Lovecraft (1890-1937), the most important American supernaturalist since Poe, has had an incalculable influence on all the horror-story writing of recent decades. Altho his supernatural fiction has been enjoying an unprecedented fame, it's not widely known that he wrote a critical history of supernatural horror in literature that has yet to be superceded as the finest historical discussion of the genre. This work is presented in this volume in its final, revised text. With incisive power, Lovecraft here formulates the esthetics of supernatural horror & summarizes the range of its literary expression from primitive folklore to the tales of his own 20th-century masters. Following a discussiom of terror-literature in ancient, medieval & renaissance culture, he launches on a critical survey of the whole history of horror fiction from the Gothic school of the 18th century (when supernatural horror found its own genre) to the time of De la Mare & M.R. James. The Castle of Otranto, Radcliffe, "Monk" Lewis, Vathek Charles Brockden Brown, Melmoth the Wanderer, Frankenstein, Bulwer-Lytton, Fouqué's Undine, Wuthering Heights, Poe (full chapter), The House of the Seven Gables, de Maupassant's The Horla, Bierce, The Turn of the Screw , M.P. Shiel, W.H. Hodgson, Machen, Blackwood & Dunsany are among those discussed in depth. He also notices a host of lesser writers--enough to draw up an extensive reading list. By charting so completely the background for his own concepts of horror & literary techniques, Lovecraft throws light on his own fiction as well as on the horror-literature which has followed. For this reason this book will be especially intriguing to those who've read his fiction as an isolated phenomenon. Any searching for a guide thru the inadequately marked region of literary horror, need search no further. Unabridged & corrected republication of 1945 edition. New introduction by E.F. Bleiler.

    His work spans some sixty years and includes original work on a diverse range of subjects, from dialectical materialism to architecture, urbanism and the experience of everyday life. The Production of Space is his major philosophical work and its translation has been long awaited by scholars in many different fields. The book is a search for a reconciliation between mental space (the space of the philosophers) and real space (the physical and social spheres in which we all live). In the course of his exploration, Henri Lefebvre moves from metaphysical and ideological considerations of the meaning of space to its experience in the everyday life of home and city. He seeks, in other words, to bridge the gap between the realms of theory and practice, between the mental and the social, and between philosophy and reality. In doing so, he ranges through art, literature, architecture and economics, and further provides a powerful antidote to the sterile and obfuscatory methods and theories characteristic of much recent continental philosophy. This is a work of great vision and incisiveness. It is also characterized by its author's wit and by anecdote, as well as by a deftness of style which Donald Nicholson-Smith's sensitive translation precisely captures.

    Their conversation takes as its point of departure psychoanalysis and its central importance to the modern imagination—though equally important is their shared sense that by misleading us about the importance of self-knowledge and the danger of narcissism, psychoanalysis has failed to realize its most exciting and innovative relational potential.            In pursuit of new forms of intimacy they take up a range of concerns across a variety of contexts. To test the hypothesis that the essence of the analytic exchange is intimate talk without sex, they compare Patrice Leconte’s film about an accountant mistaken for a psychoanalyst, Intimate Strangers, with Henry James’s classic novella The Beast in the Jungle. A discussion of the radical practice of barebacking—unprotected anal sex between gay men—delineates an intimacy that rejects the personal. Even serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer and the Bush administration’s war on terror enter the scene as the conversation turns to the way aggression thrills and gratifies the ego. Finally, in a reading of Socrates’ theory of love from Plato’s Phaedrus, Bersani and Phillips call for a new form of intimacy which they term “impersonal narcissism”: a divestiture of the ego and a recognition of one’s non-psychological potential self in others. This revolutionary way of relating to the world, they contend, could lead to a new human freedom by mitigating the horrifying violence we blithely accept as part of human nature.            Charmingly persuasive and daringly provocative, Intimacies is a rare opportunity to listen in on two brilliant thinkers as they explore new ways of thinking about the human psyche.

    In 1981, years before he sat down to tackle On Writing, Stephen King decided to address the topic of what makes horror horrifying and what makes terror terrifying. Here, in ten brilliantly written chapters, King delivers one colorful observation after another about the great stories, books, and films that comprise the horror genre—from Frankenstein and Dracula to The Exorcist, The Twilight Zone, and Earth vs. The Flying Saucers.With the insight and good humor his fans appreciated in On Writing, Danse Macabre is an enjoyably entertaining tour through Stephen King’s beloved world of horror.

    First published on the eve of war in 1939, the essay has often been read as a pacifist manifesto. Rachel Bespaloff was a French contemporary of Weil’s whose work similarly explored the complex relations between literature, religion, and philosophy. She composed her own distinctive discussion of the Iliad in the midst of World War II—calling it “her method of facing the war”—and, as Christopher Benfey argues in his introduction, the essay was very probably written in response to Weil. Bespaloff’s account of the Iliad brings out Homer’s novelistic approach to character and the existential drama of his characters’ choices; it is marked, too, by a tragic awareness of how the Iliad speaks to times and places where there is no hope apart from war.This edition brings together these two influential essays for the first time, accompanied by Benfey’s scholarly introduction and an afterword by the great Austrian novelist Hermann Broch.

    Focusing especially on the incompatible philosophical systems of Hegel and Heidegger within the space of negativity, Giorgio Agamben offers a rigorous reading of numerous philosophical and poetic works to examine how these issues have been traditionally explored. Agamben argues that the human being is not just “speaking” and “mortal” but irreducibly “social” and “ethical.” Giorgio Agamben teaches philosophy at the Collège International de Philosophie in Paris and at the University of Macerata in Italy. He is the author of Means without End (2000), Stanzas (1993), and The Coming Community (1993), all published by the University of Minnesota Press. Karen E. Pinkus is professor of French and Italian at the University of Southern California. Michael Hardt is professor of literature and romance studies at Duke University.

    Such prizes and the competitions they crown are almost as old as the arts themselves, but their number and power - and their consequences for society and culture at large - have expanded to an unprecedented degree in our day. In a wide-ranging overview of this phenomenon, James F. English documents the dramatic rise of the awards industry and its complex role within what he describes as an economy of cultural prestige. Observing that cultural prizes in their modern form originate at the turn of the 20th Century with the institutional convergence of art and competitive spectator sports, English argues that they have in recent decades undergone an important shift - a more genuine and far-reaching globalisation than what has occurred in the economy of material goods.

    The stories she loves most follow other organic patterns found in nature―spirals, meanders, and explosions, among others. Alison’s manifesto for new modes of narrative will appeal to serious readers and writers alike. As Jane Alison writes in the introduction to her insightful and appealing book about the craft of writing: “For centuries there’s been one path through fiction we’re most likely to travel―one we’re actually told to follow―and that’s the dramatic arc: a situation arises, grows tense, reaches a peak, subsides. . . . But: something that swells and tautens until climax, then collapses? Bit masculo-sexual, no? So many other patterns run through nature, tracing other deep motions in life. Why not draw on them, too?”W. G. Sebald’s The Emigrants was the first novel to show Alison how forward momentum can be created by way of pattern, rather than the traditional arc―or, in nature, wave. Other writers of nonlinear prose considered in her “museum of specimens” include Nicholson Baker, Anne Carson, Marguerite Duras, Jamaica Kincaid, Clarice Lispector, Gabriel García Márquez, Susan Minot, David Mitchell, Caryl Phillips, and Mary Robison.Meander, Spiral, Explode is a singular and brilliant elucidation of literary strategies that also brings high spirits and wit to its original conclusions. It is a liberating manifesto that says, Let’s leave the outdated modes behind and, in thinking of new modes, bring feeling back to experimentation. It will appeal to serious readers and writers alike.

    Rider Haggard, whose work has recently attracted new attention from scholars and students. Contributors engage with topics such as industrial culture, religion and science and the broader issues of the politics of gender, sexuality and race. The Companion includes a chronology and a comprehensive Guide to Further Reading.

    It's even bemoaned by poets: "I, too, dislike it," wrote Marianne Moore. "Many more people agree they hate poetry," Ben Lerner writes, "than can agree what poetry is. I, too, dislike it and have largely organized my life around it and do not experience that as a contradiction because poetry and the hatred of poetry are inextricable in ways it is my purpose to explore."In this inventive and lucid essay, Lerner takes the hatred of poetry as the starting point of his defense of the art. He examines poetry's greatest haters (beginning with Plato's famous claim that an ideal city had no place for poets, who would only corrupt and mislead the young) and both its greatest and worst practitioners, providing inspired close readings of Keats, Dickinson, McGonagall, Whitman, and others. Throughout, he attempts to explain the noble failure at the heart of every truly great and truly horrible poem: the impulse to launch the experience of an individual into a timeless communal existence. In The Hatred of Poetry, Lerner has crafted an entertaining, personal, and entirely original examination of a vocation no less essential for being impossible.

    Working with a wide range of texts, as well as movies and television, Auerbach locates vampires at the heart of our national experience and uses them as a lens for viewing the last two hundred years of Anglo-American cultural history. "[Auerbach] has seen more Hammer movies than I (or the monsters) have had steaming hot diners, encountered more bloodsuckers than you could shake a stick at, even a pair of crossed sticks, such as might deter a very sophisticated ogre, a hick from the Moldavian boonies....Auerbach has dissected and deconstructed them with the tender ruthlessness of a hungry chef, with cogency and wit."—Eric Korn, Times Literary Supplement"This seductive work offers profound insights into many of the urgent concerns of our time and forces us to confront the serious meanings that we invest, and seek, in even the shadiest manifestations of the eroticism of death."—Wendy Doniger, The Nation"A vigorous, witty look at the undead as cultural icons."—Kirkus Review"In case anyone should think this book is merely a boring lit-crit exposition...Auerbach sets matters straight in her very first paragraph. 'What vampires are in any given generation,' she writes, 'is a part of what I am and what my times have become. This book is a history of Anglo-American culture through its mutating vampires.'...Her book really takes off."—Maureen Duffy, New York Times Book Review

    -- Alan Dundes. Propp's work is seminal...[and], now that it is available in a new edition, should be even more valuable to folklorists who are directing their attention to the form of the folktale, especially to those structural characteristics which are common to many entries coming from even different cultures. -- Choice

    He takes us into the secret world of "Survivor" Spoilers, where avid internet users pool their knowledge to unearth the show's secrets before they are revealed on the air. He introduces us to young "Harry Potter" fans who are writing their own Hogwarts tales while executives at Warner Brothers struggle for control of their franchise. He shows us how "The Matrix" has pushed transmedia storytelling to new levels, creating a fictional world where consumers track down bits of the story across multiple media channels.Jenkins argues that struggles over convergence will redefine the face of American popular culture. Industry leaders see opportunities to direct content across many channels to increase revenue and broaden markets. At the same time, consumers envision a liberated public sphere, free of network controls, in a decentralized media environment. Sometimes corporate and grassroots efforts reinforce each other, creating closer, more rewarding relations between media producers and consumers. Sometimes these two forces are at war.Jenkins provides a riveting introduction to the world where every story gets told and every brand gets sold across multiple media platforms. He explains the cultural shift that is occurring as consumers fight for control across disparate channels, changing the way we do business, elect our leaders, and educate our children.

    methodologically innovative... precise and perceptive and conscious... " --Text and Performance QuarterlyWoman, Native, Other is located at the juncture of a number of different fields and disciplines, and it genuinely succeeds in pushing the boundaries of these disciplines further. It is one of the very few theoretical attempts to grapple with the writings of women of color." --Chandra Talpade MohantyThe idea of Trinh T. Minh-ha is as powerful as her films... formidable... " --Village Voice... its very forms invite the reader to participate in the effort to understand how language structures lived possibilities." --ArtpaperHighly recommended for anyone struggling to understand voices and experiences of those 'we' label 'other'." --Religious Studies Review

    . . an accepted major work.” This groundbreaking work views in depth both American literature and character from the time of the American Revolution to the present. From it, there emerges Fiedler’s once scandalous―now increasingly accepted―judgment that our literature is incapable of dealing with adult sexuality and is pathologically obsessed with death.