An intensely private man, Nabokov was uprooted first by the Russian Revolution and then by World War II. Transformed into a permanent wanderer, he did not achieve fame until late in life, with the success of "Lolita." In this first of two volumes, Brian Boyd vividly describes the liberal milieu of the aristocratic Nabokovs, their escape from Russia, Nabokov's education at Cambridge, and the murder of his father in Berlin. Boyd then turns to the years that Nabokov spent, impoverished, in Germany and France, until the coming of Hitler forced him to flee, with wife and son, to the U.S.This volume stands on its own as a fascinating exploration of Nabokov's Russian years and Russian worlds, pre-revolutionary and emigre. In the course of his 10 years' work on the biography, Boyd traveled along Nabokov's trail everywhere from Yalta to Palo Alto. The only scholar to have had free access to the Nabokov archives in Montreux and the Library of Congress, he also interviewed at length Nabokov's family and scores of his friends and associates.For the general reader, Boyd offers an introduction to Nabokov the man, his works, and his world. For the specialist, he provides a basis for all future research on Nabokov's life and art, as he dates and describes the composition of all Nabokov's works, published and unpublished. Boyd investigates Nabokov's relation to and his independence from his time, examines the special structures of his mind and thought, and explains the relations between his philosophy andhis innovations of literary strategy and style. At the same time he provides succinct introductions to all the fiction, dramas, memoirs, and major verse; presents detailed analyses of the major books that break new ground for the scholar, while providing easy paths into the works for other readers; and shows the relationship between Nabokov's life and the themes and subjects of his art.

    W. Bullinger's exhaustively researched study BibleA direct descendant of the great Swiss reformer, Johann H. Bullinger, E. W. Bullinger was a life-long scholar and writer. He studied at King's College, London, from 1860 through 1861 and was ordained in the Church of England in 1862. In 1867 he was appointed to the position of clerical secretary for the Trinitarian Bible Society, a post he would hold until his death.The Companion Bible by Bullinger was released in six parts, beginning in 1910, and Bullinger's identity as author of the notes and editor was purposely left off the title page. The introduction notes:To the same end this Bible is not associated with the name of any man; so that its usefulness may neither be influenced nor limited by any such consideration; but that it may commend itself, on its own merits, to the whole English-speaking race.The text of The Companion Bible is the Authorized Version (KJV). Bullinger's notes relied upon many sources from the biblical studies of that era, particularly the emerging archaeological and linguistic discoveries of the late 19th century.Notes within the text of this 2,176 page, one-volume study Bible give valuable insights into the original Greek and Hebrew languages. Alternate translations, explanations of figures of speech, cross-references and an introductory detailed outline of each book and chapter are among the many features which Bible students, pastors, and seminarians will find helpful.Study helps in The Companion Bible include:198 appendices, keyed to the study notes, which include explanations of Greek and Hebrew words and their use Charts, parallel passages, maps, proper names and their pronunciation Timelines plus other special information and topical studies Distinguishing type for divine names and titles. Archaeological findings and historical genealogies. Figures of speech which are noted and explained. Hebrew words supplied in their root form. Emphasized pronouns in the original text given in distinguishable type. Cross-references supplied to similar words in the original text. 10 point type size Burgundy hardcover

    What is at stake in male homo/heterosexual definition? Through readings of Melville, Nietzsche, Wilde, James and Proust, the author argues that the vexed imperatives to specify straight and gay identities have become central to every important form of knowledge of the 20th century.

    Gene Edward Veith presents basic information to help book lovers understand what they read–from the classics to the bestsellers. He explains how the major genres of literature communicate. He explores ways comedy, tragedy, realism, and fantasy can portray the Christian worldview. These discussions lead to a host of related topics—the value of fairy tales for children, the tragic and the comic sense of life, the interplay between Greek and Biblical concepts in the imagination, and the new "post-modernism" (a subject of vital importance to Christians).In the pages of this book, readers will meet writers, past and present who carry on a great literary tradition. By supporting worthy authors, Christians can exert a powerful influence on their culture."What a superb resource this is! It resonates with profound perceptions of how good literature works to enrich and illuminate us. Dr. Veith proves himself once again to be a knowledgeable guide through the landscape of the written word." —Luci Shaw, author of God in the Dark and Polishing the Petoskey Stone"Veith makes it clear that the joys of reading can be deep joys of the type which can enliven our souls. This book should raise significantly the cultural level of evangelicalism." --Dr. Edward E. Ericson, Jr., Calvin College"Reading Between the Lines is thoroughly readable and thoroughly literate--a magnificent blending of history, literature, and theology that will be welcomed by professionals and laity alike." --Dr. Wayne Martindale, Wheaton College"Ed Veith has written on important topics with his usual clarity, good sense, organizing ability, and comprehensiveness. The scope of the project is impressive." --Dr. Leland Ryken, Wheaton College

    Umberto Eco focuses here on what he once called "the cancer of uncontrolled interpretation"--that is, the belief that many interpreters have gone too far in their domination of texts, thereby destroying meaning and the basis for communication.

    The key to A Theater of Envy is Rene Girard's novel reinterpretation ofmimesis. For Girard, people desire objects not for their intrinsic value, but because they are desired by someone else--we mime or imitate their desires. This envy--or mimetic desire--he sees as one of the foundations of the human condition. Bringing such provocative and iconoclastic insights to bear on Shakespeare, Girard reveals the previously overlooked coherence of problem plays like Troilus and Cressida, and makes a convincing argument for elevating A Midsummer Night's Dream from the status of a chaotic comedy to amasterpiece. The book abounds with novel and provocative interpretations: Shakespeare becomes a prophet of modern advertising, and the threat of nuclear disaster is read in the light of Hamlet. Most intriguing of all, perhaps, is a brief, but brilliant aside in which an entirely new perspectiveis brought to the chapter in Joyce's Ulysses in which Stephen Dedalus gives a lecture on Shakespeare. In Girard's view only Joyce, perhaps the greatest of twentieth-century novelists, comes close to understanding the greatest of Renaissance playwrights. Throughout this impressively sustained reading of Shakespeare Girard's prose is sophisticated, but contemporary, and accessible to the general reader. Anyone interested in literature, anthropology, or psychoanalysis will want to read this challenging book. And all those involved in theatricalproduction and performance will find A Theater of Envy full of suggestive new ideas.

    This book ranges over the trial of Oscar Wilde, the public furore over prostitution and syphilis, moral outrage over the breakdown of the family, abortion rights and AIDS. High and low culture, from male quest romances to contemporary male bonding movies, Freud to Fatal Attraction, are all included in his study.

    As such, this is a critical survey of modern Western philosophy, focusing in particular on the complex relations between aesthetics, ethics & politics. Eagleton provides a brilliant & challenging introduction to these concerns, as characterized in the work of Kant, Schiller, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Heidegger, Lukacs, Adorno, Habermas & others. Wide in span, as well as morally & politically committed, this is his major work to date. It forms both an original enquiry & an exemplary introduction.

    It probes the work of H.D., William Carlos Williams, and Marcel Duchamp, among others, and includes DuPlessis’s pioneering essay “For the Etruscans,” described in American Literature as “one of the finest pieces of criticism in the feminist literary tradition.”“This is one of the most pleasurable works of criticism I have read in years. These essays fuse disparate voices, colloquial, theoretical, autobiographical. They intercut DuPlessis’s own words with those of other writers and poets. They draw together aspects of being usually sundered in criticism, without imposing systems or closure.” --Helen Carr, New Formations

    Translated by Helen Lane.

    Collections of interviews with notable modern writers

    Photographs.

    He includes imaginary voyages, utopias, Victorian boys' books, dime novels, pulp magazine stories, British scientific romances and mainstream work with science fiction elements. Many of these publications are extremely rare, surviving in only a handful of copies, and most of them have never been described before.

    Frye identifies four key elements found in the Bible-the mountain, the garden, the cave, and the furnace-and describes how they recur in later secular writings. Indices.

    This cautionary statement is especially applicable to Mikhail Bakhtin, whose intellectual development displays a diversity of insights that cannot be easily integrated or accurately described in terms of a single overriding concern. Indeed, in a career spanning some sixty years, he experienced both dramatic and gradual changes in his thinking, returned to abandoned insights that he then developed in unexpected ways, and worked through new ideas only loosely related to his earlier concernsSmall wonder, then, that Bakhtin should have speculated on the relations among received notions of biography, unity, innovation, and the creative process. Unity—with respect not only to individuals but also to art, culture, and the world generally—is usually understood as conformity to an underlying structure or an overarching scheme. Bakhtin believed that this idea of unity contradicts the possibility of true creativity. For if everything conforms to a preexisting pattern, then genuine development is reduced to mere discovery, to a mere uncovering of something that, in a strong sense, is already there. And yet Bakhtin accepted that some concept of unity was essential. Without it, the world ceases to make sense and creativity again disappears, this time replaced by the purely aleatory. There would again be no possibility of anything meaningfully new. The grim truth of these two extremes was expressed well by Borges: an inescapable labyrinth could consist of an infinite number of turns or of no turns at all.Bakhtin attempted to rethink the concept of unity in order to allow for the possibility of genuine creativity. The goal, in his words, was a "nonmonologic unity," in which real change (or "surprisingness") is an essential component of the creative process. As it happens, such change was characteristic of Bakhtin's own thought, which seems to have developed by continually diverging from his initial intentions. Although it would not necessarily follow that the development of Bakhtin's thought corresponded to his ideas about unity and creativity, we believe that in this case his ideas on nonmonologic unity are useful in understanding his own thought—as well as that of other thinkers whose careers are comparably varied and productive.

    P. Lovecraft: The Decline of the West," in The Weird Tale, but very quickly became something quite different, to the degree that the two works have little save the title in common. I have always been interested in Lovecraft the philosopher, and in my Starmont Reader's Guide to Lovecraft (1982) I attempted a very compressed account of his philosophical views. To treat so complex a thinker as Lovecraft in a few pages was obviously untenable, even though I think those few pages at least convey the unity of his thought--perhaps better than this fuller study does. One reviewer, however, was correct in noting that I did not sufficiently integrate Lovecraft's thought and his fiction, and I have now attempted to remedy the failing.I am still not convinced that I have really written one rather than two books here. Does Lovecraft's fiction really depend upon his philosophy? I wrestle with this question further in my introduction, but here I can note that I had great difficulty deciding upon the proper structure for this book. I deal with four principal facets of Lovecraft's philosophy--metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics, and politics--in Part I, and those same facets as applied to the fiction in Part II. It might have made more sense to juxtapose the corresponding chapters of each part, but I finally determined that this would be both methodologically and practically unsound; methodologically for reasons explained in the introduction, and practically because it would fail to demonstrate the interconnectedness of Lovecraft's thought and because in Part II I frequently rely upon conceptions expressed throughout the whole of Part I.

    The author refutes such easy categorizations of Milosz as "the poet of Poland," "the poet of history," "the poet of the Holocaust." He examines instead such crucial problems as Milosz's search for the essence of human nature, irreducible to historical, social, and biological categories; Milosz's reflection on the erosion of the Christian imagination, which has resulted in a fundamental gap between the individual's inner life and the image of humanity formed by scientific theories; his efforts to rebuild the anthropocentric vision of the world, while acknowledging the elements that have undermined it; and finally, his attempt to recreate in his poetry a language that is both poetic and philosophical.The Eternal Moment originally appeared in Polish in 1987. This version, which quotes extensively from Milosz's Collected Poems, is the first thorough introduction for English-speaking readers to this major poet.

    This book contains three of Bakhtin's early essays from the years following the Russian Revolution, when Bakhtin and other intellectuals eagerly participated in the debates of the period.

    They provide chapter-by-chapter analysis; explanations of key themes, motifs, and symbols; a review quiz; and essay topics. Lively and accessible, SparkNotes is perfect for late-night studying and paper writing. Includes: An A+ Essay—an actual literary essay written about the Spark-ed book—to show students how a paper should be written. 16 pages devoted to writing a literary essay including: a glossary of literary terms Step-by-step tutoring on how to write a literary essay A feature on how not to plagiarize

    James, and H.P. Lovecraft. The result is a thorough study of the art, craft, philosophy, and aesthetics of an enduring genre of fantastic literature.

    This collection of twenty-four of Northrop Frye's essays, nine of which have never been published and several of which have appeared only in obscure sources, focuses on the fundamental themes that have dominated Frye's career and made him one of the world's most influential critics.

    Arguing that Greek lyric represents a tradition in its own right, Nagy shows how the form of Greek epic is in fact a differentiation of forms found in Greek lyric. Throughout, he progressively broadens the definition of lyric to the point where it becomes the basis for defining epic, rather than the other way around.

    Widely acknowledged as an exceptional guide to Bakhtin and dialogics, this book now includes a new introduction, concluding chapter and a fully updated bibliography.He argues that Bakhtin's work gains coherence through his commitment to the concept of dialogue, examining Bakhtin's dialogues with theorists such as Saussure, Freud, Marx and Lukacs, as well as other thinkers whose connection with Bakhtin has previously been ignored.Dialogism also includes dialogic readings of major literary texts, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Gogol's The Notes of a Madman and Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, which provide another dimension of dialogue with dialogue.

    This book reflects the breadth of his interests. It offers a view of his career to date, raising a number of central issues in literature, culture and politics.

    With a masterful eye for the telling detail, KNox continually reminds us that we share the present with antiquity's living past. A soldier in Itlay find a battered book in the rubble of a bombed-out firehouse--and opens it to read Virgil's denunciation of war. AN illiterate Greek bard composes a garbled Homeric song to celebrate the recent heroism of local partisans. A traveler heading north from modern Athens must choose between the Sacred way--or the NATO Road.Whether the subject is the role of women in ancient Athens of the novelists of modern Italy, the wit and erudition of Bernard Knox never fail to instruct and delight. Now in paperback, Essays Ancient and Modern takes its place alongside the distinguished essay's of Knox's Word and Action, a book whose title brings together, in the words of Anthony Hecht, the double strand of his admirable career.

    The Locana, presented here in English translation for the first time, is a commentary on the ninth-century "Dhvanyaloka" of Anandavardhana, which is itself the pivotal work in the history of Indian poetics.The "Dhvanyaloka" revolutionized Sanskrit literary theory by proposing that the main goal of good poetry is the evocation of a mood or "flavor" ("rasa") and that this process can be explained only by recognizing a semantic power beyond denotation and metaphor, namely, the power of suggestion. On the basis of this analysis the "Locana" develops a theory of the psychology of aesthetic response.This edition is the first to make the two most influential works of traditional Sanskrit literary and aesthetic theory fully accessible to readers who want to know more about Sanskrit literature. The editorial annotations furnish the most complete exposition available of the history and content of these works. In addition, the verses presented as examples by both authors (offered here in verse translation) form an anthology of some of the finest Sanskrit and Prakrit poetry.

    In determining if a judicial opinion is good or bad, he explores the possibility of cultural criticism, the nature of conceptual language, the character of economic and legal discourse, and the appropriate expectations for critical and analytic writing. White employs his unique approach by analyzing individual cases involving the Fourth Amendment of the United States constitution and demonstrates how a judge translates the facts and the legal tradition, creating a text that constructs a political and ethical community with its readers."White has given us not just a novel answer to the traditional jurisprudential questions, but also a new way of reading and evaluating judicial opinions, and thus a new appreciation of the liberty which they continue to protect."—Robin West, Times Literary Supplement"James Boyd White should be nominated for a seat on the Supreme Court, solely on the strength of this book. . . . Justice as Translation is an important work of philosophy, yet it is written in a lucid, friendly style that requires no background in philosophy. It will transform the way you think about law."—Henry Cohen, Federal Bar News & Journal"White calls us to rise above the often deadening and dreary language in which we are taught to write professionally. . . . It is hard to imagine equaling the clarity of eloquence of White's challenge. The apparently effortless grace of his prose conveys complex thoughts with deceptive simplicity."—Elizabeth Mertz, Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities"Justice as Translation, like White's earlier work, provides a refreshing reminder that the humanities, despite the pummelling they have recently endured, can be humane."—Kenneth L. Karst, Michigan Law Review

    Presenting the captivating world of rabbinic storytelling, it reveals facets of the Jewish experience and tradition that would otherwise have remained unknown and examines the surprisingly deep connection between the values of classical Judaism and the art of imaginative narrative writing. Virtually all the narratives appear here in English for the first time. Sometimes pious, sometimes playful, and sometimes almost scandalous, they are each accompanied by an introduction and notes. The selections are framed by essays by David Stern and Mark Jay Mirsky that examine the various moods and forms in which the rabbinic imagination found expression and explore the impact that this unique form of narrative has had on modern fiction. The translations are by Norman Bronznick, Yaakov Elman, Michal Govrin, Arthur Green, Martha Himmelfarb, Ivan Marcus, Mark Jay Mirsky, Joel Rosenberg, David Ruderman, Raymond Scheindlin, David Stern, and Avi Weinstein.Yale Judaica Series

    In ninety essays by leading international critics and scholars, the volume covers both traditional topics such as literature and history, poetry, drama and the novel, and also newer topics such as the production and reception of literature. Current critical ideas are clearly and provocatively discussed, while the volume's arrangement reflects in a dynamic way the rich diversity of contemporary thinking about literature.Each essay seeks to provide the reader with a clear sense of the full significance of its subject as well as guidance on further reading.An essential work of reference, The Encyclopedia of Literature and Criticism is a stimulating guide to the central preoccupations of contemporary critical thinking about literature.Special Features* Clearly written by scholars and critics of international standing for readers at all levels in many disciplines* In-depth essays covering all aspects, traditional and new, of literary studies past and present* Useful cross-references within the text, with full bibliographical references and suggestions for further reading* Single index of authors, terms, topics

    To understand the origins of the novel as a species and to read individual novels well, we must know several pasts and traditions—even non-fictional and non-narrative traditions, even non-“artistic” and non-written pasts—that at first might seem far removed from the pleasures readers find in modern novels.

    An invaluable record of a stunningly original and consistently idealistic American mind. Foreword by Michael Walzer.

    Reed's study has long established itself as the standard work in English on Thomas mann, and offers as comprehensive a view of Mann's fiction and thought as is available in any language. It is based on a coherent close reading of Mann's oeuvre, literary and political, and also on manuscripts and sources, and was part of the first phase of literary scholarship that opened up the resources of the Zurich Thomas Mann Archive. Further documents that have appeared since then - Mann's diaries, notebooks, and other correspondences - have not fundamentally altered the individual interpretations or the overall picture the study offers, and in some respects have emphatically confirmed them. A further chapter added to this edition covers the new documentation, gives a vigorous account of the main curents in Mann scholarship and criticism over the last two decades suggesting how we should now see the writer, the man, and the political figure, and above all the complex relationship between the three.

    In thisbook The author shows how these three works engage one another dialectically and how all of them participate in a larger project of the imagination. Morning Work a phrase from Walden, is the name the author gives to this larger project. By it he means the work done by memory and perception as they act to shape Thoreau's emerging vision of a harmonious universe. He argues that the changing balance of memory and perception in the three works defines the unique literary character of each of them. He offers a major re-evaluation of Walden, which he sees neither as the epitome of Thoreau's career (the traditional view), nor as an anomaly (the recent, revisionary view). Rather, he sees Walden as a pivotal work, reflecting the issues of loss and remembrance that earlier had found prominent expression in A Week and prefiguring the late Journal's vision of natural order. Focusing on the two-million word Journal, the author provides a critical analysis that defines the essential forces and the imaginative coherence in its vast discursiveness. The consideration of memory and perception in Thoreau also leads him to the issue of the writer's modernity, and he explores the ways in which Thoreau anticipates 20th century thought, especially in the works of such objectivist philosophers as William James and Alfred North Whitehead.

    Lawrence's continuing importance not only within English culture but as a part of European Modernism, with its heightened awareness of the problems of form and language, and its search for cross-cultural and interdisciplinary relationships.

    A variety of literary topics are addressed in forty-three lively, often humorous, and wonderfully informative essays.With his trenchant, famously entertaining touch, Kenner explores the role of counting in literature (Joyce and St. Augustine shared a preference for the number eleven); the extravagant efforts through the ages to preserve the Iliad and the Odyssey (focusing on Ezra Pound's contributions); and Tom Wolfe's prose through the purple decades (Kenner calls him "the nonchalant master of the neon-piped sentence"). Other writers who fall under Kenner's appraising gaze include Flann O'Brien, H.D., Ernest Hemingway, Sylvia Plath, Dante, Leslie Fiedler, Wallace Stevens, Saul Bellow, William Carlos Williams, Samuel Beckett, and Vladimir Nabokov.

    - Examines the most complex and memorable characters in Western literature - A selection of critical essays provides in-depth analysis of the character considered in each volume - A concise character profile discusses the character's key personality traits and physical attributes - Contains an editor's note and introduction by Harold Bloom

    Ardis's starting point is her contention that her predecessors in this area, were too blinded by the aesthetic of high modernism to be fair to these late nineteenth century texts. Ardis sets out to examine these marginalized texts in relation to a political rather than an aesthetic agenda. Her study, she hopes, will reveal "the practical politics of modernism" and will also encourage reflection on the omissions and exclusions of "gynocriticism." Ardis thus joins other recent writers whose tribute to the feminist critics of the 1970s takes the form of interrogation and correction.

    Exploring the psychological, religious, and epistemological context of this anxiety, DeLamotte argues that the Gothic vision focuses simultaneously on the private demons of the psyche and the social realities that helped to shape them. Her analysis includes works of English and American authors, among them Henry James, Mary Shelley, Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Emily Bront�, Charlotte Bront�, and a number of often neglected popular women Gothicists.

    As a step toward remedying this situation, the essays gathered here challenge the continuing separation of sociological from textual analysis in cultural (and feminist) theory and inquiry. They address critically the question of women's writing, exploring the idea that women may begin to define their own lives and construct their own identities in a patriarchal culture through the very process of writing. They also present a cogent defense of a feminist cultural politics, including a politics of the body. Integrating material drawn from a variety of sources—feminist theory, cultural and literary analysis, sociology, and art history—Feminine Sentences is an original discussion of women's relationship to modern and postmodern culture.Janet Wolff's book represents a major statement of her distinctive position, and will be of interest to everyone working in the areas of cultural and literary theory, women's studies, and sociology.FROM THE BOOK:"Women . . . are sentenced to containment and silence. . . . This collection is intended as a contribution to the overthrow of that 'sentence,' and to the process whereby women find ways to intervene in an excluding culture, and to articulate their own experience. Feminine sentences are those formulations and expressions, in a variety of cultural forms and media, of women's own voice.""The literature of modernity describes the experience of men. It is essentially a literature about transformations in the public world and its associated consciousness. . . . In so far as the experience of 'the modern' occurred mainly in the public sphere, it was primarily men's experience.""I want to argue that a feminist cultural politics of the body is a possibility. . . . There is every reason . . . to propose the body as a privileged site of political intervention, precisely because it is the site of repression and possession."

    Instead, he reads Freud by analogy with major imaginative writers for whom the figuring and refiguring of the self is a central activity. His readings expose a dialectic between the therapeutic Freud and Freud the sublime author and challenge the normative role of psychoanalysis both in society and in literary criticism.Edmundson begins by comparing the Oedipal passage in The Interpretation of Dreams with works of Sophocles and Shakespeare. He reads Freud's "On Narcissism" through the lens of Eve's Narcissus scene in Paradise Lost; considers the papers on therapeutic technique against Wordsworth's Prelude and major lyrics; and places the ethos of "Mourning and Melancholia" in contrast to the American "refusal to mourn" that informs Emerson's essays. The readings show that even as Freud is representing general human limits, he is frequently reinventing himself symbolically in ways that defy his own normative standards. Edmundson asks, then, whether Freud's self-creating drive, or that exemplified by any of the "literary" authors in the study, can serve as an example of useful resistance against the tendencies that normative psychoanalysis reinforces within society.

    In particular, she examines the role of her mother. Lucretia Jones, and that of her long time friend Sara Norton to illustrate, respectively, the competitive and cooperative nature of her female associations. Goodman also seeks to connect an informative account of Wharton and her personal friends and rivals with a systematic review of the fictional heroines. In her suitable and insightful commentaries on Wharton's work, Goodman traces Wharton's efforts to present a model of female cooperation. Goodman concludes that Wharton exposes the false simplicity of female stereotypes and portrays the complexity and individuality of her heroines in an equally complicated world.

    What emerges from this reading is a view of the poem as a tense opposition between "myth" and "folktale," recognized as vehicles for contrasting ideological opinions on the world.With terms drawn from Bakhtin's concept of "dialogism," the Odyssey's two voices are characterized as "centripetal" and "centrifugal"--the one associated with dominant political power, with the conventional, the official, and the heroic; the other, with the personal, the disempowered, and the popular, with the antics of the Autolycan trickster and outlaw. As he examines the more audible, "centrifugal" voice, Peradotto shows how the poet's sense of power over his material, represented in Odysseus' ability to narrate a fictitious world, creates a "character" of infinite varietyone whose self-chosen anonymity becomes a paradigm for a subtler ideology of the self than that embodied in the Iliadic Achilles.

    Kathryn Kerby-Fulton discusses the major prophets and visionaries of such alternative traditions, who are characterised by their denunciation of clerical abuses, the urging of religious reform, and an ultimate historical optimism. Her book offers a proposal for the importance of such traditions, particularly as represented in the writings of Hildegard of Bingen, to the understanding of Langland's visionary mode and reformist ideology. Dr Kerby-Fulton also explores the relevance of the prophetic mentality fostered by Joachite thought, and the reactionary response which it triggered in antimendicant eschatology. Above all, this book provides a stimulating challenge to assumptions that Langland's views of the course and end of history are wholly conventional, or easily explained by Augustinian eschatology. The outcome of this study of contexts for Piers Plowman suggests that Langland's position in relation to different apocalyptic traditions was at once more sophisticated and more original than scholars have hitherto realised.

    CANDOR is a juxtaposition of essays, reviews, and poems by which Alan Davies has created a self-revealing form which is tonal critical commentary. The text comes up to itself in sometimes utter simplicity, revealing itself/himself.

    Roston demonstrates that what emerges is not a fixed or monolithic pattern for each generation but a dynamic series of responses to shared challenges. The book relates leading English writers and literary modes to contemporary developments in architecture, painting, and sculpture. A sumptuous book. . . . Clearly and gracefully written and cogently argued, Roston's admirable achievement is of paramount significance to literary studies, to cultural and art history, and to aesthetics. . . . Outstanding.--ChoiceOriginally published in 1990.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.

    Understanding Doris Lessing introduces readers to a body of work that through a variety of techniques attempts to enlarge our understanding of the literary enterprise of history, and of humanity's relationship to the universe. Included in the discussion are Lessing's earlier works, The Grass is Singing, Children of Violence, The Golden Notebook and her more recent books, The Good Terrorist and The Fifth Child.

     The Post-Colonial Critic brings together a selection of interviews and discussions in which she has taken part over the past five years; together they articulate some of the most compelling politico-theoretical issues of the present. In these lively texts, students of Spivak's work will identify her unmistakeable voice as she speaks on questions of representation and self-representation, the politicization of deconstruction; the situations of post-colonial critics; pedagogical responsibility; and political strategies.

    The 50 profiles in this collection, originally published between 1943 and 1979, provide a veritable Who's Who of arts and letters, including Katharine Hepburn, C.S. Lewis, George Bernard Shaw, Miles Davis, W.C. Fields, Ralph Richardson, Laurence Olivier, Tom Stoppard, and Greta Garbo.

    It is the first collection to examine this literature from a feminist perspective. Although the contributors represent a plurality of approaches and positions, they share a common objective: to reassess women as women, as they actually appear in the laws, in works written by women, and in canonical literature. The essays address, correct, and round out the nineteenth-century Anglo-Saxon critical tradition and begin fresh exploration of the women in Old English literature.The subjects discussed fall into the following broad categories: the historical record; sexuality and folklore; language and difference in characterization and the "deconstructed" stereotype. Contributors include Marijane Osborn; Christine E. Fell; F.T. Wainwright; Pauline Stafford; Frank M. Stenton; Mary P. Richard s and B. Jane Stanfield; Carol J. Clover; Edith Whitehurst Williams; Paul E. Szarmach; Audrey L. Meaney; Helen Damico; Patricia A. Belanoff; L. John Sklute; Paul Beekman Taylor; Alexandra Hennessey Olsen; Joyce Hill; Jane Chance; Alain Renoir; Dolores Warwick Frese; and Anita R. Riedinger.

    Murphy examines in detail the ingenious and sensitive poetic analogies through which familiar texts--the Nativity, the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes and the Lord's Prayer, the Passion and Resurrection--are transformed into Germanic settings and concepts. The first book in English on The Heliand, this study offers a new socio-political explanation of the possible motives of the unknown author in undertaking this enormous and brilliantly realized poetic task.

    Her last and most famous novel, Wide Sargasso Sea, her retelling of Jane Eyre, is a central text for the imaginative re-examination of gender and colonial power relations. Helen Carr's account draws on both recent feminism and postcolonial theory, and places Rhys's work in relation to modernist and postmodernist writing.

    "Canonized for being insufficiently American although he took America as his subject, chastised for obscurity by readers who would not allow or would not read homosexual meanings, Crane embodies many understandings of America, and of the predicament of the gay writer."—Voice Literary Supplement"A brilliant critical model for understanding how textuality and sexuality can produce pervasive effects on each other in the writing of a figure like Crane."—Michael Moon, Duke University

    

    In this survey of Julia Kristeva's work, the author outlines her intellectual development, from her work on Bakhtin through her theories of the symbolic and the semiotic to her analysis of horror, love, melancholy and cosmopolitanism.

    This work describes the lives and work of female literary figures.

    Painterly Abstraction in Modernist American Poetry concentrates on the challenges posed to poetry by modernist painting: how could the poets adapt to the painters' abilities to recast our understanding of the psyche's needs, powers, and social dependencies, and how could they share the painters' efforts to find alternatives to what seemed the inescapably ideological grounds for all value claims? By stressing the poets' ways of making the syntax of artworks carry semantic force, this orientation generates a much more dynamic, philosophically stimulating sense of modernist poetry than the ones offered by the dominant styles of political critique.