Hailed as one of the most powerful and moving poets of his generation, Galway Kinnell has been commended by critics who often pair his name with such famous predecessors as Walt Whitman, Henry David Thoreau, Robert Frost, W. B. Yeats, Rainer Maria Rilke, T. S. Eliot, and Theodore Roethke. Born on February 1, 1927, Galway Kinnell has been working on the strength and truthfulness of his voice for almost five decades now. This well-written work offers a very important perspective on a major living poet, focusing specifically on what is a key theme in Kinnell's work--death. The author's thematic analysis does not stop short with a direct reading of the poetry, it also seeks to place her subject within several contexts, including that problematic pivotal position between Modernism and Postmodernism, and a specific poetic tradition (including T. S. Eliot, William Carlos Williams, Whitman and Dickinson). What emerges from the readings of Kinnell's various poetry collections is essentially an extended philosophical meditation on death, that both offers itself as a commentary whilst also repeatedly showing, with much clarity, how complex a subject death is for Kinnell. This meditation on death also means a deep consideration of those other large themes that have asserted themselves in American poetry--transcendentalism, nature, and life itself magnified against the darkness of death in the poet's work. This volume will make an important contribution to research on Kinnell and the author's ability to follow her subject into a very complex labyrinth of philosophical and aesthetic discussions, while always being mindful that Kinnell remains central, offers much in the way of a good example of literary analysis and scholarship. This book makes a significant contribution to scholarship on Galway Kinnell, a major contemporary poet whose work will receive more and more attention over the coming years. In addition, this work also marks a contribution to scholarship on poetry, American literature and contemporary literature, as well as to the fascination with death as a theme in much of American literature, from Dickinson and Poe to Plath and Salinger. Death in the Works of Galway Kinnell will be a very valuable resource for students and teachers of contemporary poetry and American literature.

For over two hundred years, the Gothic has remained fixed in the European and American imaginations, steadily securing its position as a global cultural mode in recent decades. The globalization of Gothic studies has resulted in the proliferation of new critical concepts and a growing academic interest in the genre. Yet, despite its longevity, unprecedented expansion, and accusations of prescriptiveness, the Gothic remains elusive and without a straightforward definition. Gothic Peregrinations: The Unexplored and Re-explored Territories looks at Gothic productions largely marginalized in the studies of the genre, including the European absorption of and response to the Gothic. This collection of essays identifies landmarks and ley lines in the insufficiently probed territories of Gothic scholarship and sets out to explore its unmapped regions. This volume not only examines Gothic peregrinations from a geographical perspective but also investigates how the genre has been at odds with strict demarcation of generic boundaries. Analyzing texts which come from outside the Gothic canon, yet prove to be deeply indebted to it, like bereavement memoirs, stories produced by and about factory girls of Massachusetts, and the Mattel Monster High franchise, this volume illuminates the previously unexplored fields in Gothic studies. The chapters in this volume reveal the truly transnational expansion of the Gothic and the importance of exchange - exchange now seen not only as crucial to the genre's gestation, or vital to the processes of globalization, but also to legitimizing Gothic studies in the global world.