Contributions by Jordan Bolay, Ian Brodie, Jocelyn Sakal Froese, Dominick Grace, Eric Hoffman, Paddy Johnston, Ivan Kocmarek, Jessica Langston, Judith Leggatt, Daniel Marrone, Mark J. McLaughlin, Joan Ormrod, Laura A. Pearson, Annick Pellegrin, Mihaela Precup, Jason Sacks, and Ruth-Ellen St. Onge. This overview of the history of Canadian comics explores acclaimed as well as unfamiliar artists. Contributors look at the myriad ways that English-language, Francophone, indigenous, and queer Canadian comics and cartoonists pose alternatives to American comics, to dominant perceptions, even to gender and racial categories. In contrast to the United States' melting pot, Canada has been understood to comprise a social, cultural, and ethnic mosaic, with distinct cultural variation as part of its identity. This volume reveals differences that often reflect in highly regional and localized comics such as Paul MacKinnon's Cape Breton-specific Old Trout Funnies, Michel Rabagliati's Montreal-based Paul comics, and Kurt Martell and Christopher Merkley's Thunder Bay-specific zombie apocalypse. The collection also considers some of the conventionally "alternative" cartoonists, namely Seth, Dave Sim, and Chester Brown. It offers alternate views of the diverse and engaging work of two very different Canadian cartoonists who bring their own alternatives into play: Jeff Lemire in his bridging of Canadian/US and mainstream/alternative sensibilities and Nina Bunjevac in her own blending of realism and fantasy as well as of insider/outsider status. Despite an upsurge in research on Canadian comics, there is still remarkably little written about most major and all minor Canadian cartoonists. This volume provides insight into some of the lesser-known Canadian alternatives still awaiting full exploration.

A figure from ancient folklore, the doppelganger-in fiction a character's sinister look-alike-continues to reemerge in literature, television and film. The modern-day doppelganger ("double-goer" in German) is typically depicted in a traditional form adapted to reflect present-day social anxieties. Focusing on a broad range of narratives, the author explores 21st century representations in novels (Audrey Niffenegger's Her Fearful Symmetry, Jose Saramago's The Double), TV shows (Orphan Black, Battlestar Galactica, Ringer) and movies (The Island, The Prestige, Oblivion).

First published in 1959, Outlines of Classical Literature is a guide for students of English literature who too often come to this difficult and complex subject with little or no knowledge of one of its principal sources. It therefore does not attempt to give a complete account of the Greek and Roman writers, but tries instead to deal with those whose influences, direct or indirect, can be clearly traced in medieval and later authors. The ancients are taken in their chronological order, though this is not necessarily the order in which they became known to, or influenced the Christian World; but to follow the latter would be too confusing. The book should be of interest to the undergraduate, the general reader and to the literary critic desirous of displaying classical erudition.

First published in 1954, A Handbook of Latin Literature is an attempt to put together a cohesive account of classical and early post-classical writings in the Latin tongue, and is a companion to the Handbook of Greek Literature. The book traces the history of Latin literature from the earliest times down to the death of St. Augustine, and tackles both theological and non-theological interests of Christian authors. This book will be of interest to students of history and literature.

By mid-career, many successful writers find a groove and their readers come to expect a familiar consistency and fidelity. Not so with Henry Green (1905-1973). He prefers uncertainty over reason and fragmentation over cohesion, and rarely lets the reader settle into a nice cozy read. Evil, he suggests, can be as instructive as good. Through his use of paradoxical and ambiguous language, his novels bring texture to the flatness of life, making the world seem bigger and closer. We soon stop worrying about what Hitler's bombs have in store for the Londoners of Caught (1943) and Back (1946) and start thinking about what they have in store for each other. Praised in his lifetime as England's top fiction author, he is largely overlooked today. This book presents a comprehensive analysis of his work for a new generation of readers.

It has long been recognised that there is an apparently paradoxical relationship between the revolutionary poetic style developed by Yeats, Eliot and Pound in the period during and after the First World War, and the reactionary politics with which they were associated in the 1920s and 1930s. Concentrating on their writings in the period up to the 1930s, this study, first published in 1982, helps to resolve the paradox and also provides a much needed reappraisal of the factors influencing their poetic and political development. The work of these poets has usually been seen as deriving from the tradition of continental symbolist poetics. Yeats, Eliot, Pound and the Politics of Poetry will be of interest to students of literature.

From the Gay Repertoire is the first guide to consider the total sweep of gay plays published in English, not just those that were produced on Broadway and in London's West End. Here one will find, in addition to Off- and Off-Off-Broadway and regional theater offerings, plays from Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. Puerto Rican, Indian, and Filipino plays written in English as well as translations from other languages are given their due place. As a result fully 70% of the plays included here are appearing for the first time in such a survey. Lovers of the theater will be happy to discover the rich gay repertoire that they have inherited.

Focusing on crime fiction, film and television that artfully combine comedy and misdeed, this comprehensive study explores the reasons why writers and filmmakers inject humor into their work and identifies the various comic techniques they use. The author covers both American and European books from the 1930s to the present, by such authors as Rex Stout, Raymond Chandler, Elmore Leonard, Donald Westlake, Sue Grafton, Carl Hiaasen and Janet Evanovich, along with film and television from The Thin Man to the BBC's Sherlock series.

Living or dead, present or absent, sadly dysfunctional or merrily adequate, the figure of the mother bears enormous freight across a child's emotional and intellectual life. Given the vital role literary mothers play in books for young readers, it is remarkable how little scholarly attention has been paid to the representation of mothers outside of fairy tales and beyond studies of gender stereotypes. This collection of thirteen essays begins to fill a critical gap by bringing together a range of theoretical perspectives by a rich mix of senior scholars and new voices. Following an introduction in which the coeditors describe key trends in interdisciplinary scholarship, the book's first section focuses on the pedagogical roots of maternal influence in early children's literature. The next section explores the shifting cultural perspectives and subjectivities of the twentieth century. The third section examines the interplay of fantasy, reality, and the ethical dimensions of literary mothers. The collection ends with readings of postfeminist motherhood, from contemporary realism to dystopian fantasy. The range of critical approaches in this volume will provide multiple inroads for scholars to investigate richer readings of mothers in children's and young adult literature.

Challenging readers to rethink what they read and why, the author questions the aesthetic assumptions that have led to the devaluing of fan fiction-a genre criticized as tasteless and derivative-and other ""guilty pleasure"" reading (and writing) including romance and fantasy. The complicated relationship between ""fanfic"" and intellectual property is discussed in light of the millennia-old tradition of derivative literature, before modern copyright law established originality as the hallmark of great fiction. ""Absorbed reading""-the practice of immersing oneself in the narrative versus critically ""reading from a distance""-is a strong motive for fanfiction's appropriation of canon characters and worlds.

Presenting a multifaceted portrait of modernist culture in Russia, an array of distinguished scholars shows how artists and writers in the early twentieth century engaged with politics, science, and religion. At a time when many Russian social institutions looked to the past, modernist arts powerfully amplified a gamut of new ideas about individual and collective transformation. Expanding upon prior studies that focus more specifically on literary manifestations of the movement, Reframing Russian Modernism features original research that ranges broadly, from political aesthetics to Darwinism to yoga. These unique complementary perspectives counter reductionism of any kind, integrating the study of Russian modernism into the larger body of humanistic scholarship devoted to modernity.

Stemmatology studies aspects of textual criticism that use genealogical methods to analyse a set of copies of a text whose autograph has been lost. This handbook is the first to cover the entire field, encompassing both theoretical and practical aspects of traditional as well as modern digital methods and their history. As an art (ars), stemmatology's main goal is editing and thus presenting to the reader a historical text in the most satisfactory way. As a more abstract discipline (scientia), it is interested in the general principles of how texts change in the process of being copied. Thirty eight experts from all of the fields involved have joined forces to write this handbook, whose eight chapters cover material aspects of text traditions, the genesis and methods of traditional "Lachmannian" textual criticism and the objections raised against it, as well as modern digital methods used in the field. The two concluding chapters take a closer look at how this approach towards texts and textual criticism has developed in some disciplines of textual scholarship and compare methods used in other fields that deal with "descent with modification". The handbook thus serves as an introduction to this interdisciplinary field.

First published in 1988. Fredrick Tomlin and T. S. Eliot were friends for almost thirty-four years. What emerges from Fredrick Tomlin's memories and the many letters which passed between them is a private Eliot, seen only by his closest family and a trusted few. Tomlin evokes the man as he was - quite different in his humanity and in his humour from the public image of the 'great poet' and the austere sage. With fresh insights and personal testimony, Tomlin directs light onto aspects of Eliot's character and personality of which the public has been unaware, thereby enhancing the reader's appreciation of Eliot's work as a whole. This title will be of interest to students of literature.

This collection, first published in 1963, includes 29 of George Eliot's essays written between 1846 and 1868. Through these essays, Pinney has managed to convey her range of subject-matters and variety of style. This title, with an introduction and footnotes written by the editor, will be of particular interest to students of literature.

his study places Defoe's major fiction squarely in the emerging Whig culture of the early eighteenth century. It offers an alternative to the view that Defoe is essentially a writer of criminal or adventure fiction and to the Marxist judgment that he extols individualism or derives his greatest inspiration from popular print culture. This study reads the novels as reflections of mainstream Whig social and political concerns, the same concerns Defoe revealed in his verse and expository writings before and after his major period of fiction writing, 1719-24.

Edward Lobb's study, first published in 1981, is a thorough examination of Eliot's relation to Romantic criticism. This title also makes extensive use of Eliot's Clark Lectures on metaphysical poetry. Delivered in 1926, the lectures complete the picture of literary history set out in Eliot's published work, and are, the author believes, essential to a full understanding of the poet's ideas and their place in tradition. Drawing on a wide variety of primary sources and earlier scholarship, T. S. Eliot and the Romantic Critical Tradition will be of interest to students of literature.

In this fascinating and revealing book, first published in 1952, Maxwell shows the development of Eliot's poetry and poetic thought in the light of his political and religious attachments. This study traces Eliot's style from the earliest poems to the Quartets, and examines the characteristics of Eliot's earlier work adumbrate that of his maturity. The Poetry of T. S. Eliot is essential reading for students of literature.

This title, first published in 1961, explores the general background of attitudes, beliefs and ideas from which Eliot's works have originated. This study examines the influences of Eliot's work, and includes Eliot's personal views as told to the author. The book also looks at technique, structure and imagery of his poetry. This title will be of interest to students of literature.

Challenging the widely-held assumption that Slavoj Zizek's work is far more germane to film and cultural studies than to literary studies, this volume demonstrates the importance of Zizek to literary criticism and theory. The contributors show how Zizek's practice of reading theory and literature through one another allows him to critique, complicate, and advance the understanding of Lacanian psychoanalysis and German Idealism, thereby urging a rethinking of historicity and universality. His methodology has implications for analyzing literature across historical periods, nationalities, and genres and can enrich theoretical frameworks ranging from aesthetics, semiotics, and psychoanalysis to feminism, historicism, postcolonialism, and ecocriticism. The contributors also offer Zizekian interpretations of a wide variety of texts, including Geoffrey Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, Samuel Beckett's Not I, and William Burroughs's Nova Trilogy. The collection includes an essay by Zizek on subjectivity in Shakespeare and Beckett. Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Literature but Were Afraid to Ask Zizek affirms Zizek's value to literary studies while offering a rigorous model of Zizekian criticism. Contributors. Shawn Alfrey, Daniel Beaumont, Geoff Boucher, Andrew Hageman, Jamil Khader, Anna Kornbluh, Todd McGowan, Paul Megna, Russell Sbriglia, Louis-Paul Willis, Slavoj Zizek

Genres of Doubt shows how these two shifts-one literary, one cultural-were deeply intertwined. The novel as a literary form developed as a vehicle for realism, and the infusion of unreal content, be it fantasy or science fiction, created a new kind of space to ponder questions about the supernatural, humanity's place in the world, and the differences between belief and knowledge. This book investigates that space in a new way, and shows how questions of meaning, identity, and faith are in the DNA of the speculative genres that, whether in novels, film and television, or comic books, are so loved today.

Lauded by critics yet largely unappreciated by fans of horror and ""weird fiction,"" T.E.D. Klein is considered one of the great horror writers, despite his scant body of work. His prose blends the mundane and the supernatural, conjuring the monstrous and the malign with accessible but charged discourse that breaks with the formulaic entries in the genre. Exploring a range of topics from religious fundamentalism and Right Wing extremism to fashionable pessimism and the rise of ""digital humanities,"" the author argues that Klein's work is a prime example of what he terms ""critical horror,"" a distinct subgenre that entertains while questioning individual and cultural complacency.

Shakespearean Tragedy brings together fifteen major contemporary essays on individual plays and the genre as a whole. Each piece has been carefully chosen as a key intervention in its own right and as a representative of an influential critical approach to the genre. The collection as a whole, therefore, provides both a guide and explanation to the various ways in which contemporary criticism has determined our understanding of the tragedies, and the opportunity for assessing the wider issues such criticism raises. The collection begins by considering the impact of social semiotics on approaches to the tragedies, before moving on to deal, in turn, with the various forms of Marxist criticism, New Historicism, Cultural Materialism, Feminism, Psychoanalysis, and Poststructuralism.

Shakespeare's history plays are central to his dramatic achievement. In recent years they have become more widely studied than ever, stimulating intensely contested interpretations, due to their relevance to central contemporary issues such as English, national identities and gender roles. Interpretations of the history plays have been transformed since the 1980s by new theoretically-informed critical approaches. Movements such as New Historicism and cultural materialism, as well as psychoanalytical and post-colonial approaches, have swept away the humanist consensus of the mid-twentieth century with its largely conservative view of the plays. The last decade has seen an emergence of feminist and gender-based readings of plays which were once thought overwhelmingly masculine in their concerns. This book provides an up-to-date critical anthology representing the best work from each of the modern theoretical perspectives. The introduction outlines the changing debate in an area which is now one of the liveliest in Shakespearean criticism.

Containing a wealth of new scholarship and rare primary documents, The Black Jacobins Reader provides a comprehensive analysis of C. L. R. James's classic history of the Haitian Revolution. In addition to considering the book's literary qualities and its role in James's emergence as a writer and thinker, the contributors discuss its production, context, and enduring importance in relation to debates about decolonization, globalization, postcolonialism, and the emergence of neocolonial modernity. The Reader also includes the reflections of activists and novelists on the book's influence and a transcript of James's 1970 interview with Studs Terkel. Contributors. Mumia Abu-Jamal, David Austin, Madison Smartt Bell, Anthony Bogues, John H. Bracey Jr., Rachel Douglas, Laurent Dubois, Claudius K. Fergus, Carolyn E. Fick, Charles Forsdick, Dan Georgakas, Robert A. Hill, Christian Hogsbjerg, Selma James, Pierre Naville, Nick Nesbitt, Aldon Lynn Nielsen, Matthew Quest, David M. Rudder, Bill Schwarz, David Scott, Russell Maroon Shoatz, Matthew J. Smith, Studs Terkel

While Henry David Thoreau's travels to the Maine Woods and Cape Cod were well documented and have been followed by "Thoreauvians" for decades, his 1861 "journey west" with Horace Mann, Jr.--which took the duo from Massachusetts to Minnesota and back--was left to be veiled in mystery. This book details this, the last, longest, and least-known of Thoreau's excursions. The story of two 19th-century men and the 21st-century woman who was determined to follow their 4,000-mile path, this account will intrigue history buffs as they follow in the footsteps of a popular American writer and naturalist.