Comparison underlies all reading. Readers compare words to words, and books to all the other books which they have read. Some books, however, demand a particular comparative effort -- for example, novels which contain parallel plot lines. In this ambitious and important study Catherine Brown compares Daniel Deronda with Anna Karenina and Women in Love in order to answer the following questions: why does one protagonist in each novel fail whilst another succeeds? Can their failure and success be understood on the same terms? How do the novels' uses of comparison compare to each other? How...
Comparison underlies all reading. Readers compare words to words, and books to all the other books which they have read. Some books, however, demand a...
William Blake never travelled to the continent, yet his creation myth is far more European than has ever been acknowledged. The painter Henry Fuseli introduced Blake to traditional European thinking, and Blake responded to late 18th century body-theory in his Urizen books (1794-95), which emerged from his professional work as a copy-engraver on Henry Hunter's translation of Johann Caspar Lavater's Essays on Physiognomy (1789-98). Lavater's work contains hundreds of portraits and their physiognomical readings. Blake, Fuseli, Joshua Reynolds and their contemporaries took a keen interest in the...
William Blake never travelled to the continent, yet his creation myth is far more European than has ever been acknowledged. The painter Henry Fuseli i...
On Zeus' order, Prometheus was chained to Mount Caucasus where, every day, he was to endure his liver being devoured by a bird of prey -- his punishment for bringing fire to mankind. Through the impulse of Goethe, his fortune went through radical changes: the Titan, originally perceived as a trickster, was established both as a creator and a rebel freed from guilt, and he became a mask for the Romantic artist. This cross-disciplinary study, encompassing literature, the history of art, and music, examines the constitution of the Prometheus myth and the revolution it underwent in 19th-century...
On Zeus' order, Prometheus was chained to Mount Caucasus where, every day, he was to endure his liver being devoured by a bird of prey -- his punishme...
Does the way in which buildings are looked at, and made sense of, change over the course of time? How can we find out about this? By looking at a selection of travel writings spanning four centuries, Anne Hultzsch suggests that it is language, the description of architecture, which offers answers to such questions. The words authors use to transcribe what they see for the reader to re-imagine offer glimpses at modes of perception specific to one moment, place and person. Hultzsch constructs an intriguing patchwork of local and often fragmentary narratives discussing texts as diverse as the...
Does the way in which buildings are looked at, and made sense of, change over the course of time? How can we find out about this? By looking at a sele...
Since the revelation of Iris Murdoch's (1919-1999) affair with Elias Canetti (1905-1994), scholarship on their relationship has been largely biographical, focusing in particular on Canetti's alleged role as the real-life model for some of Murdoch's most invidious protagonists. Little research, however, has been done on the extensive common ground between the two writers' literary projects. In this groundbreaking comparative study, Elaine Morley conducts a careful philological comparison of Murdoch's and Canetti's works, from their literary themes and theories to their idiosyncratic stylistic...
Since the revelation of Iris Murdoch's (1919-1999) affair with Elias Canetti (1905-1994), scholarship on their relationship has been largely biographi...
The nineteenth century realist author was a contradictory figure. He was the focus of literary criticism, but obscured his creative role by insisting on presenting his works as 'copies' of reality. He was a celebrity who found himself subservient to publishers and the public, in a newly-industrialised literary marketplace. He was the owner of his work who was divested of his property by imperfect copyright laws, playwrights who adapted his novels for the stage, and sequel-writers. This combination of a conspicuous yet precarious status with a self-effacing attitude was expressed by an image...
The nineteenth century realist author was a contradictory figure. He was the focus of literary criticism, but obscured his creative role by insisting ...
