Since its inception, the story of the apocalypse has been used as a means by which to understand the world and one's place in it. The appeal of the apocalyptic myth is largely rooted in its ability to make sense of instances of crisis by incorporating those crises into a larger plan for history and an end of time that God has planned. Apocalypse is both an organizing principle to be imposed on an overwhelming, seemingly-disordered universe and a fundamentally moral story which offers hope of a new world where good and evil can be clearly delineated and addressed. But all of the traditional functions and comforts of the apocalyptic myth are challenged when the myth collides with postmodernism. The characteristics that define a work as postmodern ultimately destabilize the traits that make the apocalyptic myth unique. Using the work of Terry Gilliam, Don DeLillo, Kurt Vonnegut, and other writers in the genre, Apocalyptic Transformation examines the collision of the postmodern mode and the apocalyptic myth, explores the process of secularizing this religious story and the reasons for doing so, and asks the question: What happens when an author undermines the grand narrative of the apocalypse?

Virginia Woolf has been among the most scrutinised figures of the past century. Her unique literary genius, her pioneering work for women's rights, her position at the nucleus of the Bloomsbury group, her high-profile family and marriage, her relationship with Vita Sackville-West, and her suicide have all been dissected. Life and art were, for Woolf, inextricably entangled, and the autobiographical elements of many of her works, including the masterpieces To The Lighthouse and The Waves, have heightened interest in this most fascinating of figures. Elizabeth Wright here takes a fresh look at the life and legacy of one of the greatest figures of English literature. Perfect for Woolf enthusiasts and newcomers alike, Brief Lives: Virginia Woolf offers a concise, authoritative account of the author's life, and presents an engaging overview of her afterlife in literary history.

A major contribution to James Joyce studies, as well as a historical review of the French intellectual climate since the 1960s.

Flannery O'Connor may now be acknowledged as the "Great American Catholic Author," but this was not always the case. With Creating Flannery O'Connor, Daniel Moran explains how O'Connor attained that status, and how she felt about it, by examining the development of her literary reputation from the perspectives of critics, publishers, agents, adapters for other media, and contemporary readers. Moran tells the story of O'Connor's evolving career and the shaping of her literary identity. Drawing from the Farrar, Straus & Giroux archives at the New York Public Library and O'Connor's private correspondence, he also concentrates on the ways in which Robert Giroux worked tirelessly to promote O'Connor and change her image from that of a southern oddity to an American author exploring universal themes. Moran traces the critical reception in print of each of O'Connor's works, finding parallels between her original reviewers and today's readers. He examines the ways in which O'Connor's work was adapted for the stage and screen and how these adaptations fostered her reputation as an artist. He also analyses how-on reader review sites such as Goodreads-her work is debated and discussed among "common readers" in ways very much as it was when Wise Blood was first published in 1952.

As we move through the 21st century, the importance of science fiction to the study of English Literature is becoming increasingly apparent. The Science Fiction Handbook provides a comprehensive guide to the genre and how to study it for students new to the field. In particular, it provides detailed entries on major writers in the SF field who might be encountered on university-level English Literature courses, ranging from H.G. Wells and Philip K. Dick, to Doris Lessing and Geoff Ryman. Other features include an historical timeline, sections on key writers, critics and critical terms, and case studies of both literary and critical works. In the later sections of the book, the changing nature of the science fiction canon and its growing role in relation to the wider categories of English Literature are discussed in depth introducing the reader to the latest critical thinking on the field.

The Ruins of Urban Modernity examines Thomas Pynchon's 2006 novel Against the Day through the critical lens of urban spatiality. Navigating the textual landscapes of New York, Venice, London, Los Angeles and the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, Against the Day reimagines urban modernity at the turn of the 20th century. As the complex novel collapses and rebuilds anew the spatial imaginaries underlying the popular fictions of urban modernity, Utku Mogultay explores how such creative disfiguration throws light on the contemporary urban world. Through critical spatial readings, he considers how Pynchon historicizes issues ranging from the commodification of the urban landscape to the politics of place-making. In Mogultay's reading, Against the Day is shown to offer an oblique negotiation of postmodern urban spaces, thus directing our attention to the ongoing erosion of sociospatial diversity in North American cities and elsewhere.

This title examines the ways in which language, identity, and a sense of cultural belonging intersect in Conrad's and Gombrowicz's novels and other writings. "Polish, Hybrid, and Otherwise" examines the triple compact made by displaced authors with language, their host country, and the homeland left behind. It considers the entwined phenomena of expatriation and homelessness, and the artistic responses to these conditions, including reconstructions of identity and the creation of idealized new homelands. Conrad and Gombrowicz, writers who lived with the condition of exile, were in the vanguard of what today has become a thriving intellectual community of transnationals whose calling card is precisely their hybridity and fluency in multiple cultural traditions. Conrad and Gombrowicz's Polish childhoods emerge as cultural touchstones against which they formulated their writing philosophies. Gasyna claims that in both cases negotiating exile involved processes of working through a traumatic past through the construction of narrative personae that served as strategic doubles. Both authors engaged in extensive manipulation of their public image. Above all, Conrad and Gombrowicz's narratives are united by a desire for a linguistic refuge, a proposed home-in-language, and a set of techniques deployed in the representation of their predicament as subjects caught in-between.

A comprehensive guide that defines the literature and the outlines the best-selling genre of all time: romance fiction. More than 2,000 romances are published annually, making it difficult for fans and the librarians who advise them to keep pace with new titles, emerging authors, and constant evolution of this dynamic genre. Fortunately, romance expert and librarian Kristin Ramsdell provides a definitive guide to this fiction genre that serves as an indispensible resource for those interested in it-including fans searching for reading material-as well as for library staff, scholars, and romance writers themselves. This title updates the last edition of Romance Fiction: A Guide to the Genre, published in 1999.While the emphasis is on newer titles, many of the important older classics are retained, keeping the focus of the book on the entire genre, instead of only those titles published during the last decade. Specific changes include new chapters on linked and continuing romances, a new section on "Chick Lit" in the Contemporary Romance chapter, an expansion of coverage on the alternative reality subset. This is THE romance genre guide to have. A core collection list in chronological order An exhaustive bibliographic listing of romance titles Research materials and a brief history of the genre Indexes organized by author, title, and subject

Too often Eudora Welty is known to the general public as Miss Welty, a "perfect lady" who wrote affectionate portraits of her home region. Yet recent scholarship has amply demonstrated a richer complexity. Welty was an innovative artist with cosmopolitan sensibilities and progressive politics, a woman who maintained close friendships with artists and intellectuals throughout the world, a writer as unafraid to experiment as she was to level her pen at the worst human foibles. The essays collected in Teaching the Works of Eudora Welty seek to move Welty beyond a discussion of region and reflect new scholarship that remaps her work onto a larger canvas. The book offers ways to help twenty-first-century readers navigate Welty's challenging and intricate narratives. It provides answers to questions many teachers will have: Why should I study a writer who documents white privilege? Why should I give this "regional" writer space on an already crowded syllabus? Why should I teach Welty if I do not study the South? How can I help my students make sense of her modernist narratives? How can Welty's texts help me teach my students about literary theory, about gender and disability, about cultures and societies with which my students are unfamiliar?

This book is about the idea of space in the first half of the nineteenth century. It uses contemporary poetry, essays, and fiction as well as scientific papers, textbooks, and journalism to give a new account of nineteenth-century literature's relationship with science. In particular it brings the physical sciences--physics and chemistry--more accessibly and fully into the arena of literary criticism than has been the case until now.
Writers whose work is discussed in this book include many who will be familiar to a literary audience (including Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Hazlitt), some well-known in the history of science (including Faraday, Herschel, and Whewell), and a raft of lesser-known figures. Alice Jenkins draws a new map of the interactions between literature and science in the first half of the nineteenth century, showing how both disciplines were wrestling with the same central political and intellectual concerns--regulating access to knowledge, organizing knowledge in productive ways, and formulating the relationships of old and new knowledges.
Space has become a subject of enormous critical interest in literary and cultural studies. Space and the 'March of Mind' gives a wide-ranging account of how early nineteenth-century writers thought about--and thought with--space. Burgeoning mass access to print culture combined with rapid scientific development to create a crisis in managing knowledge. Contemporary writers tried to solve this crisis by rethinking the nature of space. Writers in all genres and disciplines, from all points on the political spectrum, returned again and again to ideas and images of space when they needed to set up or dismantle boundaries in theintellectual realm, and when they wanted to talk about what kinds of knowledge certain groups of readers wanted, needed, or deserved. This book provides a rich new picture of the early nineteenth century's understanding of its own culture.

THE ULTIMATE GUIDES TO EXAM SUCCESS from York Notes - the UK's favourite English Literature Study Guides. York Notes for AS & A2 are specifically designed for AS & A2 students to help you get the very best grade you can. They are comprehensive, easy to use, packed with valuable features and written by experienced experts to give you an in-depth understanding of the text, critical approaches and the all-important exam. -An enhanced exam skills section which includes essay plans, expert guidance on understanding questions and sample answers. You'll know exactly what you need to do and say to get the best grades. -A wealth of useful content like key quotations, revision tasks and vital study tips that'll help you revise, remember and recall all the most important information. -The widest coverage and the best, most in-depth analysis of characters, themes, language, form, context and style to help you demonstrate an exhaustive understanding of all aspects of the text. York Notes for AS & A2 are available for these popular titles: The Bloody Chamber (9781447913153) Doctor Faustus (9781447913177) Frankenstein (9781447913214) The Great Gatsby (9781447913207) The Kite Runner (9781447913160) Macbeth (9781447913146) Othello (9781447913191) Wuthering Heights (9781447913184) Jane Eyre (9781447948834) Hamlet (9781447948872) A Midsummer Night's Dream (9781447948841) Northanger Abbey (9781447948858 Pride & Prejudice (9781447948865) Twelfth Night (9781447948889)

Gene Wolfe's BOOK OF THE NEW SUN has been hailed by both critics and readers as quite possibly the best science fiction novel ever written. And yet at the same time, like another masterpiece of fiction, James Joyce's Ulysses, it's been deemed endlessly complex and filled with impenetrable mysteries. Now, however, in the first book-length investigation of Wolfe's literary puzzlebox, Robert Borski takes you inside the twisting corridors of the tetralogy and along the way reveals his solutions to many of the novel's conundrums and riddles, such as who really is Severian's lost twin sister (almost certainly not who you think) and why he believes the novel's main character may not even be the torturer Severian. Furthermore, and in essay after essay, Borski demonstrates how a single master key will unlock many of the book's secret relationships--all in the attempt to guide you through the labyrinth that is Gene Wolfe's BOOK OF THE NEW SUN.

The Introspective Art of Mark Twain is a major new assessment of a towering American writer. Seeking to trace the development of Mark Twain's imagination, Douglas Anderson begins near the end of Twain's life, with the long dialogue What Is Man? that Twain published anonymously in 1906. In Twain's view, the little-read What Is Man? lies at the heart of his creative life. It is the central aesthetic testament that he employed to tell the story of his artistic evolution. Anderson follows the contours of that story as it unfolds over Twain's career. The portrait that emerges addresses the full scope of Twain's achievement, drawing on his autobiographical and travel writings, as well as the published and unpublished works of fiction that are by now deeply embedded in the world literary canon. "Steer by the river in your head," Mark Twain's master pilot, Horace Bixby, once advised him, when the opaque atmosphere of the outer world made it impossible to see the actual Mississippi through which Twain was trying to guide his steamboat. For the purposes of this book, the river in one's head is not a mental construct of the physical world but the riverine networks of consciousness itself: the river that is the mind. The detailed discussions of individual books that structure each chapter direct the attention of Mark Twain's students and admirers, through inward rather than outward channels, toward a fuller appreciation for his legacy.

For anyone who loved St Trinian's - old or new - or read Malory Towers as a kid. St Brides is the perfect read for you. When Gemma Lamb takes a job at a quirky English girls' boarding school, she believes she's found the perfect escape route from her controlling boyfriend - until she discovers the rest of the staff are hiding sinister secrets: Hairnet, the eccentric headmistress who doesn't hold with academic qualifications Oriana Bliss, Head of Maths and master of disguise Joscelyn Spryke, the suspiciously rugged Head of PE Geography teacher Mavis Brook, surreptitiously selling off the library books creepy night watchman Max Security, with his network of hidden tunnels Even McPhee, the school cat, is leading a double life. Tucked away in the school's beautiful private estate in the Cotswolds, can Gemma stay safe and build a new independent future, or will past secrets catch up with her and the rest of the staff? With a little help from her new friends, including some wise pupils, she's going to give it her best shot... Previously published by Debbie Young as Secrets at St Bride's.

In this book - one of the first ecocritical explorations of Irish literature - Alison Lacivita defies the popular view of James Joyce as a thoroughly urban writer by bringing to light his consistent engagement with nature. Using genetic criticism to investigate Joyce's source texts, notebooks, and proofs, Lacivita shows how Joyce developed ecological themes in Finnegans Wake over successive drafts. Making apparent a love of growing things and a lively connection with the natural world across his texts, Lacivita's approach reveals Joyce's keen attention to the Irish landscape, meteorology, urban planning, Dublin's ecology, the exploitation of nature, and fertilityand reproduction. Lacivita unearths a vital quality of Joyce's work that has largely gone undetected, decisively aligning ecocriticism with both modernism and Irish studies.

Understanding Contemporary American Science Fiction: The Age of Maturity, 1970-2000 explores the major trends and developments during three decades that witnessed science fiction's most dramatic progression from subliterary escapist entertainment to a more sophisticated literature of ideas. Darren Harris-Fain suggests that to understand American science fiction fully, it is essential to realize that the current field with all its variety results from the proceeding decades of writings. In addition, he contends that although much science fiction of merit was written in America prior to 1970, the latter decades of the twentieth century witnessed a dramatic improvement in quality, even as the field fragmented into a variety of subgenres and as writers sought to transcend earlier critical dismissals. Harris-Fain discusses significant and representative works, most of which mainstream literary scholars and critics ignore, as he charts the historical and literary development of contemporary American science fiction. He identifies influences and events central to the genre's growth, including the internal divisions along both literary and political lines experienced during the Vietnam era; the influence of the feminist movement and other contemporary concerns; the increasing contributions of female, African American, and gay and lesbian writers; and the emergence of such significant trends as hard science fiction, cyberpunk, alternate history, and shared-world stories. Harris-Fain also considers literary science fiction's relationship to the mass media, the effects the popularity of fantasy has on the field, and academia's continued misprizing of the genre.

This is a concise and authoritative guide to Virginia Woolf's classic text "To the Lighthouse" (1927), including a brief plot summary and introduction to characters and a guide to critical reception. "To the Lighthouse" is one of Virginia Woolf's most widely read and commonly studied novels. Offering an authoritative, up-to-date guide for students, this guide introduces its context, language, themes, criticism and afterlife, leading students to a more sophisticated understanding of the text. It is the ideal companion to reading and studying the novel, setting "To the Lighthouse" in its historical, intellectual and cultural contexts, offering analyses of its themes, style and structure, providing exemplary close readings, presenting an up-to-date account of its critical reception. The book also includes a brief plot summary and guide to characters to enable students to progress quickly from early concerns about what is happening in the novel. It includes points for discussion, suggestions for further study and an annotated guide to relevant reading. "Continuum Reader's Guides" are clear, concise and accessible introductions to key texts in literature and philosophy. Each book explores the themes, context, criticism and influence of key works, providing a practical introduction to close reading, guiding students towards a thorough understanding of the text. They provide an essential, up-to-date resource, ideal for undergraduate students.

In the two Books of De divinatione Cicero considers beliefs concerning fate and the possibility of prediction: in the first book he puts the (principally Stoic) case for them in the mouth of his brother Quintus; in the second, speaking in his own person, he argues against them. In this new translation of, and commentary on, Book One--the first in English for over 80 years--David Wardle guides the reader through the course of Cicero's argument, giving particular attention to the traditional Roman and the philosophical conception of divination.

Murasaki Shikibu's The Tale of Genji is variously read as a work of feminist protest, the world's first psychological novel and even as a post-modern masterpiece. Commonly seen as Japan's greatest literary work, its literary, cultural, and historical significance has been thoroughly acknowledged. As a work focused on the complexities of Japanese court life in the Heian period, however, the The Tale of Genji has never before been the subject of philosophical investigation. The essays in this volume address this oversight, arguing that the work contains much that lends itself to philosophical analysis. The authors of this volume demonstrate that The Tale of Genji confronts universal themes such as the nature and exercise of political power, freedom, individual autonomy and agency, renunciation, gender, and self-expression; it raises deep concerns about aesthetics and the role of art, causality, the relation of man to nature, memory, and death itself. Although Murasaki Shikibu may not express these themes in the text as explicitly philosophical problems, the complex psychological tensions she describes and her observations about human conduct reveal an underlying framework of philosophical assumptions about the world of the novel that have implications for how we understand these concerns beyond the world of Genji. Each essay in this collection reveals a part of this framework, situating individual themes within larger philosophical and historical contexts. In doing so, the essays both challenge prevailing views of the novel and each other, offering a range of philosophical interpretations of the text and emphasizing the The Tale of Genji's place as a masterful work of literature with broad philosophical significance.

Amidst a revival of interest in the novels of the abbe Prevost, this study addresses some of the interpretive issues that are being raised concerning his work, namely what intellectual, moral and aesthetic meaning should we seek in works that were designed as entertainments, and should we persist in rating Manon Lescaut more highly than the rest of Prevost's output? The narrative strategies and types of distortion inherent in each of Prevost's narrators are examined. More general observations are made on the mechanics of Prevost's narration such as the deceptive rhetorical devices of juxtaposing different accounts of the same event by two or more narrators and the use of the double registre or separation of narrator from protagonist. Other aspects of Prevost's fictional technique are considered - for example, the extent to which he drew upon contemporary traditions in the novel. Another important theme is the relationship between Prevost's fictional world and the real world in which topics such as other-portrayal and the handing of time reflect the degree of unreliability of the narrator's vision. Parallel episodes and interpolations are also used to illuminate subtly the work's central themes. The latter part of this study is dedicated to the moral dilemmas raised in Prevost's work in which the world - and the author's heroes - appear to be governed by three complex and often conflicting codes of behaviour - those of religion, honour, and 'love' or 'sensibility'. In particular, the problems of women are represented as well as the failure of the heroic ideal amongst the aristocracy. In religious matters, Prevost is revealed as a man of tolerance, ultimately concerned with human nature. The Prevost who emerges from this study combines a high degree of technical mastery with a serious moral interest in the human heart. His demystification of the ideal of heroism and his fragmented vision of the human personality are likely to appeal to the modern reader. The powerful dramatisation of moral conflict, familiar in Manon Lescaut, is indeed to be found throughout his work.

The Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment series, previously known as SVEC (Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century), has published over 500 peer-reviewed scholarly volumes since 1955 as part of the Voltaire Foundation at the University of Oxford. International in focus, Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment volumes cover wide-ranging aspects of the eighteenth century and the Enlightenment, from gender studies to political theory, and from economics to visual arts and music, and are published in English or French.

The Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment series, previously known as SVEC (Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century), has published over 500 peer-reviewed scholarly volumes since 1955 as part of the Voltaire Foundation at the University of Oxford. International in focus, Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment volumes cover wide-ranging aspects of the eighteenth century and the Enlightenment, from gender studies to political theory, and from economics to visual arts and music, and are published in English or French.

Franz Kafka is one of the most widely taught, and read,writers in world literature. Readers encountering texts like 'The Metamorphosis' and The Trial for the first time are frequently perplexed by his often intentionally weird writing. Some might say that Kafka's enduring achievement has been to make his readers love being perplexed. As much of Kafka's writing is designed to perplex the reader, this guide helps the reader understand why and how perplexity has been deliberately created by Kafka's text and to realize what the uses of such perplexity might be. The book guides readers through their first encounters with Kafka and introduces the problems involved in reading his texts, the nature of his texts from the key novels and novellas toletters and professional writings, his life as a writer and different approaches to reading Kafka.

"A highly intelligent and successful study exploring the uncanny features of Conrad's art that respond, and lend depth, to the concerns of theorists such as Bakhtin and Lyotard." -- Suresh Raval, University of Arizona