In Imagining the Holocaust, Daniel R. Schwarz examines widely read Holocaust narratives which have shaped the way we understand and respond to the events of that time. He begins with first person narratives-- Wiesel's Night and Levi's Survival at Auschwitz --and then turns to searingly realistic fictions such as Borowski's This Way to the Gas Chamber, Ladies and Gentlemen, before turning to the Kafkaesque parables of Appelfeld and the fantastic cartoons of Spiegleman's Maus books. Schwarz argues that as we move further away from the original events, the narratives authors use to render the Holocaust horror evolve to include fantasy and parable, and he shows how diverse audiences respond differently to these highly charged and emotional texts.

While analyzing Damon Runyon’s work in terms of historical contexts, popular culture, and of the changing function of the media, Schwarz argues that Runyon was an indispensible figure in creating enduring images of New York City culture, which spurred an interest in the demi-monde and underworld exposed in The Godfather films and The Sopranos. In lively and exuberant chapters that include a panoramic view of New York City between the World Wars--and its colorful nightlife--Schwarz examines virtually every facet of Runyon’s career from sports writer, daily columnist, trial reporter, and Hollywood figure to the author of the still widely read short stories that were the source of the Broadway hit Guys and Dolls. As part of his discussion of Runyon’s art and artistry of Runyon’s fiction, he skillfully examines the special language of the Broadway stories known as “Runyonese” and explains how “Runyonese” has become an adjective describing flamboyant behavior.

Reissued to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Bloomsday, this now classic text" "includes a new preface by author Daniel Schwarz taking account of scholarly and critical developments since its original publication. It shows how the now-important issues of postcolonialism, feminism, Irish Studies and urban culture are addressed within the text, as well as a discussion of how the book can be approached by both beginners and seasoned readers. Schwarz not only presents a powerful and original reading of Joyce's great epic novel, but discusses it in terms of a dialogue between recent and more traditional theory. Focusing on what he calls the odyssean reader, Schwarz demonstrates how the experience of reading "Ulysses "involves responding both to traditional plot and character, and to the novel's stylistic experiments.

An attempt to define a humanistic and pluralistic ideology of reading which takes recent theory into account. By the same author as "The Humanistic Heritage: Critical Theories on the English Novel from James through Hillis Miller", and "Reading Joyce's `Ulysses'".

Focusing on the work of Hardy, Lawrence, Conrad, Joyce, Forster and Woolf, this study is divided into two sections: the first shows how historical and contextual material is essential for developing powerful readings; the second discusses how new theory has transformed the way we read and think.

Reissued to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Bloomsday, Reading Joyce's 'Ulysses' includes a new preface taking account of scholarly and critical development since its original publication. It shows how the now important issues of post-colonialism, feminism, Irish Studies and urban culture are addressed within the text, as well as a discussion of how the book can be used by both beginners and seasoned readers. Schwarz not only presents a powerful and original reading of Joyce's great epic novel, but discusses it in terms of a dialogue between recent and more traditional theory. Focusing on what he calls the odyssean reader, Schwarz demonstrates how the experience of reading Ulysses involves responding both to traditional plot and character, and to the novel's stylistic experiments.

"Narrative and Culture" draws together fourteen essays in which leading scholars discuss narrative texts and practices in a variety of media and genres, subjecting them to sustained cultural analysis. The essays cross national borders and historical periods as often and as easily as they traverse disciplinary boundaries, and they examine canonical fiction as well as postmodern media--photography, film, television. The primary subject of these pieces, notes Janice Carlisle, is "the relation between the telling of tales and the engagement of their tellers and listeners in the practices of specific societies."
Contributors: Nina Auerbach, Thomas B. Byers, Jay Clayton, Marcel Cornis-Pope, Mary Lou Emery, Colleen Kennedy, Vera Mark, Caroline McCracken-Flesher, Paul Morrison, Ingeborg Majer O'Sickey, John Carlos Rowe, Daniel R. Schwarz, Carol Siegel, Felipe Smith

Leading Conradian scholar Daniel R. Schwarz assembles his work from over the past two decades into one crucial volume, providing a significant reexamination of a seminal figure who continues to be a major focus in the twenty-first century. Schwarz touches on virtually all of Joseph Conrad's work including his masterworks and the later, relatively neglected fiction.

In his introduction and in the persuasive and insightful essays that follow, Schwarz explores how the study of Conrad has changed and why Conrad is such a focus of interest in terms of gender, postcolonial, and cultural studies. He also demonstrates how Conrad helps define the modernist cultural tradition.

Exploring such essential works as "Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, Nostromo, " and "The Secret Sharer," Schwarz addresses issues raised by recent theory, discussing the ways in which contemporary readers, including, of course, himself, have come to read Conrad differently. He does so without abandoning crucial Conradian themes such as the disjunction between interior and articulated motives and the discrepancies between dimly acknowledged needs, obsessions, and compulsions and actual behavior.

Schwarz also touches on the extent to which Conrad's conservative desires for a few simple moral and political ideas were often at odds with his profound skepticism. A powerful close reader of Conrad's complex texts, Schwarz stresses how from their opening paragraphs Conrad's works establish a grammar of psychological, political, and moral cause and effect.

"Rereading Conrad" sheds new light on an author who has spoken to readers for over a century. Schwarz's essays take account of recent developments in theory and cultural studies, including postcolonial, feminist, gay, and ecological perspectives, and show how reading Conrad has changed in the face of the theoretical explosion that has occurred over the past two decades. Because for over three decades Schwarz has been an important figure in defining how we read Conrad and in studying modernism, including how we respond to the relationship between modern literature and modern art, scholars, teachers, and students will take great pleasure in this new collection of his work.

Reconfiguring Modernism explores the relationship between modern literature and modern art. Spanning the high modernist period between the late-nineteenth century and World War 2, the cultural interrelationships between painters such as Manet, Gauguin, Cezanne, and Picasso, and writers such as James, Conrad, Eliot and Joyce are explored. The influence of African, Asian and Pacific cultures on European modernism is also examined. Schwarz considers texts - visual and written - of the modern period as a contoured textual field without absolute borders, crucial to our understanding of modernism in the last years of the twentieth century.