With Bleak House and Hard Times, Charles Dickens inaugurated a series of novels now known as "later Dickens"-works with a darker mood and more strident satire than his earlier fiction. Though immensely popular, these books are only partly understood, Alexander Welsh contends. In this sequel to his acclaimed From Copyright to Copperfield, Welsh closely examines the two novels and reassesses a crucial stage of Dickens's career.
With Bleak House and Hard Times, Charles Dickens inaugurated a series of novels now known as "later Dickens"-works with a darker mood and more striden...
Focusing on Shakespeare's Hamlet as foremost a study of grief, Alexander Welsh offers a powerful analysis of its protagonist as the archetype of the modern hero. For over two centuries writers and critics have viewed Hamlet's persona as a fascinating blend of self-consciousness, guilt, and wit. Yet in order to understand more deeply the modernity of this Shakespearean hero, Welsh first situates Hamlet within the context of family and mourning as it was presented in other revenge tragedies of Shakespeare's time. Revenge, he maintains, appears as a function of mourning rather...
Focusing on Shakespeare's Hamlet as foremost a study of grief, Alexander Welsh offers a powerful analysis of its protagonist as the archetyp...
For about three thousand years comedy has applied a welcome humanist perspective to the world's religious beliefs and practices. From the ancient Greek comedies of Aristophanes, the famous poem by Lucretius, and dialogues of Cicero to early modern and Enlightenment essays and philosophical texts, together with the inherent skepticism about life after death in tragicomedies by Plautus, Shakespeare, Moliere, and nineteenth-century novels by such as Dickens and Hugo, the literary critic and historian Alexander Welsh analyzes the prevalence of openness of mind and relieving good humor in Western...
For about three thousand years comedy has applied a welcome humanist perspective to the world's religious beliefs and practices. From the ancient Gree...
One of the most influential works on Sir Walter Scott, The Hero of the Waverley Novels is a model for reconstructing ideas common at a given period in time. In this book Alexander Welsh draws upon the entire canon of Scott's fiction to demonstrate its bearing on property and the behavior prescribed for the propertied classes. Analyzing the "passive hero"--the protagonist who is acted upon by outside forces--he shows how Scott became such a powerful influence for nineteenth-century literature and history. Welsh has updated his book with an essay on history and revolution in Old...
One of the most influential works on Sir Walter Scott, The Hero of the Waverley Novels is a model for reconstructing ideas common at a given...
One of the most influential works on Sir Walter Scott, The Hero of the Waverley Novels is a model for reconstructing ideas common at a given period in time. In this book Alexander Welsh draws upon the entire canon of Scott's fiction to demonstrate its bearing on property and the behavior prescribed for the propertied classes. Analyzing the "passive hero"--the protagonist who is acted upon by outside forces--he shows how Scott became such a powerful influence for nineteenth-century literature and history. Welsh has updated his book with an essay on history and revolution in Old...
One of the most influential works on Sir Walter Scott, The Hero of the Waverley Novels is a model for reconstructing ideas common at a given...
