This accessible Introduction provides an in-depth overview of absurdism and its key figures in theatre and literature.

Dominic Head demonstrates how the novel yields a special insight into important areas of social and cultural history in the second half of the twentieth-century. His study is the most exhaustive survey of post-war British fiction available. Placing novels in their social and historical context, it includes chapters on the state and the novel, class and social change, gender and sexual identity, national identity, and multiculturalism. Accessible and wide-ranging, this is the most current introduction to the subject available.

This comprehensive survey of Spanish poetry includes Iberian and Latin American writing from the Middle Ages to the present. Unlike most literary histories, it offers a non-chronological approach to the subject. It is arranged by genres and forms (epic, ballad, sonnet) and themes and motifs (love, religious and moral poetry, satirical and pure poetry). The wide-ranging selections in this reference make it appropriate for course use.

Including examples from Russia's greatest poets, Michael Wachtel draws on three centuries of verse, from the beginnings of secular literature in the eighteenth century to the present day. The first part of his book is devoted to concepts such as versification, poetic language and tradition. In the second part he examines the ode, the elegy, love poetry, nature poetry and patriotic verse.

Intended as a concise but thorough introduction to the various movements of twentieth century American poets, this book will help readers understand and analyze modern and contemporary poems. It covers the work of major modernists such as Robert Frost, Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, and Marianne Moore, as well as the poets of the Harlem Renaissance, the New Critics, the Confessionals, and the Beats.

An overview of how modernism emerged, how it is defined, and how it developed in different forms and genres.

The past century has witnessed the extraordinary flowering of fiction, poetry and drama from countries previously colonised by Britain, an output which has changed the map of English literature. This introduction, from a leading figure in the field, explores a wide range of Anglophone post-colonial writing from Africa, Australia, the Caribbean, India, Ireland and Britain. Lyn Innes compares the ways in which authors shape communal identities and interrogate the values and representations of peoples in newly independent nations. Placing its emphasis on literary rather than theoretical texts,...

A comprehensive introduction for those beginning to study Yeats.

This is an eloquent and accessible introduction to one of the most important writers of the twentieth century. This book provides biographical and contextual information, but more fundamentally, it also considers how we might think about an enduringly difficult and experimental novelist and playwright who often challenges the very concepts of meaning and interpretation. It deals with his life, intellectual and cultural background, plays, prose, and critical response and relates Beckett's work and vision to the culture and context from which he wrote. McDonald provides a sustained analysis of...

This pioneering book introduces students to the practice and art of creative writing and creative reading. It offers a fresh, distinctive and beautifully written synthesis of the discipline. David Morley discusses where creative writing comes from, the various forms and camouflages it has taken, and why we teach and learn the arts of fiction, poetry and creative nonfiction. He looks at creative writing in performance; as public art, as visual art, as e-literature and as an act of community. As a leading poet, critic and award-winning teacher of the subject, Morley finds new engagements for...