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The Columbia Companion to Modern East Asian Literature
This extraordinary one-volume guide to the modern literatures of China, Japan, and Korea is the definitive reference work on the subject in the English language. With more than one hundred articles that show how a host of authors and literary movements have contributed to the general literary development of their respective countries, this companion is an essential starting point for the study of East Asian literatures. Comprehensive thematic essays introduce each geographical section with historical overviews and surveys of persistent themes in the literature examined, including nationalism, gender, family relations, and sexuality. Following the thematic essays are the individual entries: over forty for China, over fifty for Japan, and almost thirty for Korea, featuring everything from detailed analyses of the works of Tanizaki Jun'ichiro and Murakami Haruki, to far-ranging explorations of avant-garde fiction in China and postwar novels in Korea. Arrayed chronologically, each entry is self-contained, though extensive cross-referencing affords readers the opportunity to gain a more synoptic view of the work, author, or movement. The unrivaled opportunities for comparative analysis alone make this unique companion an indispensable reference for anyone interested in the burgeoning field of Asian literature. Although the literatures of China, Japan, and Korea are each allotted separate sections, the editors constantly kept an eye open to those writers, works, and movements that transcend national boundaries. This includes, for example, Chinese authors who lived and wrote in Japan; Japanese authors who wrote in classical Chinese; and Korean authors who write in Japanese, whether under the colonial occupation or because they are resident in Japan. The waves of modernization can be seen as reaching each of these countries in a staggered fashion, with eddies and back-flows between them then complicating the picture further. This volume provides a vivid sense of this dynamic interplay.
Critical Insights: Contemporary Latin American Fiction
This volume will explore contemporary Latin American fiction and will focus on authors born after 1950 and works published since the mid-1990s. Authors include Chilean Roberto Bolano, Mexican Daniel Sada, and Costa Rican Ana Cristina Rossi. The volume will also deal with the presence of social media and new technology in current Latin American literature.
Critical Insights: James Baldwin
Although James Baldwin today holds a secure position in the canon of twentieth-century literature, more than twenty years after his death, he still remains one of America's most evasive authors. The body of his work is wide-ranging, complex, and occasionally contradictory, the product of a mind in a tireless dialogue itself and its paradoxical and swiftly changing culture.
Critical Insights: Things Fall Apart
Introductory essays reflect on Achebe's poineering achievement and evaluate the enduring, internations poularity of Things Fall Apart. Also included is a comparison of Things Fall Apart to major literary works within the westerm canon, such as the Odyssey and the Illiad. Other essays discuss the depeiction of gender, the presentation of cultural violence, and the portayal of colonization within the novel.
Essays on Conrad
Ian Watt (1917-1999) has long been acknowledged as one of the finest of postwar literary critics, and among the most learned of those writing about the work of Joseph Conrad. Essays on Conrad is a collection of Watt's most characteristic essays on Conrad's work. Watt's own philosophy, as well as his insight into Conrad's work, was shaped by his experiences as a prisoner of war on the River Kwai. His moving account of these experiences completes this essential collection of Watt essays.
Modernism and Eugenics : Woolf, Eliot, Yeats, and the Culture of Degeneration
In Modernism and Eugenics, Donald Childs reveals how Virginia Woolf, T.S. Eliot, and W.B. Yeats believed in eugenics, the science of racial improvement, and adapted this scientific discourse to the language and purposes of the modern imagination. He traces the impact of the eugenics movement on such modernist works as Mrs. Dalloway, The Waste Land, and Yeats's late poetry and early plays. This is an original study of a controversial theme which reveals the centrality of eugenics in the life and work of several major modernist writers.
Modern Latin American Literature: A Very Short Introduction
In the 1960s, Latin American literature became known worldwide as never before. Writers such as Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Carlos Fuentes, Pablo Neruda, Octavio Paz, and Mario Vargas Llosa all became part of the general culture of educated readers of English, French, German,and Italian. But few know about the literary tradition from which these writers emerged. This Very Short Introduction remedies this situation, providing an overview of modern Latin American literature from the late eighteenth century to the present. Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria covers a wide range of topics, discussing the birth of Modernismo, the first Latin American literary movement; how the end of World War I and the Mexican Revolution produced the avant-garde; and how the Cuban Revolution sparked a movement in the novel that came to beknown as the Boom. Within this narrative, the author covers many of the major writers of Latin American literature, from Andres Bello and Jose Maria de Heredia through Borges and Garcia Marquez to Fernando Vallejo and Roberto Bolano.
The Nightmare of History : The Fictions of Virginia Woolf and D.H. Lawrence
This book examines to what extent the Great War affected the works of Virginia Woolf and D.H.Lawrence. Wussow traces their views of social and historical events, as well as suggesting that violence and the structure of battle is evident in the pre-war writings.
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The Cambridge Companion to James Joyce
This second edition of The Cambridge Companion to Joyce contains several revised essays, reflecting increasing emphasis on Joyce's politics, a fresh sense of the importance of his engagement with Ireland, and the changes wrought by gender studies on criticism of his work. This Companion gathers an international team of leading scholars who shed light on Joyce's work and life. The contributions are informative, stimulating and full of rich and accessible insights which will provoke thought and discussion in and out of the classroom. The Companion's reading lists and extended bibliography offer readers the necessary tools for further informed exploration of Joyce studies. This volume is designed primarily as a students' reference work (although it is organised so that it can also be read from cover to cover), and will deepen and extend the enjoyment and understanding of Joyce for the new reader.
Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart: A Casebook
Chinua Achebe is Africa's most prominent writer, and Things Fall Apart (1958) is the most renowned and widely-read African novel in the global literary canon. Translated into close to sixty languages, Things Fall Apart is the novel that inaugurated the long and continuing tradition ofpostcolonial inquiry into the problematic relations between the West and the countries of the Third World that were once European colonies. This collection explores the artistic, multicultural, and global significance of Things Fall Apart from a variety of critical perspectives. The essays selected for this casebook represent the most important and well-established critical work written on the novel to date. This volume also containsan editor's introduction, an interview with Chinua Achebe, and suggestions for further reading.
Contemporary Fiction : A Very Short Introduction
Contemporary fiction is a wide and diverse field, now global in dimension, with an enormous range of novels and writers that continues to grow at a fantastic speed. In this Very Short Introduction, Robert Eaglestone provides a clear and engaging exploration of the major themes, patterns, and debates of contemporary fiction. From genre, form, and experimentalism to the legacies of modernism and postmodernism, the relationship between globalization and terrorism,and the impact of technology, Eaglestone examines how works both reflect the world in which we live and the artistic concerns of writers and readers alike.
From the Lighthouse to Monk's House
There are five places which intimately link Virginia Woolf's life and work: Cornwall, London, Kent, Cambridge and Rodmell, Sussex. In visiting each of these to compare the real places with their depictions, the author was astonished by the literal accuracy of Woolf's descriptions. This previously neglected aspect of Virginia Woolf's artistry is acknowledged and investigated in some depth for the first time in this book. The works discussed are To the Lighthouse (Cornwall and St.Ives), Mrs. Dalloway (London) Orlando (Knole and Sissinghurst), A Room of One's Own (Cambridge), and Between the Acts (Monk's House, Rodmell). By visiting each of these places the author introduces the general reader to Woolf's books and themes. Those who actually travel to the locations will find this an invaluable guide that provides greater appreciation of Virginia Woolf's works, and more pleasure and information from their journey.
Heart of Darkness
In a novella which remains highly controversial to this day, Conrad explores the relations between Africa and Europe. On the surface, this is a horrifying tale of colonial exploitation. The narrator, Marlowe journeys on business deep into the heart of Africa. But there he encounters Kurtz, an idealist apparently crazed and depraved by his power over the natives, and the meeting prompts Marlowe to reflect on the darkness at the heart of all men. This short but complex and often ambiguous story, which has been the basis of several films and plays, continues to provoke interpretation and discussion. Heart of Darkness grew out of a journey Joseph Conrad took up the Congo River; the verisimilitude that the great novelist thereby brought to his most famous tale everywhere enhances its dense and shattering power. Apparently a sailor's yarn, it is in fact a grim parody of the adventure story, in which the narrator, Marlow, travels deep into the heart of the Congo where he encounters the crazed idealist Kurtz and discovers that the relative values of the civilized and the primitive are not what they seem. Heart of Darkness is a model of economic storytelling, an indictment of the inner and outer turmoil caused by the European imperial misadventure, and a piercing account of the fragility of the human soul. (Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)
The Metamorphosis: Translation, Backgrounds and Contexts, Criticism
The novella is fully annotated and is accompanied by selected textual variants. Backgrounds and Contexts introduces readers to The Metamorphosis in the richest possible setting. The links between the author's life and his work are explored through an examination of his personal writings. Kafka's letters and diary entries illuminate the creative process behind his portrait of Gregor Samsa, his family, and their nightmarish ordeal. Criticism collects seven essays from the period 1970-95 representing the most important currents in literary theory--semiotics, feminism, identity philosophy, New Historicism, and post-Freudian cultural psychoanalysis. The essays offer a variety of perspectives on the novella by Iris Bruce, Nina Pelikan Straus, Kevin W. Sweeney, Mark Anderson, Hartmut Binder, Eric Santner, and Stanley Corngold. A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included.
Notable Crime Fiction Writers
This new, two-volume title features the best crime writers--both classic and contemporary. An incredibly popular genre, crime fiction encompasses both mystery (whodunit) stories that keep readers in suspense and detective fiction which is usually marked by a struggle between good (the law) and evil (the criminal). Each of the more than 300 essays includes a comprehensive overview of the lives of the featured author as well as a detailed look at his or her significant works. Coverage includes the following classic and more recent crime writers: Raymond Chandler Edgar Allen Poe Agatha Christie Dashiell Hammett Megan Abbott Mary Higgins Clark Gillian Flynn Shirley Jackson Asa Larsson Steig Larsson Anne Perry Attica Locke J. K. Rowling and more In addition to essays on individual writers, Notable Crime Fiction Writers includes a number of essays that survey groups of writers who are not treated at length in their own essays. Survey essays cover crime writers whose detectives fall into various groups, including LGBTQ detectives, African American detectives, Asian detectives, Scandinavian detectives, and detectives with disabilities. All individual writer essays are clearly separated into three parts: Contribution indicates the author's unique place in crime fiction; Biography summarizes the author's life, specifically events that led or contributed to their writing; and Analysis provides an overview of the author's work, detailing themes, motifs, and style. Additional features include birth/death dates, pseudonyms, type of plots, lists of significant works, and annotated bibliography. Back matter includes Terms & Techniques, Crime Fiction Jargon, Timeline of Crime Fiction, and several indexes.
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Defining Documents in World History: The 20th Century (1900-1950)
By 1950, the technological advances of the 20th century were in full swing and several important social and political reforms were making their mark. This set offers in-depth analysis of a broad range of historical documents, including legal codes, letters, speeches, constitutions, reports, and books, from "Essential Truths" by Rufus Jones to the Nato Treaty.
Great Events from History: The Twentieth Century, 1901-1940
This six-volume set profiles 1,037 of the most important events during the early years of the 20th century, including World War I, the Russian Revolution, and the rise of the Nazi party.
Great Events from History: The Twentieth Century, 1941-1970
The second in a three-part series on the 20th century, these six volumes include such important events as World War II, the Vietnam War, and the Holocaust.
Great Events from History: The Twentieth Century, 1971-2000
Coverage in this set includes the end of the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War in 1973, the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, and the completion of sequencing the human genome in 2000.
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