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.

Transforming Girls: The Work of Nineteenth-Century Adolescence explores the paradox of the nineteenth-century girls' book. On the one hand, early novels for adolescent girls rely on gender binaries and suggest that girls must accommodate and support a patriarchal framework to be happy. On the other, they provide access to imagined worlds in which teens are at the center. The early girls' book frames female adolescence as an opportunity for productive investment in the self. This is a space where mentors who trust themselves, the education they provide, and the girl's essentially good nature neutralize the girl's own anxieties about maturity. These mid-nineteenth-century novels focus on female adolescence as a social category in unexpected ways. They draw not on a twentieth-century model of the alienated adolescent, but on a model of collaborative growth. The purpose of these novels is to approach adolescence-a category that continues to engage and perplex us-from another perspective, one in which fluid identity and the deliberate construction of a self are celebrated. They provide alternatives to cultural beliefs about what it was like to be a white, middle-class girl in the nineteenth century and challenge the assumption that the evolution of the girls' book is always a movement towards less sexist, less restrictive images of girls. Drawing on best-selling novels in the United States and Germany (where this genre is referred to as Backfischliteratur), Transforming Girls reframes our understanding of the history of the girls' book and provides insightful readings of forgotten bestsellers. It also outlines an alternate model for imagining adolescence and supporting adolescent girls. The awkward adolescent girl-so popular in mid-nineteenth-century fiction for girls-remains a valuable resource for understanding contemporary girls and stories about them.

Many of the best-known British authors of the 1800s were fascinated by the science and technology of their era. Dickens included spontaneous human combustion and "mesmerism" (hyptnotism) in his plots. Mary Shelley created the immortal Dr. Victor Frankenstein and his creature. H.G. Wells imagined the Time Machine, the Invisible Man, and invaders from Mars. Percy Shelley was as infamous at Oxford for his smelly experiments and for his atheism. This book of essays explores representations of technology in the work of various nineteenth-century British authors. Essays cluster around two important areas of innovation-transportation and medicine. Each essay contributor accessibly maps out the places where art and science meet, detailing how these authors both affected and reflected the technological revolutions of their time.

In 1940, Hans Augusto Rey and Margret Rey built two bikes, packed what they could, and fled wartime Paris. Among the possessions they escaped with was a manuscript that would later become one of the most celebrated books in children's literature-Curious George. Since his debut in 1941, the mischievous icon has only grown in popularity. After being captured in Africa by the Man in the Yellow Hat and taken to live in the big city's zoo, Curious George became a symbol of curiosity, adventure, and exploration. In Curious about George: Curious George, Cultural Icons, Colonialism, and US Exceptionalism, author Rae Lynn Schwartz-DuPre argues that the beloved character also performs within a narrative of racism, colonialism, and heroism. Using theories of colonial and rhetorical studies to explain why cultural icons like Curious George are able to avoid criticism, Schwartz-DuPre investigates the ways these characters operate as capacious figures, embodying and circulating the narratives that construct them, and effectively argues that discourses about George provide a rich training ground for children to learn US citizenship and become innocent supporters of colonial American exceptionalism. By drawing on postcolonial theory, children's criticisms, science and technology studies, and nostalgia, Schwartz-DuPre's critical reading explains the dismissal of the monkey's 1941 abduction from Africa and enslavement in the US, described in the first book, by illuminating two powerful roles he currently holds: essential STEM ambassador at a time when science and technology is central to global competitiveness and as a World War II refugee who offers a "deficient" version of the Holocaust while performing model US immigrant. Curious George's twin heroic roles highlight racist science and an Americanized Holocaust narrative. By situating George as a representation of enslaved Africans and Holocaust refugees, Curious about George illuminates the danger of contemporary zero-sum identity politics, the colonization of marginalized identities, and racist knowledge production. Importantly, it demonstrates the ways in which popular culture can be harnessed both to promote colonial benevolence and to present possibilities for resistance.

Discover artifacts from a thousand generations of Jedi history in this must-have guide to the galaxy's greatest heroes! A collection of treasures inspired by the galaxy's most legendary warriors, Star Wars: Jedi Ephemera Kit will take readers on a thrilling journey through the history of the Jedi Order. From the heroic days of the High Republic, to the eras of Ahsoka Tano, Luke Skywalker, and Rey, Star Wars: Jedi Ephemera Kit compiles exquisite artifacts inspired by the Jedi and their valiant adventures.

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.

The Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction in Literature is a useful reference to the broad and burgeoning field of science fiction literature. Science fiction literature has gained immensely in critical respect and attention, while maintaining a broad readership. However, despite the fact that it is a rapidly changing field, contemporary science fiction literature also maintains a strong sense of its connections to science fiction of the past, which makes a historical reference of this sort particularly valuable as a tool for understanding science fiction literature as it now exists and as it has evolved over the years. The Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction in Literature covers the history of science fiction in literature through a chronology, an introductory essay, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 300 cross-referenced entries including *significant people; *themes; *critical issues; and *the most significant genres that have formed science fiction literature. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about this subject.

Isiah Lavender III's Dis-Orienting Planets amplifies critical issues surrounding the racial and ethnic dimensions of science fiction. This edited volume explores depictions of Asia and Asians in science fiction literature, film, and fandom with particular regard to China, Japan, India, and Korea. Dis-Orienting Planets highlights so-called yellow and brown peoples from the constellation of a historically white genre. The collection launches into political representations of Asian identity in science fiction's imagination, from fear of the Yellow Peril and its racist stereotypes to techno-Orientalism and the remains of a postcolonial heritage. Thus the essays, by contributors such as Takayuki Tatsumi, Veronica Hollinger, Uppinder Mehan, and Stephen Hong Sohn, reconfigure the very study of race in science fiction. A follow-up to Lavender's Black and Brown Planets, this collection expands the racial politics governing the renewed visibility of Asia in science fiction. One of the few on this subject, the volume probes Gary Shteyngart's novel Super Sad True Love Story, the acclaimed film Cloud Atlas, and Guillermo del Toro's monster film Pacific Rim, among others. Dis-Orienting Planets embarks on a wide-ranging assessment of Asian representations in science fiction, upon the determination that our visions of the future must include all people of color. Contributions by Suparno Banerjee, Cait Coker, Jeshua Enriquez, Joan Gordon, Veronica Hollinger, Malisa Kurtz, Stephanie Li, Bradford Lyau, Uppinder Mehan, Graham J. Murphy, Baryon Tensor Posadas, Amy J. Ransom, Robin Anne Reid, Haerin Shin, Stephen Hong Sohn, Takayuki Tatsumi, and Timothy J. Yamamura.

The Historical Dictionary of Latin American Literature and Theater provides users with an accessible single-volume reference tool covering Portuguese-speaking Brazil and the 16 Spanish-speaking countries of continental Latin America (Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela). Entries for authors, ranging from the early colonial period to the present, give succinct biographical data and an account of the author's literary production, with particular attention to their most prominent works and where they belong in literary history. The introduction provides a review of Latin American literature and theater as a whole while separate dictionary entries for each country offer insight into the history of national literatures. Entries for literary terms, movements, and genres serve to complement these commentaries, and an extensive bibliography points the way for further reading. The comprehensive view and detailed information obtained from all these elements will make this book of use to the general-interest reader, Latin American studies students, and the academic specialist.

Conversations with Colum McCann brings together eighteen interviews with a world-renowned fiction writer. Ranging from his 1994 literary debut, Fishing the Sloe-Black River, to a previously unpublished interview conducted in 2016, these interviews represent the development as well as the continuation of McCann's interests. The number and length of the later conversations attest to his star-power. Let the Great World Spin earned him the National Book Award and promises to become a major motion picture. His most recent novel, TransAtlantic, has awed readers with its dynamic yoking of the 1845-46 visit of Frederick Douglass to Ireland, the 1919 first nonstop transatlantic flight of Alcock and Brown, and Senator George Mitchell's 1998 efforts to achieve a peace accord in Northern Ireland. An extensive interview by scholar Cecile Maudet is included here, as is an interview by John Cusatis, who wrote Understanding Colum McCann, the first extensive critical analysis of McCann's work. An author who actually enjoys talking about his work, McCann (b. 1965) offers insights into his method of writing, what he hopes to achieve, as well as the challenge of writing each novel to go beyond his accomplishments in the novel before. Readers will note how many of his responses include stories in which he himself is the object of the humor and how often his remarks reveal insights into his character as a man who sees the grittiness of the urban landscape but never loses faith in the strength of ordinary people and their capacity to prevail.

Justice, Women, and Power in English Renaissance Drama is a collection of essays that explores the relationship of gender and justice as represented in English Renaissance drama. Many of the essays are concerned with interrogating the ways that women relied upon and/or reacted to the legal (and overarching political) systems in early modern England. Other essays examine issues involving the role of narrative, evidence, and gendered expectations about justice in the plays of this time period. An implicit concern of these essays is whether women were empowered or disempowered in this interaction with the legal/political system.

This book, first published in 1988, is the most comprehensive annotation of Bleak House ever undertaken. It provides authoritative background information about the topical issues of the novel that interested Dickens as a social critic and activist. It also describes the novel's literary antecedents and identifies the sources of its hundreds of literary and historical allusions. The annotation is based on a wide range of nineteenth-century sources - from newspapers, periodicals and parliamentary papers to travel guides and cookery books - and gives the modern reader unprecedented access to both Bleak House - Dickens's tract for the times - and the period when it was written.

This book, first published in 1988, reveals the great care Dickens took with the planning and preparation of A Tale of Two Cities and its roots. It also explores the aspects of Dickens's life, especially his interest in private theatricals, which contributed to the genesis of the novel. For the first time the historical sources for the very individual account of the French Revolution presented in A Tale of Two Cities are examined, and the book investigates the novelist's debt to French and English eye-witnesses. This Companion identifies the multitude of allusions to what Dickens often regarded as the whims of eighteenth-century justice, religion, philosophy, fashion and society. It provides the modern reader with both fundamental sources of information and a fascinating account of the creation of a complex historical novel.

This book, first published in 1986, explores the allusions in Dickens's work, such as current events and religious and intellectual issues, social customs, topography, costume, furniture and transportation. Together with an analysis of Dickens's imaginative responses to his culture, and their place in the genesis and composition of the text, this book is a full-scale, thoroughgoing annotation that The Mystery of Edwin Drood requires.

Caribbean women have long utilized the medium of fiction to break the pervasive silence surrounding abuse and exploitation. Contemporary works by such authors as Tiphanie Yanique and Nicole Dennis-Benn illustrate the deep-rooted consequences of trauma based on gender, sexuality, and race, and trace the steps that women take to find safer ground from oppression. Taking Flight examines the immigrant experience in contemporary Caribbean women's writing and considers the effects of restrictive social mores. In the texts examined in Taking Flight, culturally sanctioned violence impacts the ability of female characters to be at home in their bodies or in the spaces they inhabit. The works draw attention to the historic racialization and sexualization of black women's bodies and continue the legacy of narrating black women's long-standing contestation of systems of oppression. Arguing that there is a clear link between trauma, shame, and migration, with trauma serving as a precursor to the protagonists' emigration, Jennifer Donahue focuses on how female bodies are policed; how moral, racial, and sexual codes are linked; and how the enforcement of social norms can function as a form of trauma. Donahue considers the relationship between trauma, shame, and sexual politics and investigates how shame works as a social regulator that frequently leads to withdrawal or avoidant behaviors in those who violate socially sanctioned mores. Most importantly, Taking Flight positions flight as a powerful counter to disempowerment and considers how flight, whether through dissociation or migration, functions as a form of resistance.

J. R. R. Tolkien is arguably the most influential fantasy writer of all time-his world building and epic mythology have changed Western audiences' imaginations and the entire fantasy genre. This book is the first wide-ranging Christian Platonic reading on Tolkien's fiction. This analysis, written for scholars and general Tolkien enthusiasts alike, discusses how his fiction is constructed on levels of language, myth and textuality that have a background in the Greek philosopher Plato's texts and early Christian philosophy influenced by Plato. It discusses the concepts of ideal and real, creation and existence, and fall and struggle as central elements of Tolkien's fiction, focusing on The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion and The History of Middle-earth. Reading Tolkien's fiction as a depiction of ideal and real, from the vision of creation to the process of realization, illuminates a part of Tolkien's aesthetics and mythology that previous studies have overlooked.

The study of contemporary fiction is a fascinating yet challenging one. Contemporary fiction has immediate relevance to popular culture, the news, scholarly organizations, and education - where it is found on the syllabus in schools and universities - but it also offers challenges. What is 'contemporary'? How do we track cultural shifts and changes? The Routledge Companion to Twenty-First Century Literary Fiction takes on this challenge, mapping key literary trends from the year 2000 onwards, as the landscape of our century continues to take shape around us. A significant and central intervention into contemporary literature, this Companion offers essential coverage of writers who have risen to prominence since then, such as Hari Kunzru, Jennifer Egan, David Mitchell, Jonathan Lethem, Ali Smith, A. L. Kennedy, Hilary Mantel, Marilynne Robinson, and Colson Whitehead. Thirty-eight essays by leading and emerging international scholars cover topics such as: * Identity, including race, sexuality, class, and religion in the twenty-first century; * The impact of technology, terrorism, activism, and the global economy on the modern world and modern literature; * The form and format of twenty-first century literary fiction, including analysis of established genres such as the pastoral, graphic novels, and comedic writing, and how these have been adapted in recent years. Accessible to experts, students, and general readers, The Routledge Companion to Twenty-First Century Literary Fiction provides a map of the critical issues central to the discipline, as well as uncovering new perspectives and new directions for the development of the field. It is essential reading for anyone interested in the past, present, and future of contemporary literature.

Much like his novels, Steve Erickson (b. 1950) exists on the periphery of our perception, a shadow figure lurking on the margins, threatening to break through, but never fully emerging. Despite receiving prestigious honors, Erickson has remained a subterranean literary figure, receiving effusive praise from his fans, befuddled or cautious assessments from reviewers, and scant scholarly attention. Erickson's obscurity comes in part from the difficulty of categorizing his work within current trends in fiction, and in part from the wide variety of concerns that populate his writing: literature, music, film, politics, history, time, and his fascination with his home city of Los Angeles. His dream-fueled blend of European modernism, American pulp, and paranoid late-century postmodernism makes him essential to an appreciation of the last forty years of American fiction but difficult to classify neatly within that same realm. He is at once thoroughly of his time and distinctly outside it. In these twenty-four interviews Erickson clarifies how his aesthetic and political visions are inextricable from each other. He diagnoses the American condition since World War II, only to reveal that America's triumphs and failures have been consistent since its inception-and that he presciently described decades ago certain features of our present. Additionally, the interviews expose the remarkable consistency of Erickson's vision over time while simultaneously capturing the new threads that appear in his later fiction as they emerge in his thought. Conversations with Steve Erickson will deepen readers' understanding of how Erickson's books work-and why this utterly singular writer deserves greater attention.

Thomas Hardy enjoyed a long and distinguished career as a novelist before devoting his talents to writing poetry for the remainder of his life. This book focuses on Hardy's remarkable achievements as a novelist. Although Victorian readers considered some of his works controversial, his novels remained highly regarded. His novels still appear in the syllabi of courses in Victorian literature and the British novel, as well as courses in feminist/gender studies, environmental studies, and other topics. For scholars, students, and the general reader, this companion helps to makes Hardy's novels accessible by providing a detailed biography of Hardy, plot summaries of each novel, and analyses of the critical contexts surrounding them. Entries focus on the people, cultural forces, literary forms, and movements that influenced Hardy's novels. The companion also suggests approaches for original interpretations and suggestions for further study.

Against the methodological backdrop of historical and comparative folk narrative research, 101 Middle Eastern Tales and Their Impact on Western Oral Tradition surveys the history, dissemination, and characteristics of over one hundred narratives transmitted to Western tradition from or by the Middle Eastern Muslim literatures (i.e., authored written works in Arabic, Persian, and Ottoman Turkish). For a tale to be included, Ulrich Marzolph considered two criteria: that the tale originates from or at least was transmitted by a Middle Eastern source, and that it was recorded from a Western narrator's oral performance in the course of the nineteenth or twentieth century. The rationale behind these restrictive definitions is predicated on Marzolph's main concern with the long-lasting effect that some of the "Oriental" narratives exercised in Western popular tradition - those tales that have withstood the test of time, Marzolph focuses on the originally "Oriental" tales that became part and parcel of modern Western oral tradition. Since antiquity, the "Orient" constitutes the quintessential Other vis-a-vis the European cultures. While delineation against this Other served to define and reassure the Self, the "Orient" also constituted a constant source of fascination, attraction, and inspiration. Through oral retellings, numerous tales from Muslim tradition became an integral part of European oral and written tradition in the form of learned treatises, medieval sermons, late medieval fabliaux, early modern chapbooks, contemporary magazines, and more. In present times, when national narcissisms often acquire the status of strongholds delineating the Us against the Other, it is imperative to distinguish, document, visualize, and discuss the extent to which the West is not only indebted to the Muslim world but also shares common features with Muslim narrative tradition. 101 Middle Eastern Tales and Their Impact on Western Oral Tradition is an important contribution to this debate and a vital work for scholars, students, and readers of folklore and fairy tales.

Thornton Wilder is one of America's greatest writers, the only author to win Pulitzer Prizes in two different categories-one in fiction and two in drama. Equally well known for his plays and novels, his unique and diverse body of work also includes essays, journals, lectures, and film and television scripts. In The Thornton Wilder Encyclopedia, Thomas S. Hischak exhaustively covers Wilder's life and extensive career. Entries not only contain every one of his novels, plays, and scripts, but also his letters, journals, and all other existing works by Wilder, published or unpublished. In addition, this valuable reference features entries on the individuals who worked with Wilder and friends and family members who were a great influence on him. With a biography of Wilder to introduce the work and a chronology and selected bibliography to augment the entries, The Thornton Wilder Encyclopedia is the most comprehensive reference available on one of America's greatest playwrights and finest novelists.

Acts of Logos examines the 19th-century foundations of St. Petersburg's famous literary heritage, with a focus on the unifying principle of material animation. Ever since Pushkin's 1833 poem The Bronze Horseman, the city has provided a literary space in which inanimate things (noses, playing cards, overcoats) spring to life. Scollins's book addresses this issue of animacy by analyzing the powerful function of language in the city's literature, from its mythic origins-in which the tsar Peter appears as a God-like creator, calling his city forth from nothing-to the earliest texts of its literary tradition, when poets took up the pen to commit their own acts of verbal creation. Her interpretations shed new light on the canonical works of Pushkin and Gogol, exposing the performative and subversive possibilities of the poetic word in the Petersburg tradition, and revealing an emerging literary culture capable of challenging the official narratives of the state.

This book explores the changing perception of time and space in avant-garde, modernist, and contemporary poetry. The author characterizes the works of modern Russian, French, and Anglo-American poets based on their attitudes towards reality, time, space, and history revealed in their poetics. The author compares the work of major Russian innovative poets Osip Mandelstam, Velimir Khlebnikov, Vladimir Mayakovsky, and Joseph Brodsky with that of W. B. Yeats, T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and, in spite of the postmodernist "estrangement" of reality, the author proves that similar traces can be found in the work of contemporary American poets John Ashbery and Charles Bernstein. Both affinities and drastic differences are revealed in the poets' attitudes towards time-space, reality, and history.

The poetry of John Berryman (1914-1972) is primarily concerned with the self in response to the rapid social, political, sexual, racial, and technological transformations of the twentieth century, and their impact on the psyche and spirit, both individual and collective. He was just as likely to find inspiration in his local newspaper as he did from the poetry of Hopkins or Milton. In fact, in contrast to the popular perception of Berryman drunkenly composing strange, dreamlike, abstract, esoteric poems, Berryman was intensely aware of craft. His best work routinely utilizes a variety of rhetorical styles, shifting effortlessly from the lyric to the prosaic. For Berryman, poetry was nothing less than a vocation, a mission, and a way of life. Though he desired fame, he acknowledged its relative unimportance when he stated that the "important thing is that your work is something no one else can do". As a result, Berryman very rarely granted interviews - "I teach and I write", he explained, "I'm not copy" - yet when he did the results were always captivating. Collected in Conversations with John Berryman are all of Berryman's major interviews, personality pieces, profiles, and local interest items, where interviewers attempt to unravel him, as both Berryman and his interlocutors struggle to find value in poetry in a fallen world.

Contributions by Aneesh Barai, Clementine Beauvais, Justyna Deszcz-Tryhubczak, Terri Doughty, Aneta Dybska, Blanka Grzegorczyk, Zoe Jaques, Vanessa Joosen, Maria Nikolajeva, Marek Oziewicz, Ashley N. Reese, Malini Roy, Sabine Steels, Lucy Stone, Bjoern Sundmark, Michelle Superle, Nozomi Uematsu, Anastasia Ulanowicz, Helma van Lierop-Debrauwer, and Jean Webb. Intergenerational solidarity is a vital element of societal relationships that ensures survival of humanity. It connects generations, fostering transfer of common values, cumulative knowledge, experience, and culture essential to human development. In the face of global aging, changing family structures, family separations, economic insecurity, and political trends pitting young and old against each other, intergenerational solidarity is now, more than ever, a pressing need. Intergenerational Solidarity in Children's Literature and Film argues that productions for young audiences can stimulate intellectual and emotional connections between generations by representing intergenerational solidarity. For example, one essayist focuses on Disney films, which have shown a long-time commitment to variously highlighting, and then conservatively healing, fissures between generations. However, Disney-Pixar's Up and Coco instead portray intergenerational alliances - young collaborating with old, the living working alongside the dead - as necessary to achieving goals. The collection also testifies to the cultural, social, and political significance of children's culture in the development of generational intelligence and empathy towards age-others and positions the field of children's literature studies as a site of intergenerational solidarity, opening possibilities for a new socially consequential inquiry into the culture of childhood.