Noticed initially as a Native American author, Sherman Alexie has since achieved a reputation as a significant figure in the American literary landscape. The essays in this set discuss many different aspects of Alexie's works. Original essays include a comparison of Alexie's The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven to Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies. Other essays discuss the juxtaposition of poetry and prose fiction in an examination of Reservation Blues, a close reading of The Summer of the BlackWidows, and an overview of his work as writer and director of two films, Smoke...
Noticed initially as a Native American author, Sherman Alexie has since achieved a reputation as a significant figure in the American literary landsca...
Throughout his career and in the decades following his premature death in 1960, Albert Camus gained a large and avid international readership. He has also attracted the interest of scholars from many disciplines, specialists in literature, theater, philosophy, theology, political science, history, psychology, medicine, and law. This volume offers original contributions, while also reprinting a sampling of some of the more trenchant earlier essays about the man and his work. Essays discuss the reception of Camus's oeuvre, themes that have inspired discussion, points of continuing controversy,...
Throughout his career and in the decades following his premature death in 1960, Albert Camus gained a large and avid international readership. He has ...
This collection provides broad coverage of Cheever and his work. Original essays discuss the basic facts of Cheever's life and critical reputation. Providing these facts is especially important in the case of the biography of a man who was not only prone to self-invention and self-mythologizing but whose version of his life was for so long accepted as fact and that has posthumously been complicated by often unflattering revelations about his personal life in his daughter's memoirs, in his published journals and in two biographies. Other essays discuss Cheever's decorous style and fragmented...
This collection provides broad coverage of Cheever and his work. Original essays discuss the basic facts of Cheever's life and critical reputation. Pr...
This volume in the Critical Insights series begins with an essay entitled "On Jack London," which is a brief discussion of his life and works. A longer biographical section follows. Original essays include a discussion of the literary careers of Jack London and Mark Twain and a close examination of the critical reception of London's works. Other essays discuss London's use of Carl Jung's Psychology of the Unconscious, his use of Naturalism in his early works and the themes of androgyny throughout his novels.
This volume in the Critical Insights series begins with an essay entitled "On Jack London," which is a brief discussion of his life and works. A longe...
This volume is an effort to introduce O'Connor to a new generation of readers by including previously published essays that clarify her religious ideas, her narrative technique, her use of humor, and the regional and social context of her fiction. Original essays commissioned especially for this volume make significant new contributions to the understanding and appreciation of her work. Essays discuss the religious context of such stories as "A Good Man is Hard to Find" and "Good Country People." Other essays explore O'Connor's use of humor in the story "Temple of the Holy Ghost" as well as...
This volume is an effort to introduce O'Connor to a new generation of readers by including previously published essays that clarify her religious idea...
John Updike's extensive body of work is the focus of this volume. New essays include a discussion of the social and historical context of Updike's work and a consideration of Updike's recurrent Jewish-American character, the blocked writer Henry Bech, as a vehicle for his creator to treat the relationship between an author and his work and narratively perform the other. Several republished essays discuss Updike's Harry Rabbit Angstrom novels, his Scarlet Letter Trilogy and the novels featuring Harry Bech.
John Updike's extensive body of work is the focus of this volume. New essays include a discussion of the social and historical context of Updike's wor...
The purpose of this collection of essays is to provide the reader who has read or is about to read William Faulkner's novel with as much of a multi-faceted perspective as space will allow. Original essays include a close reading of the novel from the critical standpoint of feminist theory, an analysis of the novel's cultural and historical context and a discussion of the critical reception of Absalom, Absalom! The carefully chosen previously published essays provide a wide range of perspectives on such subjects as theme, protagonists, feminism, storytelling, race, style, Civil War, and time,...
The purpose of this collection of essays is to provide the reader who has read or is about to read William Faulkner's novel with as much of a multi-fa...
This Critical Insights volume is intended to make Dante's Inferno more accessible to inquiring students who will wonder like so many of us at his genius. The contributors to this new volume are in the main Dante scholars of great importance, especially in Anglophone circles, whether in new work by current magisterial authorities or reprints of seminal scholarship over decades. Essays include a close reading of Dante, a chapter comparing and contrasting Dante's Inferno to his other writing, a history of the critical response to his work, and a chapter on the cultural and historical context of...
This Critical Insights volume is intended to make Dante's Inferno more accessible to inquiring students who will wonder like so many of us at his geni...
Original essays in this volume begin with a treatment of the historical background of Shakespeare's play, beginning with its first performances and possible audience reactions. Another offer a close reading of several key passages in King Lear, with an eye to the differences between the first published version and the revisions found in the Folio version of 1623. Two other new essays discuss the ways in which audiences and critics have responded to Shakespeare's tragedy and contrasts Lear with Marlowe's Tamburlaine. The reprinted essays provide readers with a sampling of those diverse but...
Original essays in this volume begin with a treatment of the historical background of Shakespeare's play, beginning with its first performances and po...
Franz Kafka's most famous novella is given the Critical Insights treatment in this volume. Essays include a new lengthy biography about the author which warns that, although The Metamorphosis is considered to be highly autobiographical, it is ultimately a work of the imagination. Other essays include a discussion of the cultural and historical context of the work, the structure and function of self-alienation, Kafka's metaphor for extreme alienation, and a selective survey of the critical reception of The Metamorphosis.
Franz Kafka's most famous novella is given the Critical Insights treatment in this volume. Essays include a new lengthy biography about the author whi...