While crime fiction is one of the most widespread of all literary genres, this is the first book to treat it in its full global is the first book to treat crime fiction in its full global and plurilingual dimensions, taking the genre seriously as a participant in the international sphere of world literature. In a wide-ranging panorama of the genre, twenty critics discuss crime fiction from Bulgaria, China, Israel, Mexico, Scandinavia, Kenya, Catalonia, and Tibet, among other locales. By bringing crime fiction into the sphere of world literature, Crime Fiction as World Literature gives new insights not only into the genre itself but also into the transnational flow of literature in the globalized mediascape of contemporary popular culture.

This book looks at a wide range of fiction and film texts, from the 1950s to the present, in order to analyse the ways in which masculinity has been represented in popular culture in Britain and the United States. It covers numerous genres, including spy fiction, science fiction, the Western and police thrillers. Each chapter focuses on key forms of masculinity found in each genre, such as the 'double agent', the 'rogue cop' and the 'citizen-soldier'. Brian Baker takes a broad, contextual approach, placing a detailed discussion of key texts and issues concerning masculinity in their historical and cultural context. Written in a clear, accessible way, it explores the changing representation of men over the last fifty years.

Joel Chandler Harris was internationally famous in his own time and has a surprisingly broad scholarly and popular following in ours. His portraits of slaves and former slaves, particularly Uncle Remus and Free Joe, poor whites, and Brer Rabbit, the archetypal trickster hero, have influenced many other writers, including Mark Twain, Charles Chesnutt, William Faulkner, Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison, and a wide array of children's authors from Beatrix Potter to A. A. Milne. Harris also left a lasting mark on popular culture, most clearly manifested through Disney's ^ISong of the South^R and at Disney World attractions featuring versions of Harris's characters. He singlehandedly preserved and made internationally famous the Brer Rabbit folktales, the largest body of African American oral folklore that the world has ever known. Additionally, Harris was a major New South journalist who accelerated the process of reconciliation between North and South and promoted racial tolerance after the Civil War. This reference book is a complete bibliographic guide to the scholarly response to Harris during the last two decades. The introduction explores such issues as Harris's renderings of black dialect, Southern character, and folklore, and his influence on popular culture. The first part is a supplement to Bickley's earlier bibliography of Harris, which covered the period 1862-1976. The second part provides more than 300 entries for books, articles, and dissertations about Harris published after 1976. Entries are grouped in sections according to year of publication, and then alphabetically within each section. Each entry is fully annotated, and a detailed index concludes the volume.

Through examining the work of W. B. Yeats, James Joyce, and Samuel Beckett, Katherine Ebury shows cosmology had a considerable impact on modernist creative strategies, developing alternative reading models of difficult texts such as Finnegans Wake and 'The Trilogy'.

Who Is in the House? provides the first scholarly historical and psychological analysis of both the content and the appeal of women's popular fiction in America during the past two centuries. Principal attention is given to the power of the images of home and mother, and to the theme of conflict between autonomy and dependence in the female characters.

Adapting Poe collects new interdisciplinary essays by leading scholars that combine the latest work in adaptation theory with fresh discussions of Edgar Allan Poe, his work, and popular culture. The book examines a range of genres and media into which Poe has been adapted, such as film, comic art, music, literary criticism, promotional campaigns, television, and internet videos. Each essay re-evaluates Poe's influence not only on popular culture today, but also as a significant figure in its development. As a whole, this collection demonstrates Poe's pervasive and continuing relevance to the images and ideas of contemporary culture.

The Reception of British Authors in Europe series includes literary and political figures, as well as philosophers, historians and scientists. Each volume provides new research on the ways in which selected authors have been translated, published, distributed, read, reviewed A pioneering scholarly collection of essays outlining the breadth and significance of H. G. Wells's literary and political impact throughout 20th-century Europe H.G. Wells was described by one of his European critics as a 'seismograph of his age'. He is one of the founding fathers of modern science fiction, and as a novelist, essayist, educationalist and political propagandist his influence has been felt in every European country. This collection of essays by scholarly experts shows the varied and dramatic nature of Wells's reception, including translations, critical appraisals, novels and films on Wellsian themes, and responses to his own well-publicized visits to Russia and elsewhere. The authors chart the intense ideological debate that his writings occasioned, particularly in the inter-war years, and the censorship of his books in Nazi Germany and Francoist Spain. This book offers pioneering insights into Wells's contribution to 20th century European literature and to modern political ideas, including the idea of European union.

Gun-toting, rough-riding, crack-shot women; train-robbing female bandits; blood-thirsty mothers who refuse to accept injustice-- these women appear in vigilante literature as protagonists that recognize the extent of their own exploitation and directly confront the causes. In this dynamic study, Graham-Bertolini provides the first analysis of vigilante women in contemporary American fiction and develops a model of vigilante heroines using literary and feminist theory. Through close-readings of important texts, including those by Flagg, Glaspell, Hong-Kington, Hurston, Rawlings, Walker, this analysis broadens our understanding of how law and culture infringe upon women's rights and joins the discussion about gender oppression and traditional identity politics.

This book guides readers through these and other important Steinbeck works, particularly those that are most often taught, including "The Pearl" (1945), "The Red Pony" (1933), and significant short fiction. Clear analysis of each work includes discussions of character development, plot and setting, thematic treatment, historical contexts, and alternate critical readings. A biographical chapter, as well as an examination of the author's contributions and career, helps readers gain a sense of Steinbeck the man and his position as one of America's most important writers.

Since the publication of "Tortilla Flat" in 1935, Steinbeck's treatment of American landscapes and themes has struck a chord with readers. His novels "Of Mice and Men" (1937), "The Grapes of Wrath" (1939), and "Cannery RoW" (1945) were instant critical and popular successes. Each went on to become a feature film, which added to Steinbeck's cultural impact. His works have long endured to earn a place in the canon of American Literature. This book guides readers through these and other important Steinbeck works, particularly those that are most often taught, including "The Pearl" (1945), "The Red Pony" (1933), and significant short fiction.

Clear analysis of each work includes discussions of character development, plot and setting, thematic treatment, historical contexts, and alternate critical readings. A biographical chapter, as well as an examination of the author's contributions and career, helps readers gain a sense of Steinbeck the man and his position as one of America's most important writers.

One of America's most distinguished independent artists/intellectuals, Richard Kostelanetz, has written a prescient volume that uses, as a starting point, the philosopher Robin Collingwood's notion that "the historian and the novelist have much in common, for both attempt to define the largest lines of historical development." Aside from the introduction and conclusion, which were specifically written for this publication, these insightful chapters on four outstanding African-American novelists were composed and appeared in journals in the late 1960s. Kostelanetz saw the writing on the wall and told readers about it more than twenty years ago. In his analysis of the novels written by pioneering Black novelists James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938), W. E. B. Du Bois (1868-1963), Richard Wright (1908-1960), and Ralph Ellison (1914-), Kostelanetz culls their political meanings and interprets experience suggestive of political meanings. Kostelanetz places these meanings into a chronological framework that transforms the book from a political or literary history into a history of ideas in literature. This painstaking analysis of fiction--to deduce themes that are then interpreted as intellectual history--is an original scholarly approach to these novels. After presenting a typology of political alternatives for African-America, Kostelanetz looks at the work of writer/diplomat/editor James Weldon Johnson, whose groundbreaking novel, Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, appeared in 1912. Chapter three analyzes the novels of writer/editor/teacher W. E. B. Du Bois, whose work promoted greater understanding of African-Americans. Richard Wright, hailed as the most eloquent spokesman forAfrican-Americans of his generation upon publication of his powerful first novel, Native Son, is considered in the following chapter. Chapter five is devoted to Ralph Ellison whose first novel, The Invisible Man, won the National Book Award and achieved prominence as a primary text on the experience of Blacks in America. This close reading of fiction for political implications closes with an appendix of two essays also written in the 1960s about the figures and issues discussed in this study. The novels treated here retain a kind of "eye-witness account from the front" immediacy that, combined with Kostelanetz's enduring insights, will make Politics in the African-American Novel an important addition to courses in American history, African-American politics, or African-American literature. Informed general readers will also find much to ponder in this book.

This book presents critical readings of eight contemporary German novels which feature historically documented women as their main protagonist, and which reconstruct women's lives by combining source material and invention. Protagonists include Cornelia Goethe, Caroline Schlegel-Schelling, Karoline von Guenderrode and Charlotte Corday. Through a thorough examination of these novels, the wider complexities of female identity, feminism, literary technique and historiography are illuminated and discussed. The author examines how historical events are used to substantiate ideological positions and how the narrators consider this problematic aspect of their project.

The adventures and antics of James Bond have provided the world with many of the most gripping story lines of the last half-century. Fleming's novels were best-sellers in their day, and the Bond films have been even more popular, becoming the most enduring and successful film franchise in history. By some estimates, half of the world's population--billions of people--have seen a James Bond movie, thus viewing an image of global struggle through Western eyes and obtaining a particular perception of Britain and the world. This fascinating and accessible account of the global phenomenon uses the plots and characterizations in the novels and the blockbuster films to place Bond in a historical, cultural, and political context.

Black charts and explores how the settings and the dynamics of the Bond adventures have changed over time in response to shifts in the real-world environment in which the fictional Bond operates. Sex, race, class, and violence are each important factors as 007 evolves from Cold Warrior to foe of SPECTRE and eventually to world defender pitted against megalomaniacal foes. The development of Bond, his leading ladies, and the major plots all shed light on world political attitudes and reflect elements of the real espionage history of the period. This look at Bond's world and his lasting legacy offers an intriguing glimpse into both cultural history and popular entertainment.

"In recent years there has been a resurgence of interest in Hugo Gernsback, and the start of a serious study of the contribution he made to the development of science fiction. . . . It seemed to me that the time was due to reinvestigate the Gernsback era and dig into the facts surrounding the origins of Amazing Stories. I wanted to find out exactly why Hugo Gernsback had launched the magazine, what he was trying to achieve, and to consider what effects he had-good and bad. . . . Too many writers and editors from the Gernsback days have been unjustly neglected, or unfairly criticized. Now, I hope, Robert A. W. Lowndes and I have provided the grounds for a fair consideration of their efforts, and a true reconstruction of the development of science fiction. It's the closest to time travel you'll ever get. I hope you enjoy the trip."-Mike Ashley, Preface

This timely book treats Hardy's recurring use of one of the major informing myths of Western culture--that of a collision between a solar god and an earth goddess. Stave uses a chronological examination of Hardy's Wessex novels to highlight the author's evolving consciousness of the connections among patriarchy, Christianity, sexism, and classism. From the gentle affirmation of Far From the Madding Crowd to the grim Jude the Obscure, Stave paints a world in which the goddess figures die out, displaced by messianic gods, and a Pagan worldview gives way to a world devoid of spiritual meaning.

In correspondence, Willa Cather confessed to planting some of her allusions deep. This reader's companion contains thousands of lively and informative entries on persons, places, and events, fictional and real, and on quotations, works of art, and other items to reveal meanings or provide background for understanding Cather's fictional world. At the same time, it offers insights into her real world and time, her interests, and her astonishingly broad frame of reference. A lifetime project of encyclopedist John March, the once unwieldy manuscript and notes have been verified, clarified, amplified, and organized by literary scholar Marilyn Arnold, with the assistance of Debra Lynn Thornton. The goal was to develop a work that would be useful to the reader while preserving March's "authorial presence" has resulted in a dictionary that will both enlighten and delight.

Part I of this authoritative handbook offers systematic essays, which deal with major historical, social, philosophical, political, cultural and aesthetic contexts of the English novel between 1830 and 1900. The essays offer a wide scope of aspects such as the Industrial Revolution, religion and secularisation, science, technology, medicine, evolution or the increasing mediatisation of the lifeworld. Part II, then, leads through the work of more than 25 eminent Victorian novelists. Each of these chapters provides both historical and biographical contextualisation, overview, close reading and analysis. They also encourage further research as they look upon the work of the respective authors at issue from the perspectives of cultural and literary theory.

This collection of essays offers a comprehensive examination of texts that traditionally have been excluded from the main corpus of the ancient Greek novel and confined to the margins of the genre, such as the Life of Aesop, the Life of Alexander the Great, and the Acts of the Christian Martyrs. Through comparison and contrast, intertextual analysis and close examination, the boundaries of the dichotomy between the "fringe" vs. the "canonical" or "erotic" novel are explored, and so the generic identity of the texts in each group is more clearly outlined. The collective outcome brings the "fringe" from the periphery of scholarly research to the centre of critical attention, and provides methodological tools for the exploration of other "fringe" texts.

To what extent did Charles Dickens see himself as a medium of forces beyond his conscious control? What did he think such subconscious mechanisms might be, and how did his thoughts on the subject play out in his writings? "Sensation and Sublimation in Charles Dickens" traces these questions through three Dickens novels: "Oliver Twist," "Dombey and Son," and "Bleak House." It is the first book-length study to approach Dickensian psychology from the vantage point of what the speculations of Dickens's--rather than of our own--had to say about mental phenomena, both normal and abnormal.

Hailed as "a virtuoso exercise" (Sunday Telegraph), this book reflects candidly, sometimes with great humor, on the condition of being old. Charming readers, writers, and critics alike, the memoir won the Costa Award for Biography and made Athill, then ninety-one, a surprising literary star. Diana Athill was one of the great editors in British publishing. For more than five decades she edited the likes of V. S. Naipaul and Jean Rhys, for whom she was a confidante and caretaker. As a writer, Athill made her reputation for the frankness and precisely expressed wisdom of her memoirs. Writing in her ninety-first year, "entirely untamed about both old and new conventions" (Literary Review) and freed from any of the inhibitions that even she may have once had, Athill reflects candidly, and sometimes with great humor, on the condition of being old-the losses and occasionally the gains that age brings, the wisdom and fortitude required to face death. Distinguished by "remarkable intelligence...[and the] easy elegance of her prose" (Daily Telegraph), this short, well-crafted book, hailed as "a virtuoso exercise" (Sunday Telegraph) presents an inspiring work for those hoping to flourish in their later years.

In a follow-up to his previous Homeric studies, noted classicist Paolo Vivante explores Homer's verse, highlighting rhythm rather than metre. Rhythmical qualities, he argues, constitute the force of the verse-for example, in the way the words take position and in the way each pause hints suspense, producing an immediate sense of time. Vivante's main concern is not with the techniques or rules of the verse-composition, but more philosophically with verse itself as a fundamental form of human expression. This study will be of interest to both students and scholars.

How is Hardy's development of thematics and characters matched by that of narrative techniques and his handling of time? This book uses narratological methods to stress the interdependence of content and expression in a key transitional writer between the Victorian and Modernist eras.

This is a student-friendly guide featuring discussion points, questions and suggestions for further study and a comprehensive guide to further reading."Emma" is one of Jane Austen's most popular novels, in large part due to the impact of Emma Woodhouse, the 'handsome, clever and rich' heroine. This lively, informed and insightful guide to "Emma" explores the style, structure, themes, critical reputation and literary influence of Jane Austen's classic novel and also discusses its film and TV versions. It includes points for discussion, suggestions for further study and an annotated guide to relevant reading. This introduction to the text is the ideal companion to study, offering guidance on: literary and historical context; language, style and form; reading the text; critical reception and publishing history; adaptation and interpretation; and, further reading."Continuum Reader's Guides" are clear, concise and accessible introductions to key texts in literature and philosophy. Each book explores the themes, context, criticism and influence of key works, providing a practical introduction to close reading, guiding students towards a thorough understanding of the text. They provide an essential, up-to-date resource, ideal for undergraduate students.

Indian Writing in English and the Global Literary Market delves into the influences and pressures of the marketplace on this genre, which this volume contends has been both gatekeeper as well as a significant force in shaping the production and consumption of this literature.