Kategoria BISAC: Literary Criticism >> English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh

A seemingly simple tale of schoolboys marooned on an island, Lord of the Flies has proven to be one of the most enigmatic and provocative pieces of literature ever published. This casebook probes the many layers of meaning in the novel, examining its literary, philosophical, historical, scientific, and religious significance. Beginning with a literary analysis that explores the universality of the novel's characters, the story is considered as subversion of the adventure tale, comparing it to such classics as Treasure Island and Robinson Crusoe. From these literary...

Generations of readers and movie viewers have been drawn to the spirited heroines of DEGREESUSense and Sensibility and DEGREESUEmma. Prepared especially for students, this full-length critical study of Jane Austen covers her six most beloved works, including the two novels DEGREESUNorthanger Abbey and DEGREESUPersuasion, published posthumously. Young readers will enjoy the vivid biographical account of how Austen herself was just a teenager when she took up the pen and began to write in guarded secrecy. Austen scholar Debra Teachman has a historian's eye for detail as she...

Given their pedagogical nature, many Victorian novels are highly politicized; their narratives are filtered through the value schemes, social views, and conscious purposes of their authors. Victorian women were largely expected to dedicate themselves to the social and moral betterment of their families. Women were expected to be soft, meek, quiet, modest, submissive, gentle, patient, and spiritual; men were supposed to be aggressive, assertive, resilient, disciplined, and competitive. These expectations were repeatedly endorsed through the conduct books of the period, which encouraged...

The numerous and multifaceted ways in which masculinities emerge and are expressed within cultures prompt a broad ranging examination and reconsideration of what it means to be a man. Within the study of masculinity, the early modern period stands between the Renaissance, when conceptions of manhood were primarily dominated by chivalric and humanistic traditions, and the latter half of the 18th century, which marked the beginnings of modern conceptions of masculine identity. But rather than a transitional period, the early modern era was a key moment in the evolutionary dynamics of...

Without some insight into his thinking process, Salman Rushdie's complex novels must remain baffling even to the well-read. This volume puts forward a selection of significant statements made by Rushdie during the last two decades. Given in response to questions by authors, scholars, and journalists, they illuminate the life and work of the most controversial novelist of the last quarter century. Gathered here are Rushdie's utterances ordinarily hard to locate if only because, originally published in journals now defunct, they lie buried in archives across three continents.

The material...

Although Tolkien's literary works have, over the past few decades, attracted a considerable and varied body of criticism, much of this material is inaccessible, unreflective, and repetitive. Most criticism has concentrated on his sources and biographical influences, but such studies generally do not look beyond his interest in medieval literature. Nonetheless, Tolkien's writings have links and resonances with the whole of English literature from Old Norse traditions to contemporary literary thought. This book corrects a striking imbalance in Tolkien scholarship by placing his works within...

While England has been strengthened by a proud isolationism, she has simultaneously been enriched by the economic, social, and political complexities that have emerged as people of different ethnic and cultural backgrounds have moved within her borders, or when her own citizens have emigrated among those foreigners to live or rule. This book explores the foreign element in English culture and the attempt by English writers from the early 19th to the mid 20th century to portray their complex and often ambiguous responses to that doubly foreign element among them: the foreign woman. While...

Wherever vampires existed in the imaginations of different peoples, they adapted themselves to the customs of the local culture. As a result, vampire lore is extremely diverse. So too, representations of the vampire in creative works have been marked by much originality. In "The Vampyre" (1819), John Polidori introduced Lord Ruthven and established the vampire craze of the 19th century that resulted in a flood of German vampire poetry, French vampire drama, and British vampire fiction. This tradition culminated in Bram Stoker's "Dracula" (1897), which fixed the character of the...

Immediately popular when published over a century and a half ago, Jane Eyre has continued to find appreciative audiences since. This student casebook offers a unique interdisciplinary approach to the study of Charlotte Bronte's landmark novel. While it gives insightful literary analysis, it also contextualizes the novel in terms of the historical social issues it confronts. Expert commentary is supported with primary documents from legal and medical treatises, magazine articles, letters, essays and first hand accounts. A personal biography written by Elizabeth Gaskell, an...

Although Othello has been one of Shakespeare's most popular plays, its performance history has been marked with risk and tension because of the play's focus on racial prejudice, gender conflict, and sexuality. The controversies surrounding conflicting attitudes toward race and religion, love and marriage, and war and the military in Shakespeare's time are reflected in the tragic plot and thematic ambiguities of Othello. This interdisciplinary casebook is designed to help students and their teachers explore the historical and modern issues related to the play. By combining...

The 17th century was a time of significant cultural and political change. The era saw the rise of exploration and travel, the growth of the scientific method, and the spread of challenges to conventional religion. Many of these developments occurred in England and North America, and literature of the period reflects the intellectual and emotional fervor of the age. This reference chronicles the lives and works of more than 75 British and American writers of the 17th century.

Included are entries on such major canonical authors as Donne, Milton, and Jonson. The volume also...

"The Merchant of Venice," even in its own time, was considered Shakespeare's most controversial play. Now, one of the most popularly read and performed works, the play raises even more important issues for our day, particularly anti-Semitism and the treatment of Jews. Shakespeare scholar Jay Halio brings together his fascinating literary insights and his considerable knowledge of Shakespeare's world to this student casebook. His analysis of the play helps students interpret Shakespeare's plot and interwoven subplots, the sources that helped shape the play and the characters, and the...

The 20th century witnessed several major cultural movements, including modernism, anti-modernism, and postmodernism. These and other means of understanding and perceiving the world shaped the literature of that era and, with the rise of feminism, resulted in a particularly rich body of literature by women writers. This reference includes alphabetically arranged entries on 58 British women writers of the 20th century. Some of these writers were born in England, while others, such as Katherine Mansfield and Doris Lessing, came from countries of the former Empire or Commonwealth. The volume...

"Wuthering Heights "and "Jane Eyre "have remained continuously popular ever since their 1847 publication. Though their lives were tragically short, Charlotte and Emily Bront DEGREESDe made significant contributions to the history of the novel as a respected literary form. This Student Companion offers an absorbing biographical account of the Bront DEGREESDe sisters' upbringing, tracing the familial and personal influences that shaped their intellectual lives. A literary heritage chapter also helps students grasp the importance of the sisters' literary accomplishments. A thorough, clear...

Best known as the author of Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys continues to draw growing amounts of popular and scholarly attention. This book explores Rhys's sense of world, the cross-cultural and the international in her novels, stories, and autobiographical writing. The volume situates Rhys's writing in relation to the Dominican cultural production with which she was familiar, to Rhys's family's history on the island, and to European ethnographic discourses about white creole people. Special attention is given to the political and ethical locations of Rhys's authorial and narrative...

The Tudor and Stuart eras have been described as England's golden age, in large part because of the flowering of its literary and dramatic culture. Ironically, repressive government controls over freedom of expression existed side-by-side with some of the greatest literary accomplishments of the age, and many of the same issues we wrestle with today were being hotly debated in Renaissance England. This reference book provides a means for students and scholars to combine the highly popular topics of censorship and Renaissance studies.

The 92 entries in this book highlight the...

The collapse of empires has resulted in a remarkable flourishing of indigenous cultures in former colonies. The end of the colonial era has also witnessed a renaissance of creativity in the postcolonial world as modern writers embrace their heritage. The experience of postcoloniality has also drawn the attention of academics from various disciplines and has given rise to a growing body of scholarship. This reference work overviews the present state of postcolonial studies and offers a refreshingly polyphonic treatment of the effects of globalization on literary studies in the 21st century....

The work of James Joyce, especially "Ulysses, " can be fully understood only when the colonial and postcolonial context of Joyce's Ireland is taken into account. Reading Joyce as a postcolonial writer produces valuable new insights into his work, though comparisons of Joyce's work with that of African and Caribbean postcolonial writers provides reminders that Joyce, regardless of his postcolonial status, remains a fundamentally European writer whose perspective differs substantially from that of most other postcolonial writers. In addition to exploring Joyce's writings in light of recent...

Metaphors allow us to describe something new in terms of the familiar. They are culturally and ideologically grounded and help structure language, thoughts, and attitudes. The network of empire building was sustained through a system of metaphors that saw and depicted the colonizer as superior, powerful, and beneficial, and the indigenous population as deviant and primitive. Colonial metaphors included such images as bringing light to dark, barbaric places; journeying to uncharted lands; and educating ignorant natives. This volume studies how Salman Rushdie reworks and reimagines colonial...

One of Lawrence's main concerns in his art was to explore and experiment with new ways of writing about the body. But with one or two notable exceptions, few critics have systematically interrogated the broader ramifications of this concern, especially in terms of contemporary theoretical debates about language, representation, and sexuality. This book remedies that situation by considering some of the social, cultural, and ideological contexts of Lawrence's writings of the body and by engaging closely with his texts from a range of pertinent theoretical positions.

The essays included...