Literary companions, book reviews and guides

A lively and accessible introduction to the variety, depth, and wonder of Chaucer''s best-known poem.

This volume offers a literary and cultural history of the idea of crusading over the last millennium.

Considering Brazilian novelist Clarice Lispector's literature as a case study and a source of theory, Writing by Ear presents an aural theory of the novel based on readings of Near to the Wild Heart (1943), The Besieged City (1949), The Passion According to G.

A new collection of essays that offers exciting new critical approaches to the most famous vampire in literature and film.

'Generous, enjoyable and well informed.

Eighteenth-century British culture was transfixed by the threat of contagion, believing that everyday elements of the surrounding world could transmit deadly maladies from one body to the next.

A thrilling and gruesome look at the science that influenced Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

Nobel laureate Elias Canetti wrote his novel Auto-da-Fe (Die Blendung) when he and the twentieth century were still quite young.

Biblical poetry, written between the fourth and eleventh centuries, is an eclectic body of literature that disseminated popular knowledge of the Bible across Europe.

Closely examining Jacques Lacan's unique mode of engagement with philosophy, Lacan with the Philosophers sheds new light on the interdisciplinary relations between philosophy and psychoanalysis.

A unique reference book for all fans of Anthony Powell's 12-volume novel, A Dance to the Music of Time, which has become a literary landmark of twentieth-century writing.

First published in 1983, Hugh MacDiarmid: The Terrible Crystal is a detailed introduction to the poetry of Hugh MacDiarmid.

A fully revised critical overview of Atwood''s career, emphasising her recent dystopias and the televised adaptation of The Handmaid''s Tale.

Andalucia is the quintessence of Spain and yet, historically and culturally, it is surprisingly unlike the rest of the country.

A lively and accessible account of the most popular form of nineteenth-century English theatre, and its continuing influence today.

Providing the most complete record possible of texts by Italian writers active after 1900, this annotated bibliography covers over 4,800 distinct editions of writings by some 1,700 Italian authors.

In these changing times of global flows of media and technologies and reports of declining reading enjoyment, researchers, policymakers and educators need to engage anew with essential issues of what counts as reading, what kinds of reading matter and how to support teen reading engagement in school and out-of-school settings.

French Ecocritique is the first book-length study of the culturally specific ways in whicha contemporary French literature and theory raise questions about nature and environment.

First published in 1988.

First published in 1952.

Comparative Literature explores an 'area of interest' rather than a special discipline.

'A hugely entertaining and well-written tour of the links between math and literature.

This volume is a comprehensive collection of critical essays on The Taming of the Shrew, and includes extensive discussions of the play's various printed versions and its theatrical productions.

How does Victorian fiction represent personality?

Featuring three original and 14 classic essays, this volume examines literary representations of women in Arthuriana and how women artists have viewed them.

First published in 1986.

Explores 1930s authors, genres, and contexts, giving fresh attention to well-known authors and bringing new writers and approaches to the fore.

First published in 1968.

A hierarchical model of human societies' relations with the natural world is at the root of today's climate crisis; Narrating the Mesh contends that narrative form is instrumental in countering this ideology.

Fashioned Texts and Painted Books examines the folding fan's multiple roles in fin-de-siecle and early twentieth-century French literature.

It has been said that the difference between and language and a dialect is that a language is a dialect with an army.

This three-volume collection brings together the best of C.

This title, first published in 1961, explores the general background of attitudes, beliefs and ideas from which Eliot's works have originated.

First published in 1963.

The object of this study, first published in 1980, is to dispel the view that James Joyce had no political views.

Edward Lobb's study, first published in 1981, is a thorough examination of Eliot's relation to Romantic criticism.

How have African American writers drawn on "e;bad"e; black men and black boys as creative touchstones for their evocative and vibrant art?

An overview of popular literature from the early nineteenth century to the present day from a historical and comparative perspective.

The fact that Eliot disapproved of Romanticism is clear from his critical essays, where he often appears to reject it absolutely.

Offering guidance and inspiration to English literature instructors, this book faces the challenges of real-life teaching and the contemporary higher education classroom head on.

"e;A book club gives the opportunity to meet up with friends andwake the brain up a bit with lively and often quite aggressivediscussion"e; Dawn FrenchHow do you keep your reading groups discussions lively andfocussed?

The site of a thriving literary tradition, Washington, DC, has been the home to many of our nation's most acclaimed writers.

Illuminates the pleasures and challenges of Shakespeare''s complex language for today''s students, teachers, actors and theatre-goers.

Vladimir Sorokin is the most prominent and the most controversial contemporary Russian writer.

This book deals with all aspects of the Merlin legend, from its origins to its expression in medieval and modern literature, film, and popular culture.