Literary Criticism - General

This remarkable book by one of the great writers of the twentieth century includes essays on a proposed universal language, a justification of suicide, a refutation of time, the nature of dreams, and the intricacies of linguistic forms. Borges comments on such literary figures...

"Irritating, insufferable, admirable, stimulating, disappointing Rodó . . . you are part of our family quarrels, and must bear with your disrespectful, equally disappointed, intuitive, incomplete nephews, living in a world that you helped define for us, and offered unto our revolt." --from the...

Over the last few decades, character-based criticism has been seen as either naive or obsolete. But now questions of character are attracting renewed interest. Making the case for a broad-based revision of our understanding of character, Character rethinks these questions from the ground up....

A magnificent compilation of sacred writings from all traditions and the perfect companion to Stephen Mitchell's poetry collection, The Enlightened Heart, and the bestselling Tao Te ChingA collection of prose--discourses, sermons, essays, and aphorisms--includes texts and authors such as the Hindu, Confucian, and Buddhist...

bVery Short Introductionsb: Brilliant, Sharp, Inspiring /b In 1816, when eighteen-year old Mary Godwin began writing Frankenstein, the idea that a woman could dream up such a tale was as far-fetched as raising a being from the dead. But Mary wasn't just any woman....

The life of Jef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski reads like an adventure story, an adventure story that could be written by somebody like Joseph Conrad. The young Conrad dreamed of a life at sea, he eventually became a British merchant seaman and he spent fifteen...

World famous at twenty-four, brilliant and reckless, hard-living and scandalous, Stephen Crane wrote The Red Badge of Courage before he ever experienced war first-hand. So true was his portrait of a young man who runs from his first confrontation with battle that Civil War...

This successful introduction to intertextuality deftly introduces this crucial area and relates its significance to key theories and movements in the study of literature. The third edition is updated to include a brand new chapter, looking at intermediality, and how the study of intertextuality...

Living through the Nazi occupation of Holland and arriving in Montreal with little more than a film reel under his arm, Co Hoedeman had a dream to work for the National Film Board of Canada's renowned animation unit. It was there where he became...

The story of peace and war in the mythical land of Hatu. A rogue wizard tries to exact revenge on the last descendant of those who destroyed the staff of power thousands of years ago. Elves, Men, and Dwarves join in the defense of...

"People need trees, people need beauty. This is the life of the White Swan."The White Swan is a exhortation of power and beauty. The literary debut of short story author, parodist, and new immigrant Faisal Marzipan, The White Swan blends cultural critique, satire, Christianity,...

Now in its fourth edition, this popular textbook introduces prospective and practicing English teachers to current methods of teaching literature in middle and high school classrooms. This new edition broadens its focus to cover important topics such as critical race theory; perspectives on teaching...

Literary Nonfiction. Essays. Sarah Kasbeer's vivid descriptions of growing up in Illinois recall the coming-of-age memoirs of Mary Karr, but written for the #MeToo era. As an adult living in New York during this clarifying cultural moment, she has no choice but to fully...

Literary Nonfiction. Poetry. Asian & Asian American Studies. Of all the Buddhists in China, Japan, and Korea, the vast majority follow teachings centered on rebirth in the Pure Land, or Western Paradise, of Amitabha Buddha. All Buddhist sutras are about the mind, the mind...

C.S. Lewis's 1943 The Abolition of Man is a set of three essays that encapsulate some of the most important elements of good critical thinking. Lewis considers a weighty topic, moral philosophy - and more precisely how we teach it, and where morality comes...

Baruch Spinoza's Ethics is a dense masterpiece of sustained argumentative reasoning. It earned its place as one of the most important and influential books in Western philosophy by virtue of its uncompromisingly direct arguments about the nature of God, the universe, free will, and...

Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid 19th century. He was seen as a champion of individualism and a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society, and he disseminated his thoughts through...

Literary Nonfiction. Memoir. Humor. Music. Of all of Raymond Smullyan's many books, A MIXED BAG: JOKES, PUZZLES, RIDDLES AND MEMORABILIA perhaps best captures the timeless delight of the casual conversation of this American polymath. A seamless continuum of jokes, stories, puzzles, and reflections, caught...

Les Mis駻ables, the powerful story of Jean Valjean's redemption, is beloved by readers and theatre goers everywhere. Why? Because Victor Hugo's epic novel explores, through Valjean's heroic journey and transformations, truths and delusions about politics, morality, justice, religion, and both romantic and familial love....

Now in paperback, today's most celebrated writers explore literature and the literary life in an inspirational collection of original essays. By turns poignant, hilarious, and practical, Writers on Writing brings together more than forty of contemporary literature's finest voices. Pieces range from reflections on...

Artemisia Gentileschi, born in 1598, the daughter of an esteemed painter, taught art in Naples and painted the great women of Roman and biblical history. She could neither read nor write, and she was the reviled victim in a public rape trial, rejected by...

A year in Paris . . . since World War II, countless American students have been lured by that vision-and been transformed by their sojourn in the City of Light. Dreaming in French tells three stories of that experience, and how it changed the...

A gripping tale of adventure that has enthralled readers since it was first published, John Buchan's The Thirty-Nine Steps is edited with an introduction and notes by Sir John Keegan in Penguin Classics. Adventurer Richard Hannay has just returned from South Africa and is...

Luis Felipe Fabre's WRITING WITH CACA essays a lyric investigation of the Mexican modernist writer Salvador Novo. The book centers around an investigation and reclaiming of Los Anales, the original, derogatory nickname given to Novo and his compadres in the modernist group Los Contempor疣eos....

The book "" The Bookbinder in Eighteenth-Century Williamsburg; An Account of His Life & Times, & of His Craft, has been considered important throughout the human history, and so that this work is never forgotten we have made efforts in its preservation by republishing...

By bringing science into poetry, we open the possibility of discovering new forms and philosophies of poetry, new perspectives on our relationship to the Earth and our place in the universe, and even new scientific insights. In Poetry and Science: Writing Our Way to...

Literary Nonfiction. Art. Since the start of the global pandemic of 2020 the comic book art of M.J. Hiblen has touched hearts across the world--his more than 325,000 followers on social media include fans like Mark Hamill and Chris Hemsworth. Hiblen has highlighted, in...

Literary Nonfiction. Hurd's brilliant book about climate change is also a book about storytelling, about paying attention to little, most invisible things that manage to survive without heroics, or the help of heroes. There are many books about climate change, but none like hers...

Does music have to be smart or does it just have to go to the heart?Chilly Gonzales is one of the most exciting, original, hard-to-pin-down musicians of our time, known as much for the intimate piano touch of his best-selling Solo Piano album trilogy...

Throughout his career, Robert B. Pippin has examined the relationship between philosophy and the arts. With his writings on film, literature, and visual modernism, he has shown that there are aesthetic objects that cannot be properly understood unless we acknowledge and reflect on the...

The need for this study has never been greater. More than 50 years since its appearance, Dune is only increasing in relevance, as the rise of ISIS in the Middle East has recently shown. Now Mahmoud Shelton examines a world of psychic confusion in...

How does a novel entice or enlist us? How does a song surprise or seduce us? Why do we bristle when a friend belittles a book we love, or fall into a funk when a favored TV series comes to an end? What characterizes...

Known for her bestselling detective novels, Dorothy L. Sayers lived a fascinating, groundbreaking life as a novelist, feminist, Oxford scholar, and important influence on the spiritual life of C.S. Lewis. This pioneering woman not only forged a literary career for herself but also spoke...

Antonio Gramsci's Prison Notebooks is a remarkable work, not only because it was written in jail as the Italian Marxist thinker fell victim to political oppression in his home country, but also because it shows his impressive analytical ability.First published in 1948, 11 years...

Gary Indiana's collected columns of art criticism from the Village Voice, documenting, from the front lines, the 1980s New York art scene.In 1985, the Village Voice offered me a job as senior art critic. This made my life easier and lousy at the same...

Tender Points is a narrative fractured by trauma. Named after the diagnostic criteria for fibromyalgia, the book-length lyric essay explores sexual violence, chronic pain, and patriarchy through lived experience and pop culture. First published in 2015, this new edition includes an afterword by the...

"[They] said I couldn't live as a gay man, but it looks like I'm going to die like one." Good Midwestern girls did not grow up to be gay men and die from AIDS. Unless they were transgender pioneer Lou Sullivan (1951-1991). In this...

Brian Richardson presents a study that explores in depth one of the most significant aspects of late modernist, avant-garde, and postmodern narrative. Unnatural Voices analyzes in depth the creation, fragmentation, and reconstitution of experimental narrative voices that transcend familiar first- and third-person perspectives. Going...

The first comprehensive collection of hands-on exercises that bring active learning to the literature classroom This is the first comprehensive collection of hands-on, active learning exercises for the college literature classroom, offering ideas and inspiration for new and veteran teachers alike. These 101 surefire...

From Simon & Schuster, The Best American Erotica of 1993 is Susie Bright's collection featuring 20 short stories and excerpts from writers such as Anne Rice, Robert Silverberg, and others. This wide-ranging collection of the best of the past year's erotic literature is a...

Author: Edgar Allan PoeISBN-10: 0679600078ISBN-13: 9780679600077Publisher: Modern LibraryLanguage: EnglishPublished: 09/05/1992Pages: 1040Format: HardcoverWeight: 2.34lbsSize: 8.18h x 5.69w x 1.90d

The classical world and the masterpieces of its literature continue to fascinate readers and audiences throughout the media- from popular histories to the reworking of classical subject matters by contemporary poets, dramatists, and novelists. In this Very Short Introduction, William Allan explores what the...

Nikos Kazantzakis is no stranger to the heroes of Greek antiquity. In this historical novel based on the life of Alexander the Great, Kazantzakis has drawn on both the rich tradition of Greek legend and the documented manuscripts from the archives of history to...

One of a series of experimental texts in which Cage tries "to find a way of writing which comes from ideas, is not about them, but which produces them," he attempts in X to create looser structures in both life and art, to free...

Creative nonfiction, also known as narrative nonfiction, liberated journalism by inviting writers to dramatize, interpret, speculate, and even re-create their subjects. Lee Gutkind collects twenty-five essays that flourished in this new turf, all originally published in the groundbreaking journal he founded, Creative Nonfiction, now...

In his "best achievement to date" (Harold Bloom), National Book Award- winner Roger Shattuck gives us a "deeply learned, highly intelligent, and beautifully written" (New York Times) study of human curiosity versus the taboo, from Adam and Eve to the Marquis de Sade to...

Originally published in 1985, this book traces the development of an ideal of work in English writing which runs parallel to that of the Protestant work ethic. The author has called this the myth of vocation: work is seen as the primary source of...

Much like his novels, Steve Erickson (b. 1950) exists on the periphery of our perception, a shadow figure lurking on the margins, threatening to break through, but never fully emerging. Despite receiving prestigious honors, Erickson has remained a subterranean literary figure, receiving effusive praise...

'My polish grandmother made a chicken soup like no other chicken soup. To this day, it has, to my knowledge and experience, never been bettered ... Her chicken soup was the Caravaggio of soups. The Rainer Marie Rilke of soups. The Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli...

The Dutch anthropologist Geert Hofstede is recognized as a pioneer in the fields of international management and social psychology - and his work is a perfect example of the ways in which interpretative skills can help solve problems and provide the foundation for strong...