Родоначальник «литературы ужасов», известнейший американский автор мистических детективов, Эдгар Аллан По широко известен именно своими короткими рассказами, в которых проявилась вся многогранность его таланта. Увлекающие, ужасающие и неповторимые истории ждут вас на страницах этой книги! Читайте зарубежную классику в оригинале!
This book argues for the importance of Gothic in understanding one of the key elements within the films of Sam Peckinpah (1925-1984). Although occasionally noted in the past, the Gothic has been generally overlooked when most critics consider the work of Sam Peckinpah with the exception of the Freudian based Crucified Heroes (1979) by Terence Butler. This work not only examines the films made after that date, especially the often dismissed The Osterman Weekend (1983) and the two music videos he made for Julian Lennon, but also places the director within the context of the developing work on Gothic that has since appeared. Peckinpah has been identified as the director of one undisputed masterpiece, The Wild Bunch (1969). By focussing on the key role Gothic plays in most of the director’s work, this book offers a way to see Peckinpah beyond The Wild Bunch and the Western, viewing him as a director who had the potential of evolving further, had circumstances permitted, to continue his critique of American life within the developing lens of the Gothic.
The second edition of this lively and trenchant one-volume history of literary criticism in English includes new assessments of the work of T.S. Eliot, I.A. Richards, F.R. Leavis, the American New Critics, Northrop Frye, Roman Jakobson, Harold Bloom, Paul de Man, Virginia Woolf and others. Authors and Authority traces the connections between critical debate and the changing forms of literary culture from the Neoclassical period to the latest manifestations of literary theory, feminist criticism and cultural studies. From reviews of the first edition: 'A most important study.' - British Book News 'Valuable and suggestive.' - Poetry Nation Review 'Consistently balanced, judicious and acute - massively erudite without ever being overpowering.' - M.Fagg, Times Educational Supplement
This collection explores how anthologizers and editors of Edgar Allan Poe play an integral role in shaping our conceptions of Poe as the author we have come to recognize, revere, and critique today. In the spheres of literature and popular culture, Poe wields more global influence than any other U.S. author. This influence, however, cannot be attributed solely to the quality of Poe’s texts or to his compellingly tragic biography. Rather, his continued prominence as a writer owes much to the ways that Poe has been interpreted, portrayed, and packaged by an extensive group of mediators ranging from anthologizers, editors, translators, and fellow writers to literary critics, filmmakers, musicians, and illustrators. In this volume, the work of presenting Poe’s texts for public consumption becomes a fascinating object of study in its own right, one that highlights the powerful and often overlooked influence of those who have edited, anthologized, translated, and adapted the author’s writing over the past 170 years.
The History of Science Fiction traces the origin and development of science fiction from Ancient Greece up to the present day. The author is both an academic literary critic and acclaimed creative writer of the genre. Written in lively, accessible prose it is specifically designed to bridge the worlds of academic criticism and SF fandom.
Explores the science and creative process behind Poes cosmological treatise. In 1848, almost a year and a half before Edgar Allan Poe died at the age of forty, his book Eureka was published. In it, he weaved together his scientific speculations about the universe with his own literary theory, theology, and philosophy of science. Although Poe himself considered it to be his magnum opus, Eureka has mostly been overlooked or underappreciated, sometimes even to the point of being thought an elaborate hoax. Remarkably, however, in Eureka Poe anticipated at least nine major theories and developments in twentieth-century science, including the Big Bang theory, multiverse theory, and the solution to Olbers paradox. In this bookthe first devoted specifically to Poes science sideDavid N. Stamos, a philosopher of science, combines scientific background with analysis of Poes life and work to highlight the creative and scientific achievements of this text. He examines Poes literary theory, theology, and intellectual development, and then compares Poes understanding of science with that of scientists and philosophers from his own time to the present. Next, Stamos pieces together and clarifies Poes theory of scientific imagination, which he then attempts to update and defend by providing numerous case studies of eureka moments in modern science and by seeking insights from comparative biography and psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience, and evolution. Edgar Allan Poe, Eureka, and Scientific Imagination is the most comprehensive treatment of Eureka that has yet been published. It is staggeringly thorough in its analysis of Poes book, but it also shows how Poes theories of cosmogony and cosmology ramify into his fiction and poetry, especially the tales of ratiocination. Stamos takes Eureka seriously, and he does so with the empirical undergirding of vast amounts of scientific scholarship and literary criticism. James M. Hutchisson, author of Poe
Science fiction is at the intersection of numerous fields. It is a literature which draws on popular culture, and which engages in speculation about science, history, and all types of social relations. This volume brings together essays by scholars and practitioners of science fiction, which look at the genre from these different angles. After an introduction to the nature of science fiction, historical chapters trace science fiction from Thomas More to more recent years, including a chapter on film and television. The second section introduces four important critical approaches to science fiction drawing their theoretical inspiration from Marxism, postmodernism, feminism and queer theory. The final and largest section of the book looks at various themes and sub-genres of science fiction. A number of well-known science fiction writers contribute to this volume, including Gwyneth Jones, Ken MacLeod, Brian Stableford Andy Duncan, James Gunn, Joan Slonczewski, and Damien Broderick.
Winner of the 2015 Edgar Award for Best Critical/Biographical! Follow the footsteps of the father of American horror fiction. Edgar Allan Poe was an oddity: his life, literature, and legacy are all, well, odd. In Poe-Land, J. W. Ocker explores the physical aspects of Poe’s legacy across the East Coast and beyond, touring Poe’s homes, examining artifacts from his life—locks of his hair, pieces of his coffin, original manuscripts, his boyhood bed—and visiting the many memorials dedicated to him. Along the way, Ocker meets people from a range of backgrounds and professions—actors, museum managers, collectors, historians—who have dedicated some part of their lives to Poe and his legacy. Poe-Land is a unique travelogue of the afterlife of the poet who invented detective fiction, advanced the emerging genre of science fiction, and elevated the horror genre with a mastery over the macabre that is arguably still unrivaled today.