Revised and updated for 1999, this reference provides information on living authors and writers internationally. There are over 8000 entries on leading authors, novelists, playwrights, columnists, journalists, editors and critics. The appendices section lists major literary awards and recipients, literary agents and societies worldwide.

Containing an urgently needed archival database of historical evidence, this volume includes both a consolidated presentation of the documentary records of black people in Tudor and Stuart England, and an interpretive narrative that confirms and significantly extends the insights of current theoretical excursus on race in early modern England. Here for the first time Imtiaz Habib collects the scattered references to black people-whether from Africa, India or America-in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England, and arranges them into a systematic, chronological descriptive index. He offers an extended historical and theoretical interpretation of the records in six chapters, which serve as an introductory guide to the index even as they articulate a specific argument about the meaning of the records. Both the archival information and interpretive scholarship provide a strong framework from which future historical debates on race in early modern England can proceed.

Browne's famous work, first published in 1902, was the essential text on literary history in Persian studies for many years. As an overview of Persian literature from the earliest times until Firdawsi, it continues to be a valuable reference. Out of print for some time, it is now reissued as a library edition, in facsimile to capture the feel of the original edition.

It is remarkable how persistent a "minor" writer may be. He may lack the large vision and universal message of the great writer, but instead possess a clear, true, intense view of particular places, peoples, and situations that renders his work unique and irreplacable. Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904) is such a figure in American literature. Best known as a scholar of Japanese culture, Hearn was a remarkable journalist, translator, travel writer, and perhaps second only to Poe in the literature of the macabre and supernatural. Hearn's life, as strange and colorful as his work, is brilliantly recounted in Elizabeth Stevenson's sensitive and sympathetic biography. The range of Hearn's writing is reflected in the peripatetic course of his life. The son of an Irish father and a Greek mother, he was born on the Ionian island of Leucadia, was raised in Dublin, and came to America at the age of nineteen. His early career was spent as a journalist. Without a trace of condescension or pity he entered into the lives of the dock workers of Cincinnati, the Creoles of New Orleans and Martinique, and later the common villagers of Japan, describing how they lived and worked and what they believed. No mere seeker after the exotic, Hearn's immersion in Japanese culture following his emigration in 1890 was born of a profound affinity of mind and sensibility. In Japan, the clarity and force of his expression matured. Here Hearn found a beautifully ordered, artistically sensitive society, but one indifferent to individualism. In later years, he saw a society also increasingly susceptible to modern forces of authoritarianism, militarism, and xenophobia. Horrified by the dehumanizing potential of these forces, in East and West alike, Hearn remained acutely sensitive to the most minute experience. His study of Japanese folklore and his retelling of its tales and ghost stories combine insight into the universals of the larger human world with an exquisite appreciation of how small things matter. Elizabeth Stevenson's book is as much about the writer as the man. While giving an accurate measure of the scale of Hearn's achievement, she makes a compelling case for its artistry. Her reading demonstrates that his writings are not mere aids to the understanding of various cultures but ends in themselves. Hearn did not just translate the folklore of other cultures, he recreated it. "The Grass Lark" will interest literary scholars, American studies specialists, and folklorists.

Guard the Mysteries is a compendium of five talks that the poet Cedar Sigo presented for the Bagley Wright Lecture series. Retracing the ways in which he first encountered the realm of poetry, Sigo plumbs the particulars of modern critique, identity politics, early influences, and poetic form to produce a singular 'autobiography of voice.' Across these lectures, Sigo explores his childhood on the Suquamish Reservation, while paying homage to revolutionary artists, teachers, and thinkers whom have shaped his poetic aesthetic. Simultaneously timeless and extremely timely, these talks ponder the presences that California Buddhism, LGBTQ+ experiences, and Native Nations occupy in the poetic world and the world at large.

A wide range of topics relating to Chinese oral literature are lavishly illustrated in word and picture from performances & storytellers.The world of Chinese story telling is not just described and analysed - it is also brought to life.

"Wendy Wasserstein: A Casebook "contains in-depth discussions of the playwright's major works, including her recent play 1 "An American Daughter." Wasserstein's plays and essays are explored within diverse traditions, including Jewish storytelling, women's writing, and classical comedy. Critical perspectives include feminist, Bakhtinian, and actor/director. Comparisons with other playwrights, such as Rachel Crothers, Caryl Churchill, and Anton Chekhov, provide context and understanding. An interview with the playwright and an annotated bibliography are included.

Pivotal Lines in Shakespeare and Others defines a pivotal line as "a moment in the script that serves as a pathway into the larger play ... a magnet to which the rest of the play, scenes before and after, adheres." Homan offers his personal choices of such lines in five plays by Shakespeare and works by Beckett, Brecht, Pinter, Shepard, and Stoppard. Drawing on his own experience in the theatre as actor and director and on campus as a teacher and scholar, he pairs a Shakespearean play with one by a modern playwright as mirrors for each other. One reviewer calls his approach "ground-breaking." Another observes that his "experience with the particular plays he has chosen is invaluable" since it allows us to find "a wedge into such ironic texts." Academics and students alike will find this volume particularly useful in aiding their own discovery of a pivotal line or moment in the experience of reading about, watching, or performing in a play.

Bringing a fuzzy logic-based approach into translation studies and drawing on the theory of information entropy, this book discusses the translation of fuzzy language in literary works and advances a new method of measuring text fuzziness between translation and source text. Based on illustrative examples from the popular novel The Da Vinci Code and its two translated Chinese versions, the study demonstrates the fuzziness measuring method through an algorithmic process. More specifically, information entropy is applied to measure the uncertainty associated with readers' understanding of the original and its corresponding target texts. The underlying hypothesis is that the probability distribution in which readers will understand identified fuzzy discourse is measurable. By further explicating the validity of the hypothesis, it seeks to solve translational "fuzzy" problems in the translation process and offers an alternative, novel approach to the study of "fuzzy" literary texts and their translation. Hopefully, the argument of the book that the intrinsic uncertainty of fuzzy language can be evaluated through Shannon's information entropy will open up a new avenue to the quantitative description of the fuzziness of language and translation. This book will be of interest to scholars and students in translation studies, applied linguistics and literary criticism.

Available as single volumes or as a complete set, this collection traces the evolution of a literary genre: the British speculative future war novel. Taking science fiction from the 1890s, this set explores the various ways in which the science fiction tradition can be interpreted.

Available as single volumes or as a complete set, this collection traces the evolution of a literary genre: the British speculative future war novel. Taking science fiction from the 1890s, this set explores the various ways in which the science fiction tradition can be interpreted.

Available as single volumes or as a complete set, this collection traces the evolution of a literary genre: the British speculative future war novel. Taking science fiction from the 1890s, this set explores the various ways in which the science fiction tradition can be interpreted.

Available as single volumes or as a complete set, this collection traces the evolution of a literary genre: the British speculative future war novel. Taking science fiction from the 1890s, this set explores the various ways in which the science fiction tradition can be interpreted.

Available as single volumes or as a complete set, this collection traces the evolution of a literary genre: the British speculative future war novel. Taking science fiction from the 1890s, this set explores the various ways in which the science fiction tradition can be interpreted.

English and the Discourses of Colonialism opens with the British departure from Hong Kong marking the end of British colonialism. Yet Alastair Pennycook argues that this dramatic exit masks the crucial issue that the traces left by colonialism run deep.
This challenging and provocative book looks particularly at English, English language teaching, and colonialism. It reveals how the practice of colonialism permeated the cultures and discourses of both the colonial and colonized nations, the effects of which are still evident today. Pennycook explores the extent to which English is, as commonly assumed, a language of neutrality and global communication, and to what extent it is, by contrast, a language laden with meanings and still weighed down with colonial discourses that have come to adhere to it.
Travel writing, newspaper articles and popular books on English, are all referred to, as well as personal experiences and interviews with learners of English in India, Malaysia, China and Australia. Pennycook concludes by appealing to postcolonial writing, to create a politics of opposition and dislodge the discourses of colonialism from English.

The writings of six choreographers are assembled in this book and the leap they have taken to go from the medium of choreography into written text constitutes a form of translation. Some of the texts investigate the possibilities of written language as invention, others use it as a means to illustrate specific tenets or describe choreographic projects. All yield insight into the process of coaxing language from the body.

This text examines both "English" poetry through the events of the 20th century and British history through its representations in recent poetry. It builds a narrative not of poetry in the 20th century but of the 20th century in poetry. A high proportion of literature courses include an exploration of the issues of gender, ethnicity, theory, nationality, politics and social class. But until now most teaching has focused on the novel as the most useful way of raising these issues. Peter Childs demonstrates that all poetry is historically produced and consumed and is part of our understanding of society and identity. This student-friendly critical survey includes chapters on: the Georgians; First World War poetry; Eliot; Yeats; the thirties; post-war poetry; contemporary anthologies; women's poetry; and Northern Irish and black British poets. Placing literature in a wider social context, this book examines the way in which recent theory has questioned divisions between "history" and literature, between "text" and "event", between society and the individual.

Makes available research from international experts
This "Encyclopedia" gathers, for the first time, information not easily found elsewhere without extensive research. The material has been distilled from a variety of sources by over 200-internationally recognized contributors-including such leading Whitman scholars as James E. Miller, Jr., Roger Asselineau, Betsy Erkkila, and Joel Myerson. Writing under the guidance of a distinguished 11-member advisory board, they provide unprecedented access to important information about Whitman.
Comprehensive A-to-Z coverage of more than 750 topics
In all, the volume comprises more than 750 signed entries arranged in convenient alphabetical format. Coverage includes:
*Biographical Information-all names, dates, places, and events important to understanding Whitman's life and career.
*Whitman's Works-essays on all eight editions of "Leaves of Grass," major poems and poem clusters, principal essays and prose works, as well as his more than two dozen short stories and the novel, "Franklin Evans."
*Prominent Themes and Concepts-essays on such major topics as democracy, slavery, the Civil War, immortality, sexuality, and the women's rights movement.
*Significant Forms and Techniques-such as prosody, symbolism, free verse, and humor.
*Important Trends and Critical Approaches in Whitman Studies-including New Historicist and cultural criticism, psychological explorations, and controversial issues of sexual identity.
*Surveys of Whitman's International Impact-as well as an assessment of his literary legacy.
A user-friendly guide
Useful for students, researchers, librarians, teachers, and Whitmandevotees, this volume features extensive cross-references, numerous photographs of the poet, a chronology, a special appendix section tracking the poet's genealogy, and a thorough index. Each entry includes a bibliography for further study.

English Stage Comedy 1490-1990 is a unique and beautifully written study of the comedy of the English stage from the Tudor period to the late twentieth century. Alexander Leggatt demonstrates that an examination of comedy as a 'genre' can tell us much about the relationships between literature and society. English Stage Comedy 1490-1990 surveys five centuries of classic comic drama, focusing on major playwrights such as:
* Shakespeare
* Jonson
* Etherege
* Wycherley
* Congreve
* Vanbrugh
* Goldsmith
* Sheridan
* Wilde
* Shaw
* Coward
* Orton
* Ayckbourn

Boys' aviation series books from 1910-1950 shaped at least two generations' views of aircraft and American life. From the earliest days of aviation to those of spaceflight, they instilled a vision of flight both romantic and progressive. They described a future in which technology and humanity are complementary and offered flight as a way of bettering all mankind. In this first comprehensive study of the more than forty boys' aviation series, Erisman reveals the part played by the books and their writers in spurring the American nation's fascination with flying. It is a noteworthy piece of social and literary history that sheds new light on how popular art can transform technological progress into cultural idealism and reform. Some of the titles were written by journalists, others by military officers, and not a few by the pseudonymous ghosts of the Stratemeyer Syndicate (Tom Swift, the Hardy Boys, and Nancy Drew, among others), yet all shared the same goal. Populated with manly heroes in the Tom Swift and (later) Charles A. Lindbergh tradition and drawing upon the almost daily advances in aviation technology, the books communicated a steadfast vision of the liberating, exhilarating world that flying offered every boy. More than that, they conveyed as well a glimpse of the better world that would come as air-mindedness and aviation worked their uplifting influence on the larger community.

Lyric Incarnate examines the plays of Aleksandr Blok, the pre-eminent poet of Russian Symbolism and one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century. Blok's plays have received less attention than his poetry in the West, and this book is the first and only English-language monograph devoted to Blok the playwright. In chronological succession, each of Blok's major plays is examined in detail. Special attention is accorded to Blok's relations with the major directors of his time, particularly Meyerhold and Stanislavsky. Blok's role, for instance, in Meyerhold's formulation of the theatre of the grotesque proved to be critical, and his relation to the Moscow Art Theatre just before the October Revolution helped to define the future course of that theatre. Blok's innovative dramatic technique is carefully studied at each stage in his career, from his earliest "lyric dramas," such as A Puppet Show and The Stranger, to his great tragedy The Rose and the Cross.

Author Biography:
Clara Calvo is Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Murcia, Spain. Her publications include Power Relations and Fool-Master Discourse in Shakespeare, and she is a regular contributor to The Year's Work in English Studies.
Jean Jacques Weber is Professor of English at University Centre Luxembourg. His publications include Critical Analysis of Fiction, Twentieth-Century Fiction (co-edited, Routledge 1995) and The Stylistics Reader (co-edited for Routledge 1996).

"The Literature Workbook" is a practical introductory textbook for literary studies, which can be used either for independent study or as part of a class. Laying the foundation for the further study of literature, "The Literature Workbook" introduces the beginning student to the essential analytic and interpretative skills that are needed for literary appreciation and evaluation. It also equips the teacher with practical tools and materials for use in seminars or when assigning written assessments and projects. Arranged according to genre and chronology, the chapters acquaint the reader with a range of key figures in English literature and encourages the reader to think about them in their historical and cultural contexts. Adopting a user-friendly case-study approach each chapter contains exercises and activities, discussion hints, project work and suggestions for further reading. The workbook also includes a glossary and a subject and name index.

Samuel Beckett: A Casebook may be characterized as a new collection of essays by a generation of Beckett scholars who did not have access to the author. This text demarcates the line between the critical work produced when Beckett was alive, and the critical work produced within ten years of the author's death. This collection is distinctive, too, because the text offers a variety of critical perspectives which engage and problematize Beckett's dramatic canon. From Deleuzean rhizomatics to New Historicism to the crucial question of gender-each reading re-positions Beckett's plays and forces us to rethink our standard interpretations of Beckett's drama.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203020421