Best of
Literary-Criticism

1985

My Emily Dickinson


Susan Howe - 1985
    It falls in line with a tradition of books of poets writing about poets who have intensely figured into their conception of poetry. This is more personal than a biography in that it is a writer's concern with Dickinson's place in history and what she was trying to do with her poetry. Howe does a wonderful job of trying to get into the poems through playing with language. It's a place to meet Dickinson as a lover of games and words.

The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women: The Traditions in English


Sandra M. Gilbert - 1985
    The text also contains 11 complete works such as Oroonoko, Jane Eyre, The Ballad of the Sad Cafe, The Awakening and Caryl Churchill's play, Top Girls.

The Oxford Companion to English Literature


Margaret Drabble - 1985
    In 1985, under the editorship of Margaret Drabble, the text was thoroughly and sensitively revised to bring it up to date.The sixth edition, published in 2000, was extensively revised, expanded, and updated. Almost 600 new entries covered new writers, genres, and issues, and existing entries were reworked to incorporate the latest scholarship. In addition to the extensive coverage of writers, works, literary theory, allusions, and characters, there are sixteen featured entries on key topics including black British literature, fantasy fiction, and modernism. The Companion remains an unrivaled work that places English literature in its widest context: no other book offers such extensive exploration of the classical roots of English literature, and the European and non-European works and writers that have influenced its development.The sixth edition has now been revised to ensure that it remains absolutely up to date: the invaluable appendices - the chronology, and lists of winners of major literary awards - have been updated, as have many of the entries. Informed by the latest scholarly thinking, and comprehensively cross-referenced to guide the reader to topics of related interest, the Companion retains its position as the best guide to English literature available.

Speech Genres and Other Late Essays


Mikhail Bakhtin - 1985
    This is the last of Bakhtin's extant manuscripts published in the Soviet Union. All but one of these essays (the one on the Bildungsroman) were written in Bakhtin's later years and thus they bear the stamp of a thinker who has accumulated a huge storehouse of factual material, to which he has devoted a lifetime of analysis, reflection, and reconsideration.

Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire


Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick - 1985
    Hailed by the New York Times as "one of the most influential texts in gender studies, men's studies and gay studies," this book uncovers the homosocial desire between men, from Restoration comedies to Tennyson's Princess.

Habitations of the Word: Essays


William H. Gass - 1985
    Using Freudian concepts, he compares the art of writing to the art of becoming civilized: writing parallels the transformation of raw instinct into shared expression. . . . Gass writes with impassioned concern."--Publishers Weekly "[These] essays [are] meant to enliven the form as Montaigne, Emerson, and Woolf enlivened it. This is an ambitious task, but no contemporary American has better credentials than Gass. . . . He announces a topic, then descants with impressive erudition and unbuttoned ardor for the surprising phrase. The results often dazzle, and they're unfailingly original, in the root sense of the word--they work back toward some point of origin, generally a point where literature departs from the external world to invent a world of its own."--Sam Tanenhaus, Village Voice "William H. Gass is not alone among . . . American fiction writers in giving some of his time and talent to nonfiction, but nobody does it more energetically."--Frank Kermode, New York Times Book Review

Nabokov's ADA: The Place of Consciousness


Brian Boyd - 1985
    This "stunning," "magnificent" first book by "the great man of Nabokov studies," which "provides not only the best commentary on Ada, but also a brilliant overview of Nabokov's metaphysics," has now been updated with a new preface, four additional chapters and two comprehensive new indexes.

Great Reckonings in Little Rooms: On the Phenomenology of Theater


Bert O. States - 1985
    It is an extension of notes on the theater and theatergoing that have been accumulating for some time. It does not have an argument, or set out to prove a thesis, and it will not be one of those useful books one reads for the fruits of its research. Rather, it is a form of critical description that is phenomenological in the sense that it focuses on the activity of theater making itself out of its essential materials: speech, sound, movement, scenery, text, etc. Like most phenomenological description, it will succeed to the extent that it awakens the reader's memory of his own perceptual encounters with theater. If the book fails in this it will be about as interesting to read as an anthology of someone else's dreams. In any case, this book is less concerned with the scientific purity of my perspective and method than with retrieving something from the theater experience that seems to me worthy of our critical admiration.

Alexander Pope: A Life


Maynard Mack - 1985
    Winner of the Christian Gauss Award of Phi Beta Kappa and the Robert Kirsch Award of the Los Angeles Times.The noted Yale scholar and critic offers a complete biography of the great eighteenth-century poet, elucidating his skills as a doubly disadvantaged individual and his triumphs as a poet and spokesman for his times.

The Player's Passion: Studies in the Science of Acting


Joseph R. Roach - 1985
    Explores the historical and cultural evolution of the theoretical language of the stage

Edgar Allan Poe


Harold Bloom - 1985
    - Brings together the best criticism on the most widely read poets, novelists, and playwrights- Presents complex critical portraits of the most influential writers in the English-speaking world--from the English medievalists to contemporary writers- Introductory essay by Harold Bloom

The Green and Burning Tree: On the Writing and Enjoyment of Children's Books


Eleanor Cameron - 1985
    A book about writing children's literature by the best-selling author of The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet.

The Wisdom of the Outlaw: The Boyhood Deeds of Finn in Gaelic Narrative Tradition


Joseph Falaky Nagy - 1985
    Stories about the birth and boyhood deeds of the great mythical hero, Finn, are among the longest-lived Fenian tales.Joseph Nagy's book illumines for the reader the meanings of the tales and the body of traditional story to which these tales belong, the Fenian (or Ossianic) cycle.

Correspondence, 1926-1969


Hannah Arendt - 1985
    It is interrupted by Arendt's emigration and Jaspers's "inner emigration, " and it is resumed immediately after World War II. The initial teacher-student relationship develops into a close friendship, in which Jasper's wife, Gertrud, is soon included and then Arendt's husband, Heinrich Blucher. These letters show not only the way both philosophers lived, thought, and worked but also how they experienced the postwar years. Since neither ever dreamed that this correspondence would be published, and each had absolute trust in the other, they reveal themselves here - for the first time - in a personal and spontaneous way. Brilliant, vulnerable, forthright, Arendt speaks about America, her adopted country. About American universities, American politics from McCarthyism to Kennedy, American urban decay. She speaks about Germany, the country she left: its anti-Semitism, its guilt for the Holocaust, its politics. And about Israel, which she always supported as a Jew but also criticized, especially in her controversial book about the trial and execution of Adolf Eichmann in 1961. In his dialogue with Arendt, the thoughtful, generous, concerned Jaspers considers the question of the German essence, and of the Jewish character. He speaks about philosophers past and present - Spinoza, Heidegger. About old age and retirement. Corrupt journalism. Suicide. Man's future on this planet. Here is a fascinating dialogue between a woman and a man, a Jew and a German, a questioner and a visionary, both uncompromising in their examination of our troubledcentury.

Karl Marx and World Literature


S.S. Prawer - 1985
    Marx.” S. S. Prawer’s highly influential work explores how the world of imaginative literature—poems, novels, plays—infused and shaped Marx’s writings, from his unpublished correspondence, to his pamphlets and major works. In exploring Marx’s use of literary texts, from Aeschylus to Balzac, and the central role of art and literature in the development of his critical vision, Karl Marx and World Literature is a forensic masterpiece of critical analysis.

The Gospel According to Luke X-XXIV


Joseph A. Fitzmyer - 1985
    This is the conclusion of Joseph A. Fitzmyer's two-volume study of Luke. Included here is Fitzmyer's work on chapter 10, in which Jesus continues his journey to Jerusalem, through chapter 24, his Resurrection and appearances. The translation relies on the commentator's familiarity with the Greek and Semitic languages, while the exegesis commands a thorough knowledge of the vast cultural, technical, and linguistic information he has gathered from an international selection of Lucan literature. Each of the fifteen chapters here is studied and discussed in respect to the Gospel as a whole, Acts, and the Old Testament. The two indices refer to both volumes on Luke. In "joining the spirit to the letter" and scholarship to faith, Joseph A. Fitzmyer has produced a worthy successor to his "The Gospel According To Luke I-IX," which "Theological Studies" described as "extraordinarily learned and rich...a benchmark in Lucan studies.

Tragic Ways of Killing a Woman


Nicole Loraux - 1985
    Her glory was to have no glory. In Greek tragedy, however, women die violently and, through violence, master their own fate. It is a genre that delights in blurring the formal frontier between masculine and feminine. Through the subtlety of her reading of these powerful and ambiguous texts, Nicole Loraux elicits an array of insights into Greek attitudes toward death, sexuality, and gender.

William Shakespeare: Tragedies


Harold Bloom - 1985
    - A complex critical portrait of one of the most influential writers in the world- Bibliographic information that directs readers to additional resources for further study- A useful chronology of the writer's life- An introductory essay by Harold Bloom.

Old Norse-Icelandic Literature: A Critical Guide


Carol J. Clover - 1985
    Until the 1980s, however, there was a distinct lack of scholarship in the area, so in 1985, Carol J. Clover and John Lindow brought together some of the most ambitious and distinguished Old Norse scholars to contribute essays for a collection that would finally fill the void of a comprehensive guide to the field.The contributors summarize and comment on scholarly work in the major branches of the field: eddic and skaldic poetry, family and kings' sagas, courtly writing, and mythology. Taken together, their judicious and well-written essays, each with a full bibliography, make up this vital survey of Old Norse literature in English - a basic reference work that has stimulated much research and helped to open up the field to a wider academic readership.This volume has become an essential text for instructors, and twenty years later, is now being republished as part of the Medieval Academy Reprints for Teaching (MART) series with a new preface that discusses more recent contributions to the field.

Faulkner: The House Divided


Eric J. Sundquist - 1985
    A determined study of the political evidence, of contemporary literature and of sociological documents.

Wallace Stevens: A Mythology of Self


Milton J. Bates - 1985
    

Faces Of Fear: Encounters With the Creators of Modern Horror


Douglas E. Winter - 1985
    Interviews with writers of modern horror, including Richard Matheson, script writer of "The Twilight Zone" and authors William Peter Blatly ("The Exorcist"), Robert Bloch ("Psycho"), James Herbert ("The Rats" and "The Fog") and Stephen King ("Carrie" and "Salem's Lot").

Women, History, and Theory: The Essays of Joan Kelly


Joan Kelly - 1985
    These posthumous essays by Joan Kelly, a founder of women's studies, represent a profound synthesis of feminist theory and historical analysis and require a realignment of perspectives on women in society from the Middle Ages to the present.

The Aerial Letter


Nicole Brossard - 1985
    And we can rethink the world only through words." - Nicole Brossard

Words That Must Somehow Be Said: Selected Essays, 1927-1984


Kay Boyle - 1985
    Included are essays on writers and writing, on the body politic, and on the human condition, as well as a personal recollection of her family beginnings. From the expatriate years in France, when she published in the now-legendary literary magazines of the epoch, through the civil rights and anti-war movements of the 1960's, to her continuing work for Amnesty International today, Miss Boyle has 'spent a lifetime speaking for the voiceless and acting for the inactive, as this collection impressively attests' (New York Times Book Review).

The Cosmic Web: Scientific Field Models and Literary Strategies in the Twentieth Century


N. Katherine Hayles - 1985
    In The Cosmic Web, N. Katherine Hayles seeks to establish the scope of the field concept and to assess its importance for contemporary thought. She then explores the literary strategies that are attributable directly or indirectly to the new paradigm; among the texts at which she looks closely are Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Nabokov's Ada, D. H. Lawrence's early novels and essays, Borges's fiction, and Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow.

The Language of the American South


Cleanth Brooks - 1985
    He writes of the language's unique syntax and its celebrated languorous rhythms; of the classical allusions and Addisonian locutions once favored by the gentry; and of the more earthbound eloquence, rooted in the dialect of England's southern lowlands, that is still heard in the speech of the region's plain folk.It is this rich spoken language, Brooks suggests, that has always been the life blood of southern writing. The strong tradition of storytelling in the South is reflected in the tales told by Joel Chandler Harris's Uncle Remus and in the obsessive retellings that structure William Faulkner's novels and stories. But even more crucially, the language of the South--firmly rooted in the land but with a tendency to reach for the heavens above--has shaped the literary concerns and molded the complex visions to be found in the poetry of Robert Penn Warren and John Crowe Ransom; the stories of Flannery O'Connor, Peter Taylor, and Eudora Welty; and the novels of Warren, Allen Tate, and Walker Percy.

William Carlos Williams and the Meanings of Measure


Stephen Cushman - 1985
    

Pasternak On Art And Creativity


Boris Pasternak - 1985
    Many would say that he is the greatest among these. This book is an anthology of all his most important prose writings on art and creativity. These include articles, speeches, notes, the long autobiographical work A Safe Conduct, and important excerpts from his famous novel Dr Zhivago. All the material has been translated especially for this volume. Dr Livingstone provides introductions and notes, and in a concluding essay offers fresh insights into Pasternak's ideas on language, history and culture.

Sensational Designs: The Cultural Work of American Fiction, 1790-1860


Jane Tompkins - 1985
    The texts the author examines are viewed not as works of art embodying enduring themes, but as attempts to redefine the social order.

Shakespeare and the Question of Theory


Patricia Parker - 1985
    Shakespeare has been not just the focus of a variety of divergent critical movements within recent years, but also increasingly the locus of emerging debates within, and with, theory itself.This collection of essays, written by distinguished and powerful critics in the fields of literary history and Shakespeare studies, is intended both for those interested in Shakespeare and for those interested more generally in the emerging debates within contemporary criticism and theory. The essays – whether focused on the reading of individual plays or encompassing larger issues within the corpus – demonstrate the range and depth of carious critical approaches to Shakespeare, including recent developments – feminist, deconstructive, historical and political. In the individual essays various questions being raised in the contemporary theoretical debate are brought to bear on the reading of the plays and poems. Conversely, many of the assumptions of contemporary theory are in turn questioned in the light of a re-examination of these texts.Together the essays raise for debate a whole range of central issues both in the criticism of Shakespeare and in the larger field of thinking about and theorizing about literature itself.

Poets, Prophets, and Revolutionaries: The Literary Avant-Garde from Rimbaud Through Postmodernism


Charles Russell - 1985
    

H. P. Lovecraft and Lovecraft Criticism: An Annotated Bibliography.


S.T. Joshi - 1985
    T. Joshi's definitive annotated bibliography to works by and about H.P. Lovecraft.

Modern and Modernism: The Sovereignty of the Artist 1885-1925


Frederick R. Karl - 1985
    

Difference in Translation


Joseph F. Graham - 1985
    Eight contributors present translation in the light of recent developments in philosophy and critical theory. It is useful for students and scholars of literary theory, philosophy of language, linguistics and the theory and practice of religion. Contributors are: Alan Bass, Cynthia Chase, Jacques Derrida, Joseph F. Graham, Barbara Johnson, Philip E. Lewis, Robert J. Lewis and Richard Rand.

Worlds in Regression: Some Novels of Vladimir Nabokov


Donald Barton Johnson - 1985
    Games in Nabokov, in addition to the sheer fun and delight that they introduce into his novels, have a "serious" purpose. These 12 essays by a well-known Nabokov scholar are divided into three thematic groups: letters and word games, problems and mazes, and the riddle of the universe. Johnson describes Nabokov as Man of Letters, Anagrammist, Literary Chess Problemist, Maze Maker, Literary Cosmologist, and Gnostic Seeker, and shows that the games that play such a large role in Nabokov's work are part of the intricate web of allusion, coincidence and pattern that mark the presence of the other world in his novels.

Introduction to the Poem


Robert W. Boynton - 1985
    Bob Boynton and Maynard Mack's intent from the first has been to suggest ways of approaching a poem that will make it more understandable and enjoyable--to introduce students to the art of reading poetry. The authors readily admit that often a poem doesn't make immediate total sense. But a poem makes immediate rhythmic sense if it's read aloud, and meaning will come with increasing pleasure if the right approaches are taken - if, basically, a reader respects his or her native wit and lets the poem do its work. The approach of this book helps clarify what a poem is and does, and how a good reader reenacts the experience it offers.

Wallace Stevens: The Poetics of Modernism


Albert Gelpi - 1985
    The essays offer a fresh scrutiny of the poet's work and influence, re-examining the critical consensus that has developed since Stevens first gained the attention of critics in the fifties. The collection traces both the development of Modernist poetics and Stevens' place in it, from the poet's relation to such contemporaries as Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams and Marianne Moore to his influence on current writers such as John Ashbery and Robert Duncan. The contributions examine the cultural influences, or 'context', from which Stevens emerges: the Symbolist and Imagist traditions, the social and political context of the war years, and contemporary movements in the visual arts. Finally, two essays investigate the influence of Stevens on later poets.

Hazlitt: The Mind of a Critic


David Bromwich - 1985
    This book is a superb appreciation of the man and his works, at once a revaluation of the aesthetics of Romanticism and a sustained intellectual portrait. Nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award in criticism when it was first published in 1983, it is now reissued with a new preface and bibliography by the author.“Few literary figures in recent decades have seen their reputations rise as securely as Hazlitt’s. Now it will soar. David Bromwich’s book is the most persuasive and ambitious exploration of Hazlitt’s genius hitherto attempted.”—Michael Foot, New Republic“Hazlitt: the Mind of a Critic is an intellectual biography in the best sense of the word, and intellectual biography is the type of writing that shows Hazlitt in his truest light.”—Kenneth R. Johnston, Indiana University“Bromwich’s volume was first published in 1983, and its achievement has never been questioned. All Romanticists recognize that this is one of the great critical works in our field to appear in the post-war era. It aspires to (and achieves) a classical simplicity and elegance.”—Duncan Wu, University of Glasgow