Many prominent science fiction writers, artists, and editors began as s.f. "fans." This is the first book to survey fandom's history, manifestations, and accomplishments, including clubs, fanzines, and conventions. The 24 essays are divided into sections that consider the following: the types of people who become fans and the satisfactions they receive; the development of fandom in America; fandom in Europe and the Orient; social interactions in the form of local clubs or wider-drawing conventions; and long-term results in the form of beginning professional careers in writing or publishing, exercising critical attention, and so forth. The writers of these essays have all participated in the activities they describe. The book also contains a glossary, an annotated bibliography, and an index. Overall, this book gives a detailed look at the most important facets of a fascinating subculture that has contributed significantly to the direction of modern science fiction.

Employing Salman Rushdie as a guide to a historicized contemporary, this study offers an interdisciplinary exploration of the plurality of cities along his transnational trajectory. It engages with the geographically identifiable Bombay, Karachi, Islamabad, London or New York; the phantasmal, politically coded, Jahilia or Mildendo, the inspirational yet flawed urban precedents of Fatehpur Sikri or Renaissance Florence and the ways these cities generate, interact with and transform each other. In contrast with those urban studies which remain in place, this book offers a new understanding of cities wider and constantly shifting interconnections with other cities and places in an unstable, unevenly globalized and dangerously or provocatively local world. The book situates Rushdies cities in relation to developments in Bombay, Karachi, Islamabad and London writing and focuses on novels which shuttle between cities. Parashkevova attends to cities cultural and historical contexts, to many of Rushdies numerous literary, cinematic and artistic influences and to diverse events, processes and paradigms earthquakes, translations, seductions that politically re-position cities and citizens on the contemporary urban map.

Virginal Heroines, young and naive but seething with passion, change sardonic heroes into loving, monogamous husbands. Such romance novel characters and themes have been transformed by the women's movement, argues history professor Frenier in this convincing, well-researched study. Frenier surveys earlier feminist studies of women's romances and traces the evolution of the romance industry, focusing on the competition between Harlequin's more traditional British writers and the American authors of Silhouette. She finds undertones of rape and violence in late 1970s novels giving way to more explicit and equal sexuality, to gentler, more nurturing heroes matched with stronger, more experienced heroines. By the late 1980s, premarital sex and women's careers are assumed in many novels, but the heroines greatest power remains her ability to inspire her hero to addictive, obsessive love . . . the subject is fascinating. Booklist Now claiming an audience that includes nearly one-third of adult women in the United States, popular romance fiction is holding its own against competing media and has shown an ability to keep abreast of changing tastes. In the first recent book-length analysis of the subject, Frenier looks at developments in this literary genre in light of feminist issues and the pervasive social changes that continue to affect women in the post-World War II decades. Exploring traditional and more contemporary depictions of romantic heroines, as well as changing approaches to sexuality, she assesses the degree to which the values of the sexual revolution and women's movement have penetrated this form of popular culture.

This anthology of articles on the Roman novels of Petronius and Apuleius makes available some of the most useful and important articles published in German and Italian as well as English over the last thirty years. The introduction, by the editor, provides a general assessment of all scholarly work written about the texts from the 1900s to the 1990s, setting the papers usefully in context. The articles in this collection which concern the work of Petronius include a general interpretation of a fragmentary and problematic text, exploration of narrative technique, relation to Menippean satire and recently discovered Greek novel papyri, and realism. On Apuleius, the collection includes pieces on narrative and ideological unity, relation to religion and Platonism, exploration of narrative technique, relation to epic and to the Greek ass stories, to folk-tale, and historical realism. A reflection of the period of rapid expansion of scholarly interest in the area of the ancient novel, this book combines the best of current international scholarly interpretation.

What were the consequences of Tolstoy's unusual reliance on members of his family as source material for War and Peace? Did affection for close relatives influence depictions of these real prototypes in his fictional characters? Tolstoy used these models to consider his origins, to ponder alternative family histories, and to critique himself. Comparison of the novel and its fascinating drafts with the writer's family history reveals increasing preferential treatment of those with greater relatedness to him: kin altruism, i.e., nepotism. This pattern helps explain many of Tolstoy's choices amongst plot variants he considered, as well as some of the curious devices he utilizes to get readers to share his biases, such as coincidences, notions of "fate," and aversion to incest.

Key Features: Study methods Introduction to the text Summaries with critical notes Themes and techniques Textual analysis of key passages Author biography Historical and literary background Modern and historical critical approaches Chronology Glossary of literary terms

Focusing on the mythological narratives that influence Irish children's literature, this book examines the connections between landscape, time and identity, positing that myth and the language of myth offer authors and readers the opportunity to engage with Ireland's culture and heritage. It explores the recurring patterns of Irish mythological narratives that influence literature produced for children in Ireland between the nineteenth and the twenty-first centuries. A selection of children's books published between 1892, when there was an escalation of the cultural pursuit of Irish independence and 2016, which marked the centenary of the Easter 1916 rebellion against English rule, are discussed with the aim of demonstrating the development of a pattern of retrieving, re-telling, remembering and re-imagining myths in Irish children's literature. In doing so, it examines the reciprocity that exists between imagination, memory, and childhood experiences in this body of work.

Key Features: Study methods Introduction to the text Summaries with critical notes Themes and techniques Textual analysis of key passages Author biography Historical and literary background Modern and historical critical approaches Chronology Glossary of literary terms

In the first decade of a new century, this collection of bilingual essays examines Camus's continuing popularity for a new generation of readers. In crucial respects, the world Camus knew has changed beyond all recognition: decolonization, the fall of the Iron Curtain, a new era of globalization and the rise of new forms of terrorism have all provoked a reconsideration of Camus's writings. If the Absurd once struck a particular chord, Meursault is as likely now to be seen as a colonial figure who expresses the alienation of the settler from the land of his birth. Yet this increasing orthodoxy must also take account of the reasons why a new community of Algerian readers have embraced Camus. Equally, once isolated because of his anti-Communist stance, Camus has been taken up by disaffected members of the Left, convinced that new forms of totalitarianism are abroad in the world. This volume, which ranges from interpretations of Camus's literary works, his journalism and his political writings, will be of interest to all those seeking to re-evaluate Camus's work in the light of ethical and political issues that are of continuing relevance today.

British fictions of the early twentieth century appear obsessed with Europe. Various texts from E.M. Forster and D.H. Lawrence to Bram Stoker and the period's travel writing explore European spaces, constructing the European as an Other threatening the position of the English. What they constantly repeat is England's difference and the secondary role of European spaces, whose representation resembles that of colonial lands. By reading selected texts, both canonized and popular, published between 1894 and 1916, this study argues that this xenophobic construction is a sign of the pervading presence of concerns related to the maintenance of English national identity, Englishness, allegedly threatened by the European Other. By drawing on current postcolonial theory, the case studies in the volume show that the discourse on the Other produced in British writings on Europe contributes more than has been understood to the making and promoting of Englishness. The authors studied include D.H. Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield, Anthony Hope, Arnold Bennett, Mrs Alec Tweedie, Erskine Childers, and Joseph Conrad. The study will renew our understanding of the role of Europe in the period's cultural imagination, showing that the identities of the English are formed in encounters with different internal and external Others.

This series introduces students to more sophisticated analysis and wider critical perspectives to enbable students to appreciate contrasting interpretations of the text and to develop critical thinking. This volume explores Gulliver's Travels and The Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift.

The controversial British writer Ford Madox Ford (1873-1939) is increasingly recognized as a major presence in early twentieth-century literature. This series of International Ford Madox Ford Studies was founded to reflect the recent resurgence of interest in him. Each volume is based upon a particular theme or issue; and relates aspects of Ford's work, life, and contacts, to broader concerns of his time. Modernist periodicals and editorial theory have been very productive areas in recent research. This volume focuses on Ford and editing. Ford was one of the greatest editors of Modernist magazines. He founded the "English Review" in Edwardian London, publishing Henry James, Joseph Conrad, H. G. Wells, Ezra Pound, Wyndham Lewis, and D. H. Lawrence. His editorial relationships with all of these writers are examined in detail here, as are those with Jean Rhys, Ernest Hemingway, and Basil Bunting, connected with the" transatlantic review" launched by Ford in post-war Paris, which also carried experimental work by James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, and Tristan Tzara. These seventeen essays bring together distinguished scholars and poets, as well as younger experts on Modernism and its magazine culture. This collection provides a wealth of new research on the management, cultural politics, and editorial stance of Ford's magazines; on the impact of his editorial contacts on his own and others' work; and on editorial approaches to his writing, including his best-known novels, "The Good Soldier "and "Parade's End."

This book maps the most active and vibrant period in the history of British women's writing. Examining changes and continuities in fiction, poetry, drama, and journalism, as well as women's engagement with a range of literary and popular genres, the essays in this volume highlight the range and diversity of women's writing since 1970.

This is a collection of interviews with contemporary British novelists offering a fascinating insight into bestselling authors' views on fiction today.Why do writers write? How do they react to criticism of their work? What inspires them and how do they work? Does fiction have any political, ethical or spiritual significance? Can we learn more about a book from its author? This collection of interviews with contemporary British novelists offers a fascinating insight into bestselling authors' views on fiction today; their influences and themes; readers and critics; why they write and their writing process; and provides a snapshot of the reality of living as a writer. Revealing the hopes, fears, beliefs and ambitions of leading authors, "Writers Talk" is essential reading for anyone interested in contemporary literature or the nature of the writing process."Writers Talk" includes interviews with Kate Atkinson, Pat Barker, Jonathan Coe, Jim Crace, Toby Litt, David Mitchell, Will Self, Graham Swift, Matt Thorne and Alan Warner.

This study presents an exciting new approach to novels that combine the traditions of Romance and Realism to offer a more comprehensive view of contemporary life. Women are the prototypical Other in patriarchal societies, as can be seen in the first four novelists-Eudora Welty, Gloria Naylor, Margaret Atwood, and Doris Lessing-who are primarily known as realists but who disrupt our expectations to shift our perspective. Moreover, Shinn analyzes how Maxine Hong Kingston, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Toni Cade Bambara write out of their consciousness as hyphenated Americans about what is necessary to achieve an integrated self and an integrated society. Shinn explores how these women have expanded not only the language but the very structure of their novels and have transformed the novelistic tradition.

Almost three hundred years after his birth in 1694, this is the first comprehensive study of Voltaire's contes philosophiques - the philosophical tales for which he is now best remembered and which include the masterpiece Candide. The Fables of Reason situates each of the twenty-six stories in its historical and intellectual context and offers new readings and approaches in the light of modern critical thinking. It rejects the traditional view that Voltaire's contes were the private expression of his philosophical perplexity, written merely in the margins of his historiography and his campaigns against the Establishment. Arguing that narrative is Voltaire's essential mode of thought, the book stresses the role of the reader and shows how the contes are designed less to communicate a set of truths than to encourage independence of mind. Roger Pearson has written a witty, lucid and scholarly guide to the `fables of reason' with which Voltaire undermined - and continues to undermine - the religious, philosophical, and economic `fables', by which other thinkers have tried to explain and direct human experience.

Cities have always been defined by their centrality. But literature demonstrates that their diverse peripheries define them, too: from suburbs to slums, rubbish dumps to nightclubs and entire failed cities. The contributors to this collection explore literary urban peripheries through readings of literature from four continents and numerous cities.

At Macedonio Fernandez's funeral in 1952, Jorge Luis Borges delivered the following elegy: "In those years I imitated him to the point of transcription, to the point of devout and passionate plagiarism. I felt: Macedonio is metaphysics, Macedonio is literature." This is the first book available in English that collects essays by the world's leading scholars on Macedonio Fernandez, one of Borges's most important mentors and a still enigmatic thinker of the early 20th century. Macedonio's philosophy, metaphysics, ethics, and experimental writing laid the foundations for Borges's own theoretical and literary matrix. Nonetheless, Borges helped shape a myth of Macedonio as a thinker who could not translate his oratorial geniality into written intelligibility. So, despite the centrality of Macedonio to Borges's thought, his work has remained almost unknown to English-speaking readers. Contributors to this volume demonstrate, however, that this myth reduces the complexities of Macedonio's life and creative process, as each chapter shines new light on his texts. Conceived as both a companion for new readers of Macedonio's writings and an invitation for specialists to revisit his work through new perspectives, essays in this volume provide extensive background and bibliographical references, as well as English translations of Macedonio's original texts. This collection seeks to serve as a catalyst for the continued discovery and rediscovery of Macedonio Fernandez's texts and the ways they might help us to rediscover the singularities of our own present moment.

A methodologically innovative account of the role of women writers in the development of early psychological theory and practice in the long eighteenth century. Women writers played a central, but hitherto under-recognised, role in the development of the philosophy of mind and its practical outworkings in Romantic era England, Scotland and Ireland. This book focuses on the writings and lives of five leading figures - Anna Barbauld, Honora Edgeworth, Hannah More, Elizabeth Hamilton and Maria Edgeworth - a group of women who differed profoundly in their political, religious and social views but were nevertheless associated through correspondence, family ties and a shared belief in the importance of female education. It shows how through the philosophical language of materiality and embodiment that they developed and the 'enlightened domesticity' that they espoused they transformed educational practice and made substantial interventions into the social reformist politics of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Alive to the manifold overlaps between emotional, and often religious, experience and experiment in the developing science of mind at this time, the book illuminates the potential and the limits of domestic Enlightenment, particularly in projects of moral and industrial 'improvement' and casts new light on a wide variety of other fields: the history of science, early psychology and religion, reformist politics and Romanticism, and how all these reflected the political and social fallout of the French Revolution in the first years of the nineteenth century. JOANNA WHARTON is an Early Career Fellow at Lichtenberg-Kolleg, the Goettingen Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences.

Author Biography:
Malcolm Offord, Rosemary Chapman and Nicki Hitchcott all teach in the Department of French at the University of Nottingham, Sam Haigh is based at the Department of French at Warwich University and Laila Ibnlfassi at the Department of French at London Guildhall University. Offord has published widely in the field of French language studies.

'York Notes Advanced' offer an accessible approach to English Literature. This series has been completely updated to meet the needs of today's A-level and undergraduate students. Written by established literature experts, 'York Notes Advanced' introduce students to more sophisticated analysis, a range of critical perspectives and wider contexts.

This collection of essays by a diverse group of young academics, established critics, and well-known writers strikes an intriguing balance between scholarship and reminiscence. The only full-length book on Mary McCarthy that is not a biography, this volume contains discussions of McCarthy as a member of the New York intelligentsia, her search for a just and ethical political philosophy, and the paradox of her views on feminism. The contributors include McCarthy biographers Carol Brightman, Carol Gelderman, and Fran Kiernan; novelists Thomas Flanagan, Maureen Howard, and Thomas Mallon; Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Frances Fitzgerald; and critics Morris Dickstein and Katie Roiphe. The book concludes with a moving reminiscence by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.

In A Sense of the City, Gala Maria Follaco examines Nagai Kafu's (1879-1959) literary construction of urban spatialities from late Meiji through the early Showa period. She argues that Kafu's urban critique was based on his awareness of the cultural sedimentation of the cityscape and of the complex relationship that it bore with the historical framework of modern Japan. With the overall aim to define Kafu's position within pre-war Japanese literature, Follaco touches upon key issues such as memory, class difference, and language ideologies; draws connections between his sojourn abroad and strategies of "mapping" the city of Tokyo in his literature; and takes into account works previously understudied, including his biography of Washizu Kido and his photographs.

In the decades following World War II, many American Jews sought to downplay their difference, as a means of assimilating into Middle America. Yet a significant minority, including many prominent Jewish writers and intellectuals, clung to their ethnic difference, using it to register dissent with the status quo and act as spokespeople for non-white America. In this provocative book, Jennifer Glaser examines how racial ventriloquism became a hallmark of Jewish-American fiction, as Jewish writers asserted that their own ethnicity enabled them to speak for other minorities. Rather than simply condemning this racial ventriloquism as a form of cultural appropriation or commending it as an act of empathic imagination, Borrowed Voices offers a nuanced analysis of the technique, judiciously assessing both its limitations and its potential benefits. Glaser considers how the practice of racial ventriloquism has changed over time, examining the books of many well-known writers, including Bernard Malamud, Cynthia Ozick, Philip Roth, Michael Chabon, Saul Bellow, and many others. Bringing Jewish studies into conversation with critical race theory, Glaser also opens up a dialogue between Jewish-American literature and other forms of media, including films, magazines, and graphic novels. Moreover, she demonstrates how Jewish-American fiction can help us understand the larger anxieties about ethnic identity, authenticity, and authorial voice that emerged in the wake of the civil rights movement.