Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Novel Ideas explores meaning within novels with the aid of block diagrams. Written without jargon the book takes in a wide range of sometimes complex novels written over a period in excess of 200 years by British, Commonwealth, French, American, and Russian authors. These novels also take on important issues of their day that, in most cases, pursue points still relevant in today's world. Such as this can easily be seen by comparing the work of Mary Wollstonecraft in the 1790s with those that followed such as Kate Chopin and even Katherine Mansfield in the 1920s. The idea is to then reduce the content of the essays in question to a still more manageable level by containing the points raised therein on single page block diagrams. What this form of block diagram does is to give students a more easily retained visual representation of an essay that might comprise of over twelve thousand words relating to complex issues raised in the novels. It also allows students to compare and contrast similarities and differences across the novels chosen, a question frequently asked of students throughout most literature courses and under exam conditions. Other authors' works discussed are Eliot, Zola, Hardy, Flaubert, James, Conrad, De Laclose and Turgenev. If students were to operate this system for themselves it could also help by consolidating literary points brought up throughout the year. In other words this methodology can be used as a template and need not only apply to the novels dealt with here. Although primarily of use to students throughout a literary degree course the same system could be employed by students on A-level courses as an aid to disciplining their approach to this wide and often complex subject.

This study of Sherlock Holmes and panoptic power will intrigue both fans of the Holmes canon and anyone interested in the history of crime literature and how such a character has captured the imagination of countless generations. Dr Michael Plakotaris has succeeded in bringing together the most authoritative works on the matter to create a revealing insight into one of the most prominent figures of English literature. From comparisons between Holmes and his creator to studies of his Nietzschean personality, his panoptic-semiotic modus operandi and his successful relationship with Watson, we begin to understand the components used that created this astounding success in Victorian literature.

Rewriting Modernity: Studies in black South African literary history connects the black literary archive in South Africa - from the nineteenth-century writing of Tiyo Soga to Zakes Mda in the twenty-first century - to international postcolonial studies via the theory of transculturation, a position adapted from the Cuban anthropologist, Fernando Ortiz. Attwell provides a welcome complication of the linear black literary history - literature as a reflection of the process of political emancipation - that is so often presented. He focuses on cultural transactions in a series of key moments and argues that black writers in South Africa have used print culture to map themselves onto modernity as contemporary subjects, to negotiate, counteract, reinvent and recast their positioning within colonialism, apartheid and in the context of democracy.

A Revolution in Rhyme: Poetic Co-option under the Islamic Republic offers, for the first time, an original, timely examination of the pivotal role poetry plays in policy, power and political legitimacy in modern-day Iran. Through a compelling chronological and thematic framework, Shams presents fresh insights into the emerging lexicon of coercion and unrest in the modern Persian canon. Analysis of the lives and work of ten key poets traces the evolution of the Islamic Republic, from the 1979 Revolution, through to the Iran-Iraq War, the death of a leader and the rise of internal conflicts. Ancient forms jostle against didactic ideologies, exposing the complex relationship between poetry, patronage and literary production in authoritarian regimes, shedding light on a crucial area of discourse that has been hitherto overlooked.

Anyone who has read J.D. Salinger's New Yorker stories ? particularly A Perfect Day for Bananafish, Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut, The Laughing Man, and For Esme ? With Love and Squalor, will not be surprised by the fact that his first novel is fully of children. The hero-narrator of THE CATCHER IN THE RYE is an ancient child of sixteen, a native New Yorker named Holden Caulfield. Through circumstances that tend to preclude adult, secondhand description, he leaves his prep school in Pennsylvania and goes underground in New York City for three days. The boy himself is at once too simple and too complex for us to make any final comment about him or his story. Perhaps the safest thing we can say about Holden is that he was born in the world not just strongly attracted to beauty but, almost, hopelessly impaled on it. There are many voices in this novel: children's voices, adult voices, underground voices-but Holden's voice is the most eloquent of all. Transcending his own vernacular, yet remaining marvelously faithful to it, he issues a perfectly articulated cry of mixed pain and pleasure. However, like most lovers and clowns and poets of the higher orders, he keeps most of the pain to, and for, himself. The pleasure he gives away, or sets aside, with all his heart. It is there for the reader who can handle it to keep.

This book offers a new critical perspective on the perpetual problem of literature's relationship to reality and in particular on the sustained tension between literature and historiography. The scholarly and literary works of W.G. Sebald (1944-2001) serve as striking examples for this discussion, for the way in which they demonstrate the emergence of a new hybrid discourse of literature as historiography. This book critically reconsiders the claims and aims of historiography by re-evaluating core questions of the literary discourse and by assessing the ethical imperative of literature in the 20th and 21st centuries. Guided by an inherently interdisciplinary framework, this book elucidates the interplay of epistemological, aesthetic, and ethical concerns that define Sebald's criticism and fiction. Appropriate to the way in which Sebald's works challenge us to rethink the boundaries between discourses, genres, disciplines, and media, this work proceeds in a methodologically non-dogmatic way, drawing on hermeneutics, semiotics, narratology, and discourse theory. In addition to contextualizing Sebald within postwar literature in German, the book is the first English-language study to consider Sebald's oeuvre as a whole. Of interest for Sebald experts and enthusiasts, literary scholars and historians concerned with the problematic of representing the past.

Contributions by Kelly Blewett, Claudia Camicia, Alisa Clapp-Itnyre, Lisa Rowe Fraustino, Elisabeth Graves, Karlie Herndon, KaaVonia Hinton, Holly Blackford Humes, Melanie Hurley, Kara K. Keeling, Maleeha Malik, Claudia Mills, Elena Paruolo, Scott T. Pollard, Jiwon Rim, Paige Sammartino, Adrianna Zabrzewska, and Wenduo Zhang First published in 1922 to immediate popularity, The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams has never been out of print. The story has been adapted for film, television, and theater across a range of mediums including animation, claymation, live action, musical, and dance. Frequently, the story inspires a sentimental, nostalgic response-as well as a corresponding dismissive response from critics. It is surprising that, despite its longevity and popularity, The Velveteen Rabbit has inspired a relatively thin dossier of serious literary scholarship, a gap that this volume seeks to correct. While each essay can stand alone, the chapters in "The Velveteen Rabbit" at 100 flow in a coherent sequence from beginning to end, showing connections between readings from a wide array of critical approaches. Philosophical and cultural studies lead us to consider the meaning of love and reality in ways both timeless and temporal. The Velveteen Rabbit is an Anthropocene Rabbit. He is also disabled. Here a traditional exegetical reading sits alongside queering the text. Collectively, these essays more than double the amount of serious scholarship on The Velveteen Rabbit. Combining hindsight with evolving sensibilities about representation, the contributors offer thirteen ways of looking at this Rabbit that Margery Williams gave us-ways that we can also use to look at other classic storybooks.

Literary Nonfiction. Poetry History & Criticism. Translated from the German by Michael Eskin. This extraordinary book offers a dazzling personal poetics as well as a sustained engagement with the origins of poetry itself. In tracing an arc from the landfills and forests of an East German childhood to the "global air-space of poetry," it takes in a breathtaking poetic itinerary from the Classics to the present day. Emerging from the heart of the European tradition, every page is packed with insight, wit and linguistic surprises, superbly rendered in Michael Eskin's supple English. But more than that: this is a volume with a mission. In reckoning with the possibilities of poetry, it sets out to show us a better way of being in the world: "a guide to thinking and feeling with precision." Written by one of the most exciting and thought-provoking writers of the moment, THE VOCATION OF POETRY is essential reading for anyone interested in modern poetry or in modern life.

A study in critical readership, this wide-ranging collection of essays challenges accepted theories on everything from classics such as Charlotte Bronte's Villette to more contemporary works like Margaret Atwood's Life Before Man. Explored are ideas of sexual subversion and queer politics. Literature's sacred cows are reevaluated, and new ways to explore both reading and writing are offered.

Organized by heretical movements and texts from the Gnostic Gospels to The Book of Mormon, this book uses the work of James Joyce - particularly Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake - as a prism to explore how the history of Christian heresy remains part of how we read, write, and think about books today. Erickson argues that the study of classical, medieval, and modern debates over heresy and orthodoxy provide new ways of understanding modernist literature and literary theory. Using Joyce's works as a springboard to explore different perspectives and intersections of 20th century literature and the modern literary and religious imagination, this book gives us new insights into how our modern and "secular" reading practices unintentionally reflect how we understand our religious histories.

**The instant Sunday Times bestseller** What if you tried to stop doing everything, so you could finally get round to what counts? Rejecting the futile modern obsession with 'getting everything done,' Four Thousand Weeks introduces readers to tools for constructing a meaningful life by embracing rather than denying their limitations. Drawing on the insights of both ancient and contemporary philosophers, psychologists, and spiritual teachers, Oliver Burkeman sets out to realign our relationship with time - and in doing so, to liberate us from its tyranny. Embrace your limits. Change your life. Make your four thousand weeks count. 'Life is finite. You don't have to fit everything in... Read this book and wake up to a new way of thinking and living' Emma Gannon 'Every sentence is riven with gold' Chris Evans 'Comforting, fascinating, engaging, inspiring and useful' Marian Keyes

The Methuen Drama Student Edition of Twelve Angry Men is the first critical edition of Reginald Rose's play, providing the play text alongside commentary and notes geared towards student readers. In New York, 1954, a man is dead and the life of another is at stake. A 'guilty' verdict seems a foregone conclusion, but one member of the jury has the will to probe more deeply into the evidence and the courage to confront the ignorance and prejudice of some of his fellow jurors. The conflict that follows is fierce and passionate, cutting straight to the heart of the issues of civil liberties and social justice. Ideal for the student reader, the accompanying pedagogical notes include elements such as an author chronology; plot summary; suggested further reading; explanatory endnotes; and questions for further study. The introduction discusses in detail the play's origins as a 1954 American television play, Rose's re-working of the piece for the stage, and Lumet's 1957 film version, identifying textual variations between these versions and discussing later significant productions. The commentary also situates the play in relation to the genre of courtroom drama, as a milestone in the development of televised drama, and as an engagement with questions of American individualism and democracy. Together, this provides students with an edition that situates the play in its contemporary social and dramatic contexts, while encouraging reflection on its wider thematic implications.

Novel Craft explores an intriguing and under-studied aspect of cultural life in Victorian England: domestic handicrafts, the decorative pursuit that predated the Arts and Crafts movement. Talia Schaffer argues that the handicraft movement served as a way to critique the modern mass-produced commodity and the rapidly emerging industrial capitalism of the nineteenth century. Her argument is illustrated with the four pivotal novels that form her study's core-Gaskell's Cranford, Yonge's The Daisy Chain, Dickens's Our Mutual Friend, and Oliphant's Phoebe Junior. Each features various handicrafts that subtly aim to subvert the socioeconomic changes being wrought by industrialization. Schaffer goes beyond straightforward textual analysis by shaping each chapter around the individual craft at the center of each novel (paper for Cranford, flowers and related arts in The Daisy Chain, rubbish and salvage in Our Mutual Friend, and the contrasting ethos of arts and crafts connoisseurship in Phoebe Junior). The domestic handicraft also allows for self-referential analysis of the text itself; in scenes of craft production (and destruction), the authors articulate the work they hope their own fictions perform. The handicraft also becomes a locus for critiquing contemporary aesthetic trends, with the novels putting forward an alternative vision of making value and understanding art. A work that combines cultural history and literary studies, Novel Craft highlights how attention to the handicraft movement's radically alternative views of materiality, consumption, production, representation, and subjectivity provides a fresh perspective on the major changes that shaped the Victorian novel as a whole.

THE ULTIMATE GUIDES TO EXAM SUCCESS from York Notes - the UK's favourite English Literature Study Guides. York Notes for AS & A2 are brand new and have been specifically designed for AS and A2 students to help you get the very best grade you can. They are comprehensive, easy to use, packed with valuable features and written by experienced examiners and teachers to give you an expert understanding of the text, critical approaches and the all-important exam. This edition covers Frankenstein and includes: An enhanced exam skills section which includes essay plans, expert guidance on understanding questions and sample answers. You'll know exactly what you need to do and say to get the best grades. A wealth of useful content like key quotations, revision tasks and vital study tips that'll help you revise, remember and recall all the most important information. The widest coverage and the best, most in-depth analysis of characters, themes, language, form, context and style to help you demonstrate an exhaustive understanding of all aspects of the text. York Notes for AS & A2 are also available for these popular titles: The Bloody Chamber(9781447913153) Doctor Faustus(9781447913177) The Great Gatsby(9781447913207) The Kite Runner(9781447913160) Macbeth(9781447913146) Othello(9781447913191) WutheringHeights(9781447913184)

THE ULTIMATE GUIDES TO EXAM SUCCESS from York Notes - the UK's favourite English Literature Study Guides. York Notes for AS & A2 have been specifically designed to help AS and A2 studnets to get the very best grade you can. They are comprehensive, easy to use, packed with valuable features and written by experienced examiners and teachers to give you an expert understanding of the text, critical approaches and the all-important exam. This edition covers Macbeth and includes: An enhanced exam skills section which includes essay plans, expert guidance on understanding questions and sample answers. You'll know exactly what you need to do and say to get the best grades. A wealth of useful content like key quotations, revision tasks and vital study tips that'll help you revise, remember and recall all the most important information. The widest coverage and the best, most in-depth analysis of characters, themes, language, form, context and style to help you demonstrate an exhaustive understanding of all aspects of the text. York Notes for AS & A2 are also available for these popular titles: The Bloody Chamber(9781447913153) Doctor Faustus(9781447913177) Frankenstein (9781447913214) The Great Gatsby(9781447913207) The Kite Runner(9781447913160) Othello(9781447913191) WutheringHeights(9781447913184)

Winner of the prestigious Naguib Mahfouz Medal, this fierce and moving work is an unparalleled rendering of the human aspects of the Palestinian predicament.

Barred from his homeland after 1967’s Six-Day War, the poet Mourid Barghouti spent thirty years in exile—shuttling among the world’s cities, yet secure in none of them; separated from his family for years at a time; never certain whether he was a visitor, a refugee, a citizen, or a guest. As he returns home for the first time since the Israeli occupation, Barghouti crosses a wooden bridge over the Jordan River into Ramallah and is unable to recognize the city of his youth. Sifting through memories of the old Palestine as they come up against what he now encounters in this mere “idea of Palestine,” he discovers what it means to be deprived not only of a homeland but of “the habitual place and status of a person.” A tour de force of memory and reflection, lamentation and resilience, I Saw Ramallah is a deeply humane book, essential to any balanced understanding of today’s Middle East.

The untold story of how the First World War shaped the lives, faith, and writings of J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis The First World War laid waste to a continent and permanently altered the political and religious landscape of the West. For a generation of men and women, it brought the end of innocence-and the end of faith. Yet for J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis, the Great War deepened their spiritual quest. Both men served as soldiers on the Western Front, survived the trenches, and used the experience of that conflict to ignite their Christian imagination. Had there been no Great War, there would have been noHobbit, no Lord of the Rings, no Narnia, and perhaps no conversion to Christianity by C. S. Lewis. Unlike a generation of young writers who lost faith in the God of the Bible, Tolkien and Lewis produced epic stories infused with the themes of guilt and grace, sorrow and consolation. Giving an unabashedly Christian vision of hope in a world tortured by doubt and disillusionment, the two writers created works that changed the course of literature and shaped the faith of millions. This is the first book to explore their work in light of the spiritual crisis sparked by the conflict.

HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics. 'There is no greater sorrow then to recall our times of joy in wretchedness.' Considered one of the greatest medieval poems written in the common vernacular of the time, Dante's Inferno begins on Good Friday in the year 1300. As he wanders through a dark forest, Dante loses his way and stumbles across the ghost of the poet Virgil. Virgil promises to lead him back to the top of the mountain, but to do so, they must pass through Hell, encountering all manner of shocking horrors, sins and evil torments along the way, evoking questions about God's justice, human behaviour and Christianity.

Exploring the potential of poetry and poetic language as a means of conveying perspectives on ageing and later life, this book examines questions such as 'how can we understand ageing and later life?' and 'how can we capture the ambiguities and complexities that the experiences of growing old in time and place entail?' As poetic language illuminates, transfigures and enchants our being in the world, it also offers insights into the existential questions that are amplified as we age, including the vulnerabilities and losses that humble us and connect us. Literary gerontology and narrative gerontology have highlighted the importance of linguistic representations of ageing. While the former has been concerned primarily with the analysis of published literary works, the latter has foregrounded the individual and collective meaning making through narrative resources in old age. There has, however, been less interest in how poetic language, both as a genre and as a practice, can illuminate ageing. This volume suggests a path towards the poetics of ageing by means of presenting analyses of published poetry on ageing written by poets from William Shakespeare to Wallace Stevens; the use of reading and writing poetry among ordinary people in old age; and the poetic nuances that emerge from other literary practices and contexts in relation to ageing - including personal poetic reflections from many of the contributing authors. The volume brings together international scholars from disciplinary backgrounds as diverse as cultural psychology, literary studies, theology, sociology, narrative medicine, cultural gerontology and narrative gerontology, and will deploy a variety of empirical and critical methodologies to explore how poetry and poetic language may challenge dominant discourses and illuminate alternative understandings of ageing.

The gruesome double-murder upon which the novel Crime and Punishment hinges leads its culprit, Raskolnikov, into emotional trauma and obsessive, destructive self-reflection. But Raskolnikov's famous philosophical musings are just part of the full philosophical thought manifest in one of Dostoevsky's most famous novels. This volume, uniquely, brings together prominent philosophers and literary scholars to deepen our understanding of the novel's full range of philosophical thought. The seven essays treat a diversity of topics, including: language and the representation of the human mind, emotions and the susceptibility to loss, the nature of agency, freedom and the possibility of evil, the family and the failure of utopian critique, the authority of law and morality, and the dialogical self. Further, authors provide new approaches for thinking about the relationship between literary representation and philosophy, and the way that Dostoevsky labored over intricate problems of narrative form in Crime and Punishment. Together, these essays demonstrate a seminal work's full philosophical worth-a novel rich with complex themes whose questions reverberate powerfully into the 21st century.