Unsurpassed as a text for upper-division and beginning graduate students, Raman Selden's classic text is the liveliest, most readable and most reliable guide to contemporary literary theory. Includes applications of theory, cross-referenced to Selden's companion volume, Practicing Theory and Reading Literature.

When an essay is due and dreaded exams loom, here's the lit-crit help students need to succeed! SparkNotes Literature Guides make studying smarter, better, and faster. They provide chapter-by-chapter analysis, explanations of key themes, motifs, and symbols, a review quiz and essay topics. Lively and accessible, SparkNotes is perfect for late-night studying and paper writing.

The field of Margaret Atwood studies, like her own work, is in constant evolution. This second edition of The Cambridge Companion to Margaret Atwood provides substantial reconceptualization of Atwood's writing in multiple genres that has spanned six decades, with particular focus on developments since 2000. Exploring Atwood in our contemporary context, this edition discusses the relationship between her Canadian identity and her role as an international literary celebrity and spokesperson on global issues, ranging from environmentalism to women's rights to digital technology. As well as providing novel insights into Atwood's recent dystopias and classic texts, this edition highlights a significant dimension in the reception of Atwood's work, with new material on the striking Hulu and MGM television adaptation of The Handmaid's Tale. This up-to-date volume illuminates new directions in Atwood's career, and introduces students, scholars and general readers alike to the ever-expanding dimensions of her literary art.

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.

Paul Auster (b. 1947) is one of the most critically acclaimed and intensely studied authors in America today. His varied career as a novelist, poet, translator, and filmmaker has attracted scholarly scrutiny from a variety of critical perspectives. The steadily rising arc of his large readership has made him something of a popular culture figure with many appearances in print interviews, as well as on television, the radio, and the internet. Auster's best-known novel may be his first, City of Glass (1985), a grim and intellectually puzzling mystery that belies its surface image as a detective novel and goes on to become a profound meditation on transience and mortality, the inadequacies of language, and isolation. Fifteen more novels have followed since then, including The Music of Chance, Moon Palace, The Book of Illusions, and The Brooklyn Follies. He has, in the words of one critic, "given the phrase 'experimental fiction' a good name" by fashioning bona fide literary works with all the rigor and intellect demanded of the contemporary avant-garde. This volume-the first of its kind on Auster-will be useful to both scholars and students for the penetrating self-analysis and the wide range of biographical information and critical commentary it contains. Conversations with Paul Auster covers all of Auster's oeuvre, from The New York Trilogy of which City of Glass is a component to Sunset Park (2010), along with his screenplays for Smoke (1995) and Blue in the Face (1996). Within, Auster nimbly discusses his poetry, memoir, nonfiction, translations, and film directing.

Eliot's Four Quartets is arguably the finest long poem in modern English literature. It is also one that presents considerable problems of interpretation. In Word Unheard, first published in 1969, Blamires aims to unravel some of these problems by guiding the reader line by line through the poem, blending paraphrase with commentary. Blamires pays particular attention to the philosophical and theological dimensions of the poem and to its multifarious personal, historical and literary allusions. This title will be of interests to students of literature.

Hardy's second published novel, Under the Greenwood Tree (1872), the first of his great series of Wessex novels, was originally published anonymously. As part of the Cambridge Edition of the Novels and Stories of Thomas Hardy, this edition of the novel provides readers with an authoritative and accurate text of the novel; moreover it gives access to every revision that Hardy made, and to notations of all the errors introduced by printers' compositors. The annotated text is surrounded by an introduction that gives a very full account of the genesis, the writing and the publishing history of the novel. A range of appendices and comprehensive explanatory notes explore significant aspects of the composition, production and marketing of the novel, touched on in the introduction, to provide a full understanding of the nature and life of this classic work.

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.

HandiLand looks at young adult novels, fantasy series, graphic memoirs, and picture books of the last 25 years in which characters with disabilities take center stage for the first time. These books take what others regard as weaknesses-for instance, Harry Potter's headaches or Hazel Lancaster's oxygen tank-and redefine them as part of the hero's journey. HandiLand places this movement from sidekick to hero in the political contexts of disability rights movements in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Ghana.Elizabeth A. Wheeler invokes the fantasy of HandiLand, an ideal society ready for young people with disabilities before they get there, as a yardstick to measure how far we've come and how far we still need to go toward the goal of total inclusion. The book moves through the public spaces young people with disabilities have entered, including schools, nature, and online communities. As a disabled person and parent of children with disabilities, Wheeler offers an inside look into families who collude with their kids in shaping a better world. Moving, funny, and beautifully written, HandiLand: The Crippest Place on Earth is the definitive study of disability in contemporary literature for young readers.

With the excitement at the beginning of the 20th century came a whole new genre of writing. The dawn of the Edwardian era produced a host of new themes and subjects for a new generation of writers to be inspired by. With over 800 A-Z entries covering writers (nearly half of whom are women), individual works, literary periodicals, and general themes, this Companion, now available in paperback, offers access to the writings, the authors, and the preoccupations of the Edwardian era.

Focusing on the core assessment objectives for GCSE English Literature 9-1, The Quotation Bank takes 25 of the most important quotations from the text and provides detailed material for each quotation, covering interpretations, literary techniques and detailed analysis. Also included is a sample answer, detailed essay plans, revision activities and a comprehensive glossary of relevant literary terminology, all in a clear and practical format to enable effective revision and ultimate exam confidence.

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1905 edition. Excerpt: ...porch. She heard him fling the bag down on the seat, and turn away towards the village, without hindering himself for a single pace. Then the butler opened the door, took up the bag, brought it in, and carried it up the staircase to place it on the slab by Miss Aldclyffe's dressing-room door. The whole proceeding had been depicted by sounds. She had a presentiment that her letter was in the bag at last. She thought then in diminishing pulsations of confidence, 'He asks to see me Perhaps he asks to see me: I hope he asks to see me.' A quarter to eight: Miss Aldclyffe's bell--rather earlier than usual. 'She must have heard the post-bag brought, ' said the maiden, as, tired of the chilly prospect outside, she turned to the fire, and drew imaginative pictures of her future therein. A tap came to the door, and the lady's-maid entered. 'Miss Aldclyffe is awake, ' she said; 'and she asked if you were moving yet, miss.' 'I'll run up to her, ' said Cytherea, and flitted off with the utterance of the words. 'Very fortunate this, ' she thought; 'I shall see what is in the bag this morning all the sooner.' She took it up from the side table, went into Miss Aldclyffe's bedroom, pulled up the blinds, and looked round upon the lady in bed, calculating the minutes that must elapse before she looked at her letters. 'Well, darling, how are you? I am glad you have come in to see me, ' said Miss Aldclyffe. 'You can unlock the bag this morning, child if you like, ' she continued, yawning factitiously. 'Strange ' Cytherea thought; 'it seems as if she knew there was likely to be a letter for me.' From her bed Miss Aldclyffe watched the girl's face as she tremblingly opened the post-bag and found there an envelope addressed to her in Edward's handwriting; one he had written...

Twenty-five years ago this year, Ilan Stavans published his first book, Imagining Columbus: The Literary Voyage (1993). Since then, Stavans has become a polarizing figure, dismissed and praised in equal measure, a commanding if contested intellectual whose work as a cultural critic has been influential in the fields of Latino and Jewish studies, politics, immigration, religion, language, and identity. He can be credited for bringing attention to Jewish Latin America and issues like Spanglish, he has been instrumental in shaping a certain view of Latino Studies in universities across the United States as well abroad, he has anthologized much of Latino and Latin American Jewish literature and he has engaged in contemporary pop culture via the graphic novel. He was the host of a PBS show called Conversations with Ilan Stavans, and has had his fiction adapted into the stage and the big screen. The man, as one critic stated, clearly has energy to burn and it does not appear to be abating. This collection celebrates twenty-five years of Stavans's work with essays that describe the good and the bad, the inspired and the pedestrian, the worthwhile and the questionable.

This companion to Frank Herbert's six original Dune novels-Dune, Dune Messiah, Children of Dune, God Emperor of Dune, Heretics of Dune and Chapterhouse: Dune-provides an encyclopedia of characters, locations, terms and other elements, and highlights the series' underrated aesthetic integrity. An extensive introduction covers themes of ecology, chaos theory, concepts and structures, and Joseph Campbell's monomyth in Herbert's narrative.

Clear all moorings, one-half impulse power, and set course for a mare incognitum. A popular culture artifact of the New Frontier/Space Race era, Star Trek is often mistakenly viewed as a Space Western. However, the Western format is not what governs the actual worldbuilding of Star Trek, which was, after all, also pitched as `Hornblower in space'. The future of Star Trek is modeled on the world of the British Golden Age of Sail as it is commonly found in the genre of sea fiction. Star Trek and the British Age of Sail re-historicizes and remaps the origins of Star Trek and subsequently the entirety of its fictional world-the Star Trek continuum-on an as yet uncharted transatlantic bearing.

From Aesthete to Ziffern, Baby-Language to Verbosity, Badgers to Railway Stations: this gloriously serendipitous dictionary presents the life, times and strong opinions of John Ruskin (1819-1900) - art critic, patron, draughtsman, watercolourist, social thinker and philanthropist. Michael Glover's delightful A-Z distills the essence of Ruskin, revealing a lighter side to the man known for his 39 volumes of ponderous prose. When off his guard, Ruskin could write pithily and amusingly, but he was also a fascinating amalgam of self-contradictions. Combining judiciously selected extracts from Ruskin's writings with the author's wittily insightful interpretations, this book is essential reading for all those curious to know what Ruskin did with a cyanometer, why he hated iron railings and the Renaissance, and how Proust's admiration of the man was tinged with distrust.

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.

This first book-length critical examination of the life and work of Marjorie Bowen (1885-1952) reveals a major English writer whose prodigious output included stories of history, romance, and the supernatural. As Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Michael Dirda writes in his Foreword, Bowen may be "the finest British woman writer of the uncanny of the last century," a view that echoes the high regard of cultural historian Edward Wagenknecht, who called her "a literary phenomenon," one whose best work places her alongside such contemporaries as Edith Wharton and Daphne du Maurier. Publicly acclaimed-known only by a series of pseudonyms (including "Marjorie Bowen")-but privately inscrutable, she was and is a mysterious and complex character. Drawing for the first time upon archival resources and the cooperation of the Bowen Estate, this book reveals a woman who saw herself as a rationalist and serious historian, but also as a mystic and "dark enchantress of dread." Above all, through a lifetime of domestic storms and creative ecstasy, Bowen worked tirelessly as both a professional writer and a consummate artist, always seeking, as she once confessed, "to find beauty in dark places.

Despite the central role that animals play in African writing and daily life, African literature and African thinkers remain conspicuously absent from the field of animal studies. The Postcolonial Animal: African Literature and Posthuman Ethics demonstrates the importance of African writing to animal studies by analyzing how postcolonial African writing-including folktales, religion, philosophy, and anticolonial movements-has been mobilized to call for humane treatment of nonhuman others. Mwangi illustrates how African authors grapple with the possibility of an alternative to eating meat, and how they present postcolonial animal-consuming cultures as shifting toward an embrace of cultural and political practices that avoid the use of animals and minimize animal suffering. The Postcolonial Animal analyzes texts that imagine a world where animals are not abused or used as a source of food, clothing, or labor, and that offer instruction in how we might act responsibly and how we should relate to others-both human and nonhuman-in order to ensure a world free of oppression. The result is an equitable world where even those who are utterly foreign to us are accorded respect and where we recognize the rights of all marginalized groups.

Chaucer's best-known poem, The Canterbury Tales, is justly celebrated for its richness and variety, both literary - the Tales include fabliaux, romances, sermons, hagiographies, fantasies, satires, treatises, fables and exempla - and thematic, with its explorations of courtly love and scatology, piety and impiety, chivalry and pacifism, fidelity and adultery. Students new to Chaucer will find in this Companion a lively introduction to the poem's diversity, depth, and wonder. Readers returning to the Tales will appreciate the chapters' fresh engagement with the individual tales and their often complicated critical histories, inflected in recent decades by critical approaches attentive to issues of gender, sexuality, class, and language.

Since the publication of his first novel, The Intuitionist, in 1999, Colson Whitehead (b. 1969) has been considered an important new voice in American literature. His seven subsequent books have done little to contradict that initial assessment, especially after 2016's The Underground Railroad spent numerous weeks at the top of bestseller lists and won numerous major literary awards, including the Pulitzer Prize. Ranging from 2001 to 2016, the twenty-three interviews collected in Conversations with Colson Whitehead reveal the workings of one of America's most idiosyncratic and most successful literary minds. Through these interviews, it is clear that none of this well-earned praise has gone to his head. If anything, he still seems inclined to present himself as an awkward misfit who writes about such offbeat subject matter as rival groups of elevator inspectors, the insufficiency of off-brand "flesh-colored" bandages, or a literalized alternate version of the Underground Railroad. Whitehead speaks at length about matters related to his craft, including his varied literary and nonliterary influences, the particular methods of researching and writing that have proved valuable to telling his stories, and the ways in which he has managed the rollercoaster life of a professional writer. He also opens up about popular culture, particularly the unconventional blend of music, genre-fiction, B movies, and comic books that he gleefully identifies as a passion that has persisted for him since his childhood.

Richard Holloway is one of our most beloved public thinkers. Throughout his life he has turned to poets and writers to help answer the big questions, and for solace and guidance in the face of life's challenges. Now he shares those poems and words which have been his own guide, offered in the hope they will help us too. This is a book to turn to for inspiration, guidance and comfort. It offers lessons from those who, in Richard's words, 'know best how to listen and teach us to listen', all united by 'the sensual appeal of words, the pain and pleasure they impart'. It is a book to treasure.

How were the Crusades, and the crusaders, narrated, described, and romanticised by the various communities that experienced or remembered them? This Companion provides a critical overview of the diverse and multilingual literary output connected with crusading over the last millennium, from the first writings which sought to understand and report on what was happening, to contemporary medievalism, in which crusading is a potent image of holy war and jihad. The chapters show the enduring legacy of the crusaders' imagery, from the chansons de geste to Walter Scott, from Charlemagne to Orlando Bloom. Whilst the crusaders' hold on Jerusalem was relatively short-lived, the desire for Jerusalem has had a long afterlife in many cultural contexts and media.

Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials stands as a landmark in fantasy literature. Comprised of the novels The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass, the award-winning epic trilogy has been adapted for radio, stage, and film in both Britain and the United States, though it remains controversial for its negative depiction of religion. Herein, scholars from various literary, philosophical, and theatrical fields explore His Dark Materials, addressing numerous topics relevant to reading, studying and understanding the work, including its basis in Milton's Paradise Lost; the influence of science fiction on the series; issues of social class, religion, sexuality, and gender; postcolonial perspectives; and recent stage productions.