Literary Criticism - General

Their Own Society is a selection of essays, reviews, and talks written during Mitchell's career as a poet & teacher that considers what poetry is, does, and sometimes struggles to do. The book makes no central thesis about the state of American poetry today,...

Metaphysical Healing is a short work by the healer, mystic, and educator Joel S. Goldsmith. It explores the true nature of self as an infinite spiritual consciousness that brings forth health, peace, and joy. Goldsmith was born in 1892 in New York City. His...

Metaphysical Healing is a short work by the healer, mystic, and educator Joel S. Goldsmith. It explores the true nature of self as an infinite spiritual consciousness that brings forth health, peace, and joy. Goldsmith was born in 1892 in New York City. His...

Cicero's so-called Academica is a significant text for European cultural and intellectual history: as a substantial and self-contained body of evidence for one of the two varieties of scepticism in antiquity, as evidence for Stoic thought presented on its own terms and in interaction...

'To err is human'. As a material and mechanical process, early printing made no exception to this general rule. Against the conventional wisdom of a technological triumph spreading freedom and knowledge, the history of the book is largely a story of errors and adjustments....

Anthropocene Theater and the Shakespearean Stage revises the anthropocentric narrative of early globalization from the perspective of the non-human world in order to demonstrate Nature's agency in determining ecological, economic, and colonial outcomes. It welcomes readers to reimagine theater history in broader terms, and...

In Medieval Allegory as Epistemology, Marco Nievergelt argues that late medieval dream-poetry was able to use the tools of allegorical fiction to explore a set of complex philosophical questions regarding the nature of human knowledge. The focus is on three of the most widely...

This book analyses changing views on bilingualism in Cognitive Psychology and explores their socio-cultural embeddedness. It offers a new, innovative perspective on the debate on possible cognitive (dis)advantages in bilinguals, arguing that it is biased by popular "language myths", which often manifest themselves in...

The 1970s and 1980s heralded the rise of neoliberalism in United States culture, fundamentally reshaping life and work in the United States. Corporate culture increasingly penetrated other aspects of American life through popular press CEO autobiographies and management books that encouraged individuals to understand...

This book contributes to the development of contemporary historical fiction studies by analysing neo-Georgian fiction, which, unlike neo-Victorian fiction, has so far received little critical attention. The essays included in this collection study the ways in which the selected twentieth- and twenty-first-century novels recreate...

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States,...

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States,...

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States,...

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States,...

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States,...

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States,...

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States,...

The Shelf2Life Children's Literature and Fiction Collection is a charming set of pre-1923 nursery rhymes, fairy tales, classic novels and short stories for children and young adults. From a tardy white rabbit, spirited orphan and loyal watchdog to a dreamer named Dorothy, this collection...

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States,...

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States,...

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States,...

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States,...

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States,...

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States,...

"What decided me to go to Lhasa was, above all, the absurd prohibition which closes Thibet." One of the great adventure classics, published in 1927, and considered one of the best adventure books of the last 100 years by Outside magazine, My Journey to...

Introduction to Digital Humanities is designed for researchers, teachers, and learners in humanities subject areas who wish to align their work with the field of digital humanities. Many institutions are encouraging digital approaches to the humanities, and this book offers guidance for students and...

This is an inspiring book about writing and-more unusually-a book that honors ambition, that idiosyncratic drive that compels writers and other artists to action despite every kind of obstacle. Upton explores forces that threaten our ability to fulfill the most daring aspirations, and she...

Je Suis L'Autre: Essays and Interrogations, is a collection of lyric criticism that speaks to a rapidly changing literary landscape, with elements of personal narrative, craft analysis, and cultural commentary. By offering a hybrid approach to scholarly writing, Darling's prose establishes a poetic sensibility...

Editors Ilya Kaminsky and Katherine Towler have gathered conversations with nineteen of America's leading poets, reflecting upon their diverse experiences with spirituality and the craft of writing. Bringing together poets who are Christian, Buddhist, Jewish, Muslim, Pagan, Native American, Wiccan, agnostic, and otherwise, this...

Written by the great medieval Jewish philosopher Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed attempts to explain the perplexities of biblical language-and apparent inconsistencies in the text-in the light of philosophy and scientific reason. Composed as a letter to a student, The Guide aims to...

A critical analysis of David C. Kang's China Rising, which is a fine example of an author making use of creative thinking skills to reach a conclusion that flies in the face of traditional thinking. The conventional view that the book opposed, known in...

Toni Morrison's Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination is a seminal piece of literary criticism, and a masterclass in the critical thinking skill of interpretation. Interpretation plays a vital role in critical thinking: it focuses on interrogating accepted meanings and laying...

In The Night Battles, Carlo Ginzburg does more than introduce his readers to a novel group of supposed witches - the Benandanti, from the northern Italian province of Friulia. He also invents and deploys new and creative ways of tackling his source material that...

Michael E. Porter's 1980 book Competitive Strategy is a fine example of critical thinking skills in action. Porter used his strong evaluative skills to overturn much of the accepted wisdom in the world of business. By exploring the strengths and weaknesses of the accepted...

Charles Darwin called on a broad and unusually powerful combination of critical thinking skills to create his wide-ranging explanation for biological change, On the Origin of Species. It's one of those rare books that takes a huge problem - the enormous diversity of different...

Georges Lefebvre was one of the most highly-regarded historians of the 20th century - and a key reason for the high reputation he enjoys can be found in The Coming of the French Revolution. Lefebvre's key contribution to the debate over what remains arguably...

John Lewis Gaddis had written four previous books on the Cold War by the time he published We Now Know - so the main thrust of his new work was not so much to present new arguments as to re-examine old ones in the...

A critical analysis of African-American novelist and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston' 1934 essay Characteristics of Negro Expression: A crushing evaluation of the many racial prejudices of 1930s America, including a common presumption that African American art was unoriginal - merely poorly copying white culture....

Few works can claim to form the foundation stones of one entire academic discipline, let alone two, but Thucydides's celebrated History of the Peloponnesian War is not only one of the first great works of history, but also the departure point from which the...

Thomas Robert Malthus' 1798 Essay on the Principle of Population helped change the direction of economics, politics, and the natural sciences with its reasoning and problem solving. The central topic of the essay was the idea, extremely prevalent in the 18th and 19th centuries,...

The Rule of St Benedict, written around 1500 years ago by the Italian monk St Benedict of Nursia, is a slim handbook for monastic life - a subject many modern readers would regard as relatively niche. It is, however, also a model of the...

René Descartes's 1641 Meditations on First Philosophy is a cornerstone of the history of western thought. One of the most important philosophical texts ever written, it is also a masterclass in the art of critical thinking - specifically when it comes to reasoning and...

Gilbert Ryle's 1949 The Concept of Mind is now famous above all as the origin of the phrase "the ghost in the machine" - a phrase Ryle used to attack the popular idea that our bodies and minds are separate. His own position was...

In Civil Disobedience, Henry David Thoreau looks at old issues in new ways, asking: is there ever a time when individuals should actively oppose their government and its justice system?After a thorough review of the evidence, Thoreau comes to the conclusion that opposition is...

Benedict Anderson's 1983 masterpiece Imagined Communities is a ground-breaking analysis of the origins and meanings of "nations" and "nationalism". A book that helped reshape the field of nationalism studies, Imagined Communities also shows the critical thinking skills of interpretation and analysis working at their...

This is an illustrated reading guide to Heather Morris's bestselling novel The Tattooist of Auschwitz.Although presented as a novel, Lale Sokolov's story contains important eyewitness testimony that has previously not been documented in other histories of Auschwitz. There have been criticisms about the novel's...

The Hebrew Bible abounds in imagery linking feelings and emotions with various parts of the body. These vividly painted word pictures capture the imagination, and the reader can identify physically as well as emotionally with what is being expressed. But this colourful imagery, with...

Marie Adelheid, Prinzessin Reu -zur Lippe was a rebellious young woman and aspiring writer from an ancient princely family who became a fervent Nazi. Heinrich Vogeler was a well-regarded Jugendstil artist who was to join the German Communist Party and later emigrate to the...

This edition includes all of Dowson's known poems. It describes in detail the contents of his manuscript notebook and re-transcribes the poems from it; it includes his two published volumes, Verses (1896) and Decorations (1899), his verse play The Pierrot of the Minute, the...

Here you will find the collective experience of three writers and editors distilled into a complete guide to writing science fiction. Separate chapters cover Idea, Plot, Character, Background, Science, Tragedy, and Comedy. Twelve stories, each a first sale by its author, illustrate the main...