The diary is a genre that is often thought of as virtually formless, a "capacious hold-all" for the writer s thoughts, and as offering unmediated access to the diarist s true self. Focusing on the diaries of Katherine Mansfield, Virginia Woolf, Antonia White, Joe Orton, John Cheever, and Sylvia Plath, this book looks at how six very different professional writers have approached the diary form with its particular demands and literary potential. As a sequence of separate entries the diary is made up of both gaps and continuities, and the different ways diarists negotiate these aspects of...

This innovative reading of Primo Levi's work offers the first sustained analysis in English of his representations of bodies and embodiment. Discussion spans the range of Levi's works - from testimony to journalism, from essays to science fiction stories - identifying and tracing multiple narratives of embodiment and disembodiment across his oeuvre. These narratives range from the abject, disembodied condition of prisoners in Auschwitz, to posthuman or cyborg individuals, whose bodies merge with technological devices. Levi's representations of bodies are explored in relation to theories of...

This book tells, for the first time, the story of the Situationist International s influence and afterlives in Britain, where its radical ideas have been rapturously welcomed and fiercely resisted. The Situationist International presented itself as the culmination of the twentieth century avant-garde tradition as the true successor of Dada and Surrealism. Its grand ambition was not unfounded. Though it dissolved in 1972, generations of artists and writers, theorists and provocateurs, punks and psychogeographers have continued its effort to confront and contest the society of the spectacle....

Since the nation-state sprang into being in 1965, Singapore literature in English has blossomed energetically, and yet there have been few books focusing on contextualizing and analyzing Singapore literature despite the increasing international attention garnered by Singaporean writers. This volume brings Anglophone Singapore literature to a wider global audience for the first time, embedding it more closely within literary developments worldwide. Drawing upon postcolonial studies, Singapore studies, and critical discussions in transnationalism and globalization, essays unearth and...

This volume explores the role of music as a source of inspiration and provocation for modernist writers. In its consideration of modernist literature within a broad political, postcolonial, and internationalist context, this book is an important intervention in the growing field of Words and Music studies. It expands the existing critical debate to include lesser-known writers alongside Joyce, Woolf, and Beckett, a wide-ranging definition of modernism, and the influence of contemporary music on modernist writers. From the rhythm of Tagore's poetry to the influence of jazz improvisation,...