A close reading of this classic novel that explores the subtle psychology in Tolstoy's characterisation.

Anthony Close's study places Don Quixote in the context of Cervantes' life and literary career, and in the book's cultural and social background. It focuses primarily on the central problems of Cervantine comedy, the use of burlesque, the presentation of characters through dialogue, the narrator's viewpoint, the virtuoso play with registers, and the complex and elusive irony. Using detailed analysis of individual passages, Dr Close shows how the moral themes of the novel are distilled in its humour, and in the characters of Don Quixote and Sancho. He also gives particular attention to the...

Conrad's great novel is a rich study not only of a typical South American country, but of the politics of any underdeveloped country, and for this reason it is permanently topical. Ian Watt addresses Conrad's concerns when writing the work, and provides an accessible introduction, taking account of background, history and politics, and reception and influence.

This novel achieved immediate notoriety through its questioning of marriage, sex and the role of women. Stephen Heath shows how this landmark text captures and articulates a fundamental experience of the postromantic, commerical-industrial, democratic period. He explains how Madame Bovary represents Flaubert's intense personal engagement with the tragedy of bourgeois culture, while at the same time exemplifying the author's commitment to the impersonality of art and the transcendence of style.

This new textbook series is ambitious in scope. It will provide concise and lucid introductions to major works of world literature from classical antiquity to the twentieth century. It is not confined to any single literary tradition or genre, and will cumulatively form a substantial library of textbooks on some of the most important and widely read literary masterpieces. Each book is devoted to a single work and provides a close reading of that text, as well as a full account of its historical, cultural, and intellectual background, a discussion of its influence, and a guide to further...

Swann's Way, published in 1913, is the first part of Proust's seven-part novel A la Recherche du temps perdu. The author's expansion, revision and correction of the work were cut short by his death in 1922, and sixty-six years later editors are still producing variants of the last three volumes based on working notebooks. The novel's structure was compared by its author to that of a cathedral, and its status is that of one of the greatest literary landmarks of the twentieth century. Sheila Stern's study begins with a summary of the whole novel and goes on to give an account of the activity of...

This up-to-date account of the novel's composition, structure, and achievement provides readers with the literary and historical knowledge needed to make sense of the text. Professor Bellos explains how Balzac challenged prevailing nineteenth-century expectations of what novels should be like.

A detailed analysis of the principal themes and unique structure of Dicken's Bleak House.

In this volume the authors seek to illustrate how methods of differential geometry find application in the study of the topology of differential manifolds. Prerequisites are few since the authors take pains to set out the theory of differential forms and the algebra required. The reader is introduced to De Rham cohomology, and explicit and detailed calculations are present as examples. Topics covered include Mayer-Vietoris exact sequences, relative cohomology, Pioncare duality and Lefschetz's theorem. This book will be suitable for graduate students taking courses in algebraic topology and in...

Pound's 800 page Cantos, written over a period of more than fifty years (1917-1969), invites the reader to join the poet on a journey from darkness and despair towards light and positive activity. In this book, George Kearns addresses the reader approaching The Cantos for the first time. He examines the poem's aesthetic and political-ethical-didactic dimensions and shows that despite its complexity and the many objections which can be raised to its poetics and politics, its study can be greatly rewarding.