An Introduction to Literary Studies provides the beginner with an accessible and comprehensive survey of literature. Systematically taking in theory, genre and literary history, Klarer provides easy to understand descriptions of a variety of approaches to texts. This invaluable guide includes sections on: fiction poetry drama film covering: a range of theoretical approaches an extensive glossary of major literary and cinematic terms guidelines for writing research papers.
The Pathogenesis of Fear gathers together diverse conversations about cultural constructions of the monstrous. Interdisciplinary essays map the margins of monstrosity as follows: the cannibalistic paradox in Kleist’s late-Romantic Penthesilea; intersections of the monstrous-feminine and the new Victorian psycho-physiology of consciousness in George Eliot’s early novels; the monster-formed citizens of Dickensian and later dystopias; the killing of African Americans targeted as monstrous entities in US cities; the post-human anguish of a television zombie-world; the monstrous mutilations of a Spanish horror film; psychosocial aberration in Martin Millar’s werewolf fiction; the demonization of the Other on the war-torn streets of Ireland; Derridean devouring sovereignty. Discursively correlated with different categories of body and mind, monstrosity, these essays argue, persists in taking many forms. Contributors are Elizabeth Hollis Berry, Niculae Gheran, Sarah Harris, Fiona Harris-Ramsby and Mubarak Muhammad, Michaela Marková, Kimberley McMahon Coleman, Judith Rahn, Cindy Smith and Marita Vyrgioti.
The Dispossessed has been described by political thinker Andre Gorz as 'The most striking description I know of the seductions—and snares—of self-managed communist or, in other words, anarchist society.' To date, however, the radical social, cultural, and political ramifications of Le Guin's multiple award-winning novel remain woefully under explored. Editors Laurence Davis and Peter Stillman right this state of affairs in the first ever collection of original essays devoted to Le Guin's novel. Among the topics covered in this wide-ranging, international and interdisciplinary collection are the anarchist, ecological, post-consumerist, temporal, revolutionary, and open-ended utopian politics of The Dispossessed. The book concludes with an essay by Le Guin written specially for this volume, in which she reassesses the novel in light of the development of her own thinking over the past 30 years.
Hans Staden’s sixteenth-century account of shipwreck and captivity by the Tupinambá Indians of Brazil was an early modern bestseller. This retelling of the German sailor’s eyewitness account known as the True History shows both why it was so popular at the time and why it remains an important tool for understanding the opening of the Atlantic world. Eve M. Duffy and Alida C. Metcalf carefully reconstruct Staden’s life as a German soldier, his two expeditions to the Americas, and his subsequent shipwreck, captivity, brush with cannibalism, escape, and return. The authors explore how these events and experiences were recreated in the text and images of the True History. Focusing on Staden’s multiple roles as a go-between, Duffy and Metcalf address many of the issues that emerge when cultures come into contact and conflict. An artful and accessible interpretation, The Return of Hans Staden takes a text best known for its sensational tale of cannibalism and shows how it can be reinterpreted as a window into the precariousness of lives on both sides of early modern encounters, when such issues as truth and lying, violence, religious belief, and cultural difference were key to the formation of the Atlantic world.
Vol. 4 covers the late Roman period to the rise of Islam. Focuses especially on the growth and development of rabbinic Judaism and of the major classical rabbinic sources such as the Mishnah, Jerusalem Talmud, Babylonian Talmud and various Midrashic collections.
A Short Literary History of the United States offers an introduction to American Literature for students wanting to acquaint themselves with the most important periods, authors and works of American literary history. Comprehensive yet concise, it provides an essential overview of the different currents in American literature in an accessible, engaging style. This book offers: Coverage from the pre-colonial era to the present, including new media formats Coverage of the evolution of literary traditions, themes, and aesthetics Historical background, visiting the origins of content and form Overviews and comparisons of individual authors Readings of individual texts, contextualized within American cultural history A list of secondary readings, a glossary and links to open-access versions of essential texts. This book is the ideal companion to primary sources for courses in American Literature, American Studies, and others, or as a study aid for exams.
The work of German cultural theorist and art historian Aby Warburg (1866–1929) has had a lasting effect on how we think about images. This book is the first in English to focus on his last project, the encyclopedic Atlas of Images: Mnemosyne. Begun in earnest in 1927, and left unfinished at the time of Warburg’s death in 1929, the Atlas consisted of sixty-three large wooden panels covered with black cloth. On these panels Warburg carefully, intuitively arranged some thousand black-and-white photographs of classical and Renaissance art objects, as well as of astrological and astronomical images ranging from ancient Babylon to Weimar Germany. Here and there, he also included maps, manuscript pages, and contemporary images taken from newspapers. Trying through these constellations of images to make visible the many polarities that fueled antiquity’s afterlife, Warburg envisioned the Atlas as a vital form of metaphoric thought. While the nondiscursive, frequently digressive character of the Atlas complicates any linear narrative of its themes and contents, Christopher D. Johnson traces several thematic sequences in the panels. By drawing on Warburg’s published and unpublished writings and by attending to Warburg’s cardinal idea that "pathos formulas" structure the West’s cultural memory, Johnson maps numerous tensions between word and image in the Atlas. In addition to examining the work itself, he considers the literary, philosophical, and intellectual-historical implications of the Atlas. As Johnson demonstrates, the Atlas is not simply the culmination of Warburg’s lifelong study of Renaissance culture but the ultimate expression of his now literal, now metaphoric search for syncretic solutions to the urgent problems posed by the history of art and culture.
