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Tolkien: A Critical Assessment
by B. RoseburyFew attempts have been made to arrive at a sober assessment of Tolkien's achievement as a literary artist, and even fewer to define a place for him in twentieth-century literature. This book is a comprehensive and discriminating introduction to Tolkien's work which also aims to redress these deficiencies in earlier criticism. Two chapters are devoted to The Lord of the Rings: a third explores the bewildering profusion of shorter works; the last considers the significance of Tolkien's life and career in the century of modernism.
The Profession of Science Fiction: SF Writers on their Craft and Ideas (Insights Ser.)
by Maxim Jakubowski Edward JamesWhere do science fiction writers get their inspiration from? Some of the leading authors in the field tackle this fascinating subject in a series of essays reprinted from one of the genre's most respected critical journals, Foundation Whether veterans like octogenarian Jack Williamson, acclaimed literary personalities like Ursula K. Le Guin or younger, upcoming authors like Gwyneth Jones, a wide variety of SF craftsmen reveal their secrets, both personal and analytical. This is a collection of essays of great attraction to anyone interested in SF or, for that matter, creative writing.
Intertextuality and Romance in Renaissance Drama: The Staging of Nostalgia
by Richard HillmanThese essays apply the postmodernist theory of intertextuality to romantic drama of the English Renaissance, including work by Heywood, Beaumont and Fletcher, Ford, and especially Shakespeare. Placing the plays into dynamic relation with a wide variety of literary, cultural, and political 'intertexts' causes them to signify in ways not previously appreciated, as well as to define neglected features of the staged romance of the period. Equally important is the development of intertextuality as a critical methodology with a particular affinity for the genre and the period.
How Literature Works
by Kenneth QuinnIn How Literature Works important issues of literary theory are vividly illustrated by application to a wide variety of texts, many quoted and discussed at length. The theoretical aspects covered include the structural characteristics of literary texts, the psychology of the reading process and the social function of literature. The book also deals with such general questions as the relationship between literary texts and `objective' prose and the relationship between poems written to work as songs and those in which the lyric form is used to develop an argument: the singing and the speaking voice.
The Hidden Hardy
by Joe FisherFocusing on narrative structure, irony, satire and allusion, The Hidden Hardy offers a radical new perspective on Thomas Hardy's novels. Hardy's own accounts of himself and his work have long been seen as calculated impostures; it is argued here that the same qualities are not only present in his novels, but are critical factors in the way they are made. The respectable and acceptable surfaces are the impostures, masking hidden texts which are extremely hostile to established social, economic and cultural structures.
British Fiction in the 1930s: The Dispiriting Decade
by James GindinBritish Fiction in the 1930s studies the literary climate of the British 1930s through a critical treatment of some of its influential and socially representative fiction. The works depict, in various ways, a culture under the stress of seemingly insoluble economic and intensifying international dilemmas, a culture that seems betrayed by the promise of its past and the paralysis of its present. The fiction considers transforming solutions, individual and sexual rebellions as well as the fears and attractions of social and political change.
Habib Bourguiba of Tunisia: The Tragedy of Longevity (St Antony's Series)
by Derek Hopwood Sue Mi TerryPresident Habib Bourguiba of Tunisia was an Arab leader greatly admired in the West for his moderation and level headedness. He led his small country to independence after a prolonged struggle against the French coloniser. He suffered long periods of deprivation and imprisonment before he acceded to supreme rule. His country has much to thank him for but he ruled too long and ended his reign in the tragedy of senility and absolutism. This book is a sympathetic study of a long and fascinating life.
Women in the House of Fiction: Post-War Women Novelists
by Lorna SageThe novel was once upon a time the genre women felt at home in. This wide- ranging and detailed study of contemporary novelists explores the forms of nostalgia (shared by many feminist critics) for a 'woman's novel'; and the subtle or savage strategies which have turned the house of fiction upside down. The result is a critique of the nature of narrative now; and a celebration of the energies that are undoing our definitions of women's work.
From Medieval to Medievalism (Insights Ser.)
by John SimonsThe book surveys medieval literature from both a critical and an historical standpoint. Medieval literature is increasingly seen as an area of intense specialism which is to be treated differently from other areas of English Studies. The essays collected here try to overturn this perception in two ways. Firstly, there is a demonstration of the ways in which modern critical approaches and perspectives work with the medieval text. Secondly, the idea of the medieval is shown, historically, to be a discourse which has been given different symbolic values and served different social purposes.
Politics And Literature In Eastern Europe: Current Issues In East European Literature (Selected Papers From The Fourth World Congress For Soviet And East Studies)
by Celia Hawkesworth
Theory into Practice: A Reader In Modern Criticism
by Ryan JohnsonStudents of literary theory have been well provided for by the publication of various Readers in literary theory. However, the relation between theory and critical practice still presents a problem to the general reader. This book brings together essays by major critics which apply theory to practice in an accessible way. This will help a general literary readership gain a better understanding of the various types of theoretical criticism, see theory being applied to practice powerfully and persuasively, and encourage students to use theory in their own critical writing.
Sheridan and Goldsmith (English Dramatists)
by Katharine WorthEach generation needs to be introduced to the culture and great works of the past and to reinterpret them in its own ways. This series re-examines the important English dramatists of earlier centuries in the light of new information, ew interests and new attitudes. The books will be relevant to those interested in literatire, theatre and cultural history, and to threatre-goers and general readers who want an up-to-date view of these dramatists and their plays, with the emphasis on performance and relevant culture history.This book explores the reasons for the deep and lasting appeal of Sheridan's and Goldsmith's comedies, showing how they operate at the profound imaginative level and draw on their author's experience as Irish wits in an English scene. Their subtle dramatic techniques are examined in relation to physical features of the eighteenth-century stage. A chapter on sentimental comedy relates to plays such as Hugh Kelly's False Delicacy to the balance of irony and sentiment in Goldsmith's The Good Natur'd Man and Sheridan's A Trip to Scarborough. The continuing freshness of the comedy of mistakes, masks and Harlequin-like role playing which the two playwrights draw from the operatic and theatrical conventions of their day is illustrated from modern productions. These have helped to illuminate the psychological truth and social awareness underlying the sparkling surfaces of Sheridan's and Goldsmith's classic comedies.
The Public Eye: Ideology And The Police Procedural (New Directions In American Studies)
by Robert P Winston Nancy C Mellerski Robert James
The Politics of Style in the Fiction of Balzac, Beckett and Cortázar
by M R AxelrodAn investigation of the novel, with particular reference to the works of Balzac, Beckett and Cortazar.
Joseph Conrad: Betrayal and Identity
by Robert HampsonThrough attention to incidents of betrayal and self-betrayal in his fiction, this book traces the development of Conrad's conception of identity through the three phases of his career: the self in isolation, the self in society and the sexualised self. It shows how the early fiction negotiates the opposed dangers of the self-ideal and the surrender to passion; how the middle fiction tests the ideal code psychologically and ideologically; and how the late fiction probes sexuality and morbid psychology.
The Silver Age in Russian Literature
by John ElsworthThis volume consists of ten essays by scholars from the Soviet Union, the United States and New Zealand on aspects of Russian literature of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. With the exception of Gorky, all the authors considered belong to one or another branch of the Modernist movement. They include Ivan Konevskoi, who died tragically young in 1901, the poets Maksimilian Voloshin, Viacheslav Ivanov and Benedikt Livshits, and the prose writers Fedor Sologub, Andrei Belyi and Evgenii Zamiatin.
The Golden Age of Russian Literature and Thought
by Derek OffordThe volume contains ten new essays on Russian literature and thought of the classical age (roughly 1820-1880). The essays are based on papers delivered at the Fourth World Congress for Soviet and East European Studies held at Harrogate in July 1990. It strikes a balance between fresh work on major authors (Pushkin, Lermontov, Turgenev and Dostoevsky), important work on hitherto neglected minor authors (Marlinsky, Pisemsky and Boborykin), and studies that relate to thinkers of the period (Chaadaev, Herzen and Bakunin).
Ernest Hemingway (Modern Novelists)
by Peter MessentA wide-ranging re-reading of Hemingway's work which makes selective use of contemporary theory to explore four key areas. An analysis of Hemingway's impressionistic style shows how it operates as a response to the static and harmful conditions of modernity. The second chapter argues that a recognition of coherent subjectivity as a myth vies in the fiction with an urge to represent the self as autonomous. The third chapter looks at the instabilities of sexual and gender role in Hemingway. The final chapter examines the sense of geography in the work with reference to America, Spain and Africa. It ends with a revisionist reading of 'Macomber'.
New Directions in Soviet Literature
by Sheelagh Duffin GrahamThis is a selection of papers on Russian literature of the Soviet period presented at the IVth World Congress for Soviet and East European Studies in 1990. The ten articles range from the experimental prose and drama of the 1920s to studies of work by younger writers of the 1980s. The articles include analyses of works by individual writers and examinations of general phenomena, for example, village prose or the way Stalin is presented in literature of the glasnost era.
The Nouveau Roman: Fiction, Theory and Politics
by Celia BrittonThe Nouveau Roman writers have been actively involved in the theory as well as the practice of fiction, participating in a series of vigorous debates on issues such as the political significance of literature, formalism and structuralism, the status of the author, etc. This study discusses Robbe-Grillet, Sarraute, Simon, Butor and Ricardou, analysing both the interaction of their own theory and fiction and their reactions to the work of figures such as Sartre, Barthes, Lvi-Strauss, Sollers and Kristeva.
Collected Novels of Virginia Woolf: Mrs. Dalloway To the Lighthouse The Waves
by Virginia WoolfThis volume is a student compendium of the three most frequently-studied novels of Virginia Woolf: Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse and The Waves. In the introduction the novels are discussed within the context of Woolf's oeuvre as a whole. Each novel is then considered individually as its genesis is traced from originating idea to final version.
Tennyson: Seven Essays
by Philip CollinsThese essays are lectures, mostly revised or expanded, given to the Tennyson Society by leading Victorianists, including one of the doyens of Tennyson studies, Jerome H. Buckley (Harvard). In Memoriam and Maud are central texts but many other poems are discussed - lyrics, dramatic monologues, narratives, ballads - and such recurrent topics as loss, the numinous, and distance in space and time. The poems are related to their intellectual context and to other poets from Wordsworth to Edward FitzGerald.