This book offers a comprehensive film-by-film analysis of Spain's most famous living director, Pedro Almodovar. It shows how Almodovar's films draw on various national cinemas and genres, including Spanish cinema of the dictatorship, European art cinema, Hollywood melodrama and film noir. It also argues that Almodovar's work is a form of social critique, his films consistently engaging with and challenging stereotypes about traditional and contemporary Spain in order to address Spain's traumatic historical past and how it continues to inform the present. Drawing on scholarship in both English and Spanish, the book will be of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students of film studies and Hispanic studies, scholars of contemporary cinema and general readers with a passion for the films of Pedro Almodovar. -- .

This book offers a comprehensive film-by-film analysis of Spain's most famous living director, Pedro Almodovar. It shows how Almodovar's films draw on various national cinemas and genres, including Spanish cinema of the dictatorship, European art cinema, Hollywood melodrama and film noir. It also argues that Almodovar's work is a form of social critique, his films consistently engaging with and challenging stereotypes about traditional and contemporary Spain in order to address Spain's traumatic historical past and how it continues to inform the present. Drawing on scholarship in both English and Spanish, the book will be of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students of film studies and Hispanic studies, scholars of contemporary cinema and general readers with a passion for the films of Pedro Almodovar. -- .

This ambitious and wide-ranging essay collection analyses how identity and form intersect in twentieth- and twenty-first century literature. It revises and deconstructs the binary oppositions identity-form, content-form and body-mind through discussions of the role of the author in the interpretation of literary texts, the ways in which writers bypass or embrace identity politics and the function of identity and the body in form. Essays tackle these issues from a number of positions, including identity categories such as (dis)ability, gender, race and sexuality, as well as questioning these categories themselves. Essayists look at both identity as form and form as identity. Although identity and form are both staples of current research on contemporary literature, they rarely meet in the way this collection allows. Authors studied include Beryl Bainbridge, Samuel Beckett, John Berryman, Brigid Brophy, Angela Carter, J.M. Coetzee, Anne Enright, William Faulkner, Mark Haddon, Ted Hughes, Kazuo Ishiguro, B.S. Johnson, A.L. Kennedy, Toby Litt, Hilary Mantel, Andrea Levy, Robert Lowell, Ian McEwan, Flannery O'Connor, Alice Oswald, Sylvia Plath, Jeremy Reed, Anne Sexton, Edith Sitwell, Wallace Stevens, Jeremy Reed, Jeanette Winterson and Virginia Woolf. The book engages with key theoretical approaches to twentieth- and twenty-first century literature of the last twenty years while at the same time advancing new frameworks that enable readers to reconsider the identity and form conundrum. In both its choice of texts and diverse approaches, it will be of interest to those working on English and American Literatures, gender studies, queer studies, disability studies, postcolonial literature, and literature and philosophy.

European Intertexts is the first fruit of an ongoing collaborative study aiming to challenge the isolationism of much critical work on English literature by exploring the interdependence of English and continental European literatures in writing by women. While later volumes will deal with specific texts, this introductory volume provides a descriptive framework and a theoretical basis for studies in the field. Covering issues such as the role of English as a world language, the definition of 'Europe', and the current state of Translation Studies, the book also surveys theories of intertextuality and demonstrates intertextual links between written and visual and film texts. This book is itself pioneering in making a systematic approach to women's writings in English in the context of other European cultures. Although Europe is a political reality, this cultural interpenetration remains largely unexamined, and these essays represent an important first step towards revealing that unexplored richness.

This ambitious and wide-ranging essay collection analyses how identity and form intersect in twentieth- and twenty-first century literature. It revises and deconstructs the binary oppositions identity-form, content-form and body-mind through discussions of the role of the author in the interpretation of literary texts, the ways in which writers bypass or embrace identity politics and the function of identity and the body in form. Essays tackle these issues from a number of positions, including identity categories such as (dis)ability, gender, race and sexuality, as well as questioning these categories themselves. Essayists look at both identity as form and form as identity. Although identity and form are both staples of current research on contemporary literature, they rarely meet in the way this collection allows. Authors studied include Beryl Bainbridge, Samuel Beckett, John Berryman, Brigid Brophy, Angela Carter, J.M. Coetzee, Anne Enright, William Faulkner, Mark Haddon, Ted Hughes, Kazuo Ishiguro, B.S. Johnson, A.L. Kennedy, Toby Litt, Hilary Mantel, Andrea Levy, Robert Lowell, Ian McEwan, Flannery O'Connor, Alice Oswald, Sylvia Plath, Jeremy Reed, Anne Sexton, Edith Sitwell, Wallace Stevens, Jeremy Reed, Jeanette Winterson and Virginia Woolf. The book engages with key theoretical approaches to twentieth- and twenty-first century literature of the last twenty years while at the same time advancing new frameworks that enable readers to reconsider the identity and form conundrum. In both its choice of texts and diverse approaches, it will be of interest to those working on English and American Literatures, gender studies, queer studies, disability studies, postcolonial literature, and literature and philosophy.