The late 19th and early 20th century was a key period of cultural transition in Ireland. Fiction was used in a plainly partisan or polemical fashion to advance changes in Irish society. Murphy explores the outlook of certain important social classes during this time frame through an assessment of Irish Catholic fiction. This highly original study provides a new context for understanding the works of canonical authors such as Joyce and George Moore by discussing them in light of the now almost forgotten writing from which they emerged--the several hundred novels that were written during the...

The analysis of the mythopoetics of a literary work involves the search for mythological archetypes, parallels, paradigms, and motives in a literary text. In a new attempt at an integrated vision of literary works, Zubarev presents a comprehensive approach on the basis of mythopoetics. Her theory is verified through a close examination of four of Chekhov's major plays: "The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters," and "The Cherry Orchard." Zubarev presents a compelling approach to literary analysis, and explores the enigmatic roots of Chekhov's universal significance. Her mythopoetic study...

In a follow-up to his previous Homeric studies, noted classicist Paolo Vivante explores Homer's verse, highlighting rhythm rather than metre. Rhythmical qualities, he argues, constitute the force of the verse--for example, in the way the words take position and in the way each pause hints suspense, producing an immediate sense of time. Vivante's main concern is not with the techniques or rules of the verse-composition, but more philosophically with verse itself as a fundamental form of human expression. This study will be of interest to both students and scholars.

Russian-American poet Joseph Brodsky is one of the most celebrated poets of our time, preoccupied with the the nature and destiny of poetry in our era. This volume analyzes Brodsky's career in terms of key elegies and investigates the critical role of elegiac thinking in postmodernist poetics. In his elegies for poetic ancestors, family, friends, and the self, Brodsky demonstrates a concern for a paradox that is at the heart of modern elegiac poetry: attempting to find a basis for consolation in the face of death, but at length being compelled to discard traditional consolations, such as...

The contact of two different cultures in the colonization process produces a zone of cultural mingling; people who are betwixt and between. Armstrong examines the repercussions of colonization on the lives of women characters in novels about four different post-colonial cultural contexts--Native American, Jamaican, Irish, and Mexican American.

Armstrong begins by examining the particular historical contexts of each novel and the intersecting themes relating to the impact of colonialism such as liminality, mingling of cultures, loss and mourning, and reemergence of repressed history...

An important building block for further advancing world-system theory, this book considers the theory from the perspectives of global processes and antisystemic movements, feminist theory, and the aftermath of the colonial system. The volume addresses three myths tied to Eurocentric forms of thinking: objectivist and universalist knowledges, the decolonization of the modern world, and developmentalism. All three myths, the authors argue, conceal the continued hierarchical and unequal relations of domination and exploitation between European and Euro-American centers and non-European...

This is the most extensive account of Moore's fiction to date that considers his many works from the early stories to the recent novel, No Other Life. Moore, who was born in Ireland but is a Canadian citizen and resides predominantly in the United States, has earned an international reputation as an important novelist. This book sets out to demonstrate a discernible pattern of concerns that cut across Moore's fictive output over the last 40 years. It argues that the concerns of love and faith (and the interplay between them) form the backbone of Moore's oeuvre. Sullivan draws from...

This is the second in a projected three-volume series which will be the standard for the English-speaking world when completed. This series will constitute a major, comprehensive bibliography of English-language works (over 4,100 will be cited in all) on women in Africa for the period 1976-1985; a follow-up volume (targeted for publication in 1993) will cover the years 1986-1990. . . . In Volumes 2 and 3, arrangement is by subject within both regional and national categories. Items are cross-referenced for maximum coverage. . . . Required for college and university libraries supporting...