The on-going debate surrounding the Christian aspects of C.S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia, J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials, and J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter has revealed not only the prominence of religious themes in fantasy fiction, but also the readers' concern over the portrayal of religion in fantasy. Yet while the works of Lewis, Tolkien, Pullman, and Rowling have been discussed in excess, other fantasy series have so far received markedly less attention. Thus, the following book offers a critical study of the fantastic religions and religious themes present in the works of selected American and Canadian writers: Stephen R. Donaldson's Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, Guy Gavriel Kay's Fionavar Tapestry, Celia S. Friedman's Coldfire Trilogy, and Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn series. The aim of the proposed study is to reveal and investigate these series' references to biblical tradition and Christian teachings in order to examine their overall approach to Christianity and to comment on the relationship between Christianity and the fantasy genre. The study is conducted in reference to the theories and methods designed by the discipline of the phenomenology of religion.

Dystopian fiction has captured the imaginations of countless readers as they consider life in worlds at once eerily similar and shockingly foreign to their own. Essays on Dystopian Fiction as Critique of Culture showcases the most recent research on dystopian fiction whose readership has surged dramatically since the 1990s. Sixteen chapters-written by scholars from the United States, England, Ireland, India, and Poland-explore literary and popular dystopian novels focusing on the genre as a form of social critique. The essays reveal how both literary and popular dystopias arise from the same impulse as utopian fiction: the desire for an idealized and always illusory society in which evil is purged and justice prevails. Written from a variety of critical perspectives, these essays explore some of the literary novels (such as The Lord of the Flies and The Heart Goes Last) as well as some new popular ones (such as The Giver, The Hunger Games, and The Strain Trilogy). The essays collected here hold value for both fans and scholars of dystopian literature, a genre that has demonstrated its mass market appeal and its validity as an area of academic study.

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) wrote in 19th century American English and referenced long-vanished cultural contexts. A "private poet," she created her own vocabulary, and many of her poems have quite specific local and personal connections. Twenty-first century readers may find her poetry elusive and challenging. Promoting a richer appreciation of Dickinson's work for a modern audience, this book explores unfamiliar aspects of her language and her world.

The detailed and wide-ranging Penn Commentary on "Piers Plowman" places the allegorical dream-vision of the poem within the literary, historical, social, and intellectual contexts of late medieval England, and within the long history of critical interpretation of the work, assessing past scholarship while offering original materials and insights throughout. The authors' line-by-line, section by section, and passus by passus commentary on all three versions of the poem and on the stages of its multiple revisions reveals new aspects of the poem's meaning while assessing and summarizing a complex and often divisive scholarly tradition. The volumes offer an up-to-date, original, and open-ended guide to a poem whose engagement with its social world is unrivaled in English literature, and whose literary, religious, and intellectual accomplishments are uniquely powerful. The Penn Commentary is designed to be equally useful to readers of the A, B, or C texts of the poem. It is geared to readers eager to have detailed experience of Piers Plowman and other medieval literature, possessing some basic knowledge of Middle English language and literature, and interested in pondering further the particularly difficult relationships to both that this poem possesses. Others, with interest in poetry of all periods, will find the extended and detailed commentary useful precisely because it does not seek to avoid the poem's challenges but seeks instead to provoke thought about its intricacy and poetic achievements. Covering passus C.15-19 and B.13-17, Volume 4 of the Penn Commentary on "Piers Plowman" creates a complete vade mecum for readers, identifying and translating all Latin quotations, uncovering allusions, providing full cross-reference to other parts of the poem, drawing in relevant scholarship, and unraveling difficult passages. Like the other commentaries in the series, this volume contains an extensive overview and analysis of each passus, and the subdivisions within, large and small, and discusses all differences between the two versions. It pays careful attention to the poem at the literal level as well as to Latin texts that are analogues or even possible sources of Langland's thought and it emphasizes the comedy of the poem, of which these passus offer a number of examples.

Acknowledged as one of the founding figures of science fiction scholarship and teaching, and one of the genre's leading writers, James Gunn in 1951 wrote what is likely the first master's thesis on modern science fiction, Modern Science Fiction: A Critical Analysis. It achieved some degree of legendary status when portions appeared in the short-lived pulp magazine Dynamic, but has otherwise remained unavailable for scholars and general readers of science fiction. Appearing for the first time in book form, this early critical work by a science fiction master is an important historical addition to the field of science fiction studies. Gunn's observations on many of the classic Golden Age stories of the 1940s, before they were classic, highlight this exuberant and astute early academic critical assessment of science fiction. Here the reader will witness the development of Gunn's critical perspective that informed his essential genre history Alternate Worlds and the monumental anthology series The Road to Science Fiction. Michael R. Page's introduction and commentary show the historical significance of Gunn's work and frame it within the context of the later development of science fiction criticism and theory.

Australian crime fiction grew from the country's modern origins as a very distant English prison. Early stories described escaped convicts becoming heroic bushrangers, or how the system maltreated mis-convicted people. As Australia developed, thrillers emerged about threats to the wealth of free settlers and crime among gold-seekers from England and America, and then urban crime fiction including in 1887 London's first best-seller, Fergus Hume's Melbourne-located The Mystery of a Hansom Cab. The genre thrived, with bush detectives like Billy Pagan and Arthur Upfield's half-Indigenous 'Bony', and from the 1950s women like June Wright, Pat Flower and Patricia Carlon linked with the internationally burgeoning psychothriller. Modernity has massified the Australian form: the 1980s saw a flow of private-eye thrillers, both Aussie Marlowes and tough young women, and the crime novel thrived, long a favorite in the police-skeptical country. In the twenty-first century some authors have focused on policemen, and more on policewomen- and finally there is potent Indigenous crime fiction. In this book Stephen Knight, long-established as an authority on the genre and now back in Melbourne, tells in detail and with analytic coherence this story of a rich but previously little-known national crime fiction.

In this elegant but pocketable edition in the Ross's Discoveries series, passionate bibliophile Michael Ross has curated his favorite literary quotes from the collection of over 1500 well-read books on his shelves-but this isn't your typical rehashing of Bartlett's quotations. In Ross's Key Discoveries Michael Ross brings together quotes on wisdom, money, and happiness from such a new perspective even the authors themselves will probably find this book useful and insightful.

Cervantes's Don Quixote, recently chosen the world's best book by well-known authors from fifty-four countries, has from its publication in 1605 been widely translated and imitated. Throughout the world "quixotic" and "tilting at windmills" are commonplaces, and the thin knight-errant and his plump squire Sancho Panza familiar icons. Critics regard Cervantes as the inventor of fiction, author of the first novel. Consistently judged too long and complex to be read in its entirety, Don Quixote, has always inspired abbreviations and adaptations. Major and now forgotten writers were deeply influenced by the Spanish author; in English they wrote chapbooks, satiric verses, essays, plays, and novels. Cervantes's post chivalric romance inspired by the Counter Reformation in Spain became a classic for Protestant England that condemned Catholic medieval romances. Don Quixote, as children's literature, informed by adult renderings, is a major but neglected part of this remarkable tradition. In extravagant Edwardian books, collections, home libraries, and schoolbooks, words and pictures by distinguished artists retold adventures both noble and "mad." Recent adaptations-including comics and graphic novels-express current difference but also support the knight-errant's affinity to children and lasting influence.

'A very special book' DIANA HENRY.

'Perfect' NINA STIBBE.

The Little Library Year takes you through a full twelve months in award-winning food writer Kate Young's kitchen. Here are frugal January meals enjoyed alone with a classic comfort read, as well as summer feasts to be eaten outdoors with the perfect beach read to hand.

Beautifully photographed throughout, The Little Library Year is full of delicious seasonal recipes, menus and reading recommendations.

'A wonderful, brilliant book' RUBY TANDOH.

'The best present a food-obsessed bookworm could ask for' OLIA HERCULES.

'Tender, gorgeous, clever and generous' ELLA RISBRIDGER.

'Bibliophile foodies have a treat in store for them. Many treats, in fact' JASPER FFORDE.

Publius Aelius Aristides Theodorus was among the most celebrated authors of the Second Sophistic and an important figure in the transmission of Hellenism. Born to wealthy landowners in Mysia in 117, he studied in Athens and Pergamum before he fell chronically ill in the early 140s and retreated to Pergamum's healing shrine of Asclepius. By 147 Aristides was able to resume his public activities and pursue a successful oratorical career. Based at his family estate in Smyrna, he traveled between bouts of illness and produced speeches and lectures, declamations on historical themes, polemical works, prose hymns, and various essays, all of it displaying deep and creative familiarity with the classical literary heritage. He died between 180 and 185. This edition of Aristides, new to the Loeb Classical Library, offers fresh translations and texts based on the critical editions of Lenz-Behr (Orations 1-16) and Keil (Orations 17-53). Volume II contains Orations 3 and 4, which along with Oration 2 (A Reply to Plato) take issue with the attack on orators and oratory delivered in Plato's Gorgias.

In the mid- to late 2000s, the United States witnessed a boom in dystopian novels and films intended for young Audiences. At that time, many literary critics, journalists, and educators grouped dystopian literature together with science fiction, leading to possible misunderstandings of the unique history, aspects, and functions of science fiction and dystopian genres. Though texts within these two genres may share similar Settings, plot devices, and characters, each genre's value is different because they do distinctively different sociocritical work in relation to the culture that produces them. In The Order and the Other: Young Adult Dystopian Literature and Science Fiction, author Joseph W. Campbell distinguishes the two genres, explains the function of each, and outlines the different impact each has upon readers. Campbell analyzes such works as Lois Lowry's The Giver and James Dashner's The Maze Runner, placing dystopian works into the larger context of literary history. He asserts both dystopian literature and science fiction differently empower and manipulate readers, encouraging them to look critically at the way they are taught to encounter those who are different from them and how to recognize and work within or against the power structures around them. In doing so, Campbell demonstrates the necessity of both genres.

As the miscreant Detective McNulty applies bite marks to a deceased man's posterior with a set of dentures in Season Five of The Wire, so are the viewers introduced to the topic of `fake news' and the wider contemporary problems with mainstream media representations of reality. The Wire brilliantly details the manner in which neoliberal market fundamentalism trades in fabrication and falsity. `Juking the stats' is the phrase used throughout the show to signal this corruption but it refers specifically to a quantified method for measuring success that was developed during the Cold War. Doctor Strangelove lovingly describes the essence of the `doomsday machine' as free from "human meddling," while the machine begins the inexorable process of destroying the world with nuclear bombs. The film's comedy derives from the absurdity of placing the requirements of systems and institutions above moral human considerations, a common theme of Stanley Kubrick's films. This problem is central, perhaps, to human survival, as a system which seems beyond our control renders our environment more hostile to our continued existence with each passing day. Harkness and `Ballard,' the novels' protagonists seek a spiritual or sublime meaning in a world shadowed by a man-made god, one that now contains the power of the apocalypse. The former seeks it in the jargon of Cold War technocracy but finds only death without meaning; a void at the heart of the culture signified by the bomb. The latter in blood sacrifices to the new technological god, in staged car crashes offered up as miniature apocalypses. The Cold War profoundly shaped neoliberalism in ways that are as yet not fully realised. Herein is a careful and extensively researched look at the narratives that pierce the heart of the Cold War zeitgeist and its aftermath and reveal to us that we may be living in a post-Cold War world.

As science fiction becomes as a major topic for literary study, one reason for its increasing stature is the influence of the J. Lloyd Eaton Conferences on Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature, long held at the University of California, Riverside. For three decades, these regular gatherings attracted most of the world's leading experts on science fiction and fantasy, as well as distinguished scholars in other fields and famous science fiction writers, who presented papers on specific aspects of science fiction and fantasy. These papers were then assembled in published Eaton volumes now found in university libraries throughout the world. This volume brings together twenty-two of the best papers from those conferences, most with provocative new afterwords by their authors, assembled in chronological order to provide a picture of how science fiction criticism has evolved since 1979 to the present day. The book's editors are two veteran science fiction writers-Gregory Benford and Howard V. Hendrix-and two noted critics -Gary Westfahl and Joseph D. Miller-who frequently attended and participated in Eaton Conferences. Its contributors include eight scholars who have won the Science Fiction and Fantasy Research Association's Pilgrim Award for lifetime contributions to science fiction and fantasy scholarship.

The reputation of Janet Frame, modern New Zealand writer, languishes. [Janet Frame] will bring more recognition to Frame. Among its well-known contributors are Patricia Moran, Suzette A. Henke and Claire Bazin. The collection truly has a global reach, with professors in the U.S., England, France, and Australia, and all of the essays are written by women. Given Frame's opposition to patriarchy and preoccupation with "Womanly" language and feminist themes, women bring a unique point of view to analysis of Frame. Essays are organized around three themes: Frame's autobiography, Frame's short stories, and Frame's novels. The essays explore generally neglected topics in Frame's writings: her mother's Christadelphian faith; Frame's relationships with two 20th century icons, one an important artist of the Bay Area Figurative Movement (William Theophilus Brown) and the other a by now infamous scientist (John Money) who explored gender and sexuality at Johns Hopkins. Henke's "Janet Frame's New Zealand Odyssey," previously published in Shattered Subjects, is made accessible. Henke explores Frame through trauma studies. Comparative studies include Frame and Doris Lessing and Frame and Virginia Woolf. French scholars enrich Frame studies with little-evoked Gallic approaches, using Bakhtin, Foucault and Rabelais. Thus, the book is central to Frame studies.

British literature often refers to pagan and classical themes through richly detailed landscapes that suggest more than a mere backdrop of physical features. The myth-inspired writings of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Algernon Blackwood, Aleister Crowley, Lord Dunsany and even Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows informed later British films and television dramas such as Blood on Satan's Claw (1971), The Wicker Man (1973), Excalibur (1981) and Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975). The author analyzes the evocative language and aesthetics of landscapes in literature, film, television and music, and how "psycho-geography" is used to explore the influence of the past on the present.

From wondrous fairy-lands to nightmarish hellscapes, the elements that make fantasy worlds come alive also invite their exploration and study. This first book-length study of critically acclaimed novelist Patricia A. McKillip's lyrical other-worlds analyzes her characters, environments and legends and their interplay with genre expectations. The author gives long overdue critical attention to McKillip's work and demonstrates how a broader understanding of world-building enables a deeper appreciation of her fantasies.

With the incredibly long history of Batman and associated comics, it is unusual for something new to come along and grab a new generation's attention. That is exactly what happened in 1992 when young fans were introduced to Harley Quinn, a strange and eccentric female sidekick to the already popular villain the Joker. Since Harley's introduction, she has maintained a steady fan base as viewers of the cartoon series have followed the character through the comic books, live action plays, video games, and now movies with the release of the Suicide Squad movie in 2015. Those interested in a deeper understanding of Harley's bubbly and sometimes malicious character will delight in reading the first book dedicated to her in all her duality.

Get lost in a thousand great books. Fourteen years in the making and fifth in the series that has over 4.4 million copies in print, 1,000 Books to Read Before You Die is an eclectic and extraordinary book about books, as compulsively readable, entertaining, surprising, and enlightening as the 1,000-plus volumes it recommends. The author, James Mustich, has been a bookseller for decades, including two running the acclaimed independent book catalog A Common Reader, and 1,000 Books is like his personal store, where every book is excellent. Mustich's incomparable writing - lively, informed, erudite yet with an undisguised enthusiasm - not only reveals why the particular title you're reading about is vital but also gives you the urgent feeling that you need to drop everything, right now, and read that book. The expected pillars are here - Dante, Proust, Shakespeare, Faulkner, Woolf, Joyce, Kafka - but made completely fresh in these animated essays. And in between, the unexpected titles - from Harold and the Purple Crayon to Fun Home, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? to Tell Me a Riddle - are made completely essential. Aeschylus is here, and so is Nancy Drew, Herman Melville, and Edwidge Danticat. The alphabetical listing by last name results in the joy of juxtaposition - Grimm next to Grisham, Clarice Lispector followed by Hugh Lofting - prompting a rich appreciation for the gorgeous mosaic that is our literary heritage, whether poetry, science fiction, memoir, travel writing, biography, children's literature, the novel. Because ultimately what this book is not is a canon. It is, rather, an uncommon celebration of the best that our authors have put into words - and, as one of the entrants, the critic David Denby, put it, that "special character of solitude and rapture" that is the act of reading.

At the age of thirty-eight, Phyllis Dorothy James White, National Health Service employee, reinvented herself as P.D. James, crime novelist. By the time she died in 2014 at the age of ninety-four, James had long since been informally christened England's Queen of Crime. Sixteen of James's twenty novels feature one of her beloved series detectives, Adam Dalgliesh of Scotland Yard and private eye Cordelia Gray, while her stand-alone works include dystopian The Children of Men (1992) and Death Comes to Pemberley (2011), a sequel to Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. James's careful mystery plotting has earned comparison with Golden Age British detective writers such as Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers. At the same time, James's work is thoroughly modern, with realistic descriptions of police procedures and the echoing aftereffects of crime. This definitive companion to P. D. James includes over 800 encyclopedia-style entries on all her published writing, characters, settings, and themes, as well as a career chronology, a chronological and alphabetical listing of her works, and an exhaustive index, making it an invaluable resource for devoted fans and new readers alike.

A Wider View of the Universe traces the origins and development of Henry David Thoreau's painstaking and profound study of the natural world. Arguing that Thoreau in his early career did not perceive nature a worthy subject for his pen, the author chronicles his growing interest and the reasons behind the shift in viewpoint. Making do with a superficial knowledge of nature-even while living at Walden Pond-Thoreau began to study the subject more acutely in 1849 and 1850. Over the next dozen years, he applied himself especially to botany and ornithology, while seeking to integrate this more exact knowledge into the large patterns of life. Independently deriving what now would be considered an ecological world view, Thoreau devoted the last years of his writing career to nature studies, written in his own unique and exacting fashion. Henry Thoreau wrote after the fashion of a painter. How he arrived at this art provides an intriguing and arresting story.

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.

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.

Science and science fiction have become inseparable-with common stories, interconnected thought experiments, and shared language. This reference book lays out that relationship and its all-but-magical terms and ideas. Those who think seriously about the future are changing the world, reshaping how we speak and how we think. This book fully covers the terms that collected, clarified and crystallized the futurists' ideas, sometimes showing them off, sometimes slowing them down, and sometimes propelling them to fame and making them the common currency of our culture. The many entries in this encyclopedic work offer a guided tour of the vast territories occupied by science fiction and futurism. In his Foreword, David Brin says, "Provocative and enticing? Filled with 'huh!' moments and leads to great stories? That describes this volume."

This literary companion surveys the life, works, and awards of Irish playwright Brian Friel. Entries investigate his milieu and such topics as religion, violence, and achievement. Character summaries reprise his most significant figures, particularly St. Columba, the victims of Derry's Bloody Sunday, and Hugh O'Neill, the Lord of Tyrone. Coverage of Friel's column in the Irish Times and his short fiction in the New Yorker leads up to the style and influence of his most recent plays, Philadelphia, Here I Come!, Translations, and Dancing at Lughnasa.