Few poets have captured the imagination of the world like Seamus Heaney. Recognized as one of the truly outstanding poets of our time, Heaney's work is both critically acclaimed and popular with the general reader. It is taught in classrooms across the globe and has been translated into more than twenty-seven languages. Presenting original research from an international field of scholars, Seamus Heaney in Context offers new pathways to explore the places, times and influences that made Heaney a poet. Drawing on newly available archival and print sources, these essays situate Heaney in a multitude of contexts that help readers navigate received ideas about his life and work. In mapping intersecting themes in the current terrain of Heaney criticism, this study also signposts new directions for understanding Heaney's poetry in future contexts.

Contributions by Megan De Roover, Jennifer Harrison, Sarah Jackson, Zoe Jaques, Nada Kujund?Yi?c, Ivana Milkovi?c, Niall Nance-Carroll, Perry Nodelman, David Rudd, Jonathan Chun Ngai Tsang, Nicholas Tucker, Donna Varga, and Tim Wadham One hundred years ago, disparate events culminated in one of the most momentous happenings in the history of children's literature. Christopher Robin Milne was born to A. A. Milne and his wife; Edward Bear, a lovable stuffed toy, arrived on the market; and a living, young bear named Winnie settled in at the London Zoo. The collaboration originally begun by the Milnes, the Shepards, Winnie herself, and the many toys and personalities who fed into the Pooh legend continued to evolve throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries to become a global phenomenon. Yet even a brief examination of this sensation reveals that Pooh and his adventures were from the onset marked by a rich complexity behind a seeming simplicity and innocence. This volume, after a decades-long lull in concentrated Pooh scholarship, seeks to highlight the plurality of perspectives, modes, and interpretations these tales afford, especially after the Disney Corporation scooped its paws into the honeypot in the 1950s. Positioning Pooh: Edward Bear after One Hundred Years argues the doings of Pooh remain relevant for readers in a posthuman, information-centric, media-saturated, globalized age. Pooh's forays destabilize social certainties on all levels-linguistic, ontological, legal, narrative, political, and so on. Through essays that focus on geography, language, narrative, characterization, history, politics, economics, and a host of other social and cultural phenomena, contributors to this volume explore how the stories open up discourses about identity, ethics, social relations, and notions of belonging. This first volume to offer multiple perspectives from multiple authors on the Winnie-the-Pooh books in a single collection focuses on and develops approaches that bring this classic of children's literature into the current era. Essays included not only are of relevance to scholars with an interest in Pooh, Milne, and the ""golden age"" of children's literature, but also showcase the development of children's literature scholarship in step with exciting modern developments in literary theory.

Just over two hundred years ago on a stormy night, a young woman conceived of what would become one of the most iconic images of science gone wrong, the story of Victor Frankenstein and his Creature. For a long period, Mary Shelley languished in the shadow of her luminary husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley, but was rescued from obscurity by the feminist scholars of the 1970s and 1980s. This book offers a new perspective on Shelley and on science fiction, arguing that Shelley both established a new discursive space for moral thinking and laid the groundwork for the genre of science fiction. Adopting a contextual biographical approach to understand the factors that enabled Shelley to create Frankenstein, and undertaking a close reading of the 1818 and 1831 editions of the text, gives readers insight into how this famous story synthesizes many of the concerns about new science that were prevalent in Shelley's time. Using Michel Foucault's concept of discourse, this work argues that Shelley should be credited with not only the foundation of a genre but recognized as a figure who created a new cultural space for readers to explore their fears and negotiate the moral landscape of new science.

When Harry Potter first boards the Hogwarts Express, he journeys to a world which Rowling says has alchemy as its "internal logic." The Philosopher's Stone, known for its power to transform base metals into gold and to give immortality to its maker, is the subject of the conflict between Harry and Voldemort in the first book of the series. But alchemy is not about money or eternal life, it is much more about the transformations of desire, of power and of people-through love. Harry's equally remarkable and ordinary power to love leads to his desire to find but not use the Philosopher's Stone at the start of the series and his wish to end the destructive power of the Elder Wand at the end. This collection of essays on alchemical symbolism and transformations in Rowling's series demonstrates how Harry's work with magical objects, people, and creatures transfigure desire, power, and identity. As Harry's leaden existence on Privet Drive is transformed in the company of his friends and teachers, the Harry Potter novels have transformed millions of readers, inspiring us to find the gold in our ordinary lives.

The late Toni Morrison was the first African-American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993. A powerful writer, she wove stories depicting the largely overlooked Black experience in America and exploring the intersection of gender and race through the lives of Black women. Morrison's writing continues to move people and push readers to reassess their beliefs about what it means to be Black in America. Synthesizing some 250 scholarly works about Morrison's writing, this book examines eight novels as well as the short story "Recitatif." They are analyzed for techniques used to deepen meaning and emotional weight, and reveal Morrison's mastery over prose.

Charles Fort was an American researcher from the early twentieth century who cataloged reports of unexplained phenomena he found in newspapers and science journals. A minor bestseller with a cult appeal, Fort's work was posthumously republished in the pulp science fiction magazine Astounding Stories in 1934. His idiosyncratic books fascinated, scared, and entertained readers, many of them authors and editors of science fiction. Fort's work prophesied the paranormal mainstays of SF literature to come: UFOs, poltergeists, strange disappearances, cryptids, ancient mysteries, unexplained natural phenomena, and everything in between. Science fiction authors latched on to Fort's topics and hypotheses as perfect fodder for SF stories. Writers like Arthur C. Clarke, Philip K. Dick, Robert Heinlein, H.P. Lovecraft, and others are examined in this exploration of Fortean science fiction-a genre that borrows from the reports and ideas of Fort and others who saw the possible science-fictional nature of our reality.

In the six essays of this book, Ksana Blank examines affinities among works of nineteenth and twentieth-century Russian literature and their connections to the visual arts and music. Blank demonstrates that the borders of authorial creativity are not stable and absolute, that talented artists often transcend the classifications and paradigms established by critics. Featured in the volume are works by Alexander Pushkin, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Leo Tolstoy, Vladimir Nabokov, Daniil Kharms, Kazimir Malevich, Mstislav Dobuzhinsky, and Dmitri Shostakovich.

This volume explores the interface between linguistics and literary studies. Theoretical and textual analyses help illustrate the common features between everyday discourse and literature, and show the potentials for a collaborative approach between literary scholars and linguists in understanding speech acts and reference; inference, cognitive and cultural background; rhetoric, styles of speaking and writing; as well as perspectives and genres.

Percival Everett (b. 1956) writes novels, short stories, poetry, and essays and is one of the most prolific, acclaimed, yet under-examined African American writers working today. Although to date Everett has published eighteen novels, three collections of short fiction, three poetry collections, and one children's book, his work has not garnered the critical attention that it deserves. Perhaps one of the most vexing problems scholars have had in trying to situate Everett's work is that they have found it difficult to place him and his work within a prescribed African American literary tradition. Because he happens to be African American, critics have expectations of so-called authentic African American fiction; however, his work often thwarts these expectations.

In "Perspectives on Percival Everett," scholars engage all of his creative production. On the one hand, Everett is an African American novelist. On the other hand, he pursues subject matters that seemingly have little to do with African American culture. The operative word here is "seemingly"; for as these essays demonstrate, Everett's works falls well within "as well as" outside of what most critics would deem the African American literary tradition. These essays examine issues of identity, authenticity, and semiotics, in addition to postmodernism and African American and American literary traditions--issues essential to understanding his aesthetic and political concerns.

This volume focuses on several Russian authors among many who immigrated to Israel with the ""big wave"" of the 1990s or later, and whose largest part of their works was written in Israel: Dina Rubina, Nekod Singer, Elizaveta Mikhailichenko and Yury Nesis, and Mikhail Yudson. They are popular and active authors on the Israeli scene, in the printed and electronic media, and some of them are also editors of the renowned journals and authors of literary and cultural reviews and essays. They constitute a new generation of Jewish-Russian writers: diasporic Russians and new Israelis.

With the 1965 publication of In Cold Blood, Truman Capote declared that he broke new literary ground. But, despite its kinship with the New Journalism, Capote's "nonfiction novel" belongs to the long tradition of literary naturalism, originating in the work of nineteenth-century French novelist Emile Zola. Now, Naturalism offers a particular response to the increasing problem of violence in American life and the sociological implications of that violence. This book traces the origins of the fact-based homicide novel tradition that emerged in the mainstream of twentieth-century American literature with works such as Frank Norris's McTeague and Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy. At the heart of these novels is a young man isolated from every possible community who acts out in desperate circumstances against someone who reflects his isolation. A tension develops in the narrative between how society views this killer and the way he is viewed by the novelist, who shows the protagonist as both victimizer and victim. The crimes central to these narratives epitomize the vast gap between those who can aspire to the so-called "American dream" and those with no realistic chance of achieving it.

Published in 1979: This is a play based on the reign of King John with notes.

The storm has become a universal trope in the literature of crisis, revelation and transformation. It can function as a trope of place, of apocalypse and epiphany, of cultural mythos and story, and of people and spirituality. This book explores the connections between people, place and environment through the image of cyclones within fiction and poetry from the Australian state of Queensland, the northern coast of which is characterized by these devastating storms. Analyzing a range of works including Alexis Wright's Carpentaria, Patrick White's The Eye of the Storm, and Vance Palmer's Cyclone it explains the cyclone in the Queensland literary imagination as an example of a cultural response to weather in a unique regional place. It also situates the cyclones that appear in Queensland literature within the broader global context of literary cyclones.

A revised and expanded reissue containing over 1,200 brain-teasing questions on the legendary works of J.R.R. Tolkien, published to coincide with the release of the third and final The Lord of The Rings movie. How many Hobbits joined the Fellowship of the Ring? What colour is the Orcs' skin? Why did Gandalf have difficulty in opening the West-door of Khazad-dum? Who betrayed Berien and Luthien to Thingol? What was Farmer Giles' full name? The worlds of J.R.R. Tolkien, from the saga of Middle-earth to a brief visit to Wootton Major, are so rich and varied that they inspire legions of followers of different ages. This peerless revised and expanded quiz book offers over 1,200 questions and answers, including easy starter questions and more difficult tie-breakers, to test the range and depth of your knowledge. And whereas every right answer will confirm your mastery over your subject, every wrong answer will be a learning experience all of its own!

Caitlin R. Kiernan is at the forefront of contemporary gothic, weird and science fiction literature. She has written more than a dozen novels, over 250 short stories, many chapbooks, along with a large number of graphic works. For these Kiernan has won numerous awards. This first full-length look at Kiernan's body of work explores her fictional universe through critical literary lenses to show the depth of her contributions to modern genre literature. A prolific and creative writer, Kiernan's fictions bring to life our fears about the other, the unknown, and the future through stories that range widely across time and space. A sense of dark terror pervades her novels and stories. Yet Kiernan's fictional universe is not disengaged from reality. That is because she works within the long tradition of gothic fiction speaking to the gravest ethical, social and cultural issues. In her dark fiction, Kiernan illustrates the terror of the tyranny of the normal, the oppression of marginalized people, and the pervasive violence of our time. Her dystopian sf propels today's dangerous economic, social, political and environmental tendencies into the future. Kiernan's fiction portrays troubling truths about the current human condition.

This book provides tips and guidelines for teachers and learners of modern foreign languages in higher education institutions, drawing on the authors' experiences of teaching languages including Turkish, Japanese and Korean to suggest strategies and approaches that promote effective use of the online environment. As well as shedding light on modern languages that are typically under-studied and under-represented in the literature, this book demonstrates how the online sphere is increasingly fundamental to language use, change and contact. The authors provide practical guidance to help teachers and learners capitalise on the opportunities presented by a virtual educational context, and offer a more resilient blended approach that will increase teachers' and students' preparedness for changing circumstances and institutional priorities in the future. This book is primarily aimed at teachers and students of foreign languages within HE settings, but its focus on new perspectives will also be of interest to scholars researching the online shift in language education, applied linguistics, curriculum design and educational technology.

"The Translator's Doubts" singles out translation as a way of talking about literary history and theory, philosophy, and interpretation, with the work of Vladimir Nabokov as its "case study." It is hard to separate Nabokov from the act of translation, in all senses of the word--ranging from "moving across" geographical borders and cultural and linguistic boundaries to the transferring of the split between "here" and "there" and "then" and "now." Investigating translation as a transformational rather than mimetic experience allows us to understand the strikingly original end-result: in what emerges, both the "target language" and the "native" language undergo something new that dispenses with the quest for and the "anxiety" of influences. In this sense Nabokov constitutes a perfect object for comparativist study since his oeuvre offers us the unique opportunity to look at his major texts twice: as originals and as translations.

First published in 1906, this edition of Magnyfycence aimed to highlight the true significance of the play within both the canon of John Skelton's work and English drama. Robert Lee Ramsay situates Magnyfycence as a morality play which functioned as a bridge between medieval miracle plays and the modern comedy. He demonstrates the text's significance as the first example of a play by an English man of letters and our first example of a secular and literary rather than theological morality play. This edition features an extensive scholarly introduction exploring areas such as the staging, versification, sources and characterisation, followed by the Middle-English text itself along with glosses.

First published in 1905, these two volumes together reproduced the text of Rawlinson MS. B 408 from the Bodleian Library in two parts. They consist of a preface followed the full Middle English text with glosses. The initial section of the manuscript is slightly older and consists of prefixed liturgical pieces such as the Articles of Excommunication. This follows the common historical practice of combining manuscripts to encourage their preservation. The remainder of the text presents the reader with the Register of the Estates of Godstow Abbey. The manuscript was initially created as a translation of the Latin register in order to allow the nuns, who were literate in English but not Latin, to manage their own estates. This manuscript was, at the time of publication, the only known complete English-language cartulary made for a monastic house. It holds significant implications not only for the status, linguistic development and usage of the English language, but also for women's history in the church and their socioeconomic agency, along with the ability of language to both restrict and open doors. The text includes its own introduction in which the founding of the Abbey by Dame Edyve of Winchester, first Abbess of Godstow, is recounted, followed by deeds relating to the local area.

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 illuminating book traces the development of Scottish women's writing in English from its genesis in the late eighteenth century to its flowering in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Hindered initially by the hostility of the Presbyterian Church and the self-serving attitude of the male hierarchy which denied them a proper education, an astonishing number of women found opportunities, in the midst of domestic obligations, to write, and often publish - novels, poetry, diaries, journalism, letters, essays and reportage. Charlotte Waldie and Christina Keith visited, respectively, Waterloo and Flanders in the immediate aftermath of battle. Another intrepid writer, Emily Graves, wrote a memoir of her travels in Transylvania in The Light Beyond the Forest - from which Bram Stoker directly lifted the most blood-curdling elements of Dracula. Others remembered include literary multi-tasker and businesswoman Christian Isabel Johnstone; playwright Joanna Baillie; working-class poets Marion Bernstein and Janet Hamilton; novelist Susan Ferrier; memoirist Anne Grant of Laggan; and writer and scientist Mary Somerville, depicted on the cover, after whom Somerville College, Oxford is named.

Shakespeare | Sense explores the intersection of Shakespeare and sensory studies, asking what sensation can tell us about early modern drama and poetry, and, conversely, how Shakespeare explores the senses in his literary craft, his fictional worlds, and his stagecraft. 15 substantial new essays by leading Shakespeareans working in sensory studies and related disciplines interrogate every aspect of Shakespeare and sense, from the place of hearing, smell, sight, touch, and taste in early modern life, literature, and performance culture, through to the significance of sensation in 21st century engagements with Shakespeare on stage, screen and page. The volume explores and develops current methods for studying Shakespeare and sensation, reflecting upon the opportunities and challenges created by this emergent and influential area of scholarly enquiry. Many chapters develop fresh readings of particular plays and poems, from Hamlet, A Midsummer Night's Dream, King Lear, and The Tempest to less-studied works such as The Comedy of Errors, Venus and Adonis, Troilus and Cressida, and Cymbeline.

Winner 2010 Outstanding Academic Title Choice

Winner 2010 EBSCOhost / Research Society for American Periodicals Book Prize

Honorable Mention 2010 Thomas J. Lyon Book Award, Western Literature Association

In January of 1861, on the eve of both the Civil War and the rebirth of the African Methodist Episcopal Church's "Christian Recorder," John Mifflin Brown wrote to the paper praising its editor Elisha Weaver: "It takes our Western boys to lead off. I am
proud of your paper."

Weaver's story, though, like many of the contributions of early black literature outside of the urban Northeast, has almost vanished. "Unexpected Places: Relocating Nineteenth-Century African American Literature" recovers the work of early African American authors and editors such as Weaver who have been left off maps drawn by historians and literary critics. Individual chapters restore to consideration black literary locations in antebellum St. Louis, antebellum Indiana, Reconstruction-era San Francisco, and several sites tied to the Philadelphia-based Recorder during and after the Civil War.

In conversation with both archival sources and contemporary scholarship, "Unexpected Places" calls for a large-scale rethinking of the nineteenth-century African American literary landscape. In addition to revisiting such better-known writers as William Wells Brown, Maria Stewart, and Hannah Crafts, "Unexpected Places" offers the first critical considerations of important figures including William Jay Greenly, Jennie Carter, Polly Wash, and Lizzie Hart. The book's discussion of physical locations leads naturally to careful study of how region is tied to genre, authorship, publication circumstances, the black press, domestic and nascent black nationalist ideologies, and black mobility in the nineteenth century.

A Curious Peril examines the prose penned by modernist writer H.D. in the aftermath of World War II, a little-known body of work that has been neglected by scholars, and argues that the trauma H.D. experienced in London during the war profoundly changed her writing. Lara Vetter reveals a shift in these writings from classical "escapist" settings to politically aware explorations of gender, spirituality, nation, and imperialism. Impelled by the shocking political crises of the early 1940s, and increasingly sensitive to imperialist logics, H.D. began to write about the history of modern Europe using innovative forms and genres. She directed her well-known interest in mysticism and otherworldly themes toward the material world of empire-building and perpetual war. Vetter contends that H.D.'s postwar work is essential to understanding the writer's entire career, marking her entrance into late modernism and even foretelling crucial aspects of postmodernism.

With the decline of formalism and its predilection for Old English poetry, Old English prose is leaving the periphery and moving into the center of literary and cultural discussion. The extensive corpus of Old English prose lends many texts of various kinds to the current debates over literary theory and its multiple manifestations. The purpose of this collection is to assist the growing interest in Old English prose by providing essays that help establish the foundations for considered study and offer models and examples of special studies. Both retrospective and current in its examples, this collection can serve as a "first book" for an introduction to study, particularly suitable for courses that seek to entertain such issues as authorship, texts and textuality, source criticism, genre, and forms of historical criticism as a significant part of a broad, cultural teaching (and research) plan.