Mourning, Modernism, Postmodernism traces the emergence of a fundamentally new way of writing about individual and collective mourning, demonstrating how a refusal of consolation and closure succeeds in promoting a progressive cultural politics crucial for reimaging gender, racial, and sexual subjects.

The Secret Symmetry of Maimonides and Freud presents the parallels between The Guide of the Perplexed and The Interpretation of Dreams, considering how Maimonides might be perceived as anticipating Freud's much later work. In this volume, Nathan M. Szajnberg suggests that humankind has secrets to hide and does so by using common mechanisms and embedding revealing hints for the benefit of the true reader. Using a psychoanalytic approach in tandem with literary criticism and an in-depth assessment of Judaica, Szajnberg demonstrates the similarities between these two towering Jewish intellectual pillars. Using concepts of esoteric literature from the Torah and later texts, this book analyses their ideas on concealing and revealing to gain a renewed perspective on Freud's view of dreams. Throughout, Szajnberg articulates the challenges of reading translated works and how we can address the pitfalls in such translations. The book is a vital read for psychoanalysts in training and practice, as well as those interested in Judaica, the history of ideas and early Medieval studies.

This innovative volume draws on sociobiology to develop and apply an interdisciplinary approach to the study of literature. The resultant essays offer fresh, concerted, and challenging interpretations of canonical literary works that reconcile scientific knowledge with artistic beauty, empiricist rigor with imaginative experimentation, and unambiguous judgment with equivocal compassion. Full of scientific, historical, and philosophical analyses, Toward a Sociobiological Hermeneutic provides a significant educational resource in Darwinism and game theory and champions a sensitive engagement with great writers' contemplations of the human condition.

This volume offers an interdisciplinary approach to six examples of West Indian fiction, combining symbolic anthropology with traditional literary criticism. Focusing on works by George Lamming and Wilson Harris, two vastly dissimilar Caribbean writers, Joyce Jonas identifies an emerging West Indian aesthetic, stressing the conflict between oral and written communication, and between folk culture and imperialist domination. By applying post-modernist literary theories to the texts, Dr. Jonas explores colonization as a key metaphor for exploitation of gender, class, race, and environment. The six novels surveyed all describe a "plantation landscape" within which the action takes place, and which provides a context for a study of the polarized world of colonizer and colonized. Two icons are employed in the analysis: the Great House, a colonial world view of binary oppositions, and Anancy, a trickster-figure of West Indian folklore. The first of the three essays focuses on the collision between imperialist culture and the submerged folk heritage. The second explores the phenomenon of exile through the artist-in-the-text, a feature common to all six novels that places the artist at the crossroads of a colonized world. Finally, the third essay blends the anthropological concept of liminality with a feminist perspective, widening the discussion to embrace all types of oppressive exploitation. With its subtle literary readings and its philosophical commentary, this volume will be a significant resource for courses in West Indian and Third World literature, literature and culture, and race and gender in literature. It will also be an important addition to academic and public libraries.

"Taboo and Transgression in British Literature from the Renaissance to the Present" develops an innovative overview of the interdisciplinary theoretical approaches to the topic that have emerged in recent years. Alongside exemplary model analyses of key periods and representative primary texts, this exciting new anthology of critical essays has been specifically designed to fill a major gap in the field of literary and cultural studies. This book traces the complex dynamic and ongoing negotiation of notions of transgression and taboo as an essential, though often neglected, facet to understanding the development, production, and conception of literature from the early modern Elizabethan period through postmodern debates. The combination of a broad theoretical and historical framework covering almost fifty representative authors and oeuvres makes this essential reading for students and specialists alike in the fields of literary studies and cultural studies.

From the very beginnings of an independent literary culture, the North American wilderness has often served as the setting for narratives in which the boundaries between order and chaos, savagery and civilization are torn down, and the natural world - as well as the individuals and creatures associated with it - becomes a threat to physical and moral safety. The Rural Gothic in American Popular Culture argues that complex and often negative initial responses early European settlers expressed toward the North American Wilderness continue to influence American horror and gothic narratives to this day. The book undertakes a detailed and historically grounded analysis of key literary and filmic texts. The works of canonical authors such as Mary Rowlandson, Charles Brockden Brown and Nathaniel Hawthorne are discussed, as are the origins and characteristics of the backwoods horror film tradition and the post-1960 eco-horror narrative.

This book studies the made-to-order genre of socialist-realist fiction that was produced at the direction of the Main Political Directorate of the Soviet Army and Navy (MPD) as a part of the war for men's minds waged by the Soviet State. The first chapter is a history of the genre, tracing it from its roots in the Revolution to the dissolution of the MDP in 1991. Topics examined in the book include the attitude toward Germans following World War II; the retirement of the World War II generation; military wives; Dear John letters; life at remote posts; the military as a socializing institution; the use of lethal force by sentries; attitudes toward field training exercises, heroism, and initiative; legitimacy of command; and the reception of Afghan vets.

Lively, original and highly readable, An Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory is the essential guide to literary studies. Starting at 'The Beginning' and concluding with 'The End', chapters range from the familiar, such as 'Character', 'Narrative' and 'The Author', to the more unusual, such as 'Secrets', 'Pleasure' and 'Ghosts'. Now in its sixth edition, Bennett and Royle's classic textbook successfully illuminates complex ideas by engaging directly with literary works, so that a reading of Jane Eyre opens up ways of thinking about racial difference, for example, while Chaucer, Raymond Chandler and Monty Python are all invoked in a discussion of literature and laughter. The sixth edition has been revised and updated throughout. In addition, four new chapters - 'Literature', 'Loss', 'Human' and 'Migrant' - engage with exciting recent developments in literary studies. As well as fully up-to-date further reading sections at the end of each chapter, the book contains a comprehensive bibliography and an invaluable glossary of key literary terms. A breath of fresh air in a field that can often seem dry and dauntingly theoretical, this book will open the reader's eyes to the exhilarating possibilities of reading and studying literature.

This study examines the ways in which the relationships between the creative power of revolutionary people and the revolutionary power of creative artists, especially writers, are evident in the on-going Arab uprisings. Bringing together literature, cultural geography, and human rights discourse, it explores a range of recent novels and memoirs from Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Syria. These works sought to unravel the political geographies of injustice and popular discontent and thus 'anticipated' or imaginatively envisioned as well as participated in some of the major current upheavals in their particular national contexts. By revealing socio-economic divisions and spatial injustice, disappearances and political prisons, surveillance and exile as well as the revolutionary spirit of oppressed populations and the dangers of counter-revolutionary forces, civil strife, and fundamentalism, they variously re-imagine the realities that triggered the transformations we are now witnessing.

Mexican figures like La Virgen de Guadalupe, la Malinche, la Llorona, and la Chingada reflect different myths of motherhood in Mexican culture. For the first time, Melero examines these instances of portrayed motherhood as a discursive space in the political, cultural, and literary context of early twentieth century Mexico.

Laments and complaints are among the most ancient poetical forms and ubiquitous in everyday speech. Understanding plaintive language, however, is often prevented by the resentment and fear it evokes. Lamenting and complaining seems pointless, irreconcilable, and destructive. Language of Ruin and Consumption examines Freud's approaches to lamenting and complaining, the heart of psychoanalytic therapy and theory, and takes them as guidelines for reading key works of the modern canon. The re-negotiation of older--ritual, dramatic, and juridical--forms in Rilke, Wittgenstein, Scholem, Benjamin, and Kafka puts plaintive language in the center of modern individuality and expounds a fundamental dimension of language neglected in theory: reciprocity is at issue in plaintive language. Language of Ruin and Consumption advocates that a fruitful reception of psychoanalysis in criticism combines the discussion of psychoanalytical concepts with an adaptation of the hermeneutical principle ignored in most philosophical approaches to language, or relegated to mere rhetoric: speech is not only by someone and on something, but also addressed to someone.

This title offers a Marxist take on a selection of artistic and cultural achievements from the rap music of Tupac Shakur to the painting of Van Gogh, from HBO's Breaking Bad to Balzac's Cousin Bette , from the magical realm of Harry Potter to the apocalyptic landscape of The Walking Dead , from The Hunger Games to Game of Thrones .

John Banville's Narcissistic Fictions is an exploration of Banville's novels from the point of view of various psychoanalytic understandings of the concept of narcissism. It presents this increasingly central figure in contemporary fiction as a writer for whom narcissism is both an essential truth of selfhood and a fundamental aspect of the writing of fiction. Though it deals with a number of theoretical concepts, it does so in a straightforward and highly accessible manner. The book is not simply a reading of a single, isolated aspect of Banville's work; rather, it presents narcissism as the key to understanding this writer, and as a way of bringing together the various disparate strands - thematic, stylistic and formal - of his complex and enigmatic oeuvre.

"In these essays, a range of leading scholars seek both to investigate the historical, institutional and philosophical origins of deconstruction and to think through the problem of the idea of origin itself"--Provided by publisher.

This rich and varied collection of essays by scholars and interviews with artists approaches the fraught topic of book destruction from a new angle, setting out an alternative history of the cutting, burning, pulping, defacing and tearing of books from the medieval period to our own age.

This is the first volume of a book series dedicated to "Qualitative and Quantitative Analysis of Scientific and Scholarly Communication". Fighting plagiarism is a the top priority for STM publishing. A practical guide will importantly contribute to the awareness of the relevant communities, bringing to the surface the basic rules and examples from the literature.

By meshing psychology with literary analysis, this book inspires us to view the reading of fictional works as an emotional and seductive affair between reader and writer. Arguing that current teaching practices have contributed to the current decline in the study of literature, Jean-Francois Vernay's plea brings a refreshing perspective by seeking new directions and conceptual tools to highlight the value of literature. Interdisciplinary in focus and relevant to timely discussions of the vitality between emotion and literary studies, particularly within the contexts of psychology, affect studies, and cognitive studies, this book will open up a space in which the formation of our emotions can be openly examined and discussed.

An interdisciplinary project that uses literary analysis, along with personal testimony and the applications of gender theory, as a means for identifying and exploring LGBTQ stories, the book considers queer yearnings for stories other than those conventionally available, that engage and resist norms in literature as well as culture and politics.

This book examines literary representations of Sydney and its waterway in the context of Australian modernism and modernity in the interwar period. Then as now, Sydney Harbour is both an ecological wonder and ladened with economic, cultural, historical and aesthetic significance for the city by its shores. In Australia's earliest canon of urban fiction, writers including Christina Stead, Dymphna Cusack, Eleanor Dark, Kylie Tennant and M. Barnard Eldershaw explore the myth and the reality of the city 'built on water'. Mapping Sydney via its watery and littoral places, these writers trace impacts of empire, commercial capitalism, global trade and technology on the city, while drawing on estuarine logics of flow and blockage, circulation and sedimentation to innovate modes of writing temporally, geographically and aesthetically specific to Sydney's provincial modernity. Contributing to the growing field of oceanic or aqueous studies, Sydney and its Waterway and Australian Modernism shows the capacity of water and human-water relations to make both generative and disruptive contributions to urban topography and narrative topology

The decade since the publication of Jean-Michel Rabate's controversial manifesto "The Future"" of Theory" saw important changes in the field. The demise of most of the visible French or German philosophers, who had produced texts that would trigger new debates, then to be processed by Theory, has led to drastic revisions and starker assessments. Globalization has been the most obvious factor to modify the selection of texts studied. During the twentieth century, Theory incorporated poetics, rhetorics, aesthetics and linguistics, while also opening itself to continental philosophy. What has changed today? The knowledge that we live in a de-centered world has destabilized the primacy granted to a purely Western canon. Moreover, much of contemporary theory remains highly allusive and this is often baffling for students. Theory keeps recycling itself, producing authentic returns of basic theses, terms and concepts. Canonical modern theorists often return to classical texts, as those of Plato, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche. And now we want to know: what is new?"Crimes of the Future "explores the past, present and potential future of Theory.

Literary Theory and Criticism: An Introduction provides an accessible overview of major figures and movements in literary theory and criticism from antiquity to the twenty-first century. It is designed for students at the undergraduate level or for others needing a broad synthesis of the long history of literary theory. An introductory chapter provides an overview of some of the major issues within literary theory and criticism; further chapters survey theory and criticism in antiquity, the Middle Ages and Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the nineteenth century. For twentieth- and twenty-first-century theory, the discussion is subdivided into separate chapters on formalist, historicist, political, and psychoanalytic approaches.The final chapter applies a variety of theoretical concepts and approaches to two famous works of literature: William Shakespeare's Hamlet and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. The new edition has been updated throughout, including expanded coverage of Marxist theory, Disability Studies, and Critical Race Theory.

What happens when deconstruction reads politics? This collection of essays by some of Derrida's most significant readers thinks through deconstruction's relation to politics by explicating the text of Derrida in relation to political examples. Neither 'deconstruction' nor 'reading' nor 'politics' is left untouched in the encounters explored by the contributors to this volume. This book dispels any notion of the separation of deconstruction from the everyday and demonstrates the importance of deconstructive thought for the political.

This volume has its starting point in the veritable explosion of serialized formats in all of forms representation, from painting to printing, beginning in the mid nineteenth century and the well-known fascination with series in biology, mathematics, music, art, or literature. The new media culture of the late nineteenth century, very much shaped by these serialized formats, sees itself confronted with questions of truthfulness in new and profound ways, just as perhaps the accelerated rhythm, anonymity, and broadened accessibility of new media today have created new possibilities for the dissemination of misinformation and, conversely, give us cause to interrogate anew our notions of truthfulness. By examining both the formal operations of both aesthetic and scientific objects in a series form, and the historical context of their publication or presentation, the contributions in this volume examine the often strained, but yet immensely productive relationship between the way in which a series negotiates questions of truthfulness: both by reference to the rules established in its series form or by means of its serial format. This volume provides ten detailed cases of the series form from the history of science and journalism, and the history of painting, photography, and literature as well.

The December 2006 Iran Holocaust Denial Conference and the following international excoriation of it reveal a paradox of two cultural strands that are emblematic of the legacy of the twentieth century: official denial and historical amnesia on the one hand; and public, cooperative attempts at truth telling and redress on the other. "Amnesia and Redress in Contemporary American Fiction" shows how this dynamic of amnesia and truth telling shapes literary constructions of history. Focusing on works by Don DeLillo, Toni Morrison, Michelle Cliff, Bharati Mukherjee, and Julie Otsuka, Marni Gauthier identifies a new form of the historical novel that, arising from this distinct climate, articulates a politics of truth.