This second edition of a unique companion to Thackeray's great novel enables the reader to follow the novelist step by step through the maze of his erudition, clarifying the immense range of references in the novel. Since these annotations are keyed to Thackeray's chapters, not to the page numbers of any particular edition of the novel, they can be consulted in connection with any edition of Vanity Fair the reader happens to own. Within each chapter of this book, the entries follow the order in which they appear in the novel. In addition to the words, phrases, and allusions which obviously or possibly require annotation, the compilers have occasionally commented upon subtleties of narrationowithout intruding critical opinions upon the readeroand entered a few remarks on Thackeray's own illustrations. They have also addressed textual matters, questions of composition and publication, connections with other areas of Thackeray's oeuvre, and the influence of other works of literature on the novel. Intended for undergraduate and graduate students studying the English Novel. Also of interest to scholars in the field of Victorian Literature as well as general readers."

"Otherwise Fables" is the first complete collection of Oscar Mandel's fiction, including the "Gobble-Up Stories" and the novellas "The History of Sigismund, Prince of Poland," and "Chi Po and the Sorcerer." As witty as Sedaris and as profound as Calderon, Mandel's little moral tales are full of unexpected points, deep lessons, ethical ambiguity, and dry wit. Slyly subversive tales of magicians, princes, and animals will delight readers young and old with intellectually sophisticated examples of philosophical allegory and compelling storytelling. Mandel's timeless tales raise challenging questions of modern culture with panache, charm, and magic.
Oscar Mandel is a Belgian-born American author and professor emeritus of literature at the California Institute of Technology. His fabulist fiction has been widely staged and his many published works range across the fields of poetry, drama, fiction, the essay, literary scholarship and theory, translations (especially from French and German), and art history. He lives in Paris, France, and Los Angeles, California.

The collected English-language poems of Oscar Mandel, the acclaimed Belgian-born poet, playwright, fabulist, and author.

Fundamentals of the Art of Poetry takes the reader on a journey that sets out with a consideration of the various arts humankind has created, and then focuses on the special art of poetry: what poetry is, what it does and must do in order to 'succeed' for whom it does what it does, and, in detail, how it goes about doing what it tries to do. Twenty-two chapters deal with subjects like 'The Constituencies for Art', 'What Meaning Means', 'Acceptable and Unacceptable Propositions', 'The Right Word in the Right Place', 'The Sounds that Matter in Poetry', 'Energetic Metaphor: the Major Figure' and so on, including an eloquent epilogue 'Touching Genius'. Writing with great brio and tough-minded lucidity, the Belgo-American poet, dramatist, scholar and essayist examines a host of concepts concerning the arts in general and poetry in particular. This highly original Ars poetica will be of interest to general readers, college students, poets curious about their own metier, and last but not least, literary critics and theorists who will encounter many a discreet challenge to current ideas in its pages.

"Many good things are provided for our instruction and delight in this handsome volume. Chief among them perhaps, and most keenly wanted in a collection of this sort . . . are sanity and wit."--"The Romanic Review"
"A most interesting literary history of the Don Juan theme with the plays or works themselves serving as illustrations. Professor Mandel's general introduction and his shorter introductions and commentaries throughout the book are solid, wise, and engaging."--Robert E. Taylor, "Renaissance News"
"This anthology is exhaustive and informative, expertly translated, and, by virtue of its subject, damned exciting."--"Quarterly Journal of Speech"
"[The translations] are lively and . . . quite faithful to the originals. . . . The long introduction could well stand alone: fruitful in original observations on the nature of Don Juan, spirited, argu-mentative, and quite personal."--Armand F. Singer, "Hispania"
The eternal Don Juan, the creation more than 350 years ago of a monk and dramatist known as Tirso de Molina, has appeared on the boards as a thinker and fool, hero and villain, but never as anything less than a great lover. Oscar Mandel's "Theatre of Don Juan" presents different aspects of the Don's spectacular progress through a half-dozen countries, epochs, and intellectual climates. Here are full-length plays by Molina, Moliere, Shadwell, Da Ponte, Grabbe, Moncrieff, Zorrilla, and Rostand; excerpts from plays by Shaw, Montherlant, and Frisch; plus a dozen critical and interpretative essays. In his introduction, Mandel examines the legend of Don Juan.

Like Montaigne before him, Mandel examines the antic mind of his fellowmen, vain, various, and ever-changing, and its peculiar manifestations in an age that embraces ugliness and irrationality. The sixteen pieces in the collection are, literally, 'elaborations'-discursive, associative, meditative-of the author's earlier lyric poems and epigrams, arranged by him to move in an easy way from the autobiographical to matters more general and abstract.