences.

In the last eight years of his life - and he died when he was only thirty-three - Denton Welch wrote three novels, umpteen short stories, hundreds of poems, and - between 1942 and 1948, a profoundly personal and moving journal that recorded his swift maturity into a writer of genius. Therein he wrote of his battle with ill-health, his life lived in claustrophobic rooms, and (in frank, erotic terms) his frustrated pursuit of the 'ideal friend.' And yet he encountered some of the foremost writers of his time - Edith Sitwell, Herbert Read, Harold Nicolson, Vita Sackville West - and recorded every aspect of life with a fresh and arresting sensitivity.

Cult of Defeat in Mexico's Historical Fiction: Failure, Trauma, and Loss examines recent Mexican historical novels that highlight the mistakes of the nineteenth century for the purpose of responding to present crises. Over the last twenty years, historical novels have become a mainstay for major presses, surpassing other fictional genres in publication and sales. As these bestsellers enter the public sphere, they engage in a massive rewrite of the country's guiding fictions and national myths. This book argues that historical reconstructions of the nation's foundational period acquire deeper meaning when understood as part of broad contemporary debates about globalization, neoliberalism, political legitimacy, and the crises afflicting Mexican communities today.

In this pathbreaking book, which includes a powerful new translation of Hesiod's Works and Days by esteemed translator David Grene, Stephanie Nelson argues that a society's vision of farming contains deep indications about its view of the human place within nature, and our relationship to the divine. She contends that both Hesiod in the Works and Days and Vergil in the Georgics saw farming in this way, and so wrote their poems not only about farming itself, but also about its deeper ethical and religious implications.
Hesiod, Nelson argues, saw farming as revealing that man must live by the sweat of his brow, and that good, for human beings, must always be accompanied by hardship. Within this vision justice, competition, cooperation, and the need for labor take their place alongside the uncertainties of the seasons and even of particular lucky and unlucky days to form a meaningful whole within which human life is an integral part. Vergil, Nelson argues, deliberately modeled his poem upon the Works and Days, and did so in order to reveal that his is a very different vision. Hesiod saw the hardship in farming; Vergil sees its violence as well. Farming is for him both our life within nature, and also our battle against her. Against the background of Hesiods poem, which found a single meaning for human life, Vergil thus creates a split vision and suggests that human beings may be radically alienated from both nature and the divine. Nelson argues that both the Georgics and the Works and Days have been misread because scholars have not seen the importance of the connection between the two poems, and because they have not seen that farming is the true concern of both, farming in itsdeepest and most profoundly unsettling sense.

This book examines how the process of nation-building in Egypt helped transform Egypt from an Ottoman province to an Arabic speaking national community. Through the discussion of the life and works of the prominent writer A'isha Taymur, Hatem gives insight into how literature and the changing gender roles of women and men contributed to the definition and development of a sense of community.""

The Colored American Magazine, first published in 1900, was a pioneering forum for black literary talent. Pauline Hopkins was not only a prolific contributor, but one of its powerful editorial forces. These stories reveal her commitment to fiction as a vehicle for social change, weaving themes such as white oppression, the heroism of black women, and the need for organized resistance to persecution, into the narrative formulas of popular fiction.

Drawing on the discipline of stylistics, this book introduces a series of methodological tools and applies them to works by well-known Nigerian writers, including Abani, Adichie and Okri. In doing so, it demonstrates how attention to form fosters understanding of content in their work, as well as in African and postcolonial literatures more widely.

This book focuses on how Austen's life and work is being re-framed and re-imagined in 20th and 21st century literature and culture. Tracing the connections between Modernist Austen in the early C20th and feminist and post-feminist appropriations in the later C20th, it examines how Austen emerged as a complex point of reference on the global stage.

Myths of the Nation focuses on the construction of forms of historical consciousness in narratives, or schools of narrative. The study seeks to underscore what goes behind the writing of `true' and `authentic' histories by treating historical fiction as the literary dimension of nationalist ideology. It traces nationalism from its abstract underpinnings to its concrete manifestation in historical fiction which underwrites the Indian freedom struggle. The construction of identity through mythicized conceptions of India is examined in detail through Raja Rao's first novel, Kanthapura. The key concept governing the subject is that of representation. Since the `fictional reality' of the nation is a much debated issue, the study examines how history slides into fiction. The author shows how orientalist, nationalist, Marxist, subalternists, and poststructuralists, have all, in their own celebratory ways, used the disenfranchised sub-proletariat in their works. What she finds useful in poststructuralist practices, however, is that subaltern identities are imbued with heterogeneity, thus splitting open an authoritarian and reactionary nationalism, and a continuing neo-colonialism.

Few attempts have been made to arrive at a sober assessment of Tolkien's achievement as a literary artist, and even fewer to define for him a place in 20th century literature. This book provides an introduction to Tolkien's work which also aims to redress these deficiencies in earlier criticism. Two chapters are devoted to "The Lord of the Rings", while a third explores the bewildering profusion of shorter works and the last considers the significance of Tolkien's life and career in the century of modernism. This book is designed to be of interest to students of literature and language.

In this fascinating book, Reid examines Robert Louis Stevenson's writings in the context of late-Victorian evolutionist thought, arguing that an interest in 'primitive' culture is at the heart of his work. She investigates a wide range of Stevenson's writing, including "Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde" and "Treasure Island," offering a new way of understanding the relationship between his Scottish and South Seas work. Reid's close attention to Stevenson's engagement with anthropological and psychological debate also illuminates the intersections between literature and science at the fin de siecle, and includes previously unpublished material from the Stevenson archive at Yale. Reid's interpretation offers a new way of understanding the relationship between his Scottish and South Seas work. Her analysis of Stevenson's engagement with anthropological and psychological debate also illuminates the dynamic intersections between literature and science at the fin de siecle.

In its exploration of legal issues presented in novels of the Bronte sisters, this book represents a significant and original contribution to the study, not just of the Brontes and the mid-nineteenth century 'woman's novel', but also the situation of women in nineteenth century English law and the debates which moved around its prospective reform.

Atlantic Republic traces the legacy of the United States both as a place and as an idea in the work of English writers from 1776 to the present day. Seeing the disputes of the Reformation as a precursor to this transatlantic divide, it argues that America has operated since the Revolution as a focal point for various traditions of dissent within English culture. By ranging over writers from Richard Price and Susanna Rowson in the 1790s to Angela Carter and Salman Rushdie at the turn of the twenty-first century, the book argues that America haunts the English literary tradition as a parallel space where ideology and aesthetics are configured differently. Consequently, it suggests, many of the key episodes in British history--parliamentary reform in the 1830s, the imperial designs of the Victorian era, the twentieth-century conflict with fascism, the advance of globalization since 1980--have been shaped by implicit dialogues with American cultural models. Rather than simply reinforcing the benign myth of a "special relationship," Paul Giles considers how various English writers over the past 200 years have engaged with America for various complicated reasons: its promise of political republicanism (Byron, Mary Shelley); its emphasis on religious disestablishment (Clough, Gissing); its prospect of pastoral regeneration (Ruxton, Lawrence); its vision of scientific futurism (Huxley, Ballard). The book also analyzes the complex cultural relations between Britain and the United States around the time of the Second World War, suggesting that writers such as Wodehouse, Isherwood, and Auden understood the United States and Germany to offer alternative versions of the kind of technologicalmodernity that appeared equally hostile to traditional forms of English culture. The book ends with a consideration of ways in which the canon of English literature might appear in a different light if seen from a transnational rather than a familiar national perspective.

In this reassessment of Dickens, the author draws on the theories of Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari, in addition to Julia Kristeva and Edward Said, to situate Dickens within the discourses circulating within his society - in particular those associated with modernity. Focusing on Dickens's novels written after 1848, his relationship to modernity can be seen in his treatment of violence, seen in two forms in his writing: that of the state (in the rationalizing powers of Victorian bourgeois modernization), and physical violence, as portrayed in Dickens's criminals and interest in masochism and corpses.