" A clear and accessible demonstration of how contemporary literary theories can be applied to a wide range of texts, from Shakespeare, Bunyan, Sterne, Keats, to James, Stevens, Joyce, Pinter, Updike, and Arthur Miller."

Poetics of the Pretext is an original study of the French poet Lautreamont (1846-1870), who was rediscovered by the Surrealists in the 1920s and promoted to the vanguard of theoretical debate by the 'Telquelists' of the 1960s, but whose work has remained largely ignored or misinterpreted beyond a small circle of enthusiasts. Poetics of the Pretext analyses closely the texts, pretexts and intertexts of this innovative poet, bringing Les Chants de Maldoror and Poesies to the foreground of contemporary critical debates around poetics, genre, intertextuality and influence. This book will make a...

This is the first full-length study in English of Camus's life-long fascination with the works of the Russian writer Feodor Dostoevsky. The purpose of the book is to demonstrate the ways in which Dostoevsky's thought and fiction served to stimulate and crystallize Camus's own thinking. Davison lucidly identifies the lines of divergence and counter-arguments which Camus produced as answers to the challenge of Dostoevsky's Christian/Tzarist vision of life. The traditional methods of comparative literary criticism are jettisoned in favour of the more exciting claim that Camus's literary and...

This is the first full-length study in English of Camus's life-long fascination with the works of the Russian writer Feodor Dostoevsky. The purpose of the book is to demonstrate the ways in which Dostoevsky's thought and fiction served to stimulate and crystallize Camus's own thinking. Davison lucidly identifies the lines of divergence and counter-arguments which Camus produced as answers to the challenge of Dostoevsky's Christian/Tzarist vision of life. The traditional methods of comparative literary criticism are jettisoned in favour of the more exciting claim that Camus's literary and...