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Books > Language & Literature > Literature: history & criticism > Literary theory

Literary Urban Studies and How to Practice It (Hardcover): Jason Finch Literary Urban Studies and How to Practice It (Hardcover)
Jason Finch
R4,150 Discovery Miles 41 500 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

Literary Urban Studies and How to Practice It is the first textbook in literary urban studies (LUS). It illuminates and investigates this exciting field, which has grown since the humanities' 'spatial turn' of the 1990s and 2000s. The book introduces city literature, urban methods of reading, classics in LUS and new directions in the field. It outlines the located qualities of literary narratives, texts and events through three units. First, the concept of the city and the main methods and terms needed as tools for investigating city literatures are introduced. A second section, ordered historically, shows how notions like pre-modern, realist, modernist, postcolonial and planetary actually work in nuanced explorations of actual writers, texts and places. The third unit covers literary urban modes: fictional and non-fictional prose in multiple genres; poetry and the idea of the city; dramatic city representation and the theatre as urban place. Multiple key categories of place are explored: the sacred spaces of religion; entry points such as railway stations and junctions; residential areas such as the 'slum', suburb and mass housing district; hubs of publishing and performance; categories of city such as the port and resort. In each chapter key terms, reflection questions and tasks labelled 'Research It' support reference and learning. Some Research It tasks enable readers to enter new areas of LUS by engaging with neighbouring disciplines like human geography, cultural history, sociology and urban studies. Others equip users by sharpening particular skills of writing or documentation. A thorough glossary of key terms and concepts aids the reader. Literary Urban Studies and How to Practice It is designed for application to literatures and cities in any period and part of the world. Armed with it, humanities researchers at any career stage can develop their interdisciplinary skills and ability to participate in activism and public debates while becoming specialised in LUS. The book is a gateway to practicing LUS and spatial literary research.

Literary Urban Studies and How to Practice It (Paperback): Jason Finch Literary Urban Studies and How to Practice It (Paperback)
Jason Finch
R1,183 Discovery Miles 11 830 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

Literary Urban Studies and How to Practice It is the first textbook in literary urban studies (LUS). It illuminates and investigates this exciting field, which has grown since the humanities' 'spatial turn' of the 1990s and 2000s. The book introduces city literature, urban methods of reading, classics in LUS and new directions in the field. It outlines the located qualities of literary narratives, texts and events through three units. First, the concept of the city and the main methods and terms needed as tools for investigating city literatures are introduced. A second section, ordered historically, shows how notions like pre-modern, realist, modernist, postcolonial and planetary actually work in nuanced explorations of actual writers, texts and places. The third unit covers literary urban modes: fictional and non-fictional prose in multiple genres; poetry and the idea of the city; dramatic city representation and the theatre as urban place. Multiple key categories of place are explored: the sacred spaces of religion; entry points such as railway stations and junctions; residential areas such as the 'slum', suburb and mass housing district; hubs of publishing and performance; categories of city such as the port and resort. In each chapter key terms, reflection questions and tasks labelled 'Research It' support reference and learning. Some Research It tasks enable readers to enter new areas of LUS by engaging with neighbouring disciplines like human geography, cultural history, sociology and urban studies. Others equip users by sharpening particular skills of writing or documentation. A thorough glossary of key terms and concepts aids the reader. Literary Urban Studies and How to Practice It is designed for application to literatures and cities in any period and part of the world. Armed with it, humanities researchers at any career stage can develop their interdisciplinary skills and ability to participate in activism and public debates while becoming specialised in LUS. The book is a gateway to practicing LUS and spatial literary research.

Recovering Black Storytelling in Qualitative Research - Endarkened Storywork (Hardcover): S.R. Toliver Recovering Black Storytelling in Qualitative Research - Endarkened Storywork (Hardcover)
S.R. Toliver
R4,129 Discovery Miles 41 290 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

A highly unusual fictional / science fiction presentation of Black and feminist issues in qualitative research Demonstrates the need for a Black research model based around Afrofuturism Presents semi-fictionalised narratives of real research participants showing the diversity of Black girl experience

Pragmatism and Poetic Agency - The Persistence of Humanism (Hardcover): Ulf Schulenberg Pragmatism and Poetic Agency - The Persistence of Humanism (Hardcover)
Ulf Schulenberg
R4,595 Discovery Miles 45 950 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

Pragmatism is a humanist philosophy. In spite of the much-debated renaissance of pragmatism, however, a detailed discussion of the relationship between pragmatism and humanism is still a desideratum. It is difficult to understand the complexity of pragmatism without considering the significance of humanism. At least since the 1970s, humanism, mostly in its liberal version, has been vehemently attacked and criticized. In pragmatism, however, a particular understanding of humanism has persisted. Bringing literary studies, philosophy, and intellectual history together and establishing a transatlantic theoretical dialogue, Pragmatism and Poetic Agency endeavors to elucidate this persistence of humanism. Schulenberg continues the thought-provoking argument he developed in his previous two monographs by advancing the idea that one can only grasp the unique contemporary significance of pragmatism when one realizes how pragmatism, humanism, anti-authoritarianism, and postmetaphysics are interlinked. If one appreciates the implications and consequences of this link, then one is in a position to see pragmatism's antifoundationalist and antirepresentationalist story of progress and emancipation as continuing the project of the Enlightenment.

Critical Discourse in Bangla (Hardcover): Subha Chakraborty Das Gupta, Subrata Sinha Critical Discourse in Bangla (Hardcover)
Subha Chakraborty Das Gupta, Subrata Sinha
R4,161 Discovery Miles 41 610 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

The book brings together English translation of major writings of influential figures dealing with literary criticism and theory, aesthetic and performative traditions and re-interpretations of primary concepts and categories in Bangla, one of the major South Asian languages. It presents 32 key texts in literary and cultural studies from Bengal. Comprehensive and authoritative, this volume offers an overview of the history of critical thought in Bangla literature in South Asia. It will be essential for scholars and researchers of Bengali/Bangla language and literature, literary criticism, literary theory, comparative literature, Indian literature, cultural studies, art and aesthetics, performance studies, history, sociology, regional studies and South Asian studies. It will also interest the Bengali-speaking diaspora and those working on the intellectual history of Bengal and conservation of languages and culture.

The Anti-Oedipus Complex - Lacan, Postmodernism and Philosophy (Paperback): Rob Weatherill The Anti-Oedipus Complex - Lacan, Postmodernism and Philosophy (Paperback)
Rob Weatherill
R1,467 Discovery Miles 14 670 Ships in 9 - 15 working days

The Anti-Oedipus Complex critically explores the post-'68 dramatic developments in Freudo-Lacanian psychoanalysis and cultural theory. Beginning with the decline of patriarchy and the master, exemplified by Freud's paean for the Father, the revolutionary path was blown wide open by anti-psychiatry, schizoanalysis and radical politics, the complex antinomies of which are traced here in detail with the help of philosophers such as Nietzsche, Baudrillard, Levinas, Steiner, Zizek, Badiou, Derrida and Girard, as well as theologians, analysts, writers, musicians and film makers. In this book, Rob Weatherill, starting from the clinic, considers the end of hierarchies, the loss of the Other, new subjectivities, so-called 'creative destruction', the power of negative thinking, revolutionary action, divine violence and new forms of extreme control. Where does this leave the psychoanalytic clinic - adrift in postmodern indifference? Does the engagement of the Radical Orthodoxy movement offer some hope? Or should we re-situate psychoanalysis within a 'genealogy of responsibility' (Patocka / Derrida) as it emerges out of the sacred demonic, via Plato and Christianity? The Anti-Oedipus Complex will be of interest to psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, counsellors, social workers and scholars in critical theory, philosophy, cultural theory, literary theory and theology.

The New Midlife Self-Writing (Hardcover): Emily O. Wittman The New Midlife Self-Writing (Hardcover)
Emily O. Wittman
R1,580 Discovery Miles 15 800 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

In The New Midlife Self-Writing, Wittman treats recent self-writing by Rachel Cusk, Roxane Gay, Sarah Manguso, and Maggie Nelson, carefully situating these vital midlife works within the history of self-writing. She argues that they renew and redirect the autobiographical trajectories characteristic of earlier self-writing by switching their orientation to face the future and by celebrating midlife as a growing season, a time of Bildung. In each chapter, writer-by-writer, she demonstrates how the midlife self-writers in question trace confident and future-oriented paths through the past, rejecting triumphalism and complicating both identity and individualism, just as they refine and redefine genres. Exploring these midlife self-writers as chroniclers of Generation X's midlife in particular, Wittman coins the term "digital absence" to map their unique relationship to new forms of knowledge and knowledge gathering in an Information Age that they are both of and set apart from. She theorizes that their works share a "pedagogical style," a style characterized by clarity, exposition, and classical rhetoric, as well as a concern with the classroom, offering a warrant for reading them in pedagogical terms in concert with traditional scholarly approaches. Furthermore, Wittman presents readers with a look ahead at the future of midlife self-writing as well as self-writing overall, concluding that we might be looking at the scholarship of the future.

Storylistening - Narrative Evidence and Public Reasoning (Hardcover): Sarah Dillon, Claire Craig Storylistening - Narrative Evidence and Public Reasoning (Hardcover)
Sarah Dillon, Claire Craig
R4,144 Discovery Miles 41 440 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

At a time when the humanities are under fire this book offers not just a defence but a clear need for engagement with literature and narrative Authors are very well established in their fields with huge amounts of experience and credentials that mean the book will appeal to people in a variety of fields Interjects into real and ongoing debates around public policy, "truth" and democracy

Intermedial Studies - An Introduction to Meaning Across Media (Paperback): Jorgen Bruhn, Beate Schirrmacher Intermedial Studies - An Introduction to Meaning Across Media (Paperback)
Jorgen Bruhn, Beate Schirrmacher
R967 Discovery Miles 9 670 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

- Uses a very broad range of examples across history and media, so easy to adopt on existing courses - The introduction offers a detailed history and theory of the field, ensuring students are fully grounded in the area - Provides a "toolbox" - all of the information, terminology, technique and analysis that a student needs to complete a cross/inter media study - Covers contemporary topics such as social media and videogames to thoroughly engage students - Detailed case studies are used to cement the theoretical and analytical knowledge

Intermedial Studies - An Introduction to Meaning Across Media (Hardcover): Jorgen Bruhn, Beate Schirrmacher Intermedial Studies - An Introduction to Meaning Across Media (Hardcover)
Jorgen Bruhn, Beate Schirrmacher
R4,162 Discovery Miles 41 620 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

- Uses a very broad range of examples across history and media, so easy to adopt on existing courses - The introduction offers a detailed history and theory of the field, ensuring students are fully grounded in the area - Provides a "toolbox" - all of the information, terminology, technique and analysis that a student needs to complete a cross/inter media study - Covers contemporary topics such as social media and videogames to thoroughly engage students - Detailed case studies are used to cement the theoretical and analytical knowledge

Wyndham Lewis - An Anthology of His Prose (Hardcover): E.W.F. Tomlin Wyndham Lewis - An Anthology of His Prose (Hardcover)
E.W.F. Tomlin
R2,734 Discovery Miles 27 340 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

Originally published in 1969, this project had Wyndham Lewis' personal approval and is a comprehensive anthology of his prose writings, especially those which are difficult to access. There are extracts from some of Wyndham Lewis' remarkable books such as Paleface, The Art of Being Ruled and Men Without Art. Lesser known works such as Filibusters in Barbary, The Diabolical Principle and The Dithyrambic Spectator, Blasting and Bombardiering, and Rude Assignment, are freely drawn upon and there is a section devoted to writings on the USA, a country which Lewis knew well.

Probings and Re-Probings - Essays in Marxian Reawakening (Hardcover): Sankar Ray, Shaibal Gupta Probings and Re-Probings - Essays in Marxian Reawakening (Hardcover)
Sankar Ray, Shaibal Gupta
R4,170 Discovery Miles 41 700 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

'Controversy was the breath of Marx's life and he revelled in it. We are therefore not at all apologetic', wrote Puran Chand Joshi in the preface to Karl Marx: A Symposium, published in 1968 commemorating the 150th birth anniversary of Marx, adding further, (It is) 'in the best Indian tradition to operate with belief and hope that it is only through the clash of ideas that truth emerges.' At a time, when a Marxian renaissance has been taking place in academia, Joshi's words reverberate with a new vitality, an evanescence of 'official Marxism' and official Marxist parties notwithstanding. There is no denying that the so-called Marxists now pay dearly for wavering 'between a rather mechanistic interpretation of crisis and its opposite: the conviction that capitalism could only be overcome by an act of will.' This book is the outcome of an international conference on Karl Marx organised by ADRI in Patna between June 16 and 20, 2018 keeping the new Marxian reality in mind. Over 50 scholars from across the world sent papers to the Conference, covering topics such as economics, politics, society, philosophy, etc. ADRI welcomed them with an open mind in sync with the Marxian reawakening that treats Marx historically and critically. This book is co-published with Aakar Books, New Delhi. Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the print versions of this book in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

Gandhi, Marx and India - An Alternative Path to Progress (Hardcover, 2nd edition): Pradhan H. Prasad Gandhi, Marx and India - An Alternative Path to Progress (Hardcover, 2nd edition)
Pradhan H. Prasad
R3,983 Discovery Miles 39 830 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

The book unravels the dynamics of capitalist development, critically assesses the socialist experiment in charting out a course of development different from capitalism, explains the contradictions in the post-Independence development process in India, evaluates other efforts outside the state towards ushering in 'development', and then proposes an alternative path to progress - an employment based ecologically sustainable model of decentralized development based on local resource endowment and heightened mass consciousness which will take the country out of the dependency paradigm. This book is co-published with Aakar Books, New Delhi. Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the print versions of this book in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

Virginia Woolf's Unwritten Histories - Conversations with the Nineteenth Century (Hardcover): Anne Besnault Virginia Woolf's Unwritten Histories - Conversations with the Nineteenth Century (Hardcover)
Anne Besnault
R4,134 Discovery Miles 41 340 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

Virginia Woolf's Unwritten Histories explores the interrelatedness of Woolf's modernism, feminism and her understanding of history as a site of knowledge and a writing practice that enabled her to negotiate her heritage, to find her place among the moderns as a female artist and intellectual, and to elaborate her poetics of the "new": not as radical rupture but as the result of a process of unwriting and rewriting "traditional" historiographical orthodoxies. Its central argument is that unless we comprehend the genealogy of Woolf's historical thought and the complexity of its lineage, we cannot fully grasp the innovative thrust of her attempt to "think back through our mothers." Bringing together canonical texts such as Orlando (1928), A Room of One's Own (1929), Three Guineas (1938) or Between the Acts (1941) and under-researched ones - among which stand Woolf's essays on historians and reviews of history books and her pieces on literary history and nineteenth-century women's literature - this book argues that Woolf's textual "conversations" with nineteenth-century writers, historians and critics, many of which remain unexplored, are interwoven with her historiographical poiesis and constitute the groundwork for her alternative histories and literary histories: "unwritten," open-textured, unacademic and polemical counter-narratives that keep track of the past and engage politically with the future.

Fanon, Phenomenology, and Psychology (Hardcover): Leswin Laubscher, Derek Hook, Miraj U. Desai Fanon, Phenomenology, and Psychology (Hardcover)
Leswin Laubscher, Derek Hook, Miraj U. Desai
R3,991 Discovery Miles 39 910 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

* Presents Fanon's theories and insights in a manner that is easy to understand for students * Highlights the various ways that multi-disciplinary forms of psychological analysis can be applied to the critique of contemporary forms of racism * Seamlessly ties together critical and contemporary scholarship from and about Fanon that introduces his analyses of racism and racialized subjectivity in an accessible manner

Translation (Paperback): Sophie Williamson Translation (Paperback)
Sophie Williamson
R428 Discovery Miles 4 280 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

Part of the acclaimed series of anthologies which document major themes and ideas in contemporary art. An essential collection of texts reflecting on the cultural and political complexities of translation in global contemporary artistic practices. The movement of global populations, and subsequently the task of translation, underlies contemporary culture: the intricacies of ancient and modern Jewish diaspora, waves of colonisation and the transportation of slaves are now superimposed by economic and environmental migration, forced political exiles and refugees. This timely anthology will consider translation's ongoing role in cultural navigation and understanding, exploring the approaches of artists, poets and theorists in negotiating increasingly protean identities: from the intrinsic intimacy of language, to translation's embedded structures of knowledge production and interaction, to its limitations of expression and, ultimately, its importance in a world of multiple perspectives. Artists surveyed include Meric Algun Ringborg, Geta Bratescu, Tanya Bruguera, Chto Delat, Chohreh Feyzdjou, Susan Hiller, Glenn Ligon, Teresa Margolles, Shirin Neshat, Helio Oiticica, Pratchaya Phinthong, Kurt Schwitters, Yinka Shonibare, Mladen Stilinovic, Erika Tan, Kara Walker, Wu Tsang. Writers include Hannah Arendt, James Baldwin, Walter Benjamin, Judith Butler, Luis Camnitzer, Jean Fisher, Stuart Hall, bell hooks, Sarat Maharaj, Martha Rosler, Bertrand Russell, Simon Sheikh, Gayatri Spivak, Hito Steyerl, Lawrence Venuti.

Gender, Race, and Mourning in American Modernism (Hardcover): Greg Forter Gender, Race, and Mourning in American Modernism (Hardcover)
Greg Forter
R2,678 Discovery Miles 26 780 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

American modernist writers' engagement with changing ideas of gender and race often took the form of a struggle against increasingly inflexible categories. Greg Forter interprets modernism as an effort to mourn a form of white manhood that fused the 'masculine' with the 'feminine'. He argues that modernists were engaged in a poignant yet deeply conflicted effort to hold on to socially 'feminine' and racially marked aspects of identity, qualities that the new social order encouraged them to disparage. Examining works by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner and Willa Cather, Forter shows how these writers shared an ambivalence toward the feminine and an unease over existing racial categories that made it difficult for them to work through the loss of the masculinity they mourned. Gender, Race, and Mourning in American Modernism offers a bold new reading of canonical modernism in the United States.

Women's Utopias in British and American Fiction (Paperback): Nan Bowman Albinski Women's Utopias in British and American Fiction (Paperback)
Nan Bowman Albinski
R978 Discovery Miles 9 780 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

Utopian writing offers a fascinating panorama of social visions; and the related forms of dystopia and anti-utopian satire extend this into the range of social nightmares. Originally published in 1988, this comparative study of utopian fiction by British and American women writers demonstrates the continuity of a well-established, but little-known, tradition, emphasising its range and diversity, and providing ample evidence of women's aspirations and documenting the restrictions and exclusions in private and public life that their novels challenge. Historically, the growth of each national tradition is traced in relation to social and political movements, particularly the suffrage movement and contemporary feminism. Comparatively, the quite different responses of British and American women to what are in many instances the same social problems are examine in the light of changing expectations. Definitions of human nature and gender relationships are assessed on a nature/culture continuum as a means of understanding this change. Women's attitudes to their social and political roles, their working lives, to sexuality, marriage and the family are reflected in their visions of fruitful change; and so also is the impact of two world wars, socialism and fascism, the debate on peaceful uses of nuclear energy and fears of a nuclear holocaust.

Journey through Utopia (Paperback): Marie-Louise Berneri Journey through Utopia (Paperback)
Marie-Louise Berneri
R1,100 Discovery Miles 11 000 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

In this title, originally published in 1950, the author has set out to give a description and a critical assessment of the most important (not necessarily the most famous) Utopian writings since Plato first gave, in his Republic, a literary form to the dreams of a Golden Age and of ideal societies which had doubtless been haunting man since the beginning of the conscious discussion of social problems. It is more than a mere compilation and criticism of Utopias, it brings out in a striking way the close and fateful relationship between Utopian thought and social reality, and takes its place among the important books which had appeared in the previous few years, warning us, from various points of view, of the doom that awaits those who are foolish enough to put their trust in an ordered and regimented world.

Biofictions - Literary and Visual Imagination in the Age of Biotechnology (Hardcover): Lejla Kucukalic Biofictions - Literary and Visual Imagination in the Age of Biotechnology (Hardcover)
Lejla Kucukalic
R1,616 Discovery Miles 16 160 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

Biofictions introduces three novel concepts: 'biofiction,' 'bioimagination,' and 'biodiscourse' to talk about intersections of literary and visual texts and biotechnology. The book proposes a new interdisciplinary area of research that correlates processes of genetics and literature, based on two critical approaches. One, drawing parallels between the genetic codes, human language, formal (binary) language, and posthuman communication and the role of meaning and imagination in these forms of communication. Two, by defining 'biofictions' as a critical scientific-artistic concept and as a corpus of texts that engage ideas and developments in molecular biology. Syncretic connection between biotechnology and literature is especially evident in an open science movement and the literary artistic genre of biopunk, discussed across chapters. The study includes well-known contemporary texts, such as David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, that are recontextualized as biofiction; it offers a rereading of important but neglected novels such as Thomas Disch's Camp Concentration (1967); and it analyzes new visual texts such as the TV series Altered Carbon and Ghost in the Shell films. Based on these wide-ranging examples and new critical concepts, the book argues that coming up with possible alterations for the genetic code or intended traits for the organism is a discursive practice that brings into being bionarratives that are both organic and literary. Chapter 1 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Illegitimate Freedom - Informality in Modernist Literature, 1900-1940 (Hardcover): Gaurav Majumdar Illegitimate Freedom - Informality in Modernist Literature, 1900-1940 (Hardcover)
Gaurav Majumdar
R4,130 Discovery Miles 41 300 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

Illegitimate Freedom: Informality in Modernist Literature, 1900 - 1940 is the first study of informality in modernist literature. Differentiating informality from intimacy in its introduction, the book discusses the informal in relation with sensory experience, aesthetic presentation, ethical deliberation or action, and social attitudes within modernist works. It examines these works for particular nuances of the word "informality" in each of its chapters in the following thematic sequence: informality that offers humour, interpretive freedom, and promiscuity as counters to self-absorption in works by Virginia Woolf; rebuttals to male priorities in liberalism through "feminine informality" in several short stories by Katherine Mansfield; contempt for colloquialism and intimacy, tinged with class-anxieties and crises of attitude, in T. S. Eliot's poetry; resistance to disgust in James Joyce's novels; and the fusion of irreverence, protest, and praise in W. H. Auden's writings before 1940. The book's conclusion considers the risks of informality through a discussion of what it calls "inverted dignity." The theoretical aspects of the book offer insights into Lockean liberalism, the ethical dimensions of what Helene Cixous termed "feminine writing," relations of sublimity and domesticity, Sigmund Freud's arguments on humour and melancholia, and recent affect theory's-as well as Immanuel Kant's and Friedrich Nietzsche's-views on disgust, linking these with modernism. This wide range of engagement makes this study relevant for those interested in literary studies, critical theory, and philosophy.

English Teachers' Accounts - Essays on the Teacher, the Text and the Indian Classroom (Hardcover): Nandana Dutta English Teachers' Accounts - Essays on the Teacher, the Text and the Indian Classroom (Hardcover)
Nandana Dutta
R3,994 Discovery Miles 39 940 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

1) This book presents a comprehensive overview of teaching English literature in India. 2) It contains case studies of actual classroom practices. 3) This book will be of interest to departments of cultural studies and South Asian studies across UK

The Tree of Life and Arboreal Aesthetics in Early Modern Literature (Hardcover): Victoria Bladen The Tree of Life and Arboreal Aesthetics in Early Modern Literature (Hardcover)
Victoria Bladen
R4,135 Discovery Miles 41 350 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

The Tree of Life and Arboreal Aesthetics in Early Modern Literature explores the vital motif of the tree of life and what it meant to early modern writers who drew from its long histories in biblical, classical and folkloric contexts, giving rise to a language of trees, an arboreal aesthetics. An ancient symbol of immortality, the tree of life was appropriated by Christian ideology and iconography to express ideas about Christ; however, the concept also migrated beyond religious doctrine. Ideas circulating around the tree of life enabled writers to imagine and articulate ideas of death and rebirth, loss and regeneration, the condition of the political state and personal states of the soul through arboreal metaphors and imagery. The motif could be used to sacralise landscapes, such as the garden, orchard or country estate, blurring the lines between contemporary green spaces and the spiritual and poetic imaginary. Located within the field of environmental humanities, and intersecting with ecocriticism and critical plant studies, this volume outlines a comprehensive history of the tree of life and offers interdisciplinary readings of focus texts by Shakespeare, George Herbert, Henry Vaughan, Aemilia Lanyer, Andrew Marvell and Ralph Austen. It includes consideration of related ideas and motifs, such as the tree of Jesse and the Green Man, illuminating the rich histories and meanings that emerge when an understanding of the tree of life and arboreal aesthetics are brought to the analysis of early modern literary texts and their representations of green spaces, both physical and metaphysical.

Fictionality (Hardcover): Karen Petroski Fictionality (Hardcover)
Karen Petroski
R2,684 Discovery Miles 26 840 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

Does fiction enhance reality or threaten our sense of what is real? What, if anything, is special about experiencing fictional works and worlds? Today we speak casually of parallel universes and virtual reality; how much do we really know about what these phenomena involve? In Fictionality, Karen Petroski explains how philosophers and literary theorists have approached these questions in the Western literary tradition from Greek antiquity to the present day. The book introduces readers to both long-running and contemporary debates about: * The value and dangers of engagement with fiction; * The origins of fictional artworks, especially literary works, in Western literature; * The role played by imagination in engaging with fiction; * The peculiarities of fictional "worlds"; * The structure of linguistic reference within fictional artworks; * The functions of fictionality in non-linguistic artworks such as film and television; * The role played by fictionality outside artworks, for example in philosophy, law, and politics. Fictionality offers an accessible and comprehensive introduction to this field of increasing critical and theoretical interest. Bringing together theoretical insights from a variety of perspectives, it will be an essential resource for anyone studying fictionality.

In Defence of Fantasy - A Study of the Genre in English and American Literature since 1945 (Paperback): Ann Swinfen In Defence of Fantasy - A Study of the Genre in English and American Literature since 1945 (Paperback)
Ann Swinfen
R982 Discovery Miles 9 820 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

The modern fantasy novel might hardly seem to need a defence, but its position in contemporary literature in the 1980s was still rather ambivalent. Many post-war writers had produced highly successful fantasy novels, some phenomenal publishing successes had occurred in the field, and an increasing number of universities throughout the English-speaking world now included the literary criticism of fantasy as part of their English Literature courses. None the less some critics and academics condemned the whole genre with a passion that seemed less than objectively critical. In this book, originally published in 1984, Dr Ann Swinfen presents a wide-ranging and comprehensive view of fantasy: what it is, what it tries to achieve, what fundamental differences distinguish it from mainstream realist fiction. She concentrates on the three decades from 1945, when a new generation of writers found that Tolkein had made fantasy 'respectable'. Her approach is thematic, rather than by individual author, and she brings out the profound moral purpose that underlies much modern fantasy, in a wide range of works, both British and American, such as Russell Hoban's The Mouse and His Child, C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia and Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea Trilogy.

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