Scholars from a variety of academic disciplines have been drawn into exhaustive analyses of what went wrong in "e;the terrible 20th Century"e;, as Winston Churchill dubbed it.
Bringing together leading international scholars of contemporary fiction and modern women writers, this book provides authoritative new critical readings of Angela Carter's work from a variety of innovative theoretical and disciplinary approaches.
An illuminating study looking at an influential group of Roman Catholic novelists and writers - Chesterton, Belloc, Waugh, Greene, Spark and David Lodge among others.
'The foreigner' is a familiar character in popular crime fiction, from the foreign detective whose outsider status provides a unique perspective on a familiar or exotic location to the xenophobic portrayal of the criminal 'other'.
In the aftermath of the September 11 terror attacks, the political situation in both the United States and abroad has often been described as a "e;state of exception"e;: an emergency situation in which the normal rule of law is suspended.
In such novels as Hotel World and the Whitbread Prize winning The Accidental, Ali Smith has established herself as one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary fiction.
Mary Butts was an important figure in inter-war modernist circles and one who reviewed and associated with some of the major literary figures of the era, from T.
British Fiction Today provides students and readers with a critical introduction to key authors and novels since 1990 and provides the latest critical perspectives on current British fiction.
Ulysses remains less widely read than most texts boasting such a canonical status, largely due to misunderstanding about how to read it, and this guide provides an easy to follow remedy.
This book provides a concise and highly readable reassessment of Iris Murdoch's engagement with philosophy throughout her life and proposes that she was, most importantly, a philosophical novelist.
'The foreigner' is a familiar character in popular crime fiction, from the foreign detective whose outsider status provides a unique perspective on a familiar or exotic location to the xenophobic portrayal of the criminal 'other'.
British Fictions of the Sixties focuses on the major socio-political changes that marked the sixties in relationship to the development of literature over the decade.
The 1990s violence in the Former Yugoslavia, the worst in Europe since World War II, triggered the conversion of multi-ethnic, multi-religious, and cosmopolitan areas of idiosyncratic and independent socialism into regions of xenophobic nationalism, wars, and, afterwards, Western-style democracy and capitalism.
Modernist troublemaker in the 1890s, Nobel Prize winner in 1920, and indefensible Nazi sympathiser in the 1930s and 40s, Knut Hamsun continues to provoke condemnation, apologia and critical confusion.
Roth and Trauma: The Problem of History in the Later Works (1995-2010) moves beyond a critical reception of Philip Roth's recent fiction that has focused primarily on an interest in post WWII America.
Look Back in Anger is one of the few works of drama that are indisputably central to British culture in general, and its name is one of the most well-known in postwar cultural history.
Defying critical suggestions that the pastoral elegy is obsolete, Iain Twiddy reveals the popularity of the form in the work of major contemporary poets Seamus Heaney, Ted Hughes and Paul Muldoon, Michael Longley, Douglas Dunn and Peter Reading.
An examination of developments in contemporary narrative, placing them in the context of wider social, cultural and technological trends, using a case-study approach.
At first glance, Samuel Beckett's writing-where scenes of violence and cruelty often provide the occasion for an unremittingly bleak comedy-would seem to offer the reader few examples of ethical conduct.
This study approaches the fiction of the 1930s through critical debates about genre, language and history, setting these in their original context, and discussing the generic forms most favoured by novelists at the time.
Reader's Guides provide a comprehensive starting point for any advanced student, giving an overview of the context, criticism and influence of key works.
Margaret Atwood's popular dystopian novel A Handmaid's Tale, engages the reader with a broad range of issues relating to power, gender and religious politics.
From its growth in Europe in the nineteenth century, detective fiction has developed into one of the most popular genres of literature and popular culture more widely.
Introduces the work of James Joyce, the literary, historical and political contexts in which he wrote and his critical reception up to the present day.
From its growth in Europe in the nineteenth century, detective fiction has developed into one of the most popular genres of literature and popular culture more widely.
Long before John Barth announced in his famous 1967 essay that late 20th-century fiction was 'The Literature of Exhaustion,' authors have been retelling and recycling stories.
