Davis challenges the dominant accounts of the Elizabethan literary system, revealing the competing commercial, intellectual, political, and personal interests that swirled around the printing of The Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia, Astrophel and Stella, and The Defence of Poesie. He also produces lively, accessible, significant new readings of arguably the most influential secular literary work of the Elizabethan age: the 1598 folio Arcadia, comprising all these works. Finally, by applying Jerome J.McGann's revisionary textual theories, Davis generates an original narrative literary history of Sidney's works and many of the most important printing enterprises of 1590s London.

Through a broad-ranging survey of the allegory, utopia, the historical novel and the epic in post-colonial literature, Jean-Pierre Durix proposes a critical reassessment of the theory of genres. He argues that in the new literatures, which are often rooted in hybrid aesthetics, the often decried mimesis must be viewed from a completely different angle. Analyzing texts by Gabriel García Márquez, Salman Rushdie, Alejo Carpentier, Wilson Harris and Edouard Glissant, he pleads for the redefinition of "magic realism" if the term is to retain generic relevance.

This carefully curated collection consists of 16 chapters by leading Polish and world literature scholars from the United States, Canada, Italy, and, of course, Poland. An historical approach gives readers a panoramic view of Polish authors and their explicit or implicit contributions to world literature. Indeed, the volume shows how Polish authors, from Jan Kochanowski in the 16th century to the 2018 Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk, have engaged with their foreign counterparts and other traditions, active participants in the global literary network and the conversations of their day. The volume features views of Polish literature and culture within theories of world literature and literary systems, with a particular attention paid to the resurgence of the idea of the physical book as a cultural artifact. This perspective is especially important since so much of today's global literary output stems from Anglophone perceptions of what constitutes literary quality and tastes. The collection also sheds light on specific issues pertaining to Poland, such as the idea of Polishness, and global phenomena, including social and economic advancement as well as ecological degradation. Some of the authors discussed, like the Romantic poet Adam Mickiewicz or the 1980 Nobel laureate Czeslaw Milosz, were renowned far beyond the borders of their country, while others, like the contemporary travel writer and novelist Andrzej Stasiuk, embrace regionalism, seeing as they do in their immediate surroundings a synecdoche of the world at large. Nevertheless, the picture of Polish literature and Polish authors that emerges from these articles is that of a diverse, cosmopolitan cohort engaged in a mutually rewarding relationship with what the late French critic Pascale Casanova has called "the world republic of letters."

Clarkson pays sustained attention to the dynamic interaction between Coetzees fiction and his critical writing, exploring the Nobel prize-winner's participation in, and contribution to, contemporary literary-philosophical debates. The book engages with the most recent literary and philosophical responses to Coetzees work.

This collection reveals the variety of literary forms and visual media through which travel records were conveyed in the long nineteenth century, bringing together a group of leading researchers from a range of disciplines to explore the relationship between travel writing, visual representation and formal innovation.

Who do you think you are? In Subjectivity, Ruth Robbins explores some of the responses to this fundamental question. In readings of a number of autobiographical texts from the last three centuries, Robbins offers an approachable account of formations of the self which demonstrates that both psychology and material conditions - often in tension with one another - are the building blocks of modern notions of selfhood. Key texts studied include: - William Wordsworth's Prelude - Thomas De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium Eater - James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - Oscar Wilde's De Profundis - Jung Chang's Wild Swans Robbins also argues that our subjectivity, far from being the secure possession of the individual, is potentially fragile and contingent. She shows that the versions of subjectivity authorized by the dominant culture are full of gaps and blindspots that undo any notion of universal human nature: subjectivity is culturally and historically specific - we are, in part, what the culture in which we live permits us to be. Concise and easy-to-follow, this introduction to the concept of subjectivity, and the theories surrounding it, shows that, in spite of the insecurity of selfhood, there is still much to be gained from the textual encounter with other selves. It is essential reading for all those studying 'autobiography' or 'autobiographical writing'.

This book argues that journalism is a more recent invention than most authors have acknowledged so far. The profession of the journalist and the journalistic discourse are the products of the emergence, during the second half of the 19th century, of a specialized field of discursive production, the journalistic field. The book analyzes the emergence of journalism and examines the development of discursive norms, practices and strategies which are characteristic of this discourse.

For the last twenty-five years, "Language, Discourse, Society" has been the most intellectually challenging series in English. Its titles range across the disciplines from linguistics to biology, from literary criticism to law, combining vigorous scholarship and theoretical analysis at the service of a broad political engagement. This anniversary reader brings together a fascinating group of thinkers from both sides of the Atlantic with an introductory overview from the editors which considers the development of theory and scholarship over the past two decades.

Literary Territories introduces readers to a wide range of literature from 200-900 CE in which geography is a defining principle of literary art. From accounts of Holy Land pilgrimage, to Roman mapmaking, to the systematization of Ptolemy's scientific works, Literary Territories argues that forms of literature that were conceived and produced in very different environments and for different purposes in Late Antiquity nevertheless shared an aesthetic sensibility which treated the classical "inhabited world," the oikoumene, as a literary metaphor for the collection and organization of knowledge. This type of "cartographical thinking" stresses the world of knowledge that is encapsulated in the literary archive. The archival aesthetic coincided with an explosion of late antique travel and Christian pilgrimage which in itself suggests important unifying themes between visual and textual conceptions of space. Indeed, by the end of Late Antiquity the geographical mode appears in nearly every type of writing in multiple Christian languages (Greek, Latin, Syriac, Armenian, and others). The diffusion of cartographical thinking throughout the real-world oikoumene, now the Christian Roman Empire, was a fundamental intellectual trajectory of Late Antiquity.

This volume explores African American historical fiction written by women in the last four decades of the twentieth century. Comprehensive in scope, this book refers to over thirty authors whose work has contributed to the tradition, from Margaret Walker to Sherley Anne Williams to Toni Morrison. Ana Nunes's approach to the text emphasizes the narrative and thematic achievements of individual novels against the backdrop of the main trends and developments of the contemporary African American historical novel.

Much of the widespread interest in the Bloomsbury Group over the past quarter-century has been biographical, yet without the Group's works there would be little interest in their lives. The studies in literary and intellectual history and collected in this volume are chiefly concerned with these works. Subjects covered in the eight essays include an analysis of the philosophical assumption of Virginia Woolf's fiction, an assessment of J M Keyne's account of D H Lawrence's reactions to Cambridge, discussions of the literary backgrounds of E M Forster's Aspects of the Novel and Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own , a consideration of the Woolfs' work as printers and publishers, and a history of Ludwig Wittgenstein's relations with the Bloomsbury Group.

Written in hypertext and read from a computer, hypertext novels exist as a collection of textual fragments, which must be pieced together by the reader. "The Possible Worlds of Hypertext Fiction" offers a new critical theory tailored specifically for this burgeoning genre, providing a much needed body of criticism in a key area of new media fiction.

This book is an assessment of narrative technique in contemporary British fiction, focusing on the experimental use of the demotic voice (regional or national dialects). The book examines the work of James Kelman, Graham Swift, Will Self and Martin Amis, amongst many others, from a practical as well as theoretical perspective.

If the tragic interpretation of experience is still so current, despite its disastrous ethical consequences, it is because it shapes our subjectivity. Instead of contradicting the ideals of autonomy and freedom, a modern subjectivity based on self-victimization in effect enables them. By embracing subjection to an alienating other (the Law, Power) the autonomous subject protects its sameness from the disruption of real people. "Seductions of Fate" stages a dialogue between this tragic agent of political emancipation and the unconditional ethical demands it seeks to evade.

Combining sustained empirical analysis of reading group conversations with four case studies of classic and contemporary novels: Things Fall Apart, White Teeth, Brick Lane and Small Island, this book pursues what can be gained through a comparative approach to reading and readerships.

Addressing the world of the imaginary, the dream, the uncanny, the paranormal, and all forms of speculative fiction, Contours of the Fantastic is a collection of twenty-two essays that were originally presented at the Eighth International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts at Houston in 1987. The volume gives valuable perspectives on the territory covered by the fantastic, showing the diversity of the field and the variety of approaches used to survey and comprehend it. Each essay brings its own method of investigation--phenomenological, theoretical, historical, sociological, psychological, textual--in an effort to situate the border between reality and fantasy and the passage from one to the other. Authors and works discussed in the volume include Balzac, Dickens, Poe, Aldous Huxley, C. S. Lewis, Tolkien, Muriel Spark, Mary Shelley, Albee's The Zoo Story, Pynchon, Coleridge's Christabel, Le Fanu's "Carmilla," and Stephen Donaldson's Thomas Covenant trilogies. Following the editor's introductory essay, the work is divided into 7 sections: "Fantasy and Discontinuity," "Theory of National Fantasy--Tradition and Invention," "Fantastic Vision in Children's Literature," "Science Fiction and Fantasy Films," "Fusion, Transfusion, and Transgression in the Fantastic," "The Fantastic and Science," and "The Fantastic World--Space and Time." Individual essays within these major divisions zero in on specific works of fantasy; offer a psychology of fantasy writers; analyze language; assess fantasy from a national perspective; and investigate Christian horror in fiction. The final two sections delineate the border between fantasy and reality--in science and in relation to space and time. Amongthe outstanding contributors are Brian Aldiss, novelist, poet, and critic, author of more than two dozen books-- many of which are considered science fiction classics; Vivian Sobchack, science fiction film critic and writer on semiotics and phenomenology; and Nancy Willard, author of prize-winning novels, collected stories, poetry, and children's books. Generalists in literature and the arts, sociology, the natural sciences, engineering, and aeronautics as well as students and scholars, aestheticians, and critics of the fantasy/science fiction genres in literature, film, and art will find this collection both a useful and fascinating volume.

Time-Bound Words argues that changes in English society and the English language are woven together, often in surprising ways, and investigates this claim by following eleven words from Chaucer's time to Shakespeare's. Middle English words like corage, estat, thrift , and virtu come to serve the logic of new social discourses by 1611. Language from Chaucer, Wyclif, More, Spenser, Shakespeare, Jonson and others is examined both as current and emerging usage, and as verbal play that accomplishes cultural work.

The question of memory intrigues us more and more as industrialized societies move further and further away from the written word. In the past the role of memory was integral to literary history, precise mnemonics served as the support systems for erudition, and Mnemosyne was mother of the Muses. The group Oulipo, born in reaction to the Surrealists, proposes, invents, and applies novel literary constraints. Using memory, and best of all conscious memory, as a theoretical starting point, the implications of writing under constraint are analyzed. First, writing under constraint is viewed as a new mnemonics; second, the spiritual component of such a practice is shown to redefine a notion of inspiration; third, constraints and their relationship with games and society is highlighted; finally the manner in which they build a literary consciousness is studied through the lenspiece of contemporary neurobiological research. For the first time the work of the group Oulipo, and the member's emphasis on the function of literature, is placed in historical, cultural, and philosophical context.

Reviews of Not Saussure and The Explicit Animal: Not Saussure - 'I greatly enjoyed it...' - Bernard Bergonzi 'The Explicit Animal - '...his books are genuine contributions to professional debate...' - Stephen R.L. Clarke, Times Literary Supplement;Newton's Sleep examines the complementary roles of science and art in human life. Science has been criticised for being at best useful but spiritually derelict, and art for attempting to answer the spiritual needs of humankind while ignoring the material needs of millions who live in want. Newton's Sleep deals with the charges that science is spiritually empty and that art fails in its civilising mission by relating these aspects of human culture to the physical and metaphysical hungers of an explicit animal who lives in both the Kingdom of Means and the Kingdom of Ends. 'Tallis can, and frequently does, write extremely well. He also writes with considerable passion...Tallis...is perhaps best seen as an exceptionally interesting and broad-minded heir to Huxley, preaching the cause of the Church Scientific...' Richard Webster

This collection examines ways in which modern literature responds to the body-at-war, examining the effects of violent conflict on the body in its literal and representative forms. Spanning literature from World War I to the present day, it includes essays on pacifist theatre, torture, fascist fantasies, and uniforms and masculinity.

Theories of Memory provides a comprehensive introduction to the rapidly expanding field of memory studies. It is a resource through which students of literature will be able both to broaden their knowledge of contemporary theoretical perspectives and to trace the development of ideas about memory from the classical period to the present.

The reader is organized into three parts:

Part I, Beginnings, is historical in scope. Its three sections, Classical and Early Modern Ideas of Memory, Enlightenment and Romantic Memory, and Memory and Late Modernity, lay out key psychological, rhetorical, and cultural concepts of memory in the work of a range of thinkers from Plato to Walter Benjamin.

Part II, Positionings, identifies three major perspectives through which memory has been defined and debated more recently: Collective Memory, Jewish Memory Discourse, and Trauma.

Part III, Identities, examines the key role of memory in contemporary constructions of identity under the headings of Gender, Race/Nation, and Diaspora.

"Animated by scandals, scoundrels and imposters, this collection, with contributions from prominent scholars of literature, history and law, seeks to address issues of identity, trust and deception in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain through the optic of the twin concepts of legitimacy and illegitimacy"--Provided by publisher.

To explore literary silence is to explore the relationships between literary texts and the silence of the ineffable. It is to enquire what dynamics texts develop as they strive to 'say the unsayable', and it is to think literature as a silence that speaks itself. This study describes these literary and silent dynamics through readings of Pascal's Pensees, Rousseau's Reveries, and Beckett's trilogy Molloy, Malone meurt, and L'Innommable. It contributes to our understanding of three major writers and challenges our idea of what silence is. The subject of silence and of the ineffable has a long philosophical and critical tradition. A careful study of this tradition reveals the dominance of a limiting dualistic understanding of silence and its relationship to noise or language: silence becomes the negative other, the beyond, about which there remains nothing to say. The study of literary silence seeks rather to trace a language that becomes its own silence. It compromises the attempt to think a silence that moves within and through texts, that is inherent to the literary expression. Central to this theoretical endeavour are thinkers like Derrida, Deleuze, Gadamer, and Vattimo (among several others). The theoretical understanding of silence permits an effective methodology for reading literary silence. Notions of repetition, the aporia and the implosion, which are developed in reference to Kierkegaard and Bataille, describe textual strategies of literary silence and structure the readings. Finally, the reading of literary silence has its point of reference in writers like Mallarme, Blanchot, and Beckett. It is their texts that have taught us to become topological readers, to move in and out of texts' movements; they have shown us how the literary expression is irreducible to linear, meaning oriented language. As readers of such texts we have been prepared to read the dynamics of the unsayable, and finally to start discerning the silences of the literary.

"Scenes of Intimacy" analyzes the representation of acts and relationships of intimacy in contemporary literature, the effect this has upon readers, and the ways these representations resonate with, complement, and challenge the concerns of contemporary theory. Opening with an in-depth interview with literary critic, Derridean, and novelist Professor Nicholas Royle, the volume contains eleven further essays that move from intimate scenes of familial and pedagogic legacy, on to representations of love, of sex, and finally to scenes of death and dying. The essays are textually attentive to how literary techniques create intimacy, and draw upon new and notable theoretical positions and critics from queer theory, affect studies, psychoanalysis, poststructualism and deconstruction to ask difficult and uncomfortable questions about intimacy and its representation. Across the genres of poetry, autobiography, journals, love letters, short stories and novels, "Scenes of Intimacy" shows that contemporary literature poses new possibilities and questions about our intimate relationalities, their failures and their futures.

The debate over extending full civil rights to British and Irish Catholics not only preoccupied British politics but also informed the romantic period's most prominent literary works. This book offers the first comprehensive, interdisciplinary study of Catholic Emancipation, one of the romantic period's most contentious issues.