A comprehensive introduction to Middlemarch, offering both general information and an original interpretation. It pays considerable attention to the intellectual and social context surrounding Middlemarch, and situates the work within nineteenth-century traditions of the novel in England and Europe. Karen Chase gives particular emphasis to the Woman Question in Middlemarch.

This is the first critical study of Sons and Lovers to engage with the new Cambridge edition, which prints for the first time the whole text that Lawrence wrote, restoring the sustantial cuts made by the first editor. Michael Black gives special attention to the genesis of the book--the writing and editing processes, where Jessie Chambers and then Edward Garnett made decisive interventions. He analyzes Sons and Lovers in detail, relates it to Lawrence's other works, and traces the history of its reception. Historical context and a guide to further reading are also provided.

Les Fleurs du Mal, once the most infamous book of poems in French literature, has in this century become the most famous and the most admired, owing its "landmark" status to the sheer aesthetic quality of its verses rather than to its judicial condemnation on its first publication in 1857. In this volume, Professor Leakey provides a comprehensive guide to the understanding and appreciation of Les Fleurs du Mal, offering new insights into its composition, themes and style, setting it in its historical context, and devoting a whole chapter to Baudelaire's crowning achievement, Le Cygne.

An introduction to Wordsworth's greatest poem, its creation, historical context, structure and reception history. Stephen Gill places The Prelude in the context of Wordsworth's life, and discusses the various states in which it survives. He gives an account of each book of the 1805 poem, and provides detailed discussion of its blank verse and of the religious viewpoint of the whole. The final chapter is a survey of the work's scholarly and critical reception.

In Doktor Faustus, his last major novel, Thomas Mann attempted to interpret and judge Germany's role in European culture and history since the Reformation. In this study, Michael Beddow analyzes the chief historical, theological, psychological and musical themes of this complex work, and considers Mann's indebtedness to the Faust tradition, Nietzsche, and neo-Marxism. He concludes with an account of the novel's generally hostile reception in defeated Germany. The book also includes a chronological table and a guide to further reading.

This textbook series is ambitious in scope. It provides 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 reading. The...

Galdos's four-part Fortunata and Jacinta (1886 7), the masterpiece among his almost 80 novels, tells the turbulent story of two women, their husbands and their lovers, set against the intricate web of dynastic alliances and class contrasts of Madrid in the 1870s. In this new critical introduction Professor Turner provides information on the history and social life of the times, and analyzes Galdos's theory of realism, his powerful use of imagery and metaphor to express the reality of social, mental and moral conditions, and the artistic merits of his narrative style. The book contains tables...

The Brothers Karamazov, completed in November 1880 just two months before Dostoyevsky's death, displays both his mastery as a storyteller and his significance as a thinker. In this volume, Dr. Leatherbarrow shows that far from being merely a philosophical religious tract, The Brothers Karamazov is an enjoyable and accessible novel. He discusses its major themes, including atheism and belief, the nature of man, socialism and individualism, and the state of European civilization, focusing particulary on those themes of justice, order and disorder, in whose revolutionary treatment he sees the...

This is a new introduction to Zola's masterpiece, published amid controversy in 1876-7. L'Assommoir is analyzed as a social and political novel, as a representative work of literary naturalism, and in the context of its repercussions in the history of the novel. Professor Baguley investigates its complex and sometimes ambiguous themes, its literary structures and its technical innovativeness. He provides a synthesis of the best research and criticism of the novel together with new insights into its interpretations. The biographical and historical context is given, and there is a guide to...

In Boccaccio's innovative text ten young people leave Florence to escape the Black Death of 1348, and organize their collective life in the countryside through the pleasure and discipline of storytelling. David Wallace guides the reader through their one hundred novelle, which explore both new and familiar conflicts with unprecendented subtlety, urgency and humor: everything from the struggle for domestic space, fought out between individual men and women, to the greater politics of the Mediterranean world where Christian and Arab meet. He emphasizes the relationship between the Decameron and...