Literary Feminisms provides a map for charting the difficult waters that feminist theories have created in literary studies. Ruth Robbins shows the reasons for the development of feminist literary critiques, explains the difficulties and exposes some of feminism's blindspots. A wide range of theorists is discussed, ranging from Wollstonecraft to Kristeva, showing the ways in which materialist, psychoanalytic and literary accounts of feminist thinking creatively intersect. Through a series of exemplary readings, of texts such as The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Yellow Wallpaper, she also points out how the student reader can begin to make her or his own feminist criticism, and can learn to engage with both the politics and poetics of the literature.

Key Features: * Study methods * Introduction to the text * Summaries with critical notes * Themes and techniques * Textual analysis of key passages * Author biography * Historical and literary background * Modern and historical critical approaches * Chronology * Glossary of literary terms

Victorian Literary Cultures: Studies in Textual Subversion provides readers with close textual analyses regarding the role of subversive acts or tendencies in Victorian literature. By drawing clear cultural contexts for the works under review-including such canonical texts as Dracula, Jane Eyre, Middlemarch, and stories featuring Sherlock Holmes-the critics in this anthology offer groundbreaking studies of subversion as a literary motif. For some late nineteenth-century British novelists, subversion was a central aspect of their writerly existence. Although-or perhaps because-most Victorian authors composed their works for a general and mixed audience, many writers employed strategies designed to subvert genteel expectations. In addition to using coded and oblique subject matter, such figures also hid their transgressive material "in plain sight." While some writers sought to critique, and even destabilize, their society, others juxtaposed subversive themes and aesthetics negatively with communal norms in hopes of quashing progressive agendas.

Oscar Wilde's reputation has shifted dramatically during the twentieth century from outcast in the wake of his trials for homosexual offences, to martyr to the gay cause in the 1980s and 90s, to important figure in the history of writing in English. Ruth Robbins introduces Wilde through a focus on his manipulations of genre and sets Wilde's life and work in its literary and cultural context, including the history of Victorian drama; the contexts of criticism in the period; poetry as post-romantic and pre-modernist mode of expression; the uses and subversions of fictional forms in his work; and his subversion of the autobiographical mode in his prison letter De Profundis. This comprehensive and readable introduction offers readers and students a lively and informative guide to Wilde's significance in the context of his own time and his extensive afterlife in literature, criticism and popular culture.

"The short story remains a crucial if neglected - part of British literary heritage. This accessible and up-to-date critical overview maps out the main strands and figures that shaped the British short story and novella from the 1850s to the present. It offers new readings of both classic and forgotten texts in a clear, jargon-free way"--Provided by publisher.

Who do you think you are? In Subjectivity, Ruth Robbins explores some of the responses to this fundamental question. In readings of a number of autobiographical texts from the last three centuries, Robbins offers an approachable account of formations of the self which demonstrates that both psychology and material conditions - often in tension with one another - are the building blocks of modern notions of selfhood. Key texts studied include: - William Wordsworth's Prelude - Thomas De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium Eater - James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - Oscar Wilde's De Profundis - Jung Chang's Wild Swans Robbins also argues that our subjectivity, far from being the secure possession of the individual, is potentially fragile and contingent. She shows that the versions of subjectivity authorized by the dominant culture are full of gaps and blindspots that undo any notion of universal human nature: subjectivity is culturally and historically specific - we are, in part, what the culture in which we live permits us to be. Concise and easy-to-follow, this introduction to the concept of subjectivity, and the theories surrounding it, shows that, in spite of the insecurity of selfhood, there is still much to be gained from the textual encounter with other selves. It is essential reading for all those studying 'autobiography' or 'autobiographical writing'.

The Victorian period was one of enormous cultural diversity with places for figures as different as Alfred Tennyson and Oscar Wilde. Victorian Identities simultaneously celebrates that diversity whilst drawing out the connections between disparate voices. With essays on the 'Greats' of the period - Dickens, Tennyson, George Eliot, Wilkie Collins and Wilde - as well as on the less well-known sensation writer, Rhoda Broughton, and on the formation of children's voices in Victorian literature - the collection rejects narrow definitions of the period and its values, and exposes its texts to readings informed by contemporary literary theory.

Applying: to Derrida: What might such an extraordinary phrase mean? How are we to read its many folds, its strange, enigmatic grammar? Who does the applying? To whom? In what cases does Derrida apply, and why should scholars apply (themselves) to Jacques Derrida, today, more than ever? In order to find possible answers to such questions, all prospective applicants should apply within to this extraordinary collection of essays, which provides some of the most innovative insights and radical departures in the field of Derridean studies. Striking out from a number of new headings and in a number of new directions each of the essays in this collection pushes at the borders of their topics, disciplines and ways of thinking, providing innovative and inventive insights into the work - and application - of Jacques Derrida on a diverse range of themes including Irish identity, communication, ethics, love, tele-technology, Victorian studies, the limits of philosophy, translation, otherness and literature, demonstrating that, today, despite repeated accusations over recent years that the work of Derrida has become passe, there is more vitality and spirit in engaging with the writings of Derri

Applying: to Derrida: What might such an extraordinary phrase mean? How are we to read its many folds, its strange, enigmatic grammar? Who does the applying? To whom? In what cases does Derrida apply, and why should scholars apply (themselves) to Jacques Derrida, today, more than ever? In order to find possible answers to such questions, all prospective applicants should apply within to this extraordinary collection of essays, which provides some of the most innovative insights and radical departures in the field of Derridean studies. Striking out from a number of new headings and in a number of new directions each of the essays in this collection pushes at the borders of their topics, disciplines and ways of thinking, providing innovative and inventive insights into the work - and application - of Jacques Derrida on a diverse range of themes including Irish identity, communication, ethics, love, tele-technology, Victorian studies, the limits of philosophy, translation, otherness and literature, demonstrating that, today, despite repeated accusations over recent years that the work of Derrida has become passe, there is more vitality and spirit in engaging with the writings of Derri

Medical Advice for Women is a new five-volume collection from Routledge and Edition Synapse covering professional, scientific, and medical opinion, in addition to the popular guides aimed at the female reader, between the years 1830-1915. Medical literature from this period provides a fascinating insight into the interrelations between social proscriptions, often validated by appeals to religious authority, and medical prescriptions. The narrative contained within this largely chronological collection is not necessarily a progressive one from quackery to medical and scientific enlightenment; the situation was more nuanced than selective quotation from sensational examples has implied in the past. This collection, edited and with a new introduction by Ruth Robbins, illuminates the complexity and shifting grounds of opinion in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by bringing back into print a broad selection of texts offering medical advice to women, and will be of interest to all scholars and students working in gender and cultural studies, and particularly to historians and sociologists of medicine.

Sinclair Lewis, the first American to win the Nobel Prize for literature, and a writer lauded both for his craft and his principles, wrote The Job as a statement of female empowerment, and self-determination over societal expectation. Written in the early years of the 1900s Lewis' central character, highly unusual for the era, is a woman, Una Golden, who gains work in an exclusively male world of commercial real estate. Golden struggles for the recognition of her male peers while balancing romantic and work life; she marries, divorces, continues to work hard and finally emerges triumphant on her own terms. Flame Tree 451 presents a new series, The Foundations of Feminist Fiction. The early 1900s saw a quiet revolution in literature dominated by male adventure heroes. Both men and women moved beyond the norms of the male gaze to write from a different gender perspective, sometimes with female protagonists, but also expressing the universal freedom to write on any subject whatsoever. Each book features a brand new biography and a new glossary of Literary, Gothic and Victorian terms.

This is a short, readable introduction to Oscar Wilde's life, work and afterlife. Oscar Wilde's reputation has shifted dramatically during the twentieth century from outcast in the wake of his trials for homosexual offences, to martyr to the gay cause in the 1980s and 90s, to important figure in the history of writing in English. Ruth Robbins introduces Wilde through a focus on his manipulations of genre and sets Wilde's life and work in its literary and cultural context, including the history of Victorian drama; the contexts of criticism in the period; poetry as post-romantic and pre-modernist mode of expression; the uses and subversions of fictional forms in his work; and his subversion of the autobiographical mode in his prison letter "De Profundis". This comprehensive and readable introduction offers readers and students a lively and informative guide to Wilde's significance in the context of his own time and his extensive afterlife in literature, criticism and popular culture. It offers concise, accessible introductions to major writers focusing equally on their life and works. Written in a lively style to appeal to both students and readers, books in the series are ideal guides to authors and their writing.

The Russian folktale about an old woman's endless search for the Christ child.

This title provides clear and useful discussions of the main areas of literary, critical and cultural theory. It includes Key Concepts in Literary Theory presents the student of literary and critical studies with a broad range of accessible, precise and authoritative definitions of the most significant terms and concepts currently used in psychoanalytic, poststructuralist, Marxist, feminist, and postcolonial literary studies. It includes more than 100 additional terms and concepts defined. It provides newly defined terms that include keywords from the social sciences, cultural studies and psychoanalysis and the addition of a broader selection of classical rhetorical terms. It is an expanded chronology, with additional entries and a broader historical and cultural range. It offers expanded bibliographies including key texts by major critics.

Victorian Literary Cultures: Studies in Textual Subversion provides readers with close textual analyses regarding the role of subversive acts or tendencies in Victorian literature. By drawing clear cultural contexts for the works under review-including such canonical texts as Dracula, Jane Eyre, Middlemarch, and stories featuring Sherlock Holmes-the critics in this anthology offer groundbreaking studies of subversion as a literary motif. For some late nineteenth-century British novelists, subversion was a central aspect of their writerly existence. Although-or perhaps because-most Victorian authors composed their works for a general and mixed audience, many writers employed strategies designed to subvert genteel expectations. In addition to using coded and oblique subject matter, such figures also hid their transgressive material "in plain sight." While some writers sought to critique, and even destabilize, their society, others juxtaposed subversive themes and aesthetics negatively with communal norms in hopes of quashing progressive agendas.