Kategoria BISAC: Literary Criticism >> American - General

To read these interviews given between 1969 and 1996 is to gain insights into William Kennedy's high seriousness in pursuing the craft of fiction and to witness the artistic growth of this remarkable writer. The twenty-four interviews in this collection reveal how the opportunities and challenges in Kennedy's writing life parallel those other contemporary writers have faced in the last years of the century.

-The high drama of imagined worlds, - he says, -becomes a Rosetta Stone, the key that unlocks the very real mysteries and complexities of our daily lives.-

-You're inventing out...

A Hitchcock thriller could be a comedy of remarriage or a melodrama of an unknown woman, both Emersonian genres, except for the murderous villain and godlike author, Hitchcock, who pulls the villain's...

A Hitchcock thriller could be a comedy of remarriage or a melodrama of an unknown woman, both Emersonian genres, except for the murderous villain and godlike author, Hitchcock, who pulls the villain's...

Given the long-standing belief that children ought to be shielded from disturbing life events, it is surprising to see how many stories for kids involve killing. Bloody Murder is the first full-length critical study of this pervasive theme of murder in children's literature. Through rereadings of well-known works, such as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories, and The Outsiders, Michelle Ann Abate explores how acts of homicide connect these works with an array of previously unforeseen literary, social, political, and cultural issues. Topics...

Here is a list of three dozen of the top literary locales in the country. The selection of sites is necessarily subjective, yet it attempts to represent geographical, historical, social, and cultural concerns as well as strictly literary interests. Had this list been prepared by the editors of Michelin Guide, they would have added asterisks or stars to the entries:

It is the opinion of the author of Canadian Literary Landmarks that all thirty-six sites are "Worth a journey." It is...

This new edition includes a preface by the author covering Sendak's life, work, and cultural impact in the years since 1994.

Over the course of more than ninety books, in a career that spanned six decades, Maurice Sendak became the most influential and, at times, the most controversial creator of works for children. Each of the books in his trilogy--Where the Wild Things Are, In the Night Kitchen, and Outside Over There--was precedent setting, dramatically expanding the boundaries of subject matter and images that have been conventionally accepted in books...

This book visits the significance of New York City in children s literature, stressing literary, political, and societal influences on writing for young people from the twentieth century to the present day. Contextualized in light of contemporary critical and cultural theory, the chapters examine the varying ways in which children s literature has engaged with New York City as a city space, both in terms of (urban) realism and as "idea," such as the fantasy of the city as a place of opportunity, or other associations. The collection visits not only dominant themes, motifs, and tropes, but...

The discovery of the Rosetta Stone and the subsequent decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphics captured the imaginations of nineteenth-century American writers and provided a focal point for their speculations on the relationships between sign, symbol, language, and meaning. Through fresh readings of classic works by Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville, John T. Irwin's American Hieroglyphics examines the symbolic mode associated with the pictographs.

Irwin demonstrates how American Symbolist literature of the period was motivated by what he calls...

This book begins a new and foundational discussion of maximalism by investigating how the treatment of detail in contemporary literature impels readers to navigate, tolerate, and enrich the cultural landscape of postindustrial America. It studies the maximalist novels of David Foster Wallace, Nicholson Baker, Thomas Pynchon, and others, considering how overly-detailed writing serves the institutional, emotional, and intellectual needs of contemporary readers and writers. The book argues that maximalist novels not only exceed perceived limits of style, subject matter, and scope, but strive...