Renaissance Woman: A Sourcebook is an invaluable collection of accounts of women and femininity in early modern England. The volume is divided thematically into nine sections, each with an accessible introduction, notes on sources and an annotated bibliography. The sections are:
* Theology
* Biology
* Conduct
* Sexuality and Motherhood
* Politics and Law
* Education
* Work
* Writing and Speaking
* Feminism
Renaissance Woman: A Sourcebook brings together sources ranging from medical documents and political pamphlets to sermons and the Bible, as well as literary sources. Providing a historical context to issues of gender in the Renasissance, it will be essential reading for students of the period, gender studies and cultural history.

Climate has infused the literary history of the United States, from the writings of explorers and conquerors, over early national celebrations of the American climate, to the flowering of romantic nature writing. This volume traces this complex semantic history in American thought and literature to examine rhetorical and philosophical discourses that continue to propel and constrain American climate perceptions today. It explores how American literature from its inception up until the present engages with the climate, both real and perceived. Climate and American Literature attends to the central place that the climate has historically occupied in virtually all aspects of American life, from public health and medicine, over the organization of the political system and the public sphere, to the culture of sensibility, aesthetics and literary culture. It details American inflections of climate perceptions over time to offer revealing new perspectives on one of the most pressing issues of our time.

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.

First published in 1902, this volume was edited from the unique manuscript, Laud Misc. 595, in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. The manuscript dates to the early 15th century, though it cannot be the original. Parts I and II of this Middle-English text are republished here as one volume, accompanied with glosses though without introduction.

Since the fall of General Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship in 1990, Chilean society has shied away from the subject of civilian complicity, preferring to pursue convictions of military perpetrators. But the torture, murders, deportations, and disappearances of tens of thousands of people in Chile were not carried out by the military alone; they required a vast civilian network. Some citizens actively participated in the regime's massive violations of human rights for personal gain or out of a sense of patriotic duty. Others supported Pinochet's neoliberal economic program while turning a blind eye to the crimes of that era. Michael J. Lazzara boldly argues that today's Chile is a product of both complicity and complacency. Combining historical analysis with deft literary, political, and cultural critique, he scrutinizes the post-Pinochet rationalizations made by politicians, artists, intellectuals, bystanders, former revolutionaries-turned-neoliberals, and common citizens. He looks beyond victims and perpetrators to unveil the ambiguous, ethically vexed realms of memory and experience that authoritarian regimes inevitably generate.

First published in 1907, the publication of these Middle-English texts aimed to make the dramatic Harrowing of Hell and Gospel of Nicodemus easily accessible to students of English literature. Edited together using all known manuscripts, the volume includes the texts of the Harrowing of Hell and the Gospel of Nicodemus along with an extensive scholarly introduction on both texts. The Digby, Harley and Auchinleck manuscripts of the Harrowing are printed in three parallel columns to allow for fuller, comparative understanding, at once succinct and comprehensive. The Gospel is reproduced similarly with its Galba, Harley and Sion manuscripts along with an additional manuscript. Explanatory notes and glosses have been omitted owing to inclusion in a separate publication.

First published in 1900, this volume was edited from a unique 1440 A.D. manuscript residing in Salisbury Cathedral. As a penitential manual, it joined others of its time such as Handlyng Synne and Parson's Tale and is one of the more voluminous treatises. The fundamental allegory of this Middle-English text is of the well of mire representing the sins of humanity and how it may be cleaned to become a fit receptacle of Grace as we may also cleanse ourselves and our consciences. This volume consists of a modest introduction followed by the Middle-English text Jacob's Well along with glosses.

First published in 1902, this volume contains an extensive, technical scholarly introduction, followed by three Middle-English versions of the Rule of St. Benet along with the Northern Lansdowne Ritual on the reception of novices and the Vespasian Ritual of making a nun. As St Benet is the Medieval English version of St. Benedict, the original version of this text dates back to the 6th century.

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.

In Combating Injustice, Jon Falsarella Dawson approaches American literary naturalism as a means of social criticism, exploring the powerful economic arguments and commentaries on labor struggles presented in novels by Frank Norris, Jack London, and John Steinbeck. Making use of extensive archival research, Dawson considers many of the original periodical sources that fueled books from McTeague to The Grapes of Wrath, as Norris, London, and Steinbeck transformed contemporary materials into illustrations of the socioeconomic forces that shape American life. By depicting the operations of powerful individuals and institutions, these naturalist writers offered audiences a greater awareness of the plight of labor so that readers might find the inspiration to become agents of change. Works such as The Octopus, The Iron Heel, Martin Eden, and In Dubious Battle illuminate many of the central economic issues at play in the United States during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including the rise of commodity culture, labor disputes involving industrial and agricultural workers, widespread poverty, extreme inequality, and the concentration of resources and land ownership. Norris, London, and Steinbeck highlighted the dangers of these developments by charting their impact on central characters whose fates result from the predatory tactics of corporate monopolies, wealthy individuals, and large financial establishments. Dawson's lucid analysis shows how all three writers, drawing on contemporary events, accentuated the need for reform and stressed the potential for change by human action. Each author took inspiration from notable events in California, ranging from the Mussel Slough tragedy of 1880 to the agricultural strikes in the Central Valley during the 1930s, presenting the state as a microcosm for conditions throughout the nation during a period of tremendous upheaval. Combating Injustice: The Naturalism of Frank Norris, Jack London, and John Steinbeck provides carefully contextualized readings of three major writers whose works express both the necessity for and the possibility of creating a more egalitarian society.

Huckleberry Finn, Anna Karenina, Harry Potter, Hester Prynne...these are just a handful of remarkable characters to be found in literature, but of course, the list of memorable characters is virtually endless! But why ponder which of these creations are the greatest? More than just a topic to debate with friends, the greatest characters from fiction help readers comprehend history, culture, politics, and even their own place in today's world. Despite our reliance on television, film, and technology, it is literature's great characters that create and reinforce popular culture, informing us again and again about society and ourselves. In The 100 Greatest Literary Characters, three scholars of literature identify the most significant figures in fiction published over the last several centuries. From Jay Gatsby to Jean Valjean, the characters profiled here represent a wide array of storytelling, and the authors explore each one's significance at the time they were created as well as their relevance today. Included in this volume are characters from literature produced around the world, such as Aladdin, James Bond, Holden Caulfield, Hercule Poirot, Don Quixote, Lisbeth Salander, Ebenezer Scrooge, and Yuri Zhivago. Readers of this volume will find their beloved literary figures, learn about forgotten gems, or discover deserving choices pulled from history's dustbin. Providing insights into how literature shapes and molds culture via these fabricated figures, The 100 Greatest Literary Characters will appeal to literature lovers around the globe.

This Dictionary explores the identities of fictional people and places in over 1,000 English language novels and short stories. Over 4,000 identifications are included and supported or contested by accompanying extracts.

Though separated by only eleven years in age, Hemingway and Williams seem literary generations apart. Yet both authors bridged their modernist/postmodernist divide through mutual examinations of the polemics behind heteromasculinity, Hemingway in The Sun Also Rises and Williams in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. This book explores the two works many sociopolitical, literary, and intertextual ties, in particular how the conclusion of one echoes that of the other, not just in its irony but also in its implication of the audiences participation in engendering the social rules responsible for the protagonists struggle to negotiate his sexual identity. Hemingway's Sun shares more with Williams' Cat than just a similar ending, however. Both works explore more broadly the construction of a queer masculinity, where the parameters that define masculinity and sexuality grow as unstable and irresolute as the frontier during a war or the line of scrimmage during a football game.

Providing an overview of the dynamic field of comics and graphic novels for students and researchers, this Essential Guide contextualises the major research trends, debates and ideas that have emerged in Comics Studies over the past decades. Interdisciplinary and international in its scope, the critical approaches on offer spread across a wide range of strands, from the formal and the ideological to the historical, literary and cultural. Its concise chapters provide accessible introductions to comics methodologies, comics histories and cultures across the world, high-profile creators and titles, insights from audience and fan studies, and important themes and genres, such as autobiography and superheroes. It also surveys the alternative and small press alongside general reference works and textbooks on comics. Each chapter is complemented by list of key reference works.

With thousands of new volumes lining the shelves of bookstores, abundant advertisements, and innumerable online reviews, it is becoming increasingly difficulty for the concerned adult to recommend literature that is of quality, yet speaks to young audiences. Core Collection for Children and Young Adults presents the best in contemporary and classic literature for children and young adults. Every book listed in this reference has a concisely worded annotation, which is followed by headings designating awards the book has won, related subjects, and character themes. With more than 350 titles reviewed, this resource will prove invaluable for teachers, librarians, parents, collectors of children's books, and college students with an interest in juvenile literature, education, or child growth and development.

Throughout her fiction, Willa Cather mentioned forty-three operas. References to opera appear in all but three of her twelve novels and in roughly half of her short stories. Despite a dearth of musical education, Cather produced astute writing about the genre beginning in her earliest criticism and continuing throughout her career. She counted opera stars among her close friends, and according to Edith Lewis, her companion throughout adulthood, the two women frequently visited the theater, even in the early days, when purchasing tickets to attend performances proved a financial sacrifice. Melding cultural history with thoughtful readings of her works and discussions of opera's complex place in turn-of-the-century America, David McKay Powell's Cather and Opera offers the first book-length study of what drew the writer so powerfully and repeatedly to the art form. With close attention to Cather's fiction and criticism, Powell posits that at the heart of both her work and the operatic corpus dwells an innate tension between high artistic ideals and popular acceptance, often figured as a clash between compositional integrity and raw, personal emotion. Considering her connection to opera in both historical and intertextual terms, Cather and Opera investigates what operatic references mean in Cather's writing, along with what the opera represented to her throughout her life.

A CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title 2018 The digital age has had a profound impact on literary culture, with new technologies opening up opportunities for new forms of literary art from hyperfiction to multi-media poetry and narrative-driven games. Bringing together leading scholars and artists from across the world, The Bloomsbury Handbook of Electronic Literature is the most authoritative available handbook to the field. Crossing disciplinary boundaries, this book explores the foundational theories of the field, contemporary artistic practices, debates and controversies surrounding such key concepts as canonicity, world systems, narrative and the digital humanities, and historical developments and new media contexts of contemporary electronic literature. Including guides to major publications in the field, The Bloomsbury Handbook of Electronic Literature is an essential resource for students of contemporary culture in the digital era.

First published in 1986. Dubliners was James Joyce's first major publication. Setting it at the turn of the century, Joyce claims to hold up a 'nicely polished looking-glass' to the native Irishman. In Backgrounds for Joyce's Dubliners, the author examines the national, mythic, religious and legendary details, which Joyce builds up to capture a many-sided performance and timelessness in Irish life. Acknowledging the serious work done on Dubliners as a whole, in this study Professor Torchiana draws upon a wide range of published and unpublished sources to provide a scholarly and satisfying framework for Joyce's world of the 'inept and the lower middle class'. He combines an understanding of Joyce's subtleties with a long-standing personal knowledge of Dublin. This title will make fascinating reading for scholars and students of Joyce's writing as well as for those interested in early twentieth century Irish social history.

This collection, first published in 1982, brings together thirteen writers from a wide variety of critical traditions to take a fresh look at Joyce and his crucial position not only in English literature but in modern literature as a whole. Comparative views of his work include reflections on his relations to Shakespeare, Blake, MacDiarmid, and the Anglo-Irish revival. Essays, story and poems all combine to celebrate the major constituents of Joyce's work - his imagination and comedy, his exuberant use of language, his relation to the history of his country and his age, and his passionate commitment to 'a more veritably human tradition'. This title will be of interest to students of literature.

This title, first published in 1990, offers a feminist and psychoanalytic reassessment of the Joycean canon in the wake of Freud, Lacan, and Kristeva. The author centres her discussion of Ulysses, Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist, Finnegans Wake, and Exiles around questions of desire and language and the politics of sexual difference. Suzette Henke's radical "re-vision" of Joyce's work is a striking example of the crucial role feminist theory can play in contemporary evaluation of canonical texts. As such it will be welcomed by feminists and students of literature alike.

Monsters seem inevitably linked to humans and not always as mere opposites. Maaheen Ahmed examines good monsters in comics to show how Romantic themes from the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries persist in today's popular culture. Comics monsters, questioning the distinction between human and monster, self and other, are valuable conduits of Romantic inclinations. Engaging with Romanticism and the many monsters created by Romantic writers and artists such as Mary Shelley, Victor Hugo, and Goya, Ahmed maps the heritage, functions, and effects of monsters in contemporary comics and graphic novels. She highlights the persistence of recurrent Romantic features through monstrous protagonists in English- and French-Language comics and draws out their implications. Aspects covered include the dark Romantic predilection for ruins and the sordid, the solitary protagonist and his quest, nostalgia, the prominence of the spectacle as well as excessive emotions, and above all, the monster's ambiguity and rebelliousness. Ahmed highlights each Romantic theme through close readings of well-known but often overlooked comics, including Enki Bilal's Monstre tetralogy, Jim O'Barr's The Crow, and Emil Ferris's My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, as well as the iconic comics Series Alan Moore's Swamp Thing and Mike Mignola's Hellboy. In blurring the otherness of the monster, these protagonists retain the exaggeration and uncontrollability of all monsters while incorporating Romantic characteristics.

Scarlett O'Hara munched on a radish and vowed never to go hungry again. Vardaman Bundren ate bananas in Faulkner's Jefferson, and the Invisible Man dined on a sweet potato in Harlem. Although food and stories may be two of the most prominent cultural products associated with the South, the connections between them have not been thoroughly explored until now.

Southern food has become the subject of increasingly self-conscious intellectual consideration. The Southern Foodways Alliance, the Southern Food and Beverage Museum, food-themed issues of "Oxford American" and "Southern Cultures," and a spate of new scholarly and popular books demonstrate this interest. "Writing in the Kitchen" explores the relationship between food and literature and makes a major contribution to the study of both southern literature and of southern foodways and culture more widely.

This collection examines food writing in a range of literary expressions, including cookbooks, agricultural journals, novels, stories, and poems. Contributors interpret how authors use food to explore the changing South, considering the ways race, ethnicity, class, gender, and region affect how and what people eat. They describe foods from specific southern places such as New Orleans and Appalachia, engage both the historical and contemporary South, and study the food traditions of ethnicities as they manifest through the written word.

In this study, first published in 1983, Professor Smith makes the argument that although The Waste Land is analogous in form to a musical composition that it is actually made of its literary echoes. He calls these a 'music of allusions' and shows the resemblance of this music in its evocativeness to the technique of Mallarme and the French symbolists. Smith also comments extensively on Eliot's critical theories as they bear on The Waste Land and traces the development of Eliot's allusive and transformational poetic form from its genesis in early work. This title will be of interest to students of literature.

Across two decades of intense creativity, David Foster Wallace (1962-2008) crafted a remarkable body of work that ranged from unclassifiable essays, to a book about transfinite mathematics, to vertiginous fictions. Whether through essay volumes ("A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, Consider the Lobster"), short story collections ("Girl with Curious Hair, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, Oblivion"), or his novels ("Infinite Jest, The Broom of the System"), the luminous qualities of Wallace's work recalibrated our measures of modern literary achievement. "Conversations with David Foster Wallace" gathers twenty-two interviews and profiles that trace the arc of Wallace's career, shedding light on his omnivorous talent.Jonathan Franzen has argued that, for Wallace, an interview provided a formal enclosure in which the writer "could safely draw on his enormous native store of kindness and wisdom and expertise." Wallace's interviews create a wormhole in which an author's private theorizing about art spill into the public record. Wallace's best interviews are vital extra-literary documents, in which we catch him thinking aloud about his signature concerns--irony's magnetic hold on contemporary language, the pale last days of postmodernism, the delicate exchange that exists between reader and writer. At the same time, his acute focus moves across MFA programs, his negotiations with religious belief, the role of footnotes in his writing, and his multifaceted conception of his work's architecture. "Conversations with David Foster Wallace" includes a previously unpublished interview from 2005, and a version of Larry McCaffery's influential "Review of Contemporary Fiction" interview with Wallace that has been expanded with new material drawn from the original raw transcript.