Svidrigailov simply is the most memorable figure in the book, obscuring Raskolnikov, who after all is the protagonist, a hero-villain, and a kind of surrogate for Dostoevsky himself.

    Schoenbaum, New York Times Book Review“The most accessible and sheerly enjoyable of [Frye’s] books….The effect is that of listening to a fluent, genial conversationalist who loves Shakespeare and unabashedly celebrates him in that high aspect of criticism well called ‘appreciation.’”—Edmund Fuller, Wall Street Journal“A boon to both Shakespearean scholars and readers dipping into the Bard’s work for the first time. … Written with verve, erudition and more-than-occasional humor, this ‘summing-up’ of 50 years of scholarship will be read with pleasure, profit and gratitude by drama lovers for years to come.”—Kirkus ReviewsNorthrop Frye, professor of English, has been on the faculty of the University of Toronto for almost fifty years.  He is the author of numerous books, including the seminal work Anatomy of Criticism

    Throughout the collection, Heaney's gifts as a wise and genial reader are exercised with characteristic exactness, and we are reminded, above all, of the essentially gratifying nature of poetry itself.

    David Reynolds reveals how these authors broadly assimilated the themes and images of popular culture. Their classic works--among them Moby Dick, The Scarlet Letter, Leaves of Grass, Walden, and the tales of Poe--are given strikingly original reading when viewed against the rich, often startling background of long neglected popular writings of the time. Reynolds also explores a whole lost world of sensational literature, including grisly novels, openly sold on the street, that combined intense violence with explicit eroticism. He demonstrates as well how common concerns with issues of religion, slavery, and workers' (as well as women's) rights resonate in the major writings.

    - Comprehensive reading and study guides for the world's most important literary masterpieces- A selection of critical excerpts provide a scholarly overview of each work- "The Story Behind the Story" places the work in a historical perspective and discusses it legacy- Each book includes a biographical sketch of the author, a descriptive list of characters, an extensive summary and analysis, and an annotated bibliography

    Delivered in summer 1942 at the University of Freiburg, this course was first published in German in 1984 as volume 53 of Heidegger's Collected Works. Revealing for Heidegger's thought of the period are his discussions of the meaning of "the political" and "the national," in which he emphasizes the difficulty and the necessity of finding "one's own" in and through a dialogue with "the foreign." In this context Heidegger reflects on the nature of translation and interpretation. A detailed reading of the famous chorus from Sophocles' Antigone, known as the "ode to man," is a key feature of the course.

    The book also analyzes Pynchon's use of language and dialect.

    First edition. Great gift.

    Not only will it sing, but it will tell time too. Or as Fats Domino once observed, 'I don't want to bury the lyrics, man; I want 'em to understand what I'm saying.'" Halflife is captivating. Charles Wright, in disclosing the contents of his journal, reveals the influence of Ezra Pound, Eugenio Montale, Emily Dickinson, Italian painter Giorgio Morandi, and country music legend A.P. Carter.

    Booth argues for the relocation of ethics to the center of our engagement with literature.But the questions he asks are not confined to morality. Returning ethics to its root sense, Booth proposes that the ethical critic will be interested in any effect on the ethos, the total character or quality of tellers and listeners. Ethical criticism will risk talking about the quality of this particular encounter with this particular work. Yet it will give up the old hope for definitive judgments of "good" work and "bad." Rather it will be a conversation about many kinds of personal and social goods that fictions can serve or destroy. While not ignoring the consequences for conduct of engaging with powerful stories, it will attend to that more immediate topic, What happens to us as we read? Who am I, during the hours of reading or listening? What is the quality of the life I lead in the company of these would-be friends?Through a wide variety of periods and genres and scores of particular works, Booth pursues various metaphors for such engagements: "friendship with books," "the exchange of gifts," "the colonizing of worlds," "the constitution of commonwealths." He concludes with extended explorations of the ethical powers and potential dangers of works by Rabelais, D. H. Lawrence, Jane Austen, and Mark Twain.

    "The best (and the best written) book about Austen that has appeared in the last three decades."—Nina Auerbach, Journal of English and Germanic Philology"By looking at the ways in which Austen domesticates the gothic in Northanger Abbey, examines the conventions of male inheritance and its negative impact on attempts to define the family as a site of care and generosity in Sense and Sensibility, makes claims for the desirability of 'personal happiness as a liberating moral category' in Pride and Prejudice, validates the rights of female authority in Emma, and stresses the benefits of female independence in Persuasion, Johnson offers an original and persuasive reassessment of Jane Austen's thought."—Kate Fullbrook, Times Higher Education Supplement

    It covers all the major novelists, poets and dramatists - from Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Austen, Dickens to Conrad and to contemporary writers from all over the English-speaking world - Saul Bellow, Adrienne Rich, Les Murray, Wole Soyinka, and Janet Frame. More than 100 specialist contributors provide detailed biographical and critical articles not only on writers and their works. Substantial coverage is also given to such literary genres as popular fiction, science fiction, detective novels, and children's classics. All literary concepts and movements are described in detail. - Over 4,500 alphabetical entries, cross-referenced throughout - Includes all literature in English - British, Irish, American, Australian, African, Canadian, New Zealand, Indian and Caribbean - Illustrated throughout with over 115 photographs and line drawings

    For Achebe, overcoming Eurocentrism goes hand in hand with eradicating the destructive effects of racism and injustice in Western society. He reveals the impediments that still stand in the way of open, equal dialogue between Africans and Europeans, between blacks and whites, but also instills us with hope that they will soon be overcome.

    James Allen has selected sixteen to translate and discuss in order to shed light on one of the questions that clearly preoccupied ancient intellectuals; the origins of the world.

    In this groundbreaking study, Tony Magistrale shows how King's fiction transcends the escapism typical of its genre to tap into our deepest cultural fears: "that the government we have installed through the democratic process is not only corrupt but actively pursuing our destruction, that our technologies have progressed to the point at which the individual has now become expendable, and that our fundamental social institutions-school, marriage, workplace, and the church-have, beneath their veneers of respectability, evolved into perverse manifestations of narcissism, greed, and violence."Tracing King's moralist vision to the likes of Twain, Hawthorne, and Melville, Landscape of Fear establishes the place of this popular writer within the grand tradition of American literature. Like his literary forbears, King gives us characters that have the capacity to make ethical choices in an imperfect, often evil world. Yet he inscribes that conflict within unmistakably modern settings. From the industrial nightmare of "Graveyard Shift" to the breakdown of the domestic sphere in The Shining, from the techno-horrors of The Stand to the religious fanaticism and adolescent cruelty depicted in Carrie, Magistrale charts the contours of King's fictional landscape in its first decade.

    Informed by the most current critical and theoretical ideas, it sets forth a generation's interpretation of the rise of American civilization and culture.The "Columbia Literary History of the United States" contains essays by today's foremost scholars and critics, overseen by a board of distinguished editors headed by Emory Elliott of Princeton University. These contributors reexamine in contemporary terms traditional subjects such as the importance of Puritanism, Romanticism, and frontier humor in American life and writing, but they also fully explore themes and materials that have only begun to receive deserved attention in the last two decades. Among these are the role of women as writers, readers, and literary subjects and the impact of writers from minority groups, both inside and outside the literary establishment.

    These selections of his essays, spanning thirty years of a prodigious output, gather some of his most seminal work in permanent form, and show his development from new-critical idealism to historicism, from formalism to cultural poetics. Underlying the whole, however, is an ongoing project to synthesize problems of literature, art, and philosophy; to develop a model of mind and imagination, and a theory of cultural change.

    A collection of eight critical essays on Dreiser's novel, arranged in chronological order of their original publication.

    Book by Welch, Robert

    Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England is a sustained and powerful exemplification of this innovative method, offering a new way of understanding the power of Shakespeare's achievement and, beyond this, an original analysis of cultural process.

    The poets bring to their task a fresh eye and a freshened language, vivid with nuance and color and force.

    This introduction to the Genji sketches its cultural background, offers detailed analysis of the text, including language and style, and traces the history of its reception through nine centuries of cultural change. First Edition Hb (1988): 0-521-33349-0 First Edition Pb (1988): 0-521-33636-8

    Doody also draws upon a mine of letters and diaries for detailed and sometimes surprising biographical information. Burney's feelings and emotions forcefully emerge in her sophisticated and complex late novels, Camilla and The Wanderer. Her novels all relate to personal experience; as an artist she is attracted to the violent, the grotesque, and the macabre. She is a powerful comic writer, but her comedy is far from reflecting a shallow cheerfulness. Bringing a novelist's perspective to her material, in this 1989 book Doody shows an appreciation of the many dimensions of a predecessor's writings and she tells her story with force and conviction.

    excellent book... " --The Classical Outlook..". brief and readable... There is good tonic in these pages for the serious student of oral tradition... a remarkable book." --Asian Folklore Studies"The bibliography is a boon for students and faculty at any level who are curious about the nature, composition, and performance of oral poetry." --Choice..". concise, evolutionary account... " --Religious Studies Review"As ever, Professor Foley's conscientious scholarship and sound judgements combine to make a further substantial contribution to the field." --E. C. Hawkesworth, School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London, The Slavonic Review"Foley is probably the only scholar who is in a position even to suggest the extent of what we should know to work in this area." --Speculum"Foley's survey stands as a fitting tribute to the achievements of Parry and Lord and as a sure guide to future productive work in the field." --Journal of American Folklore..". detailed and informative study... We are fortunate that John Foley chose to write this book." --Motif..". Theory of Oral Composition... detailed account written in an elegant style which could serve equally as a textbook for college and graduate students and as a reference tool for scholars already in the field." --Olifant"As an 'introductory history, ' The Theory of Oral Composition accomplishes its purpose admirably. It has the capacity to arouse interest on the part of the uninitiated." --AnthropologicaPresents the first history of the new field of oral-formulaic theory, which arose from the pioneering research of Milman Parry and Albert Lord on the Homeric poems.

    

    

    -- 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

    The latest generation of titles in this series also feature glossaries and visual elements that complement the classic, familiar format.In CliffsNotes on Uncle Tom's Cabin, you discover Harriet Beecher Stowe's most memorable and socially relevant novel -- a book that, when published in 1852, galvanized public opinion against slavery in a way never seen before. The story follows the lives of two slaves: Eliza, who escapes slavery with her son, and Tom, who must endure humiliation, abuse, and torture inflicted by his owners.This study guide takes you though Eliza and Tom's journeys by providing summaries and commentaries on each chapter of the novel. Critical essays give you insight into the major themes of the novel, as well as the novel's structure and Gothic elements. Other features that help you study includeCharacter analyses of the main charactersA character map that graphically illustrates the relationships among the charactersA section on the life and background of Harriet Beecher StoweA review section that tests your knowledgeA ResourceCenter full of books, articles, films, and Internet sitesClassic literature or modern modern-day treasure you'll understand it all with expert information and insight from CliffsNotes study guides."

    

    He focuses on the remarkable generation of poets who came to maturity in the years of the First World War and whose works constitute the principal body of poetic Modernism in English. This large historical argument is developed through monographic chapters on the poets which include close readings of their major poems. Comprehensive in scope and subtle in its analysis, Gelpi's book promises to be one of the major studies of American poetry for years to come.

    

    While acknowledging rhetoric's general loss of prestige, the author asserts its value in modern times as an indispensable vehicle for style and thought in the work of Joyce, Orwell, Jarrell, and others, and concludes by surveying rhetoric's fragmentation and misapplication in the current critical theories of such thinkers as Jakobson and de Man.

    Also includes background on the author's life and times, sample tests, term paper suggestions, and a reading list.

    Some theorists gave argued persuasively that textual meaning, in literature and in literary interpretation, is structured by repression and forgetting, by what the literary or critical text does not say as much as by what it does. All these claims are directly relevant to legal hermeneutics, and thus it is no surprise that legal theorists have recently been turning to literary theory for potential insight into the interpretation of law. This collection of essays is designed to represent the especially rich interactive that has taken place between legal and literary hermeneutics during the past ten years."

    At the crux of the play, he notes, the novice nun Isabella accuses her brother Claudio: "Is't not a kind of incest, to take life/From thine own sister's shame?" Shell's analysis shows exactly how Claudio's request is a kind of incest in a virtuoso analysis that extends his earlier work on philosophical and literary economies. In the first work to develop fully the thematic role of the monastic orders in Shakespeare's drama, Shell demonstrates that the play lays bare some Western culture's most fundamental tensions -- between natural and political teleologies, between Christian and political ideals of brotherhood and the incest taboo, and between the pragmatic imperative to classify people and the moral imperative to treat them all alike. Drawing upon an astonishing range of literary material, Shell's discussion goes far beyond mere commentary -- offering, for example, brilliant readings of other Shakespearean plays.Praise for Marc Shell's The Economy of Literature and Money, Language, and Thought, also published by Johns Hopkins:"Shell offers admirably close readings [which are] often brilliant." -- The Eighteenth Century"A remarkable piece of work. Valuable for a wide range of readers from the expert to the inquiring generalist." -- Religious Studies Review"Stimulating and valuable." -- Comparative Literature

    In this study Judith Marcus suggests that Mann's character Leo Naphta in The Magic Mountain is modeled on Lukács—the Jewish intellectual. Professor Marcus goes on to argue that Mann consistently portrayed this "ideal type" throughout his work as ironically containing a "totalitarian" personality which was inspired by radicalism, rigidity, dogmatism, and asceticism—all negative traits that Mann found in Lukács and that prevented the growth of personal intimacy between these two men.Marcus's study is largely based on Lukács's and Mann's early work, on their correspondence, and on previously undiscovered, untranslated, and/or unpublished archival materials. Her research was carried out in three countries and in interviews conducted with Lukács, Katja Mann, Ernst Bloch, and Arnold Hauser, among others.

    This text sets the background of this working theatre, against which the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries can be understood.

    

    This work subjects the fundamental ideas of Derrida, Lacan, Barthes and their followers to an examination and demonstrates the baselessness of post-Saussurean claims about the relations between language, reality and self.

    

    Contents include: The matter of Fantasy / The Fairies Underground: Fantasy from the Middle Ages to Victorian Times / The Golden Key: Fantasy of the Victorian Era / Dream Days: The Edwardian Age and After / A Box of Delights: Fantasy of the 1920s and 1930s / Playing In the Shadows of War: Fantasy of the 1940s / There and Back Again: Fantasy of the 1950s / Extensions of Reality: Fantasy of the 1960s / Games of Dark: Fantasy of the 1970s / Possibilities and Plausibilities: Fantasy of the 1980s.

    Eugene Stelzig examines what it means to be an autobiographical writer by considering Hesse's fictions of the self as an exemplary instance of the relationship between life and art and between biography and autobiography. In a graceful and inviting style, he frees this major confessional writer from the confines of German culture and the status of cult figure of the 1960s, and situates him in the tradition of world literature and in a variety of literary, psychological, philosophical, and religious contexts.Three introductory chapters on autobiography and Hesse set the stage for a chronological study. Then follows a penetrating analysis of the balance between biographical fact and confessional fantasy in Hesse's long career, from the failed autobiography of his first literary success, Beneath the Wheel, through the protracted midlife crisis of the grotesque Steppenwolf period, to the visionary autobiography of his magisterial fictional finale, The Glass Bead Game.Originally published in 1988.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

    This, the first comprehensive study of the work to appear in English, guides the reader towards Musil's central concerns. It examines how Musil laboured through draft after draft to produce material that would pass his own strict literary 'quality control' and traces major themes through different layers of narrative with the aid of close textual analysis. It details how Musil subjects leading figures of fin-de-siecle Vienna to intense ironic scrutiny and how, by drawing on his extensive knowledge of philosophy, psychology, politics, sociology and science, he works into his novel essayistic statements which record the state of contemporary European civilisation. Through a disturbing and deeply serious liaison with his sister, Musil's hero Ulrich, is shown to struggle through to the brink of self-discovery and enlightenment.

    Ranging from Caxton's Preface of 1485 to George Saintsbury in 1912, this chronological record of the various evolutions of the "Morte d'Arthur" is drawn from the comments of numerous literary historians, scholars, poets and novelists.