For three centuries grammarians have argued about the necessity of parentheses. While some consider them subordinate, additional, irrelevant, and even damaging to the clarity of argument, Lennard's history explores how writers such as Marlowe, Swift, Coleridge, Browning, Derek Walcott, and e.e. cummings used them in their work as vehicles for pointing dramatic gesture, controlling tone, adding humor, and intensifying satire, in addition to contributing to the clarity of argument. Lennard offers both a new history of the poetic use of parentheses from their first appearance in England in 1494...

Taking up where Of Modern Dragons (2007) left off, these essays continue Lennard's investigation of the praxis of serial reading and the best genre fi ction of recent decades, including work by Bill James, Walter Mosley, Lois Mcmaster Bujold, and Ursula K. Le Guin. There are groundbreaking studies of contemporary paranormal romance, and of Hornblower's transition to space, while the fi nal essay deals with the phenomenon and explosive growth of fanfi ction, and with the increasingly empowered status of the reader in a digital world. There is an extensive bibliography of genre and critical...