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.

Engaged with the paradigms of cultural geography, local history, spatial politics, and everyday life, The Lost Geopoetic Horizon of Li Jieren unveils a Sichuan writer's lifelong quest: an independent historical fiction writing project on Chengdu from the turn of the century through China's 1911 Revolution. Kenny Kwok-kwan Ng's study illuminates the crisis of writing home in a globalized age by rescuing Li Jieren's repeatedly revised but never finished river-novel series written from Republican to Communist China, struggling to liberate local memory from the national cum revolutionary currents. The book undercuts official historiography and rewrites Chinese literary history from the ground up by highlighting Li's resilient geopoetics of writing that decenters the nation by adopting the place-based view of a distant province.

The first study to look at the intersection of the discourse of the Anthropocene within the two highly influential storytelling modes of fantasy and myth, this book shows the need for stories that articulate visions of a biocentric, ecological civilization. Fantasy and myth have long been humanity's most advanced technologies for collective dreaming. Today they are helping us adopt a biocentric lens, re-kin us with other forms of life, and assist us in the transition to an ecological civilization. Deliberately moving away from dystopian narratives toward anticipatory imaginations of sustainable futures, this volume blends chapters by top scholars in the fields of fantasy, myth, and Young Adult literature with personal reflections by award-winning authors and illustrators of books for young audiences, including Shaun Tan, Jane Yolen, Katherine Applegate and Joseph Bruchac. Chapters cover the works of major fantasy authors such as J. R. R. Tolkien, Terry Prachett, J. K. Rowling, China Mieville, Barbara Henderson, Jeanette Winterson, John Crowley, Richard Powers, George R. R. Martin and Kim Stanley Robinson. They range through narratives set in the UK, USA, Nigeria, Ghana, Pacific Islands, New Zealand and Australia. Across the chapters, fantasy and myth are framed as spaces where visions of sustainable futures can be designed with most detail and nuance. Rather than merely criticizing the ecocidal status quo, the book asks how mythic narratives and fantastic stories can mobilize resistance around ideas necessary for the emergence of an ecological civilization.

Winner of the National Book Award for her short story collection Victory Over Japan, Ellen Gilchrist has entertained audiences with her vivid fictional portraits of strong women, eccentric lives, and the difficulties of love and life. Known both for her short fiction and her novels, Gilchrist has been awarded several honors throughout her career, and her work continues to receive both critical and popular acclaim. This book examines her fiction, book by book, and offers an appreciation of her craft through a careful analysis of the stories themselves, their critical reception, and their lasting effect on the reader. Hooper offers the first complete evaluation of Gilchrist's entire fiction oeuvre. Author of such works as In the Land of Dreamy Dreams, The Annunciation, Go Hunting with My Daddy, and several other novels and collections of short stories, Ellen Gilchrist has transcended the bounds of Southern writing, appealing to audiences in all corners of the nation. Here, Hooper celebrates her fiction, focusing on the strong, feisty female characters that populate her works, exerting their will and independence regardless of traditional restraints on their activities. In addition, he pays special attention to her strengths and weaknesses as both a short fiction writer and a novelist, arguing that while her novels may entertain, her lasting contribution to American letters can more easily be found in her short fiction.

The Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish Fiction presents authoritative essays by thirty-five leading scholars of Irish fiction. They provide in-depth assessments of the breadth and achievement of novelists and short story writers whose collective contribution to the evolution and modification of these unique art forms has been far out of proportion to Ireland's small size. The volume brings a variety of critical perspectives to bear on the development of modern Irish fiction, situating authors, texts, and genres in their social, intellectual, and literary historical contexts. The Handbook's coverage encompasses an expansive range of topics, including the recalcitrant atavisms of Irish Gothic fiction; nineteenth-century Irish women's fiction and its influence on emergent modernism and cultural nationalism; the diverse modes of irony, fabulism, and social realism that characterize the fiction of the Irish Literary Revival; the fearless aesthetic radicalism of James Joyce; the jolting narratological experiments of Samuel Beckett, Flann O'Brien, and Mairtin O Cadhain; the fate of the realist and modernist traditions in the work of Elizabeth Bowen, Frank O'Connor, Sean O'Faolain, and Mary Lavin, and in that of their ambivalent heirs, Edna O'Brien, John McGahern, and John Banville; the subversive treatment of sexuality and gender in Northern Irish women's fiction written during and after the Troubles; the often neglected genres of Irish crime fiction, science fiction, and fiction for children; the many-hued novelistic responses to the experiences of famine, revolution, and emigration; and the variety and vibrancy of post-millennial fiction from both parts of Ireland. Readably written and employing a wealth of original research, The Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish Fiction illuminates a distinguished literary tradition that has altered the shape of world literature.

The consolidation of law and the development of legal writing during Spain's Golden Age not only helped that country become a modern state but also affected its great literature. In this fascinating book, Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria explores the works of Cervantes, showing how his representations of love were inspired by examples of human deviance and desire culled from legal discourse. Gonzalez Echevarria describes Spain's new legal policies, legislation, and institutions and explains how, at the same time, its literature became filled with love stories derived from classical and medieval sources. Examining the ways that these legal and literary developments interacted in Cervantes's work, he sheds new light on "Don Quixote "and other writings.

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)

Over the last decade, Samuel Beckett's popularity has rocketed around the world and he is increasingly recognised as one of the most important and influential writers of the twentieth century but there has been very little scholarly work on Beckett's reception outside Europe. This comprehensive volume brings together essays from leading critics on Beckett's international critical reception. Due to Beckett's linguistic and artistic abilities, he was intimately involved in the translation and production of his writings in German, French, English and Spanish; and consequently countries using these languages have sophisticated critical traditions. However, many other countries have adopted Beckett as their own, from places where he lived for lengthy periods of his life (England, France, Ireland and Germany), to those finding directly applicable political messages in his work (such as ex-Soviet states including the Czech Republic and Romania), and those countries whose national literary traditions bear heavily upon his work (e.g. Norway and Italy). This fascinating volume reveals Beckett's evolving critical reception from contemporary reviews to the present.

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 important contribution to the study of early modern Chinese fiction and representation of gender relations focuses on literary representations of the prostitute produced in the Ming and Qing periods. Following her heavily symbolic body, the present work maps this fictional heroine's journey from innocence to sex-work and beyond. This crucial angle allows the author to paint a picture of gender identity, sexuality, and desire that is at once unitary and multi-layered, and that comes to illuminate some of the major themes in the construction of Chinese modernity.

This title provides an insight into the original context, qualities and influence of George Orwell's essays and provides the first extended examination of his genius as an essayist. George Orwell ranked his essays among his greatest literary achievements. In modern English literature they are praised as the finest accomplishments of the form. More than half a century after his death, Peter Marks gives them the scholarly attention they merit. We gain a better understanding of Orwell by properly understanding his essays. Mark's sophisticated account of the essay form explains why its flexible properties are the ideal tool for Orwell's critical and political thinking. Situating the essays in their original periodical contexts we see how Orwell manipulates his approach across a range of journals so as to entertain, convince or provoke his expected readers. We are privy to the rhetorical tactics a master uses to convince his audience. Exploring the popularity of the essay's beyond his death, we realize how the essays have influenced Orwell's posthumous reputation. A major contribution to our interpretation of Orwell, this critical study unravels the variety, complexity and, occasional inconsistency, of essays by one of the greatest writers of the form.

Eastern and Western Synergies and Imaginations: Texts and Histories is a product of east-west studies crossed with adaptation studies: it goes beyond evaluation of cultural interactions and discussion of forms and manners of adaptation. This volume brings together critical discourses from various cultural locales which have developed from and thrived on the notion of "East meets West" or "West meets East". The 10 chapters trace and investigate cross-, trans- or multi-cultural interpretations of fictional and non-fictional narratives that feature people and events in cities and regions which thrive, or have thrived, as East-West hubs, thereby expounding multiple layers of relationship between source texts and new texts. An allegorical play, The Three Ladies of Macao, premiered in December 2016, is now published as appendix in this volume.

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.

"All-Electric" Narratives is the first in-depth study of time-saving electrical appliances in American literature. It examines the literary depiction of refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, oven ranges, washing machines, dryers, dishwashers, toasters, blenders, standing and hand-held mixers, and microwave ovens between 1945, when the "all-electric" home came to be associated with the nation's hard-won victory, and 2020, as contemporary writers consider the enduring material and spiritual effects of these objects in the 21st century. The appropriation and subversion of the rhetoric of domestic electrification and time-saving comprises a crucial, but overlooked, element in 20th-century literary forms and genres including Beat literature, Black American literature, second-wave feminist fiction, science fiction, and postmodernist fiction. Through close-readings of dozens of literary texts alongside print and television ads from this period, Dini shows how U.S. writers have unearthed the paradoxes inherent to claims of appliances' capacity to "give back" time to their user, transport them into a technologically-progressive future, or "return" them to some pastoral past. In so doing, she reveals literary appliances' role in raising questions about gender norms and sexuality, racial exclusion and erasure, class anxieties, the ramifications of mechanization, the perils and possibilities of conformity, the limitations of patriotism, and the inevitable fallacy of utopian thinking-while both shaping and radically disrupting the literary forms in which they operated.

"Joyce and Company" is a comparative study which encourages a way of thinking about Joyce not as an isolated figure but as someone who is best understood in the company of others whether from the past, the present or, indeed, the imagined future. Throughout, Pierce places Joyce and his time in dialogue with other figures or different historical periods or languages other than English. In this way, Joyce is seen anew in relation to other writers and contexts. The book is organised in four parts: Joyce and History, Joyce and Language, Joyce and the City, and Joyce and the Contemporary World. Pierce emphasises Joyce's position as both an Irish and a European writer and shows Joyce's continuing relevance to the twenty-first century, not least in his commitment to language, culture and a discourse on freedom.

Providing easy access to information on nearly 450 short stories, this unique guide surveys a wide spectrum of world literature, canonical works, and contemporary fiction. Librarians and teachers will find multiple purposes for this expertly-compiled resource, which can be employed in much the same way as a standard bibliography. Educators will appreciate the concise annotations, arranged alphabetically by author, that form the core of this work. Insightful critical statements synthesize plot summaries and identify the thematic content of each short story.

A theme guide utilizes the nearly 100 theme headings matching those at the start of each entry, allowing the user to quickly locate story titles on related themes and construct reading lists based on individual interests and needs. Another component designed to aid librarians offers one bibliography that lists the anthologies from which the stories are drawn (Works Cited) and one comprised of a number of recent anthologies that can be adapted for the classroom (Further Reading). In addition to the theme index, the general subject and author indexes make this a user-friendly and invaluable resource.

Sherman Alexie (b. 1966) gained national attention upon release of "The Business of Fancydancing," his first collection of poems, in 1992, when a critic for the "New York Times Book Review" called him "one of the major lyric voices of our time." More recently, in 2007, Alexie won a National Book Award for "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian," a young-adult novel based on his own high school experiences.

In "Conversations with Sherman Alexie," the writer displays the same passion, dynamic sense of humor, and sharp observational skills that characterize his work. The interviews ranging from 1993 to 2007 feature Alexie speaking candidly about the ideas and themes behind poetry collections ("I Would Steal Horses, First Indian on the Moon"), short story collections ("The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, Ten Little Indians"), novels ("Indian Killer, Reservation Blues"), and screenplays ("Smoke Signals").

Coeur d'Alene through his father and Spokane through his mother, Alexie grew up in Wellpinit on the Spokane Indian Reservation in eastern Washington. Reservation life is a central concern in his work, as are politics, love, contemporary literature, city living (he now lives in Seattle), and his beloved sport of basketball. Alexie's wit, polemical engagement, and willingness to confront received notions have made him one of the most popular American Indian writers today.

'An utterly gorgeous romantic read. It made me want to pack my bags for Paris!' Sandy Barker Irena and Sacha come from two very different worlds. An heiress to a fortune, Ren's home-from-home is the Ritz, while the handsome and brooding Sacha has grown up in Paris's less salubrious suburbs. So when an accident brings them together, romance seems an unlikely outcome. When Ren's society engagement reaches a very public end, Irena's over-protective grandmother wants her home in London. Ren needs an excuse to stay in Paris, and so after some persuasion, Sacha agrees to pose as her new boyfriend. But only for the twenty-one days Ren's grandmother has allowed her to nurse her broken heart before heading home to face the music. Over the course of three weeks, Ren realises the world outside her exclusive bubble is more beautiful than she could have imagined. While Sacha reluctantly begins to see the goodness of the woman behind the wealth. When their time is up, will Ren want to return to her gilded cage, and will Sacha be able to let go of the woman he's been 'pretending' to fall in love with... Let Leonie Mack whisk you off to the City of Lights for a tale of love against the odds, and of following your dreams. Perfect for fans of Mandy Baggot, Jo Thomas and Sarah Morgan. 'I love her beautiful settings and brooding heroes!' Sarah Bennett What readers are saying about Leonie Mack: 'This is one of those books where you want to get to the end but you also don't want it to end because you know you're going to miss it when it's done. A great read.' 'Ah the romance - I really loved every moment, as the two main characters I'd really taken to my heart fought that magnetic pull between them when you really, really wanted them to have their happy ending. This was one of those perfect summer reads, but with a depth and emotion that was particularly satisfying - most definitely one I'd recommend to others.' 'A burst of pure joy... It has all the feel good elements needed for an irresistible romance you can't help but root for, even though you know the odds aren't in their favour! 'Beautifully written, this is a great take on the opposites attract theme.'

This book investigates a new form of fiction that is currently emerging in contemporary literature across the globe. 'Novels of the extreme' - from North and South America, from Europe, the Middle East and Asia - are set in a world both similar to and different from our own: a hyper-real, often apocalyptic world progressively invaded by popular culture, permeated with technology and dominated by destruction. While their writing is commonly classified as 'hip' or 'underground' literature, authors of contemporary extreme novels have often been the center of public controversy and scandal; they, and their work, become international bestsellers. This collection of essays indentifies and describes this international phenomenon, investigating the appeal of these novels' styles and themes, the reason behind their success, and the fierce debates they provoked. Alain-Philippe Durand is Associate Professor of French, Film Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Rhode Island. Naomi Mandel is Assistant Professor in the Department of English, University of Rhode Island.

One of the most distinctive voices in mainstream comics since the 1970s, Howard Chaykin (b. 1950) has earned a reputation as a visionary formal innovator and a compelling storyteller whose comics offer both pulp-adventure thrills and thoughtful engagement with real-world politics and culture. His body of work is defined by the belief that comics can be a vehicle for sophisticated adult entertainment and for narratives that utilize the medium's unique properties to explore serious themes with intelligence and wit.

Beginning with early interviews in fanzines and concluding with a new interview conducted in 2010 with the volume's editor, "Howard Chaykin: Conversations" collects widely ranging discussions from Chaykin's earliest days as an assistant for such legends as Gil Kane and Wallace Wood to his recent work on titles including "Dominic Fortune," "Challengers of the Unknown," and "American Century." The book includes 35 line illustrations selected from Chaykin, as well. As a writer/artist for outlets such as DC Comics, Marvel Comics, and "Heavy Metal," he has participated in and influenced many of the major developments in mainstream comics over the past four decades. He was an early pioneer in the graphic novel format in the 1970s, and his groundbreaking sci-fi satire "American Flagg " was an essential contribution to the maturation of the comic book as a vehicle for social commentary in the 1980s.

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.

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.