Literary Criticism

This wide-ranging Companion to Modern British and Irish Drama offers challenging analyses of a range of plays in their political contexts. It explores the cultural, social, economic and institutional agendas that readers need to engage with in order to appreciate modern theatre in all its complexity.:.; An authoritative guide to modern British and Irish drama.; Engages with theoretical discourses challenging a canon that has privileged London as well as white English males and realism.; Topics covered include: national, regional and fringe theatres; post-colonial stages and multiculturalism; feminist and queer theatres; sex and consumerism; technology and globalisation; representations of war, terrorism, and trauma. more...

Price: $149.95

Romance is a varied and fluid literary genre, notoriously difficult to define. This groundbreaking Companion surveys the many permutations of romance throughout the ages. Comprising 30 essays written by leading authorities in the field, it considers the historical and literary development of the genre from its classical origins to the present day. The focus is on English literature, although this is placed within the larger context of perceptions of romance. The book incorporates discussion of the changing readership of romance, particularly romance's special relation to women readers. It challenges the idea that the appeal of romance is exclusively escapist, drawing on a wide range of specific and influential literary examples. The Companion is suitable for general readers and for those beginning their study of literature, as well as for readers seeking more specialized information on the issue of romance or on the individual types of writing, writers, and works considered. Contributors to this volume:. Elizabeth Archibald, W. R. J. Barron, Derek Brewer, Helen Cooper, Richard Cronin, David Fairer, Robert Fraser, David Fuller, Jerrold E. Hogle, Kathryn Hume, Susan Jones, Andrew King, Edward Larrissy, Richard Mathews, Ulrika Maude, Clare Morgan, Lori Humphrey Newcomb, Francis O'Gorman, Michael O'Neill, Leonee Ormond, Lynne Pearce, Fiona Price, Clive Probyn, Fiona Robertson, Andrew Sanders, Corinne Saunders, John Simons, Raymond H. Thompson, Lisa Vargo, Judith Weiss more...

Price: $151.95

The four-volume Companion to Shakespeare's Works, compiled as a single entity, offers a uniquely comprehensive snapshot of current Shakespeare criticism. This volume looks at Shakespeare’s histories.:.; Contains original essays on every history play from Henry VI to Henry V.; Includes fourteen additional articles on such topics as censorship in Shakespeare's histories, the relation of Shakespeare's plays to other dramatic histories of the period, Shakespeare's histories on film, the homoerotics of Shakespeare's history plays, and nation formation in Shakespeare's histories.; Brings together new essays from a diverse, international group of scholars.; Complements David Scott Kastan's A Companion to Shakespeare (1999), which focused on Shakespeare as an author in his historical context.; Offers a provocative roadmap to Shakespeare studies. more...

Price: $190.00

The four-volume Companion to Shakespeare's Works, compiled as a single entity, offers a uniquely comprehensive snapshot of current Shakespeare criticism. This volume looks at Shakespeare’s poems, problem comedies and late plays.:.; Contains original essays on Troilus and Cressida, Measure for Measure, All's Well That Ends Well, Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece, and The Sonnets, as well as Pericles, The Winter's Tale, Cymbeline, The Tempest, Henry VIII and The Two Noble Kinsmen.; Includes eleven essays on such topics as the reception history of the sonnets, collaboration in Shakespeare's middle and late plays, the generic classification of Shakespeare's late plays, The Tempest in performance, and the relation of Shakespeare's "problem plays" to the work of contemporary dramatists.; Brings together new essays from a diverse, international group of scholars.; Complements David Scott Kastan's A Companion to Shakespeare (1999), which focused on Shakespeare as an author in his historical context.; Offers a provocative roadmap to Shakespeare studies. more...

Price: $190.00

This Concise Companion offers an authoritative overview of American fiction from 1900-1950 focusing on the literature that developed out of the social, cultural, and political changes, which occurred in the first part of the 20th century. With careful reference to key authors and their works, newly-commissioned chapters examine the period's formative events, such as the Depression and the two World Wars, and their representation in literature. In addition, essays also analyze the multiple and paraadoxical self-descriptions that have been taken to define modernism, such as the 'rise of proletarian literature' and the 'high modernist' novel. Looking at issues of race, language, cosmopolitanism, and the First and Second World Wars, this volume introduces the contextual information and strategic knowledge that students need to formulate their own readings of classic American fiction. Authors such as Faulkner, Fitzgerald, and Hemingway, who have defined our understanding of modernism for so long, are reread in relation to key texts of the period by Richard Wright, Charles Chesnutt, Zora Neale Hurston, and Anzia Yezierska. This Companion examines the original context of these authors' works and looks at its current reception to uncover how 20th-century literature is being reinterpreted in the new millennium. more...

Price: $100.00