There's more than meets the eye in the fiction of the master of the espionage thriller Robert Ludlum. In a study that examines seventeen of Ludlum's novels in depth, including the latest, The Apocalypse Watch (1995), Macdonald uncovers the serious themes running through the novels: the role of the individual in preserving democracy, the value of competing voices, the failure of educational institutions to preserve ideals, the temptations of power, the importance of personal loyalties in the face of impersonal organizations, and the nature of evil. She shows how Ludlum's novels are valuable in helping us to understand modern paranoia--our fear of conspiracies, terrorism, barbarism, and intolerance. A personal interview granted by Ludlum for this book illuminates the influences on his craft, especially his long experience in the theater, which affects his sense of pacing, characterization, humor, and suspense. After an initial biographical chapter, Macdonald examines Ludlum's literary roots in suspense novels and discusses the genre. Each succeeding chapter examines a group of his novels tied together thematically or, in the case of the Bourne series, by recurring characters. The discussion of each novel is organized into sections on plot and structure, character, and theme, and features an alternate critical interpretation, such as Freudian, Marxist, or reader response criticism, which offers the reader another fresh perspective from which to examine the concerns of the novel. Novels covered in depth are: Trevayne, The Cry of the Halidon, The Scarlatti Inheritance, The Rhinemann Exchange, The Gemini Contenders, The Holcroft Covenant, The Road to Gandolfo, The Road to Omaha, The BourneIdentity, The Bourne Supremacy, The Bourne Ultimatum, The Matarese Circle, The Parsifal Mosaic, The Aquitaine Progression, The Icarus Agenda, The Scorpio Illusion, and The Apocalypse Watch. This critical companion includes an up-to-date bibliography of all of Ludlum's published works, as well as selected reviews of all works examined in this study.

A brand new cozy crime series set in gorgeous Tuscany...It's murder in paradise!A remote retreat... Nestled high in the Tuscan hills lies Villa Volpone, home to renowned crime writer Jonah Moore and his creative writing course. It's also the last place retired DCI Dan Armstrong expected to spend his retirement! Dan's no writer, but maybe this break will help him to think about the next chapter in his own life story? A gruesome murder... But only days into the course, Jonah Moore is found stabbed to death with his award-winning silver dagger! And Dan finds himself pulled out of retirement with a killer to catch. Eleven possible suspects. The other guests all seem shocked by Jonah's death, but Dan knows that one of them must be lying. And as he and Italian Commissario Virgilio Pisano begin to investigate it quickly becomes clear that everyone at Villa Volpone has secrets to hide... But can Dan discover who the murderer is before they strike again? A gripping new murder mystery series by bestselling author T.A. Williams, perfect for fans of Lee Strauss and Beth Byers.

This is a feminist study of a recurring character type in classic British detective fiction by women - a woman who behaves like a Victorian gentleman. Exploring this character type leads to a new evaluation of the politics of classic detective fiction and the middlebrow novel as a whole.

Since its publication in 1959, " A Separate Peace" has acquired the reputation of a minor classic of American literature. This insightful analysis helps young readers relate to the themes of disillusionment, guilt and betrayal, and the fear of failure and intergenerational conflicts experienced by the teenaged characters in the novel. This casebook also situates "A Separate Peace" against the backdrop of World War II, enabling students to see the connections between the fictional world of the novel and the real World as it existed for young people. Moving well beyond a standard literary treatment, this interdisciplinary casebook provides a collection of historical primary documents drawn from official records, War Department orders, institutional histories, personal memoirs and letters, and poignant interviews.

With commentary by Knowles himself, the casebook takes readers from the prep school setting of the novel to the impact of wartime on American students and their schools. You're in the Army Now explores the difficult transitions through induction and military training. The Combat Zone graphically confronts the realities of war with interviews of two former P.O.W.'s who experienced firsthand the terrors and tragedies of WWII. The volume also examines some of the contemporary issues of the novel including current controversies in athletic programs, gender issues in education, and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Teachers and librarians will find helpful suggestions for oral discussion, research projects, and further suggested readings on these important topics.

Alan H. Goldman presents an original and lucid account of the relationship between philosophy and the novel. In the first part, on philosophy of novels, he defends theories of literary value and interpretation. Literary value, the value of literary works as such, is a species of aesthetic value. Goldman argues that works have aesthetic value when they simultaneously engage all our mental capacities: perceptual, cognitive, imaginative, and emotional. This view contrasts with now prevalent narrower formalist views of literary value. According to it, cognitive engagement with novels includes appreciation of their broad themes and the theses these imply, often moral and hence philosophical theses, which are therefore part of the novels' literary value. Interpretation explains elements of works so as to allow readers maximum appreciation, so as to maximize the literary value of the texts as written. Once more, Goldman's view contrasts with narrower views of literary interpretation, especially those which limit it to uncovering what authors intended. One implication of Goldman's broader view is the possibility of incompatible but equally acceptable interpretations, which he explores through a discussion of rival interpretations of Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises. Goldman goes on to test the theory of value by explaining the immense appeal of good mystery novels in its terms. The second part of the book, on philosophy in novels, explores themes relating to moral agency-moral development, motivation, and disintegration-in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn, John Irving's The Cider House Rules, and Joseph Conrad's Nostromo. By narrating the course of characters' lives, including their inner lives, over extended periods, these novels allow us to vicariously experience the characters' moral progressions, positive and negative, to learn in a more focused way moral truths, as we do from real life experiences.

Tracing the changing conceptions of nationality in the work of traveling writers such as D.H. Lawrence, Gertrude Stein, and Claude McKay, Modernism and Mobility argues that the passport system is an indispensable segue into discussions of literary modernism.

"Utopianism, Modernism, and Literature in the Twentieth Century" considers the links between utopianism and modernism in two ways: as an under-theorized nexus of aesthetic and political interactions; and as a sphere of confluences that challenges accepted critical models of modernist and twentieth-century literary history. An international group of scholars considers works by E. M. Forster, Ford Madox Ford, Wyndham Lewis, Naomi Mitchison, Katharine Burdekin, Rex Warner, Yevgeny Zamyatin, Thomas Pynchon, Elizabeth Bowen, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, and Ernst Bloch. In doing so, this volume's contributors prompt new reflections on key aspects of utopianism in experimental twentieth-century literature and non-fictional writing; deepen literary-historical understandings of modernism's socio-political implications; and bear out the on-going relevance of modernism's explorations of utopian thought. "Utopianism, Modernism, and Literature in the Twentieth Century" will appeal to anyone with an interest in how deeply and how differently modernist writers, as well as writers influenced by or resistant to modernist styles, engaged with issues of utopianism, perfectibility, and social betterment.

Science fiction occupies a peculiar place in the academic study of literature. For decades, scholars have looked at science fiction with disdain and have criticized it for being inferior to other types of literature. But despite the sentiments of these traditionalists, many works of science fiction engage recognized canonical texts, such as the "Odyssey, " and many traditionally canonical works contain elements of science fiction. More recently, the canon has been subject to revision, as scholars have deliberately sought to include works that reflect diversity and have participated in the serious study of popular culture. But these attempts to create a more inclusive canon have nonetheless continued to marginalize science fiction. This book examines the treatment of science fiction within the academy.

The expert contributors to this volume explore a wide range of topics related to the place of science fiction in literary studies. These include academic attitudes toward science fiction, the role of journals and cultural gatekeepers in canon formation, and the marginalization of specific works and authors by literary critics. In addition, the volume gives special attention to multicultural and feminist concerns. In discussing these topics, the book sheds considerable light on much broader issues related to the politics of literary studies and academic inquiry.

A leading cultural historian of premodern Japan draws a rich portrait of the emerging samurai culture as it is portrayed in gunki-mono, or war tales, examining eight major works spanning the mid-tenth to late fourteenth centuries. Although many of the major war tales have been translated into English, Warriors of Japan is the first book-length study of the tales and their place in Japanese history. The war tales are one of the most important sources of knowledge about Japan's premodern warriors, revealing much about the medieval psyche and the evolving perceptions of warriors, warfare, and warrior customs.

Henry James's Style of Retrospect traces James's engagement with the writing of the recent past across the last twenty-five years of his life and examines the thoroughgoing change his style underwent in this last phase of his career, as his focus turned from the observation of contemporary manners to biographical commemoration and autobiographical reminiscence, and the balance of his output gradually shifted from fiction to non-fiction. The 'late personal writings' of the book's subtitle are works of retrospective non-fiction. They are a varied group, representing a broad array of genres and occasions: commemorative essays and obituary tributes, textual revisions and accounts of revisiting familiar places, cultural and literary criticism, biography and autobiography, and family memoir. Oliver Herford proposes that we read the late personal writings as a coherent sequence, bound together by a close texture of cross-references and allusive echoes, and united by James's newly discovered sense for the literary possibilities of non-fiction. Closely analyzing the style of these writings, this study offers a boldly revisionist account of the way style itself challenges and preoccupies the very late James. A linked series of innovative close readings takes the major works of this period in sequence, addressing a key point of style in each: particular attention is paid to procedures of reference (to the historical past, to real persons and places and objects), a dimension of style often neglected and sometimes actively slighted in analyses of James's late work. Henry James's Style of Retrospect asks what it means for so distinguished a novelist to alter the foundations of his written manner so strikingly in late life, and shows how we may begin to reconfigure our understanding of late Jamesian aesthetics accordingly.

Though Doris Lessing never explicitly refers to spirituality in her works, she nonetheless explores spiritual issues throughout her texts. This book examines the prominence of spirituality in her writings. The volume provides both close readings of individual works and sweeping surveys of her nearly fifty year career. The contributors employ a variety of theoretical perspectives such as systems theory, feminist studies of the body and of androgyny, postcolonial theories, mythic prophecy, and intersubjective psychology. The contributors reveal that Lessing's presentation of spirituality is neither rigid nor orthodox neither the product of the split between the body and the soul nor anchored in formal systems of the past or present.

The volume is divided into three sections. The first, on spirituality manifested in everyday life, examines individual works in which ordinary experiences such as growing old or struggling to adopt to the difficulties of married life comment on spiritual concerns. Included are chapters on "The Diaries of Jane Somers" and "The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four, and Five." The second section contains chapters on the formation and dissolution of individual identity for characters at different stages of the life cycle and the parallel changes within societies at different stages of cultural collapse. The third part presents chapters on the larger patterns that inform many of Lessing's works, with attention either to individual texts or to clusters of her writings.

Although the fiction of Joseph Conrad has been studied extensively from a psychological perspective, a major theme seemingly neglected is that of ambivalence in the relations between fathers and sons. This volume contains Rising's Freudian and post-Freudian analysis of father/son interactions, at either the family or the social level, in Conrad's work. Defining the father as any older male with power and influence over a younger one, Rising examines wide thematic variations that show Conrad's obsessive concern with paternity-- as an object either of fear and hatred or of longing--and in turn addresses the theme of Conrad's most successful fiction: the protagonist's struggle to find (or keep) his place in a world of men. In his fiction, Conrad uses an array of fathers and paternal types to achieve a constantly shifting perspective on filial relationships. In a panorama of actual or potential conflict, the author provides portraits of Conrad's father and son, and shows what chance of accommodation he offers. In chapters on the prototype of the father, the jeaopardy of the son on land, and the immunity of the son at sea, the book discusses Conrad's use of an Oedipal compromise, a solution he abandoned in later works. Ultimately, although he appears to have sought new avenues of reconciliation in his last novels, the author demonstrates that the father/son antagonism is never fully resolved in his fiction. In addition to the primary chapters and epilogue, the work contains a bibliography and an index. This book will be an important reference tool for courses in English and psychology, as well as an important addition to academic and public libraries.

Building on the formula of York Notes, this Advanced series introduces students to more sophisticated analysis and wider critical perspectives. The notes enable students to appreciate contrasting interpretations of the text and to develop their own critical thinking. Key features include: study methods; an 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; and glossary of literary terms.

This new book examines how a range of authors today perpetuate Virginia Woolf's literary legacy, by creating new forms adapted to their new ages and audiences. Addressing questions about the current penchant for refashioning our canon in order to update, this book will be valuable reading for both students and scholars of Woolf.

Ancient Greek Myth in World Fiction since 1989 explores the diverse ways that contemporary world fiction has engaged with ancient Greek myth. Whether as a framing device, or a filter, or via resonances and parallels, Greek myth has proven fruitful for many writers of fiction since the end of the Cold War. This volume examines the varied ways that writers from around the world have turned to classical antiquity to articulate their own contemporary concerns. Featuring contributions by an international group of scholars from a number of disciplines, the volume offers a cutting-edge, interdisciplinary approach to contemporary literature from around the world. Analysing a range of significant authors and works, not usually brought together in one place, the book introduces readers to some less-familiar fiction, while demonstrating the central place that classical literature can claim in the global literary curriculum of the third millennium. The modern fiction covered is as varied as the acclaimed North American television series The Wire, contemporary Arab fiction, the Japanese novels of Haruki Murakami and the works of New Zealand's foremost Maori writer, Witi Ihimaera.

Drawing on private correspondence and little known documents, published and unpublished, Pilling explores every aspect of the More Pricks Than Kicks short story collection. From its publishing history to why they were written, Pilling reveals Beckett's conflicted feelings about the;compromise' of writing short stories and his struggle to find a voice distinct from James Joyce, his friend and authority of the form. By discussing each story as separate entity, in a grouping that deviates from the collection, and by analysing Echo's Bones', Pilling makes new comparisons and contrasts, illustrating Beckett's idiosyncratic handling of the form. Making sure to place the stories in the context of the post-war work, this early study of Beckett highlights the years and work central to his development as a writer.

Read an interview with Norbert Bachleitner. In this 200th volume of Internationale Forschungen zur Allgemeinen und Vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft the editors Norbert Bachleitner, Achim H. Hoelter and John A. McCarthy 'take stock' of the discipline. It focuses on recurrent questions in the field of Comparative Literature: What is literature? What is meant by 'comparative'? Or by 'world'? What constitute 'transgressions' or 'refractions'? What, ultimately, does being at home in the world imply? When we combine the answers to these individual questions, we might ultimately reach an intriguing proposition: Comparative Literature contributes to a sense of being at home in a world that is heterogeneous and fractured, rather than affirming a monolithic canon marked by territory and homogeneity. The volume unites essays on world literature, literature in the context of the history of ideas, comparative women and gender studies, aesthetics and textual analysis, and literary translation and tradition.

This is the most extensive account of Moore's fiction to date that considers his many works from the early stories to the recent novel, No Other Life. Moore, who was born in Ireland but is a Canadian citizen and resides predominantly in the United States, has earned an international reputation as an important novelist. This book sets out to demonstrate a discernible pattern of concerns that cut across Moore's fictive output over the last 40 years. It argues that the concerns of love and faith (and the interplay between them) form the backbone of Moore's oeuvre. Sullivan draws from interviews with Moore and presents a study that convincingly demonstrates how Moore's fictions, from first to last, take their place in a larger thematic and formal masternarrative.

Confronting nationalistic and nativist interpreting practices in Persianate literary scholarship, Persian Literature as World Literature makes a case for reading these literatures as world literature-as transnational, worldly texts that expand beyond local and national penchants. Working through an idea of world literature that is both cosmopolitan and critical of any monologic view on globalization, the contributors to this volume revisit the early and contemporary circulation of Persianate literatures across neighboring and distant cultures, and seek innovative ways of developing a transnational Persian literary studies, engaging in constructive dialogues with the global forces surrounding, and shaping, Persianate societies and cultures.

A collection of ten original essays forging new interdisciplinary connections between crime fiction and film, encompassing British, Swedish, American and Canadian contexts. The authors explore representations of race, gender, sexuality and memory, and challenge traditional categorisations of academic and professional crime writing.

This work defends two main theses. First, modern Western pornographic fiction functions as a self-deceptive vehicle for sexual or blood-lustful arousal; and second, that its emergence owes as much to Puritan Protestantism and its inner- or this-worldly asceticism as does the emergence of modern rationalized capitalism.

Presenting the first English-language collection of essays on Jorge Semprun, this volume explores the life and work of the Spanish Holocaust survivor, author, and political activist. Essays explore his cultural production in all its manifestations, including the role of testimony and fiction in representations of the Holocaust.

Elizabeth Gaskell's work and life are being rediscovered against a backdrop of Victorian middle-class women's experience by many feminist scholars. Viewed in this century as conventional and conservative, Gaskell may instead be regarded as a radical for her time, because she challenged widely-held assumptions about the nature of women, their proper sphere, and their participation in the public realm. Examining the theme of work in Gaskell's novels, Colby presents this Victorian novelist as an effective advocate of change as she tried to create space for women within the world of work.