This book deals with the traditional problem of the classification of linguistic units, with a primary focus on word classes. The approach is descriptive rather than theoretical, and is based on the use of distinctive features analogous to the ones used in phonology, which entails a radical reworking of the traditional classification. The first part presents some basic notions such as the use of distinctive features and the role of word classes in grammar; classification by prototypes; and the use of world knowledge as a resource to assign thematic relations to constituents in the sentence. In the second part, some descriptive problems are examined, namely the classification of verbs according to valency; connectives, adverbs, and the internal constituents of the NP; and the classification of units larger than words. This book will be of use as a guide for linguists working on the description of natural languages, as well as a resource for students on courses in linguistic theory and description.

Conversations with Dana Gioia is the first collection of interviews with the internationally known poet and public intellectual, covering every stage of his busy, polymathic career. Dana Gioia (b. 1950) has made many contributions to contemporary American literature and culture, including but not limited to crafting a personal poetic style suited to the age; leading the revival of rhyme, meter, and narrative through New Formalism; walloping the "intellectual ghetto" of American poetry through his epochal article "Can Poetry Matter?"; helping American poetry move forward by organizing influential conferences; providing public service and initiating nationwide arts projects such as Poetry Out Loud through his leadership of the National Endowment for the Arts; and editing twenty best-selling literary anthologies widely used in American classrooms. Taken together, the twenty-two collected interviews increase our understanding of Gioia's poetry and poetics, offer aesthetic pleasure in themselves, and provide a personal encounter with a writer who has made poetry matter. The book presents the actual voice of Dana Gioia, who speaks of his personal and creative life and articulates his unique vision of American culture and poetry.

This collection explores the heterogeneous places we have traditionally been taught to term 'islands.' It stages a conversation on the very idea of 'island-ness', thus contributing to a new field of research at the crossroads of law, geography, literature, urban planning, politics, arts, and cultural studies. The contributions to this volume discuss the notion of island-ness as a device triggering the imagination, triggering narratives and representations in different creative fields; they explore the interactions between legal, socio-political, and fictional approaches to remoteness and the 'state of insularity,' policy responses to both remoteness and boundaries on different scales, and the insular legal framing of geographical remoteness. The product of a cross-disciplinary exchange on islands, this edited volume will be of great interest to those working in the fields of Island Studies, as well as literary studies scholars, geographers, and legal scholars.

Although Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel To Kill a Mockingbird has attracted a great deal of scholarly and popular attention due to its engaging narrative and broad appeal to a sense of justice, little has been done to examine the modern classic through the lens of Lee's controversial novel Go Set a Watchman, published unexpectedly a year before the author's death. In Mockingbird Grows Up Cheli Reutter and Jonathan S. Cullick assemble a team of scholars to take on the task of interpreting, contextualising, and deconstructing To Kill a Mockingbird in the wake of Go Set a Watchman. The essays contained in this groundbreaking volume cover a range of literary topics, such as race, sexuality, language, and reading contexts. Critically, the volume revisits the question of African-American characterisation in Lee's work and reexamines the development of Atticus Finch, a character long believed to be an exemplar of justice and virtue in Lee's fiction. The editors also take on questions regarding the publication of Go Set a Watchman, and Holly Blackford contributes an essay that places Watchman within the pantheon of American literature. Literary scholars, educators, and those interested in southern literature will appreciate the new light this publication sheds on a classic American novel. Mockingbird Grows Up offers a deeper understanding of a canonical American work and prepares a new generation to engage with Harper Lee's appealing prose, complex characters, and influential metaphors.

Contributions by Torsten Caeners, Phoebe Chen, Mathieu Donner, Shannon Hervey, Angela S. Insenga, Patricia Kennon, Maryna Matlock, Ferne Merrylees, Lars Schmeink, Anita Tarr, Tony M. Vinci, and Donna R. White For centuries, humanism has provided a paradigm for what it means to be human: a rational, unique, unified, universal, autonomous being. Recently, however, a new philosophical approach, posthumanism, has questioned these assumptions, asserting that being human is not a fixed state but one always dynamic and evolving. Restrictive boundaries are no longer in play, and we do not define who we are by delineating what we are not (animal, machine, monster). There is no one aspect that makes a being human--self-awareness, emotion, artistic expression, or problem-solving--since human characteristics reside in other species along with shared DNA. Instead, posthumanism looks at the ways our bodies, intelligence, and behavior connect and interact with the environment, technology, and other species. In Posthumanism in Young Adult Fiction: Finding Humanity in a Posthuman World, editors Anita Tarr and Donna R. White collect twelve essays that explore this new discipline's relevance in young adult literature. Adolescents often tangle with many issues raised by posthumanist theory, such as body issues. The in-betweenness of adolescence makes stories for young adults ripe for posthumanist study. Contributors to the volume explore ideas of posthumanism, including democratization of power, body enhancements, hybridity, multiplicity/plurality, and the environment, by analyzing recent works for young adults, including award-winners like Paolo Bacigalupi's Ship Breaker and Nancy Farmer's The House of the Scorpion, as well as the works of Octavia Butler and China Mieville.

When an essay is due and dreaded exams loom, here's the lit-crit help students need to succeed! SparkNotes Literature Guides make studying smarter, better, and faster. They provide chapter-by-chapter analysis, explanations of key themes, motifs and symbols, a review quiz, and essay topics. Lively and accessible, SparkNotes is perfect for late-night studying and paper writing.

This is a book of book lists. Not of the '1,001 Books You MUST Read Before You Die' variety but lists that tell stories. Lists that make you smile, make you wonder, and see titles together in entirely new ways. From Bin Laden's bookshelf to the books most frequently left in hotels, from prisoners' favourite books to MPs' most borrowed books, these lists are proof that a person's bookcase tells you everything you need to know about them, and sometimes more besides.

Charting a homeward-bound voyage from Bombay to London aboard a sailing ship, The Nigger of the 'Narcissus' (1897) captured the late-Victorian era's maritime obsession and identified the strikingly original talent of Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) as a sea writer in what has proved to be a landmark of sea literature. The Introduction situates the novel in Conrad's career and traces its origins and reception. Explanatory notes illuminate literary and historical references, identify real-life places and indicate Conrad's sources and influences. The essay on the text and the apparatus lay out the history of the work's composition and publication, and detail interventions by Conrad's typists, compositors and editors. Also included are notes explaining literary and historical references, a glossary of nautical terms, illustrations, including maps and pictures of early drafts, and appendixes. This edition of The Nigger of the 'Narcissus' presents the novel and its preface in forms more authoritative than any so far printed, and restores a text that has circulated in defective forms since its original publication.

In the past seven centuries Dante has become world renowned, with his works translated into multiple languages and read by people of all ages and cultural backgrounds. This volume brings together interdisciplinary essays by leading, international scholars to provide a comprehensive account of the historical, cultural and intellectual context in which Dante lived and worked: from the economic, social and political scene to the feel of daily life; from education and religion to the administration of justice; from medicine to philosophy and science; from classical antiquity to popular culture; and from the dramatic transformation of urban spaces to the explosion of visual arts and music. This book, while locating Dante in relation to each of these topics, offers readers a clear and reliable idea of what life was like for Dante as an outstanding poet and intellectual in the Italy of the late Middle Ages.

How contemporary Cuban writers build transnational communitiesIn Writing Islands, Elena Lahr-Vivaz employs methods from archipelagic studies to analyze works of contemporary Cuban writers on the island alongside those in exile. Offering a new lens to explore the multiplicity of Cuban space and identity, she argues that these writers approach their nation as part of a larger, transnational network of islands. Introducing the term "arcubielago" to describe the spaces created by Cuban writers, both on the ground and in print, Lahr-Vivaz illuminates how transnational communities are forged and how they function across space and time. Lahr-Vivaz considers how poets, novelists, and essayists of the 1990s and 2000s built interconnected communities of readers through blogs, state-sponsored book fairs, informal methods of book circulation, and intertextual dialogues. Book chapters offer in-depth analyses of the works of writers as different as Reina Maria Rodriguez, known for lyrical poetry, and Zoe Valdes, known for strident critiques of Fidel Castro. Incorporating insights from on-site interviews in Cuba, Spain, and the United States, Lahr-Vivaz analyzes how writers maintained connections materially, through the distribution of works, and metaphorically, as their texts bridge spaces separated by geopolitics. Through a decolonizing methodology that resists limiting Cuba to a distinct geographic space, Writing Islands investigates the nuances of Cuban identity, the creation of alternate spaces of identity, the potential of the Internet for artistic expression, and the transnational bonds that join far-flung communities. Publication of this work made possible by a Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Popular perceptions of American writers as either godless radicals or God-fearing reactionaries overlook a vital tradition of Christian leftist thought and creative work. In Communion of Radicals, Jonathan McGregor offers the first literary history of theologically conservative writers who embraced political radicalism, as their reverence for tradition impelled them to work for social justice. Challenging recent accounts that examine twentieth-century American literature against the backdrop of the rising Religious Right, Communion of Radicals uncovers a different literary lineage in which allegiance to religious tradition fostered dedication to a more just future. From the Gilded Age to the Great Depression to the civil rights movement, traditional faith empowered the rebellious writing of socialists, anarchists, and Catholic personalists such as Vida Scudder, Dorothy Day, Claude McKay, F. O. Matthiessen, and W. H. Auden. By recovering their strain of traditioned radicalism, McGregor shows how strong faith in the past can fuel the struggle for an equitable future. As Christian socialists, Scudder and Ralph Adams Cram envisioned their movement for beloved community as a modern version of medieval monasticism. Day and the Catholic Workers followed the fourteenth-century example of St. Francis when they lived and wrote among the disaffected souls on the Bowery during the Great Depression. Tennessee's Fellowship of Southern Churchmen argued for a socialist and antiracist understanding of the notion of "the South and the Agrarian tradition" popularized by James McBride Dabbs, Walker Percy, and Wendell Berry. Agrarian roots flowered into creative expressions encompassing the queer and Black medievalist poetry of Auden and McKay, respectively; Matthiessen's Catholic socialist interpretation of the American Renaissance; and the genteel anarchism of Percy's southern comic novels. Imaginative writing enabled these Christian leftists to commune with the past and with each other, driving their radical efforts in the present. Communion of Radicals chronicles a literary Christian left that unites deeply traditional faith with radicalism, and offers a usable past that disrupts perceived alignments of religion and politics.

A History of English Autobiography explores the genealogy of autobiographical writing in England from the medieval period to the digital era. Beginning with an extensive introduction that charts important theoretical contributions to the field, this History includes wide-ranging essays that illuminate the legacy of English autobiography. Organized thematically, these essays survey the multilayered writings of such diverse authors as Chaucer, Bunyan, Carlyle, Newman, Wilde and Woolf. Written by a host of leading scholars, this History is the definitive, single-volume collection on English autobiography and will serve as an invaluable reference for specialists and students alike.

A literary scholar and investment banker applies economic criticism to canonical novels, dramatically changing the way we read these classics and proposing a new model for how economics can inform literary analysis. Every writer is a player in the marketplace for literature. Jonathan Paine locates the economics ingrained within the stories themselves, revealing how a text provides a record of its author's attempt to sell the story to his or her readers. An unusual literary scholar with a background in finance, Paine mines stories for evidence of the conditions of their production. Through his wholly original reading, Balzac's The Splendors and Miseries of Courtesans becomes a secret diary of its author's struggles to cope with the commercializing influence of serial publication in newspapers. The Brothers Karamazov transforms into a story of Dostoevsky's sequential bets with his readers, present and future, about how to write a novel. Zola's Money documents the rise of big business and is itself a product of Zola's own big business, his factory of novels. Combining close readings with detailed analyses of the nineteenth-century publishing contexts in which prose fiction first became a product, Selling the Story shows how the business of literature affects even literary devices such as genre, plot, and repetition. Paine argues that no book can be properly understood without reference to its point of sale: the author's knowledge of the market, of reader expectations, and of his or her own efforts to define and achieve literary value.

Contributions by Danielle Christmas, Joanna Davis-McElligatt, Garrett Bridger Gilmore, Spencer R. Herrera, Cassandra Jackson, Stacie McCormick, Maria Seger, Randi Lynn Tanglen, Brook Thomas, Michael C. Weisenburg, and Lisa Woolfork Reading Confederate Monuments addresses the urgent and vital need for scholars, educators, and the general public to be able to read and interpret the literal and cultural Confederate monuments pervading life in the contemporary United States. The literary and cultural studies scholars featured in this collection engage many different archives and methods, demonstrating how to read literal Confederate monuments as texts and in the context of the assortment of literatures that produced and celebrated them. They further explore how to read the literary texts advancing and contesting Confederate ideology in the US cultural imaginary-then and now-as monuments in and of themselves. On top of that, the essays published here lay bare the cultural and pedagogical work of Confederate monuments and counter-monuments-divulging how and what they teach their readers as communal and yet contested narratives-thereby showing why the persistence of Confederate monuments matters greatly to local and national notions of racial justice and belonging. In doing so, this collection illustrates what critics of US literature and culture can offer to ongoing scholarly and public discussions about Confederate monuments and memory. Even as we remove, relocate, and recontextualize the physical symbols of the Confederacy dotting the US landscape, the complicated histories, cultural products, and pedagogies of Confederate ideology remain embedded in the national consciousness. To disrupt and potentially dismantle these enduring narratives alongside the statues themselves, we must be able to recognize, analyze, and resist them in US life. The pieces in this collection position us to think deeply about how and why we should continue that work.

The public is familiar with the Emily Dickinson stereotype-an eccentric spinster in a white dress flitting about her father's house, hiding from visitors. But these associations are misguided and should be dismantled. This work aims to remove some of the distorted myths about Dickinson in order to clear a path to her poetry. The entries and short essays should open avenues of debate and individual critical analysis. This companion gives both instructors and readers multiple avenues for study. The entries and charts are intended to prompt ideas for classroom discussion and syllabus planning. Whether the reader is first encountering Dickinson's poems or returning to them, this book aims to inspire interpretative opportunities. The entries and charts make connections between Dickinson poems, ponder the significance of literary, artistic, historical, political or social contexts, and question the interpretations offered by others as they enter the never-ending debates between Dickinson scholars.

This edited book focuses on the state of language learning in Anglophone countries and brings together international research from a wide range of educational settings. Taking a contextual perspective on the language learning crisis currently facing Anglophone countries, the authors examine systemic challenges, real-world practices, and broader cultural trends that have an impact on the uptake of modern foreign languages in different Anglophone settings. This book will be of interest to scholars working in applied linguistics and language education, particularly those with a focus on educational policy and Global English.

Asian Americans have made many significant contributions to industry, science, politics, and the arts. At the same time, they have made great sacrifices and endured enormous hardships. This reference examines autobiographies and memoirs written by Asian Americans in the twentieth century. Included are alphabetically arranged entries on 60 major autobiographers of Asian descent. Some of these, such as Meena Alexander and Maxine Hong Kingston, are known primarily for their writings; others, such as Daniel K. Inouye, are known largely for other achievements, which they have chronicled in their autobiographies.

Each entry is written by an expert contributor and provides a reliable account of the autobiographer's life; reviews major autobiographical works and themes, including fictionalized autobiographies and autobiographical novels; presents a meticulously researched account of the critical reception of these works; and closes with a bibliography of primary and secondary sources. An introductory essay considers the history and development of autobiography in American literature and culture and discusses issues and themes vital to Asian American autobiographies and memoirs, such as family, diaspora, nationhood, identity, cultural assimilation, racial dynamics, and the formation of the Asian American literary canon. The volume closes with a selected bibliography.

The Wanderer in African American Literature highlights an enduring feature of African American letters: "From the slave narrative to Afrofuturism, the literature is populated, driven, and emboldened by wanderers who know no bounds." Gena E. Chandler argues that wanderers and the theme of wandering push the limits of narrative forms and challenge assumptions about the African American experience. The slave narratives of Olaudah Equiano and Harriet Jacobs echo eighteenth-and nineteenth-century literary traditions and chronicle journeys toward freedom and faith. Equiano traces his changing identity, integrating his native African culture with his adopted European one. Jacobs addresses the gender restrictions she faces as a slave and then a free woman whose progress in life remains uncertain and ongoing. Langston Hughes and Nella Larsen chronicle real and imagined journeys during the Harlem Renaissance and the Great Migration. Hughes's autobiography I Wonder as I Wander (1956) traces his global travels in the 1930s, highlighting his unique identity as a black American. Larsen's novel Quicksand (1928) follows its biracial heroine as she travels throughout the United States and to Denmark while navigating matters of race and gender. The protagonist of Richard Wright's The Outsider (1953) seeks individual freedom and a new identity but is "constrained within the boundaries of an American nation and a Western ideal that continuously views the black Subject as outside and distinct from the modern project of advancement and freedom." In James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room (1956), the white protagonist flees America for France yet cannot escape difficult questions about sexuality and race. Finally, John Edgar Wideman's The Cattle Killing (1996) tells the story of two wanderers-an itinerant preacher spreading God's word during the Great Awakening and a twentieth-century writer on a journey of self-discovery about his identity and vocation. The former experiences a crisis of his Christian faith, and the latter endures a crisis of faith in his literary abilities. Tying these diverse threads together, Chandler demonstrates the power of the black narrative to assimilate and redeploy the literary trope of wanderlust, exchanging its premise of rootless drifting for something altogether more mobilizing.

Join Mike Ashley on a characterful tour of the most ingenious and often forgotten books from the rich history of classic British science fiction. From the enrapturing tales of H. G. Wells to the punishing dystopian visions of 1984 and beyond, the evolution of science fiction from the 1890s to the 1960s is a fascinating journey into the hopes and fears of those years. Establishing this period as what we can now appreciate as the 'classic' age of the genre, which for most of this time had no name, Mike Ashley takes us on a tour of the stars, utopian and post-apocalyptic futures, worlds of AI and techno-thriller masterpieces asking piercing questions of the present. Though not seeking to be exhaustive, this book offers an accessible view of the impressive spectrum of imaginative writing which the genre's classic period has to offer. Towering science fiction greats such as Ballard and Aldiss run alongside the, perhaps unexpected, likes of G. K. Chesterton and J. B. Priestley and celebrate a side of science fiction beyond the stereotypes of space opera and bug-eyed monsters; the side of science fiction which proves why it must continue to be written and read, so long as any of us remain in uncertain times.

In times of trouble, worry or strife, a fiction prescription is just what the doctor ordered. Discover over 200 reading recommendations for great literature to soothe your soul and offer a cure for modern life, from Ageing through to Boredom via Hangovers and Procrastination. Reach for the perfect book in any situation with insightful and surprising recommendations for classic and current literature that offer words of wisdom, comfort and inspiration. The perfect gift for book lovers (or anyone) in uncertain times, from bibliotherapist and co-author of the bestselling The Novel Cure.

The purpose of the Bibliography of the International Arthurian Society (BIAS), which continues the annual bibliography previously published by the International Arthurian Society since 1949 as Bibliographical Bulletin of the International Arthurian Society / Bulletin Bibliographique de la Societe Internationale Arthurienne (without any interruption in the numerical sequence of annual volumes) is, year by year, to draw attention to all scholarly books and articles directly concerned with the matiere de Bretagne. Subjects which are only indirectly concerned with it, such as the origins of courtly love, are deliberately excluded. Also excluded are popular works, general surveys found in histories of literature and most studies which deal with the Arthurian tradition after the sixteenth century. Within these limits, the Bibliography aims to include all books, reviews and articles published in the year preceding its appearance, an exception being made for earlier studies which have been omitted inadvertently. The research section previously published in BBIAS/BBSIA will be integrated in the new Journal of the International Arthurian Society (JIAS).

The Chronology is a digest of the printed record of English literature 1474-2000, providing a carefully selected, checklist of significant and representative works including fiction, poetry, drama, literary scholarship, and non-fiction. Each entry includes invaluable subsidiary information, and extensive author and titles indexes provide alternative means of access.

`The Index of Middle English Prose when completed will be a monumental achievement' REVIEW OF ENGLISH STUDIES Two very different collections are surveyed in this volume. The manuscripts of Pembroke College, Cambridge are typical of a medieval foundation. Its core of books is a working library of that period, representing the interests andneeds of its Fellows, very often given or bequeathed by them to the College. The collection was substantially enlarged in 1599 through the gift by William Smart of Ipswich of a large number of manuscripts which until the Reformation had belonged to the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds. By contrast the emphasis of the Fitzwilliam Museum collection is to a great extent art historical. At its heart are the manuscripts bequeathed by Lord Fitzwilliam in 1816. These were supplemented throughout the 19th century by a series of gifts and bequests, culminating in 1904 in the largest bequest to date, from Frank McClean, of some 203 manuscripts. In spite of the different character of the two collections, both contain a range of Middle English prose items, among them Chaucer's Boece, a complete Wycliffite sermon cycle and several Paston letters [all from Pembroke], the Anlaby Cartulary, the "Canutus" pestilence tract, the Brut, Lydgate's Serpent of Division and Nicholas Love's Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ (from the Fitzwilliam). KARI ANNE RAND is Professor of Older English Literature at the University of Oslo.