2003-01-01,Victoria Rowe,A History of Armenian Women's Writing: 1880-1921,Hardback,9781904303237,29.99,"A History of Armenian Women’s Writing: 1880-1921 introduces the reader to the wealth and diversity of women’s writing in Armenian in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The volume focuses on six Armenian women writers-Srpouhi Dussap, Sibyl, Mariam Khatisian, Marie Beylerian, Shushanik Kurghinian and Zabel Yesayian and these authors’ novels, short stories, poems and essays. The study contends that Western and Eastern Armenian women writers, while not displaying a uniformity of opinion and vision, nevertheless found inspiration in the activism, writings and arguments of one another and form a literary genealogy of women’s writing in Armenian.

The study has several objectives. For general readers and those interested primarily in the historical account it provides a chronological description of the formative period of modern Armenian women’s writing beginning in 1880 with the publication of a series of articles on women’s education and employment by Srpouhi Dussap and concludes with the physical dislocations and psychological traumas of the Armenian Genocide in 1915 and the fall of the first independent Republic of Armenia in 1921. 

On another level the book concentrates on disentangling the contemporaneous intellectual debates about Armenian women’s proper sphere. The author argues that the role of the Armenian woman was central to debates about national identity, education, the family and society by Armenian writers and women writers sought to participate in and guide this discourse through literary texts.",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2003-01-01,Rodney Edgecombe,Aspects of Form and Genre in the Poetry of Edwin Morgan,Hardback,9781904303220,29.99,"Edwin Morgan was born in 1920 in Glasgow and studied at Glasgow University where he later taught literature. He is much admired for his experimental writings, his ‘social’ poems, as well as for the diversity of his output.
The present book comprises a chapter on Morgan’s early vision poems (which have received scant critical attention hitherto); two on his hodoiporika, The Cape of Good Hope and The New Divan; a chapter on his deployment of the grotesque mode, centred chiefly on the Instamatic Poems and The Whittrick; another on his adaptations of the elegy, in which Edgecombe propose a new genre called the “thanasimon;” and, finally, an examination of his various monologic poems, read in terms of his avowed enterprise of “voicing” the universe. The study is topped by a prologue that sets out the consistency of Morgan’s vision over time, and tailed by an epilogue that connects his various critical pronouncements to his remarkably diverse output.",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2005-02-01,Peter Knight and Jonathan Long,Fakes and Forgeries,Hardback,9781904303404,39.99,"The possibility that works of art and literature might be forged and that identity might be faked has haunted the cultural imagination for centuries. That spectre seems to have returned with a vengeance recently, with a series of celebrated hoaxes and scandals ranging from the Alan Sokal hoax article in Social Text to Binjamin Wilkomirski’s “fake” Holocaust memoir. But as well as creating anxiety, the possibility of “faking it” has now been turned into entertainment.
Traditionally these activities have been dismissed as dangerous and immoral, but more recently some scholars have begun to speculate, for example, that all forms of national identity rely on forged myths of origin. Recent cultural theory has likewise called into question traditional notions of authenticity and originality in both personal identity and in works of art. Despite critical pronouncements of the death of the author and the substitution of the simulacrum for the original, however, making a distinction between the genuine and the fake continues to play a major role in our everyday understanding and evaluation of culture, law and politics. Consider, for example, the fiasco surrounding the “forged” Hitler diaries, law suits against auction houses for failing to detect forgeries in the art market, or the problem of plagiarism at universities. It still seems to matter that we can spot the difference, especially in the historical moment when we are capable of making copies that are indistinguishable—perhaps even better than—the original.
This collection of essays considers the moral, aesthetic and political questions that are raised by the long history and current prevalence of fakes and forgeries. The international team of contributors consider the issues thrown up by a wide range of examples, drawn from fields ranging from literature to art history. These case studies include little-known subjects such as Eddie Burrup, the Australian aboriginal artist who turned out to be an 81-year-old white woman, as well as new interpretations of familiar cases such as faked holocaust memoirs. The strength of the collection is that it brings together not only a wide range of cultural examples of fakes and forgeries from different historical periods, but also offers a wide variety of theoretical takes that will form a useful introduction and casebook on this growing field of inquiry.",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2005-06-01,"David Cunningham, Andrew Fisher and Sas May",Photography and Literature in the Twentieth Century,Hardback,9781904303466,39.99,"Photography and Literature in the Twentieth-Century offers an accessible and fresh approach to an object of interdisciplinary research that is currently receiving increased international attention. Providing a broad historical schema, and examining pivotal moments within it, the collection brings together a range of writers and practitioners who help to guide the reader through a historical cross-section of current work in this area. Unlike most existing studies, this volume considers both key literary figures, from Proust to Sebald, and photographic practitioners, from Heartfield to Sekula, in order to give a commanding overview of its subject that is both well-informed and often ground-breaking. With original and accessible essays by acknowledged experts in the field, this is a book that should be of interest not only to students and teachers in departments of literature and photography, but also to those in cultural studies and art history, as well as photographic artists.

","Although in the 20th century the relation between literature and photography was arguably as significant as literature’s relation to painting in the 19th century, over the past generation the discussion of photography’s multiple intersections and interactions with writing and writers have tended to narrow to a few overly canonised works. This volume reverses this situation through the diversity and originality of the essays it gathers together: it has the potential to reawaken a field that for too long has been allowed to remain dormant. 

Norman Bryson, Professor of Art History, Theory and Criticism, University of California, San Diego, and author of Looking at the Overlooked.


From Proust to Sebald, photography has occupied a significant place in literature, and visa versa. This book makes an important contribution to engaging with the relationship between the photograph and the text. 

Steve Edwards, Open University, and author of The Making of English Photography.


Discussion of literature and photography still tends to languish in the realms of image and text, rather than in the literary strategizing of photographers, or in the recurrent placing of the effects of the photographic act in twentieth-century fiction. Photography and Literature in the Twentieth Century remedies this. One of the most significant outcomes of the conjunction it generates is the realisation of how much the two are interrelated in the formation of modernism and after. The collection brings together work by some of the best emerging scholars and artists in the field. I highly recommend it. 

John Roberts, University of Wolverhampton, and author of The Art of Interruption: Realism, Photography and the Everyday.

",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2005-10-01,"George William, Lord Lyttelton",Contributions Towards a Glossary of the Glynne Language,Hardback,9781904303527,29.99,"The Glynnese Glossary is that rare beast, a dictionary of a family language. Many families develop favourite words and phrases, giving them unique meanings based on passing events or encounters. For the most part these fade into oblivion with the death of their users. The families of William Gladstone, several times Prime Minister of England, and of his wife Catherine Glynne, however, developed an unusually rich and persistent language; and this was recorded in the Glossary in 1851 by Gladstone's brother-in-law George, Lord Lyttelton, who married Catherine Glynne's sister Mary. Glynnese can be traced through generations of family memoirs, and the families' lofty social status led to its being taken up by outsiders. Lyttelton was a talented student of language, and in the Glossary he draws on the contemporary popularity of philology to produce a spoof dictionary which parodies the tradition of dialect glossaries, while accurately recording the eccentric vagaries of Glynnese. 

George William, 4th Baron Lyttelton (1817-76) was educated at Eton and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was Senior Classic (top of the first class in Classics) in 1838. In 1839 he and William Gladstone married the sisters Mary and Catherine Glynne in a double wedding conducted by the brides' father. He had eight sons and four daughters, and a further three daughters by his second wife. Lyttelton and Gladstone were both keen composers in Latin and Greek, and published a book of translations from English literature together in 1861. Lyttelton devoted much of his life to public service, especially in education, sitting on two Royal Commissions in the 1860s. He was a manic depressive, and committed suicide in 1876.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2005-12-01,Shane Alcobia-Murphy,Governing the Tongue in Northern Ireland: The Place of Art/The Art of Place,Hardback,9781904303602,29.99,"How free is the Northern Irish writer to produce even a short poem when every word will be scrutinised for its political subtext? Is the visual artist compelled to react to the latest atrocity? Must the creative artist be aware of his or her own inculcated prejudices and political affiliations, and must these be revealed overtly in the artwork? Because of these and other related questions, the recent work by Northern Irish writers and visual artists has been characterised by an inward-looking self-consciousness. It is an art that relays its personal responses in guarded, often coded ways. Characterised by obliquity and self-reflexivity, the art does not simply re-present events and the artist’s emotive response towards them; rather, it calls attention to the manner of its presentation. It is an art about art, and its role and place in society. Governing the Tongue examines how the creation of art in a time of violence brings about an anxiety in the Northern Irish artist regarding his or her artistic role, and how it calls into question the ability to represent events. The series of essays is inter-disciplinary in its approach, exploring the place of art – its role and location – in the work of key Northern Irish writers (Ciaran Carson, Seamus Deane, Brian Friel, Seamus Heaney, Michael Longley, Medbh McGuckian, Eoin McNamee, Glenn Patterson) and visual artists (Willie Doherty, Rita Donagh, Paul Seawright, Victor Sloan).


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-01-01,Daniel Meyer-Dinkgraefe,"Consciousness, Theatre, Literature and the Arts",Hardback,9781904303633,44.99,"In May 2005, the Department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies at the University of Wales Aberystwyth hosted  the First International Conference on Consciousness, Theatre, Literature, and the Arts, to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the launch of the refereed web journal Consciousness, Literature and the Arts (CLA) (www.aber.ac.uk/tfts/journal),  the launch of Daniel Meyer-Dinkgräfe’s Theatre and Consciousness: Explanatory Scope and Future Potential and the launch of Amy Ione’s Innovation and Visualization: Trajectories, Strategies, and Myths. 80 delegates from fourteen countries attended the conference. This book collects 40 of the papers presented, characteristic of the wide range of topics and disciplines represented at the conference.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-03-01,Justyna Deszcz-Tryhubczak and Marek Oziewicz,Towards or Back to Human Values? Spiritual and Moral Dimensions of Contemporary Fantasy,Hardback,9781904303732,34.99,"Towards or Back to Human Values? Spiritual and Moral Dimension of Contemporary Fantasy is a collection driven by two strong convictions. The first one is that issues related to spirituality, ethics, and the moral philosophy—thrown overboard as an embarrassing legacy of liberal humanism—need to be brought back to the center of discussion about literature. The second is that among literary conventions available to contemporary writers, fantasy is especially suitable to bring up the theme of values. Its uniqueness lies in its being subversive of the reductionist scientific worldview, which denies the reality and importance of anything beyond the scope of its empirical verification. 
In this sense, fantasy literature is a festering provocation, a phenomenon which—a cliché attested to by its marginalization by the academia— should not be, but persists. Against the dominant skepticism and cynicism of the age, fantasy points to hope and trust. Against moral relativism and abandonment, it makes us rethink the way we deconstruct ourselves as moral agents and responsible human beings. Against our abuse of the natural world and our resulting sense of isolation and frustration, it asserts that we are part of a larger web of life and that our future depends on how soon we will become aware of this fact. At its best, fantasy does much more; it troubles our oldest certainties and rekindles the hope we have almost given up, the hope of finding the meaning and reaching human fulfillment.
Beginning with five theoretical essays on fantasy as a consideration of spirituality and human values, the collection moves to five studies of specific fantasies as commenting on the role of imagination in human life. These are followed by four essays on fantasy as asserting the interconnectedness of all life, stressing the need for cooperation and the cultivation of environmental awareness. Finally, our discussion concludes with five studies of fantasy seen as exploration of the human condition with its eternal dilemmas of life versus death, of chaos versus order, of rationality versus intuition, of fate versus free will, and of the real versus the imaginary.",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-05-01,Robin DeRosa,Assimilation and Subversion in Earlier American Literature,Hardback,9781904303848,29.99,"Assimilation and Subversion in Earlier American Literature is a collection of essays that explores the complex interplay between dominance and oppression.  Spanning the “long” early American period, the collection considers texts written from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries. Native Americans, Puritan ministers and Puritan “whores,” Barbadian and transatlantic slaves: the early American figures who populate these essays are talking about power, and creating—in writing—a dynamic and complicated relationship between the mainstream and the margin. The essays in this collection offer a collective paradigm for thinking about these issues, one in which “assimilation” and “subversion” are not so much oppositional as they are closely aligned, codependent, and mutually defining. Though these essays do maintain the dialectical play between the two terms, they offer new ways to think about dialectic itself. The goal of the collection is to give readers useful models for approaching texts by nondominant subjects, models that consider the polyphonic flow of power and the possibility of simultaneous multiple, conflicting, and even oppositional effects of oppression.
The collection begins by looking at complex representations of the Christianized Native American, moves through a discussion of “creolized” West Indian and “converted” African slave narratives, explores the ironic uses of sentimentality in a nineteenth-century novel about slavery, and ends with a study of female criminality and the way that it both subverted and reinscribed dominant Puritan orthodoxy. The liminal spaces where assimilation becomes subversion (and vice versa) go by many difference names in this collection: the contact zone, the transcultured, the hybrid, the syncretic, the zombie, the pardodic, the parabolic, the transgressive, the framed. Each of the contributors works to find ways to describe this space without simultaneously closing it down. It can be a significant rhetorical challenge to articulate what might ultimately be a paradox, but this collection aims not only to look at familiar texts in new ways, but also to think about the critical process in a new way. In what ways does the critic’s own explication of a text undermine and stabilize the text’s coherent meaning? This is, in many ways, a collection that investigates this methodological question even as it focuses on the nature of power and how “the oppressed” write their way into and out of their own oppression.

Contributors include John J. Kucich, Ann M. Brunjes, Nicole N. Aljoe, Robin DeRosa, Mary Getchell, and Kristina Lucenko.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-05-01,Dave Postles,"Naming the People of England, c.1100-1350",Hardback,9781904303879,32.99,"Medieval historians have for some time recognized the significance of personal naming processes and patterns for the illumination of social relations such as kinship and spiritual kinship or godparenthood. Increasingly, they are employing the investigation of personal naming (anthroponymy) as part of their elucidation of cultural change-attempting, through changes in patterns of personal naming, to discern cultural transitions and transformations. Recent coordinated research on the European continent has produced major collaborative discussion of the cultural implications of naming in France, the Iberian peninsular, and 'Italy'. The fruits of new research into the 'Germanic' lands have also richly enhanced our understanding of cultural change there. So it is predicated that a new trans-European culture arose in the centuries about and after the year 1000.
Omitted from this coordinated understanding of the arrival of a new European cultural tradition (as it came to persist) is the British archipelago. We are, however, far from devoid of scholarly examination of the culture of personal naming in the British Isles. An older generation of linguists produced a basic foundation, although it has not remained free of some criticism. Subsequently, several scholars have independently advanced the interpretive analysis (Clark, Fellows Jensen, Insley, and McClure).
At one level, then, this book attempts a synthesis of that previous, highly valuable, but diffuse, research, to make it more widely known, understood and accessible. At another level, nonetheless, it engages with what has become a prevailing narrative of cultural change in England after the Norman Conquest: the rapid transformation of English naming (and culture) through the assimilation of a new, dominant, extraneous influence. By reinserting the detail and complexity, it is hoped to demonstrate that far from a single uniform (homologous) culture, there existed residual, even resistant, and 'regional', cultures. The account, it is hoped, presents a cohesive, new narrative of the cultural implications of personal naming in England, whilst also addressing important issues of gender, politics, and social organization.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-05-01,Raúl Fernández-Calienes and Judith Barr Bachay,"Women Moving Forward: Volume One: Narratives of Identity, Migration, Resilience, and Hope",Hardback,9781904303800,32.99,"“Women Moving Forward: Narratives of Identity, Migration, Resilience, and Hope is an excellent example of ethnographic inquiry, revealing the normative behavior of women within specific cultural boundaries, while also illuminating the individual transcendence of norms in the quest for self-realization. The stories in Women Moving Forward are each unique in their depiction of culture and mores and allow the reader to catch a glimpse of the lives of women in various parts of the globe. Despite their variety, however, the stories are united in their core as they each validate the very human need to hope for a future that is fulfilling and, at least to some extent, self-constructed rather than imposed...this book cannot be missed.”
Associate Professor Beatriz González Robinson, Ph.D., LMHC
Vice President for University Planning and Chief of Staff, St. Thomas University
State Coordinator, Office of Women in Higher Education
Fellow, American Council on Education

“These are the stories that find voice in the human spirit. The simple, yet deeply moving narratives of everyday people who share an extraordinary experience – uprooting themselves from their native lands to seek the centuries-old dream of a better life in the United States. A new language, new culture, new political system. With opportunities to grow nearly offset by deep-seated prejudices that cause more than one to question the wisdom of their life-altering decision. Yet all persevere. All prevail. So, ultimately, these are the stories of everyday heroes (though none might admit to it). Pioneers, following the great American tradition that says, ‘You are welcome here, and with hard work and patience, you too will realize your dream.’ They hail from Cuba, Jamaica, and elsewhere, but each has made a new home in a strange new place without sacrificing their cherished traditions and values. And they and their adopted land are the better for it. So sit back and enjoy these twelve humble, yet beautiful tales. Raúl Fernández-Calienes and Judy Barr Bachay have given us a treasure.”
Brother Herman E. Zaccarelli, C.S.C.
Formerly Director, Educational Conference Center, Kings College, Pennsylvania

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-06-01,Steve Glassman,Florida Studies: Proceedings of the 2005 Annual Meeting of the Florida College English Association,Hardback,9781904303930,39.99,"Florida was the first region of the United States to be discovered, explored, and, after a fashion, settled by Euroamericans. Its population in the early 21st century is approaching 17 million. Within years the number of people living in the state will surpass those living in New York, and the Sunshine State will become the most populous area east of the Mississippi. The first book in English about Florida was written by Jean Ribault. A French adventurer, Ribault established a colony of Huguenots near present-day Jacksonville. He was captured by the very able Spanish commander Pedro Menendez, who ordered his French rival and all his minions killed.

The state’s long and colorful past is matched by its equally long and colorful literary production. Strangely, critical assessment of Florida literature has lagged far behind. With this volume, the Florida College English Association has formally begun an effort to correct this lamentable oversight. Included are papers on every aspect of Florida literature and history by scholars from every part of the state who are employed in every kind of institution of higher learning. Of special interest are the studies of Florida literature in the 19th century and in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, areas that are generally ignored in national journals. The papers on the contributions of African-American literary figures, such as Zora Hurston and James Weldon Johnson, are noteworthy. Of particular interest are the suggestions for teaching Florida studies in the classroom, which can be adapted for high school as well as college students.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-06-01,Scott L. Baugh,Mediating Chicana/o Culture: Multicultural American Vernacular,Hardback,9781847180056,34.99,"Mediating Chicana/o Culture: Multicultural American Vernacular covers an unconventional array of topics—from handkerchiefs, votives, and graffiti to food, fútbol, and the Internet—as well as cutting edge literature, cinema, photography, and more. In its cross-disciplinary approach, this collection makes an invaluable contribution to the scholarship on Chicana and Chicano culture and provides engaging readings for courses in race/ethnic studies, media studies, and American studies.

Collected chapters critically interrogate the underlying tensions between personal expressions and public demonstrations in their on-going negotiation of Chicana and Chicano identity. Drawing on the revolutionary work of Gloria Anzaldúa, Tómas Ybarra-Frausto, Emma Pérez, Alfred Arteaga, Chela Sandoval, Julia Watson and Sidonie Smith, the Latina Feminist Group, among others, chapters in this collection closely read the processes that seem built into the actions and behaviors, the products, the art, the literature, and the discourse surrounding the search for identity in the rush of our diverse 21st-century existence. Mediating Chicana/o Culture lays bare the methods by which we define ourselves as individuals and as members of communities, examining not only the message, but also the medium and the methods of mediating identity and culture.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-06-01,Martha Carpentier,Susan Glaspell: New Directions in Critical Inquiry,Hardback,9781847180049,29.99,"Pulitzer Prize-winning dramatist, founding member of the Provincetown Players, best-selling novelist and award-winning short fiction writer, Susan Glaspell (1876-1948) has been recovered from the marginalization of women writers that took place in the post-war period of canon-formation in America.  Her recovery, begun by feminist critics and theatre historians in the 1980s, reached a milestone with the 1995 publication of the first collection of critical essays, Susan Glaspell: Essays on Her Theater and Fiction, edited by Linda Ben-Zvi. Since then scholarship has been exploding, with six major books on Glaspell and her work published since the year 2000, several by authors represented here. While Glaspell’s work with the Provincetown Players, 1915-1922, was crucial for the development of American theatre, scholars are now fully realizing the extent to which her stories and novels, as well as all of her plays, reflect a deep engagement with the major literary movements and political events of her age. A realist concerned with issues of social justice and a modernist committed to exploring the psyche, Glaspell through her art provides thoughtful commentary, not only on feminist issues of women and gender, but on war, class, socialism, idealism, aesthetics, ethics and law. 

Susan Glaspell: New Directions in Critical Inquiry continues the tradition started by Ben-Zvi and brings it up to date, featuring new work in various post-structural critical approaches from leading Glaspell scholars, including Americanists Mary E. Papke and Kristina Hinz-Bode; legal scholar, Patricia L. Bryan; cultural historian, J. Ellen Gainor; feminist biographer, Barbara Ozieblo; performance artist, Lucia V. Sander; and classicist Marie Molnar.


Praise for the book:
""Professor Carpentier's study of Glaspell's fiction stands as the most important work on the subject and has led to a renewed interest in the subject.""

""There is growing interest in Glaspell's writing, and this book should find a solid readership from the following fields: American drama and fiction studies, American studies, Women's studies, and Cultural Studies. I fully support the project and encourage your press to publish it.""

Linda Ben-Zvi, Professor of Theatre Studies, Tel Aviv Unviesrity
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-07-01,Donald E. Morse,Anatomy of Science Fiction,Hardback,9781847180186,29.99,"""This wide-ranging collection of essays re-opens the connection between science fiction and the increasingly science-fictional world. 

Kevin Alexander Boon reminds us of the degree to which the epistemology of science fiction infects modern political discourse. Károly Pintér explores the narrative structures of utopian estrangement, and Tamás Bényei and Brian Attebery take us deeper into the cultural exchanges between science fiction and the literary and political  worlds. In the second half, Donald Morse, Nicholas Ruddick and Éva Federmayer look at the way in which science fiction has tackled major ethical issues,  while Amy Novak and Kálmán Matolcsy consider memory and evolution as cultural batteries.  The book ends with important discussions of East German and Hungarian  science fiction by Usch Kiausch and Donald Morse respectively.

I envisage that the book will find a market both among academics and as a recommended text to undergraduates as it offers interesting essays on important readers. The tendency for science fiction to be offered  as a literature class to science majors is not usually considered, but this book would be particularly appropriate for such a market.""

Dr. Farah Mendelsohn,
Middlesex University


","Collectively speaking, the authors featured in this anthology do a fine job of peeling the skin off the body of storytelling we call sf to examine specific texts and traditions under the bright light of crtitcal and cultural theory.

All of the essays in this volume are outstanding examples of sf scholarship that use theory to illuminate sf while also using sf to complicate readers' understanding of theory. In my experience, that is something that happens too seldom in sf studies, and that alone makes Anatomy of Science Fiction worth reading. Lisa Yaszek in Science Fiction Studies

Along with its international flavor, the strength of this collection comes from its breadth, yet it is also bound by the focus on the cultural and critical  context in which each of the contributors sites and cites his or her analyses. Anatomy of Science Fiction is a thought-provoking and welcome addition to science fiction scholarship.

W. A. SENIOR; JOURNAL OF THE FANTASTIC IN THE ARTS Vol. 19.2
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-07-01,Peter Cochran,Byron and Orientalism,Hardback,9781904303909,39.99,"Of all the English Romantic poets Byron is often thought of as the one who was most familiar with the East. His travels, it is claimed, give him a huge advantage with which contemporaries like Southey, Moore, Shelley, and Coleridge, who had comparable orientalist ambitions, could not compete.

Byron and Orientalism sets out to examine this thesis. It looks at Byron’s knowledge of the East, and of its religions in particular, in greater detail than ever before. Essays are included on Byron’s Turkish Tales, Edward Said’s attitude to Byron, Byron’s version of Islam, Byron’s Hebrew Melodies, and Byron’s influence on the orientalist writings of Pushkin and Lermontov. There is a massive introduction, setting Byron’s eastern poetry in the contexts both of European literature, English literature, and the poet’s own confused and disorientated existence.

'This is an extremely valuable - impressively diverse and genuinely multidisciplinary - collection of essays, which will be of great interest to a variety of audiences.  The topic of Byron and Orientalism offers similarly rich potential and Peter Cochran brings a great wealth of expertise to bear on the subject in his substantial contributions to this volume.'  James Watt,  Liverpool University Press.






","""If one of the strengths of the collection is that essays such as these enrich our understanding of the cultural phoenomenon of Romantic Orientalism, another is the way in which many of the volume's contributors emphasise that intercultural contact is a necessarily a two-way affair, where the distribution of agency is far from straightforward and the consequences are often unpredictable ... All told, this is an extremely valuable - impressively diverse and genuinely multidisciplinary - collection of essays, which will be of great interested to a variety of audiences ... The topic of 'Byron and Orientalism' offers similarly rich potential, and Peter Cochran brings a great wealth of experience to bear on the subject in his substantial contributions to this new volume. Cochran's 150-page introduction covers an enormous amount of ground, and provides an impressively learned account of relevant historical and literary-historical contexts, as well as a rich fund of information concerning Byroninc sources, allusions and intertexts. ...Byron and Orietalism contains much to reward the attention of Byron scholars.""

-James Watt, The Byron Journal




",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-07-01,Susan Sheridan and Paul Genoni,Thea Astley's Fictional Worlds,Hardback,9781847180155,34.99,"'This landmark contribution to Australian literary studies is the first collection of critical responses to the work of one of our most important novelists, Thea Astley. As well as essays from leading Australian and international critics, dating from 1967 to the present, it includes three essays by Astley herself, a major interview with her and the first Thea Astley lecture, given by Kate Grenville in 2005.' 

Professor Elizabeth Webby
Sydney University
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-07-01,"Jacqueline Genet, Sylvie Mikowski and Fabienne Garcier",The Book in Ireland,Hardback,9781904303978,39.99,"This volume on the Book in Ireland, originally published in France, brings together contributions by scholars in Irish studies from both countries and by Irish professionals in the field such as writer-publishers and curators.

In three different sections, it explores the relation between Irish people and the printed word in various contexts, beginning with the emergence of private presses which, from the late 19th century onwards, and following the example of William Morris’s Kelmscott Press in England, renewed a time-honoured editorial and typographical tradition. It highlights the importance of the printed word in the passing on and circulating of ideas, through translation, teaching, political propaganda, or the publishing of literary anthologies.

It emphasizes the major role played by periodicals in Irish cultural life and the building of an Irish identity in a country where, for a variety of reasons, people were in the habit of reading more newspapers and magazines than books. 

Significantly originating from France, where the conceptual framework of the history of the book was devised, this volume brings under scrutiny many previously unexplored aspects of the field.


Praise for the book:
'These are all scholarly essays of real rigour and originality. The collection is a commendably bold and wide-ranging introduction to the Irish book in its many guises and languages.'

Declan Kiberd, Professor of Anglo-Irish Literature and Drama
UCD School of English and Drama


Inspired by William Morris, and carried along by the impetus of the Arts and Crafts Movement and the Celtic Revival, a great many publishing houses came into being at the beginning of the 20th century in Ireland. Most of them pursued the ideal of the “Book Beautiful” and devoted themselves to the cause of a literature of quality. Between 1967 and 1974, the Irish University Press continued to shape the publishing landscape; the Raven Arts Press stood out for its non-conformist spirit, rejecting the values of the Irish Renaissance, but discovering young talents and reprinting forgotten authors. One consequence of this effervescence was to stimulate readership. The study of the production and circulation of publications reveals both the desire to assert a national identity, including a renewed interest in the Gaelic language, and the wish to spread ideas, as shown, for example, by the propaganda newspaper published by the Sinn Féin Printing and Publishing Company. Encouraged by the creation of Aosdána, Irish writing showed a diversity eminently illustrated by the authors of The Field Day Anthology. From as early as 1830, periodicals took advantage of the increasing habit of reading and developments in printing: as they were cheaper than books, they became a principal means of access to literature for Irish people. The abundance of magazines such as The Dublin University Magazine, Studies and The Honest Ulsterman were ample testimony to the variety of social and cultural preoccupations.

The Book in Ireland, edited by Jacqueline Genet, Sylvie Mikowski and Fabienne Garcier, explores these various enterprises and their impact.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-08-01,Rebecca Fine Romanow,The Postcolonial Body in Queer Space and Time,Hardback,9781847180261,34.99,"The Postcolonial Body in Queer Space and Time examines the ways in which the notion of the postcolonial correlates to Judith Halberstam’s idea of queer space and time, the non-normative path of Western lifestyles and hegemonies.  Emphasizing authors from Africa and Southeast Asia in the diaspora in London from the mid-1960s through 1990, the reading of both postcolonial lands and subjects as “queer counterproductive” space reveals a depiction of bodies in these texts as located in and performing queer space and time, redefining and relocating the understanding of the postcolonial.

The first wave of postcolonial literature produced by diasporics presents the body as the site where the non-normative is performed, revealing the beginnings of a corporeal resistance to the re-colonization of the diasporic individual residing in England from the Wilson through the Thatcher regimes.  This study emphasizes the ways in which early postcolonial literature embodies and encounters the topics of race, gender and sexuality, proving that a rejection of subjectifying processes through the representation of the body has always been present in diasporic postcolonial literature.  

Reading through postcolonial theory as well as the works of Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari, Hardt and Negri, Homi Bhabha, and Giorgio Agamben, as well as Halberstam and queer theory, The Postcolonial Body in Queer Space and Time discusses the poetry and journals of Arthur Nortje, Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia and his film Sammy and Rosie Get Laid, and Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North, tracing a geographic arc from homeland to London to the return to the homeland, traveling through the queer space and time of the postcolonial.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-09-01,Joe Jordan,"a Wilderness of Signs: Ethics, Beauty, & Environment after Postmodernism",Hardback,9781847180322,34.99,"While it is clear that postmodernism was a much-needed shift in thinking—a concerted movement to displace naturalized “grand narratives” and power-stacked claims to reason, order, and justice—postmodernism has evaded address of elements integral to the condition(s) of being human: ethics, beauty, value, and judgment. And although signifying practice inescapably defines the human world, postmodernism has not successfully addressed aspects that lie outside human signification, namely the environment and the natural world. Here we find a dangerous conundrum: while the natural world around us has an existence independent of its human conceptions, these human conceptions carry with them grave consequences for the natural world’s very existence. 

This collection is comprised of selections from the 2005 Pacific Rim Conference on Literature and Rhetoric—“ethics beauty environment: the Wilderness of Signs”—an annual graduate student conference held at the University of Alaska Anchorage. Clipped from a wide critical swath, the discussions in this collection include clashes between global capitalism and environmentalist discourses; problems implied by ownership of place; dismantling the borders between language, region, and modern criticism; extending agency, action, and voice to the voiceless; and re-discovering identity, ethics, and “reality” through the lens of post-positivism. 

At the dusk of postmodernism, now is the time to visit careful attention upon these issues—issues critical not only for the good of humanity, but for the good of the non-human world as well.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-09-01,Mary Pierse,George Moore: Artistic Visions and Literary Worlds,Hardback,9781847180292,39.99,"The Irish writer George Moore (1852-1933) was a very significant and often controversial figure on the literary stages of Paris, London and Dublin at a key cultural moment. Between 1880 and 1931, his creative involvements included spells with literary theatres in London and Dublin, jousts with the daring and repression of the fin de siècle, and a hail-and-farewell to Yeats and the Irish Revival.  This collection of essays offers fresh insights into diverse elements of his œuvre and reflects some of the wide variety in Moore’s literary innovations, influences and legacy. Contributors note his pioneering contributions to the short story, his penetrating insights into Greek classical literature, his avant-garde feminism and egalitarianism, and – what may surprise 21st-century readers of biblical-theme blockbusters - his sensitive but contentious novelistic treatment of the historical Jesus.   

In this volume, there are studies of sophisticated composition, and fresh approaches to textual analysis. The multiple Moore talents are scrutinised, myths are dispelled and new evidence is uncovered for historic linkages. George Moore’s anticipation of Freudian psychological insights and his engagement with Darwinian theses are but two of his close involvements with key nineteenth-century figures. Manet, Degas, Parnell, Kant, Maupassant, Gladstone, Zola, Marx and Woolf must feature on the list of names that are inseparable from Moore’s life and work. Yeats and Joyce also loom large and their under-acknowledged indebtedness to Moore poses difficult questions for literary history.  While Moore’s own debt to French artistic influences, English models, and Irish heritage has long been recognised, perceptions of Moore’s writing from outside the Anglophone world highlight issues that demand further consideration.  This multi-faceted author is well-served by these new studies that, in turn, suggest additional avenues yet to be explored.


","""The dust jacket ... announces that the volumes eighteen essays ... offer 'fresh insights into diverse elements' of Moore's oeuvre and reflect the wide variety of his 'literary innovations, influences and legacy.' Readers will not be disappointed: here is MOore in all shapes and guises - from autobiographer to Voltairian - through the lenses of Irish, English, American, French, Spanish, Brazilian, and Greek scholars.""

From a review in English Literature in Transition




""This volume is a most welcome and timely reassessment  of George Moore’s significance in Irish and world literature, of his sense of innovation, his modernism, his significance to James Joyce, his artistic role. The variety of the theoretical approaches, of the national backgrounds of the authors, their emphasis on Moore’s significance in their own countries all contribute to the interest of this book.

This is an excellent analysis of the significance of what Deleuze and Gattari call 'minority literature', i. e. 'the literature of a minority written in the  language of the majority, a literature in which compulsive expression of revolutionary sentiment cannot be avoided by its author'.

Moore is rendered visible in his working and reworking of the written text and the process through which textual grammar reveals psychic grammar is made explicit.""

Professor  J. Brihault

""Mary Pierse argues for a lasting sympathy between Moore and his reforming landowner father in her essay on politics. If this erases the late-century textures of the younger Moore's advanced beliefs, it also refigures teh cultural geography of post-Famine Ireland, Pierse preparing the reader for Moore's reading of Dalkey as a modern-day Babylon, the decaying villas of the mortgaged aristocracy hanging like faded gardens from the Dublin coast. Perceptively, Pierse sets Thomas hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles against Moore's Esther Waters... 

Manet's early portrait, 'George Moore au Cafe', outlines a writer and thinker in development, the wide cuffs and loose collar opening on to a career to which Moore looks across the table, attentively disputatious. George Moore: Artistic Visions and Literary Worlds is an engaging portrait of this figure in literary perspective""

-Nicholas Allen, Associate Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, in The Irish Times Weekend Review, Saturday, June 30, 2007



",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-09-01,Gerd Bayer,Mediating Germany: Popular Culture between Tradition and Innovation,Hardback,9781847180339,39.99,"Popular culture in the German-speaking world has reacted in numerous ways to the demands of contemporary life, combining century-old traditions but also addressing current political and social debates. The essays collected in this volume offer case studies of popular fiction, theatre, hip-hop and rock music, events like the love parade, as well as describe new developments in documentary filmmaking. Read individually or as a whole, the chapters provide a detailed analysis of both the current issues in popular culture and the legacy of popular art forms throughout the twentieth century.


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-09-01,Robert P. McParland,Music and Literary Modernism: Critical Essays and Comparative Studies,Hardback,9781904303534,34.99,"In Music and Literary Modernism, the intersections of music, literature and language are examined by an international group of scholars who engage in studies of modernist art and practice. The essays collected here present the significant place of music in the writing of T.S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, James Weldon Johnson, Mina Loy, Stephen Mallarme, Ezra Pound, Marcel Proust, Gertrude Stein,Wallace Stevens and Virginia Woolf, as well as the importance of literary art for composers such as George Antheil, Pierre Boulez, Olivier Messaein, and The Beatles. Contributors explore the role of music and literary modernism in the postmodern sublime, sound and ""music"" in language, the uneasy alliance of jazz and pop song in high modernist work, the Beatles as modernists, and other topics.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-09-01,Geoff Baker and Ann McGruer,"Readers, Audiences and Coteries in Early Modern England",Hardback,9781847180360,29.99,"This book draws on and contributes to the wealth of recent research in the history of the book and the history of reading. All six case studies contained here are linked by the general theme of how a particular text, or type of text, may have been appropriated by an individual, a group of readers, or the author themselves. The contributors consider how the physical form of the text impacts on its readership, concluding that early modern texts do not hold a fixed meaning but are instead interpreted and appropriated in a different manner by each individual reader. Through discussions of a range of different publications, the contributors to this volume describe a period that was both vibrant and inventive in its literary output. The extension of literacy and the increased access to written material made possible by the printing press raised concerns of legitimacy and reputation, an aspect explored here in relation to the publication of plays, as well as concerns over the efficacy and role of censorship within the literary marketplace. This volume seeks to add a further contribution to the increasing interdisciplinary dialogue over the history of the book, the history of reading and the networks of exchange involved in the 'textual culture' of early modern England. Concerned with reading practices throughout the period, the contributors come from the fields of both English and history and provide a variety of new interpretations on the presentation of texts, the aims of their authors, and the ways in which their audiences received them. The range of literary and historical material covered within the chapters of this volume represents a valuable reinforcement of the need for interdisciplinary study through a demonstration of the benefits of collaboration between literary and historical scholars.",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-09-01,Sanja Bahun-Radunovic and Marinos Pourgouris,The Avant-Garde and the Margin: New Territories of Modernism,Hardback,9781847180308,39.99,"The collection of essays The Avant-garde and the Margin: New Territories of the Modernist Avant-garde refigures the critical and historical picture of the modernist avant-garde by introducing a variety of less-commonly discussed geo-artistic sites and dynamics. The contributors explore the multifaceted relations established between the avant-garde “centers” (France, Germany, England, and others) and their counterparts in the cultural “periphery” (Greece, India, Japan, Poland, Quebec, Romania, and the former Yugoslavia), as well as the unique artistic and literary dialogues which these encounters engendered. The primary concern of the anthology is the set of relations established between the center and the margin, the redefinition of which was pivotal for the formulation of the modernist avant-garde aesthetic project itself.

While enriching the kaleidoscopic picture of modernism, the essays in this collection also offer new methodological approaches to this polychrome cultural image. In this way, the collection avoids the pitfalls of both the traditional diffusionist/Eurocentric model of the world and the more recent over-relativization of the positions of the margin and the center. In their stead, the anthology proposes a hermeneutics of encounter that is simultaneously “spatial” and “historical,” aware of its limits but convinced of its own necessity.  



","""The anthology The Avant-garde and the Margin: New Territories of Modernism has been long awaited. This exemplary series of essays proposes novel ways of looking at the dynamic of the center and the margin while performatively and theoretically targeting the most pressing issue in modernist studies—namely, the geographical and temporal expansion of its scope of inquiry.""

""The collection provides a fresh look at the geocultural spaces of Central and Eastern Europe, Asia, and Americas in the extended epoch of modernism and offers multiple surprising insights into the hidden dynamics of modernist intercultural relating, in particular, those pertaining to the studies of Slavic literatures in comparative context. Finally, this multifaceted inquiry into the neglected “territories of modernism” goes beyond a simple disclosure of the previously unattended aesthetic achievements of “marginal” modernisms: it moves the boundaries of the present theoretical conceptualizations of the dynamic of centers and margins, opening a set of new questions and theoretical frameworks. I recommend this anthology strongly not only to modernist scholars, but also to any serious student of aesthetic interculturality.""

Novica Milić, Professor of Comparative Literature and Theory, University of Belgrade


""The collection of essays The Avant-garde and the Margin: New Territories of Modernism offers an insightful discussion of the dialogue, in modernism, between the so-called “centers’’ of aesthetic production and their counterparts in the cultural “periphery,” questioning the very existence of centers and margins and proposing a theory that argues for fruitful bi-directional (rather than only uni-directional) intercultural encounters in specific historical contexts. While much has been written on modernism in Western Europe and England, this volume breaks new ground in its concentration on modernism practiced in locations ranging from Romania, Poland, and the former Yugoslavia to Greece, French Canada, Japan, and India. Shedding light on the genres of poetry and drama; movements such as Surrealism, DADA, and other avant-gardes; and issues such as gender, modernity, and nationalism, it demonstrates that the concepts of center and margin are useful in the study of intercultural interactions and that the study of modernism practiced from the periphery reveals important truths about the routes of cultural transfer. The volume contributes to the ongoing discussion of cultural trafficking across boundaries and borders in the twentieth century.""

Janet A. Walker, Professor of Comparative Literature, Rutgers University


""Avoiding the predictable poles of center and margin, metropolitan and colonized, the west and the east, The Avant Garde and the Margin looks at the modernist traditions in forgotten and often uncelebrated places: Quebec, Greece, Poland, Romania, India, the former Yugoslavia. Wide-ranging in subject matter and comprehensive in theoretical approach, this collection of essays broadens our understanding of cultural interaction.  In so doing, it challenges our conception of world literature by forcing us to think about modes of literary and cultural exchange that both traditional and poststructuralist discourses have neglected.""

Gregory Jusdanis, Humanities Distinguished Professor, The Ohio State University


",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-10-01,Wendy K. Perriman,A Wounded Deer: The Effects of Incest on the Life and Poetry of Emily Dickinson,Hardback,9781847180452,39.99," What made Emily Dickinson the reclusive woman she was, and the dynamic poet she became? A Wounded Deer concludes that her enigmatic poetry may have originated from a personal exposure to incest, and examines how she used her craft to make the transition from victim to survivor at a time when the medical profession failed to acknowledge any damage related to this event.  

Research into the Dickinson family background, evidence from letters and poems, and the testimony of people who knew the poet, indicate that she apparently displayed at least 33 of 37 “Incest Survivors’ Aftereffects” from a diagnostic tool used internationally by many therapists; when a client exhibits over 25 of these behavior patterns sexual abuse is strongly suspected. The second section of the book deals with the three stage of recovery from complex post-traumatic stress, as outlined by trauma expert Judith Herman. Remarkably, Dickinson seems to have completed stages one and two, but was unable to complete stage three because she could not reconnect with the outside world.

Writing was Dickinson’s way of identifying the nature of her trauma, coming to terms with its impact, breaking the silence to inspire future women writers, and reconstructing a new persona–albeit from the sanctuary of her self-imposed isolation. The final section of A Wounded Deer examines what the poet might have discovered about sexual abuse from the literature she read, and how she responded to this information in her own work.  It discusses The Bible, Shakespeare, Byron, Hawthorne, (Charlotte) Brontë, (George) Eliot, and Barrett Browning.

""A Wounded Deer is fascinating, clearly written, difficult to put down, and a must for Dickinson scholars, psychologists and anyone interested in psychological interpretations of literature.""
Marilyn Berg Callander, President-Elect of the Fulbright Association.

""A Wounded Deer is well worth reading: its argument is clear, cogent and at times riveting.  Although we will never know the truth of the poet's life, this study offers readers a very plausible suggestion of what may be at the core of Dickinson's ""omitted center"".""
Maryanne Garbowsky, English professor at the County College of Morris (NJ) and Dickinson scholar

""This is a ""groundbreaking"" book, a fascinating and revealing read.""  
E. Sue Blume, LCSW, Diplomate in Clinical Social Work
Author, Secret Survivors: Uncovering Incest and Its Aftereffects in Women (1990: Ballantine Books)

""How many multitudes of women have been terrorized into silence, withholding the truth of their damning accusations rather than face their fear, condemnation and shame of incest.  Emily allows her soul to reach over time and space to tell others tortured by life's tragedies that they are not alone, and doing so the poet triumphs.""
Sandra Bloom has served as President of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies, President of the Philadelphia Physicians for Social Responsibility, and Chair of the Task Force on Family Violence for the Attorney General.  She is the author of two books.


","""Emily Dickinson's life and poetry have gaps that mystify and provoke readers to suggest answers. One such theory provided by Wendy Perriman in her book A Wounded Deer is that Emily Dickinson may be the victim of incest. As startling and provocative as this sounds, the author presents thorough and extensive research based on primary sources, such as Dickinson's letters and poems, and on secondary sources ranging from literary scholars and critics through the literature of medical doctors, psychologists, and social workers. The result is a credible, well-documented study 
...
A Wounded Dear is well worth reading: its argument is clear, cognent and at times riveting. I recommend this book for the general reader who is curious about the nineteenth centuary patriarchal world and it's treatment of young girls and women. I especially recommend it for those interested in Dickinson scholarship. Although we will never fully know the truth of the poet's life, this study offers readers a plausible suggestion of what may be at the core of Dickinson's 'omitted centre'."" 
-Maryanne Garabowsky - Emily Dickinson International Society Bulletin. Nov/Dec 2007


",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-10-01,Amardeep Singh,Literary Secularism: Religion and Modernity in Twentieth-Century Fiction,Hardback,9781847180490,34.99,"Literary Secularism: Religion and Modernity in Twentieth-Century Fiction shows the path to secularization in the modern novel in comparative perspective. Writers as diverse as George Eliot, James Joyce, Salman Rushdie, Orhan Pamuk, Taslima Nasrin, and James Wood, have all struggled with religious orthodoxy in their personal lives, and are some of the most important and representative ""secular"" writers in the modern world canon. But their novels, which are far more than mere anti-religious manifestos, directly reflect the continued power of religious communities and institutions in the modern world. While religion is in a very real sense displaced from epistemological centrality in modernity, all of these writers suggest that religious texts, rituals, and communities have a force that is, in George Eliot's words, “still throbbing” in modern life. In a series of close readings, Literary Secularism argues that the  intimate, often deeply ambivalent representation of religion is a key feature of modern writing and is central to the larger intellectual and historical project of modernity.

""Literary Secularism"" is then a complex literary ethos, which impinges as much on style, language, and novelistic form as on theme. The close readings here of novels such as George Eliot's Daniel Deronda, Rabindranath Tagore's Gora, James Joyce's Ulysses, and Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses all hinge on the ambiguity of religious and secular discourses. In some cases, the ambiguity is expressed through the affective and embodied experience of the protagonists, whose private subjectivity often conflicts with their public identities. The conflict between present and private is also explored in a dedicated chapter on secularism and feminism in India, as well as with regard to the global crisis of secularism that has emerged following the terrorist attacks of 9/11. While the particular experiences of the various narratives vary somewhat from author to author, all of the authors in this study are interested in defining a way of being secular that no sociological or ideological formula can fully describe. Correspondingly, while works of literature are certainly artifacts marking key moments in the history of secularisation, literature by itself doesn't produce secularism in either the cultural or the political context. In arguing for the ""literary"" as a historically-specific social and cultural mode of secularity, Literary Secularism offers a unique perspective on the problem of secularisation that may be of interest to fields such as literary criticism, religious studies, the sociology of religion, and polticial theory.",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-10-01,Ciara Bhreatnach and Aoife Bhreatnach,Portraying Irish Travellers: Histories and Representations,Hardback,9781847180551,34.99,"This edited volume offers an interdisciplinary perspective on the history of Irish Travellers. Scholars from anthropology, history, literary studies and socio-linguistics explore the methodological problems that arise when a marginalised minority is portrayed by an established and powerful majority population. Each chapter addresses how different sources illuminate settled and Traveller history alike. With new research and perspectives from a number of disciplines, Irish Travellers: Histories and Representations is a welcome consideration of a neglected aspect of Irish society; the relationship between Irish Travellers and the majority, settled population. Although Irish Travellers are a conspicuous minority in contemporary Irish society, their past existence is often ignored. The contributors to this volume demonstrate a range of sources and approaches that prove Travellers deserve a place in the narrative of Ireland. This book will appeal to scholars interested in majority-minority relations generally, and the example of Ireland in particular.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-10-01,Larbi Touaf and Soumia Boutkhil,Representing Minorities: Studies in Literature and Criticism,Hardback,9781847180469,34.99,"The papers in this volume include not only the traditional view of what constitutes a minority but also any individual, or group recalcitrant and reluctant, not to say resistant, to the generalized lobotomy operated by the rampant uniformisation of cultures around the world. For in the ruins of “the end of history” and its context of violence and Manichean politics, any opposition to the “general consensus” could be dismissed as anti-historical and atavistic. The objective of the book is precisely to counter such rhetoric and underscore the necessity of cultural diversity and the right to difference.  
      
This book contains what can amount to a critical response to the current context of confusion surrounding the postmodern condition that arguably dominates most societies. It stresses the issue of ethics not only in world politics but also in literature and criticism which are the main focus here. In fact, the interest in minority issues is in itself an ethical concern that contributes to give substance to the idea that postmodernity opens the gates for the long-suppressed identities and sensibilities to emerge and demand recognition. 

This volume intends, therefore, to contribute to the recent ethical turn that seems to take place in scholarship worldwide. Operated mainly by what is referred to as postcolonial studies this shift turned literary criticism and cultural studies into the site where a sense of literature can be envisioned that is not at all universalist, or reflecting the hegemonic temptations of the new world order. It seeks to present a patchwork of minor literatures, in the sense that besides the “major” literatures/languages, there are myriads of minor voices that express dissimilarity oftentimes under the umbrella of those major languages and literatures themselves.",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-10-01,Nathalie Ramière and Rachel Varshney,"Rhizomes: Connecting Languages, Cultures And Literatures",Hardback,9781847180544,39.99,"This volume, Rhizomes, is a challenging path into a very multidisciplinary set of papers. Papers range across cultural studies and film, to applied linguistics to sociolinguistics; and as gathered in this one volume - the result of postgraduate student research of a very high order - they 'force' readers to think critically of disciplines, their assumed boundaries and most importantly, the usefulness of assuming the enduring value of such boundaries. This is not to say that ‘anything goes’, but the diversity of areas under scrutiny means that sharper re-thinking of one’s own comfort zones is necessarily one key outcome when confronted with a volume like this. This is one advantage of the selected papers – besides the obvious one of having at your finger tips a simple way of delving into a challenging diversity.

Brian Ridge, Campion College, Sydney

This is a wonderful collection of papers, which demonstrates the power and vitality of contemporary literary and cultural research.  The scope of the papers, the diversity of the subject matter, and the willingness of their authors to work across disciplinary boundaries work together to create an exemplary collection of research for the twenty-first century – multidisciplinary, multigeneric, and multimodal, like 21st century texts and media.
Greg Hainge’s opening paper sets the stage for the diverse and engaging papers that follow.  With his own examples of rhizomatics drawn from music, Greg immediately has the reader acknowledging the multidisciplinary – and multimodality – of contemporary texts – and so the need for research that can address the richness and complexity of these texts.
In Part 1 we have two papers that address the issue of the limitations of conventional research methodology in their own fields (language acquisition, film studies) – and propose alternative and more productive methodologies.  The exciting thing about this section is that these are fields normally considered very different and without much to say to one another – and yet the combination works to create a dialogue that extends across these and many other fields of research.  Most importantly, both challenge the dichotomising of research and analytical methods that has worked to impoverish their fields and the research on which it is based. 
Part 2 presents papers on a range of marginalised social positionings and experiences – and in the process demonstrates both the power of research to uncover what has been ignored or elided in contemporary histories (how many westerners know of the long history of Chinese women in film? Or of an Aboriginal Taiwanese literature?) as well as the power of new perspectives, new ways of thinking the research subject, to open up areas of study such as dating manuals and country music, both conventionally dismissed as inherently trivial and/or sexist.
In Part 3 the papers all play brilliantly with the notion of connectivity, demonstrating for readers the inextricability of texts and meaning systems (verbal, visual and other) with the cultural contexts in which they operate – and so the diverse ways they may be deployed.  These papers banish forever any reliance on a formalist reading or methodology for the analysis of text and meaning!  And, again, the range of subject-matter is breath-taking and argues the need for cross-disciplinary, transdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research practice.
Part 4 takes the reader into the realm of transformations, challenging the ways in which textual and systemic changes articulate profound cultural changes in the societies that produce them.  So we learn about grammatical interventions in the Chinese language as feminine and neuter pronouns are added to the gender-free Chinese language – and consider the major cultural change that both caused this change and is subsequently produced by it.  We consider the ways in which cinema has evolved as an art-form, under the influence of its material and verbal technologies.  And we consider the ways in which Chinese poetry has entered a range of cultural practices in the west and the east, and again consider how its traditional meanings and significance are maintained and communicate to these new contexts – and the nature of the transcultural experience this generates.
For the academic, student, or interested reader this collection offers a breath-taking scope of subject-matter and a vital and engaged approach to the material, that makes this collection a research ‘page turner’!

Professor Anne Cranny-Francis, Department of Critical and Cultural Studies, Macquarie University, Sydney
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-10-01,"Anna Guttman, Michel Hockx and George Paizis",The Global Literary Field,Hardback,9781847180537,39.99,"The Global Literary Field is a collection of twelve articles dealing with the impact of globalization on literary production. Focusing especially on the social context of literature and employing comparative methodologies, all articles comment on the literary market as it functions today, highlighting unexpected and understudied commercial and symbolic exchanges between literary communities from different parts of the globe. 

Featuring the work of many scholars working from non-Eurocentric perspectives and with non-European languages, this collection constitutes a timely intervention in the ongoing debate about “world literature”, which is so often dominated by scholars specializing exclusively in European literatures. The global literary field, as described in this collection, ranges from Atlantic Canada to Malaysia, from the Caribbean to Japan, and especially also across cyberspace. Dealing with both “serious” and “popular” literature and with the important issue of translation, this collection achieves a uniquely comprehensive coverage of a highly complex global phenomenon.


","""This highly informative and inspiring anthology is an outcome of 'The Global Literary Economy,' a conference that was held in 2005 at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London ... The anthology addresses a wide range of topics relevant to scholars working in various fields. The individual contributions highlight the persistence of long-standing concerns (e.g. the dominant role of market-forces) and the emergence of new opportunities (e.g. new publishing venues in the digital age) ... Everything considered, this anthology clearly indicates that the comparitive study of the world's literatures generates illuminating and thought provoking analyses that shed light on the ways in which people across the planet make sense of life by producing and consuming literature.""
-Nina Berman, The Ohio State University, in Recherche Littéraire/Literary Research, 2008 issue, pp. 62-64


",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-10-01,Jon Lewis,Tomorrow through the Past: Neal Stephenson and the Project of Global Modernization,Hardback,9781847180612,39.99,"Tomorrow Through the Past: Neal Stephenson and the Project of Global Modernization is the first collection of scholarly essays dedicated exclusively to this important voice in contemporary American fiction.  The collection grew from five essays originally presented at the 2006 XXth Century Literature Conference at the University of Louisville, and the contributors are made up of graduate students, independent scholars, and university professors who hope the collection will aid general readers as well as instructors teaching Stephenson and professionals building the critical response to his work.

Reading through the lenses of history and linguistic, cultural, and science fiction studies, the essays in the collection examine each of Stephenson’s novels from The Big U to The Baroque Cycle as well as his long non-fiction work on computer operating systems, In the Beginning … Was the Command Line.  Included in this collection is a new interview conducted with Stephenson during the summer of 2006.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-10-01,Madelena Gonzalez and Francine Tolron,Translating Identity and the Identity of Translation,Hardback,9781847180438,39.99,"The aim of this volume is to use the problematic of translation in both its metaphorical and literal acceptations in order to explore the concept of identity and its manifestations in cultural, artistic and literary production, particularly, but not exclusively, in postcolonial societies which have recently undergone profound upheaval. The changing nature of identity in its local and global manifestations is examined as well as the manner in which an identity may be “translated” for the consumption of a specific market. To what extent can translation and the adaptation that it implies furnish access to a foreign culture?  Is it possible or even desirable to attempt to transcend cultural barriers through translation and/or adaptation, whether the translator’s agenda be literary, political, ethical or even metaphysical? When we attempt to transfer meaning from one medium or language to another what are the challenges and pitfalls facing the cultural interpreter or “translator”. In an era of late-capitalist globalisation of culture has homogenisation replaced local specificity or is the latter merely recuperated as a facet of marketing strategy? These are some of the questions which will be addressed by the authors of the pieces collected here as they seek to negotiate a philosophy of translation for the beginning of the twenty-first century.",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-11-01,Rodney Stenning Edgecombe,A Self-divided Poet: Form and Texture in the Verse of Thomas Hood,Hardback,9781847180704,39.99,"Whereas Thomas Hood has long been regarded as a minor comic poet, this book--the first to devote itself exclusively to his verse--provides a detailed analysis of two ""serious"" poems (""Hero and Leander"" and ""The Plea of the Midsummer Fairies"") so as to give a better sense of his range. Most commentators have pointed to the influence of Keats on such occasions, but close examination reveals an even greater debt to Elizabethan and Metaphysical poets, whose sometimes playful deployment of the conceit struck a chord in his sensibility.

At the same time, the book gives Hood's comic genius its due, supplying detailed accounts of the deftness and panache of his light-hearted oeuvre. One chapter examines his excursion into the mock-heroic mode (Odes and Addresses to Great People), and another his reliance on that airiest of forms, the capriccio (Whims and Oddities). The study concludes with an extensive examination of ""Miss Kilmansegg and Her Precious Leg,"" showing how Hood was here able to inflect a jeu d'esprit with a fine Juvenalian passion.",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-11-01,Rachel Dickinson and Keith Hanley,"Ruskin's Struggle for Coherence: Self-Representation through Art, Place and Society",Hardback,9781847180674,34.99,"The writers of the ten essays collected here address a central problem in Ruskin studies—that of coherence in his multi-disciplinary works. They attempt to define the forms and mythic structure of his writings and to match what Ruskin himself refers to as the “polygon” of his thought with their interdisciplinary approaches. In differing degrees of application, these essays view it from the angles of art and literary criticism, aesthetics, formalism, myth criticism, cultural topography, history and geography, psychoanalysis, historicism, postructuralism, disability studies, neo-colonialism, and sociological and educational theory. As is explained in the editorial introduction, there is no pretension to completion, either individually or altogether, as that would ignore precisely what all Ruskin’s writings are finally about: what he called in a lecture of 1868 “The Mystery of Life and Its Arts”—that which no great artist or thinker has been able conclusively to pin down but which has effectively spurred all their intellectual and creative activities. 
Tony Tanner’s essay, “Ruskin and the Sea”, is a virtuoso critical response to Ruskin’s response to both the sea and Turner’s paintings; Clive Wilmer’s “Ruskin and the Sense of an Ending: Apocalypse and Literary Form” is the exploration by a poet-critic of the interrelationship in Ruskin’s writing between time and spatiality; in “Sex and the City—Death in Venice: An Argument about Ruskinian Myth”, Robert Hewison takes issue with reductive autobiographical readings of The Stones of Venice; Keith Hanley’s “Ruskin’s Holy Land: the Sacred Language of Landscape” explores the representational content of some of Ruskin’s key places as adaptations of the critical sacred site of the Holy Land; Francis O’Gorman’s essay, “Ruskin’s Mountain Gloom”, confronts Ruskin’s increasingly anguished and disorientating awareness of the collapse of his early aspirations as a great cultural teacher; in “A Fine Grotesque or a Pathetic Fallacy? The Role of Objects in the Autobiographical Writing of Ruskin and Proust”, Alison Milbank celebrates the disjunction between the world of external objects and Ruskin’s subjectivism as the working of Ruskin’s “grotesque”; Deborah Sherman examines the same disjunctions in the light of trauma theory and disability studies by linking them to Ruskin’s late mental breakdowns and his final extended silence; in his essay, “Recontextualizing ‘The Two Boyhoods’: Ruskin, Thornbury and the Double Lives of Turner”, Andrew Leng argues that Ruskin attempted to retain for himself the kind of cultural wholeness he had once attributed to Turner’s art  by exerting a controlling part in the first formal, two-volume Life of Turner by Walter Thornbury; David Thiele’s “Ruskin, Authority, and Adult Education” examines the contradictory tensions in Ruskin’s educational outlook in the context of “the Victorian movement for adult ‘self-culture’”, particularly in the practices and ideology of the London Working Men’s College; and in “Reading Unto This Last—A Transformative Experience: Gandhi in South Africa”, Judith M. Brown recounts the transformation of what was arguably Ruskin’s most influential political intervention, attributable partly to “the power and spread of the English language” and partly to the compatibility of what she calls “ideals rooted in the Hindu tradition.”
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-12-01,Lance Weldy,From Colonialism to the Contemporary: Intertextual Transformation in World Children's and Youth Literature,Hardback,9781847180759,29.99,"The compilation of this book has been carefully constructed to convey the essence of its title, From Colonialism to the Contemporary: Intertextual Transformation in World Children's and Youth Literature.  In other words, the different chapters have been selected and ordered to illustrate the chronological effects surrounding the phenomenon of Children’s and Youth Literature.  While this selection of essays as a whole does not seek to provide an exhaustive historical analysis of literature surrounding and written for children, it does seek to highlight several points in time that will give the reader a sound understanding of certain shifts in ideology found in children’s literature.  

Furthermore, the focus of this book is multivalent and interconnecting.  While historically tracing a few texts from around the world along a timeline, this book also seeks to convey the transformative and intertextual nature of these respective texts, thereby revealing that children’s literature is not an isolated genre, but instead one that conveys—and is subject to—all the same ideologies as other genres of literature.  Furthermore, it is important to note that these chapters highlight texts from around the world, as the title expresses.  Therefore, the reader can see how audiences have responded to and transformed texts pertaining to such countries as India, the United States, and the United Kingdom as well as regions like Western Europe and Scandinavia.  Meta-narratively speaking, this book also reflects the multinational nature and audience of this book, with contributing scholars writing from and representing various parts of the world.  Most importantly, the thread that ties all of these topics together is Transformation.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-12-01,Jorge Febles,Into the Mainstream: Essays on Spanish American and Latino Literature and Culture,Hardback,9781847180797,34.99,"Into the Mainstream: Essays on Spanish American and Latino Literature and Culture is a direct outgrowth of Jorge Febles’s involvement with the annual conference of the American Culture Association and the Popular Culture Association.  In that sense, the compilation expands on a project initiated in 1993 by Helen Ryan-Ransom with her book Imagination, Emblems and Expressions:  Essays on Latin American, Caribbean, and Continental Culture and Identity (Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1993).   David William Foster, who penned a lengthy preface to that collection, justified its intent by underscoring:  “The very fact that our approach to culture is dominated by categories based on high, academic, institutionalized phenomena poses from the very outset the question of how to deal with all those other cultural manifestations that do not comfortably assimilate to the accepted canon” (Ryan-Ransom 3).  The past fourteen years, however, have witnessed a radical transformation of that so-called canon due to the widespread acceptance of ideas espoused by cultural theorists like García Canclini, Homi Bhabba, Said, Stuart Hall, Benhabib, Bourdieu and countless others.  Therefore, the ambivalence regarding what constitutes culture identified by Foster is inoperative nowadays to a substantial degree.  In fact, a fundamental component of the postmodern outlook resides in the ability to blend comfortably the high and the low, the elitist and the popular realms of production in a multiplicity of textual artifacts, creative as well as critical in nature.  Hence, the essays that conform Into the Mainstream do not question barriers anymore, nor do they expound on the need to assign a discursive intellectual space to matters pertaining to popular culture.  Thus, this collection espouses an inclusive approach in which a variety of analytical approaches coalesce to reflect on an equally kaleidoscopic textuality.
Pursuant to its comprehensive nature, Into the Mainstream airs established as well as developing critical voices so as to reflect both ideological continuity and evolving viewpoints. Scholars who have compiled strong academic records like Hortensia Morell, Raquel Rivas Rojas, Elsa Gilmore, David Petreman and Benjamín Torres Caballero share a venue with younger critics like Corey Shouse Tourino, Roberto Vela Córdova, Stacy Hoult, Eduardo del Río, Bruce Campbell, Laura Redruello, Dinora Cardoso and April Marshall, as well as with two graduate students about to complete their academic preparation:  Nuria Ibáñez Quintana and María Teresa Vera Rojas.  The result is an eclectic compilation meant to elicit discussion on the basis of its variety.  Into the Mainstream’s primordial objective is to place these provocative essays—which are expanded versions of papers presented during the annual gathering of the American Culture Association and the Popular Culture Association in the period 2002-2005—along with the numerous subjects they treat in the academic mainstream where they rightfully belong.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-12-01,Kate Fetherston and Roger Weingarten,Open Book: Essays from the Vermont College Postgraduate Writers Conference,Hardback,9781847180834,34.99,"The texts we write are not visible until they are written.  Like a creature coaxed from out a deep wood, the text reveals itself little by little.  The maze evokes a multiplicity of approaches, the many tricks we employ to tempt the text hither.” writes Rikki Ducornet in her essay, “The Deep Zoo.”   This book of essays is a convocation at the edge of that mystery, a meeting of minds passionate about words whose intent is to tempt language from the realms of imagination and experience onto the page.  

Our collection—navigating the confluences between novelist and poet, between short story and creative nonfiction writer—aims to encourage the technical and linguistic leaps that keep writers writing.  To this end, we didn’t divide this collection into genres.  By ordering alphabetically, we mean to allow readers to move through the slightly familiar into the unfamiliar. We’ve selected pieces that will be useful to writers at different levels of experience as well as to teachers of writing.  
We offer this collection to inspire your imagination and tune your craft as you make that leap from “What if?” to the page",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-12-01,Benito Pérez Galdós,The Forbidden,Hardback,9781847180773,39.99,"Benito Pérez Galdós, considered Spain’s most important novelist after Cervantes, wrote 77 novels, several works of theater and a number of other tomes during his lifetime (1843–1920). His works have been translated into all major languages of the world, and many of his most highly regarded novels, those of the contemporary period, have been translated into English two, three and even four times over. Of the few “contemporary novels” of Galdós that until now have not come to light in English, The Forbidden is certainly among the most noteworthy.

The story line concerns a wealthy philanderer, José María Bueno de Guzmán, who attempts to buy the favors of his three beautiful married cousins. He is successful with the first, Eloísa, a grasping materialist who falls deeply in love with him. Then he rejects her in order to attempt to seduce the youngest, Camila. Meanwhile, the third, the pseudo-intellectual María Juana, jealous, seduces José María. But it is Camila, healthy, impetuous and wild, who resists his temptations and holds our attention. The novelist and critic Leopoldo Alas, Galdós’s contemporary, calls her “the most feminine, graceful, lively female character that any modern novelist has painted.”

As a naturalistic study, in the manner of Balzac in particular, principal characters of Galdós’s other novels (El doctor Centeno, La de Bringas, La familia de León Roch) become fleetingly visible in The Forbidden. In addition, the entire Bueno de Guzmán family gives evidence of the naturalistic emphasis on heredity: they all display certain physical or mental disorders. Eloísa has a morbid fear of feathers, María Juana often feels that she has a tiny piece of cloth caught in her teeth, José María suffers bouts of depression, an uncle is a kleptomaniac, one of the relatives writes letters to himself, etc. At the same time, this novel shows the foibles of Spanish society where status is determined by one’s associates, by the wearing of finery, and by living on borrowed money. In their history of Spanish literature, Chandler and Schwartz call Galdós “the greatest novelist of the nineteenth century and the only one who deserves to be mentioned in the same breath with great novelists like Balzac, Dickens and Dostoievsky.” The Forbidden, written at the height of the author’s creative powers, is a major work and its publication for an English-speaking audience is long overdue.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-01-01,Nicholas Meriwether,All Graceful Instruments: The Contexts of the Grateful Dead Phenomenon,Hardback,9781847180971,39.99,"All Graceful Instruments: The Contexts of the Grateful Dead Phenomenon gathers thirteen representative essays from a wide array of fields into an interdisciplinary anthology that reveals the depth and extent of this fascinating, variegated cultural phenomenon. Contributors use the techniques of literary criticism, musicology, sociology, philosophy, business theory, and more to explore the meaning and significance of the music of the Grateful Dead, the implications of their artistic and commercial success, and the social dimensions of their following, the Deadheads.

For scholars and students of American history and culture, this book makes a convincing case for why the Grateful Dead phenomenon is worthy of academic attention and what that study can offer. By focusing a wide array of critical approaches on a single, discrete subject, All Graceful Instruments provides a refreshing approach to interdisciplinary studies that should appeal to a wide audience.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-01-01,Robert Schechtman and Suin Roberts,Finding the Foreign,Hardback,9781847181022,39.99,"""Finding the Foreign"" includes the proceedings of the thirteenth annual Interdisciplinary German Studies Conference at the University of California, Berkeley (2005), which explored constructions of the “foreign”
in the German-speaking context in language, literature, music, and visual media. The collected articles discuss how various tropes and rhetorical techniques have historically been employed to position cultural works on a spectrum from familiar to the strange. The multi-disciplinary range of approaches contained in this volume reveals how diverse the portrayals of the foreign have been, as well as how contingent and varying the delineation between the foreign and the familiar can become.",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-01-01,David Raizman and Carma Gorman,"Objects, Audiences, and Literatures: Alternative Narratives in the History of Design",Hardback,9781847180926,34.99,"In Objects, Audiences, and Literatures: Alternative Narratives in the History of Design, five art historians tap a variety of unexpected literary sources to reveal the dynamic relationship between intention and reception in architecture, interior design, costume, and the decorative arts. The essays consider both handcrafted and serially produced objects from the eighteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries, including a japanned high chest from colonial Boston, German and Austrian Artistic Dress, Tiffany lamps, the architecture of the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels in Paris, and the “dream homes” portrayed in two popular postwar American films.

The five chapters demonstrate that a complex and even contradictory mixture of stakeholders determines the meanings of designed objects. Each author examines popular forms of literature in order to reveal the preconceptions that viewers brought with them to the experience of looking at and using objects. The authors’ attentiveness to viewers’ class and gender provides a methodological model for approaching the study of reception within the field of design history.


""Objects, Audiences, and Literatures introduces a new generation of historians of design and decorative arts with five superb case studies. Looking beyond the laconic historical data that has formed the backbone of scholarship in this field these authors plumb popular culture—films, advertisements, and especially novels—to understand contemporaneous meanings of objects. Using these polyglot sources with an eye particularly on narrative and gender they suss out heretofore unnoticed dissonances between the prescriptive pronouncements of avant-garde “insiders” and the reception that design innovation found in broader publics. These wide-ranging essays are marked by imagination, exuberance, and acuity; I look forward to using it in my teaching.""
—Margaretta M. Lovell, University of California, Berkeley


""This is a welcome addition to the literature that addresses the growing scholarly and popular interest in design and design history.  Drawing on an impressive array of examples, the authors explore how class, gender, and cultural context shaped the reception of architecture, interior design, costume, and the decorative arts at various moments in the modern era. The collection is noteworthy for the way each of the contributors draws upon literary sources for insights into design and material culture that transcend the specific examples under review. Models of methodological rigor, these essays should appeal to scholars in multiple disciplines.""
—Dennis P. Doordan, University of Notre Dame

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-01-01,Robert Bray,Tennessee Williams and His Contemporaries,Hardback,9781847181015,29.99,"Tennessee Williams and His Contemporaries compiles eight transcribed panels that were featured at The Tennessee Williams Scholars’ Conference, an annual event held each March in conjunction with the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival.  This study, the first of its kind, explores issues involving Williams’s drama, fiction, poetry, and films in a discursive format designed to probe and debate the legacy of America’s famous playwright.  

Virtually all aspects of Williams’s long career are covered in this volume, including the early and late plays, his unpublished work, his use of the grotesque, and his relationships with three of his contemporaries: Carson McCullers, Lillian Hellman, and William Inge.  In addition, Williams scholars who teach his work discuss the most effective strategies for bringing his material into the classroom.  The unique design of this volume offers a broad understanding of his material for students previously unacquainted with Tennessee Williams as well as fresh perspectives from recognized experts in the field that will satisfy those who are already familiar with his life and work.





",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-01-01,Marguerite Helmers and Tilar Mazzeo,The Traveling and Writing Self,Hardback,9781847181060,29.99,"The collected essays that comprise The Traveling and Writing Self examine the critical relationship between the journey, the author of the travel narrative, and published and private texts. Contributors draw attention to the performed nature of the travel writer’s self, emphasizing that the carefully crafted persona of the traveler-protagonist is a fiction. The traveler’s identity is frequently in flux, negotiating between social convention, literary convention, personal motivations, and nationalist agendas. 

The Traveling and Writing Self is a notable addition to studies of travel writing because the contributors explore several genres in addition to the traditional accounts of the journey; these genres include histories of exploration, diaries, memoir, poetry, film, and short story. Not limited to a specific historical era or geographical location, individual chapters explore the work of Rebecca Solnit, Isak Dinesen, Melinda Atwood, William Byrd, E. J. Pratt, Beatrice Grimshaw, and Louisa May Alcott. From each, we learn that perhaps the most interesting subject of any travel account is the author.",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-02-01,David Divine,Multiple Lenses: Voices from the Diaspora located in Canada,Hardback,9781847181107,44.99,"Black Canadian Studies is the exploration of the range of histories, experiences, contributions, perceptions, feelings, convictions, triumphs, and obstacles awaiting to be overcome, of identified Black people of African descent resident in Canada. Black Canadian Studies revolves around the agency of Black people as the subject of investigation.  Their stories, their interpretations, their pride, their independence, their self determination, their challenges, their triumphs, their shortfalls and sense of freedom and justice, are at the forefront of investigation. 

Multiple Lenses: Voices from the Diaspora Located in Canada is an essential introduction to an understanding of the experience of Black people in Canada over a four hundred year period. Through the lenses of history, law, literature, film, music, Black community organizations, media, sports, Black spirituality, party politics, labour markets, education and lived experience, renowned commentators explore through Canadian eyes, how Black people in Canada have identified themselves, and been identified over this period. What factors influenced that process?

Black people in Canada are not part of ""imagined communities"" but real people with visceral connections, flesh and blood, striving to build lives under often unimaginable hardships.  This book is dedicated to such Black people and their allies who, together, have fashioned meaning and hope in an often hostile environment.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-02-01,Andrew Mangham,Wilkie Collins: Interdisciplinary Essays,Hardback,9781847181091,34.99,"This eclectic collection brings together a range of critical voices, from varying disciplinary backgrounds, to comment on the life and works of Wilkie Collins. 

A close friend of Dickens, Collins engaged with some of the nineteenth century’s most influential ideas and cultural developments. As this collection makes clear, he formed interesting connections with key figures in literature, art, theatre, medicine, and the law. As a result, his works often engaged with the period’s most influential ideas and cultural developments. 

Best remembered for spearheading the Sensation genre with The Woman in White and detective fiction with The Moonstone, Collins’s career actually encompassed a large amount of material that has remained relatively neglected until recently. Wilkie Collins: Interdisciplinary Essays offers readings of previously unstudied sources while offering new perspectives on the author’s most canonical works.

","""Andrew Mangham's Wilkie Collins: Interdisciplinary Essays is an eclectic collection of essays on the popular Victorian writer. The book does not just consider Collins as a sensation novelist; it examines the legal, artistic, scientific or theatrical resonances of his novels and illuminates the variety of themes which mark Collins's work ... There is no doubt that this highly varied collection of articles will prove useful to students and scholars interested in Wilkie Collins. It consistently points out how Collins engagedwith his own time, fuelling his plotswith contemporary legal or scientific debate, defying artistic and literary trends, and always challenging normality and conventionality.""

Laurence Talairach-Vielmas (University of Toulouse-Le Mirail) in Gothic Studies, vol. 10, no. 1,  May 2008

",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-03-01,Sally Goade,Empowerment versus Oppression: Twenty First Century Views of Popular Romance Novels,Hardback,9781847181398,39.99,"The title of Empowerment versus Oppression: Twenty-First Century Views of Popular Romance Novels comes from the central question evident in popular romance criticism for at least the past thirty years: Are women readers (and writers) oppressed by their commitment to a narrative with an essentially patriarchal, heterosexual relationship at its center, or are they somehow empowered by their ability to create, escape to, and transform the romance narrative into a vehicle for reimagining women’s freedom within relationships?  While building on the work of early critics, who provided theories with which to agree, tinker, and argue, these selections add something new to the conversation, whether it be a new perspective from a unique group of readers (we hear from readers in Hong Kong and India), an examination of a particular romance subtype (included are Christian, African-American, and Gothic novels, as well as those set in Las Vegas and the Middle East), or a new way of presenting a critical response (we have a romance novelist’s controversial reflection, a critique of the industry as creative enterprise, an examination of students negotiating with romance, and established critics—including Kay Mussell and Tania Modleski—“rewriting” their favorite romances).

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-03-01,Mateusz Borowski and Malgorzata Sugiera,Fictional Realities / Real Fictions. Contemporary Theatre in Search of a New Mimetic Paradigm,Hardback,9781847181381,34.99,"The collection of essays Fictional Realities / Real Fictions. Contemporary Theatre in Search of a New Mimetic Paradigm tackles the problem of fictionality and reality in contemporary theatre practice and playwriting. It approaches this hotly debated issue in a larger context of the theories of theatrical and dramatic mimesis. The volume provides an answer to the most recent developments in performative arts, such as the widespread use of new media technologies, the popularity of site specific productions, and the flourishing of various post-dramatic forms of expression. The phenomena scrutinized in this collection call into question the basic dichotomy between the fictional and the real on which the theory and practice of the Western theatre has been based right from its inception. However, due to their extremely heterogeneous character, they pose a considerable problem for researchers and teachers, who still do not find a widely applicable methodology for the analysis of contemporary performances and texts for the theatre. 
Fictional Realities / Real Fictions sets the discussion of the onset of new mimetic paradigm in three interrelated contexts: the new perceptual patterns forged by contemporary theatre, the use of media on stage, and the strategies of today’s political theatre. The case studies presented here, in spite of their thematic diversity, are subordinated to a single theoretical framework. Thus they turn out extremely useful both for the scholars investigating the problems of contemporary theatre, and students of theatre and drama. Fictional Realities / Real Fictions offers them a rigid methodological scaffolding, supported by a number of illustrative examples from a variety of cultural context and theatre traditions, which gives them an opportunity to extrapolate from the main argument of the volume to their own research.",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-03-01,"Ray B. Browne and Lawrence A. Kreiser, Jr.",The Detective as Historian,Hardback,9781847181268,39.99,"""Deeper understanding of history is enhanced by encasing it in art and interest. Crime fiction is one of the widest and most rapidly growing forms of literature. Historical crime fiction serves effectively the double purpose of entertaining while it teaches. The ""truth"" of the narrative account, the editors of this volume believe,  is dependent on the understanding of human nature reflected in the author who writes the narrative.
     ""Historical crime fiction,"" the editors of this volume write, ""has an obligation and a golden opportunity. It must bring the past up to the present through the device of timeless crime and it must take the reader into the world about which is being written so that the characters are alive and the events interesting and challenging.""
     Professional writers of fiction need to be more effective than mere authors of dates and assumed motivations. Therefore they can fill in human motivations and drives where no records exist and can aid the professional historians in what historian David Thelen calls the ""challenge of history "" which is ""to recover the past and [interpret it for] the present."" The essays in this volume accept the challenge and make major accomplishments for meeting it.",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-04-01,Jean Webb,"""A Noble Unrest"": Contemporary Essays on the Work of George MacDonald",Hardback,9781847181541,29.99,"“A Noble Unrest” is an international collection of contemporary essays on the work of the Scottish author George MacDonald (1824-1905), who was a major nineteenth century writer, principally of fairy tales and works of fantasy, predominantly for children. His work was strongly influenced by his Christian beliefs, Romanticism and his own theories of the imagination. MacDonald’s fiction, whilst categorised as fantasy, also writes into the realities of the social context, critiquing the philosophical and moral tenets of the Victorian period. The essays are by established and new scholars who work in a range of fields: children’s literature, nineteenth century studies, Modernism, literary theory, creative writing and reading habits. The collection is organized as a line of discussion working from the nineteenth century social context and MacDonald’s influence on such; the inter-relationship between fantasy and realism; fairy tale; the construction of heroism – particularly pertinent in the period of high imperialism – the similarities between MacDonald’s work and that of Joseph Conrad and notions of subjectivity. The collection concludes with essays on the relevance of MacDonald’s work for the contemporary reader. The title “A Noble Unrest” is drawn from a pertinent quotation from George MacDonald, which emphasizes the need for continuing consideration and re-consideration, here applied to the writer himself as an important literary and philosophical figure: 

‘…repose is not the end of education; its end is a noble unrest, an ever renewed awaking from the dead a ceaseless questioning of the past for the interpretation of the future ...’
George MacDonald A Dish of Orts – “The Imagination: Its Functions and Culture”, 1867.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-04-01,Robert Bond and Jenny Bavidge,City Visions: The Work of Iain Sinclair,Hardback,9781847181534,34.99,"City Visions: The Work of Iain Sinclair collects fourteen pathbreaking essays treating the panoramic oeuvre of novelist, poet, filmmaker and essayist Iain Sinclair. This book aims to reflect and develop the current strong interest in the work of Sinclair, who is widely recognized as one of the most significant figures in contemporary British literature and culture. The essays herein cover the key genres and periods of Sinclair’s output, discussing his poetry, prose and filmmaking, and are developed from the proceedings of the first academic conference on Sinclair, which was held at the University of Greenwich in 2004.

Following the introductory chapter, which includes a brief survey of Sinclair’s career up until now, the collection is arranged thematically in four sections. The first part, ‘Contexts’, features essays which comment on the critical categorization and definition of Sinclair’s work. The second part, ‘Culture and Critique’, includes essays which explore the political import and contexts of Sinclair’s oeuvre. The articles in the third part, ‘Connections’, look at the links between Sinclair and other writers, addressing the often noted intertextuality of his writing; and the final section, ‘Spaces’, contains three considerations of Sinclair’s treatment of London’s urban spaces. This collection provides access to the latest research by the leading scholars working in this area, and will be a key point of reference for anyone interested in Sinclair’s production.


“To some, the field of `London writing’ may increasingly look like an indifferent, over-populated wasteland. Iain Sinclair, however, remains pre-eminent, by virtue, not only of the amplitude of his knowledge of the city, but of the intensity and complexity of his thought about it. He is the redemptive memorialist of a host of disregarded London cultures that lie quite beyond the reach of contemporary pieties. In that respect, he is less our Blake, as he sometimes seems to believe, than our Pepys or our Defoe. At the same time, he is an audacious experimenter with prose forms in the modernist tradition from Joyce to Burroughs and beyond. Like the Sinclair phenomenon itself, this valuable collection of essays is multifaceted, illuminating its subject from a variety of different angles, whilst very well aware that it is part of a `work in progress’. It offers important testimony to the scope and power of a writer engaged in an original, serious and necessary project.”
—Andrew Gibson, Research Professor of Modern Literature and Theory, Royal Holloway, University of London


“This is an important and timely collection about arguably the most significant living London writer who is increasingly being recognised as an important contemporary English author in every sense.”
—Lawrence Phillips, Principal Lecturer in English, University of Northampton


“At last, Iain Sinclair has the readers he deserves--at least on the ample, often provocative, and always fascinating evidence of City Visions, a collection of essays marked equally by panache and verve, awareness of alternative cultural history and theoretical sophistication. Over fourteen chapters, critics with wide-ranging interests gather their restless energies and obsessions in response to the scatter-gun agitprop and guerilla-intellectualism of Sinclair, to produce a necessary and necessarily edgy volume. In this admirably relentless collection Jenny Bavidge and Robert Bond offer an unnerving and inventive critical topography that uncovers the dark heart of a writer who is simultaneously the enfant terrible and éminence grise of English letters. Belles-lettrists and other dilettantes be warned, this is not a volume for the faint-hearted—these essays manifest an evangelical zeal equal to their subject's own; in doing so, they take us on an exhilarating intellectual adventure, so refreshing in the world of lit-crit, where the polite formulas of sensible reading make one want to faint from ennui.”
—Professor Julian Wolfreys, Loughborough University
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-04-01,Phyllis Granoff and Koichi Shinohara,Heroes and Saints: The Moment of Death in Cross-cultural Perspectives,Hardback,9781847181602,39.99,"The present volume makes a unique contribution to the study of dying in ancient cultures by focusing on what happens in the critical moments before death.
Employing a wide range of literary sources, the essays in this volume focus exclusively on the moment of death and practices associated with the transition
from this world to the next. Five of the essays deal with Asian religions, primarily Buddhism in India, Tibet, China, and Japan. The other five essays
deal with the moment of death in the West, old Norse-Icelandic, Old English, and the Judeo-Christian tradition. The authors explore the many ways in which
the good death was envisioned. Remarkable parallels emerge between the good death in religious texts and in heroic sagas . Despite the diversity
of cultures, time periods and religious traditions represented in these essays, this volume vividly illustrates the fundamental human need to see in the
inevitable moment of death a possibility of choice and a promise of hope.


","'There is much here both for those interested in the topic of death in Buddhist traditions and for those with broadeer interests in death and dying as a category of comparison within the history of Religions... the book covers a great deal of ground in terms of time and space... the book will interest students of death and dying in Buddhist traditions.'

Liz Wilson, Miami University, Religious Studies Review, Vol. 36, No. 3, September 2010
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-05-01,Harry Edwin Eiss,Children’s Literature and Culture,Hardback,9781847181725,34.99,"This collection of scholarship on the world of the child offers an eclectic overview of several aspects of youth culture today.  The first essay focuses on Donna Williams, Joanna Greenberg, Temple Grandin and other children whose unusual minds raise questions that take us deep into the mysteries of all of human existence.  The second, “Colonel Mustard in the Library With The Sims: From Board Games to Video Games and Back,” gives a historical context and theoretical frame for considering contemporary video and board games in our current age of television  The third, “Just a Fairy, His Wits, and Maybe a Touch of Magic; Magic, Technology, and Self-Reliance in Contemporary Fantasy Fiction,” takes on the technological world of childhood, in this case considering how it is represented in three fantasy series, Harry Potter, Artemis Fowl and Faerie Wars, The fourth essay offers a detailed view of the history of children’s literature in China, including discussions of the important philosophical views that controlled what got taught and how, detailed charts of significant historic dates, genres of children’s literature, and award winning books of Chinese literature. The fifth considers contemporary Western world consumerism, in this case three popular book series, Clique, Gossip Girl, and The A-List, all published by Alloy for teenage girls. The sixth,  “Surfing the Series: A Rhizomic Reading of Series Fiction,” once again deals with series fiction. The seventh explores the recent “Monet Mania” that has sparked interest in the great Impressionist Claude Monet among adults and educators. The final essay, “Jean Craighead George’s Alaskan Children’s Books: Love and Survival,” focuses on her book Julie of the Wolves and how it expresses aspects of Alaskan culture.",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-05-01,Sanda Badescu,From One Shore to Another: Reflections on the Symbolism of the Bridge,Hardback,9781847181763,34.99,"The essays collected in this book—a selection of papers presented at the conference “The Sea, The Land, The Bridge: Histories of Communication” held at the University of Prince Edward Island (Canada) in August 2005––combine various approaches, covering literary, social, philosophical and anthropological fields, in exploring the theme of the bridge. Each essay is concerned with one possible definition of the bridge as a connection between shores, countries, languages, cultures, people or communities.
The book is intended  for undergraduate and graduate students and for academics in the humanities. It will be of more particular interest to scholars who are working on the history of communication and literature and on the symbolism of the bridge.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-05-01,Florence Feiereisen and Kyle Frackman,From Weimar to Christiania: German and Scandinavian Studies in Context,Hardback,9781847181862,29.99,"From Weimar to Christiania is a new compilation of graduate student work in the fields of German and Scandinavian Studies.  Resulting from research presented at a unique graduate student conference at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, these essays utilize a wide variety of disciplinary approaches and represent an ambitious and successful effort to connect related yet distinct fields.  
This anthology is aimed at scholars within the broad areas of German and Scandinavian Studies.  All of the contributions speak to an appreciation of cultural studies as a diverse collection of theoretical tools, which provide the historian, political scientist, and literary and film scholars gathered here with the means to contextualize and investigate cultural productions, situations, and environments.  From Weimar to Christiania delivers compelling research that expands bodies of knowledge in northern European studies.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-05-01,Magali Compan and Katarzyna Pieprzak,Land and Landscape in Francographic Literature: Remapping Uncertain Territories,Hardback,9781847181633,29.99,"The literary production of landscape in the French-writing world, whether in Quebec, Morocco or Mauritius, is not new, but over the past fifty years it has developed added significance. As the dynamics of globalization continue to displace bodies around the world and deterritorialize its subjects, the relevance of land and landscape as a potent source for cultural identity, nationalist aspirations, and alternative post-nationalist subjectivities continues to grow. The essays in this collection examine contemporary literature in French from and in multiple spaces around the world, and consider the ways the vernacular and the local–as well as the virtual and transnational–re-claim, re-map and re-fashion post-colonial, national, cultural and ethnic landscapes while also questioning both the limits and challenges to this imagination. 

Contributors address landscape as an imaginary, constructed, and negotiated literary space rather than an unproblematic transcription of an external geographic reality, and through this prism explore images of dispossession, resistance, and re-appropriation. These essays link the literary conquest of nature to the process of writing/righting a history of imperialism and neocolonialism, locate in nature the rhythms of a material identity and metaphysical reality beyond urban and industrial capitalism, use landscape to explore the psychic disturbances of displacement, and call for a reinvention of places of memory. The collection aims to illuminate what can best be described as a Francographie that traces in multiple hands tenuous if not altogether uncertain geographies and unfinished maps.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-05-01,Jennifer Birkett and Chiara Briganti,Margaret Storm Jameson: Writing in Dialogue,Hardback,9781847181824,34.99,"From her birth in Whitby in 1891, to her death in Cambridge in 1986, Margaret Storm Jameson’s life and writing spanned the greater part of the twentieth century. She was, in every sense, a woman of her time, speaking to the long series of generations she lived through of their collective present, past and future. Out of her own life-history she created a mirror reflecting the long twentieth-century transformation of Europe. 

This collection of essays, the first volume to be devoted entirely to Jameson, brings together a distinguished group of academics to analyse the impressive range and variety of her work. Their studies follow the chronology of her career from the 1920s to the 1960s. They review the different modes in which she wrote (fiction, journalism, autobiography), and show how effectively her writing engages with the contested issues of the period (socialism, fascism, pacifism, exile, communism, colonialism) and with key historical events (the First World War, the General Strike, the Munich Pact, the Second World War, the Cold War). They place her writing in relation to other writers of the day, both her English connections and her European models, in order to underline its relevance, recover forgotten networks of activism and collaboration, and restore Jameson to the pivotal role she played during her lifetime. In the process, the conventional categorisations of twentieth-century writing come under pressure: reviewing Jameson’s links with early modernist journals, and highlighting overlooked connections between British and Continental modernisms, these essays help redefine the field of modernist studies. The collection closes with a sequence of unpublished letters from Jameson to the feminist, historian, and social activist Hilary Newitt Brown, a lively, first-hand account of literary, political and everyday life in England during the Second World War.

Jameson was first and foremost a stylist, whose work on the relations of aesthetics and politics challenges simplistic critical divides between modernism and documentary realism. She was a key activist in politics and cultural politics, and an analyst of feeling, and the part it plays in both politics and everyday life. Last but not least, she was a chronicler of public life, and of the collective experience of England and Europe in the twentieth century. This volume proposes a re-assessment of Jameson’s overall significance in the writerly landscape of her time; in the process, it suggests perspectives in which that landscape is itself ripe for revision.

""For someone who published so many novels, among them ones of real distinction, Storm Jameson was unusually prone to self doubt. ‘Its singular badness proves that I was not a born novelist’, she remarked of her early and very interesting novel, The Pot Boils (1919), and in her autobiography, Journey From the North, she more than once suggests that her chosen career was a mistake, or at all events led to no great achievement. That she rarely made much money from her novels is true. Yet as every page of the autobiography shows, and as a cache of letters included in the present book further reveals, Jameson was a born writer. These letters, which have never before been published and which perhaps provide the book’s high point, were written over a period of some fifty years to her close friends, Hilary Newitt Brown and Harrison Brown, an English couple who, foreseeing the coming of the Second World War, in 1937 settled in British Columbia and to whom Jameson could talk with unabashed candour – for example, of her fearful loathing of Hitler and fascism, of her contempt for most politicians, and of her sense of outrage at the pusillanimity, backsliding and ill faith of officialdom in wavering about whether to grant refugee status to writers and intellectuals she was trying to get out of continental Europe before the Nazis got to them. Jameson was deeply involved in P.E.N., whose English president she became in 1939, but this alone won’t account for her hard work on behalf of other writers. These letters are vivid testimony of the tensions, fears and difficulties of the times, both before, during and after the war. But what makes them so appealing is Jameson’s often excoriating wit. Of Chamberlain’s relationship with the French government in 1938, she remarks: ‘it isn’t true C let the French down. He didn’t have to this time. They were taking the lift down so fast he had to run to get into it’ (p.185). And, in 1940, with Britain under siege, she notes, ‘I don’t know where the Munich spirit is, I mean, what stone it has crawled under. No doubt you could lift a stone or two and find things come crawling out. I know where one or two such stones lie. But the ordinary people are fine’ (p.193).
The essays that make up Writing in Dialogue rightly consider some of the ways in which Jameson finds fictional form in which to explore her awareness that the worth of ‘ordinary people’ is threatened by forces that they must try to control or be controlled and oppressed by. Her writing career more or less coincides with what Eric Hobsbawm has called ‘The Age of Extremes’ – that is, 1913-1989 – and her novels try to account for the age’s dark, violent forces, and at the same time, and despite a period as a pacifist and although she was a committed socialist, try not to buy into any of what Orwell, with pugnacious relish, called ‘the smelly little orthodoxies that contend daily for our souls.’
As the editors remark in their Introduction, ‘Jameson has suffered from the tendency in feminist scholarship to focus solely on female writing for its representation of women’s lives and to ignore their political work except in terms of their feminism’ (p. 3). In this context, it is notable that Rosamond Lehmann is quoted as finding Jameson’s ‘Munich’ novel, Europe to Let, ‘electrifying and ferocious’, and motivated by a ‘a passionate disgust and indignation combined with a masculine intelligence.’ I’m surprised that Kate McLoughlin, who quotes this in her interesting essay, ‘Voices and Values: Storm Jameson’s Europe to Let and the Munich Pact’, doesn’t consider the implications of that phrase ‘masculine intelligence’; but other essays engage with the formal consequences of Jameson’s determination to produce novels of ideas. Hence, Briganti’s ‘Mirroring the Darkness: Storm Jameson and the Collective Novel’ – though in any discussion of the trilogy Mirror in Darkness (1934-36) I would have thought it worthwhile to consider Dos Passos’s 1920s U.S.A. trilogy, given the impact it made overseas as well as in America, and in view of its author’s professed communist sympathies. Hence, too, Sharon Ouditt’s valuable essay on the ‘Men, Women and World War I in the Fiction of Storm Jameson’ – though, if, as Ouditt shows, Jameson had to overcome the prejudice against women being non-combatants and thus ‘at best peripheral to war’ (p. 57), I don’t see why Arnold Bennett’s The Pretty Lady (1918) shouldn’t come into the reckoning, given that Bennett was also a non-combatant and yet for my money produced one of the very best novels to emerge from that period, one that deals quite brilliantly with the effects of war on the home front. Hence, too, Jennifer Birkett’s insistence that Jameson looked to writers outside England for her peers. In her pages on ‘The Shape of Evil: Before the Crossing and The Black Laurel’, and especially in her telling remark on Jameson’s ‘self-flagellating insight into the necessary cruelty of authorial vision’ (p. 130), Birkett as good as buries Angus Wilson’s contention in The Wild Garden (1963) that English novelists have been unable to write about evil. Given Dickens’s novels, this was anyway a fairly daft claim. But Wilson’s intention was to rebuke English readers not so much for a complacent humanism as for their indifference to those novels of ideas he associated with continental Europe. As a corrective to such indifference he could have looked closer to home. He could and indeed should have looked to Jameson. And as someone who himself could be properly satiric about the pretensions and venality of the literary life, Wilson should have been much taken by Jameson’s 1962 novel, The Road From the Monument, a most subtle dissection of male vanity, egoism, and self-deception.
This late novel isn’t discussed in Writing in Dialogue. Nor are quite a few others. I grant that not all are important. Others however are, and it would have been good to see them at least mentioned. (The so-called comedies are for the most part ignored.) Still, you can’t have everything and Writing in Dialogue gives us a good deal. The essays are consistently interesting, readable, informative, and without an air of special pleading. With their publication we can reasonably hope that the reputation of this important novelist is now on the mend.""
—John Lucas, Key Words,  A journal of Cultural Materialism - Nottingham Trent University

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-05-01,Max J. Skidmore and Andrew Cline,Politics and Language,Hardback,9781847181831,34.99,"Politics and Language, edited by Max J. Skidmore and Andrew R. Cline, is built upon a similar framework to Skidmore's 1972 work, Word Politics:
Essays on Language and Politics (Palo Alto: James E. Freel and Associates). In keeping with its predecessor, this new volume brings together many of the most thoughtful and provocative essays and articles that together emphasize the complex interrelationship of language, thought, and action. In addition to scholarly and journalistic essays, the selections include editorials and commentary on contemporary issues.
The sources are highly varied. Some are popular; some technical. Some are light; some deadly serious. All center on the language, as well as the actions, of politics.

In 1972, the year of Richard Nixon's landslide re-election, America was struggling fiercely in Vietnam while protests were raging at home. The language of political discourse suffered drastically. The situation was unprecedented, and political rhetoric reflected the turmoil. In 2006, following the election of George W. Bush to a second term as President of the United States--hardly a landslide in this instance--the situation is less tumultuous but, perhaps, more dangerous. America again is involved in a struggle abroad. Protests do not rage as they did during Nixon's administration, but there nonetheless is a profound sense of unease. Although the country's unease does not compare with its earlier turmoil, its political discourse suffers.

The struggle among competing values forms the essence of politics. The ways in which societies react to their languages-and use language to define and fight for values--is also part of that essence. This collection will have served its purpose if it calls attention to the importance of language to understanding the politics of the early 21st century.",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-05-01,Adalgisa Giorgio and Julia Waters,"Women's Writing in Western Europe: Gender, Generation and Legacy",Hardback,9781847181657,44.99,"Women’s writing has, in recent decades, been one of the most exciting and productive areas of literary creativity and critical analysis. Thirty years on from the initial, spectacular blossoming of women’s writing and from pioneering critical projects to (re)construct a female literary tradition, Women’s Writing in Western Europe: Gender, Generation and Legacy is the first study to investigate the legacy of this earlier generation of writers, texts and theories for contemporary women writers from across western Europe.

This important and timely book brings together original analyses by different generations of critics from around the globe, from internationally renowned feminist scholars to promising doctoral students. Their sophisticated studies uncover a complex web of explicit and implicit intertextual links between contemporary writers and such iconic figures as Aleramo, Beauvoir, Colette, Cixous, Duras, Irigaray, Kristeva, Morante, Morgner, Wolf and Woolf, so attesting to the existence of a truly international women’s culture across ever more fluid national borders. 

Women’s Writing in Western Europe is a major intervention in the field of feminist literary criticism which offers new, comparative understandings of such key theoretical concepts as intertextuality, intergenerational relations, gender, identity and legacy.

“Covering an enormous range of writers and national traditions, Women’s Writing in Western Europe: Gender, Generation and Legacy attests to the vibrancy and the currency of feminist criticism and theory in the new Europe. These essays give us new paradigms to think and read with in the future.”
—Professor Marianne Hirsch, Columbia University, New York.

“Thirty years after the creative outburst of women’s writing and feminist theory of the early 1970s, can we still speak of a women’s tradition of writing, of gender and generation, of the iconic role of the mother figure? This dense and wide ranging collection of essays engages with the dynamics of legacy and conflict, of recognition and denial, to map out some of the many complex strands and relationships marking the textual relations of women’s writing across time and geographic boundaries. No simple tradition of women’s writing emerges, but the powerful hold exerted by some of the most canonical writers – Beauvoir, Woolf, Cixous, Irigaray, Kristeva, Rich – and the evidence of the construction of new relationships between and across texts by women points to a continuing network of transmission in which women’s texts are enmeshed. This is an important collection and a large readership will be grateful for this probing of issues which are at the heart of the reading of women’s writing.”
—Professor Elizabeth Fallaize, St. John’s College Oxford
","“Women’s Writing in Western Europe is a rich source of highly interesting, wide-ranging material, on the literatures of Germany, Great Britain, France, Portugal, Ireland, Italy and beyond.”
—Leggendaria (68, April 2008)

“This volume—collecting twenty-seven papers delivered at a conference held in 2005—is testimony to the important work still being carried out on women writers as a field of enquiry in literary studies.”
—Katharine Mitchell, Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge, MLR, 104.1, 2009

“The essays are interesting and thought provoking . . . very useful for students doing research in European Women’s writing. A valuable book for academic research.”
—Elizabeth Russell, Universitat Rovira i Virgili Tarragona in Contemporary Women’s Writing, 3:2 Dec 2009
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-06-01,Chris N van der Merwe and Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela,Narrating our Healing: Perspectives on Working through Trauma,Hardback,9781847182081,29.99,"In the 1990’s, South Africa surprised the world with a peaceful, negotiated transition from armed conflict to an inclusive democracy. This was followed by the ground-breaking Truth and Reconciliation Commission, established to confront and work through a troubled past. The search for truth and reconciliation in South Africa, however, is far from completed; the country is in many ways still burdened by unresolved individual and collective traumas. In this book, two academics from the University of Cape Town, one a psychologist and the other a literary scholar, explore the importance of narrative as a way of working through trauma. Although written from within a South African context, the work has a much wider relevance. It offers illuminating perspectives on the process of  “narrating our healing”: the sharing of personal narratives, the appropriation of literary narratives, and above all, the re-creating of life narratives shattered by trauma. It is a book about the search for meaning when all meaning seems to have been lost; it deals with the overwhelming nature of traumatic suffering, yet offers some hope of healing.

The book is remarkably overarching, tailored to the needs of scientists and practitioners in the fields of psychology, social work, education and literature. It offers a strong message to all individuals and nations who live in an atmosphere of blame, shame and hopelessness. 
- Yuval Wolf, Professor of Psychology and Dean of Social Sciences, Bar-Ilan University.

Narrating Our Healing is a good book in the widest sense of that adjective: it is well constructed, meticulously researched, and likely to deepen understanding of the difficult but profoundly important subject of trauma and how to address it. It is something like a handbook for living with suffering – both one’s own and that of others. To have constructed a text that can serve such a purpose is a profoundly admirable achievement.  Annie Gagiano, LitNet.
 
It is a timeous and exciting study that should be essential reading for anyone grappling with our present, our past and our future. 
- André P Brink – South African and international author

This is one of the best books I have ever read on healing deep wounds.
- Vamÿk D. Volkan, M. D. Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at the University of Virginia.

We need to know the truth about what happened in South Africa during the Apartheid years. Van der Merwe and Gobodo-Madikizela have given us the tools to face that challenge. 
- Rolf Wolfswinkel, Professor of Modern History, New York University.











","""Books like this one provide an opportunity for narrative researchers to address the often rather uneasy relation between their work, and work which takes narrative as a medium of personal and social change from individual narrative therapy, through narrative community theatre projects, to large-scale social interventions through popular media narratives. Much more than this, though, this particular book offers a highly sophisticated, though controversial, take on relations between narrative and social change, which many narrative researchers can usefully consider in relation to their own work. 

Mos obviously, Narrating Our Healing gives an insightful account of how people deal, individually and collectively, with the aftermath of genocides and violent political oppression, particularly that lived through by the authors.""

-Professor Corinne Squire in Narrative Inquiry 18:1 (2008) 181-185

""The book is remarkably overarching, tailored to the needs of scientists and practitioners in the fields of psychology, social work, education and literature. It offers a strong message to all individuals and nations who live in an atmosphere of blame, shame and hopelessness.""

-Yuval Wolf, Professor of Psychology and Dean of Social Sciences, Bar-Ilan University

""Narrating Our Healing is a good book in the widest sense of that adjective: it is well constructed, meticulously researched, and likely to deepen understanding of the difficult but profoundly important subject of trauma and how to address it. It is something like a handbook for living with suffering – both one’s own and that of others. To have constructed a text that can serve such a purpose is a profoundly admirable achievement."" 

-Annie Gagiano, LitNet
 
""It is a timeous and exciting study that should be essential reading for anyone grappling with our present, our past and our future.""

-André P Brink, South African and international author

""This is one of the best books I have ever read on healing deep wounds.""

- Vamÿk D. Volkan, M. D. Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at the University of Virginia.

""We need to know the truth about what happened in South Africa during the Apartheid years. Van der Merwe and Gobodo-Madikizela have given us the tools to face that challenge.""

- Rolf Wolfswinkel, Professor of Modern History, New York University









",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-06-01,Enrico Terrinoni,Occult Joyce: The Hidden in Ulysses,Hardback,9781847182104,34.99,"Ulysses is in many ways an occult text, in that it deliberately hides meanings and significances from sight, and compels the reader to unveil its secrets by reading it backwards, from deceiving surfaces to underlying truths. To discuss the occult in Joyce is to analyse “the hidden” in the text. Ulysses is a “human” book. Its most profound meanings are encrypted beneath the surface of its “body.” To discover what’s concealed behind it implies an effort of anthropological archaeology. Accordingly, readers become really interpreters of the occult. Only by following the traces and signs left on the textual surface will they eventually dig out what lies dormant beneath. Joyce was extremely well-read in the occult. The variety of texts on the subject he possessed shows that his position was very eclectic, as if the occult were a kind of amalgam of different traditions, all marked by the signature of secrecy. In his own view, theosophy, mysticism, magic, spiritism, and the so-called occult science blend together to form a cluster of obscure erudition where he finds provocative ideas, helpful in building up his own cryptic system.
To read Ulysses hermetically is also a way to show that the act of reading itself is always an experiment. The good thing about readings is that they are always provisional. Reading as a creative process implies the awareness that one will always be quite uncertain as to what lies hidden behind those concatenations of syllables and words we call texts. Interpretation is in fact a mark of our freedom, and all original readings are always subversive and provocative. Criticism to some extent implies often some kind of a subversive attitude, and the game of literature is a useful working ground for attempting to change its possible worlds. To see through surface inanity, in Ulysses, helps us understand that to read is often an act of revolt and resistance to past authoritative interpretations. Excavating the occult in Joyce’s masterpiece is a way to face more canonical readings that preferred not to acknowledge fully the author’s fondness for, and deep knowledge of, the subject.


""This is a book which has the gift of explanation rather than simplification - and it will help to move Joyce Studies into new and exciting areas of investigation.""

Prof. Declan Kiberd, UCD Dublin School of English and Drama


""Dr. Terrinoni's work is a very well researched and penetrating study of the occult and hidden in 'Ulysses' finding connections and meanings ignored or misunderstood by other scholars. It is a real contribution to Joyce Studies.""

Prof. Clive Bloom, Middlesex University
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-06-01,Giovanna Summerfield,Patois and Linguistic Pastiche in Modern Literature,Hardback,9781847182111,29.99,"In an era of globalization and European standardization, dialect, patois, and linguistic pastiche are marks of identity, of individual and regional nature. Paraphrasing the words of Luigi Pirandello, one tends to use the standard national language to express the concept, while one opts to use one’s regional dialect to express the feeling. The literary tradition has always accepted language mixing.  Linguists and literary critics have studied this phenomenon from different perspectives.  No in-depth treatment, however, has been offered so far as to the causes, conditions, consequences, and limits of language mixing from both the linguistic and literary points of view.  The aim of this book is to start to fill this lack of analysis.  Through a plurality of literary subjects, perspectives, and linguistic environments, this publication provides an overview of the linguistic and cultural contributions which underline, in turn, the importance of dialect use and conservation.  This book recognizes the international and topical scope of interest in the academia and the public at large both through the contributions made by the authors of the respective essays, who come from various parts of the world and from a wide range of disciplines, and also through the international and topical importance of the perspectives offered by these contributions.  Contributors offer analysis of selected literary and cinematic works which reveal the intricate interweaving of morphosyntax, semantics, and pragmatics of various dialects, Italian, French, English, and other languages that contribute to invented codes, which, in turn, provide material for the construction of invented worlds.  This publication is a must for all literary scholars, linguists, and for all students of foreign languages, linguistic and literary studies.  It is a unique collection of perspectives and topics of interest to all language and literature aficionados.

","
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-06-01,John S. Bak,Post/modern Dracula: From Victorian Themes to Postmodern Praxis,Hardback,9781847182005,29.99,"“Post/modern Dracula” explores the postmodern in Bram Stoker’s Victorian novel and the Victorian in Francis Ford Coppola’s postmodern film to demonstrate how the century that separates the two artists binds them more than it divides them. What are the postmodern elements of Stoker’s novel? Where are the Victorian traits in Coppola’s film? Is there a postmodern gloss on those Victorian traits? And can there be a Victorian directive behind postmodernism in general? The nine essays compiled in this collection address these and other relevant questions per the novel and the film at three distinct periods: (post)modern Victorianism, post/modernism, and finally postmodernism.

Part I on (post)modernist issues in Stoker’s novel establishes the link between Victorian themes and postmodern praxes that begins with colonialist concerns and ends with poststructuralist signification. Part II looks at the post/modernist traits in Stoker’s Dracula, those obviously influenced by modernism but also, with the help of the novel’s plasticity vis-à-vis the media over the last century, by postmodernism. Part III examines more closely the novel’s postmodern characteristics, particularly with respect to Coppola’s 1992 film, Bram Stoker’s Dracula.  

Dracula defies time and promises to undermine any critical study of it that precisely tries to situate it within a given epoch, including a postmodernist one. Given its relationship to late-capitalist economy, to post-Marxist politics, and to commodity culture, and given its universal appeal to human fears and anxieties, fetishes and fantasies, lusts and desires, Stoker’s novel will forever remain post/modern—always haunting our future, as it has repeatedly done so our past.

Though scholars of Dracula and Gothic literature in general will find some of the essays innovative and engaging per today’s literary criticism, the book is also intended for both an informed general reader and a novice student of the novel and of the film. As such, a few essays are highly specialized in postmodern theory, whereas others are more centered around the sociohistorical context of the novel and film and use various postmodern theories as inroads into the novel’s or the film’s study.",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-06-01,Benjamin Schreier,Studies in Irreversibility: Texts and Contexts,Hardback,9781847182050,39.99,"The premise of Studies in Irreversibility: Texts and Contexts is that there is a big difference between phenomena, practices, processes, and events that are irreversible and those that are reversible, and moreover that this difference and its manifold implications remain underappreciated so long as the analysis of culture continues to anchor itself in an emphasis on the capacities of human agency. If messianic modes posit a future to justify the present, and so interpret the influence of the past, the papers in this collection are devoted to examining the present of experience from the perspective of its uncompromising and irreducible past, finding in irreversibility a key to an interpretation of futurity. Together, these papers outline a method of examining experience as something more—or at least other—than the desire to know it, and in so doing they shed light on the powerful role of normativity in the narratives we construct in and about culture.

Through novel analyses from the disciplines of literature, art criticism, history, philosophy, ethnic studies, and ethics, the contributors to this book address key questions about the nature of irreversibility: What differentiates the experience of the irreversible from the experience of the reversible? How is irreversibility recognized? What happens when we acknowledge something to be irreversible? How has society contended with irreversibility, and what sorts of tools exist today to interpret its significance? Wary of impetuously fixing the meaning of a still-elusive concept, this volume collects papers that employ a wide array of methodologies, mindful that no one critical approach may yet have proved itself. Irreversibility is not simply a quality of the texts examined in this volume, nor is it strictly speaking a lens through which otherwise coherent or stable texts are examined; rather, it emerges as a model that brings together texts and the thinking of them.

By together outlining a method of examining culture that moves beyond reliance on tropes such as functionalism, teleology, and chance, tropes that have dominated twentieth century cultural analysis, these papers help to inaugurate a new paradigm in the study of culture.",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-06-01,"Daryl McCarthy, Bob VanderVennen and Joy McBride",Surprised by Faith: Conversion and the Academy A Collection of Papers Commemorating the 75th Anniversary of the Conversion of C. S. Lewis,Hardback,9781847181978,39.99,"Surprised by Faith celebrates the 75th anniversary of C. S. Lewis “kicking and screaming” his way into Christianity—his 1931 conversion.  Lewis described himself as, “the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England."" But a convert, nonetheless, surprised by joy. 

This volume was inspired by Lewis’s autobiographical account of the life-events which led to his coming to faith—an event that had a profound effect on his work and his relationships. In Surprised by Faith, Lewis’s conversion is explored as both “a rational quest for truth and a romantic quest for meaning.”

This collection of essays commemorates Lewis’s conversion, but also celebrates, examines and discusses what conversion means to us as scholars, academicians, and most importantly, as human beings. It’s a kind of conversation about conversion. The conversation’s participants are individuals from a variety of backgrounds who themselves have been converted in the classic Christian sense. 

Surprised by Faith hopefully will challenge the reader to think more deeply, biblically and theologically about the transformation that takes place in each life that embraces Christ and moves from unbelief to belief. The essays look at the influence of conversion on perspectives as they relate to various disciplines, such as anthropology, poetry, psychology, education, philosophy and culture.

","“Surprised by Faith is a sparkling set of essays about the nature and experience of true Christian conversion, with detailed examples ranging from Abraham to John Wesley.  This book will delight and challenge both the casual reader and the serious student of theology.  It will surely be very widely read and discussed.”
—Phillip E. Johnson, author of Darwin on Trial

“Truth be told, there are no unconverted people, because everyone, everywhere has turned to something in search of foundation for life. The big question, of course, is what we have been converted to! This fine book thoroughly examines the neglected but significant notion of Christian ‘conversion’ in an interdisciplinary fashion, especially by and among scholars in the academy. The surprise of faith in Jesus Christ is that it not only results in redemption, but is accompanied by a transformation of one's entire life-system or worldview. This is just one of many insights in this book that celebrates the seventy-fifth anniversary of C. S. Lewis's turn from atheism to Christian theism.”
—David Naugle, Professor of Philosophy, Dallas Baptist University, Author of Worldview: The History of a Concept (Eerdmans 2002)

“This is a valuable contribution to the on-going conversation about the nature of conversion.  We need this book; it is so urgent that we re-think the meaning of conversion and its implications for the church and for the academy.  And this will be one of those resources that many will turn to.”
—Gordon T. Smith, President, reSource Leadership International and adjunct lecturer at Regent College, Vancouver.  Smith is the author of Beginning Well:  Christian Conversion and Authentic Transformation (IVPress 2001) and A Holy Meal:  the Lord’s Supper in the Life of the Church (Baker 2005).

",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-06-01,Miranda Anderson,The Book of the Mirror: An Interdisciplinary Collection Exploring the Cultural Story of the Mirror,Hardback,9781847181930,34.99,"The essays in this book are gathered together from the realms of art, literature, history, archaeology, philosophy and science. Together they weave a picture that gives us new insights into the mirror as a material object and as an image in art and texts. This interdisciplinary and innovative book raises important issues about the material life of an object and its intimate interrelations with socio-cultural imagery. Perceptions of the workings of our cognitive processes and of our subjectivity are shown to be dynamically interwoven with the technological and socio-cultural matrices of particular periods, whilst longer term continuities in the understanding and employment of the mirror reflect underlying continuities in the capacities and constraints of mirrors and of human subjects. This book demonstrates the active role imagery and technologies have always played in our thoughts, lives and worlds.



",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-06-01,Ian Copestake,The Legacy of William Carlos Williams: Points of Contact,Hardback,9781847181947,39.99,"The essays in The Legacy of William Carlos Williams collectively examine the reasons for Williams’s continued importance to the work of a diverse range of American poets, and to the development of distinct branches of poetics throughout the twentieth century and beyond. As well as contextualising Williams’s relationship to emergent cultural trends and ideas that influenced American poetry during his own lifetime (modernism, abstract expressionism, pragmatism, surrealism), the book highlights his impact on poets as diverse as Louis Zukofsky, Robert Creeley, Frank O’Hara, Michael Palmer, Lorine Niedecker and Rae Armantrout. The essays contained here help shed light on contemporary trends in American poetry by re-examining Williams’s own work from the perspective of those who embodied his example to forge divergent traditions.



","“Williams is as exciting, mysterious, problematic, and tonic now as he ever was. He is the poet who opens doors—onto language and onto our practice of everyday life. He continues to open new doors in a new century, as the fascinating and illuminating essays in this collection suggest anew.” From Steven Gould Axelrod’s Preface.


",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-07-01,Dana A. Williams,"African American Humor, Irony and Satire: Ishmael Reed, Satirically Speaking",Hardback,9781847182142,29.99,"African American Humor, Irony, and Satire: Ishmael Reed, Satirically Speaking includes select proceedings from the annual Heart’s Day Conference, sponsored by the Department of English at Howard University.  Among the collection’s many strengths is the range of essays included here.  Essays on Ishmael Reed center the collection, and satirists from George Schuyler to Aaron McGruder are examined as are popular culture comedians Richard Pryor and Dave Chappelle. Thus, the collection adds broadly to the body of scholarship on traditional and non-traditional interpretations of humor, irony, and satire.

What these essays also reveal is how the lens of humor, irony, and satire as a way of reading texts is especially useful in highlighting the complexity of African American life and culture.  The essays also uncover crucial but no so obvious connections between African Americans and other world cultures.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-07-01,Sladja Blazan,"Ghosts, Stories and Histories: Ghost Stories and Alternative Histories",Hardback,9781847182197,39.99,"This collection combines academic reflections on typical ghost stories from the seventeenth century to our current ghosts in the machine. All primary texts are associated with Anglo-American discourses, some of which originate in the Chinese or African traditions as in the case of the American appropriation of Zhang Yimou's adaptation of Raise the Red Lantern. The focus on the function and the representation of the ghostly figure allows such different narratives as Daniel Defoe's ""A True Relation of the Apparition of One Mrs. Veal"" (1705), one of the first modern ghost stories, and Toni Morrison's Beloved (1987), a psychological exploration of a mother-daughter relationship after the experience of slavery, to appear next to each other. This variety demonstrates that spectral vocabulary—which so far mainly circulated in marginalized spheres such as women’s issues, so-called ethnic topics, and supernatural literature—is finally finding its place in cultural theory and literary studies.",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-07-01,Laurie Ousley,To See the Wizard: Politics and the Literature of Childhood,Hardback,9781847182333,44.99,"To See the Wizard: Politics and the Literature of Childhood takes its central premise, as the title indicates, from L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Upon their return to The Emerald City after killing the Wicked Witch of the West, the task the Wizard assigned them, Dorothy, the Tin Woodman, Scarecrow, and Lion learn that the wizard is a “humbug,” merely a man from Nebraska manipulating them and the citizens of both the Emerald City and of Oz from behind a screen. Yet they all continue to believe in the powers they know he does not have, still insisting he grant their wishes. The image of the man behind the screen—and the reader’s continued pursuit of the Wizard—is a powerful one that has at its core an issue central to the study of children’s literature: the relationship between the adult writer and the child reader. As Jack Zipes, Perry Nodelman, Daniel Hade, Jacqueline Rose, and many others point out, before the literature for children and young adults actually reaches these intended readers, it has been mediated by many and diverse cultural, social, political, psychological, and economic forces. These forces occasionally work purposefully in an attempt to consciously socialize or empower, training the reader into a particular identity or way of viewing the world, by one who considers him or herself an advocate for children. Obviously, these “wizards” acting in literature can be the writers themselves, but they can also be the publishers, corporations, school boards, teachers, librarians, literary critics, and parents, and these advocates can be conservative, progressive, or any gradation in between. It is the purpose of this volume to interrogate the politics and the political powers at work in literature for children and young adults.


Childhood is an important site of political debate, and children often the victims or beneficiaries of adult uses of power; one would be hard-pressed to find a category of literature more contested than that written for children and adolescents. Peter Hunt writes in his introduction to Understanding Children’s Literature, that children’s books “are overtly important educationally and commercially—with consequences across the culture, from language to politics: most adults, and almost certainly the vast majority in positions of power and influence, read children’s books as children, and it is inconceivable that the ideologies permeating those books had no influence on their development.” If there were a question about the central position literature for children and young adults has in political contests, one needs to look no further than the myriad struggles surrounding censorship. Mark I. West observes, for instance, “Throughout the history of children’s literature, the people who have tried to censor children’s books, for all their ideological differences, share a rather romantic view about the power of books. They believe, or at least they profess to believe, that books are such a major influence in the formation of children’s values and attitudes that adults need to monitor every word that children read.” Because childhood and young-adulthood are the sites of political debate for issues ranging from civil rights and racism to the construction and definition of the family, indoctrinating children into or subverting national and religious ideologies, the literature of childhood bears consciously political analysis, asking how socialization works, how children and young adults learn of social, cultural and political expectations, as well as how literature can propose means of fighting those structures. 


To See the Wizard: Politics and the Literature of Childhood intends to offer analysis of the political content and context of literature written for and about children and young adults. The essays included in To See the Wizard analyze nineteenth and twentieth century literature from America, Britain, Australia, the Caribbean, and Sri Lanka that is for and about children and adolescents. The essays address issues of racial and national identity and representation, poverty and class mobility, gender, sexuality and power, and the uses of literature in the healing of trauma and the construction of an authentic self.


","""...this book provides a number of lively and interesting chapters investigating how adults assert their power in the world of children's literature...many of the points made within this book are relevant and important to a wider world of children's literature criticism.""

Julie Anastasia Barton, University of East Anglia, in the International Research Society for Children's Literature Journal, January 2010
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-07-01,Susan E. Thomas,What is the New Rhetoric?,Hardback,9781847182173,34.99,"The Age of Information has spawned a critical focus on human communication in a multimedia world, particularly on theories and practices of writing. With the worldwide web impacting increasingly on academic and business communication, the need has never been greater for advanced study in writing, communication, and critical thinking across all genres, sectors, and cultures.

In recent decades, the definitions of 'new rhetoric' have expanded to encompass a variety of theories and movements, raising the question of how rhetoric is understood and employed in the twenty-first century. The essays collected here represent variations on these themes, with each attempting to answer the title?s deliberately provocative question, addressing particularly:

-How the classical art of rhetoric is still relevant today;
-How it is directly related to modern technologies and the new modes of communication they have generated;
-How rhetorical practice is informing research methodologies and teaching and learning practices in the contemporary academy.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-08-01,Bert Cardullo,American Drama/Critics: Writings and Readings,Hardback,9781847182517,39.99,"""American  Drama/Critics: Writings and Readings"" is a collection of essays on acknowledged classics of American drama such as ""Death of a Salesman,"" ""The Glass Menagerie,"" and ""Our Town,"" and on newer but no less esteemed works like David Mamet's ""Glengarry Glen Ross"" and Sam Shepard's ""Buried Child.""  Included are interviews with the great American drama critics Eric Bentley and Stanley Kauffmann; a consideration of the practice of American dramaturgy; an analysis of the adaptation to film of several American dramas; and an examination of experimental playwriting and production in the United States, as seen in the work of Gertrude Stein as well as that of other, lesser-known avant-garde dramatists.  

This book's thesis is not only the generally accepted one that American drama is essentially a representational one and that its avant-garde experiments are just that--experimental detours that ultimate lead back to the main highway of realism and naturalism.  The thesis of ""Americam Drama/Critics"" is also that the decline of American drama in the late twentieth to early twenty-first century is paralleled by, and even attributable to, the decline or disappearance of American dramatic criticism.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-08-01,Sharon R. Yang,"The X-Files and Literature: Unweaving the Story, Unraveling the Lie to Find the Truth",Hardback,9781847182395,39.99,"The X-Files and Literature:  Unweaving the Story, Unraveling the Lie to find the Truth provides an innovative and valuable exploration of the groundbreaking television program. Although much academic work has been devoted to the social, psychological, and spiritual significance of The X-Files, until this collection none has fully addressed the series’ rich adaptation of literature to interrogate our perception, definition, or recounting of the “truth.” This collection not only unveils new twists and insights into expected connections between The X-Files and Gothic writers or with its modernist and post-modernist slants on narrative, plot, and characterization. The X-Files and Literature also delves into some unexpected literary sources shaping the series, such as the Arthurian quest, Catholic and Biblical mythology, folkloristics, and James Fennimore Cooper and the “vanishing American” mythos. This collection of essays covers both how The X-Files works with literature’s own constantly morphing definition and portrayal of truth through form and content, as well as how the television program may or may not subvert our own contradictory expectations and distrust of literature’s providing us with enlightenment.

""As television becomes more and more literary, with shows like Lost and Gilmore Girls sending us off to the bookstore and the library so we might read them more carefully, a book like The X-Files and Literature is welcome indeed. Sharon R. Yang’s diverse collection on one of Nineties’ TV’s richest texts finds the truth of the gothic and the Arthurian and the folkloric, of the postmodern and the metafictional, of Poe, Pynchon, Cooper, Nabokov, and Tennyson, not just “out there” but in the perhaps too complicated narrative of the perpetually frustrated quests of Mulder and Scully. Valuable-in-itself as an intellectual exercise, its real worth may come when we put the book down and return, smarter, better readers, to the primary text.""
--David Lavery, Co-Editor, Deny All Knowledge: Investigating The X-Files

""Sharon Yang's X-Files collection deals with an important subject addressed by thoughtful writers. The idea that television can be seen as a branch of literature is certainly sustained by The X-Files, and the contributors to this volume succeed in making the case. Brian Hauser on Fenimore Cooper, Cary Jones on Mary Shelley, Tamy Burnett on Poe, Thomas Argiro on Pynchon, Matthew VanWinkle on Tennyson-these and more explore the connections with The X-Files not only in terms of sources but also themes and techniques. Both students of television and literature will want to own this book.""
—Rhonda V. Wilcox, Ph.D., Professor of English, Gordon College, Barnesville
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-08-01,David Miller,"With Poetry and Philosophy:  Four Dialogic Studies—Wordsworth, Browning, Hopkins and Hardy",Hardback,9781847182500,29.99,"Taking its point of initiation from the long-standing dialogue between poetry and philosophy concerning their respective claims to contrasting orders of insight, this book tackles issues relating to the differing conditions of knowledge and insights relating to language and thought imparted by ‘modern’ poets and philosophers, from Kant and Wordsworth to Adorno and Hardy. The book draws on recent debates in literary theory and philosophy in order to outline a new ‘dialogic’ approach for conducting comparative criticism and literary history. The poets and the philosophers appear under configurations of reading that produce considerations that are unexpected, yet strangely fitting.",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-09-01,Matthew Feldman and Mark Nixon,Beckett’s Literary Legacies,Hardback,9781847182814,34.99,"Featuring twelve chapters on a range of novelists, poets and dramatists, Beckett’s Literary Legacies is the first volume dedicated to charting the truly global influence of Samuel Beckett upon contemporary literature. To do this, editors Feldman and Nixon have included studies of both internationally recognised authors (Auster, Muldoon, Celan) and lesser-known figures within Anglophone scholarship (Laederach, Mayröcker)—all of whom reveal a demonstrable indebtedness to Beckett’s art. With this criteria to hand, case studies, no less than their respective contributors, reflect the international reception of Beckett’s revolutionary artistic project: from Japan (Oe), the United States (DeLillo) and South Africa (Coetzee) to France (Blanchot) and Britain (Kane) and, of course, Ireland (Banville).  

In addition to finding that Beckett’s shadow is a long and indeed diffuse one, commentators here also stress the challenge his oeuvre presents to authors writing alongside and after him: reflexivity and literary abstraction, radical stoicism and structural innovation; all of these are recurring themes the 1969 Nobel Laureate has engendered. While the list of ‘legacees’ is exhaustive and by no means limited to literature, as the only study to date covering this often paradoxical, always fascinating subject, Beckett’s Literary Legacies offers a sustained exploration of Samuel Beckett’s burgeoning artistic legacy.
 
 From the introduction:
‘Through wide-ranging example, contributors to this volume have undertaken analyses of Beckett’s influence on major international writers, most of whom are still alive and at work forging their own literary legacies. As for Beckett’s, the authors surveyed here find that legacy to be both philosophically rich and artistically challenging. And Beckett scholars of similarly global breadth consider Beckett’s art to be a truly revolutionary one, pushing at the very boundaries of literature. What follows is the first sustained attempt to gauge the literary impact of that project, […] for the majority of the critics and their respective case studies here, Beckett’s influence represents an apparent schism in the Western literary canon, one perceived to be an artistic challenge no less than a literary liberation from representation—however well-disguised the latter may be.’

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-09-01,William S. Waddell,"""Catch if you can your country’s moment"": Recovery and Regeneration in the Poetry of Adrienne Rich",Hardback,9781847182715,29.99,"The eight essays in this collection explore the work of Adrienne Rich, one of America’s most significant living writers and a poet and a public intellectual with a substantial audience both inside and outside the academy. Taken together, the essays argue for a shift in the perceived center of gravity of Rich’s career, from the passionate and eloquent poems of a largely personal feminist awakening, from the mid 60s to the early 80s, to the equally (if differently) passionate and eloquent poems of a more broadly public re-imagination of our country and its history, beginning with her work of the mid 1980s.

Rich has remained committed to the reconstruction of poetry’s place in public as well as private life, nationally and globally. From varied perspectives, accessible to the common reader as well as the specialist, the collection addresses Rich’s negotiation of the boundary between these public and private spheres and the potential of poetry as a revolutionary medium and alternate epistemology, a means, as the title expresses it, of recovery and regeneration. Rich has aimed always, as the last lines of her poem “Planetarium” (1968) have it, at “the relief of the body / and the reconstruction of the mind,” and this collection works to describe her effort to extend the reach of that healing motive across a continent and a culture.




""In these eight keenly executed essays edited by William Waddell, we see Rich finally removing those “asbestos gloves” once used to handle sizzling political topics. Critics in this volume show Adrienne Rich struggling barehanded with changing poetic strategies, complex new subject positions and the relations of power and cultural practice in the constitution of history.  Transformative cartographer of words and perceptions, Rich, as Waddell argues, outlines “a method for redefining American space,” remapping North American culture for the marginalized, the repressed and the resistant.  Waddell’s collection celebrates the polyphony of politics and aesthetics in Rich’s work, shaping for the reader an ethical discourse intensively visible, for the first time, in volumes such as An Atlas of the Difficult World: Poems 1988-1991, but equally present throughout Rich’s prose and poetry.""

Mary Lynn Broe, Caroline Werner Gannett Professor, Rochester Institute of Technology
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-09-01,Amy Tak-yee Lai,"Chinese Women Writers in Diaspora: Jung Chang, Xinran, Hong Ying, Anchee Min, Adeline Yen Mah",Hardback,9781847182708,29.99,"The mention of Chinese women writers in diaspora immediately brings to mind Jung Chang (b. 1952) and her Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China (1991), which won the 1992 NCR book award and the 1993 British Book of the Year Award, and got officially banned in China. Despite its popular reception and crucial acclaim, Chang’s work has invited a lot of attacks. Among the most common is the contention that it merely focuses on the experience of the privileged and does not tell the reader what other memoirs have not already revealed. 

Chinese Women Writers in Diaspora is a pioneering study that focuses on four Chinese women writers currently living in the United States and England, whose works have been popularly received—and are in many cases, highly controversial—but have received little scholarly attention: Xinran (b. 1958), Hong Ying (b. 1962), Anchee Min (b. 1957), and Adeline Yen Mah (b. 1937). The chapters illuminate how Xinran constructs her identity and her fellow Chinese women in dialectics of self and other; how Hong Ying evokes cycles of return that blend Western and Chinese philosophical concepts; how Min employs images of theatre and theatrical conventions to depict the entrapment and transgression of her protagonists; and how Mah transliterates and appropriates both Western and Chinese fairy tale motifs to fashion her Chinese feminist utopia. While Jung Chang’s memoir seems confining, it has aroused interest in the genre of Chinese female autobiography, and Chinese women writers who live and write between cultures.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-09-01,"Claudia Slate, General Editor, Florida Southern College  and Steve Glassman, Executive",Florida Studies: Proceedings of the 2006 Annual Meeting of the Florida College English Association,Hardback,9781847182654,39.99,"Florida was the first region of the United States to be discovered, explored, and, after a fashion, settled by Euroamericans. Its population in the early 21st century is approaching 17 million. Within years the number of people living in the state will surpass those living in New York, and the Sunshine State will become the most populous area east of the Mississippi. The first book in English about Florida was written by Jean Ribault. A French adventurer, Ribault established a colony of Huguenots near present-day Jacksonville. He was captured by the very able Spanish commander Pedro Menendez, who ordered his French rival and all his minions killed.

The state’s long and colorful past is matched by its equally long and colorful literary production. Strangely, critical assessment of Florida literature has lagged far behind. With this volume, the Florida College English Association has formally begun an effort to correct this lamentable oversight. Included are papers on every aspect of Florida literature and history by scholars from every part of the state who are employed in every kind of institution of higher learning. Of special interest are the studies of Florida literature in the 19th century and in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, areas that are generally ignored in national journals. The papers on the contributions of African-American literary figures, such as Zora Hurston and James Weldon Johnson, are noteworthy. Of particular interest are the suggestions for teaching Florida studies in the classroom, which can be adapted for high school as well as college students.


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-09-01,Annemarie McAllister,John Bull's Italian Snakes and Ladders: English Attitudes to Italy in the mid-nineteenth Century,Hardback,9781847182623,34.99,"This book examines representations of Italy and Italians in the mid-nineteenth century and the uses made of them by English writers and readers. Italians were shown on the one hand as despised public nuisances, personified by organ grinders, but were also depicted in the most glamorous and fashionable settings such as opera houses. The range of meanings accorded to the sign ‘Italian’ was vast and this is the source of the title metaphor: as John Bull played his Italian Snakes and Ladders, his self esteem and self-image waxed and waned correspondingly.  In tracing this, the study examines how and why Italy operated as an important mechanism in the construction of ‘Englishness’, and the factors combining to make the mid-nineteenth century such a crucial period. 

The versions of ‘Italianness’ in circulation established an iconography of ‘the Italian’, emblematic representations which could be repeated or alluded to as a taxonomy, building up a complex map of discourses about Italy. Sometimes these might conflict, or they may be traced as combining to create a field of prejudice as, for example, the construction of Italians as primitive, closer to nature, and more instinctive. Such a view could shade either into ideas of dirtiness, disreputability and evil or, conversely, into Italy as a site of unspoilt, ‘natural’ bliss. 

The study focuses particularly on the middle-class male reader and traces reasons for, and advantages conferred by, the circulation of such myths.  Masculinity, nationality and class positioning can be seen as fragile walls to the edifice of self-esteem, supporting each other from similar foundations. The sources for analysis are chosen with this readership in mind; there is a wide range of texts from high and popular culture, including contemporary periodicals, and a key feature is the central use of visual texts in the argument, with over fifty illustrations. Italy, and Italians, can be seen to have held an important place in Victorian self-fashioning.



""Annemarie McAllister’s book on the representation of Italian culture in the nineteenth century draws on both a range of cultural theory and a wide diversity of sources to suggest some of the ways in which stereotypes and popular perceptions were constructed and used within Victorian society. Particularly compelling and original is her analysis of music as a site for building popular beliefs and assumptions about Italy and its people, but her study includes such topics as Italian history, gender, and sensuality as the focus for debate. McAllister’s use of illustrations, and her detailed knowledge of the illustrated press, offer original and telling ways into the constructions of national identities so central to the Victorian way of thinking and believing.""

Brian Maidment
Professor of English, University of Salford.




“I am delighted to have the chance to comment on this book. I read the doctoral thesis on which it is based with great interest and enjoyment, and learnt enormously from it. As a historian of nineteenth-century Britain with a particular interest in the construction of identities (and as an Italophile) I found it highly rewarding. The topic is of intrinsic interest and considerable significance. The author identifies a key period in the emergence of the English idea(s) of ‘Italianness’ and interrogates the topic through a variety of thoughtfully chosen case studies and via a rich array of appropriate primary sources. Most of the material was new to me and even topics that I felt some familiarity with, notably street music, were presented in a novel and rewarding way. 

I think the topic alone is worthy of a book-length study; matters Italian were at the heart of much political and cultural discussion in the mid-Victorian period and shaped both international political discourses and notions of British/English identity. However, what I think gives added value to this particular treatment is its approach. The work is inter-disciplinary in the best sense of the word. Dr McAllister is confident with the historical component (knowledge of context, strength and weakness of sources) but also with a number of approaches drawn from the field of cultural studies. Crucially, she manages to fuse the two so as to avoid the empirical overload that can blight the former and the linguistic opacity and wilfulness that can mark the later. The result is a subtle work that adds much to our knowledge but is also a model of how to write this type of study.”

Professor David Russell, Department of History, University of Central Lancashire





“The book sets out to examine a range of representations of Italy, Italians and, more, of ‘Italianness’ in mid-nineteenth-century England, with a view to exploring how ideas of Englishness were defined against Italian archetypes. Taking the mid-century years of the Risorgimento as her focus, Dr McAllister demonstrates, in a well-orchestrated and well-illustrated argument, the significance of a taxonomy of ‘Italianness’ to Victorian self-understanding and self-fashioning. She is particularly interested in its meanings for middle-class English men, and its role in the construction of Victorian masculinity.

The reach of this study is wide, taking in high and popular cultural texts, both literary and visual, including novels, poetry, painting, the periodical press and its illustrations, travel literature, and critical and historical writing in the context of the Risorgimento struggle for Italian unification and independence. 

Dr McAllister’s book makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of the high profile of Italy and the Italian in the mid-nineteenth-century English imagination and of the impact of such cross-cultural negotiations on the self-definition of the middle-class male.”

Professor Hilary Fraser, Geoffrey Tillotson Chair in Nineteenth-Century Studies, 
School of English & Humanities, Birkbeck University of London


","McAllister’s ability to present an account of different media forms and cultural practices so they can be used by academic readers with particular research interests, and yet develop her argument focussed on national and masculine identity, is the strength of this book...it provides insight into the media landscape of the period, a balance between the worth and significance of different forms of entertainment, and demonstrates how ‘Italianness’ was a vital part of the mid-nineteenth-century popular imagination.

Nickianne Moody, Liverpool John Moores University in Popular Narrative Media 2.1, June 2009 (Liverpool University Press)

",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-09-01,Earl Yarington and Mary De Jong,Popular Nineteenth-Century American Women Writers and the Literary Marketplace,Hardback,9781847182326,44.99,"""Wide-ranging, admirably researched, and accessible, this volume of essays locates women writers firmly in the center of the hurly-burly of literary and economic developments that made up the literary marketplace in nineteenth-century America.""
—Dr. Joanne Dobson,  independent scholar and novelist.

""This remarkable collection by editors Earl Yarington and Mary De Jong contributes richly to the ongoing recovery of the works and methods of highly popular American women writers of the nineteenth century. Augmenting the body of scholarship on professional women writers, these essays showcase the ways in which best-selling female authors met the demands of a burgeoning literary marketplace. This collection provides striking insights into an industry that was anything but sedate or genteel.  Sensitive to hair-trigger shifts in the marketplace, nineteenth-century women writers refined their strategies for meeting consumer desires.  Professional writers like Stowe, Hale, Warner, Holmes and Southworth are recognized here for their attunement to audience trends, tastes and temperament. They responded with a prodigious output of novels, short fiction, non-fiction and serialized features that bolstered the American publishing industry. The contributors to this much-needed volume have succeeded in re-acquainting later generations with the extensive output and skilled professionalism of writers whose works once covered parlor library tables. This is an important scholarly achievement.""
—Susan I. Gatti, Indiana University of PA

Includes essays on Lydia Maria Child, Elizabeth Oakes Smith,Grace Greenwood, Anna Warner, E. D. E. N. Southworth, Alcott, Grace King, Frances Harper, Chopin, Winnifred Eaton, and other successful authors.


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-09-01,Carmen Casaliggi and Paul March-Russell,Ruskin in Perspective: Contemporary Essays,Hardback,9781847182845,39.99,"Moving laterally across John Ruskin’s complete work, this new anthology draws his ideas together around the common theme of perspective. Grouped into three parts (Art and Literature, Aesthetics and Politics, Geography and Landscape), the essays examine Ruskin’s critical intervention both within its own period and in relation to its contemporary legacy. Drawing upon literary theory, art criticism, political, social and cultural history and biographical studies, the essays offer a new and exciting interdisciplinary approach to understanding the scale and relevance of Ruskin’s thought. Topics include the role of the reader in Ruskin’s work, Anglo-European encounters, Ruskin’s style and political influence, national and cultural heritage, the aesthetics of painting, perspective and the sublime, and the impact of geology and evolutionary theory upon Ruskin and nineteenth-century culture. Illustrated throughout with examples from Ruskin’s own art-work as well as the artists admired by him (such as J.M.W. Turner), the anthology will be invaluable for readers interested not only in Ruskin as writer, critic and commentator but also in his position within the changing currents of nineteenth and twentieth-century intellectual thought.

This collection shows how Ruskin can still teach us to read and see. It breathes enthusiasm and scholarly care in a way that will appeal to a wide range of readers. I am very impressed by the wealth of illustration in the book, which seems to me indispensable for an understanding of Ruskin's thought and its relevance to us. The choice of contributors is harmonious and refreshing - established authorities rub shoulders with rising scholars. This really is an unusually vibrant, well thought-through and valuable collection on a key formative figure in the history of literature, art and criticism. 
Dr. Sarah Wood, University of Kent.

""Ruskin studies are currently flourishing (...) There is a wide ranging interest, on both sides of the Atlantic, reflected in the essays here by established European names as well as younger scholars. 

The compilation is well focused, which will give Ruskin in Perspective a distinctive character in its consideration of literature, aesthetics and geography, thereby appealing to a genuinely interdisciplinary audience. 

—Stephen Wildman, Director and Curator, The Ruskin Library, Lancaster University






",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-09-01,Kate McLoughlin and Malin Lidström Brock,Tove Jansson Rediscovered,Hardback,9781847182692,39.99,"Best known to English-speaking audiences as the creator of the Moomin books, Tove Jansson was also a novelist, short-story writer, memoirist, painter, cartoonist and creator of picture-books.  Tove Jansson Rediscovered brings the full range of Jansson’s artistic and literary creativity to light.

The nineteen essays in the volume, contributed by leading scholars from around the world, discuss themes of artistic and personal identity, gender and sexuality, childhood and old age in Jansson’s work.  Jansson’s writing for children and adults, her paintings, cartoon-strips and illustrations are explored in contexts such as her membership of the Swedish-speaking minority in Finland and her life as an island-dweller.

Assembling scholarship in children’s literature, women’s writing, queer theory, linguistic analysis and reception studies, Tove Jansson Rediscovered updates the critical understanding of an extraordinary writer and artist.


""McLoughlin's and Lidstrom Brock's collection, the first of its kind in English, gives a fascinating picture of the work of Tove Jansson. It reads her well-known children's fiction alongside her writings for adults and her visual art, and in the context of the traumatic period of Scandinavian history during which she lived. The essays are wide-ranging and the collection makes a strong claim for Jansson as an artist whose work repays detailed critical investigation.""

Dr. Alice Jenkins, Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Glasgow




","""According to the astute  introduction, this book aims at updating Tove Jansson's literary standing . It clearly achieves this purpose...The collection is intended tor English-speaking readers, and many of the essays are written from a non-Scandinavian perspective - however, that by no means diminishes its usefulness to Scandinavian readership. On the contrary, it is refreshing to see one's own culture viewed through foreign eyes. The usefulness of the volume is further enhanced by lists of Finnish/Swedish editions of Tove Jansson's works, English translations of the titles, British as well as North American editions, and a brief listing of secondary works. In addition, each essay is accompanied by a list of works cited.""

Virpi Zuck, Oregon University, Scandinavian Studies Vol. 81, Issue 1, 2009
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-09-01,Gillian Ania and Ann Hallamore Caesar,Trends in Contemporary Italian Narrative 1980-2007,Hardback,9781847182760,29.99,"The ‘new Italian narrative’ that began to be spoken about in the 1980s was not associated with a single writer or movement but with an eclectic and varied production. The eight essays that make up this volume set out to give a flavour of the breadth and range of recent trends and developments. The collection opens with two essays on crime fiction. In the first, Luca Somigli examines novels dealing with topical issues or recent history and which reveal a strong indigenous and regional tradition, while in the second, Nicoletta McGowan discusses the particular case of a noir by Claudia Salvatori. They are followed by essays on two of Italy’s best-known contemporary writers: Marina Spunta’s essay explores the representation of space, place and landscape in the work of Gianni Celati and photographer Luigi Ghirri, while Darrell O’Connell analyses the fiction of Vincenzo Consolo, and his struggle to find a means of representing an ethical stance within fiction.
Two essays then examine the role of the anthology for young writers: Charlotte Ross and Derek Duncan in the context of lesbian and gay writing, looking at identity politics and the problematics of categorization; Monica Jansen and Inge Lanslots in that of the “Young Cannibals”, and their often unsettling non-literary language and orientation towards cinema, pop music and slang. The penultimate essay, by Jennifer Burns, discusses the literature of migrants to Italy, focusing on questions of identity, memory, mobility and language, while the final contribution, by Gillian Ania, is a study of apocalypse and dystopia in contemporary writing, looking at novels by Vassalli, Capriolo, Avoledo and Pispisa.

""This volume examines Italian narrative from the 1980s to the present, from the original viewpoint of genres, categories, trends, rather than author-based analyses. It highlights the innovations of the last twenty years, incorporating into the various themes well known writers like Consolo, Celati and Vassalli, with relative newcomers like Avoledo and Pispisa. The contributors to the volume, academics from the UK, Ireland, Canada, Belgium, cover a wide range of themes which have come to the fore during this period, ranging from detective stories (both the giallo and the noir) to lesbian and gay writing, to immigration literature in Italian, to the study of apocalypse and dystopia. The themes are contextualized in the socio-political and cultural changes taking place in Italy, and parallel to this the temporal moments of the narratives are in turn related to their historical realities. 
This is a richly woven account which presents post '80s Italian narrative from a new and stimulating angle, in eight lucid and informative essays which will be welcomed by all those interested in contemporary fiction in its cultural context.""
—Professor Anna Laura Lepschy, Department of Italian, University College London",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-10-01,Lorna J. Clark,A Celebration of Frances Burney,Hardback,9781847183200,39.99,"On the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the birth of the writer Frances Burney (1752–1840), a window to her memory was placed in the arched recess of stained glass that graces Poets’ Corner. Novelist, playwright and diarist, Frances Burney is one of the few women accorded such an honour. She joins the likes of Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë and George Eliot who might in some ways be seen as her literary heirs. Burney’s journey to recognition on the stage of the world has been a long one, crowned finally with triumph.

The service marked the mid-point of a two-day conference in which various aspects of Burney’s life and achievement were canvassed. Her journals and letters, her novels and plays (both comedies and tragedies), her life, family and context were all given serious scholarly treatment. 

This volume includes the papers presented at the conference, which cover the many facets of a remarkable career and represent the broad spectrum of scholarly approaches to the entire opus of Frances Burney. It shows how far Burney has come from being dismissed as a minor precursor to Jane Austen to being recognized in her own right as a powerful, complex and influential writer, whose works had considerable impact on her own and subsequent generations.




","""A Celebrations provides the reader procides the reader with a broad scope  as well as the minute details of Frances Burney's life ... affirms the importance of Frances Burney d'Arblay's work in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.""

Sarah D. Spence in  JASNA News, Volume 25 No. 2, Summer 2009

""This collection is a tasty smorgasbord indeed and should be enjoyed as such.""

Mascha Gemmeke, Universitat Greifswald, The Eighteenth Century Intelligencer, vol, 23, no. 3, Sept 2009

""'A Celebration' constitutes a hgihly commendable volume written with scholarly rigour, useful for specialists as well as movices in the field alike. Apart fom its pluralistic scope, a notable strength is its comprehensive bibliography covering primary and secondary works. The great merit of 'A Celebration' is its attempt to analyse Burney as a prolific, versatile writer, and it testifies to the vitality and actuality of her oeuvre, whose merit remains unquestioned.""

Carmen M. Fernandez Rodriguez, Universidad de A Coruna in Miscelanea vol. 40, 2009
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-10-01,Joyce C. Harte,Come Weep With Me: Loss and Mourning in the Writings of Caribbean Women Writers,Hardback,9781847183248,39.99,"This groundbreaking anthology represents the critical inquiry of literary scholars into the trope of loss and mourning in the work of women writers from the Caribbean archipelago.

There is a great deal of recent scholarly interest in the relationship of loss and mourning yet there are no books specifically devoted to an examination of this trope in the works of Caribbean women writers. To fill this gap, this collection of original essays examines subjects that encompass the brutality of slavery, oppressive dictatorships, AIDS, and the catastrophe of the Mount Pele volcano that appear in the writings of women from the English, Spanish and French speaking Caribbean. It is an important addition to the contemporary discourse on loss and mourning.  

The project is an exciting and vital one because it brings together a multiplicity of perspectives and critical approaches to examine the works of writers such as Jean Rhys, Jamaica Kincaid, Julia Alvarez and Maryse Condé. What emerges is a complex portrait of loss, mourning and remembrance that both enriches and challenges customary discourses of loss, mourning and melancholia.






",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-10-01,Georges-Claude Guilbert,Literary Readings of Billy Wilder,Hardback,9781847183156,39.99,"Billy Wilder, hailed by most as a great filmmaker, often considered himself primarily as a writer. Yet to this day no publisher had thought fit to release literary interpretations of his work. Such an endeavor was clearly missing. The idea of this book is to offer academic but non hermetic readings of nine of his most significant films, informed by literary criticism, Gender Studies, semiotics, Film Studies, and the “artistic sensibility” of its contributors. Literary Readings of Billy Wilder should please film students, English students and Wilder fans alike.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-10-01,Amelia Sanz and Dolores Romero,Literatures in the Digital Era: Theory and Praxis,Hardback,9781847182913,39.99,"The application of technology to information, communication, and culture has been through the history of humanity a key factor in social progress and well being. Literatures in the Digital Era: Theory and Praxis analyses in its twenty chapters the impacts of digital technology for the contemporary culture. The literary system is being powerfully affected in three aspects. In the first place, computer resources have been used to preserve and edit literary texts, associating to them graphical material, links with related texts or with dictionaries, and, above all, developing search tools of concordance and syntactic/semantic analysis. Secondly, we are watching the birth of a digital literature, with new generic characteristics, new creators, with knowledge of both, technological mechanisms and literary resources, and a reader capable of interpreting and enjoying texts on the screen. Thirdly, literary theory has expressed new postulates with regard to the multiple authorship of digital texts, the disintegration of the textual meaning, the intertextuality and implications of the reader in the creation process and the interpretation of the texts. These three impacts imply, for some authors, the search of a new paradigm for the creation, reading, and interpretation of digital texts, which points to a new humanism.",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-10-01,Joseph D. Anderson and Barbara Fisher Anderson,Narration and Spectatorship in Moving Images,Hardback,9781847183095,39.99,"Philosophers and students of the arts have wondered since the time of Aristotle about the nature of aesthetic experience, and how this experience can seemingly be evoked by works of art. For more than a century producers and directors of motion pictures have made decisions about how to craft them based upon assumptions about complex stylistic devices and the effects such patterns of organization have on viewers. Over the past few years film scholars have made considerable progress in analyzing the manifold connections that exist between stylistic patterns and aesthetic effects for moving images of all kinds. In doing so, they have increasingly drawn upon insights and methodologies derived from psychology. The international conference from which this volume takes its contributions and its title, was organized to encourage the seeking of descriptive models pertaining to those elements of filmic construction that account for specific aesthetic experience. The focus of the current selection of twenty essays is therefore on the elements of filmic narration and their presumed aesthetic effects. The editors are pleased to strengthen the link between film studies and psychology in the interest of gaining tangible insight into the ancient mystery of the link between art and aesthetic experience.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-10-01,Gary Grieve-Carlson,Olson’s Prose,Hardback,9781847182906,34.99,"Author of The Maximus Poems, Rector of Black Mountain College, and quondam Democratic Party activist, Charles Olson is one of the central figures of mid-twentieth-century American poetry.  Charles Olson: A Poet’s Prose is the first book-length critical study to focus strictly on Olson’s prose, ranging from his groundbreaking study of Melville, Call Me Ishmael (1947), through such seminal work as “Projective Verse” (1950), “Human Universe” (1951), The Special View of History (1956, 1970), “Equal, That Is, to the Real Itself” (1958), and Proprioception (1962).  

The eleven essays collected in this volume introduce a new generation of scholars who engage Olson’s thinking on gender and sexuality, human ecology, the relevance of non-Euclidean geometry and quantum physics for poetics, phenomenology and Whitehead’s process philosophy, and postmodernism.  Olson thinks and writes against the grain of the established authorities in poetry and literary criticism, and his influence on American letters has been broad and varied.  Like some Old Testament prophet or Melville’s Ishmael, Olson projects a voice that is immediately distinctive, sometimes disturbing, always provocative, and often compelling.  To begin to understand postmodern American poetry, one must begin with Charles Olson.

","“Charles Olson is part of that knotty, unpredictable and enduring “American grain” growing out of Melville and Whitman—idealist and materialist at once; wildly imaginative yet profoundly rooted in place.  With this volume, Gary Grieve-Carlson has collected eleven essays that add significantly to our understanding of this quintessentially American writer.  Focusing on Olson’s rich and wide-ranging prose, these essays probe the various ways in which Olson explored the boundless encounter of language with experience. “
		
Bonnie Costello, Boston University


“For anyone reading Charles Olson, sustained attention to the prose along with the poetry is essential.  Grieve-Carlson’s collection offers a wide-ranging and systematic review of that prose certain to be helpful to our understanding of Olson’s significance.  This timely collection takes its place in the continuing critical revaluation that is beginning to displace the confessional lyric from its central position in the poetry of the second half of the twentieth century, and establishes Olson as one of the mid-century’s most complex, difficult, provocative, and influential literary explorers.”

William Waddell, St. John Fisher College

",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-10-01,Scott Magelssen and Ann Haugo,Querying Difference in Theatre History,Hardback,9781847183033,29.99,"Terms such as race, ethnicity, otherness, and pluralism are becoming increasingly problematic as we grapple with issues of identity in the “post-multicultural” discursive landscape of the twenty-first century.  Querying Difference in Theatre History comprises sixteen scholarly case studies in which authors tease out the limitations of contemporary discourse concerning ideas of difference in theatre history today. The essays then incorporate new approaches, theories, and critical vocabulary for dealing with such issues. Unlike other works that address similar subjects, this volume arranges essays by mode of inquiry rather than by “kind of difference.” It offers essays that are complex and rigorous, yet accessible and pleasurable—ideal for use in graduate- and upper-division undergraduate theatre and performance classrooms.

While “difference” may immediately conjure issues of race, ethnicity, gender, and/or sexuality, this volume also includes essays that examine differences more broadly construed:  nationalisms, economic gradations, and so forth. Particular topics in this volume range from intersections of class-based and sex-based politics in theatrical performances during the French Revolution, constructions of blackness and whiteness in turn-of-the-century American brothel dramas, “fantasy heritage,” examinations of immigrant, exile, and refugee dramatic characters vis-à-vis notions of diasporic space, to the political and methodological dilemmas raised when dealing with an individual or event that is “repugnant” or “despicable” to the historian (e.g., anti-gay funeral protests).



","“For skeptics who dismiss identity and difference as solely contemporary concerns, this volume demonstrates the ongoing political and analytical vitality of thinking through differences by offering case studies across history and geography. These essays address both familiar and new objects from refreshing perspectives, and persuade readers of the importance of maintaining difference as a critical term in our scholarly and performance vocabularies. The assembled scholars also use historiography to stage conversations with practice and to create new genealogies through which to consider theatrical themes, styles, and values. Their ideas deepen our understandings of the place of identity and performance in social history.”

Jill Dolan, Zachary T. Scott Family Chair in Drama at the University of Texas at Austin

“How do we perform difference? How do we understand difference in performance? Such questions have become increasingly compelling and complex with the spread of globalization and continuous expansions in international cultural traffic. Querying Difference in Theatre History provocatively addresses these questions not so much by looking at the present, but by looking back and examining what the processes of and moments in theatre history might add to this discussion of difference. This engaging critical anthology is notably diverse, crossing various geographic and historical periods, including a wide range of topics in performance from interculturalism to decolonialism and on to indigeneity. This volume offers a series of approaches to otherness that in their differences demonstrate how identity is always in flux and that cultural identities inevitably depend on positioning oneself in relation to an other. What the essays contained in this collection suggest is that querying difference needs to be a necessary politics and practice in theatre history studies. For students and scholars working in theatre historiography, this is a useful and thought provoking book.”

Harry J. Elam, Jr., Olive H. Palmer Professor in the Humanities Chair, Department of Drama Stanford University 

“For those of us who care about the future of the theatrical past, Querying Difference will open up fresh perspectives and new horizons of thought.  Largely the work of younger scholars, the collection offers a variety of critical and methodological approaches to problems of “difference” – itself variably defined—across an array of case studies drawn from theatre history and performance studies.  There is something in the brevity, wit, and conversational tone of each essay that makes them ideal for classroom use – it’s like having available sixteen visiting scholars to help present new ideas, provoke discussion, and inspire further work.”

Tamara Underiner, Associate Professor of Theatre and Film at Arizona State University

“Magelssen and Haugo achieve in one anthology what a three volume series might do, for their assembly of essays is so varied yet so collectively resonant. The assortment of topics and theoretical approaches in this book all contribute to a rich and complicated conversation about theatre history and the construction of difference. I found myself marking essays for my undergraduate students to read, and simultaneously making notes regarding my own research, so diverse were the theories and subjects scrupulously undertaken here by some of the best young thinkers in the field of theatre and performance studies. Indeed, Querying Difference in Theatre History reveals through sixteen essays--arranged methodologically--a provocative, sensitive, and often witty investigation of theatre, historiography, and the performance of difference.”

Elizabeth Reitz Mullenix, Chair of Theatre at Miami University in Ohio

",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-10-01,Carolyn Weber,"Romanticism and Parenting: Image, Instruction and Ideology",Hardback,9781847182951,29.99,"If the child is the father of the man, as William Wordsworth so famously declared, then what of the father that child grows to become?  How does a daughter born of her mother’s death, as in the case of Mary Shelley, navigate the politics of production and reproduction within a loaded language of mythological allusion between generational authorships?  How do the visual arts perpetuate or challenge cultural agendas, such as portraying patriarchal anxieties about the “effeminization” of homeland by the foreign “other”, or attempting, iconically, to “save the soul” of a nation?  How do parents both encode and decode our world?  With the rise of the cult of the child in the later 18th and 19th centuries, Romantic writers of Britain and Europe, and eventually of North America, were perfectly positioned to explore, by extension, what it meant to “parent,” whether it be in within the domestic or the political sphere.
The essays in Romanticism and Parenting: Image, Instruction and Ideology offer a fresh, timely, and cutting edge contribution to the field of Romantic studies. The collection has its roots in conference proceedings from the 2005 Romanticism and Parenting Conference held at Seattle University in Seattle, Washington.  Essays acknowledge traditional discussions of such quintessentially “Romantic” themes as the child, education and familial politics while building upon contemporary innovative arguments within the contexts of Romanticism.  As a result, chapters in the collection range from examining didactic children’s literature to complicating constructions of the family politic at personal, communal and nationalistic levels. While challenging and deepening an understanding of Romantic studies, the collection also points to current, dynamic issues, such as the burgeoning discussion of the experience that actual parents face in academia. Consequently, the collection reveals how the Romantic period has come to profoundly influence our own current constructions of the politics of parenting.",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-10-01,Chris Bishop,Text and Transmission in Medieval Europe,Hardback,9781847183149,34.99,"Scholars of the Middle Ages are familiar with the notion of text as an inscribed document, whether that inscription occurs upon stone, metal, vellum or textiles, but the concept of inscription and, therefore, of text, can be extended to cover a range of evidence. Thus, one might speak of archaeological remains, land use patterns, traditional stories, remnant practices and revenant beliefs as constituting texts in their own right. Broadly defined then, text is the means by which we engage with the historical subject. 
The medievalist, however, faces particular constraints in interpreting these texts through the agencies of their transmission. Questions such as who authored these texts, when and why, intersect with problems of transcription, translation and redaction to inform a complex discourse. 
The majority of the chapters in this book started life as papers presented at a conference entitled Text and Transmission in Early Medieval Europe and the title of this book ultimately derives from that theme.  The subjects these chapters deal with range in geography from Ireland through to Byzantium, and cover almost a millennium of European history, but they are united in their effort to prise from their subjects some truths about texts, transmission and the critical literacies needed to interpret both.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-10-01,Susana Onega and Jean-Michel Ganteau,The Ethical Component in Experimental British Fiction since the 1960’s,Hardback,9781847183125,34.99,"Some humanist critics contend that only realist texts have an ethical function, that there is no ethical message behind the parodic and self-conscious games played by experimental fiction and that, since emotion neutralises the ethical faculties, there is no ethical dimension in such excess-pedling postmodernist genres and modes as kitsch, melodrama and romance. Yet, one may argue that the defamiliarisation imposed by parody, metafictional overkill and sundry devices symptomatic of emotional paroxysm on the realist text involves some measure of criticism of received truth and makes for the practice of a non-deontic ethics of truths that is also fairly often an ethics of alterity. This volume examines analytical evidence for the ethical component in key experimental British novels from the 1960's to the present, with special focus on John Fowles, Brigid Brophy, B. S. Johnson, Angela Carter, Peter Ackroyd, A. S. Byatt, Martin Amis, Zadie Smith, Will Self, Ian McEwan and Julian Barnes.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-10-01,Richard Trim and Sophie Alatorre,Through Other Eyes: The Translation of Anglophone Literature in Europe,Hardback,9781847183255,29.99,"The present volume represents the results of ideas put forward by specialists of literature, linguistics and translation studies at the Institution of Translation in Europe conference held at the University of Provence in June/July 2006. Its aim is to investigate how English-language literary works have been translated, with the focus primarily on French, and how they have been disseminated in Europe throughout a period going as far back as the Renaissance.

Exactly how were translations carried out and with whose support? Which official institutions were involved? What were the translators’ intentions? How ‘faithful’ were translations with regard to source texts? What kind of linguistic and literary difficulties were involved in the translations?

These are just some of the questions that the present volume aims to answer. It attempts to give an overview which covers a variety of aspects on the complex task of making suitable translations available to the European public. The result, however, is that translations have often been portrayed in quite a different light to the original…

","‘… the broad scope of the volume allows it to posit challenging questions that are of particular relevance for the study of translation within a European context.
‘Through Other Eyes charts a variety of problems and approaches that could prove to be important and/ or productive for European reception studies and the central position that translations have played therein.

Tom Toremans, Target 22:1- John Benjamins Publishing Company


",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-11-01,Louise E. Wright,Maurice Magnus: A Biography,Hardback,9781847182029,34.99,"Maurice Magnus's Memoirs of the Foreign Legion was published in 1924, several years after his death. In the introduction, D. H. Lawrence presents the author as a scoundrel and a cheat, an assessment that has had a lasting influence on Magnus's reputation. 
Maurice Magnus: A Biography is the first full-length study of the expatriate American writer, translator and businessman. It takes the reader from his youth in New York City and suspected Hohenzollern connections to his last impoverished days on Malta and desperate decision to avoid imprisonment by committing suicide. Early chapters focus on his personal and professional associations with Isadora Duncan and Edward Gordon Craig, in whose careers he remained interested until his death. Later chapters highlight his business dealings, Foreign Legion experience and relationships with Norman Douglas and Lawrence. The book emphasizes the value Magnus placed on his friendships, the importance he accorded his literary endeavors and the perseverance with which he met adversity. 

Relying heavily on unpublished letters, manuscripts and documents, the biography presents a portrait of an individual frequently at odds with the circumstances in which he found himself, of a gentleman ill-suited to the changing times in which he was living. It is essential reading for anyone interested in the early twentieth-century worlds of literature, publishing and the performing arts.


""Until Wright’s biography, no account had ever been written of Magnus’ life.  Her tireless research has now illuminated Magnus so fully that we finally can know what transpired between this man and the likes of Lawrence and Duncan.  This kind of basic research is far from glamorous labor, but it represents the highest ideals of literary scholarship by clearing up mysteries once and for all in a thoroughly professional and engaging manner.""

- John W. Crowley, Professor of English, University of Alabama



Wright's ""researches . . . have produced a rich filling of memoirs, reminiscences and in particular letters (for it was in his friendships that Magnus always believed that he most strongly lived) that successfully bring this strange, at times comic, always fascinating and in the end tragic figure back to life.""

- John Worthen is Emeritus Professor, University of Nottingham.

","

",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-11-01,Bárbara Arizti and Silvia Martínez-Falquina,On the Turn: The Ethics of Fiction in Contemporary Narrative in English,Hardback,9781847183583,44.99,"On the Turn: The Ethics of Fiction in Contemporary Narrative in English is an attempt to listen to the various voices that participate in the current dialogue on the relationship between fiction and ethics. 
The editors’ introduction investigates the current state of affairs on the return to ethics in critical and literary consideration, and it opens up the way for the variety of approaches that follows. Participants include internationally recognized scholars like Andrew Gibson, Patricia Waugh, or Native American fiction writer and poet Gordon Henry, winner of the American Book Award in 1995. All in all, contributors cover a significant geographical diversity, and their approaches also vary from general theory to particular examples, from traditional interpretations to post-deconstruction ethics. Authors analyze texts both mainstream and marginal, colonial and postcolonial; they examine the ethics of race, gender and sexuality; the ethics of self-positioning and orientation; the ethics of style; the ethics of reception; the ethics of mode and genre; the ethics of extreme situations of evil, disease and fascism. 
In its search for a better understanding of the global/nationalistic world of today, On the Turn therefore moves beyond the scope of literary criticism into issues of wider, more urgent relevance. 



What should I, ought I, may I, must I, do, if anything, on the basis of reading, when I have read a literary work? What does reading a literary work authorize, or even command, me to do? Writing an essay about the work would be one response. On the Turn is a wonderfully diverse, learned, challenging, provocative, even sometimes controversial, collection of essays on the ethical dimensions of literature. This book is testimony to the continued lively interest in the ethical turn in literary studies. The authors are, for the most part, concerned with ethical theory and with ethically charged situations in postmodern novels in English, as they shape readers’ values and judgments. Poetry and non-print media are, however, also discussed.

J. Hillis Miller
UCI Distinguished Research Professor of Comparative Literature and English, University of California at Irvine


The Ethics of Fiction is an important and exciting volume that explores with energy and rigour the connections between ethics and literature. Relating literature to philosophy, neurobiology, politics, religion, deconstruction and psychoanalysis, the twenty two contributors richly advance ‘the ethical turn’ recently embraced by many critics. Works by authors such as Ian McEwan, A.S.Byatt, Charles Palliser, Hanif Kureishi, J.M. Coetzee, David Malouf, George Orwell, E.L. Doctorow, Flannery O’Connor, Toni Morrison and Paul Auster are presented in a new light and complex topics such as territoriality, the nature of love, Islamophobia and the politics of representation are tackled with imagination and intellectual integrity. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in the dialogue between ethics and literature.

Avril Horner,
Professor of English, Kingston University 





",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-11-01,Linda Martz and Anita Higgie,Questions of Identity in Detective Fiction,Hardback,9781847183439,34.99,"With essays by an international group of scholars, Questions of Identity in Detective Fiction delves into the ways in which this genre, given its status as popular yet marginalized literature, allows for the exploration of a wide range of meanings. Contributors examine how the genre both mirrors and focuses the personal/sexual/ ethnic/spiritual, how it interfaces with national literatures and histories, and how the generic identity of detective fiction has evolved over time. Chapters include discussions of novels and short stories from American, Argentine, British, Canadian, French, German, and Japanese national literatures, ranging from the mid 19th century to the early 21st century.    

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-11-01,Cristina Sánchez-Conejero,Spanishness in the Spanish Novel and Cinema of the 20th – 21st Century,Hardback,9781847183460,39.99,"Spanishness in the Spanish Novel and Cinema of the 20th-21st Century is an exploration of the general concept of “Spanishness” as all things related to Spain, specifically as the multiple meanings of “Spanishness” and the different ways of being Spanish are depicted in 20th-21st century literary and cinematic fiction of Spain. This book also represents a call for a re-evaluation of what being Spanish means not just in post-Franco Spain but also in the Spain of the new millennium. 

The reader will find treatments of some of the crucial themes in Spanish culture such as immigration, nationalisms, and affiliation with the European Union as well as many others of contemporary relevance such as time, memory, and women studies that defy exclusivist and clear-cut single notions of Spanishness. These explorations will help contextualize what it means to be Spanish in present day Spain and in the light of globalization while also dissipating stereotypical notions of Spain and Spanishness.




","“The collection’s explicit aim of contributing to a better understanding of the precise meaning of ‘being Spanish’ is addressed by twenty of the most prestigious Spanish scholars from the UK and the US using a diverse panoply of approaches and methodologies loosely identifiable within the realm of Cultural Studies.”
 - Prof. Alfredo Martínez-Expósito, University of Queensland, Australia

“This comprehensive, well-researched, insightful, and enjoyable collection is crucial for scholars and engaging reading for all students of contemporary Spain.” 
 - Prof. Thomas C. Turner, University of Minnesota, Morris

",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-11-01,Natasha Duquette,"Sublimer Aspects: Interfaces between Literature, Aesthetics, and Theology",Hardback,9781847183361,34.99,"How did eighteenth-century aesthetics come to so strongly influence not only the theology but also the practice of Christianity by the late nineteenth century? The twelve essays in Sublimer Aspects seek to answer this question by examining interfaces between literature, aesthetics, and theology from 1715-1885. In doing so, they consider the theological import of canonical writers–such as Daniel Defoe, Alexander Pope, Voltaire, and Immanuel Kant–as well as writers whose work is now experiencing a revival, namely women writers–including Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck, Anne Brontë, Frances Ridley Havergal, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, and Adelaide Procter. The volume concludes with essays on the possibility for hope within the Christian Romanticism of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Thomas Carlyle and George MacDonald, whose texts continue to cultivate a sense of wonder in new generations.    

Divided into five sections, essays by Ben Faber, Katherine Quinsey, Melora G. Vandersluis, Richard J. Lane, Natasha Duquette, Susan R. Bauman, Krista Lysack, Sandra Hagan, Roxanne Harde, Cheri Larsen Hoeckley, Franceen Neufeld, and Monika Hilder address mutually interdependent connections between providence and grace, sublimity and ethics, gender and hymnody, literature and activism, and finally, aesthetics and hope.


","""With topics ranging from Daniel Defoe to Jacques Derrida, this book shows the reach and the long-standing importance of the aesthetics of the sublime.   Natasha Duquette has assembled a plurality of voices in a fascinating mix of essays that provide a chronological study of the shifting representations of the sublime in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literature.  The religious and the Biblical sublime are well represented, in addition to secular manifestations of the sublime, even, as one author describes, in a movement from the “aspiration of the Gothic spire to the madness of subterranean dungeons.” These scrupulously researched and well-written essays include analysis of Alexander Pope’s brilliant satires and Anne Brontë’s tenacious hymns, a rich range of material that will appeal to a wide audience.""

Deborah Kennedy, Saint Mary’s University
author of Helen Maria Williams and the Age of Revolution




",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-11-01,Robin Hammerman,Womanhood in Anglophone Literary Culture:  Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Perspectives,Hardback,9781847183507,39.99,"Taken together, the fourteen essays in this collection contribute to the discourse of social conditions for literary women.    The essays examine relevant social, intellectual, and professional questions about the ways in which women writers contributed to conceptions of womanhood in nineteenth and twentieth century Anglophone literary culture.   Contributors to this collection describe and examine several nineteenth and twentieth century women writers’ responses to patriarchal assumptions about literary merit in genres including poetry and fiction.  Womanhood in Anglophone Literary Culture: Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Perspectives will be of special interest to students and faculty of women’s studies and literature written in the English language.",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-11-01,Jirí Flajšar and Zénó Vernyik,Words into Pictures: E. E. Cummings’ Art Across Borders,Hardback,9781847183354,34.99,"Words Into Pictures: E. E. Cummings’ Art Across Borders is a collection of ten new essays on the American poet and artist E. E. Cummings (1894-1962). Bringing together the verbal and the visual, two forms of art traditionally considered to be distinct and separate, the volume invites the reader to examine fields in Cummings studies that have been neglected or under-researched.    

An artist who vigorously pursued painting and writing throughout his life, Cummings may be called the William Blake of American Modernism, a PoetAndPainter whose habitual genre-crossing renders his oeuvre a unique choice for multidisciplinary critical studies. The essays of this volume address the limits of the visual, linguistic, spatial, and political vison of the artist.

Contributors to this volume include established as well as junior Cummings scholars from the U.S. and Europe, giving Words Into Pictures an international and authoritative flavour. 

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-12-01,"T.Foy Vernon, with Mícheál Ó'hAodha, editor",American “Outsider”: Stories from the Irish Traveller Diaspora,Hardback,9781847183927,34.99,"Of all of the world’s countries, America is the one that we all think we know. World globalization and the dominance of English language and American idiom makes us secure in our “knowledge” of what the United States is and who her people are. This book jettisons all such pre-conceptions. It affords a window on the American experience that eschews many of the hackneyed representations of old. It throws back the curtains on the hidden lives of a people who quietly live along the dusty weave of a Mid-West highway. Small towns, woods and wayside stops. Like passengers in the rear of the truck, we are brought on a journey of “life as it is lived” for the quintessential “people of the road”―the Irish―American Pavees (Travellers). This book is a small glimpse of a distinct culture, language and a way of life. As bravely-written as it is unique, this is the story of a people who have lived in the shadows of rumour, hearsay and a hot summer sun. Strange, yet familiar. These are the shy migrants of the nameless road.






",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-12-01,Wendy Harding and Jacky Martin,Beyond Words: The Othering Excursion in Contemporary American Literature,Hardback,9781847183705,34.99,"This is a book about reading, or rather about the moment when the usual frames of interpretation no longer apply. That is where the Othering Excursion begins. Through disruptive forms of rhetoric, writers discard the structures and norms of the cultural system and use the disorders thus created to suggest what lies beyond it. Cultivating distortion, conceptual blocks and chaotic constructions, their texts flout normal processes of interpretation. Whereas traditional approaches often overlook these disorders or treat them as a form of informational noise, in this study they become the basis of critical reflection. Harding and Martin elaborate a critical concept and a range of reading methods to deal with what seem to be zones of obscurity in literary texts. Cutting across boundaries of race, ethnicity and gender, they treat a wide range of poetry and short fiction that challenges traditional interpretations. Giving new readings of canonical texts, the book examines works by American authors that are widely read and taught, like Elizabeth Bishop, A.R. Ammons, Don DeLillo, Leslie Marmon Silko, or Sandra Cisneros. At the same time, it includes studies of emerging writers like Kate Braverman, Dan Chaon, or Chase Twichell. 

""There is something deeply moving in witnessing the birth of a new concept. And indeed Wendy Harding and Jacky Martin’s concept of “Othering” is a welcome addition to an already crowded field, where concepts like “difference”, “alterity” or “hybridity” are firmly established. But the new concept is more than an addition, it is more in the nature of a substitution, as it aims to replace the now exhausted concepts, allows the authors to avoid the trivialities of a criticism based on gender and race, and, by focusing on form and language (or style), to recapture the now largely lost intuitions of close reading. This combination of close reading and a firm grasp of theory is one of the attractions of the book. I am impressed by their mastery of the intricacies of theory and the range of their literary corpus (in terms both of genres and texts). I have no doubt that their book will be a major contribution to the renewal of the study of contemporary American literature.""
—Professor Jean-Jacques Lecercle, University of Nanterre, Paris

In Beyond Words, Wendy Harding and Jacky Martin offer “a new attitude to reading” that approaches true diversity by ignoring trends toward traditional groupings of authors by race and gender and instead examining, democratically, recent American literature in terms of its unique and peculiar achievements. In choosing texts that employ “the rhetoric of the inexpressible,” the authors have identified “Othering” as the common thread running through short fiction and poetry by authors as varied as Allen Ginsberg, Raymond Carver, Sandra Cisneros, Adrienne Rich, and Li-Young Lee. In transliterating the language of the ineffable and unspoken, Beyond Words employs its superbly original methodology toward unfolding previously inaccessible layers of meaning and provoking a fuller understanding of the creative process and its cultural milieu.
—Michael Waters, Professor of English at Salisbury University, USA

""A germinal study from an ""other"" (in this case, European) perspective of an at once idiosyncratic and indicative range of American texts with a view of how they, themselves, encounter the unexamined and unexpected.""
—Marilyn Hacker, Professor at City College of New York and CUNY Graduate Center

""Invigorating and original, Beyond Words: The Othering Excursion in Contemporary American Literature challenges conventional ways of approaching literary texts. Eschewing binaries, Wendy Harding and Jacky Martin propose a new approach to reading and analyzing the heterogeneity of recent American literature. By juxtaposing both well-known and less-familiar poetry and short fiction by authors as various as Gayl Jones, John Ashbery, Russell Banks, and Marilyn Nelson, Harding and Martin consider a stimulating variety of texts that cross aesthetic, generic, canonical and political boundaries. Harding and Martin’s polysemous approach to literary texts, a procedure they call “othering,” is groundbreaking and enlightening. Beyond Words provides rich insights for scholars and general readers alike. Harding and Martin’s new mapping of American literature is a remarkable achievement, certain to provoke dialogue for decades to come.""
—Sue Standing, Jane Ruby Professor of English, Wheaton College, Norton, Massachusetts

""In this new book with the apt title Beyond Words: the Othering Excursion in Contemporary American Literature, Wendy Harding and Jacky Martin promise to generate intense conversation about their conceptual approach to reading canonical, as well as newer texts in late twentieth century American literature.  Beyond Words favors a shift in thinking about all texts that defy conventional analysis, and it resists the cleavages that it finds in unsatisfactory terms like “alterity” and “hybridity” conceived to account for differences in gender-racial, ethnic, and class contexts.  Re-conceiving Othering as a corroborative and complementary methodology rather than a splintered one, Beyond Words invites an illuminating, comprehensive analysis of literary production in late twentieth century American texts.""
—Helena Woodard, Associate Professor of English, Department of English, University of Texas at Austin, USA




","""Wendy Harding and Jacky Martin offer [this work] as a breath of fresh air not only for the study of American poetry and prose of the last thirty years, but as an attempt to revitalize literary criticism generally...It is a difficult task that could easily descend into a repetition of broad poststructuralist premises or overly generalized arguments, but Harding and Martin take such care with the project's organization and the reiteration and refining of their claim that the result is a valuable contribution on several levels...The strength of 'Beyond Words' is that it does not seek to offer a strict critical framework to be further applied to the authors and other works. The limitations of that kind of methodology are precisely what the critics argue against. Instead, they advocate an openness of reading, a way of making ourselves more and variously available to all the text has to offer.""

Stacey Peebles, University of North Carolina at Greensboro
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-12-01,"Peter Orford with Michael P Jones, Lizz Ketterer, Joshua McEvilia",“Divining Thoughts”: Future Directions in Shakespeare Studies,Hardback,9781847183798,24.99,"Dr Peter Orford and his editing team have collected articles from the next generation of Shakespeare scholars to offer a glimpse into the future of Renaissance Studies. The essays included were presented at the International British Graduate Shakespeare Conference and represent research from around the globe, either exploring new territory, or redefining the work of those before them. In his foreword, Professor Stanley Wells states that ‘The essays printed here demonstrate that the future of early modern dramatic scholarship and criticism is in good hands.” 

The articles included are:

•	“Seldom Seene: Observations from Editing The Launching of the Mary, or the Seaman’s Honest Wife” by Matteo Pangallo
•	“Thomas Heywood and the Construction of Taste in the Repertory of Queen Henrietta’s Men” by Eleanor Collins
•	“Bawdiness, Crime and Low Characters in Late Elizabethan Comedy” by Shelly Hsin-Yi Hsieh 
•	“Print and Elizabethan Military Culture” by Dong-Ha Seo
•	“Actors, Audiences and Authors: The Competition for Control in Brome’s The Antipodes” by Audrey Birkett
•	“Shakespeare’s King Richard III: The Perverted Machiavel” by Conny Loder
•	“Women in the Shakespearean Audience – Recognition and Authority” by Brian Schneider
•	“Dis-playing History: The Case of Shakespeare’s Globe” by Kelly Jones
•	“‘Ever Holy and Unstained’: Illuminating the Feminist Cenci Through Mary Wollstonecraft and Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus” by Kristine Johansan
•	“Narcissus and Modernity in Shakespeare’s Sonnets” by Will McKenzie
•	“Cowboys and Romans: Cymbeline and Paradigmatic Change in the Theatre” by Miles Gregory



",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-12-01,Sharmina Mawani and Anjoom A. Mukadam,Gujaratis in the West: Evolving Identities in Contemporary Society,Hardback,9781847183682,34.99,"Gujaratis in the West: Evolving Identities in Contemporary Society is uniquely placed in that it is a compilation of the works of scholars focusing on the diverse nature of Gujarati communities. This volume offers an insight, through different lenses and in varying contexts, of the complexities faced by particular Gujarati communities in a specific time and space.

In contemporary societies the concept of identity has taken on greater importance and there are now increasing debates relating to the locality of certain communities, their allegiance to the nation states in which they reside as well as their links to the land of their ancestors. Gujaratis in the West investigates how Gujaratis, who are considered to be successful and integrated, construct and express their complex religious, linguistic and ethnic identities in the contexts of the nations in which they reside. 

Most of the previous research on the identities of minority ethnic communities in the West who originate in South Asia has focussed on disadvantaged and less-well integrated groups. In these challenging times for Gujarati, as well as other communities, especially those residing in the West, the location of their identities in an increasingly complex global diversity takes on added significance.




","""This book is the first major study to discuss Gujaratis in the west as diverse communities.  Scholarly research has hitherto focused on Gujaratis as separate castes or individual religions whereas Gujaratis in the west acknowledges that Gujaratis comprise a mixture of various Hindu, Jain and Muslim communities who are linked not only by language but by a cultural history as well as patterns of migration.
Anjoom Mukadam and Sharmina Mawani are founders of the Gujarat Studies Association which is an invaluable resource bringing together academics and others interested in the study of Gujarat and its people.""
—Professor Rachel Dwyer
, Professor of Indian Cultures and Cinema, Department of the Languages and 
Cultures of South Asia, 
 School of Oriental and African Studies, 
University of London





The Gujarati speaking community of the West reflect both the growing diversity of these societies and the changing landscape of academic disciplines that encompass this new experience in a scholarly way.
This volume is an important contribution that makes available ongoing research in the field and the methodological issues that arise for a number of disciplines that formerly constituted Area Studies, Ethnic Studies or Language and Cultural Studies.

Professor Azim Nanji
Director, The Institute of Ismaili Studies




",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-12-01,Roxanne Harde,Narratives of Community: Womens Short Story Sequences,Hardback,9781847183835,44.99,"Narratives of Community draws together essays that examine short story sequences by women through the lenses of Sandra Zagarell’s theoretical
essay, “Narrative of Community.” Reading texts from countries around the world, the collection’s twenty-two contributors expand scholarship on the genre as they employ diverse theoretical models to consider how female identity is negotiated in community or the roles of women in domestic, social and literary community. Grouped into four sections based on these examinations, the essays demonstrate how Zagarell’s theory can provide a point of reference for multiple approaches to women’s writing as they read the semiotic systems of community. While “narrative of community” provides an organizing principle behind this collection, these essays offer critical approaches grounded in a wide variety of disciplines. Zagarell contributes the collection’s concluding essay, in which she provides a series of reflections on literary and cultural representations of community, on generic categorizations of community, and on regionalism and narrative
of community as she returns to theoretical ground she first broke almost twenty years ago. Overall, these essays bring their contributors and
readers into a community engaged with a narrative genre that inspires and affords a rich and growing tradition of scholarship. 

With Narratives of Community, editor Roxanne Harde offers a wealth of critical essays on a wide variety of women's linked series of short stories, essays that can be seen overall to explore the genre as a kind of meeting house of fictional form and meaning for an inclusive sororal community. The book itself joins a growing critical community of monographs and essay collections that have been critically documenting the rise of the modern genre of the story cycle to a place second only to the novel. But more than simply joining this critical venture, Narratives of Community makes a major contribution to studies in the short story, feminist theory, women's studies, and genre theory. Its introduction and essays should prove of enduring interest to scholars and critics in these fields, as well as continue highly useful in the undergraduate and graduate classrooms.
— Gerald Lynch, Professor of English, University of Ottawa

The introduction, by Prof. Harde, and the 20 essays in the book dialogue with Sandra Zagarell’s proposed paradigm “narratives of community”, which other scholars have called “short story cycles” or “story sequences”. Zagarell’s proposal organically blends a generic model with a thematic concern to explain how women writing community often turn to a particular narrative style that itself supports the literary creation of that community. Harde and the volume contributors appropriate this brilliant and engaging proposal in the context of other crucial discussions of the genre—notably Forest Ingram’s germinal study, J. Gerald Kennedy’s work, and those by Robert Luscher, Maggie Dunn and Anne Morris, James Nagel, Gerald Lynch and (I’m honored to note), my own study on Asian American short story cycles—to expand the range of the critical discussion on the form. The quality and diversity of the essays remind us that there is still much work that can be done in the area of genre studies.

The volume emphasizes an important caveat to one vital misconception: that although writers like James Joyce or Sherwood Anderson are thought to be the precursors or, even, “inventors” of the form, women’s sequences, by Sara Orne Jewett and Elizabeth Gaskell, among others, actually predate the work of the male writers. This fact suggests that the development of the form as a genre that attends to specific perspectives or creative formulations of and by women needs to be considered in depth. The temporal scope of the volume is therefore a vital contribution to scholarship on the form, as is the diversity of the writers analyzed. Indeed, the examination of narratives by writers from different countries and that focus on characters from different time periods, racial, religious, or ethnic communities, and social class impels a multilayered reading of the texts that inevitably promotes a nuanced understanding of the project of each of the writers, a project that connects issues of individuality and community in varied and often surprising ways. The essays thus critically explore the notion of community in its myriad associations with the individual and as a crucial site not only for women’s action upon the world but also for her creative endeavors.
The essays in the volume revisit familiar texts—Naylor’s The Women of Brewster Place, Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street, Kingston’s The Woman Warrior, Welty’s The Golden Apples, Munro’s The Lives of Girls and Women, among others—but offer new perspectives on the way form interacts with issues of women’s communities and women creating community in these works. Significantly, it also offers readings on texts that have not been analyzed in detail from this perspective—Gaskell’s Cranford or Woolf’s A Haunted House, for example—thus contributing to a continuing conversation about the ways women write. The juxtaposition of the familiar and the new expand the paradigms of current criticism not only on the story cycle but also on women’s writing in general. 
—Rocio Davis, Professor of Literature, University of Navarre

""Roxanne Harde’s forthcoming volume, Narratives of Community: Women’s Short Story Sequences, provides an abundant collection of varied responses to Sandra Zagarell’s longstanding call for further in-depth exploration of the genre that Zagarell christened “the narrative of community” in her 1988 essay linking non-novelistic narrative form with representations of female experience.  As Harde observes, such narratives of community overlap significantly with the growing canon of unified but discontinuous collections of autonomous stories that critics have variously labeled as the short story cycle/ sequence/ composite . .
. The essays in her collection examine a rich variety of such works by women, extending the scholarship in this area. . . Harde’s ample collection of essays presents a concerted and diverse exploration of the implications of the short story sequence form as a representation of women’s lives as part of and in conflict with membership in a community.
. . . Overall, Harde’s volume is a welcome addition to current scholarship on the short story sequence, bringing in a variety of new voices and perspectives to the community of scholars who have engaged in the exploration of this paradoxical, evolving, and increasingly popular genre.""
— Dr. Luscher



",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-12-01,Colman Hogan and Marta Marin-Dòmine,The Camp: Narratives of Internment and Exclusion,Hardback,9781847183989,39.99,"The camp is nothing if not diverse: in kind, scope, and particularity; in sociological and juridical configuration; in texture, iconography, and political import. Adjectives of camp specificity embrace a spectrum from extermination and concentration, to detention, migration, deportation, and refugee camps. And while the geographic range covered by contributors is hardly global, it is broad: Chile, Rwanda, Canada, the US, Central Europe, Morocco, Algeria, South Africa, France and Spain. 

And yet—is to so characterize the camp to run the risk of diffusing what in origin is a concentration into a paratactical series of “identity particularisms”? While The Camp does not seek to antithetically promulgate a universalist vision, it does aim to explore the imbrication of the particular and the universal, to analyze the structure of a camp or camps, and to call attention the role of the listener in the construction of the testimony. 

For, by naming what cannot be said, is not every narrative of internment and exclusion a potential site of agency, articulating the inner splitting of language that Giorgio Agamben defines as the locus of testimony: “to bear witness is to place oneself in one’s own language in the position of those who have lost it, to establish oneself in a living language as if it were dead, or in a dead language as if it were living.”

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-12-01,Paul Varner,Westerns: Paperback Novels and Movies from Hollywood,Hardback,9781847183859,34.99,"Whatever we might think of them, popular Westerns, both movies and cheap paperbacks on the newsstand racks, have had a powerful impact on both U.S. culture and Western European culture in general. Collected here are new studies from a variety of critical approaches of popular Westerns by scholars from the U.S., the U.K., and Europe, new studies of classic William S. Hart, John Ford, Clint Eastwood, and Sam Peckinpah film Westerns as well as new studies of seldom studied writers such as James Warner Bellah, Clarence Mulford, Charles Portis, and Oakley Hall.



",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-01-01,Pallavi Rastogi and Jocelyn Fenton Stitt,Before Windrush: Recovering an Asian and Black Literary Heritage within Britain,Hardback,9781847184139,34.99,"Before Windrush: Recovering an Asian and Black Literary Heritage within Britain is an important intervention in the growing field of Black British literary studies. Composed of essays on non-white writers living in, or writing about, Britain in the period before the post-WW II wave of immigration, the anthology testifies to the existence of a British nation that has been multiracial and multicultural for centuries. Through an analysis of well-known figures such as Mary Prince, Mary Seacole, C. L. R. James, and Mulk Raj Anand as well as forgotten writers such as Helena Wells, Lucy Peacock, Olive Christian Malvery, Bhagvat Singh Jee, T. B. Pandian, and Lao She among others, the essays in Before Windrush shed light on an understudied aspect of Britain: its racial and ethnic complexity during the colonial period. The authors discussed here, whose work originates in and borrows from Romantic, Victorian, and Modernist conventions, challenge the implicit whiteness of English writing by showing the literary legacy of the Asian and black presence in Britain. Before Windrush places this hidden literary history of Asian and black literature within the social and cultural contexts of its British production.

Contributors include Julie Codell, Pallavi Rastogi, W. F. Santiago-Valles, Jocelyn Fenton Stitt, Michelle Taylor, Stoyan Tchaprazov, Margaret Trenta, and Anne Witchard. 




","Before Windrush breaks significantly new ground in the focus it gives to Asian writers in  multicultural British literature before 1948. Placing these voices into constructive relationships and conversations with Afro-Caribbean literary figures verifies their indivisibility from an often exclusionary canon.  The writing is lucid and concise, the critical lenses sharp and revealing. This anthology fills a long neglected space in our scholarship and teaching.

---Keith Sandiford, Louisiana State University, Author, Measuring the Moment: Strategies of Protest in Eighteenth-Century Afro-English Writing

“An eloquent and compelling reframing of the life and history of “Black” Britons before 1948, Before Windrush provides a rare yet essential overview of the Asian, South Asian, Caribbean and African writers’ engagements and contributions to both British and world history. Boasting an impressive survey of topics, ethnicities and eras, from reevaluations of canonical texts to intrepid, new analyses of largely overlooked writers and minority British communities, this volume brings lost conversations and undiscovered material back into British and postcolonial literary studies…..

There is no better place to either start or further expand one’s knowledge of Black British literature, culture and thought—in all of its manifestations.”

--Michelle M. Wright, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, 
Author, Becoming Black: Creating Identity in the African Diaspora


",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-01-01,Peter Cochran,Byron at the Theatre,Hardback,9781847184276,34.99,"Byron at the Theatre is a collection of essays by a wide spectrum of European scholars, dealing with Byron’s dramas in a variety of ways. It starts with a long and detailed introduction on Byron and Drury Lane, incorporating much recent research done on the riotous and squalid conditions of the theatre in Regency London – conditions which go far towards explaining Byron’s distaste for the idea of theatrical success.

There follows a chapter about the influence on Byron of Vittorio Alfieri, a vital subject which has not been written about thoroughly for over a century, and which goes far to explain what motivated Byron’s experiments in classical drama.
	
The main body of the essays discuss Byron’s plays from thematic perspectives, and examine Byron himself as a figure in the dramas of Goethe and Stoppard. There is a chapter on Rudolph Nureyev’s little-known Manfred ballet, and another on Byron himself as a dramatic performer.

Byron at the Theatre is a vital book for anyone interested in this much-discussed but little-understood aspect of Byron’s life and work.




",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-01-01,Melinda Dooly and Diana Eastment,“How we’re going about it”: Teachers' Voices on Innovative Approaches to Teaching and Learning Languages,Hardback,9781847184313,39.99,"“How we’re going about it” provides a space for teachers’ voices in the nexus between research and practice by outlining specific cases of innovative approaches to language teaching and learning as they have been applied in the classroom. The volume includes descriptions of some of the most representative recent work and practice in the field while at the same time covering a wide geographic scope. 

The case descriptions help synthesize research and teaching practice in a way that is accessible to busy teachers, teacher trainers or anyone interested in language development. Each chapter focuses on a similar approach taken by teachers and researchers from different countries and while the book contains contributions from some well-known authors, it also includes contributions from lesser-known practitioners who merit recognition of their innovative practices.

This book is an important contribution to language teaching and learning for several reasons. It deals with educational innovation at various levels of education (young learners, primary, secondary, tertiary); it deals with perspectives from different areas of Europe and beyond; and it provides examples of grass-roots experiences being carried out by real teachers in real classrooms and is honest about the problems faced when implementing educational changes. It is therefore a book about authentic experiences with both a theoretical and problem-solving base, experiences which in turn make an important contribution to the underlying theories described herein.



",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-01-01,Sylvie Crinquand,Last Letters,Hardback,9781847184016,29.99,"This collection of essays is devoted to last letters : letters sent – or not – to sever a relationship, to mark the end of a phase in one’s life, or letters written by people about to be executed or commit suicide just before their deaths.
Conversely, some of the letters analysed are fictional, and still other forms of texts, such as poems, are considered ultimate messages by the authors of the articles.
By focussing on various forms of last letters, the contributors aim to define the influence of the epistolary context on endings and to provide an original approach to closure. 


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-01-01,"Mary Carr, K.P. Clarke and Marco Nievergelt",On Allegory: Some Medieval Aspects and Approaches (with an Introduction by Eric Stanley and an Afterword by Vincent Gillespie),Hardback,9781847184009,34.99,"This collection of essays focuses on the ubiquity of the allegorical imagination in pre-modern western culture, and participates in a recent wave of resurgence of interest in the complex practices and ideas usually defined by the word ""allegory"". The contributors study the impact of the allegorical imagination on the production, reception and interpretation of literature, as well as its function as a tool of philosophical and theological enquiry, and its role in shaping the visual arts. Essays focus on subjects as varied as the general theories on allegory, allegory's relation to the human imagination, its usefulness or even inevitability as a human mode of cognition and its potential for the encoding of meanings that may be political, historical, religious and amorous. They discuss canonical figures such as Petrarch, Boccaccio, Boethius, Hans Memling, Pico della Mirandola, King James I and John Donne, but extend to include neglected but equally important figures such as Stephen Hawes or Thomas Usk as well as thematic approaches less concerned with issues of authority and authorship. As such the collection is a testimony to the variety, complexity, and adaptability of ""allegory"" at the heart of medieval western civilisation. 




",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-01-01,Beatrice Batson,Reconciliation in Selected Shakespearean Dramas,Hardback,9781847184382,34.99,"This study focuses on the rich complexity of the term, reconciliation, as depicted by Shakespeare in selected dramas. The study declares the term’s biblical and theological basis and asserts that it is also a prominent word in social and political discourse. Some contributors to this volume connect reconciliation to justification and atonement before God through Christ’s death; others see the interrelations between the state and the religious character of its ruler; others unfold the need for reconciliation between one person and another or one group of persons and another, while other contributors include the thematic narrative significance of the term.

","A rum thought occurred to me as I read these essays, and upon reflection I think it was not altogether far-fetched: “Shakespeare himself would immediately appreciate these.” This could not, I think, at all be said of much that has been written during the past forty years of literary criticism and scholarship. The great point of these essays is that they treat of the true substance of Shakespeare’s concerns. They have no ulterior agenda. None. Could we hope that they signal the arrival of a post-post-modern epoch of scholarship–one which finds itself enthralled by that which clearly enthralled the Bard?

Dr. Thomas Howard
Retired Chair of English at Gordon College, MA

All readers of the Bard, but especially those interested in Shakespeare’s religion, will find this collection of essays to be a highly absorbing and informative read.  Bringing together the leading experts in the field, it offers a range of perspectives on how Christian reconciliation, as conceived in scripture and developed in medieval and early modern commentary, resonates throughout the canon, with implications not only for the representation of religious experience but for political practice and theory as well in such plays as Hamlet, Measure for Measure and Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2.

Dr. Paul White
Chair of Medieval and Renaissance Studies at Purdue University, IN

",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-01-01,"Pauline MacPherson, Christopher Murray, Gordon Spark and Kevin Corstorphine","Sub/versions: Cultural Status, Genre and Critique",Hardback,9781847183729,29.99,"Sub/versions draws together recent work analysing texts that exist in a complicated relationship to issues of “high” and “low” culture. An important aspect of this debate is the manner in which the critical reception of “original” versions can act to resist the validity of new or re-imagined adaptations. Equally important is the reception of works that are self-consciously intertextual, or exist in various forms and different media. The research represented here examines these issues, exploring the changes that are made between versions and the ways in which these transformations might subvert the original text. The approach of this collection is therefore fundamentally interdisciplinary, drawing on a range of topics related to subversion and “sub/versions”, including translation, parody, satire, metafiction, performance, allegory, and genre. 

""An incisive and innovative collection of essays that combines a theoretical enquiry into the nature of subversive texts, with scholarly readings of key contemporary authors such as Kazuo Ishiguro, Jeanette Winterson, Neil Gaiman, Grant Morrison, and Philip Pullman, and artists and filmmakers such as Terry Gilliam, Mary Harron and Orson Welles.""
—Professor Marion Wynne Davies, University of Surrey

""A diverse collection of papers exploring the emerging territories of subversion in literature, comics and film. A useful guide for undergraduate and research students working in these areas. ""
—Professor Peter Kitson, President of English Association

""Nearly all the greatest stories are re-tellings – Sophocles, Shakespeare, Milton, Tennyson, and hosts of others of like stature, were all in the re-tale trade. Their tales go on being recycled in a cultural economy that recognises no boundaries of genre or nationality. In the twentieth century the pace has intensified, in line with the growth of new cultural forms, and we now encounter cannonical tales re-born in graphic novels, animated cartoons, operas (of both the soap and the
high-art kind), art installations, poems, stories, and digital media. This book is a lively and much-needed examination of the processes of textual subversion and metamorphosis which remain a major force in our culture.""
—Professor Peter Barry, Aberystwyth University





",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-02-01,Aleksandra Nikčević-Batrićević  and Marija Knežević,Culture-Bound Translation and Language in the Global Era,Hardback,9781847184627,29.99,"The title of this collection, Culture-bound Translation and Language in the Global Era, suggests the wide scope and spirit of our culture and times. The essays gathered here are divided under two headings: Translation and Language, five on each area, making up Part One and Part Two of this book. They examine in detail some of the problems implied by the interaction between translation, language and culture while providing both breadth and depth to the cultural dimension, an area which has strangely been neglected together with translation studies, despite their recognized importance, until the early eighties.

The authors’ insights into the complex phenomenon of  cross-cultural communication is as interesting as fascinating, and perhaps even more so because the scholars, who have contributed to this book, come from various countries, including Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Italy, Latvia, Russia, Serbia, and Slovenia.
                                                                     



",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-02-01,Heather Bailey,"Orthodoxy, Modernity, and Authenticity: The Reception of Ernest Renan's ""Life of Jesus"" in Russia ",Hardback,9781847184481,39.99,"Ernest Renan was one of the most renowned European intellectuals of the second half of the nineteenth century. Yet, the impact of his most popular work, Life of Jesus, has been underestimated when not altogether ignored. While commonplace now, the idea that Jesus was merely human was at one time a novelty, with significant socio-political, cultural, and religious implications. A case study in the Russian encounter with modernity, Orthodoxy, Modernity, and Authenticity: The Reception of Ernest Renan’s “Life of Jesus” in Russia demonstrates that Renan’s book has had long-lasting and broad appeal in Russia because it presents an alternative to a strictly materialist worldview on the one hand, and an Orthodox worldview on the other. Renan offered his readers the possibility to accept the tenets of modernity while still retaining both an admiration for the importance of religion in history and a sense of religious feeling or even belief in a higher religious ideal. Assessments of Renan’s alternative belief system, whether positive, negative, or mixed, were often simultaneously evaluations of the moral, socio-political, and spiritual condition of European society in general and Russian society in particular. The interpretive history of Renan’s Life of Jesus in Russia reveals a persistent disillusionment with a strictly materialist interpretation of history and of life.
","
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-02-01,"Christine Walsh (Mícheál Ó hAodha, editor)",Postcolonial Borderlands: Orality and Irish Traveller Writing,Hardback,9781847184498,29.99,"A traditionally nomadic people, the Irish Travellers have experienced a long history of marginalization and discrimination in modern Ireland. This volume explores colonisation as an unresolved trauma which has contributed to this marginalisation of Travellers both within Ireland and abroad. Travellers’ traditionally oral culture has meant that they have, until recently, been excluded from many educational institutions and frameworks. Focusing on two autobiographical works by Traveller writers, Nan Joyce’s My Life on the Road (2000) (formerly Traveller, 1985) and Seán Maher’s The Road to God Knows Where (1972, 1998), the prominence given to oral expression and narration suggests that memory is a collective process, one whereby an individual’s cultural identity develops on a communal level, a level that is intimately connected to the natural world. By re-engaging with the official versions of Irish history as encompassed in narratives where Travellers are active participants, Joyce and Maher reveal the seminal role of storytelling in the creation of a sense of nationhood for a people hitherto excluded to society’s margins. The writings of these Traveller authors also serve to construct a legitimate sense of belonging for Travellers within the modern Irish nation-state. By re-engaging with such individual narrative voices it is possible to illuminate what is lost, but also, what is worth safeguarding for the future.	



",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-02-01,Donna L. Potts and Amy D. Unsworth,"Region, Nature, Frontiers: Proceedings from the 11th International Region and Nation Literature Association Conference",Hardback,9781847184597,34.99,"The book is a collection of sixteen essays on issues of regional and national identities and perceptions in literature ranging from South Africa to the United States. Discussions include the American frontier, the relationship between non-fiction and place, linguistic and postcolonial boundaries.


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-02-01,"Jonathan B. Himes, with Joe R. Christopher and Salwa Khoddam",Truths Breathed Through Silver: The Inklings' Moral and Mythopoeic Legacy,Hardback,9781847184443,29.99,"Representing a decade of scholarly activity within the C. S. Lewis &  Inklings Society (CSLIS), this book challenges readers to examine the complex factors that shaped the theological perspectives, cultural concerns, and literary conventions in the works of the Oxford Inklings. The mythopoeic fiction that Lewis, Tolkien, Williams, and their associates enjoyed and composed put mortal humanity in contact with the immortal and the divine. The selection of papers in this volume, intended not only for experts but also for undergraduates and general readers, includes keynote presentations by Joe R. Christopher, Rolland Hein, Kerry Dearborn, David Neuhouser, and Thomas Howard that explore the Inklings legacy of moral mythopoeia, as well as essays that analyze works like Screwtape (Tom Shippey), The Magician s Nephew (Salwa Khoddam), The Silmarillion (Jason Fisher), The Lord of the Rings (David Oberhelman) and The Dark Tower (Jonathan B. Himes). The Inklings believed there was still power in the old myths, and ultimately that there was still truth to fortify humanity in them. Their friendship and their fiction provided these men a forum for entertaining speculative and sometimes unorthodox answers to the complex realities of sacred tradition. 
","""These ten essays constitute a lively conversation at the intersection of faith, myth, and truth. Each voice is distinct, each topic particular, each approach thought-provoking on its own terms. But the cumulative effect is to remind us just how much mythopoeic writers like J. R. R. Tolkien,  H. Rider Haggard, G. K. Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, George MacDonald, and Charles Williams continue to say about things that concern us all.""
--Diana Glyer, author of The Company They Keep: C. S.Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien as Writers in Community, Professor of English, Azusa Pacific University

“In this wide-ranging collection of essays on MacDonald and the Inklings, some shed new light on old topics and others direct our attention to fresh, sometimes surprising themes. Often retaining the personal warmth of their origins in oral presentation, they go beyond traditional literary criticism to point out practical implications for cultural critique, theological understanding, and holy living.”
-- Charles Huttar, Professor of English, Emeritus, Hope College

""This collection of essays is marked by venturesomeness and innovative scholarship. Serious bibliophiles, philologists, lay-theologians and connoisseurs of mythopoesis will all find something here of value, and, with thoughtful essays such as the editor's on the problematic DARK TOWER and a superb reflection by a professional mathematician on the ouevres of George MacDonald in the light of GM's passion for mathematics, there will be something genuinely new in this book for almost everyone.""
—David Lyle Jeffrey,  Distinguished Professor of Literature and Humanities, Honors College, Baylor University

“Though long overshadowed by Beowulf, the romantically-discovered fragments of the Old English epic of Waldere give us our earliest vernacular glimpse of the Nibelungs and related legends. Jonathan Himes’s new edition now combines scholarly rigour with reader-accessibility, puts the case for identification of the speakers, and provides welcome expansion on the background of the legend, the problems of the manuscript, and issues both archaeological and literary. It will replace all previous editions and give a new stimulus to study of an often-bypassed poem.”
—Tom A. Shippey, Professor of English and Walter J. Ong Chair of Humanities (Retired), St. Louis University

""Certainly enough of interest to make the book worth reading, with high points being Khoddam's quote from The Quest of Blerheris, Himes's valiant attempt to sort out the mess regarding The Dark Tower, Howard's reminicences, and the essays by Fisher and Shippey.""

John D. Rateliff, Mythlore 107/108, Winter 2009

",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-03-01,Shakila Abdul Manan and Lalita Sinha,"Exploring Space: Trends in Literature, Linguistics and Translation",Hardback,9781847184726,29.99,"This book embodies the current trends towards inter- and intra-disciplinary studies specifically within the areas of Literature, Linguistics, and Translation.  It is a collection of original and insightful essays by Malaysian academics, reflecting state-of-the-art research, and seen through traditional and modern lenses of conceptualising reality or “spaces” within the fields mentioned.  The uniqueness of this book lies in its attempts to provide textual and theoretical readings from a variety of positions and perspectives. The multi-disciplinary approach taken will appeal to readers from diverse backgrounds, particularly with the contemporary emphasis on  and celebration of heterogeneity in all its forms within a global context. 





",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-03-01,"Urszula Chowaniec, Ursula Phillips and Marja Rytkönen",Masquerade and Femininity: Essays on Russian and Polish Women Writers,Hardback,9781847184689,34.99,"Masquerade and Femininity: Essays on Russian and Polish Women Writers introduces the reader to the diversity of women’s writing in Poland and Russia in the 19th and 20th centuries in the light of the notion of masquerade. The present articles scrutinize particular works by women writers (Nadezhda Dmitrievna Khvoshchinskaia, Irina Odoevtseva, Vera Pavlova, Narcyza Żmichowska, Maria Komornicka, Irena Krzywicka and others) and the strategies of masquerading female experience. 

Taken together, the articles draw attention to the feeling of an inexpressible gap between the living body (and its everyday life experience of pain and suffering or happiness and pleasure) and the culturally constructed, powerfully imposed code of expression that readily makes use of various masks, guises and acts of pretending, applied especially cleverly in literary works. The concept of masquerade illuminates the complexity of what we call “femininity” by combining two sides of the divide: the real feelings and the constructed expressions. 

This volume uses both feminist and non-feminist approaches to women’s writing and sheds new light on the themes of femininity, woman’s identity, experience, masks, body, gender relations, nature, culture and authorship. 

Masquerade and Femininity brings together East European literary studies and gender studies, offering a comparative perspective on literature, literary theory and cultural phenomena in Poland and Russia, and featuring a range of both eastern European and western scholars.   In its pages, the reader is invited to move beyond Russian literature and language into a dialogic approach between Slavic literatures. 

This book will also contribute to filling the comparative gap which is still relatively unexplored not only with regard to the application of western scholarship to East European studies, but also with regard to the dialogue between Russian and Polish scholarship.

","""I am absolutely convinced that no scholar interested in Russian and Polish women’s literature will be able to get by without this book, which forms an excellent introduction both to the literary material and to Slavic (Russian and Polish) feminist studies. The contributors’ fascinating close readings, their insightful analyses and the in-depth knowledge of the subject revealed by the introduction make up an impressive whole and encourage further research.""
—Professor Grażyna Borkowska, Institute of Literary Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences

""Masquerade and Femininity brings together an impressive range of internationally-based, established and emerging scholars in the field of gender studies in Polish and/or Russian literature (including Irina Adelgeym, Arja Rosenholm, Mariia Litovskaia, Evgeniia Stroganova and Lidia Wiśniewska). Contributors are based in the UK, Russia, Poland, Finland and the USA, and between them offer a wealth of experience in the field of gender studies in Polish and/or Russian literature. With contributions spanning the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Masquerade and Femininity offers new perspectives on Polish and Russian women’s writing and the construction of femininity. This collection considers the western feminist theory of “masquerade” in an eastern European context, and in so doing raises important questions about the universal applicability of theory, and the stability of conceptual boundaries between “East” and “West”, as well as providing valuable textual analyses of the works in question.""
—Carol Adlam, University of Exeter
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-03-01,Chris N van der Merwe and Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela,Narrating our Healing: Perspectives on Working through Trauma,Paperback,9781847184818,14.99,"In the 1990’s, South Africa surprised the world with a peaceful, negotiated transition from armed conflict to an inclusive democracy. This was followed by the ground-breaking Truth and Reconciliation Commission, established to confront and work through a troubled past. The search for truth and reconciliation in South Africa, however, is far from completed; the country is in many ways still burdened by unresolved individual and collective traumas. In this book, two academics from the University of Cape Town, one a psychologist and the other a literary scholar, explore the importance of narrative as a way of working through trauma. Although written from within a South African context, the work has a much wider relevance. It offers illuminating perspectives on the process of  “narrating our healing”: the sharing of personal narratives, the appropriation of literary narratives, and above all, the re-creating of life narratives shattered by trauma. It is a book about the search for meaning when all meaning seems to have been lost; it deals with the overwhelming nature of traumatic suffering, yet offers some hope of healing.

The book is remarkably overarching, tailored to the needs of scientists and practitioners in the fields of psychology, social work, education and literature. It offers a strong message to all individuals and nations who live in an atmosphere of blame, shame and hopelessness. 
- Yuval Wolf, Professor of Psychology and Dean of Social Sciences, Bar-Ilan University.

Narrating Our Healing is a good book in the widest sense of that adjective: it is well constructed, meticulously researched, and likely to deepen understanding of the difficult but profoundly important subject of trauma and how to address it. It is something like a handbook for living with suffering – both one’s own and that of others. To have constructed a text that can serve such a purpose is a profoundly admirable achievement.  Annie Gagiano, LitNet.
 
It is a timeous and exciting study that should be essential reading for anyone grappling with our present, our past and our future. 
- André P Brink – South African and international author

This is one of the best books I have ever read on healing deep wounds.
- Vamÿk D. Volkan, M. D. Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at the University of Virginia.

We need to know the truth about what happened in South Africa during the Apartheid years. Van der Merwe and Gobodo-Madikizela have given us the tools to face that challenge. 
- Rolf Wolfswinkel, Professor of Modern History, New York University.



",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-03-01,Teresa Seruya and Maria Lin Moniz,Translation and Censorship in Different Times and Landscapes,Hardback,9781847184740,39.99,"This volume is a selection of papers presented at the international conference on Translation and Censorship. From the 18th Century to the Present Day, held in Lisbon in November 2006. 
Although censorship in Spain under Franco dictatorship has already been thoroughly studied, the Portuguese situation under Salazar and Caetano has been, so far, almost ignored by the academic research. This is then an attempt to start filling this gap. At the same time, new case studies about the Spanish context are presented, thus contributing to a critical view of two Iberian dictatorial regimes. 
However other geographical and time contexts are also included: former dictatorships such as Brazil and Communist Czechoslovakia; present day countries with very strict censoring apparatus such as China, or more subtle censorial mechanisms as Turkey and Ukraine. Specific situations of past centuries are given some attention: the reception of Ovid in Portugal, the translation of English narrative fiction into Spanish in the 18th century, the translation of children literature in Victorian England and the emergence of the picaresque novel in Portugal in the 19th century.
Other forms of censorship, namely self-censorship, are studied in this volume as well. 

""The book fits in one of the most innovative fields of research in translation studies, i.e. the study of social and political constraints on translation processes and translation functions. More specifically, the concept of censorship is crucial to the understanding of these constraints, especially in spatio-temporal settings where translation exhibits conflicts between what is acceptable for and what is prohibited by a given culture. For that reason, detailed descriptive research is needed in as many situations as possible.
It gives an excellent view on the complex mechanisms of censorship with regard to translation within a large number of modern European and non European cultures. In addition to articles devoted to cases dealing with China, Brazil, Great-Britain, Turkey, Ukraine or Czechoslovakia, Spain and Portugal occupy a prominent role. As a whole, the volume marks an important step forward in our growing understanding of the role of socio-political factors for the development and changes of translation policies.
I highly recommend the publication.""
Prof. dr. Lieven D’hulst, Professor of Translation Studies at K.U.Leuven (Belgium).



","
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-04-01,Ahmed Etman,A Belle in the Prison of Socrates,Hardback,9781847185273,24.99,"Socrates represents a turning point in the history of Greek thought. He achieved radical changes in the way of thinking and obtaining knowledge without writing even one word. But through his discussions with his students and contemporary artists and philosophers, he exposed the intellectual vices and failings that dominated Athenian life in the last 30 years of the 5th century B.C., a time that witnessed the disintegration of Athenian Democracy, especially after the Peloponnesian wars which ended with the defeat of Athens. A Belle in the Prison of Socrates presents the character of the renowned Greek philosopher as historically known from the original Greek sources, i.e., The Clouds of Aristophanes, The Dialogues of Plato and the writings of Xenophon. While attempting to capture the historical image of Socrates, the play provides a subtle criticism of our contemporary life as characters and events shed light on the fragility of Democratic practices nowadays. Readers are persistently lured to hold a comparison between Democracy as it originated in ancient Athens and its modern variations and deviations. The play, therefore, addressees not only the classicist but the common reader as well, both in the Arab world and everywhere.

A Belle in the Prison of Socrates is a culmination of years of research in Greek history about Athenian intellectual and political life. It blends knowledge and pleasure in a highly entertaining dramatic composition


","“This play takes the Athenian thinker Socrates, the ‘gad-fly of Athens’, and follows his conversations at home, in the Agora, on the city walls of the defeated polis and in his eventual trial, imprisonment and execution at the behest of the restored democracy. The dramatic structure and idiom of the play draws on and reworks major classical sources on Socrates’ life and thought. Etman contextualizes these in the themes of the war between the Athenians and the Spartans and the resulting disruptions of Hellenic social identity and unity amid the shifting alliances with Persia""
—Lorna Hardwick, Prof. of Classics. The Open University. U.K.
 
 ""Democratia herself in my prison’, Socrates exclaims, wondering who that phantom may be that haunts him in the sudden absence of his guards! ‘Socrates…you are a god Socrates’, she replies. 
Two these sentences, belonging to the last moments of Socrates in prison, reveal a lot. On the one hand, there is this man, a philosopher, dressed in rags, bare-footed, a louse on his bald-head, meditating in his last moments, not afraid to die. On the other hand, there is this woman called Democratia, symbol and allegory, representative of a culture based upon power, manipulation and deceit… As a character belonging to the political arena, she represents just one of the many cheap and superficial humans, who do not understand at all what Socrates is dealing with""
—Freddy Decreus, Professor of Classics. University of Ghent, Belgium



",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-04-01,Lori Duin Kelly,Bodily Inscriptions: Interdisciplinary Explorations into Embodiment,Hardback,9781847185051,29.99,"	 Awareness of the role that physical difference plays in an individual’s ability to negotiate personal and cultural spaces has spread into a variety of disciplines within the past two decades. This collection of essays adds to the growing corpus of work exploring the body as a site of cultural inscription by focusing exclusively on how this process plays out in the sphere of popular culture.
	 The nine essays in this collection touch on a variety of topics of interest to both scholars and students of the body, ranging from contested issues within the discourse on fat and anorexia, to tattoos, domestic violence campaigns, mastectomy, neurasthenia, and gendered identity. 
 By drawing on the work of scholars from a variety of disciplines within the social sciences and humanities, this collection provides models of how different disciplines approach the body. By incorporating perspectives from new and emerging fields like New Historicism, as well as Queer Theory, Fat, and Disability Studies, it simultaneously demonstrates how the use of a body perspective can expand and enliven understanding within these disciplines, and thus should be of interest to a wide variety of readers. 


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-04-01,Stephanie Brown and Éva Tettenborn,"Engaging Tradition, Making It New: Essays on Teaching Recent African American Literature",Hardback,9781847185280,29.99,"Engaging Tradition, Making It New offers a rich collection of fresh scholarly and pedagogical approaches to new African American literature. Organized around the theme of transgression, the collection focuses on those writers who challenge the reading habits and expectations of students and instructors, whether by engaging themes and literary forms not usually associated with African American literature or by departing from traditional modes of approaching historical, social, or legal struggles. Each chapter offers a specific reading of a particular novel, memoir, or poetry collection, sometimes in concert with a second, related text, and suggests both a useful critical context and one or more pedagogical approaches. Engaging Tradition, Making It New points the way toward exciting new methods of teaching and researching authors in this dynamic field. 


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-04-01,Marija Knežević and Aleksandra Nikčević-Batrićević,"History, Politics, Identity: Reading Literature in a Changing World",Hardback,9781847185099,29.99,"Contributions reprinted in this book highlight some of the wide ranging ways in which the issues of culture and identity can be approached in a literary text, while focusing on the ways in which cultural encounters have been changing both the world and its reflection in literature. The beginning of the twenty first century is an appropriate time to repay careful attention to these issues. Understanding how our perception of the Other changes with the concept of the world we inhabit, we want to emphasize the rising importance of fostering cultural pluralism and global understanding. 

For its argumentation strongly founded in recent literary studies and humanities in general, its interdisciplinary nature and its focus on the actual global problems of abrupt cultural change and exchange, its heightened understanding of the necessity of coexistence of differences in a changing world, its spirit of tolerance, and its international spirit in general, we assume this collection will not only attract academic literary scholars but will also appeal to the general reading public.


","""The essays gathered here … must speak for themselves. Nonetheless, in their different ways, they address a common core of questions arising from the global nature of problems concerning history, ideology and identity. They do so by employing those strategies of literary investigation that have emerged over the last four decades, in particular by deconstructing texts to expose their internal contradictions and patterns of opposition, which are so important in determining their ideological standpoint. This is not to say that the essays themselves wish to persuade readers to an ideological position; nor does it mean that they are innocent and neutral readings of the texts they discuss. But it is hoped that this volume will reflect the spirit of tolerance, the recognition of and respect for difference in a changing and globalised world.""
—Peter Preston, University of Nottingham

",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-04-01,Fabio A. Durão and Dominic Williams,Modernist Group Dynamics: The Politics and Poetics of Friendship,Hardback,9781847185082,39.99,"For decades, the study of literary and philosophical modernism concerned solitary figures like the flâneur, the exile, and the lonely genius, but recently the group formations that fostered modernist movements have emerged into view. The essays in Modernist Group Dynamics: The Poetics and Politics of Friendship pursue this new direction in modernist scholarship, exploring the ways artists and intellectuals worked in concert and in conflict. Placing group formations, with all their promises and problems, at the centre of our study allows the contributors—scholars from around the world—to reconsider some of the best-known figures of European modernism, to analyze collaborations across national boundaries, and to recover modernist groups in unexpected contexts like the so-called Third World.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-04-01,Guido Rings and Anne Ife,Neo-Colonial Mentalities in Contemporary Europe? Language and Discourse in the Construction of Identities,Hardback,9781847185129,34.99,"In the rapidly evolving context of contemporary Europe many citizens have previous experience of colonial, or neo-colonial, forms of domination. This raises questions about the impact of such experiences on the shaping of identities within an environment that is itself constantly evolving. How do such people see themselves and their community? How are they perceived? What effect does this have on their integration into the wider European community? This timely volume brings together a series of papers which explore such questions through the discourse relating to those people, both self- and other-generated. 

The originality of this book stems not only from its thematic focus but also from the multi-national, multi-disciplinary background of the contributions which offer new interpretations and analyses, in particular within a framework of post-colonial and critical discourse theory. Contributors from across Europe and North America bring perspectives from applied linguistics, language and literary studies, communication studies, sociology, and social psychology. Primary texts examined include literature, news media, film, political discourse, both written and spoken, and original interview data. Language is observed both in its usage and for its participatory role in identity formation.

Three different groupings are identified for observation, namely: 1) migrant diasporas originating from the traditional areas of European colonisation in Africa and Asia; 2) citizens of newer member states of the European Union, including former Soviet satellite states like Latvia, or aspiring members, like Turkey; and 3) a number of regional groups (Irish, Welsh), whose relationship with the central government shares neo-colonial characteristics.

The book is intended for all those interested in understanding the factors influencing the rapidly evolving character of Europe and its populations, and is intended to form a platform for future exploration and research in this area.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-04-01,"Chryssoula Lascaratou, Anna Despotopoulou and Elly Ifantidou","Reconstructing Pain and Joy: Linguistic, Literary and Cultural Perspectives",Hardback,9781847185198,44.99,"How are pain and joy constructed, articulated, represented, manipulated, and, ultimately, socially determined? This is the first collection of essays that investigates how such multi-faceted and subjective domains of human experience as pain and joy—which combine physical, psychological, private, public, conceptual, and cultural dimensions—are represented and reconstructed in language, literature, and culture. Adopting a genuinely interdisciplinary approach, the book is organized around themes and divided into four parts which blend literary, cultural, and linguistic examinations of theoretical angles, socio-cultural appropriations, stage and screen constructions, and the body. Contributors include eminent scholars from a variety of fields—Catherine Belsey, Declan Kiberd, Zoltán Kövecses, and Elaine Scarry—whose work informs a current academic conversation also developed by other authors in the volume from original angles. With its multi-cultural focus, cross-historical, and interdisciplinary scope—featuring studies of literature, language, art, philosophy, religion, theatre, film, music, television, the internet—this book not only surveys past and contemporary theoretical and critical grounds, but also anticipates future developments: an invaluable resource for all scholars and students exploring the representation of joy and/or pain.





","
“In an important contribution to contemporary thinking about pain and its cultural and literary representations,  Lascaratou, Despotopoulou, and Ifantidou bring together essays from widely divergent theoretical and historical fields to explore the relationship of pain to joy.  How was pain transformed to triumphant joy in the fiery deaths of the Protestant martyrs? How is it that audiences derive pleasure from the depiction of pain on screen or stage? Is it possible for past pleasure to outweigh present pain? These questions—amongst many others raised by this intriguing book—suggest ways in which academic discussions of pain have developed from early investigations of its inexpressibility to considering it as a phenomenon that can only be fully understood in broad theoretical and historical terms. This is a splendid book that draws on the work of such groundbreaking critics as Elaine Scarry and Catherine Belsey and sets these alongside emerging voices to produce something new, provocative, and persuasive.”

Lucy Bending, Lecturer, University of Reading, Author of The Representation of Bodily Pain in Late Nineteenth-Century English Culture. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000.


“A stimulating collection of essays, providing insightful research and reflection on the relation between the textual construction of pain and the ultimate ineffability of experienced pain.”

Theo van Leeuwen, Professor at the Centre for Language and Communication Research, Cardiff University, UK.
Co-author of Kress, G. and Van Leeuwen, T. (2001) Multimodal Discourse: The Modes and Media of Contemporary Communication. London: Edward Arnold.



",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-04-01,Joan O'Sullivan,"""Talkin' Different"": Linguistic Diversity and the Irish Traveller Minority",Hardback,9781847185204,39.99,"The Irish Travellers are one of Ireland's oldest minorities, a minority who have frequently lived on the margins of the ""majority"" or settled community. This volume explores linguistic change amongst this cultural group with a particular focus on the influence of the educational system. This book analyses whether increased attendance by young Traveller women in secondary education is influencing long-term change in linguistic usage and speech patterns. The tendency for convergence/non-convergence to the settled community's speech patterns is analysed as is the question of whether such speech variations are a strategy for ""survival"" in the school environment. This study is based on an analysis of both naturally-occurring conversation and speech as explored within an informal interview setting.






",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-04-01,Anna Budziak,"Text, Body and Indeterminacy: Doppelgänger Selves in Pater and Wilde",Hardback,9781847185075,39.99,"The nature of the self is an important point at which philosophy and literature intersect. Text, Body and Indeterminacy acknowledges this connection by forging a link between the philosophical concept of the self and the category of the literary character.
The philosophical horizon of Text, Body and Indeterminacy is delineated by the neo-pragmatist debate on selfhood. The book entwines the ideas of Richard Rorty and Richard Shusterman by stressing similarity in their aestheticizing of ethics and by showing the difference in their understanding of the self as textual or bodily. The characters created by Pater and Wilde are freshly assessed within this dual philosophical perspective. Their doppelgängers are seen as the forerunners of postmodernist concepts: the cerebral flâneur is reflected in Rorty’s model “ironist,” and the sensuous aesthete returns through Shusterman’s notion of the somatic self.   
Text, Body and Indeterminacy establishes how Pater renders his protagonists through discursive patterns—tropes of Decadence, philosophical theorems, and myths—only to subvert these vocabularies and to emphasize the reality of the body, the extra-textual dimension of the self. It also shows how Wilde’s sensuous personae, both bodily and indeterminate, transcend the vocabularies available to the Wildean flâneurs. Through its interpretations, Text Body and Indeterminacy uniquely combines literary portraits by Pater and Wilde, highlights interlocking themes and, in every reading, points to the ethical gains of tilting the idea of selfhood into the somatic realm.









",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-04-01,Katie Halsey and Jane Slinn,"The Concept and Practice of Conversation in the Long Eighteenth Century, 1688-1848",Hardback,9781847184979,34.99,"This collection of essays brings together eighteenth-century scholars from a variety of disciplines, to discuss conversation in the eighteenth century as concept and practice. At the heart of the volume is a simple question: are eighteenth-century conceptualisations of the role and purpose of conversation still relevant or useful to scholars and thinkers today?  This volume contains essays by leading scholars of the period as well as early career researchers, and answers a need for a broad-ranging discussion of the concept of conversation in the arts, social sciences and humanities. The long eighteenth century is a particularly fruitful starting point for work on this topic, since ideas about conversation permeated all types of writing in this period, from the early forerunners of scientific textbooks to philosophical dialogues. The collection covers an exceptionally wide range of long-eighteenth-century authors, artists, lawmakers, texts and works of art, and, although the focus of the volume is largely on eighteenth-century Britain, the volume takes note of the rich relationships between continental European thought and British intellectual life in the period, and of the influence of British ideas in the newly independent American republic. 







","'The editors offer a collection of ideas and points of view, and every reader will find something provocative’

Pat Michaelson- University of Dallas Texas, Eighteenth-Century Fiction 22, no.4 Summer 2010
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-04-01,"Francis Tobienne, Jr.",The Position of Magic in Selected Medieval Spanish Texts,Hardback,9781847184962,29.99,"“It is difficult to assess an explanation of a belief, or a belief system in words,” Tobienne begins, “and harder still to assign signification to such inexplicable conviction[s].” This book addresses the often blurred line[s] between magic, religion, and science within Spanish literature and history, and is divided into three parts. 

The first section offers a brief overview of Spanish history from the fifth century through the seventh century and looks at the divide between “white” and “black” magic. White magic is often attributed to a divine agency, whereas black magic is the result of dark or demonic influences. 

The second part of the book looks at Alfonso X (also known as el Sabio, or “the Wise”) and his Las Siete Partidas and Lapidario, and the role of how magic was received in the Spanish university system and translating centers and spaces within Alfonso’s court. 

The final section examines two poems: Auto de Los Reyes Magos and the Vida de Santa María Egipciaca in terms of the white magic concepts of mirabilia and miracula.   Collectively, these poems alongside Bishop Isidore of Seville’s Etymologiae contribute to the discourse of a Medieval Spain and its rich, intellectual history and moreover, provides a launching pad into this discussion regarding a small window of quasi-tolerance in Spain amidst Muslims, Jews, and Christians.  






","'...fascinating, clearly organized scholarly text...organised into three easy to follow chapters...covers its subject with clarity and sufficient depth to make its point... This book will repay lengthy study, and would be of great value in any program of medieval studies that at least touches on its twin subjects, magic and medieval Spain. Iread it with pleasure and believe my readers will do the same.'

John McLaughlin, PhD
English Department, East Stroudsburg University, Emeritus

""The author has painstakingly gathered a number of important sources and offers a basic conclusion that the boundaries between magic, religion, and science are ambiguous. The book is especially valuable in its inclusion of works from outside of Spain that aid in illuminating that era's views. It serves as a well researched compliment to the growing corpus of studies of magic in medieval Spain and will serve scholars who wish to pursue further studies in that area.""

~Jennifer M. Corry, Berry College (Mystics Quarterly volume 35, no. 3-4, September/ December 2009)

",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-04-01,Paula Murphy,"The Shattered Mirror: Irish Literature and Film,1990-2005",Hardback,9781847185013,29.99,"The Shattered Mirror: Irish Literature and Film, 1990-2005 is a response to changing representations of Irish identity.  Interrogating the period of the 'Celtic Tiger' in Ireland, which was accompanied by widespread social change, the book draws on Lacanian psychoanalysis to explore issues such as prosperity, Europeanism, Diaspora, multi-culturalism, decline in religious faith and gender norms.  Examining three writers and filmmakers in each section on narrative, drama and film, The Shattered Mirror argues that, in this fifteen years, Irish identity has changed radically.  




","
“Dr. Murphy’s The Shattered Mirror: provides a badly needed assessment of what some Irish dramatists, fictional writers and film makers make of the seismic period commonly referred to as ‘The Celtic Tiger.’”

Dr. Eamon Maher, Director, National Centre for Franco-Irish Studies, ITT Dublin,


“Paula Murphy furnishes us with a fresh and searching overview of the contemporary cultural moment in Ireland and charts it more completely than anyone has done to date.” 

Anne Fogarty, Professor of James Joyce Studies, University College Dublin


“For anyone who wants to know about contemporary Ireland and about how contemporary Irishness is a diverse and plural text,  The Shattered Mirror is a must-read!”

Dr. Eugene O’Brien, Head of Department of English Language and Literature, Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick


",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-04-01,Christina Ionescu and Renata Schellenberg,Word and Image in the Long Eighteenth Century: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue,Hardback,9781847185044,39.99,"Interrelated by a common thread, which is the emphasis on the interdependence of literature and the visual arts, the essays selected for this collection illustrate how eighteenth-century specialists approach word and image studies today. In addition to highlighting various concepts and concerns of particular pertinence to current scholarship, these studies also serve the important practical function of sensitising the reader to both the possibilities and limitations of this sort of interdisciplinary undertaking. 
Without foregrounding the visual, these contributions aim to look at verbal-visual interaction through the prism of equality and balance that marks word and image studies—that is, without valorising one to the detriment of the other. The choice of images as objects of study reflects the democratisation of the visual domain advocated by visual culture studies: from theatre iconography and painted portraits of actors, to drawing books and educational prints, graphic satire and royal portraiture, conversation pieces and domestic interiors, literary illustrations and versified prints after well-known paintings, and engravings commissioned for calendars and periodicals. If the choice of images is inclusive and diverse so is the choice of texts: epistolary novels, conduct manuals, Salon criticism, plays, drawing books, pamphlets, historical writings, verses accompanying engravings and satirical prints are among those examined from a word and image perspective.   
The primary objective of this collection is to advance research in the field of word and image theory and methodology by stimulating dialogue on the rich and complex verbal-visual interaction structuring mixed media of expression and underpinning cultural formations in eighteenth-century Europe. Peaceful coexistence, mutual collaboration or striking collision—how do words and images interact in eighteenth-century art, literature and culture? How do they reflect and communicate values, stereotypes and ideologies?


","

",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-04-01,Annette M. Magid,You are What You Eat: Literary Probes into the Palate,Hardback,9781847184924,44.99,"You are What You Eat: Literary Probes into the Palate offers tantalizing essays immersed in the culture of food, expanded across genres, disciplines, and time. The entire collection of You Are What You Eat includes a diversity of approaches and foci from multicultural, national and international scholars and has a broad spectrum of subjects including: feminist theory, domesticity, children, film, cultural history, patriarchal gender ideology, mothering ideology, queer theory, politics, and poetry. Essays include studies of food-related works by John Milton, Emily Dickinson, Fay Weldon, Kenneth Grahame, Roald Dahl, Shel Silverstein, J.  K. Rowling, Mother Goose, John Updike, Maxine Hong Kingston, Alice Walker, Amy Tan, Louise Erdrich, Amanda Hesser, Julie Powell, Mary Wilkins Freeman, Martin Scorsese, Bob Giraldi, Clarice Lispector, José Antônio Garcia, Fran Ross, and Gish Hen. The topic addresses a range of interests appealing to diverse audiences, expanding from college students to food enthusiasts and scholars.
","“You are What You Eat: Literary Probes into the Palate offers the whole spectrum of scientific methods of literary research, from gender studies to political readings and poetical theory. The diversity of methods meets the variety of media; films and novels are dealt with equally. In a comprehensive way, different phases of literature and various cultural areas are taken into view. Eating as a ‘fait social total’ (Marcel Mauss) is researched thoroughly, thus producing a complete picture of the different social, political, cultural and gender specific implications of eating for modern society.”
– Professor Karin Becker, PhD, Author of Ecritures du repas. Fragments d'un discours gastro­nomique; University of Münster, Germany

“. . . the essays provide a diversity of topics and approaches . . .”
– Barbara Kelly, The Emily Dickinson International Society Bulletin, 22, no. 1 May/June 2010
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-05-01,A. J. Milnor,Arthur W. Upfield: Life and Times of Bony's Man,Hardback,9781847185570,34.99,"Both Australia and Arthur W. Upfield (1890-1964) matured together.  At the start of the last century, Upfield emigrated to Australia as that nation was gaining independence and identity.  The Gallipoli campaign changed both, and both spent the next decades in pursuit of identity, he wandering, Australia finding its own unique place among nations.

Arthur W. Upfield lived a life many might envy: unsuccessful student, immigrant (1911), walker, horse breaker and camel driver, soldier, Bushman, fence rider, journalist, intelligence officer, explorer, novelist, swordfisherman, and creator of bi-racial Detective Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte, “Bony”, in novels rivaling the popularity of Sherlock Holmes.  Caught between two worlds, like his fictional character, Upfield was thoroughly English and yet also an Australian nationalist describing Outback Australia to the world through his part Aboriginal character.  Famous novelists including Tony Hillerman and Stan Jones, to name only two, found a detective model in “Bony”.

Australia developed quickly after the Second World War, and Upfield, too, was successful after years of tea, chops and damper, chasing “rabbit, ‘roo and dog”.  As Australia developed, Upfield’s Bush, his “Australia Proper”, slowly succumbed to modernization.  After the war, Upfield left the Bush to become a successful writer eventually to be published in a wide range of languages and selling books in the millions of copies.

The biography relies on letters, papers, and public documents of the period, in Australia, England and America, many unexplored before now, in order to understand the story of his life and that of his true homeland, Australia.


","

",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-05-01,Peter Cochran,Byron in London,Hardback,9781847185457,34.99,"BYRON IN LONDON is a collection of essays by leading authorities on Byron, charting both his life in London and his writings about the capital. Byron emerges from the different perspectives given as one of English poetry’s leading urban and metropolitan writers. Chapters are on Byron and the London boxing fraternity, Byron and the London stage, and Byron’s attitude to the newly-emerging London coterie of women writers. There is one chapter on his relationship with John Murray, his London publisher, and another on Ugo Foscolo’s life in London. Other chapters place Byron in the English verse tradition of urban writing; and nearly all make reference to the way he describes London in Don Juan.


","


",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-05-01,Rebecca S. Thomas,"Crime and Madness in Modern Austria: Myth, Metaphor and Cultural Realities",Hardback,9781847185464,44.99,"This collection of essays explores the changing history, rhetoric, politics and representation of crime and madness in modern Austria. From the emergence of Viennese modernism to the post-modern moment, the myths, metaphors and realities of crime and madness have unfolded in the shadow of larger cultural questions regarding cultural norms, gender, war, and national identity. Historically based contributions illuminate such diverse cultural realities as the evolution of psychiatry as medical practice, asylum practices in the early twentieth century, and Austrian participation in and responses to terror and war crimes.  From these investigations proceeds the clear insight that cultural responses to crime and madness are often steeped in mythmaking as much as objective policy and practice. Conversely, literary and metaphorical representations of crime and madness reveal attitudes and cultural realities about the Austrian society that produced them and which they reflect. Specialists from the fields of Austrian history, literature and culture studies have collaborated to produce this truly interdisciplinary volume, which responses to crime and madness are often steeped in mythmaking as much as objective policy and practice. Conversely, literary and metaphorical representations of crime and madness reveal attitudes and cultural realities about the Austrian society that produced them and which they reflect. 






","“Rebecca Thomas has assembled a highly competent group of twenty-two scholars to explore the themes of crime and madness in Austria as expressed in myth, metaphor, and cultural reality. This significant anthology is a multi-disciplinary, multi-perspectival compendium of salient approaches to the overriding topic and draws upon literature, art, music, film, history, sociology, psychology, medicine, law, and women’s and gender studies in presenting a collage of rewarding information. These individual scholars fill in critical elements of the large mosaic that this overarching topic incorporates. Concentrating on content and contexts emerging within Austria from the latter 19th century to the present day, the articles are grouped thematically under subheadings that Thomas nimbly outlines in her introduction. The volume offers anyone seriously interested in Austria and its culture or in comparative studies of the themes of crime and madness in diverse ramifications a fascinating and valuable resource that is undeniably relevant, highly informative, and intellectually enlightening.”

Paul F. Dvorak, Professor of German, Virginia Commonwealth University Richmond, Virginia

“Crime and madness are not particular to Austria, of course, but Austria seems to be the small world in which the great one holds its rehearsals (Elfriede Jelinek, ""The Forsaken Place,"" 2008). Crime and Madness in Modern Austria is an excellent scholarly volume on the discourse of experiences outside normality and beyond sanity, and on a large variety of artistic representations. The book's sixteen well-researched articles range from the second half of the 19th century and Fin-de-Siècle Vienna to WWII and the postwar era, and into the present time. Written by American and European scholars they offer a wide variety of thought-provoking discussions on Adalbert Stifter, Sigmund Freud, Robert Musil, and Alban Berg, Rosa Mayreder, Veza and Elias Canetti and contemporary writers such as Marlene Streeruwitz, Peter Handke, Thomas Bernhard, and the filmmaker Michael Haneke. This book is a vast resource for scholars and for advanced undergraduate and graduate students in Austrian, German and comparative literature seminars.”

Margarete Lamb-Faffelberger,
Professor of German, Lafayette College


The editor's clarity in organising a wide variety of material, much of it from a conference held in 2007 at Wake Forest University, is a distinct nsign of success...Any one essay could well grow into a book.

Vincent Kling, La Salle University.
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-05-01,Elizabeth Dill and Sheri Weinstein,Death Becomes Her: Cultural Narratives of Femininity and Death in Nineteenth-Century America,Hardback,9781847185617,34.99,"Dead and dying women are surely an age-old narrative trope.  While associations of femininity with death have become almost prototypical in literary criticism and are familiar fodder for cultural conversations, the editors of Death Becomes Her offer us an opportunity to investigate the values that underlie such associations. But from where does our tireless investment in what constitutes a feminine death, a feminine reaction to death, and death’s courting of women emerge? These essays give voice to the idea that power and victimization are not opposites, but rather are complements in an operatic fantasy of intrigue, agency, absence and presence that pervades American writing and experience. 
Each chapter of Death Becomes Her offers a different lens to investigate the nature of death as surely more than just an anatomical matter: The penny press obsessively covers the death of a beautiful prostitute in 1840s Chicago; a novel of seduction becomes also a narrative of autopsy; a story of haunting allows women outlets for sexual license and the polemics of desire. Overall this volume invites readers to explore the ways in which death is portrayed as both an ornamentation of femininity and an ontological reality of it: how, put simply, “death becomes her.”  Essays include analyses of women’s deathbed scenes, suicides, murders, funerals, and autopsies in literature and other nineteenth-century media. As such, the chapters in Death Becomes Her show how the authorial and readerly interest in scripting and staging women’s deaths is both intricate and abiding. They tell us that death is never, of course, simply about death, and they make relevant other issues, from linguistics to politics, as they inform the literature and lives of women from the late-eighteenth to early twentieth-century America. Taken together, the pieces in Death Becomes Her allow us greater access to the surrounding culture out of which the American woman emerges, performs, lives and dies. In doing so, they offer fresh insight into the often unsettling and highly relevant role of death in feminism. 



",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-05-01,Cynthia Burkhead and Hillary Robson,Grace under Pressure: Grey's Anatomy Uncovered,Hardback,9781847185341,29.99,,"“Television has always seduced viewers with guilty pleasures, shows and series never missed but never admitted to. Being only human, television scholars, too, have their embarrassing delights, and one of mine has continued to be Grey's Anatomy. But now that we have Grace Under Pressure, Cynthia Burkhead and Hillary Robson's smart and astute collection, it is time to come out of the (medical) closet, get out of the elevator, and accept, guilt-free, Shonda Rimes' medical melodrama into the quality pantheon.”
-- David Lavery, Founding Editor of Critical Studies in Television



",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-05-01,Kenneth Harrow and Kizitus Mpoche,"Language, Literature and Education in Multicultural Societies: Collaborative Research on Africa",Hardback,9781847185631,39.99,"
This book presents a vivid overview of linguistic, literary and educational issues in a multicultural context from various perspectives. These range from large-scale surveys to specific analyses on aspects of language, literature and education. Contributions are very original and based on a common denominator: Multiculturalism. 

Despite the numerical dominance of contributions from Cameroon (one of the most multilingual countries in the world), this book brings together views from specialists in the different domains from several parts of the world (Africa, Europe and the United States of America). These contributions exhibit not theoretical issues that underpin current academic debates in linguistic and literary research, but also empirical and interesting data that can further be exploited to other ends.

Critical views on literature and postcolonialism, the fears of language death with the advent of globalisation and the spread of English language, the educational significance or influence of the internet, the wealth of Cameroon/African literature and the education of the Cameroonian/African child, and theoretical issues in language and literary education are themes handled here in an accessible manner to readers without previous knowledge of language science, literature and education.





","""The extent to which one’s representations of Africa result from multiple and interrelated discourses cannot be underestimated. Such discourses have been disseminated in the course of one’s personal history not only through the teaching of ‘official’ history at school (Ferro, 1981) but also through children’s literature. 
The issue is not simply that representations of Cameroon will be different depending on whether individuals are French, English, German, Irish or indeed, Cameroonians because they have been taught different ‘histories’ at school (Manceron, 2003) but that their own representations frame their interpretations, understandings and methodologies. If one takes a socio-cultural standpoint and assumes that learning and teaching situations need to be studied in their situated, cultural context (Bruner, 1996) the issue is far from trivial because the researcher’s meanings are constitutive of the research site.""

Prof Edith Esch



""A variety of perspectives on the globalization of English have been addressed and can be topics of linguistic research. … there are political issues, for instance attitudes towards the spread of English, and the question of which standards should be promoted in the political arena, with typical options including either the upholding of foreign, usually British, standards for international communication or the acceptance of indigenous varieties as expressions of local identities. … this translates directly into pedagogical needs. ""

Prof Edgar Schneider







",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-05-01,Andrea Campbell,New Directions in Ecofeminist Literary Criticism,Hardback,9781847185334,29.99,"As ecofeminism continues to gain attention from multiple academic discourses, the field of literary criticism has been especially affected by this philosophy/social movement.  Scholars using ecofeminist literary criticism are making new and important arguments concerning literature across the spectrum and issues of environment, race, class, gender, sexuality, and other forms of oppression.  The essays in New Directions in Ecofeminist Literary Criticism highlight the intersections of these oppressions through the works of different authors including Barbara Kingsolver, Ruth Ozeki, Linda Hogan and Flora Nwapa, and demonstrate the expansion of ecofeminist literary criticism to a more global scale as well as important connections with the field of environmental justice.  This collection offers fresh insight and expands the important discussion surrounding the field of ecofeminism and literature.


","
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-05-01,Maria Holmgren Troy and Elisabeth Wennö,"Space, Haunting, Discourse",Hardback,9781847185600,34.99,"This anthology reflects the current interest in the concept of space as a revitalising approach to literary, social, mental, political and discursive phenomena. The contributions, which examine novels, films, art, and cultures, invite the reader to consider the function of space in human constructions as symbolic representation, analytical tool, discursive strategy and haunting effect. In a wider context they demonstrate the extent to which spatiality impacts on our lives and has ethical, political, historical and cultural implications. 

The contributors represent a wide range of disciplines in the Humanties: Literature, Photography, Art, Human Geography, Ethnic Studies, and Cultural Studies. 


Maria Holmgren Troy and Elisabeth Wennö are Associate Professors in English Literature at Karlstad University, Sweden


","
“Space, Haunting, Discourse is a profoundly important collection of essays. Moving beyond the limits of literature and popular culture, this is an exciting and provocative series of investigations into the ways in which discursive, psychic and material structures are inhabited and motivated by haunting forces, for which critical language is only just beginning to take account. Driven by passion, inventiveness and scholarly rigour, the 'ghost hunters' assembled by Maria Holmgren Troy and Elisabeth Wennö, offer the reader some of the most challenging reorientations in thought since Derrida's Specters of Marx.”

Julian Wolfreys, Professor of Modern Literature and Culture, Department of
English and Drama, Loughborough University.

“This fascinating collection explores haunting in a variety of spaces, from haunted houses to spectral bodies, from the camps that haunt modernity to the ghosts shadowing places.  By turns fascinating and provocative, the range of these essays both extends and deepens our understanding of how spatialities can provide passage for the hauntings in and of discourse.”

Gillian Rose, Professor of Cultural Geography, Head of Department of Geography, The Open University

",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-05-01,Glen Colburn,The English Malady: Enabling and Disabling Fictions,Hardback,9781847185648,34.99,"The eleven essays collected in The English Malady: Enabling and Disabling Fictions adopt perspectives from a variety of disciplines—history, sociology, music, theater, and literary studies—in order to examine manifestations of and writing about hysteria in Europe during the long eighteenth century. The collection demonstrates not only that hysteria was an important cultural metaphor for the Enlightenment—a fact sometimes obscured by scholarly emphasis on the study of hysteria as a nineteenth and early twentieth-century phenomenon—but also that the period’s writers sometimes considered hysteria a blessing as well as a curse. Implicit in the various arguments of this collection is the suggestion that hysteria might be considered an expression of early modern ambivalence about the emergence of modernity.

","The book offers a wide-ranging, compelling set of essays on hysteria and hypochondria, the amorphous symptoms of which have been known since the eighteenth century as “the English malady.”  As Colburn puts it in his introduction to the volume, the English malady as a subject of scholarly inquiry “invites both serious and playful analysis of the Enlightenment.”  Whether taking up the study of music, medical history, or literature, the eleven essays in this book accept the invitation with vigor and humor, providing challenging new insights and provocative analyses.
—Devoney Looser, Associate Professor, Department of English, University of Missouri-Columbia
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-05-01,Maria González Davies and Riitta Oittinen,Whose Story? Translating the Verbal and the Visual in Literature for Young Readers,Hardback,9781847185471,24.99,"This book is based on the discussions carried out in two seminars on the translation of children’s literature, coordinated by Maria González Davies and led by Riitta Oittinen. The main focus finally revolved around four questions: a) Tackling the challenges posed by translating children’s literature, both picturebooks and books with illustrations, and the range of strategies available to solve specific issues; b) the special characteristics involved in reading aloud, its emotional dimension, and the sphere it occupies between private and public reading; c) the interpretation and manipulation of child images; and, d) the role of the translator, publishers and mediators as active or passive agents whose decisions may finally mirror the images projected by the authors of the source books. This volume is also professionally-oriented and presents examples that underline the interaction between theory and practice. The topics range from Bible translation, to translating the classics, such as Beatrix Potter’s tales and fairytales, fantasy worlds for young adults as depicted in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, or novels such as those by Christine Nöstlinger, as well as stories with a psychological and social function such as the African war tales. Finally, it includes didactic applications that help enhance an awareness of the issues involved.


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-06-01,Borbála Faragó and Moynagh Sullivan,"Facing the Other: Interdisciplinary Studies on Race, Gender and Social Justice in Ireland",Hardback,9781847185976,34.99,"This collection offers a multi-faceted investigation of the critical issue of the creation and place of the “Other” in Ireland. The extraordinarily rapid recent economic development of Ireland has effected a profound transformation in the island’s social and cultural life. In the process, old verities and assumptions concerning the nature of Irish society and culture have been called into question, with a whole variety of new challenges coming to light. The developments of the last two decades have transformed questions of what and who constitutes the “Other” within Irish society, but in the process older societal faultlines based on gender, disability and religious difference have not disappeared and historical processes of “Othering” continue to play a critical role in influencing and moulding the social contours of the new Ireland of the twenty-first century. Drawing on a number of different disciplinary perspectives, this collection presents a number of key analyses of social and cultural practices and policies that reflect anxieties about and negotiations of these changes, examining historical and contemporary representation of fears about the porousness of national borders; the increasing racialization of the Irish state through social and juridical proscriptions, and the popular and official narrative of ‘progress’. 



",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-06-01,Natalie Edwards and Christopher Hogarth,"Gender and Displacement: ""Home"" in Contemporary Francophone Women’s Autobiography",Hardback,9781847185853,24.99,"
""Home"" is a contested notion in contemporary literary and cultural studies, as critics assess the impact of empire, independence, migration and globalization upon colonial and postcolonial subjects. This volume assembles articles on the representation of home specifically in women's autobiography, which is now one of the most exciting and productive fields of literary studies.  The chapters analyze writing from diverse areas of the Francophone world, including North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, the Caribbean and Indo-China, in addition to focussing on works by immigrant writers in France.  The volume investigates the importance and the nuances of the construction of ""home"" in narratives of female identity in different contexts.  

This timely book  includes original analyses by a range of scholars and studies both established writers, such as Maryse Condé, Marguerite Duras and Marie Cardinal, and newer voices such as Fatou Diome, Faïza Guène and Hélène Grimaud.  

Gender and Displacement: The Representation of Home in Francophone Women's Autobiography thus brings new understandings to the connections between race, gender, colonization and migration in female identity in diverse spaces.


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-06-01,Michael D. Burke,Maine's Place in the Environmental Imagination,Hardback,9781847185723,24.99,"The essays in Maine’s Place in the Environmental Imagination address – from a variety of perspectives – how Maine’s unique identity among the states of the United States has been formed, and what that identity is: A place that is still imagined by others primarily through its environmental associations, its “nature” and landscape, rather than through its social arrangements and human history.  The collection attempts a foundational study, not of a regional literature, but of a state literature.  In doing so, it makes the case that Maine was constructed imaginatively and environmentally through its literature, and that this image is the one that endures even now.  
	
The essays suggest how this identity was formed, by discussing writings ranging from the recently recovered work of Joseph Nicolar, a member of the Penobscot Nation in the late 19th century, to the contemporary Maine author Carolyn Chute; from Thoreau’s canonical essay, “Ktaadn,” to the modernist E.B. White, whose works have an under-appreciated environmental project. Contributors include scholars Nathaniel Lewis, Annette Kolodny, Linda Kornasky, Daniel Malachuk, Kent Ryden, and Lynn Wake



",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-06-01,Jan Auracher and Willie van Peer,New Beginnings in Literary Studies,Hardback,9781847185945,44.99,"Traditional studies of literature have developed approaches ranging from historical, hermeneutic, critical, close reading and author studies perspectives. The present volume shows that there is much, much more to analysing literary texts, their readers, the literary system, movies, their structure and their effects. These diverse new ways of looking at literature are exemplified in this volume.

The volume shows how these various approaches can be carried out in concrete projects in the area of literary studies. Twenty-three chapters encompass research on literary studies from perspectives of psychology, linguistics, anthroplogy, history, sociology, computer science. The contributors demonstrate in non-technical language the amplitude of detail and insight that can be gained from such a wider perspective on the study of literary texts. The interdisciplinary diversity of the study of literature may launch itself as a New Beginnings in Literary Studies indeed.











","











",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-06-01,C. J. Fusco,"Our Orwell, Right or Left: The Continued Importance of One Writer to the World of Western Politics",Hardback,9781847186027,24.99,"Writers’ words have always been used by pundits and politicos in order to further their own agendas, but it is probable that no writer’s work has been used (and misused) as frequently and as effectively as George Orwell’s. Once the champion of Europe’s down-and-out and a self-proclaimed advocate of Socialism, Orwell was, understandably, embraced by many on the Left during his own lifetime. Following the publications of Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four – and the writer’s own death shortly thereafter – Orwell also became a patron saint of sorts for many on the Right. Within the arenas of political theory and literary criticism, this confusing and seemingly contradictory turn of events has resulted in an ongoing battle over the writer’s legacy. 

Our Orwell, Right or Left examines Orwell’s reception history in order to decode why critics on both ends of the political spectrum have been compelled to claim Orwell as one of their own, and how they have gone about doing so. In many cases, when Orwell’s writing has been misused by those in politics, it has, alarmingly, reflected the same species of dangerous propaganda that Orwell had warned about in his final two books. As there is an inherent problem with a situation in which critics have misrepresented the scope and focus or Orwell’s writing – whether the misrepresentation happens to be intentional or not – Our Orwell, Right or Left takes a close look at the details of Orwell’s own writing and juxtaposes what George Orwell had written with the often dubious claims of his proponents. 

Manipulative political propaganda, however, is but one of the many very dangerous symptoms of repression and tyranny that Orwell had warned against in his writing. As Our Orwell, Right or Left shows, there are many aspects of our contemporary culture that are worryingly similar to the Oceania of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. That Orwell’s writing still remains prescient even approaching sixty years following his death proves that he is not only a writer still worthy of being read, but that he is also a writer still worth fighting over.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-06-01,Ralph J. Poole and Ilka Saal,Passionate Politics: The Cultural Work of American Melodrama from the Early Republic to the Present,Hardback,9781847185747,34.99,"This new collection of essays on American stage and film melodrama assesses the multifarious and contradictory uses to which melodrama has been put in American culture from the late 18th century to the present. It focuses on the various ways in which the genre has periodically intervened in debates over race, class, gender and sexuality and, in this manner, has also persistently contributed to the formation and transformation of American nationhood: from the debates over who constitutes the newborn nation in the Early Republic, to the subsequent conflict over abolition and the discussion of gender roles at the turn of the 19th century, to the fervent class struggles of the 1930s and the critiques of domestic containment in the 1950s, as well as to ongoing debates of gender, race, and sexuality today. Addressing these issues from a variety of different angles, including historical, aesthetic, cultural, phenomenological, and psychological approaches, these essays present a complex picture of the cultural work and passionate politics accomplished by melodrama over the course of the past two centuries, particularly at times of profound social change. 

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-06-01,David Bell and Gerald Porter,Riots in Literature,Hardback,9781847185822,29.99,"Riots in Literature addresses representations of crowd disorder as manifestations of popular politics, including colonial and postcolonial contexts. The terms used to describe disorder are themselves, of course, contested. Words like “mob,” “demonstration” and “protest,” not to mention “riot’ itself, denote a particular perspective based on an elitist taxonomy for dealing with social and cultural phenomena in society. Of primary concern is the way in which the text describes and designates crowd behaviour using the language of denigration, metaphors of the primitive and animalistic, brutal images, and silences, and where the mediation of the event is expressed in terms of the binary order/disorder. 

The contributors to this volume are interested in the analysis of the interaction of official political culture and crowd politics as represented in literature and orature, and how such representations contribute to the discourses of authority and subversion of their period. The essays are wide-ranging and explore the phenomenon of riots in literature through studies of popular risings in Shakespeare; Carlyle and the French Revolution; the Rebecca Riots in Wales; popular ballads and the Indian War of Independence in 1857, post-partition riots in India and Pakistan in the 1960s, township violence in South African fiction post-1948, the 1965 Watts riots in Los Angeles in detective fiction and avant garde disturbances in France of the 1920s and 1930s.

Throughout the book, these essays focus attention on the tension-filled relationship that is perceived between literature and discourses of power and popular resistance.






","If you Google the word “riot” you get 8,500,000 hits. The term is clearly loaded with meaning, usually negative, synonymous with violence and uncontrolled crowd behaviour. Crowds run riot, noisily, yet their individual voices are usually silenced by what E. P. Thompson called “the enormous condescension of posterity”. Historians like Thompson have over the years sought to rescue riots and  rioters from this condition of negative collective obscurity by revisiting the archives in search of the carnivalesque contribution of the common street crowd to the long march of everyman. It is within this democratic tradition of revisionist history-from-below that Riots in Literature should be seen.
   This new collection of radically challenging essays differs, however, from these previous attempts to break through the collective silence of the street-fighting past in that the focus  is shifted from historical to literary representations of riots and rioters . Such a literary turn proves to be as fascinating  as it is fruitful, both in terms of the range of areas covered by the collection , as well as the revealing insights each of the contributions provide. Like the earlier “linguistic turn” in Chartist studies,  the radical shift of emphasis in Riots in Literature represents a new and exciting redirection of research into the fractious link between literature and the discourse of power and popular unrest.

Ronald Paul
Associate Professor of Literature
University of Gothenburg
Sweden

This essay is a  timely and provocative reassessment of the role of riots and rebellion in Anglophone literary and cultural texts from the nineteenth century to modern times. The carefully contextualised and historicized articles contribute to a multifaceted understanding of the workings of power in modern societies where the voices of dissent are so often silenced. What makes the volume particularly recommendable is its sensitivity  to the experience of marginalized, as testified in its excavations of popular and post-colonial narratives. The book is compulsory reading for anyone interested in dissent and power in literature and popular culture. 

Jopi Nyman
Professor of English
Vice-Dean of Humanities
University of Joensuu

Riots in Literature takes up an under researched area of writing as well as rarely focused incidents in better known works, and subjects them, in a number of case studies, to sustained, extending and thoughtful discussion, not least by probing into the very language in which unruly crowd behaviour ¾ fictionalised or documented ¾ is couched. The chosen perspectives offer unusual insights into the treatment of mass action on stage and in fiction. While occasions of spontaneous rebellion of the downtrodden engage the critical sympathy of the editors and contributors, they are not blind to orchestrated violence in the interests of a repressive social or political order. How to interpret the temporary suspension of authority and power during triumphant moments of crowd action is another question exercising both the authors of the texts under discussion and the contributors to this pioneering symposium.

H. Gustav Klaus
Professor of the Literature of the British Isles, Universität Rostock, Germany

'The project, Riots in Literature, takes its point of departure from previous socio-political research, concerning the history of crowd politics, the psychology of rioters, and clashing interpretations of the same event. The eight contributors to this volume of essays note how central in the representation of riots is the question of who is speaking since the writing is usually “of”, not “by” i.e. the writer is not a member of the class actively involved in the event. So the contributors’ aim is  to give a voice to the “life and dynamic change” underlying what all too frequently confronts readers as strategically distorted representations.

The contributions, ranging widely in terms of period and genre, from Shakespearian drama to contemporary fiction, stress that words like “mob” and “riot” tend to denote an elitist, exclusionary perspective. Journeying back through this stimulating array of essays to investigate the kind of textual mediation that riots or crowd disorder have prompted, the reader is led to recognise the implicit disempowerment thereby achieved. What has become generally accepted  as disorder of the mob in several cases subverted by these contributors to reveal an alarming scale of disorder in the agents of authority and power, a form in fact of legalized rioting. The editors also warn, however that our new orthodoxy arising from mass democracy, may prompt a spurious romanticism of the crowd and an illusory hope of social reform.

Riots in Literature  is a challenging and crucial book which deserves a wide readership. It will be particularly welcomed by students of literature, politics and sociology, but its fascinating and often deeply disturbing revelations are likely to interest all serious readers.'

J A Kearney (Professor)
Senior Research Associate
English Studies (School of Literary Studies, Media and Creative Arts)
Howard College
University of KwaZulu-Natal
Durban 
South Africa
 








",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-06-01,Seán Crosson,"""The Given Note"": Traditional Music and Modern Irish Poetry",Hardback,9781847185693,34.99,"The oldest records indicate that the performance of poetry in Gaelic Ireland was normally accompanied by music, providing a point of continuity with past tradition while bolstering a sense of community in the present. Music would also offer, particularly for poets writing in English from the eighteenth century onwards, a perceived authenticity, a connection with an older tradition perceived as being untarnished by linguistic and cultural division.
While providing an innovative analysis of theoretical work in music and literary studies, this book examines how traditional Irish music, including the related song tradition (primarily in Irish), has influenced, and is apparent in, the work of Irish poets. While looking generally at where this influence is evident historically and in contemporary Irish poetry, this work focuses primarily on the work of six poets, three who write in English and three who write primarily in the Irish language: Thomas Kinsella, Seamus Heaney, Ciaran Carson, Gearóid Mac Lochlainn, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill and Cathal Ó Searcaigh. 
	



","""Seán Crosson, himself a composer and performer, has written a penetrating and nuanced study of the influence of traditional music and song on modern Irish poetry…It is certainly the most thorough exploration of this subject to date, and combines awareness of music with the practice of poetry in an original and compelling way.""			
-- Dr. Riana O’Dwyer, Senior Lecturer, English Department, NUI, Galway.

""This book makes an original contribution to the field of Irish Studies. It is particularly impressive in discussing together the normally disparate studies of Irish literature (in both languages), metrics, music and orality studies. The study is clearly well-written in a clean uncluttered style and proceeds with a logic of argument which carries the reader along.""
-- Professor Alan Titley, Head of Department of Modern Irish, University College Cork.

""This book draws on a wide range of theoretical perspectives to construct an exploratory inquiry detailing and interrogating previously unarticulated connections between words and music. Despite the breathtaking wealth of referential material, the model that emerges is subtle, nuanced and flexible, handled with the sure and elegant touch of one who is supremely aware of the possibilities of effects at the nexus of these two intertwined media… This pioneering work is sure to herald other studies in this rich field of inquiry, and provides an exemplary model which leads the way with confident assurance.""  
-- Dr. Lillis Ó Laoire, sean-nós singer and author of On a Rock in the Middle of the Ocean: Songs and Singers in Tory Island (2007)



",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-07-01,Steven McLean,H. G. Wells: Interdisciplinary Essays,Hardback,9781847186157,29.99,"This eclectic collection brings together a range of essays on H. G. Wells (1866-1946). While he is best known for his early ‘scientific romances’, which are generally acknowledged as the precursors of modern science fiction, Wells was a polymath whose varied and prolific writings included science textbooks, journalism, social novels, utopias and short stories. H. G. Wells: Interdisciplinary Essays brings together a collection of mostly new essays from both established scholars and younger researchers and incorporates various aspects of Wells’s position as one of the most important writers of the late nineteenth century and early years of the twentieth century. 

The volume features essays examining well-known works such as The Time Machine, The Island of Doctor Moreau and The War of the Worlds in the context of the sustained recent interest in the interconnections between literature and science. Yet it also includes intriguing evaluations of novels that have received very little attention in academic criticism, such as The Wheels of Chance and Mr Blettsworthy on Rampole Island. Wells’s philosophical outlook and his political impact are assessed in essays that include an investigation of his relationship to the American philosopher William James and his intellectual influence on Winston Churchill. 








","""This volume offers scholars an excellent overview of Wells’s lasting legacy, not only as a writer of fiction, but also as a thinker. philosopher and intellectual influence. … All of the essays in this volume offer the reader insights into or new perspectives on Wells … H. G. Wells: Interdisciplinary Essays is a fine collection that reminds us again of Wells’s significance as an author. It also highlights the fact that Wells was a prolific author whose influence should not be underestimated, and whose oeuvre contains much that has been neglected and that needs revisiting, even reassessing.""
—Linda Dryden, The Wellsian, 32 (2009), 61-3.

‘If you want to sample the most recent work on Wells, this is your best resource. ... McLean’s work is brilliant (see his The Early Fiction of H. G. Wells: Fantasies of Science [2009], based on a stellar PhD thesis), and his knowledge of the breath of Wells’s writing is impressive, the introduction leaving this reader wanting more.  ... H. G. Wells: Interdisciplinary Essays is, collectively, an example of sterling scholarship.’ (Andrew Shail, Victorian Studies, 52:2 (2010), 334-7)  


",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-07-01,Harry Eiss,Insanity and Genius: Masks of Madness and the Mapping of Meaning and Value,Hardback,9781847186119,44.99,"     Pablo Picasso said “We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand.” John Keats expressed the same in the climactic couplet of his poem, Ode on a Grecian Urn, when he wrote, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,--that is all / Ye know on earth and all ye need to know.”  On September 8, 1888, Vincent Van Gogh, referring to his painting The Night Cafe, wrote in a letter to his brother Theo: “I have tried to express the terrible passions of humanity by means of red and green.”

     This is what I have struggled with, this higher truth, and its messengers: drama, dance, sculpture, painting--all of the arts, and such other disciplines as philosophy, theology, psychology and neurology. It is what led me, innocent of all the implications and reasons for it, to first submerse myself in literature, music and drawing in my desperate search for meaning as a child following my father’s death. 

     In his book about the discovery of the structure of DNA, James Watson wrote, “So we had lunch, telling ourselves that a structure this beautiful just had to exist.” Indeed, the question most often asked by scientists about a scientific theory is “Is it beautiful?” Yes, truth equals beauty. Scientists know, mathematicians know.

     But the beauties, the truths of math and science were not the truths I needed as a child, and I intuitively knew it, intuitively knew that the truths I needed come from a different way of knowing, a way of knowing not of the world of logic and reason and explanation (though they help lead us to it), but rather a way of knowing that is of the world of expression, a world that takes us to what is just beyond the grasp of logic. 

     That is what this book is all about. It is an exploration of the greatest minds of especially the past two centuries and how they have struggled to find the deepest truths about the human condition.  




",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-07-01,"Suzanne Bray, Adrienne E. Gavin and Peter Merchant","Re-Embroidering the Robe: Faith, Myth and Literary Creation since 1850",Hardback,9781847186089,34.99,"Religious faith, myths and legends have always been present in literature. However, their role has changed over time. Since the middle of the nineteenth century, with the diminishing role of religion in European society, writers with some kind of belief system, whether religious or political, have tended to use myth in two different ways.
They have either retold the old, familiar myths of the past so that they carry fresh messages relevant to a contemporary audience or created their own, new myths as modern vehicles of traditional truths. Many writers have combined the two techniques.

Such is the transforming artistry which the eighteen essays in Re-Embroidering the Robe examine: the remaking or new-minting of myth, in literature from 1850 to the present day, so that what it embodies and expresses speaks powerfully to the modern reader. In widely differing ways, therefore, all of the texts analysed here compel attention.





","

“This fascinating and timely collection of essays explores the diverse uses and inflections of myth in European literary culture since 1850. The scope of its engagements is ambitious, and includes Victorian, Modernist and postmodern texts, in French as well as English.  The collection is carefully structured, with helpful introductions to each section. The essays contextualize and discuss in innovative ways a remarkable miscellany of literature for both adults and children, from the familiar Chronicles of Narnia to the unfamiliar world of Estonian mythology, from explorations of orthodox Christian faith to diverse expressions of paganism ranging from Swinburne to Yourcenar.”

Dr William Gray, Reader in Literary History and Hermeneutics, University of Chichester, author of Fantasy, Myth and the Measure of Truth: Tales of Pullman, Lewis, Tolkien, MacDonald and Hoffmann (Palgrave Macmillan), Robert Louis Stevenson: a Literary Life (Palgrave Macmillan) and C.S. Lewis (Northcote House)
	
""The book will undoubtedly command the attention and respect of its targeted audience, the academic community.  But there also exists a very large general readership, both Anglo-American and European, for whom this book will also have a significant appeal.""

Chris Mitchell, Professor of Christian Thought at Wheaton College, Illinois and Director of the Marion E. Wade Center

",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-07-01,Andrew Lynch and Anne Scott,Renaissance Poetry and Drama in Context: Essays for Christopher Wortham,Hardback,9781847186102,39.99,"Renaissance Poetry and Drama in Context is a stimulating refereed collection of new work dedicated to Emeritus Professor Christopher Wortham of The University of Western Australia. The essays provide a rich context for the interdisciplinary study of the English Renaissance, from its medieval antecedents to its modern afterlife on stage and screen. Their up-to-date engagement with many scholarly fields - art and iconography, cartography, cultural and social history, literature, politics, theatre, and film - will ensure that this book makes a valuable contribution to contemporary Renaissance studies, with a special interest for those researching and teaching English literature and drama.

The nineteen contributors include distinguished Renaissance scholars such as Ann Blake, Graham Bradshaw, Alan Brissenden, Conal Condren, Joost Daalder, Heather Dubrow, Philippa Kelly, Anthony Miller, Kay Gililand Stevenson,  Robert White, and Lawrence Wright. Work on Shakespeare forms the core of this coherent collection. There are also significant essays on Magnificence, Donne, Marlowe, A Yorkshire Tragedy, Jonson, Marvell, the Ferrars of Little Gidding, and female conduct literature.

hardbound with dust jacket; xii+353 pp; 18 b/w illustrations.




","“Renaissance Poetry and Drama in Context: Essays for Christopher Wortham offers the reader an exciting range of probing enquiries into early modern texts as artworks and cultural documents. Firmly anchored in fresh approaches to canonical authors such as Shakespeare, Marlowe, Jonson, Donne and Marvell, this illustrated collection is conceptually expansive, drawing in more minor works as it reaches back to medieval drama and classical precedents and forward to film and the novel. As a showcase of primarily Australian, yet also global, scholarship from established and newer researchers, Renaissance Poetry and Drama in Context pursues fascinating textual minutiae and raises provocative, larger questions about the period. These contributions, bookended with reflections on an impressive academic life, make the volume a worthy tribute to Professor Wortham.”

Dr Liam Semler, Department of English, University of Sydney


“Prismatically reflecting the many and varied interests of the scholar it celebrates, Renaissance Poetry and Drama in Context: Essays for Christopher Wortham will delight all those interested in the exploration of early modern literature and culture. Its contributors have obviously been provoked by the occasion to produce of their best, and the essays collected here crackle with critical energy. Tudor drama, Shakespeare, Marlowe, Jonson, Donne and Marvell all feature in discussions rich in insights and original contextualization; contemporary cartography, cosmology and mythology are explored; women's lives and authorship are discussed in fascinating detail; and essays on the legacy of 'the Shakespearean moment' in our own contemporary culture in creative writing and film point to the enduring power and interest of the poetry and drama celebrated here.  A worthy Festschrift, and a rich feast indeed.”

Dr Ronald Bedford, School of Arts, University of New England




",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-07-01,Sue Owen,"Re-Reading Richard Hoggart: Life, Literature, Language, Education",Hardback,9781847186126,34.99,"Richard Hoggart has been one of the leading cultural commentators of the last sixty years. He was the first literary critic to take the working class seriously and to extend the parameters of literary criticism to include popular culture. Hoggart put the working class on the cultural map. He differentiated between what was offered by the “popular providers” (media, popular fiction, advertisements) and the resilient culture of working-class people themselves. Hoggart’s most famous work is the seminal The Uses of Literacy. Part II (written first) offers a searing indictment of the specious populism and banality of popular newspapers and magazines, the fake “pally patter” of the tabloids and of adverts aimed at ordinary people, and the literary flatness and moral emptiness of much popular fiction. Part I celebrates the resilient culture of working-class people themselves and offers a basis for the argument that working-class people deserve better than what passes for popular culture. Though best known for The Uses of Literacy, Hoggart has been a prolific writer, publishing twenty-seven books, including two in 2004 at the age of eighty-seven. These range from works of cultural analysis such as The Way We Live Now, to works of personal reflection such as First and Last Things and Promises to Keep, and to collections of essays on a wide variety of topics, such as the two volumes of Speaking to Each Other, Between Two Worlds and An English Temper. One of his most important contributions to the transformation of perceptions of class and culture was the founding of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at Birmingham University in the early 1960s. For Hoggart, public service is a duty of the intellectual. Therefore he has not lived in the ivory tower but has engaged in society, striving for change from within. He worked for five years as Assistant Director-General of UNESCO and has undertaken many activities in arts, culture, broadcasting and education, including: the Albermarle Committee on Youth Services, the Pilkington Committee on Broadcasting, Reith Lecturer, Chair of the Broadcasting Research Unit, Vice-Chair of the Arts Council, Chair of the Statesman and Nation Publishing Company, Chair of the Advisory Council for Adult and Continuing Education and member of the British Board of Film Classification Appeals Committee. Hoggart was a leading witness for the defence in the trial at the Old Bailey in 1960 of Penguin Books Ltd. for publishing D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover. His evidence is widely acknowledged to have been central in leading to the acquittal, which marked a watershed in public perception and shifted cultural parameters. Hoggart was also the first British critic to take TV and radio seriously. He made a number of critical interventions: his Reith lectures, his contributions to the report of the Pilkington Committee and his works on media, including Only Connect: on the Nature and Quality of Mass Communications, The Mass Media: A New Colonialism, and Mass Media in Mass Society. Hated by Margaret Thatcher and Mary Whitehouse, Hoggart nevertheless, strove to serve culture in the public sphere, as an important extension of his ideas about the need for cultural quality. This volume affirms the importance of Richard Hoggart, focusing, in particular, on new understandings of his life, of the importance of literature and literary criticism to his method, and of his significant role in literary, cultural and educational shifts from the fifties onwards. It locates Hoggart’s work and identifies his influence within multiple contexts: the working-class and “angry young man” novels of the fifties and sixties; the Lady Chatterley trial and resulting literary and cultural change; the shift from the “new criticism” to a broader field of cultural enquiry; the rise of cultural studies; and educational reforms from the fifties onwards.
","""Because The Uses of Literacy was first published half a century ago, we are in danger of regarding Richard Hoggart as a voice from the past, one to be recalled in moments of piety but otherwise safely forgotten. This excellent collection forces us to think otherwise.   The contributors, with David Lodge, Fred Inglis, and Sue Owen herself to the fore, respond to what continues to be forceful, persuasive, and (in its own distinctive way) urgent about Richard Hoggart's writing.   In fact, it is precisely by trying to capture and analyse that familiar yet elusive 'voice' that this book most effectively shows Hoggart to be, in every sense, a living presence, speaking to debates about class, education, literature, and what is misrepresented as 'dumbing down'.  By re-examining his career and his work, the essays probe beyond a  too-familiar reputation to bring out a man who has always been more complex, more multi-talented, and more literary than text-book histories of the origins of 'Cultural Studies' ever allow.   And, from the opening contribution by his son, Simon Hoggart, onwards we get engaging glimpses of the private man, one who continues to inspire admiration, affection, and love.""

Stefan Collini, Professor of Intellectual History and English Literature, Faculty of English, University of Cambridge


",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-07-01,Kathleen A. Bishop with a Foreword by David Matthews,The Canterbury Tales Revisited – 21st Century Interpretations,Hardback,9781847186133,39.99,"In The Canterbury Tales Revisited – 21st Century Interpretations, Editor Kathleen A. Bishop has brought together a group of authors that is both diverse and international including scholars from the United States and Canada, as well as the UK and the continent and Asia. The articles they have contributed cover “hot” new areas such as Chaucer and Judaism, Queer studies, and feminism and gender. The eminent Medievalist David Matthews has contributed an insightful opening piece situating Chaucer studies in the new century and discussing where we have been and where we seem to be going.
","

",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-08-01,Heather Ostman,Kate Chopin in the Twenty-First Century: New Critical Essays,Hardback,9781847186478,29.99,"The essays in Kate Chopin in the Twenty-First Century update Chopin scholarship, creating pathways, both broad and narrow, for study in a new century. Given Chopin’s atypical literary career and her frequent writing about unconventional themes for her time—such as divorce, infidelity, and suicide—she may have approved such approaches as the essays here suggest. This collection of essays offers readers newer ways of thinking about Chopin’s works. They break away from the familiar trends of the feminist considerations of her work, ranging from her short stories, to her lesser-known novel, At Fault, to her best-known work, The Awakening. Part one introduces interdisciplinary themes for reading “culture” in Chopin, including urban living and theatre as a lens for viewing New Orleans’s social and class stratifications; the importance of music—a central interest of Chopin’s—in her texts; and the cultural relevance of Vogue magazine, where eighteen of Chopin’s stories were first published. Part two identifies important and overlapping concerns of religion, race, class, and gender within the contexts of selected short works. And part three offers fresh readings of The Awakening, using the lens of race, as well as the lens of class to reconsider protagonist Edna Pontellier’s transformation and her dependency upon the “rights” of privilege within a specific cultural context. Together, all of the essays in the collection, by both established and newer scholars, help to usher Chopin’s work into the twenty-first century.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-08-01,Richard Pine and Eve Patten,Literatures of War,Hardback,9781847186379,39.99,"“The most terrible disaster that one group of human beings can inflict on another is war. Wars cause misery on an indescribable scale. Yet we go on doing it to one another, generation after generation. Why? Warfare is a recurrent and universal characteristic of human existence. The mythologies of practically all peoples abound in wars and the superhuman deeds of warriors, and pre-literate communities apparently delighted in the recital of stories about battles. Since our species became literate a mere 5,000 years ago, written history has mostly been the history of wars. Thousands who knew war evidently sickened of it and dreamt of lasting peace, expressing their vision in literature and art, in philosophy and religion. They imagined Utopias freed of martial ambition and bloodshed which harked back to the Golden Age of classical antiquity, to the Christian vision of a paradise lost, and to the Arcadia of Greek and Latin poetry, so richly celebrated in the canvases of Claude and Poussin. All these things bear eloquent testimony to the human longing for peace, but they have not triumphed over our dreadfully powerful propensity to war.” 
—from the Introduction by Anthony Stevens

In this multi-disciplinary collection of essays on the manifestations of war in poetry, fiction, drama, music and documentaries, scholars and practitioners from an international context describe the transformation of the war experience into chronicles of hope and despair, from Herodotus up to the present day. 

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-08-01,José Ramón Prado-Pérez and Dídac Llorens-Cubedo,New Literatures of Old: Dialogues of Tradition and Innovation in Anglophone Literature,Hardback,9781847186232,34.99,"Artistic creativity is fuelled by the permanent interaction among artistic forms, cultures, societies, and eventually different individuals, in the form of an all-inclusive intertextuality. The dialogues between the past and the present help the artist examine his own art, making him conscious of his position in the field, whether through self-evaluation, renewal or experiment with new textualities. This book explores how the strategies reflecting the exchanges between past and present modes of artistic production become active agents of intervention in creating the various spaces of dialogue and confrontation when establishing the identities and cultural specificity of a certain society or community.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-08-01,"Micaela Muñoz-Calvo, Carmen Buesa-Gómez and M. Ángeles Ruiz-Moneva",New Trends in Translation and Cultural Identity,Hardback,9781847186539,44.99,"New Trends in Translation and Cultural Identity is a collection of thirty enlightening articles that will stimulate deep reflection for those interested in translation and cultural identity and will be an essential resource for scholars, teachers and students working in the field. From a broad range of different theoretical perspectives and frameworks, the authors provide a multicultural reflection on translation issues, fostering intercultural communication, knowledge and understanding, crucial to effective transfer and intercultural exchange within the “global village”.  



","“I have now had a good look at /NewTrends in Translation and Cultural Identity/. It is a magnificent collection which recommends itself through its sheer depth and diversity. The book's distinguishing feature is its combination of theoretical sharpness with an unusually rich array of case studies covering historical as well as contemporary  topics and different text types across a range of media. It is held together by the focus on the role of translation in shaping cultural identities. Its thematic breadth however ensures that the discussion encompasses not only mediation and transmission but also the uncertainties affecting contact zones and other conflictual and liminal spaces. It is both a challenging and an accessible book; it will be an eye-opener for many.”
Theo Hermans, Professor, University College London, United Kingdom

“The fast pace of political developments in today’s world, with its confusing combination of post-colonial and neo-imperialist forces, the increased physical mobility of individuals and populations, and, perhaps more than anything else, the ever growing hold of the media on our lives and imaginations endow this volume with great significance. Ranging from the cultural politics of Seamus Heaney’s rewriting of Beowulf to translation policies in the European Union, and from multilingual advertising campaigns aimed at the global market to the intricacies of rendering the cultural specifics of African novels, the thirty chapters in New Trends in Translation and Cultural Identity cover enormous ground and usefully bring together many theoretical perspectives, making the book into a valuable and timely contribution to a debate that should concern all translation scholars and students of culture more broadly.”
Dirk Delabastita, University of Namur and CETRA








",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-08-01,"Lotte Dam, Lise-Lotte Holmgreen and Jeanne Strunck",Rhetorical Aspects of Discourses in Present-Day Society,Hardback,9781847186591,39.99,"Since antiquity, the notion of rhetoric has been associated with Aristotle, Cicero and Quintilian. Their theories are central to the understanding that, on the one hand, rhetoric can be used for persuading and convincing an audience, and on the other, for becoming an eloquent speaker. Based on this understanding, the study of rhetoric was for many years regarded by scholars as a meaningless enterprise as it was perceived as a study of linguistic ornamentation. 

However, in the beginning of the twentieth century, scholars regained an interest in the study of rhetoric in recognition of rhetorical skills being important for communication in modern society. Like speakers in public life, e.g. politicians, who had always acknowledged the role of rhetoric, all sorts of communicators, mediators and scholars became interested in rhetoric as a practical tool for building up texts meant for the public sphere as well as an analytical tool for the critique of public argumentation. This led to the development of new theories from New Rhetoric over Rhetorical Criticism to theories of genre and discourse, reflecting the view that rhetoric must be understood and used against the social and cultural framework in which it is embedded.

The contributions of this book reflect this multi-faceted approach to rhetoric, discourse and genre through their focus upon and analysis of different institutionalised discourses. Thus, within the three sections of political, journalistic and organisational discourse, the articles discuss various discourse types and their rhetorical features, contributing to the understanding of rhetoric and discourse having significant influence on human action and interaction in society.






","""This wide-ranging book offers new insights into crucial aspects of the public sphere—politics, journalism and the corporate world. A deeply rooted European tradition, the study of rhetoric, has re-appeared in the contemporary world, a world in which the public display of persuasive language seems to be the very essence of our self-understanding. Using up-to-date approaches to discourse analysis, the contributors to this volume deploy rhetorical analysis in a way that illuminates the nature of the rhetorical maelstrom that engulfs us in today’s societies, and has been doing so at an accelerating pace for the last half century. This is an important volume indeed for anybody who is trying to make sense of the rising flood of daily discourse.""

Paul Chilton, Lancaster University




",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-08-01,"Tuomas Huttunen, Kaisa Ilmonen, Janne Korkka and Elina Valovirta",Seeking the Self – Encountering the Other: Diasporic Narrative and the Ethics of Representation,Hardback,9781847186317,39.99,"Seeking the Self – Encountering the Other offers new insights into diasporic experiences, encounters and representations. This collection of texts examines diaspora narratives and the ways in which different encounters with the other are represented, as well as how these encounters might be read and interpreted in ethical terms. 

The anthology explores questions of ethics in narratives of displacement or belonging, nationalist narratives of exclusion and borderline narratives, constructed on the foundation provided by encounters with the cultural, sexual, gendered and ethnic other. The contributors’ aim is to explore questions of responsibility and ethics in the study of diaspora, migration, and alterity from a wide range of perspectives. Following a Levinasian one, if the other is always ultimately transcendental and ungraspable through language, we are required to consider ethics every time we write, read or interpret an encounter with the other. 






","“The fields of diaspora studies and postcolonial ethics are gaining in popularity and prestige. The collection provides very comprehensive coverage of both the issues and debates that animate diaspora studies in the humanities and a series of distinctive and careful mappings of these issues.”

Dr Alison Donnell, Reader at the School of English and American Literature, University of Reading

""Seeking the Self-Encountering the Other is an important and powerful volume of essays, which asks how ethics can be responsive to the kinds of otherness thrown up by living in a diasporic world. What kinds of encounters with others are possible when unfinished histories of colonialism shape the landscapes of the present? With a remarkable willingness to proceed from the particular, and a patience for thinking through the complexities of history and inheritance, this volume has much to teach us about the practical as well theoretical value of ethical thinking. Individual contributors reflect on questions of trauma, power and conflict, and attend with optimism to the ongoing living potentiality for new cultural forms in situations of encounter. Showing us on every page that ethics is also about how we read and know about others, as well as how we allow ourselves to be affected by others, this volume will open up a much needed dialogue between postcolonial studies of diaspora and ethical criticism.”

-Sara Ahmed, Professor in Race and Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths, University of London


“[the book’s] analysis of diasporic cultural traditions and the ethics of representation are of particular interest not only in a postcolonial context but also in terms of our contemporary phase of ‘globalisation’. With its interlinked focus on philosophical/theoretical and literary texts and its exposition of central notions, such as the ‘self’, ‘nation’ and ‘home’, it promises to extend critical and academic discourse in the field.”

-Tabish Khairm University of Aarhus, Denmark









",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-08-01,Lynn Forest-Hill,The Mirror Crack'd: Fear and Horror in JRR Tolkien's Major Works,Hardback,9781847186348,34.99,"Fear and horror are an inextricable part of Tolkien’s great mythology and his use of medieval sources for his evocations of fear and horror contribute to the distinctive tone of his work. This collection of essays shows how his masterly narrative techniques transform his sources, both familiar and unfamiliar, so that hitherto benign characters, objects and landscapes, as well as his famous monstrous creations, engage with deeply rooted human fears. The essays, by an international group of scholars, confirm Tolkien’s worldwide reputation. They highlight the depiction of the fear associated with marginalised characters; explore the moral implications of light and its absence; consider the subtle distinction between secular and religious spiders; discuss the role of landscapes and natural disasters in the evocation of fear in Middle-earth; and address the spectacular significance of Tolkien’s dragons, wolves, and Undead. While some of the essays presented here turn to modern science, psychology, and anthropology to deepen their analyses of fear and horror, they all add depth to our appreciation of Tolkien’s most famous and frightening creations by defining their relationships to ancient and culturally significant images of fear and horror.




","It has the advantage over many conference-based collections of a clear unifying theme. Within its field, its scope is comprehensive, every chapter is accessible to an intelligent reader of Tolkien, and the best essays stand comparison with any work on Tolkien published in the last decade
Brian Rosebury , University of Central Lancashire


""Why don't we draw wolves? To what extent are our views of European Paganism seen through a Christian bias? What scientific articles might Tolkien have read while writing his legendarium? Does Tolkien express a 'Philosophy of Light' in his work? There's enough variety in these essays to appeal to many interests, and much to think about.""

Nancy Martsch, 'Beyond Bree', Newsletter of the American  Mensa Tolkien special interest group, October 2008.





",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-08-01,"Penny Gay, Judith Johnston, and Catherine Waters","Victorian Turns, NeoVictorian Returns: Essays on Fiction and Culture",Hardback,9781847186621,34.99,"Victorian Turns, NeoVictorian Returns: Essays on Fiction and Culture brings together essays by scholars of international reputation in nineteenth-century British literature. Encompassing new work on Victorian writers and subjects as well as later readings, rewritings, and adaptations, the two-part arrangement of this collection highlights an ongoing dialogue.

Part One: Victorian Turns focuses principally on some of the major novelists of the period—George Eliot, Charles Dickens, Charlotte Brontë—while placing them in a wide cultural context, in particular that provided by the intellectual journals to which many of the novelists contributed. Reflecting the diversity of debate in the Victorian period, contributors’ essays range across key topics of the day, including the “woman question”, class relations, language, science, work, celebrity, and travel. English writers’ consciousness of the challenging contemporary developments in French literature forms a significant and persistent theme.

In Part Two: NeoVictorian Returns, the rich and varied afterlife of Victorianism is touched on. NeoVictorianism in contemporary literature and film demonstrates an ongoing and productive engagement with an age which established the social and cultural directions of the modern world. In rewritings, appropriations, and colonial writings-back, and in the persistent power of nineteenth-century images and stories in modern cinema, the period’s social, cultural and political modernity continues to flourish.






","“An exceptionally distinguished and innovative collection of essays, Victorian Turns, Neo-Victorian Returns explores some of the many ways in which the Victorians turned their world in new directions, creating imaginative patterns that continue to intrigue and inspire.  The particular strength of the volume lies in its double perspective, as it brings fresh critical insight to a wide range of Victorian texts and authors, and demonstrates the multiplicity of their cultural reach, while pointing to the continuing vitality of the period as a source of imaginative energy for contemporary readers. ‘Neo-Victorianism’ is now generating much critical interest, and these essays amount to a significant contribution to this expanding field. It is a powerful reminder of why it is still worth returning to the legacies of Victorian literary thought.”
Professor Dinah Birch, School of English, University of Liverpool
 
“A rich and varied collection which offers multiple perspectives on the ways in which nineteenth-century British novelists responded to and shaped a relatively new literary form and their world, and on the returns and reshaping of  their fictions in the cultural forms in the twentieth and twenty first centuries.”
  
Professor Lyn Pykett, Pro Vice-Chancellor, Aberystwyth University

“Bringing together some of the best contemporary American, Australasian and British scholars, this volume presents a view of nineteenth-century literature as ever in dialogue – with its own cultural milieu, and its own cultural heritage, but also with the future, in its own turn. As such it constitutes an apt return to Professor Margaret Harris for her tireless promotion, over many years, of critical dialogue about the Victorians and their afterlives.”


Professor Hilary Fraser, Geoffrey Tillotson Chair in Nineteenth-Century Studies, Birkbeck University of London.






",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-09-01,Robin DeRosa,Assimilation and Subversion in Earlier American Literature,Paperback,9781847187826,14.99,"Assimilation and Subversion in Earlier American Literature is a collection of essays that explores the complex interplay between dominance and oppression.  Spanning the “long” early American period, the collection considers texts written from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries. Native Americans, Puritan ministers and Puritan “whores,” Barbadian and transatlantic slaves: the early American figures who populate these essays are talking about power, and creating—in writing—a dynamic and complicated relationship between the mainstream and the margin. The essays in this collection offer a collective paradigm for thinking about these issues, one in which “assimilation” and “subversion” are not so much oppositional as they are closely aligned, codependent, and mutually defining. Though these essays do maintain the dialectical play between the two terms, they offer new ways to think about dialectic itself. The goal of the collection is to give readers useful models for approaching texts by nondominant subjects, models that consider the polyphonic flow of power and the possibility of simultaneous multiple, conflicting, and even oppositional effects of oppression.
The collection begins by looking at complex representations of the Christianized Native American, moves through a discussion of “creolized” West Indian and “converted” African slave narratives, explores the ironic uses of sentimentality in a nineteenth-century novel about slavery, and ends with a study of female criminality and the way that it both subverted and reinscribed dominant Puritan orthodoxy. The liminal spaces where assimilation becomes subversion (and vice versa) go by many difference names in this collection: the contact zone, the transcultured, the hybrid, the syncretic, the zombie, the pardodic, the parabolic, the transgressive, the framed. Each of the contributors works to find ways to describe this space without simultaneously closing it down. It can be a significant rhetorical challenge to articulate what might ultimately be a paradox, but this collection aims not only to look at familiar texts in new ways, but also to think about the critical process in a new way. In what ways does the critic’s own explication of a text undermine and stabilize the text’s coherent meaning? This is, in many ways, a collection that investigates this methodological question even as it focuses on the nature of power and how “the oppressed” write their way into and out of their own oppression.

Contributors include John J. Kucich, Ann M. Brunjes, Nicole N. Aljoe, Robin DeRosa, Mary Getchell, and Kristina Lucenko.


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-09-01,Klaus Stierstorfer and Monika Gomille,Cultures of Translation,Hardback,9781847186959,34.99,"The essays of this volume reflect the tremendous semantic extension the term 'translation' has experienced in the recent debates, which have transformed it into a key term in current issues about language, literature and culture. In the wake of the culture concepts of the 1980s, translation has emerged as the central analytical term for the contact of cultures, while the poststructuralist idea of the infinite chain of the signification process has helped to establish it as a dynamic model. In the course of recent research developments, the issues discussed in an ever-widening field of translation studies began to interconnect with issues discussed in equally topical and newly-established research areas of postcolonial studies and questions of 'World Englishes' and their lively cultural and literary exchanges. The essays of this volume take up and develop this general premise of a close interrelationship in processes of translation between language and culture, and the resulting linkage in the study of these processes between research in language and translation studies, on the one hand, and cultural and literary studies, on the other. The thematic scope stretches across the entire spectrum from issues in translations from one language and culture to another, through problems of and new avenues for cultural interchange as presented in works of art, to questions of translation theory and intercultural exchange on the most general level.


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-09-01,Gilbert D. Chaitin,Culture Wars and Literature in the French Third Republic,Hardback,9781847188083,34.99,"The articles assembled in Culture Wars and Literature in the French Third Republic describe and analyze the ever-widening attempts in the early years of the Third Republic (1870-1914) to mobilize literary phenomena for the purposes of political and social warfare. Literature became the preferred site in which the human implications of the fiercest and most widespread of these culture wars, the battles over national identity waged between proponents of secular and religious education, were articulated, dramatized and appraised. 
	
In studies of Erckmann-Chatrian and Vallès, Rachilde and Colette, the Goncourt brothers and Marcelle Tinayre, La Fontaine and Corneille, the song-writer Jules Jouy and the theater critic Francisque Sarcey among others, some of  these essays open up new perspectives on well-known issues such as education, the definition of national classics, Boulangism and women’s liberation, while others bring to light hitherto unsuspected connections between apparently disparate problems like decadence, anarchism and feminism, the mystery of literariness and the ban on Muslim headscarves, or the posthumous publication of private letters and the State’s interest in cultural and literary heroes. The final piece crystallizes the fundamental conflict of democratization: the tension between the republican desire for popular participation and the fear of the consequences of that participation by an uncultured public.




",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-09-01,Jennifer Chambers,Diversity and Change in Early Canadian Women’s Writing,Hardback,9781847187321,34.99,"Diversity and Change in Early Canadian Women’s Writing is a collection of nine essays, thematically arranged, dedicated to the works of women writing between 1828 and 1914. It is for all those readers who were certain that there had to be diverse, interesting, socially relevant voices in early Canadian women’s writing.  It is, equally, for sceptics, who will find that early Canada is not bereft of women writers, or of writing of substance.  
When Lorraine McMullen published the collection of essays Re(dis)covering Our Foremothers in 1990, she considered the field in its infancy. As keen as literary historians and critics have been to assess the contributions of women to Canada’s early cultural scene, this collection moves beyond listing which women were writing in early Canada, and brings together a study of their journalistic and literary works.  For a nation caught up in projects to enhance nation-building, and concerned with the development of its national literature, the essays reconnect with early literary works by women.
Eighteen years after McMullen’s, this collection shows the progression along the path that hers initiated. Working with theories of genre, gender, socio-politics, literature, history, and drama, the essayists make cases not only for the women writing, but also for the literary voices they created to work for diversity and social change in Canada.



","…the collected essays do convey the different ways in which these female authors subverted societal and reader expectation, while the collection  itself covers fictions, drama, poetry, journalism and personal correspondence from a wide range of authors across the Early Canadian era, suggesting that for those ‘willing to persevere’ there is still a wealth of material to be uncovered and explore.
Sarah Galletly
University of Strathclyde

",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-09-01,Gerd Bayer,Mediating Germany: Popular Culture between Tradition and Innovation,Paperback,9781847187604,19.99,"Popular culture in the German-speaking world has reacted in numerous ways to the demands of contemporary life, combining century-old traditions but also addressing current political and social debates. The essays collected in this volume offer case studies of popular fiction, theatre, hip-hop and rock music, events like the love parade, as well as describe new developments in documentary filmmaking. Read individually or as a whole, the chapters provide a detailed analysis of both the current issues in popular culture and the legacy of popular art forms throughout the twentieth century.



",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-09-01,"David Cunningham, Andrew Fisher and Sas May",Photography and Literature in the Twentieth Century,Paperback,9781847187697,14.99,"Photography and Literature in the Twentieth-Century offers an accessible and fresh approach to an object of interdisciplinary research that is currently receiving increased international attention. Providing a broad historical schema, and examining pivotal moments within it, the collection brings together a range of writers and practitioners who help to guide the reader through a historical cross-section of current work in this area. Unlike most existing studies, this volume considers both key literary figures, from Proust to Sebald, and photographic practitioners, from Heartfield to Sekula, in order to give a commanding overview of its subject that is both well-informed and often ground-breaking. With original and accessible essays by acknowledged experts in the field, this is a book that should be of interest not only to students and teachers in departments of literature and photography, but also to those in cultural studies and art history, as well as photographic artists.


","Although in the 20th century the relation between literature and photography was arguably as significant as literature’s relation to painting in the 19th century, over the past generation the discussion of photography’s multiple intersections and interactions with writing and writers have tended to narrow to a few overly canonised works. This volume reverses this situation through the diversity and originality of the essays it gathers together: it has the potential to reawaken a field that for too long has been allowed to remain dormant. 
—Norman Bryson, Professor of Art History, Theory and Criticism, University of California, San Diego, and author of Looking at the Overlooked.


From Proust to Sebald, photography has occupied a significant place in literature, and visa versa. This book makes an important contribution to engaging with the relationship between the photograph and the text. 
—Steve Edwards, Open University, and author of The Making of English Photography.


Discussion of literature and photography still tends to languish in the realms of image and text, rather than in the literary strategizing of photographers, or in the recurrent placing of the effects of the photographic act in twentieth-century fiction. Photography and Literature in the Twentieth Century remedies this. One of the most significant outcomes of the conjunction it generates is the realisation of how much the two are interrelated in the formation of modernism and after. The collection brings together work by some of the best emerging scholars and artists in the field. I highly recommend it. 
—John Roberts, University of Wolverhampton, and author of The Art of Interruption: Realism, Photography and the Everyday.


",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-09-01,Ciara Bhreatnach and Aoife Bhreatnach,Portraying Irish Travellers: Histories and Representations,Paperback,9781847187642,14.99,"This edited volume offers an interdisciplinary perspective on the history of Irish Travellers. Scholars from anthropology, history, literary studies and socio-linguistics explore the methodological problems that arise when a marginalised minority is portrayed by an established and powerful majority population. Each chapter addresses how different sources illuminate settled and Traveller history alike. With new research and perspectives from a number of disciplines, Irish Travellers: Histories and Representations is a welcome consideration of a neglected aspect of Irish society; the relationship between Irish Travellers and the majority, settled population. Although Irish Travellers are a conspicuous minority in contemporary Irish society, their past existence is often ignored. The contributors to this volume demonstrate a range of sources and approaches that prove Travellers deserve a place in the narrative of Ireland. This book will appeal to scholars interested in majority-minority relations generally, and the example of Ireland in particular.


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-09-01,Elizabeth Boyle and Anne-Marie Evans,Reading America: New Perspectives on the American Novel,Hardback,9781847187772,34.99,"This specially commissioned volume of essays offers a refreshing and unusual perspective on classic novels from the American literary canon. Accessible to students, scholars and the interested reader, this engaging collection explores familiar novels through unfamiliar lenses and, in so doing, sheds light on surprising and previously overlooked aspects of each text. 

Reading America presents a new approach to American literature by showcasing a cross-section of recent research into previously un-tapped areas of interest. Each chapter attempts to re-read classic American texts using new or unorthodox theoretical frameworks, including such diverse topics as an Emersonian reading of Don DeLillo, decoding Thomas Pynchon with eco-criticism and understanding Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy by exploring the graphic novel version of “City of Glass”. Other authors explored in this way include Henry James, Truman Capote, Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison, Joyce Carol Oates and F. Scott Fitzgerald. This type of approach widens the reader’s knowledge of each well-known text and encourages new critical evaluations of contemporary American literature. 

The collection moves through six large topic areas, from Naturalism and an idea of the “Great American Novel” at the end of the nineteenth century, through politics, sexuality, language and nature, to a contemporary engagement with postmodernism. Each essay deals with its own particular subject and author, but the full impact of each on the notion of the “American novel” as a phenomenon can only be understood when read in conjunction with the others. 

Of interest to both undergraduate and postgraduate students, Reading America would be a valuable asset to any American Studies or American Literature degree course, and a useful companion to American History or Politics courses. The volume will also attract strong interest from established academics, especially those researching the fields of literature, critical theory, cultural history and politics.





","""'Reading America' does what it promises, offering new perspectives on the American novel. The articles are fresh, challenging and compelling, imaginatively organized into a highly readable and well-researched volume looking at the extraordinary growth and importance of the novel form in the United States from the era of realism and naturalism in the late 19th century to the radical disorientation of postmodern texts. Young, emergent scholars offer informed and vital readings of major novels. Very welcome indeed.""

Professor Adam Piette, School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics, University of Sheffield, Sheffield


",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-09-01,Larbi Touaf and Soumia Boutkhil,Representing Minorities: Studies in Literature and Criticism,Paperback,9781847187734,17.99,"The papers in this volume include not only the traditional view of what constitutes a minority but also any individual, or group recalcitrant and reluctant, not to say resistant, to the generalized lobotomy operated by the rampant uniformisation of cultures around the world. For in the ruins of “the end of history” and its context of violence and Manichean politics, any opposition to the “general consensus” could be dismissed as anti-historical and atavistic. The objective of the book is precisely to counter such rhetoric and underscore the necessity of cultural diversity and the right to difference.  
      
This book contains what can amount to a critical response to the current context of confusion surrounding the postmodern condition that arguably dominates most societies. It stresses the issue of ethics not only in world politics but also in literature and criticism which are the main focus here. In fact, the interest in minority issues is in itself an ethical concern that contributes to give substance to the idea that postmodernity opens the gates for the long-suppressed identities and sensibilities to emerge and demand recognition. 

This volume intends, therefore, to contribute to the recent ethical turn that seems to take place in scholarship worldwide. Operated mainly by what is referred to as postcolonial studies this shift turned literary criticism and cultural studies into the site where a sense of literature can be envisioned that is not at all universalist, or reflecting the hegemonic temptations of the new world order. It seeks to present a patchwork of minor literatures, in the sense that besides the “major” literatures/languages, there are myriads of minor voices that express dissimilarity oftentimes under the umbrella of those major languages and literatures themselves.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-09-01,Susan Sheridan and Paul Genoni,Thea Astley's Fictional Worlds,Paperback,9781847188052,16.99,"This second edition includes an updated bibliography.

""Astley's signature is a highly allusive, layered and self-conscious prose style, non-linear and open-ended"" (Gillian Whitlock, JASAL: Journal of Association for the Study of Australian Literature, 6, 2007, p. 154.)

""The essays offer insights into issues of language, art, gender and religion ... as well as Astley's evolving body of writing and the historical and literary context of her work"" (Lyn Jacobs, Australian Literary Studies v.23, n.3, 2008, p.358).



","'This landmark contribution to Australian literary studies is the first collection of critical responses to the work of one of our most important novelists, Thea Astley. As well as essays from leading Australian and international critics, dating from 1967 to the present, it includes three essays by Astley herself, a major interview with her and the first Thea Astley lecture, given by Kate Grenville in 2005.' 

Professor Elizabeth Webby
Sydney University

",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-09-01,Rebecca Fine Romanow,The Postcolonial Body in Queer Space and Time,Paperback,9781847187789,16.99,"The Postcolonial Body in Queer Space and Time examines the ways in which the notion of the postcolonial correlates to Judith Halberstam’s idea of queer space and time, the non-normative path of Western lifestyles and hegemonies.  Emphasizing authors from Africa and Southeast Asia in the diaspora in London from the mid-1960s through 1990, the reading of both postcolonial lands and subjects as “queer counterproductive” space reveals a depiction of bodies in these texts as located in and performing queer space and time, redefining and relocating the understanding of the postcolonial.

The first wave of postcolonial literature produced by diasporics presents the body as the site where the non-normative is performed, revealing the beginnings of a corporeal resistance to the re-colonization of the diasporic individual residing in England from the Wilson through the Thatcher regimes.  This study emphasizes the ways in which early postcolonial literature embodies and encounters the topics of race, gender and sexuality, proving that a rejection of subjectifying processes through the representation of the body has always been present in diasporic postcolonial literature.  

Reading through postcolonial theory as well as the works of Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari, Hardt and Negri, Homi Bhabha, and Giorgio Agamben, as well as Halberstam and queer theory, The Postcolonial Body in Queer Space and Time discusses the poetry and journals of Arthur Nortje, Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia and his film Sammy and Rosie Get Laid, and Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North, tracing a geographic arc from homeland to London to the return to the homeland, traveling through the queer space and time of the postcolonial.



",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-09-01,Ailsa Cox,The Short Story,Hardback,9781847186690,34.99,"Long regarded as an undervalued and marginalised genre, the short story is undergoing a renaissance. The Short Story celebrates its unique appeal. Practitioners and scholars address the issues facing short story criticism in the 21st century. Author A.L. Kennedy shares the pleasures and frustrations of writing the short story in the literary marketplace. This is followed by an assessment of recent attempts to promote short story readership in the UK. Other contributors look at forms such as the short-short and the short story sequence.  The range of authors discussed includes Martin Amis, Anita Desai, Salman Rushdie and James Joyce. The short story is the most international of genres; this is reflected in chapters on Jorge Luis Borges and Italo Calvino and on Japanese short fiction. Postcolonial and translation theory are combined with the close reading of specific texts. Neglected authors, such as the Welsh writer Dorothy Edwards and the colonial figure Frank Swettenham, are re-evaluated and we also consider genre writing, with chapters on crime fiction and Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles.  Integrating theory and practice, The Short Story will appeal both to writers and to students of  literary criticism. 



","“I am delighted to write in support of this publication. The Short Story opens with a brilliant discussion by the writer A.L. Kennedy of the particular qualities and strengths of the short story form. Her essay ‘Small in a Way That a Bullet is Small’ moves our thinking beyond the twentieth century linking of the short story with the transitory, as she emphasises instead the form’s ability to capture moments of irrevocable change. As she writes, ‘There is a moment when you weren’t in love and then you are. There is a moment when your mother isn’t dead and then she is….There are defining moments in anybody’s life, which mark them forever, which don’t actually take an awful long time: that’s what the short story is about.’ (3) This powerful opening is complemented by a wide-ranging set of essays which explore topics as diverse as the (post)colonial stories of Frank Swettenham and those of Anita Desai, the ‘Martian’ stories of Ray Bradbury and ‘female sadism’ in the stories of the Japanese writers Junichiro Tanizaki  and Hitomi Kanehara. Ailsa Cox’s authoritative and engaging introduction draws out the connections between these diverse manifestations of the short form and the collection as a whole is a testament to the richness and vitality of contemporary work in and on the short story.”

- Professor Clare Hanson, Head of English, School of Humanities, University of Southampton

""This [book] creates an assortment of writing covering a broad range of topics from artistic, practical and scholarly perspectives on writing and studying the short story and its subsidiaries...there is something here for everyone no matter how obscure your interests are. This book is stimulating for both reader and critic""

Laura Tansley, University of Glasgow, The Kelvingrove Review, Issue 4, 2009
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-09-01,Raúl Fernández-Calienes and Judith Barr Bachay,"Women Moving Forward: Volume One: Narratives of Identity, Migration, Resilience, and Hope",Paperback,9781847188298,14.99,"“Women Moving Forward: Narratives of Identity, Migration, Resilience, and Hope is an excellent example of ethnographic inquiry, revealing the normative behavior of women within specific cultural boundaries, while also illuminating the individual transcendence of norms in the quest for self-realization. The stories in Women Moving Forward are each unique in their depiction of culture and mores and allow the reader to catch a glimpse of the lives of women in various parts of the globe. Despite their variety, however, the stories are united in their core as they each validate the very human need to hope for a future that is fulfilling and, at least to some extent, self-constructed rather than imposed...this book cannot be missed.”
Associate Professor Beatriz González Robinson, Ph.D., LMHC
Vice President for University Planning and Chief of Staff, St. Thomas University
State Coordinator, Office of Women in Higher Education
Fellow, American Council on Education

“These are the stories that find voice in the human spirit. The simple, yet deeply moving narratives of everyday people who share an extraordinary experience – uprooting themselves from their native lands to seek the centuries-old dream of a better life in the United States. A new language, new culture, new political system. With opportunities to grow nearly offset by deep-seated prejudices that cause more than one to question the wisdom of their life-altering decision. Yet all persevere. All prevail. So, ultimately, these are the stories of everyday heroes (though none might admit to it). Pioneers, following the great American tradition that says, ‘You are welcome here, and with hard work and patience, you too will realize your dream.’ They hail from Cuba, Jamaica, and elsewhere, but each has made a new home in a strange new place without sacrificing their cherished traditions and values. And they and their adopted land are the better for it. So sit back and enjoy these twelve humble, yet beautiful tales. Raúl Fernández-Calienes and Judy Barr Bachay have given us a treasure.”
Brother Herman E. Zaccarelli, C.S.C.
Formerly Director, Educational Conference Center, Kings College, Pennsylvania
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-10-01,Rodney Stenning Edgecombe,A Self-divided Poet: Form and Texture in the Verse of Thomas Hood,Paperback,9781847189363,19.99,"Whereas Thomas Hood has long been regarded as a minor comic poet, this book--the first to devote itself exclusively to his verse--provides a detailed analysis of two ""serious"" poems (""Hero and Leander"" and ""The Plea of the Midsummer Fairies"") so as to give a better sense of his range. Most commentators have pointed to the influence of Keats on such occasions, but close examination reveals an even greater debt to Elizabethan and Metaphysical poets, whose sometimes playful deployment of the conceit struck a chord in his sensibility.

At the same time, the book gives Hood's comic genius its due, supplying detailed accounts of the deftness and panache of his light-hearted oeuvre. One chapter examines his excursion into the mock-heroic mode (Odes and Addresses to Great People), and another his reliance on that airiest of forms, the capriccio (Whims and Oddities). The study concludes with an extensive examination of ""Miss Kilmansegg and Her Precious Leg,"" showing how Hood was here able to inflect a jeu d'esprit with a fine Juvenalian passion.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-10-01,William Gray,"Death and Fantasy: Essays on Philip Pullman, C. S. Lewis, George MacDonald and R. L. Stevenson",Hardback,9781847188717,24.99,"Drawing on philosophy, theology and psychoanalysis as well as on literary criticism, this collection of essays explores a range of fantasy texts with particular attention to the various ways in which they seek to deal with the reality of death. The essays uncover some fascinating links, and indeed tensions, between the writers discussed.    







","“Death and Fantasy is a concise and welcome gathering of work by William Gray on notable authors of fantasy: Philip Pullman, C. S. Lewis, George MacDonald, and Robert Louis Stevenson. In nine astute and insightful chapters the volume analyses texts ranging from Macdonald’s Phantastes to Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia and from Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde to Pullman’s His Dark Materials. Examining the ways in which death is both dealt with and used in these fantasies, Gray reveals fascinating interconnections between their authors.”

Dr Adrienne Gavin, Reader in English Literature, Canterbury Christ Church University


“This book makes a scholarly and very readable contribution to matters of current critical debate in the area of children’s fantasy. It displays how much children’s literature criticism has to gain from scholars who bring to it a background of knowledge of other disciplines. Supported throughout by useful close reading, Gray’s arguments are well-maintained and display knowledge of a very wide range of psychoanalytic, philosophical and theological sources, all brought to bear in a relevant and convincing manner. Perhaps the most interesting sections are those where Gray displays the affinities between George MacDonald and Philip Pullman. The suggestion that Pullman’s creative achievement depends on a misreading of C.S.Lewis, just as Lewis’s did on a misreading of MacDonald, is a particularly fertile area for further critical investigation. The book has much to offer to scholars and students alike.”

Dr Pat Pinsent, Senior Research Fellow, National Centre for Children’s Literature, Roehampton University

""Death and Fantasy thus offers a tantalizing glimpse at how psychoanalytic criticism can be applied to the analysis of fantasy literature and its preoccupation with death. Gray gives critics some new approaches to the study of these authors, and hopefully will in future expand upon the nature of death in their works and in the works of other fantasists.""

David D. Oberhelman in Mythlore, 109/110 Spring/Summer 2010

""...this is a valuable book for scholars interested in the relationship of one generation of fantasy writers with the next. ...this study is wonderfully fluent in style, and the comparative theology is magnificent""

Stacie L. Hanes, Journal of the Fantastic Arts, Vol. 21, No. 1, 2010





",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-10-01,Mark Lussier and Bruce Matsunaga,Engaged Romanticism: Romanticism as Praxis,Hardback,9781847189141,34.99,"In November 2006, the International Conference on Romanticism convened for its annual conference on the campus of Arizona State University and explored a wide range of work identified as “engaged romantic,” as a mode and a practice, rather than simply as a literary historical period defined by a specific temporal spectrum (c. 1750-1850). As the introduction to the volume suggests, most writers during the period were actively engaged in the cultural articulation of the aesthetics, criticism, ethics, poetics, and politics of the age, and a large number of writers deployed their talents to help transform the public sphere, whether shaping responses to the practices of slavery or resisting the emergence of a crystallized form of Newtonianism at the foundation of Enlightenment epistemology. The intellectual and disciplinary range of the essays included in this volume pay tribute to this often neglected aspect of the revolutionary dictates of what has come to be called “Romanticism,” and the following critical essays, offered by both thoroughly established and relatively new voices within Romantic Studies, examine virtually every aspect of this approach to Romantic thought and writing. Whether focused on the formal and intellectual practices at the foundation of the novel, the philosophical resonance of William Wordsworth within emergent forms of eco-criticism, the play of the transatlantic Romantic imagination, the aesthetic commitments of Romantic art and music, or the current process of pedagogical engagements, the essays sound the depths of what engaged practice can accomplish, both in the age of Romanticism itself as well as our own moment.
 


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-10-01,"Mompoloki Mmangaka Bagwasi, Modupe Moyosore Alimi and Patrick James Ebewo",English Language and Literature: Cross Cultural Currents,Hardback,9781847189523,39.99,"
English Language and Literature: Cross Cultural Currents is a collection of essays that interrogate the precarious positions of English and African languages in an era in which English is increasingly becoming the dominant language in Africa while at the same time there is a growing resistance against it. Though many Africans take pride in their own cultural heritage that is expressed by their African languages, they require the economic and social benefits of English. The book presents a language dilemma in which both African languages and English enhance, inhibit, and influence each other.
The data used by the authors spans a broad spectrum of sources including: fiction, courts, parliamentary Hansards, House of Chiefs, classrooms, internet, roads and bus ranks. Thus, it is reflective of the most and least educated, the most and least influential Africans. The presentations provide broad insights about African symbols, metaphors, imagery and folklores representing undocumented literature that challenge scientific imperialism and deficit theories. The diversity and freshness of the ideas in the book stem from the unique blend of the background of the contributors: English language and literature teachers, teachers of African languages, educationalists, sociologists, historians and politicians. Thus the book is a valuable asset to scholars in linguistics, anthropology and language policy makers.



",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-10-01,Ganakumaran Subramaniam,Ideological Stylistics and Fictional Discourse,Hardback,9781847188984,39.99,"This book focuses on ideology and its function in fictional discourse, exploring the link between textual ideologies and real ideologies in text-production environments. It attempts this through a specific focus on the social and linguistic elements that control the presence, the use, and the presentation of ideology, and also the way in which linguistic elements are controlled and manipulated by the collective consciousness of the text producer. This correlation between fictional discourse and ideology is revealed through a series of chapters that cover four closely interrelated areas, focusing specifically on Malaysian and Singaporean fiction.  Firstly, the positioning of Malaysian and Singaporean literatures in English as individual literary traditions. This is to counter the non-recognition of Malaysian and Singaporean literatures as individual traditions in spite of five decades of independence.  Secondly, establishing a contextual (socio-cultural and political) framework as a basis for discussion on real ideology, arguing that Malaysian and Singaporean writers have moved beyond the anti-western nationalistic stage and on to more personal and communal concerns such as race relations, identity and a sense of belonging. Thirdly, rationalising the social structures of ideology that are likely to be found in the Malaysian and Singaporean social milieus, especially location and text-specific social variables of ideology. Lastly, it seeks to reveal a linguistic-oriented approach for the study of textual ideologies and for linking textual ideologies to ideologies in the overall text production environment.  The book  ultimately shows the significant possibilities of systematic links between textual ideology, and the real ideology in the text production environment, through what can best be termed as ideological stylistics. In doing so, it aims to contribute significantly to studies of ideology in general and more specifically on ideology on Malaysian and Singaporean literatures in English.




","“Ganakumaran Subramaniam ‘s Ideological Stylistics and  Fictional Discourse is a distinctive contribution to the growing body of work at the interface of language and literature study, with a focus on new Literatures written in English.  The very use of the term ‘new literatures’ provokes questions concerning who is defining what as ‘new’ and for whom might the ‘new’ be designated; it therefore simultaneously invokes political questions.  Writing with real clarity and insight and drawing on texts from Malaysian and Singaporean literature, Subramaniam is alert to such issues and shows how political ideologies are not just stated or represented but are produced in the very textual organisation of fictional discourses.  This book makes a major and an original contribution to studies of the literature and language of S.E. Asia.” Professor Ronald Carter, Professor of Modern English Language, University of Nottingham,England.  


",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-10-01,Jorge Febles,Into the Mainstream: Essays on Spanish American and Latino Literature and Culture,Paperback,9781847189318,14.99,"Into the Mainstream: Essays on Spanish American and Latino Literature and Culture is a direct outgrowth of Jorge Febles’s involvement with the annual conference of the American Culture Association and the Popular Culture Association.  In that sense, the compilation expands on a project initiated in 1993 by Helen Ryan-Ransom with her book Imagination, Emblems and Expressions:  Essays on Latin American, Caribbean, and Continental Culture and Identity (Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1993).   David William Foster, who penned a lengthy preface to that collection, justified its intent by underscoring:  “The very fact that our approach to culture is dominated by categories based on high, academic, institutionalized phenomena poses from the very outset the question of how to deal with all those other cultural manifestations that do not comfortably assimilate to the accepted canon” (Ryan-Ransom 3).  The past fourteen years, however, have witnessed a radical transformation of that so-called canon due to the widespread acceptance of ideas espoused by cultural theorists like García Canclini, Homi Bhabba, Said, Stuart Hall, Benhabib, Bourdieu and countless others.  Therefore, the ambivalence regarding what constitutes culture identified by Foster is inoperative nowadays to a substantial degree.  In fact, a fundamental component of the postmodern outlook resides in the ability to blend comfortably the high and the low, the elitist and the popular realms of production in a multiplicity of textual artifacts, creative as well as critical in nature.  Hence, the essays that conform Into the Mainstream do not question barriers anymore, nor do they expound on the need to assign a discursive intellectual space to matters pertaining to popular culture.  Thus, this collection espouses an inclusive approach in which a variety of analytical approaches coalesce to reflect on an equally kaleidoscopic textuality.
Pursuant to its comprehensive nature, Into the Mainstream airs established as well as developing critical voices so as to reflect both ideological continuity and evolving viewpoints. Scholars who have compiled strong academic records like Hortensia Morell, Raquel Rivas Rojas, Elsa Gilmore, David Petreman and Benjamín Torres Caballero share a venue with younger critics like Corey Shouse Tourino, Roberto Vela Córdova, Stacy Hoult, Eduardo del Río, Bruce Campbell, Laura Redruello, Dinora Cardoso and April Marshall, as well as with two graduate students about to complete their academic preparation:  Nuria Ibáñez Quintana and María Teresa Vera Rojas.  The result is an eclectic compilation meant to elicit discussion on the basis of its variety.  Into the Mainstream’s primordial objective is to place these provocative essays—which are expanded versions of papers presented during the annual gathering of the American Culture Association and the Popular Culture Association in the period 2002-2005—along with the numerous subjects they treat in the academic mainstream where they rightfully belong.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-10-01,Scott L. Baugh,Mediating Chicana/o Culture: Multicultural American Vernacular,Paperback,9781847189530,14.99,"Mediating Chicana/o Culture: Multicultural American Vernacular covers an unconventional array of topics—from handkerchiefs, votives, and graffiti to food, fútbol, and the Internet—as well as cutting edge literature, cinema, photography, and more. In its cross-disciplinary approach, this collection makes an invaluable contribution to the scholarship on Chicana and Chicano culture and provides engaging readings for courses in race/ethnic studies, media studies, and American studies.

Collected chapters critically interrogate the underlying tensions between personal expressions and public demonstrations in their on-going negotiation of Chicana and Chicano identity. Drawing on the revolutionary work of Gloria Anzaldúa, Tómas Ybarra-Frausto, Emma Pérez, Alfred Arteaga, Chela Sandoval, Julia Watson and Sidonie Smith, the Latina Feminist Group, among others, chapters in this collection closely read the processes that seem built into the actions and behaviors, the products, the art, the literature, and the discourse surrounding the search for identity in the rush of our diverse 21st-century existence. Mediating Chicana/o Culture lays bare the methods by which we define ourselves as individuals and as members of communities, examining not only the message, but also the medium and the methods of mediating identity and culture.


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-10-01,Indira Gazieva,Oriental Languages and Cultures,Hardback,9781847189196,24.99,"Oriental Languages and Cultures is a collection of new essays by academics who participated in the 1st international conference Oriental Languages and Cultures, held at Russian State University for the Humanities in Moscow on 22-23 November 2007. The collection presents a vivid overview of current problems in the study of the languages, literatures and cultures of the Middle and Far East. The uniqueness of this book lies in its bringing to publication a steadily growing interest in  languages and culture of the Far East, as well as the East as a cultural phenomenon which has long been observed in the former Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia. The book is divided into five sections. The first contains essays outlining new approaches in the understanding of theoretical concepts relating to oriental languages. The second section explores new directions in the field of oriental literature. The third surveys a growing Russian interest in the culture of the Far East. The fourth section provides insights that help towards understanding the nature of the tolerance and gender problem in Eastern languages and cultures; and the fifth section’s contributions address the issues of assessment and pedagogy in the teaching of Oriental languages.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-10-01,Valerie Pellatt and Elena Minelli,Proceedings of the Bath Symposium,Hardback,9781847188328,29.99,"Bath University set up its MA course in interpreting and translating in 1966. This volume celebrates forty years of interpreter and translator training at Bath. The papers cover a range of interests, from the history and development of the world-class programme, to the use of IT in the teaching and practice of translation. Issues of teaching technique – in both interpreting and translating - quality assessment in the classroom and the workplace, questions of detailed operation, such as short term memory in interpreting and the evolution of lexis are all tackled. 

The volume provides an example of the way in which professionals and academics can work together in this highly specialised field. It reflects the principles and practice at the heart of the professions and the issues which relate to training and the work place in the modern world. Contributors include past and present staff and students of the Bath MAIT and professionals and trainers from other well-known institutions.


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-10-01,"Sarah Buxton, Laura Campbell, Tracey Dawe and Elise Hugueny-Leger",Reflections: New Directions in Modern Languages and Cultures,Hardback,9781847188366,29.99,"Mirroring, doubling, imitation, parody, intertextuality. The contributors to this volume — all postgraduate researchers at the time of writing — engage with some of these familiar words to produce articles that deal with the concept of “reflections” in literary and visual culture. Ranging from Italian Golden Age theatre to contemporary French literature and from Cuban film to German fiction, the twelve essays in this volume provide a fresh look at Modern Language Studies, highlighting in particular, the interdisciplinary nature of this field.

On one level, the volume speaks to those exploring Modern Language Studies for the first time, for example, undergraduate students, who seek a greater understanding of the dialogue between language and culture. However, the individual essays also have the potential to attract experienced scholars either looking for new knowledge on specialist subjects, or ways of approaching research in Modern Languages. Through its central theme, Reflections: New Perspectives in Modern Languages and Cultures makes some suggestions about the way forward for Modern Language Studies.




","""The conference covered a broad variety of periods, languages and cultures. The overarching theme of ‘Reflections’ meant that many contributions were interrelated and stimulated fruitful questions and discussions. ""Reflections: New Directions in Modern Languages and Cultures"" is a coherent and tightly-focused volume.""

Dr Alison Fell, senior lecturer in French, University of Leeds 


“Great thought has gone into the composition of this volume, particularly its division into constituent but coherent sections. Although initially springing from a Durham Modern Languages initiative, the articles included here, ranging as they do from Medieval to the modern and dealing with such diverse forms as the textual, theatrical, cinematic and artistic, are sure to interest students and scholars with an interest in cultural production and cultural studies more generally”.

 

Professor Jan Clarke, Department of French, Durham University


",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-10-01,"Pavel Drábek, Klára Kolinská and Matthew Nicholls",Shakespeare and His Collaborators over the Centuries,Hardback,9781847189783,34.99,"This book presents a series of essays exploring the cultural notion that has come to be known as “Shakespeare.” Shakespeare's collaborators are not only those who were his contemporaries but also those who have given new life to his works in a new garb, be it a play, a theatre production, a film, a TV play, a novel, a museum item, or a collection of illustrated strips.

The collection presents papers given at an international conference entitled Shakespeare and His Collaborators over the Centuries, which took place at the Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University (Brno, Czech Republic) on February 8-11, 2006. The individual contributions deal with the notion of collaborating with Shakespeare both in a literal as well as figurative sense. The essays in the first section discuss the literary and cultural milieus which were conducive to the creation of Shakespeare’s works. The second part discusses early adaptations and variants of Shakespeare’s plays while the third section offers a broader range of artistic (as well as idolatrous) repercussions of the Shakespearean canon.


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-10-01,Martha Carpentier,Susan Glaspell: New Directions in Critical Inquiry,Paperback,9781847188441,12.99,"Pulitzer Prize-winning dramatist, founding member of the Provincetown Players, best-selling novelist and award-winning short fiction writer, Susan Glaspell (1876-1948) has been recovered from the marginalization of women writers that took place in the post-war period of canon-formation in America.  Her recovery, begun by feminist critics and theatre historians in the 1980s, reached a milestone with the 1995 publication of the first collection of critical essays, Susan Glaspell: Essays on Her Theater and Fiction, edited by Linda Ben-Zvi. Since then scholarship has been exploding, with six major books on Glaspell and her work published since the year 2000, several by authors represented here. While Glaspell’s work with the Provincetown Players, 1915-1922, was crucial for the development of American theatre, scholars are now fully realizing the extent to which her stories and novels, as well as all of her plays, reflect a deep engagement with the major literary movements and political events of her age. A realist concerned with issues of social justice and a modernist committed to exploring the psyche, Glaspell through her art provides thoughtful commentary, not only on feminist issues of women and gender, but on war, class, socialism, idealism, aesthetics, ethics and law. 

Susan Glaspell: New Directions in Critical Inquiry continues the tradition started by Ben-Zvi and brings it up to date, featuring new work in various post-structural critical approaches from leading Glaspell scholars, including Americanists Mary E. Papke and Kristina Hinz-Bode; legal scholar, Patricia L. Bryan; cultural historian, J. Ellen Gainor; feminist biographer, Barbara Ozieblo; performance artist, Lucia V. Sander; and classicist Marie Molnar.


Praise for the book:
""Professor Carpentier's study of Glaspell's fiction stands as the most important work on the subject and has led to a renewed interest in the subject.""

""There is growing interest in Glaspell's writing, and this book should find a solid readership from the following fields: American drama and fiction studies, American studies, Women's studies, and Cultural Studies. I fully support the project and encourage your press to publish it.""

Linda Ben-Zvi, Professor of Theatre Studies, Tel Aviv Unviesrity
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-10-01,Jon Lewis,Tomorrow through the Past: Neal Stephenson and the Project of Global Modernization,Paperback,9781847189295,19.99,"Tomorrow Through the Past: Neal Stephenson and the Project of Global Modernization is the first collection of scholarly essays dedicated exclusively to this important voice in contemporary American fiction.  The collection grew from five essays originally presented at the 2006 XXth Century Literature Conference at the University of Louisville, and the contributors are made up of graduate students, independent scholars, and university professors who hope the collection will aid general readers as well as instructors teaching Stephenson and professionals building the critical response to his work.

Reading through the lenses of history and linguistic, cultural, and science fiction studies, the essays in the collection examine each of Stephenson’s novels from The Big U to The Baroque Cycle as well as his long non-fiction work on computer operating systems, In the Beginning … Was the Command Line.  Included in this collection is a new interview conducted with Stephenson during the summer of 2006.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-10-01,Melanie H. Ross and Greg W. Zacharias,Tracing Henry James,Hardback,9781847189158,44.99,"Range and diversity are aims of Tracing Henry James, which brings together 28 essays by established and newer Henry James scholars from eight countries in North America, Europe and Asia.  The essays are organized into an introductory section, a group of essays on Henry James’s shorter fiction, one on James’s longer fiction, one on The American Scene and James’s travel essays, one on James and criticism, and one on Henry James’s letters.



",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-10-01,Jennifer Harding and Pat Pinsent,What Do You See?  International Perspectives on Children’s Book Illustration,Hardback,9781847188502,49.99,"This extensively illustrated book is a collection of the papers given at the 2007 annual conference of the British section of the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY) and the National Centre for Research in Children's Literature (NCRCL) MA course, Roehampton University London. It reflects the convictions of the editors and the participants that picture books and other illustrated texts for children are vitally important as substance for academic debate, and that people in the English speaking world are far too often ignorant of the wealth of literary and artistic material deriving from other cultures and traditions.

 The papers explore the diversity of modern children's book illustration and consider its potential as a space for cultural dialogue and exchange. They also look at ways in which illustrations are themselves histories of art and style, arising from cultural tradition, and the extent to which they enable us to traverse boundaries and dissolve barriers.

 The sections into which this volume is divided to some extent represent different areas of debate: the work of illustrators from Europe and from the rest of the world, and the response to such books by their youthful primary audience. Attention is also paid to some of the new talent in the area of children's book illustration. While it would be impossible for any book to convey the richness of the visual experience of the conference, we hope that the illustrations may go some way towards recreating it.



","‘…there is much here to be savoured’

Elizabeth Hammill- Co-founder of Seven Stories, Childrens Books History Society Newsletter No.96- May 2010

‘From Sweden to South Africa, from Australia to Cyprus- the range of countries covered in this collection of 22 essays on piture books is astonishing. ‘What do you see?' Provides a fascinating multi-facetted insight into picture books worldwide.’

Evamaria Zettl- University of Education, Thurgau
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-10-01,Jennifer Harding and Pat Pinsent,What Do You See?  International Perspectives on Children’s Book Illustration,Paperback,978-1-4438-0007-5,25.99,"This extensively illustrated book is a collection of the papers given at the 2007 annual conference of the British section of the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY) and the National Centre for Research in Children's Literature (NCRCL) MA course, Roehampton University London. It reflects the convictions of the editors and the participants that picture books and other illustrated texts for children are vitally important as substance for academic debate, and that people in the English speaking world are far too often ignorant of the wealth of literary and artistic material deriving from other cultures and traditions.

 The papers explore the diversity of modern children's book illustration and consider its potential as a space for cultural dialogue and exchange. They also look at ways in which illustrations are themselves histories of art and style, arising from cultural tradition, and the extent to which they enable us to traverse boundaries and dissolve barriers.

 The sections into which this volume is divided to some extent represent different areas of debate: the work of illustrators from Europe and from the rest of the world, and the response to such books by their youthful primary audience. Attention is also paid to some of the new talent in the area of children's book illustration. While it would be impossible for any book to convey the richness of the visual experience of the conference, we hope that the illustrations may go some way towards recreating it.




","‘…there is much here to be savoured’

Elizabeth Hammill- Co-founder of Seven Stories, Childrens Books History Society Newsletter No.96- May 2010

‘From Sweden to South Africa, from Australia to Cyprus- the range of countries covered in this collection of 22 essays on piture books is astonishing. ‘What do you see?' Provides a fascinating multi-facetted insight into picture books worldwide.’

Evamaria Zettl- University of Education, Thurgau
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-10-01,Ágnes Pethő,"Words and Images on the Screen: Language, Literature and Moving Pictures",Hardback,9781847188434,39.99,"The screen has never been merely a canvas for the images to be displayed but also – to quote Jean-Luc Godard – “a blank page”, a surface for inscriptions and a “stage” for all kinds of linguistic occurrences be their audible or visual. Word did not come into the world of cinema at the time of the talkies but has been a primordial medial “companion” that has shaped the cinematic experience from its very beginnings. This volume offers a collection of essays that question the role of words and images in the context of moving pictures covering a wide area of their interconnectedness. How can we analyse literary adaptations? What is the role of adaptations in the evolution of specific national cinemas? In what way are written texts used in films? Is the model of the word and image relations used in silent films still applicable today? What major paradigms can be discerned within the multiplicity of ways Jean-Luc Godard’s cinema plays with words and images? Are these models of modernist or postmodern cinema reflected in films of other directors like R. W. Fassbinder? How do avant-garde works deal with the word and image debate? What are the connections of animation or computer games with verbal text and narrative? What is the phenomenon of jet-setting and how does it connect to the ideological implications of the relations between the culture of books and films? What happens when Hamlet is completely rewritten reflecting the ideology of late capitalism? What happens from the point of view of literariness or rejection of literariness when films are made vehicles of national propaganda? How do words get mediated through images? These are some of the questions addressed in the present volume by in-depth case studies of cinematic intermediality or more general surveys regarding cinema’s long lasting liaisons with language or literature.








",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-10-01,Zsolt Almási and Mike Pincombe,Writing the Other: Humanism versus Barbarism in Tudor  England,Hardback,9781847188359,34.99,"An international group of scholars working in early modern English literature and culture have been invited to reflect upon one of the most dynamic dialectics of the period: the opposition between the concept “human, humanist, humanism” versus the concept “barbarous, barbarian, barbarism.” The result is Writing the Other: Humanism versus Barbarism in Tudor England. 

The essays in this volume range widely across the literary and cultural field mapped out by this opposition, thus revealing a rich multiplicity of voices and approaches to one of the fundamental processes by which self-fashioning and also “other-fashioning” operated during the Tudor reign. The focus moves from England to North Africa, to Hungary and to the New World in its panoramic display of the vast theatre in which identities were forged.

The volume as a whole demonstrates how the cultural OtherOther was as much invented as described—“forged”  in the sense, perhaps, of “counterfeited” —during the early modern and especially the Tudor period. This invention occasionally led to the demonisation of the object of its gaze, at other times its rehumanisation; sometimes we may detect evidence of a painful act of distortion, and at others we see the purposeful and profitable creation of a self-identityidentity with an eye on the rhetorical, religious, poetic, national expectations of the readers in the new context of print culture. But everywhere we witness the remarkable energy and fertility of the primary opposition which gives this collection its central theme.


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-11-01,Mark Shackleton,Diasporic Literature and Theory - Where Now?,Hardback,978-1-4438-0013-6,34.99,"The theoretical innovations of Edward Said, Homi Bhabha, Gayatri Spivak, Stuart Hall, Paul Gilroy, James Clifford and others have in recent years vitalized postcolonial and diaspora studies, challenging ways in which we understand ‘culture’ and developing new ways of thinking beyond the confines of the nation state. The articles in this volume look at recent developments in diasporic literature and theory, alluding to the work of seminal diaspora theoreticians, but also interrogating such thinkers in the light of recent cultural production (including literature, film and visual art) as well as recent world events.

The articles are organized in pairs, offering alternative perspectives on crucial aspects of diaspora theory today: Celebration or Melancholy?; Gender Biases and the Canon of Diasporic Literature; Diasporas of Violence and Terror; Time, Place and Diasporic “Home”; and Border Crossings. A number of the articles are illustrated by discussions of particular authors, such as Caryl Phillips, Salman Rushdie, and Michael Ondaatje, and the range of reference found in this volume covers writing from many parts of the world including contemporary Chicana visual art, Asian diaspora writers, and Black British, Afro-Caribbean, Native North American, and African writing. 



",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-11-01,J. A. Downie,Henry Fielding In Our Time: Papers Presented at the Tercentenary Conference,Hardback,9781847189875,39.99,"Henry Fielding In Our Time publishes many of the papers presented at the international conference held at the University of London 19-21 April 2007 to commemorate the tercentenary of his birth. 

Written by established scholars, including the acknowledged doyen of Fielding scholars, Martin C. Battestin of the University of Virginia, as well as younger scholars who successfully bring their recent research to bear on neglected areas of Fielding’s life and works, the essays offer a cross-section of current approaches to Fielding and his writings, from his ballad operas, poetry and political journalism , via Joseph Andrews, Tom Jones and Amelia—the novels for which he is still best known—to the social pamphlets written during his years at Bow Street as magistrate for Westminster and Middlesex. 

The collection should appeal both to undergraduate and postgraduate students as well as academics and general readers interested in the eighteenth-century in general, and Fielding’s contribution to the emergence and development of the novel form in particular.



","“Fielding as we are now coming to see him is far from being the same Fielding we thought we understood in the 1970s and 1980s. The year 2007 was the tricentenary of his birth, and the conference that was organized at the University of London by Alan Downie brought together a strikingly varied array of Fielding scholars prepared to suggest, question, and argue over what had once seemed a settled canonical figure. The eighteen contributors to the resulting volume of essays range from Martin C. Battestin (the acknowledged doyen of Fielding studies) to lively new Ph.D.s. This is a refreshingly undoctrinaire collection. Half a dozen of the essays tackle particular issues in Joseph Andrews, Tom Jones, and Amelia, but most of them explore territory well beyond the familiar ground of the novels. We have here accounts of Fielding’s literary relations (including his engagement with Milton), his work as a magistrate (still under-appreciated), his understudied ballad operas (some of them successful for decades), the politics and ideology of his very neglected poems, a contrarian reading of his heterosexuality, his presentation of London, his little understood relations with Eliza Haywood, and the problems of teaching his novels to present-day undergraduates. Some of the contributors send us to unfamiliar texts and others back to very familiar ones—but no previous collection of Fielding studies takes in so much of this seemingly familiar but still surprisingly confusing and contested canonical writer. These essays constitute a stimulating contribution to an ongoing reassessment that promises to force us to rethink our comfortable assumptions about a major author.”

Professor Robert D. Hume, Evan Pugh Professor of English Literature, Penn State University


“The generation-long neglect of Henry Fielding seems to be over. Here, in a rethinking mode, are some of the most distinguished 18th century scholars and critics and also a rich array of dynamic younger voices—all passionately determined to see Fielding anew. This is a fresh and important reconsideration of a variety of texts and issues.”

Professor J. Paul Hunter of the University of Virginia


“This important collection brings together a wide range of contributions from leading scholars of Fielding and eighteenth-century literary culture, giving a vivid and authoritative conspectus of contemporary Fielding studies, including not only fresh assessments of his most familiar work, like Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones, but also significant new scholarship on such less well-served parts of his career as his poetry, his links with contemporaries like Eliza Haywood or Voltaire, and his place in musical theatre history.”

Professor Thomas Lockwood of the University of Washington 


",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-11-01,Alex Ramon,Liminal Spaces: The Double Art of Carol Shields,Hardback,978-1-4438-0012-9,34.99,"This book offers a comprehensive reassessment of the work of Carol Shields. Arguing against enduring conceptions of Shields’s fiction as celebratory domestic miniaturism, the study presents her work as more expansive and equivocal than has sometimes been recognised, reading her texts as “liminal spaces” situated on a series of formal and thematic borders. Close attention is paid to Shields’s stylistic experimentation, to her subversions of auto/biography and historiography, and to the significance of her critical writing, while works which have previously received very little analysis, such as her early poetry collections, are also examined. Intertextual links between Shields’s work and that of a range of other writers including Phillip Larkin, Iris Murdoch, Alice Munro and Margaret Atwood are identified and explored, and the study also draws extensively on manuscript materials which give an insight into Shields’s working methods and extend debate about her experiments with narrative perspective and genre-mixing.



","“This is the first critical study on Carol Shields to be published in Britain. It is a scholarly and celebratory book which honours the wide range of this very popular writer’s work. The great value of this book is that it encourages us to take a second (or maybe even a third) look at novels we thought we knew well, for Ramon’s Shields is an altogether odder and more experimental writer than we may have thought, with her excursions into the wilder areas of fantasy and imagination, postmodernism and paradox. Ramon offers new subversive critical insights into this most discreetly subversive woman writer’s works.”

 - Coral Ann Howells, Professor Emerita at the University of Reading; co-editor of the Cambridge History of Canadian Literature



“This elegantly written, persuasively argued book is the most comprehensive study of Shields's work yet carried out. It explores her poetry and critical writing alongside her much-admired fiction and offers many fresh insights based on extensive research in the Shields archive. Ramon attends to some of the darker and more eccentric elements of Shields's writing, and his revelation of the play of light and shade in her work challenges the usual readings of her as a sunny, optimistic writer.”
- Dr. Faye Hammill, senior lecturer in English, University of Strathclyde

",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-11-01,Sarah A. Appleton,"Once upon a Time: Myth, Fairy Tales and Legends in Margaret Atwood’s Writings",Hardback,9781847186843,29.99,"While it is often acknowledged that Margaret Atwood's novels are rife with allusions from the oral tradition of myth, legends, fables, and fairy tales, the implications of her liberal usage bear study. The essays in this volume have been written by some of the most influential Margaret Atwood scholars internationally, each exploring Atwood’s use of primal, indeed archetypal, narratives to illuminate her fiction and poetry. These essays interact with all types of such narratives, from fairy tales and legends, to Greek, Roman, Biblical, and pagan mythologies, to contemporary processes of myth and tale creation.  And, as the works in this collection demonstrate, Atwood’s use of myths and fairy tales allows for an abundance of old, yet fresh material for contemporary readers. By reconciling, yet by also revisioning, the archetypal motifs, characters, and narratives, Atwood’s writings present a familiar, yet unique, reading experience.

","""Margaret Atwood is on record as saying that Grimm’s Fairy Tales influenced her profoundly, and much scholarly work has already been done on this important aspect of her writing.  However, in Once upon a Time, Sarah Appleton has gathered together nine fascinating new essays on Atwood’s use of myth and fairy tales by specialists from Canada, England, Israel, and the United States.  This collection offers new perspectives on the function of fairy tale, myth, and legend in Atwood’s earlier work and brings this discussion up-to-date through analyses of recent novels, like The Blind Assassin and Oryx and Crake, and the staging of The Penelopiad.  And if readers are curious about the fate of princes and male heroes in Atwood’s hands, then there is an essay here that will get you thinking about them.  Every student of Atwood, or of contemporary culture more broadly, will want to read Once upon a Time.""
—Sherrill Grace, F.R.S.C., Professor of English and Distinguished University Scholar, The University of British Columbia
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-11-01,Andrea Fischerová,Romanticism Gendered: Male Writers as Readers of Women’s Writing in Romantic Correspondence,Hardback,9781847186812,39.99,"This study focuses on the six writing men who have been throughout decades regarded as the alpha and omega of British Romanticism: Byron, Coleridge, Keats, Scott, Shelley, and Wordsworth. It sees these men as a representative cohort of their time and examines their letters as results of a reading process. Although letters are usually seen as additional sources of reference in literary studies, in this book they are treated as the dominant information material: correspondence enables to reconsider British Romanticism on the basis of the epistolary communication of the first half of the nineteenth century.

The target information from the letters are references to women writers and to their writings. A detailed analysis of the correspondence manages to answer the question whether male Romantics regarded writing women as “provoking” from time to time, as Duncan Wu assumes, and whether the gender identity of the woman author influenced the way male readers read her literary works.

The examination of the correspondence thus takes a gendered perspective on British Romanticism. This approach to the target research data discloses a long list of almost 120 names of women writers from different periods and of different literary genres. Whereas the male readers in question have acquired a well-established, stable long-term position within literary history, the women were often marginalized, even forgotten. The study presents plentiful examples proving the discrepancies between what the twenty-first-century reader regards as the core of women’s Romantic literary tradition, and what the Romantic reader did.

The following women writers are discussed in the study in detail: Susannah Centlivre, Anne Finch (Lady Winchelsea), Ann Radcliffe, Mary Robinson, Felicia Hemans, Mary Shelley, Joanna Baillie, Maria Edgeworth, Maria Jane Jewsbury, Catherine Grace Godwin, and Emmeline Fisher.





","""The study 'Romanticism Gendered: Male Writers as Readers of Women’s Writing in Romantic Correspondence' offers a new and stimulating approach to British Romanticism. The author focuses on the correspondence of the six major poets and singles out their respective evaluation of English, Scottish and Irish female writers. Based on a thorough theoretical discussion of the letter as a genre, receptionist aesthetics and the construction of the Romantic canon, the study offers, in the letters of Scott, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Shelley und Byron, inspiring insights into the phenomenon of collective and individual reading and the striking differences in evaluation due to reigning cultural expectations and particular individual situations. One of several remarkable results is the revision of the existing opinion concerning Wordsworth’s attitude to younger female writers, especially in his later years, and the discovery of an intense interest in women poets who have received only minor attention in contemporary literáry history. Based on countless Romantic letters, the study presents an innovative picture of the complex relationship between male and female poets and the existing network of gender prejudice in the early 19th century.""
 
-- Prof. Dr. Dieter A. Berger (University of Regensburg, Germany)


""While the traditional canon of English Romantic writers is an exclusively male one, recent scholarship has been busy tracing the many female writers who were also active – and often more commercially and critically successful – than the well-known male figures Wordsworth and Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keats. Yet frequently the revision of traditional perceptions has taken place at the price of simply projecting the earlier critical bias in favour of male writers onto the male Romantics themselves. This was aided by many biased quotations, for example by Byron, which could be employed to characterise male Romantics as narrow-minded chauvinists.
Andrea Fischerová’s study shows how much more complexly female writers were viewed by the male Romantics. Her study uses the crucial Romantic medium of the letter to assess the ways in which male Romantics viewed their female colleagues. It manages to show that male Romantic writers showed remarkable reverence for established female writers, such as Susannah Centlivre, appreciated the trademark character and style of Ann Radcliffe, and even actively promoted women’s writing, as in the case of Mary Shelley. At the same time the male writers were children of their time in treating female writers in traditional patriarchal terms, sometimes in flirtatious ways, yet also sometimes to the point of devaluing their works and even actively discouraging them. That no general tendencies can be discerned also becomes evident in the curious silence with which the works of Charlotte Smith are ignored in the correspondence analysed in the study. 
The male Romantics, this Andrea Fischerová demonstrates, struggled to construct their own sense of tradition, yet their motivations ranged from vanity to nationalism and refuse to conform to any homogenous reasoning. English Romanticism continues to provide intriguing riddles and presents the reader and critic with strange alliances and surprising responses to other writers and literary tradition. Andrea Fischerovà’s study adds a significant contribution to the ongoing debates on English Romanticism and especially its gender aspects. It is well worth publishing.""

-- Prof. Rainer Emig, M.A. (Warwick), D.Phil. (Oxon.), (from September 2008 Chair of English, Leibniz University, Hanover, Germany)  



",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-11-01,Rachel Dickinson and Keith Hanley,"Ruskin's Struggle for Coherence: Self-Representation through Art, Place and Society",Paperback,9781847189943,14.99,"The writers of the ten essays collected here address a central problem in Ruskin studies—that of coherence in his multi-disciplinary works. They attempt to define the forms and mythic structure of his writings and to match what Ruskin himself refers to as the “polygon” of his thought with their interdisciplinary approaches. In differing degrees of application, these essays view it from the angles of art and literary criticism, aesthetics, formalism, myth criticism, cultural topography, history and geography, psychoanalysis, historicism, postructuralism, disability studies, neo-colonialism, and sociological and educational theory. As is explained in the editorial introduction, there is no pretension to completion, either individually or altogether, as that would ignore precisely what all Ruskin’s writings are finally about: what he called in a lecture of 1868 “The Mystery of Life and Its Arts”—that which no great artist or thinker has been able conclusively to pin down but which has effectively spurred all their intellectual and creative activities. 
Tony Tanner’s essay, “Ruskin and the Sea”, is a virtuoso critical response to Ruskin’s response to both the sea and Turner’s paintings; Clive Wilmer’s “Ruskin and the Sense of an Ending: Apocalypse and Literary Form” is the exploration by a poet-critic of the interrelationship in Ruskin’s writing between time and spatiality; in “Sex and the City—Death in Venice: An Argument about Ruskinian Myth”, Robert Hewison takes issue with reductive autobiographical readings of The Stones of Venice; Keith Hanley’s “Ruskin’s Holy Land: the Sacred Language of Landscape” explores the representational content of some of Ruskin’s key places as adaptations of the critical sacred site of the Holy Land; Francis O’Gorman’s essay, “Ruskin’s Mountain Gloom”, confronts Ruskin’s increasingly anguished and disorientating awareness of the collapse of his early aspirations as a great cultural teacher; in “A Fine Grotesque or a Pathetic Fallacy? The Role of Objects in the Autobiographical Writing of Ruskin and Proust”, Alison Milbank celebrates the disjunction between the world of external objects and Ruskin’s subjectivism as the working of Ruskin’s “grotesque”; Deborah Sherman examines the same disjunctions in the light of trauma theory and disability studies by linking them to Ruskin’s late mental breakdowns and his final extended silence; in his essay, “Recontextualizing ‘The Two Boyhoods’: Ruskin, Thornbury and the Double Lives of Turner”, Andrew Leng argues that Ruskin attempted to retain for himself the kind of cultural wholeness he had once attributed to Turner’s art  by exerting a controlling part in the first formal, two-volume Life of Turner by Walter Thornbury; David Thiele’s “Ruskin, Authority, and Adult Education” examines the contradictory tensions in Ruskin’s educational outlook in the context of “the Victorian movement for adult ‘self-culture’”, particularly in the practices and ideology of the London Working Men’s College; and in “Reading Unto This Last—A Transformative Experience: Gandhi in South Africa”, Judith M. Brown recounts the transformation of what was arguably Ruskin’s most influential political intervention, attributable partly to “the power and spread of the English language” and partly to the compatibility of what she calls “ideals rooted in the Hindu tradition.”

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-11-01,Sherry R. Truffin,Schoolhouse Gothic: Haunted Hallways and Predatory Pedagogues in Late Twentieth-Century American Literature and Scholarship,Hardback,9781847189936,29.99,"The “Schoolhouse Gothic,” undertaken by insiders and outsiders to the academy alike and embodied both in literature and in academic discourse, draws on Gothic metaphors and themes in representing and interrogating contemporary American schools and educators. Curses from the past take the form of persistent power inequities (of race, gender, class, and age) and, rather ironically, the very Enlightenment that was to save the moderns from rigid, ancient, mystified hierarchies. In Schoolhouse Gothic literature, including works by Stephen King, Flannery O’Connor, Toni Morrison, Joyce Carol Oates, and David Mamet, school buildings, classrooms, and/or offices, function as traps, or analogues to the claustrophobic family mansions, monasteries, and convents of old. In Schoolhouse Gothic scholarship, the trap is academic objectivity, viewed not as a lofty goal but rather as an institutional strategy of concealment that blinds the scholar to his or her own prejudices and renders even the most well-meaning complicit with inequitable power structures. The combination of curse and trap common to the Gothic scenario produces paranoia, violence, and monstrosity. In Schoolhouse Gothic literature, schools turn students into psychopaths and machines. In the scholarship, the product is discourse, or “epistemic violence” reified. The Schoolhouse Gothic suggests—at the very least—that Americans have become increasingly uneasy about the role of the academy, increasingly mistrustful of its guardians, and increasingly convinced that something sinister lies behind its
officially benevolent exterior.


","""Professor Truffin's elegant study defines a literature about school days. Since the Gothic always reveals an alternative history, the hidden underside of experience, these are not the bright happy times of school anthems and graduation speeches, but a history of power abused and trust betrayed. Schoolhouse Gothic makes us look at education and American literature with new eyes. This is an important book, and it will be widely read and admired.""

- Charles Crow, Professor Emeritus of English at Bowling Green State University 
Editor of American Gothic: An Anthology and A Companion to the Regional Literatures of America


",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-11-01,"Jacqueline Genet, Sylvie Mikowski and Fabienne Garcier",The Book in Ireland,Paperback,978-1-4438-0014-3,19.99,"This volume on the Book in Ireland, originally published in France, brings together contributions by scholars in Irish studies from both countries and by Irish professionals in the field such as writer-publishers and curators.

In three different sections, it explores the relation between Irish people and the printed word in various contexts, beginning with the emergence of private presses which, from the late 19th century onwards, and following the example of William Morris’s Kelmscott Press in England, renewed a time-honoured editorial and typographical tradition. It highlights the importance of the printed word in the passing on and circulating of ideas, through translation, teaching, political propaganda, or the publishing of literary anthologies.

It emphasizes the major role played by periodicals in Irish cultural life and the building of an Irish identity in a country where, for a variety of reasons, people were in the habit of reading more newspapers and magazines than books. 

Significantly originating from France, where the conceptual framework of the history of the book was devised, this volume brings under scrutiny many previously unexplored aspects of the field.


Praise for the book:
'These are all scholarly essays of real rigour and originality. The collection is a commendably bold and wide-ranging introduction to the Irish book in its many guises and languages.'

Declan Kiberd, Professor of Anglo-Irish Literature and Drama
UCD School of English and Drama


Inspired by William Morris, and carried along by the impetus of the Arts and Crafts Movement and the Celtic Revival, a great many publishing houses came into being at the beginning of the 20th century in Ireland. Most of them pursued the ideal of the “Book Beautiful” and devoted themselves to the cause of a literature of quality. Between 1967 and 1974, the Irish University Press continued to shape the publishing landscape; the Raven Arts Press stood out for its non-conformist spirit, rejecting the values of the Irish Renaissance, but discovering young talents and reprinting forgotten authors. One consequence of this effervescence was to stimulate readership. The study of the production and circulation of publications reveals both the desire to assert a national identity, including a renewed interest in the Gaelic language, and the wish to spread ideas, as shown, for example, by the propaganda newspaper published by the Sinn Féin Printing and Publishing Company. Encouraged by the creation of Aosdána, Irish writing showed a diversity eminently illustrated by the authors of The Field Day Anthology. From as early as 1830, periodicals took advantage of the increasing habit of reading and developments in printing: as they were cheaper than books, they became a principal means of access to literature for Irish people. The abundance of magazines such as The Dublin University Magazine, Studies and The Honest Ulsterman were ample testimony to the variety of social and cultural preoccupations.

The Book in Ireland, edited by Jacqueline Genet, Sylvie Mikowski and Fabienne Garcier, explores these various enterprises and their impact.




",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-12-01,Laura Hapke and Lisa A. Kirby,A Class of Its Own: Re-Envisioning American Labor Fiction,Hardback,978-1-4438-0105-8,39.99,"A Class of Its Own positions important and rediscovered American social protest authors within both a scholarly and student-centered context. The volume draws on the expertise and pedagogy of established and younger scholars who move gracefully from theories of what makes a text “working class” to how studies of class empower college teachers and courses. Among the authors discussed in the volume’s essays and prominent in the book’s syllabi section are Zora Neale Hurston, Stephen Crane, Agnes Smedley, and Ana Castillo.




","As the interdisciplinary field of Working-Class Studies grows, books like A Class of Its Own are shaping a new way of thinking about academic work.  By linking the scholarly study of working-class literature with strategies for teaching the same texts, this book demonstrates the commitment of Working-Class Studies scholars to make their research not merely smart and insightful but also useful.  A Class of Its Own is scholarship that makes a difference. 

Dr. Sherry Linkon, Professor of English and American Studies and Co-Director of the Center for Working-Class Studies at Youngstown State University


Hapke's approach is ... novel and engaging for anyone interested in the many fields that 'Labor's Canvas' encompasses; cultural studies, labor history, art criticism and economic history. Political Biography is also a part of Hapke's palette in that an underlying narrative thread in Labor's Canvas is the political affiliation, and thus implicit sympathy with the labor subject matter, of each of the more than thirty artists under study in the book.

Cameron M. Weber, New School for Social Research, EH.NET
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-12-01,Bert Cardullo,American Drama/Critics: Writings and Readings,Paperback,978-1-4438-0035-8,19.99,"""American  Drama/Critics: Writings and Readings"" is a collection of essays on acknowledged classics of American drama such as ""Death of a Salesman,"" ""The Glass Menagerie,"" and ""Our Town,"" and on newer but no less esteemed works like David Mamet's ""Glengarry Glen Ross"" and Sam Shepard's ""Buried Child.""  Included are interviews with the great American drama critics Eric Bentley and Stanley Kauffmann; a consideration of the practice of American dramaturgy; an analysis of the adaptation to film of several American dramas; and an examination of experimental playwriting and production in the United States, as seen in the work of Gertrude Stein as well as that of other, lesser-known avant-garde dramatists.  

This book's thesis is not only the generally accepted one that American drama is essentially a representational one and that its avant-garde experiments are just that--experimental detours that ultimate lead back to the main highway of realism and naturalism.  The thesis of ""Americam Drama/Critics"" is also that the decline of American drama in the late twentieth to early twenty-first century is paralleled by, and even attributable to, the decline or disappearance of American dramatic criticism.



",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-12-01,Peter Cochran,Byron and Orientalism,Paperback,9781847187499,18.99,"Of all the English Romantic poets Byron is often thought of as the one who was most familiar with the East. His travels, it is claimed, give him a huge advantage with which contemporaries like Southey, Moore, Shelley, and Coleridge, who had comparable orientalist ambitions, could not compete.

Byron and Orientalism sets out to examine this thesis. Based on a conference held in 2005 at Nottingham Trent University, it looks at Byron’s knowledge of the East, and of its religions in particular, in greater detail than ever before. Essays are included on Byron’s Turkish Tales, Edward Said’s attitude to Byron, Byron’s version of Islam, Byron’s Hebrew Melodies, and Byron’s influence on the orientalist writings of Pushkin and Lermontov. There is a massive introduction, setting Byron’s eastern poetry in the contexts both of European literature, English literature, and the poet’s own confused and disorientated existence.








","""If one of the strengths of the collection is that essays such as these enrich our understanding of the cultural phoenomenon of Romantic Orientalism, another is the way in which many of the volume's contributors emphasise that intercultural contact is a necessarily a two-way affair, where the distribution of agency is far from straightforward and the consequences are often unpredictable ... All told, this is an extremely valuable - impressively diverse and genuinely multidisciplinary - collection of essays, which will be of great interested to a variety of audiences ... The topic of 'Byron and Orientalism' offers similarly rich potential, and Peter Cochran brings a great wealth of experience to bear on the subject in his substantial contributions to this new volume. Cochran's 150-page introduction covers an enormous amount of ground, and provides an impressively learned account of relevant historical and literary-historical contexts, as well as a rich fund of information concerning Byroninc sources, allusions and intertexts.
...Byron and Orietalism contains much to reward the attention of Byron scholars.""

-James Watt, The Byron Journal





",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-12-01,"Dorsia Smith, Raquel Puig, and Ileana Cortés Santiago","Caribbean Without Borders: Literature, Language and Culture",Hardback,978-1-4438-0039-6,34.99,"Caribbean Studies is an emerging field. As such, many topics within this discipline have yet to be explored and developed. This collection of essays is one of the forerunners dedicated to a comprehensive study of the literature, language, and culture of the Caribbean. By exploring the works of such prominent literary scholars as Samuel Selvon and Lorna Goodison as well as the myriad of issues pertaining to the Caribbean experience, this volume provides an engaging overview of literary, language, and cultural analysis. Because of this wide range of essays, this text meets a need to examine the Caribbean in its complexity, which is rarely addressed.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-12-01,Anita Rose,Gender and Victorian Reform,Hardback,978-1-4438-0067-9,34.99,"Gender, in the nineteenth century as now, is an integral part of identity. As a result, gender, along with race  and class, has long been a vital part of public discourse about social concerns and reform. The fourteen essays in Gender and Victorian Reform address the overt and subtle ways in which gender influenced social reform in Victorian England. In addition to investigating the more readily apparent instances of gender in the areas of suffrage, women's education, and marriage law reform, the contributors to this collection examine the structure of charitable organizations, the interpretation of language and literacy, ideas of beauty, and religion through the lens of gender and offer diverse approaches to Victorian literature and culture. Some examine specific texts or single canonical authors, others introduce the reader to little-known authors and texts, and still others focus on the culture of reform rather than specific literary texts.
 
Essays are arranged into four parts, with Part I focusing on historical context and a revisioning of the historical romance.  Part II addresses more specifically the role of women in public life and in the professions. The essays in Part III look even more specificallyat the connections among reform, gender, literacy and literary genre in Eliot, Collins, and Gaskell. The final four essays offer readings of the impact of gender ideology on beauty, dress, politics and religion.
Taken as a whole, the essays in this collection present a serious consideration of the role of gender in art and in public life that spans the Victorian era. Reformist impulses are revealed in a number of Victorian texts that are not generally read as overtly political. In this way, this collection thoughtfully focuses on the influence of gender on a wide range of social movements, and moves the significance of gender beyond simply the content of Victorian fiction and the identity of the authors and into the more fundamental connection of discourse to reform.""



",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-12-01,Marianna D’Ezio,Literary and Cultural Intersections during the Long Eighteenth Century,Hardback,978-1-4438-0063-1,29.99,"Culture and literature, indeed intellectual life as a whole, in eighteenth-century Britain were characterized by complex internal tensions as well as influenced by the unprecedented atmosphere of major political, cultural and social change which led to the revolutions at end of the century. Furthermore, the diffusion of periodicals and newspapers, which formed the basis of public conversation in urban coffee-houses, functioned as a vehicle for the dispersion of works which publicly mirrored a private society in the process of transformation. The focus on this change and the circulation of new ideas on taste and polite society as well as on culture and literature can be found in the continual intertwining between the public and the private spheres of society. 

The aim of the first part of this collection of original, unpublished essays by young international scholars is to investigate the dynamics of these “overlapping” spheres through new readings of eighteenth-century literary works which not only analysed the mechanisms of the private and public spheres, but also highlighted some remarkable cultural features, such as clothing and fashion, gossip and gender issues. As suggested by the title, the second part of the collection will expand on the principal idea of “intersections” in eighteenth-century English literature: from the intersections linking the private and public spheres of British society, to those between eighteenth-century works within the British literary canon, taking into account the influence of European thought. The purpose of the second group of essays is thus that of offering fresh perspectives and a re-evaluation of literary and cultural reciprocal exchanges, in order to better locate or re-locate canonical works and authors within the eighteenth-century literary tradition. 



",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-12-01,Xavier Blanco and Max Silberztein,Proceedings of the 2007 International NooJ Conference,Hardback,978-1-4438-0053-2,34.99,"This volume contains a selection of 18 papers, chosen from among the 38 papers that were presented at the 2007 NooJ conference, Autonomous University of Barcelona, June 7-9, 2007.
NooJ is a linguistic development environment that allows linguists to formalize a wide gamut of linguistic phenomena, and then test, adapt, share and accumulate each elementary description to build linguistic “modules”, i.e. structured libraries of linguistic resources.
NooJ is also used as a corpus processor that can launch sophisticated queries over large corpora in order to produce various results (concordances, statistical analyses, information extraction, etc).
NooJ’s linguistic engine is integrated in several research centers and software companies in order to build numerous Natural Language Processing applications.


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-12-01,Cheryl Bove and Anne Rowe,"Sacred Space, Beloved City: Iris Murdoch’s London",Hardback,978-1-4438-0066-2,34.99,"
Sacred Space, Beloved City: Iris Murdoch’s London is a celebration of Iris Murdoch’s love for London and establishes her amongst distinguished “London writers” such as William Blake, Charles Dickens and Virginia Woolf. Individual chapters focus on the City, London art galleries and museums, the Post Office Tower (now the BT Tower), the statue of Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, Whitehall and the River Thames. Each chapter identifies intricate links between the environment and human consciousness and is accompanied by a corresponding walk that links Murdoch’s plots to landmarks and routes. All essays and walks are illustrated with sketches by Paul Laseau. These drawings not only illustrate locations for identification but also conjure their atmosphere so that readers engage with how Murdoch’s characters experience their surroundings. The final London Glossary is an annotated index of the London place names mentioned in all of Murdoch’s 26 novels.




",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-12-01,Robert Bray,Tennessee Williams and His Contemporaries,Paperback,978-1-4438-0042-6,14.99,"Tennessee Williams and His Contemporaries compiles eight transcribed panels that were featured at The Tennessee Williams Scholars’ Conference, an annual event held each March in conjunction with the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival.  This study, the first of its kind, explores issues involving Williams’s drama, fiction, poetry, and films in a discursive format designed to probe and debate the legacy of America’s famous playwright.  

Virtually all aspects of Williams’s long career are covered in this volume, including the early and late plays, his unpublished work, his use of the grotesque, and his relationships with three of his contemporaries: Carson McCullers, Lillian Hellman, and William Inge.  In addition, Williams scholars who teach his work discuss the most effective strategies for bringing his material into the classroom.  The unique design of this volume offers a broad understanding of his material for students previously unacquainted with Tennessee Williams as well as fresh perspectives from recognized experts in the field that will satisfy those who are already familiar with his life and work.

'A valuable and unique volume. Rich variety within eight chapters transcribe topical panels from the Tennesee Williams Scholars Conference. Eight well placed chapters give even the best-informed Williams fan a solid base for comparing him with his literary contemporaries with speakers remarks representing decades of scholarship and lively conversations providing spontaneous intellectual exchanges that are absent in most critical discourse. Audiences know that a good panel discussion can be the highlight of a scholarly meeting . Eight times over, Tennesee Williams and His Contemporaries recreates this satisfying experience.' Joan Wylie Hall, The Southern Register.




",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-12-01,Marguerite Helmers and Tilar Mazzeo,The Traveling and Writing Self,Paperback,978-1-4438-0043-3,14.99,"The collected essays that comprise The Traveling and Writing Self examine the critical relationship between the journey, the author of the travel narrative, and published and private texts. Contributors draw attention to the performed nature of the travel writer’s self, emphasizing that the carefully crafted persona of the traveler-protagonist is a fiction. The traveler’s identity is frequently in flux, negotiating between social convention, literary convention, personal motivations, and nationalist agendas. 

The Traveling and Writing Self is a notable addition to studies of travel writing because the contributors explore several genres in addition to the traditional accounts of the journey; these genres include histories of exploration, diaries, memoir, poetry, film, and short story. Not limited to a specific historical era or geographical location, individual chapters explore the work of Rebecca Solnit, Isak Dinesen, Melinda Atwood, William Byrd, E. J. Pratt, Beatrice Grimshaw, and Louisa May Alcott. From each, we learn that perhaps the most interesting subject of any travel account is the author.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-01-01,"Ingrid Hotz-Davies, Anton Kirchhofer and Sirpa Leppänen",Internet Fictions,Hardback,978-1-4438-0108-9,34.99,"The Internet is nothing less than a medium for the indiscriminate and global dissemination of information if we take “information” in its cybernetic sense as bits of data – any data. As such, it is also a massive, amorphous, rhizomic collection of substantiated facts, guesswork, fantasy, madness, debate, criminal energy, big business, stupidity, brilliance, all in all a seemingly limitless multiplication of voices, all clamouring to be heard. It is a medium which proliferates stories, narratives, fictions, in ways which are both new and familiar. It is as a generator of fictions that the Internet seems to be just waiting to be explored by the disciplines of literary, cultural and linguistic studies: Fan-fiction, slash and straight; scam baiting; fan sites; ‘wild’ or ‘rogue’ interpretive universes; gossip, theories, musings, opinions. As a singularly unstructured – and hence as yet uncanonizable – body of texts, the stories told on the Internet have a distinct element of ‘grass-roots’ fictionalization and so offer an unprecedented opportunity to access, hear and investigate the stories and fantasies woven by non-professional writers alongside their more formally recognized colleagues. As a medium which is beginning to investigate itself by means of various meta-debates within the vast community of Internet fictionalizers, it is also a location where emergent phenomena may be debated in their process of being generated. 

This collection seeks to explore this for the most part uncharted territory in creative, innovative, theory-savvy ways using the manifold fictions the Internet generates. It brings together a wide variety of expertise from the fields of linguistic, literary, media and cultural studies. All contributors bring to the collection their individual voices and approaches which speak from various positions of involvedness or critique to provide searching and passionate discussions of the issues involved in Internet Fictions. 



",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-01-01,"Anthony Uhlmann, Helen Groth, Paul Sheehan, and Stephen McLaren",Literature and Sensation,Hardback,978-1-4438-0116-4,44.99,"“I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train” (Oscar Wilde). Literature has always treated the sensational: crime, passion, violence, trauma, catastrophe. It has frequently caused, or been at the centre of scandal, censorship and moral outrage. But literature is also intricately connected with sensation in ways that are less well understood. It mediates between the sensory world, perception and cognition through rich modes of thought allied with perceptions and emotions and makes sense of profound questions that transcend the merely rational. And at its boundaries, literature engages with the uncanny realm in which knowledge, presentiment or feeling is prior to articulation in words.  

This book reviews the sensational dimension of literature according to themes that have too often been left to one side. Literary theory has often privileged perception over sensation, cognition over raw experience, in focusing on semantics rather than sense. The essays in this volume cover literature and sensation in all its facets, drawing upon a range of approaches from evolutionary theory, theories of mind, perception, philosophy and aesthetics. The works considered are drawn from various literary periods and genres, from the nineteenth century to contemporary prose and poetry, including experiments in new media. 

Literature and Sensation offers detailed and subtle readings of literature according to the sensations they represent, incite, or evoke in us, and will be of interest to readers of literary theory, ethics and aesthetics, and theorists of new media art. 


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-01-01,Isabelle Constant and Kahiudi C. Mabana,Negritude: Legacy and Present Relevance,Hardback,978-1-4438-0112-6,39.99,"Doit-on considérer la Négritude comme un mouvement ancré dans la fin de la période coloniale et sur lequel il n’y a plus lieu de revenir ? C’est une des questions que le colloque qui s’est tenu à l’Université des West Indies à la Barbade en l’honneur du centenaire de la naissance de Senghor s’efforce d’explorer. Lylian Kesteloot nous rappelle encore récemment dans son étude Césaire et Senghor un pont sur l’Atlantique l’importance de ce mouvement qui entre les années trente et soixante a participé à la naissance de la littérature africaine. La question du particularisme que le mot Négritude implique et de son opposé l’universel sera largement débattue dans les pages de cet ouvrage. Les articles de cet essai discutent les défauts essentialistes de la Négritude senghorienne, mais également le fait que dans les termes de Senghor « la Négritude est un mythe », donc une construction identitaire, l’expression d’une invention. Il envisageait par exemple l’avènement d’un socialisme africain, dans une interprétation unique du marxisme. En tant que mouvement poétique, philosophique, littéraire, ou en tant que réponse idéologique à une oppression, les auteurs africains et antillais étudiés ici et qui traitent de thèmes très contemporains, démontrent la vivacité d’une Négritude toujours d’actualité dans sa présentation des cultures. Il faut bien entendu dépasser la notion raciale contenue dans le terme et insister sur le culturel, le philosophique et l’esthétique, pour accepter que la Négritude ait une pertinence actuelle. Notamment nous verrons que la Négritude s’est métamorphosée aux Antilles où au Brésil en d’originaux projets idéologiques et esthétiques. 

Should Negritude be seen as a movement that originated at the end of the colonial era and merits no further study in this contemporary world? This is one of the questions explored in the Colloquium held at the University of the West Indies, Barbados, to mark the centenary of the birth of Léopold Sedar Senghor.  In a recent study, Césaire et Senghor: Un pont sur l’Atlantique, Lylian Kesteloot reminds her readers of the importance of Negritude which contributed to the emergence of African literature between 1930 and 1960.  The idea of essentialism which the word Negritude implies, as well as the opposite idea of universalism, will be widely discussed in the pages of this work. This collection of essays acknowledges the essential shortcomings of Senghor’s Negritude, but, at the same time, underlines the fact that in Senghor’s words, “Negritude is a myth” and therefore has to do with the construction of (an) identity and is the expression of an imaginary creation. It envisaged, for example, the creation of an African form of socialism within a unique interpretation of Marxism. In this volume, African and Caribbean writers who are concerned with contemporary issues, demonstrate the vitality of Negritude as a poetic, philosophical and literary movement and as an ideological response to oppression that is still relevant in its presentation of cultures. Clearly, it is necessary to go beyond the notion of race implied in the term and to focus on the cultural, philosophical and aesthetic elements in order to appreciate the relevance of Negritude today. Most notably in the Caribbean or Brazil, Negritude has been transformed into original ideological and aesthetic projects.







",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-01-01,Anita Kasabova,On Autobiographical Memory,Hardback,978-1-4438-0110-2,29.99,"The aim of this book is to provide an account of autobiographical memory, the memory of episodes in the subject’s autobiography and to answer the following questions: what happens when we remember something? Why do we remember some things rather than others? The main assumptions in this book are that autobiographical memory is an active structure of a representational nature and that autobiographical memory is a construct of the imagination enabled by a semantic principle: the ground-consequence relation. Anita Kasabova reconstructs the epistemological accounts of memory by the Prague philosopher and mathematician, Bernard Bolzano and the Prague physiologist Ewald Hering as well as the phenomenological accounts by Edmund Husserl and Roman Ingarden, and discusses various accounts put forward within analytic philosophy. She examines the trace theory and its relation to the phenomenology of autobiographical memory and the different temporal perspectives that characterize this form of memory.

Kasabova formulates a philosophical explication of how autobiographical memory works, dealing with issues such as: ‘what are the defining features of autobiographical memory?’; ‘how is it structured and how does it function?’; ‘what is a recollection and what are the necessary and (for the most part) sufficient conditions for a recollection to occur?’ Kasabova argues that such conditions are a sense of self and a sense of connectedness of the self that is semantic rather than causal, the subject’s sense of ownership of past experiences and the capacity of imagination: for mental time travel and thinking about past episodes, you have to be able to produce representations not bound to the current situation. It is argued that access to the subject’s personal past cannot occur otherwise than by construction in imagination. In order to reproduce a past experience in the present, imagination is necessary for representing a past episode as if it were present. Other necessary conditions for autobiographical memory are time-awareness, a continuous temporal reference frame, a successive temporal order and the capacity to refer back to previous positions in time. Finally, semantic relations of part-whole and ground-consequence are crucial for explaining autobiographical memory. It is argued that the part-whole relation is the principle of the memory trace and that the grounding relation co-ordinates the subject’s perspective on past episodes in recollective statements. Kasabova argues that autobiographical memory is basically semantic, as it is grounded by and constructed through a ‘sense-making’ relation expressed by the explanatory conjunct ‘because’: we recall certain experiences or actions rather than other because we are sensitive to the reasons for having experienced it. 

""The new book by Anita Kasabova fills a gap between traditional philosophical “armchair” speculations about memory and contemporary cognitive theories, which have grown out of extensive experimental research.
The book’s main idea that autobiographical memory is not a mere recollection but rather an active reconstruction of our past memories is not an entirely new one. Anita Kasabova, however, provides a new take on this idea by revealing that the theories of Bolzano, Hering, and Husserl not only bear historical significance but, properly reconstructed, they might be viewed as an important contribution to the contemporary interdisciplinary studies of memory.
An appreciable achievement of the book is the chosen conceptual framework: it makes the idiosyncratic language of Bolzano and Husserl accessible to contemporary cognitive scientists as well as making the recent cognitive theories understandable for the traditional philosophical scholars. Even if this were the only achievement of Anita Kasabova (and it is not) it would represent her monograph as a book of a great merit for a large community of memory scholars.""
—Assoc. Prof. Lilia Gurova, Department of Cognitive Science and Psychology, New Bulgarian University







","“Anita Kasabova’s book is the first systematic analytical study on this topic. Her main thesis is that autobiographical memory is the awareness of one’s past experiences as a result of an act of recollection. The arguments she presents are compelling, thus belonging to the best analytical tradition. Moreover, they are nicely accompanied by rich phenomenological descriptions. I highly recommend this book not only to philosophers, psychologists, cognitive scientists and their students, but also to literary critics working on autobiography.”

Clotilde Calabi, Associate Professor of Theories of Language and Mind, Philosophy Department, Università degli Studi di Milano
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-01-01,Peter Cochran,“Romanticism” – and Byron,Hardback,978-1-4438-0113-3,44.99,"""Romanticism - and Byron"" is a book in two parts.
 
In the first part, Dr Cochran examines ""Romanticism"" and shows that it is a word meaning anything, and therefore nothing. It is an academic construct created by academics, and has no basis in the writings of the early nineteenth century. Its continued use, argues Dr Cochran, is a modern marketing phenomenon solely.
 
In the second part, Dr Cochran examines the life and work of Byron in the non-""romantic"" context of his contemporaries. He shows how Byron's antithetical nature created problems when he was forced into compromising situations with friends who were close to parts of his mind, yet irreconcilable with one another. This ""mobility"", argues Cochran, was often an embarrassment for Byron's social life, but of great benefit to his creativity.
 
This part of the book features chapters on Shelley, Scott, Blake, Keats, Coleridge and Wordsworth, and is notable for the amount of original archive documentation with which Cochran illustrates his theme.




",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-01-01,Benjamin D. Carson,"Sovereignty, Separatism, and Survivance: Ideological Encounters in the Literature of Native North America",Hardback,978-1-4438-0121-8,34.99,"This collection, broad in its scope, explores rich and multi-faceted literary works by and about Native Americans from the “long” early American period to the present. What links these essays is a concern for the ways in which Native Americans have navigated, negotiated, and resisted dominant white ideology since the founding of the Republic. Importantly, these essays are historically situated and consider not only the ways in which indigenous peoples are represented in American literature and history, but pay much needed attention to the actual lived experiences of Native Americans inside and outside of native communities. 
     By addressing cross-cultural protest, resistance to dominant white ideology, the importance to Natives of land and land redress, sovereignty, separatism, and cultural healing, Sovereignty, Separatism, and Survivance contributes to our understanding of the discrepancy between ideological representations of native peoples and the real-life consequences those representations have for the ways in which indigenous peoples live out their daily lives.   




",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-02-01,"Nessa Cronin, Seán Crosson and John Eastlake",Anáil an Bhéil Bheo: Orality and Modern Irish Culture,Hardback,978-1-4438-0152-2,39.99,"Anáil an Bhéil Bheo brings together a stimulating range of interdisciplinary essays considering the connections between orality and modern Irish culture. From literature to song, folklore to the visual arts, contributors examine not only the connections between oral and textual traditions in Ireland, but also the theoretical concept of “orality” itself and the corresponding significance of oral texts in Irish society. Featuring work by emerging scholars in the fields of history, literature, folklore, music, women’s studies, film and theatre studies and disciplines contributing to Irish Studies, this multifaceted volume also includes contributions from scholars long engaged with issues of orality such as Gearóid Ó Crualaoich and Henry Glassie.





","""This ambitious collection greatly widens the customary scope for exploring the intricate connections between literary culture and oral culture in modern Ireland. The editors and contributors-a fruitful mix of senior and younger scholars-collectively make a powerful case for challenging the common dichotomous alignments that would link orality with the Irish language, traditional culture, and rurality, and that would connect print literacy with the English language, modernity, and urbanity.""
—Professor James S. Donnelly, Jr., University of Wisconsin-Madison.  

""In exploring the different forms, expressions and performances of oral cultures in modern Ireland, the essays avoid simple dichotomies and provide persuasive evidence of the centrality of orality and the influence of cultures of literacy in everything from the reporting of military conflict to the shaping of the Joycean oeuvre. Anáil an Bhéil Bheo is a collection that is required reading for anyone with an interest in the emergence of modern Irish society and culture.""
—Professor Michael Cronin (Centre for Translation and Textual Studies, Dublin City University)    


",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-02-01,Bernadette H. Hyner and Precious McKenzie Stearns,Forces of Nature: Natural(-izing) Gender and Gender(-ing) Nature in the Discourses of Western Culture,Hardback,978-1-4438-0187-4,39.99,"In Forces of Nature, the authors investigate the relationships between the natural world and gender and sexuality.  The authors explore the frameworks within which femininity and nature have been constructed, as well as the impact nature has had on our understandings of masculinity, homosexuality, and heterosexuality.  For some writers nature has restorative powers, for others nature embodies violence and destruction.  Yet, one common thread runs across all of the chapters in this collection: nature and animals can not be separated from the human experience.  Forces of Nature brings to light the intimate connection humans have with the natural world and provides students and scholars with innovative readings of both canonical and noncanonical texts.  


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-02-01,Heather Ellis and Jessica Meyer,Masculinity and the Other: Historical Perspectives,Hardback,978-1-4438-0151-5,44.99,"Histories of masculinity have generally examined both social ideologies of masculinity and subjective male identities within frameworks that define them against the feminine. Yet historians and sociologists have increasingly argued that men have been and continue to be defined both socially and subjectively as much by their relations to other men as in relation to women. This collection  brings together the work of scholars of masculinities working in a variety of fields, including literature, history and art history, to examine some of the forms of 'otherness' against which ideas of masculinity have been defined throughout history. The collection reflects the current breadth of scholarship relating to the study of masculine alterity. While the subjects addressed are largely historical, the time span covered is broad and the disciplinary approaches to the subject matter are equally wide-ranging. A huge variety of men, masculine behaviours and definitions of masculinity are considered in an exciting and invigorating collection that showcases both established academics and emerging scholars in the field.










","“Masculinity and the Other propels the field of masculinity studies into a new age. It brings together some of the most dynamic young scholars in the field, to address questions of 'otherness' and gender in exciting new ways. The volume radiates with intellectual vitality. It promises to significantly enrich our understanding of the lived experience of men in the past, in all their complexity. It is a 'must read'.”

Professor Joanna Bourke, author of Dismembering the Male, among other works.


""Heather Ellis and Jessica Meyer have given an exciting conference the full public exposure that it deserved. By focusing on masculinity's multiple others in contrasted locations, this volume provides a cogent theoretical critique and a wealth of illuminating case-studies.""

John Tosh, Roehampton University

“This wideranging and stimulating collection of studies of Masculinity and the Other both takes stock of and extends an important and burgeoning field. The pieces are specific but create together a coherent and well structured book. The Introduction tackles the conceptual issues at stake with verve and perception.”

Anthony Fletcher: Author of Growing Up in England: The Experience of Childhood (1600-1914), retired professor of history at the University of Essex.

""Because of the wide-ranging time-span covered by the essays, they demonstrate an ability to read history through a lens of masculinity in quite different contexts and across different disciplines. They are also successful at problematizing masculinity as a construction. The book will be useful to those of us who desire to see how particular case studies of history done from this perspective might be approached.""

Robert J Myles, Journal of Men, Masculinity and Spirituality, Vol. 4, No. 1, Jan 2010
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-02-01,Catherine Dousteyssier-Khoze and Edward Welch,"Naturalisme et excès visuels: pantomime, parodie, image, fête. Mélanges en l'honneur de David Baguley",Paperback,978-1-4438-0147-8,24.99,"Dans le sillage des travaux incontournables de David Baguley sur Zola et le Naturalisme, le recueil intitulé Naturalisme et excès visuels: pantomime, parodie, image, fête. Mélanges en l’honneur de David Baguley cherche à éclairer l’esthétique naturaliste d’une lumière nouvelle, à travers le concept d’excès. Un excès naturaliste qui devient synonyme, tout à tour ou simultanément, de théâtralisation, de surcodage, de débordement des cadres génériques et/ou littéraires. À l’intérieur comme à l’extérieur du mouvement littéraire naturaliste, il s’agit de mettre en évidence certaines énergies naturalistes à travers quatre grandes pistes ou articulations qui n’ont été que peu abordées ensemble par la recherche: celles de pantomime, de parodie, d’image et de fête. Chacune de ces facettes va, à sa façon, permettre d’affirmer ou de réaffirmer la prédominance de l’excès, du corporel, du visuel, inscrits au cœur d’une esthétique naturaliste foncièrement moderne.


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-02-01,Aukje Kluge and Benn E. Williams,Re-examining the Holocaust through Literature,Hardback,978-1-4438-0176-8,44.99,"In the late 1980s, Holocaust literature emerged as a provocative, but poorly defined, scholarly field. The essays in this volume reflect the increasingly international and pluridisciplinary nature of this scholarship and the widening of the definition of Holocaust literature to include comic books, fiction, film, and poetry, as well as the more traditional diaries, memoirs, and journals. Ten contributors from four countries engage issues of authenticity, evangelicalism, morality, representation, personal experience, and wish-fulfillment in Holocaust literature, which have been the subject of controversies in the US, Europe, and the Middle East.

Of interest to students and instructors of antisemitism, national and comparative literatures, theater, film, history, literary criticism, religion, and Holocaust studies, this book also contains an extensive bibliography with references in over twenty languages which seeks to inspire further research in an international context.
","“Memoirs, diaries, novels, plays, poetry, even comics—Holocaust literature includes such writings and more. Absent the best of these works and sensitive interpretation of them, understanding of the Holocaust would be impoverished. The essays in these pages, skillfully edited and introduced by Aukje Kluge and Benn Williams, make available important examples of the sound analysis that the new voices of younger scholars are producing to advance the field of Holocaust studies. Clearly written, cogently argued, carefully documented, these chapters—each and all—contribute significantly to the task identified by this book’s title, Re-examining the Holocaust through Literature.”
—John K. Roth, Edward J. Sexton Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, Founding Director, Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights, Claremont McKenna College

“The Holocaust continues to shock, frighten and fascinate. Kluge and Williams have brought together a group of talented young scholars to analyze the literature of the Holocaust. They belong to a generation born long after the war, a generation who witnessed the decline of old ideologies and the blurring of the barriers between disciplines. Reflecting this backdrop their collection of essays offers a fresh and interesting approach to this oft studied subject.”
—Simon Kitson, Director of Research at the University of London Institute in Paris; Author of The Hunt for Nazi Spies (University of Chicago Press, 2008)

“Re-examining the Holocaust through Literature is an impressive collection offering new perspectives on representations of the Holocaust by the next generation of Holocaust scholars.  The essays cover work ranging from Elie Wiesel to Art Spiegelman passing by way of Peter Weiss and Samuel Fuller; the 140 page International Bibliography of the Holocaust is a wonderful resource.”
—Kenneth Mouré, Chair, Department of History, University of California at Santa Barbara

“In one sense, Re-examininng the Holocaust through Literature reflects some of the ways that Holocaust scholarship has evolved over the past sixty years. But in another sense, this collection of scholarly essays edited by Aukje Klluge and Benn E. Williams asks us to reconsider a fundamental question: What counts as Holocaust literature? The essays in this volume challenge us as educators to explore our notions of what we think we already know, as well as what these new perspectives can provide as we continue to rethink, remake, and reinvigorate our teachings of the Holocaust.

Perhaps the most significant message of Re-examining the Holocaust through Literature is that, in reading and teaching about the Holocaust, the ‘truth’ is inextricable from the meanings created through multiple genres, disciplines and subject positions. The ‘International Bibliography of Holocaust Literature’ that concludes the volume provides an excellent resource for this ongoing quest.”
—Brian Kahn, Millikin University in Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies,  Vol. 29, No. 2, 2011
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-02-01,Joan Fitzpatrick,"The Idea of the City: Early-Modern, Modern and Post-Modern Locations and Communities",Hardback,978-1-4438-0146-1,39.99,"This collection of essays emerges from a two-day international conference held at the University of Northampton, UK. It contains the best of the papers presented by 45 delegates from 12 countries (UK, India, USA, Canada, Italy, France, Ireland, Australia, Romania, Japan, Germany, Portugal) involving both established academics and new scholars. The collection is divided into three parts: Part 1: ‘Medieval and Early-Modern Cities: Performance and Poetry’, Part 2: ‘Defining Urban Space: the Metropolis and the Provincial’, and Part 3: ‘Modern and Postmodern Cities: Marginal Urban Identities’. The chapters explore the nature of the modern city in literature, history, film and culture from its origins in the early-modern period to post-modern dislocations and considers the city as a context within which literature is created, structured, and inspired, and as a space within which distinct voices and genres emerge. Much interest has developed recently on the city and its contexts but there is a tendency to focus on London (for example there is the journal Literary London: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Representation of London and the annual Literary London Conference, a major conference that has run since 2002). This collection fills an important gap in the market by having a truly global focus.  

""Joan Fitzpatrick’s The Idea of the City represents a fascinating snapshot of the current state of literary urban studies. Conference proceedings can often seem diffuse or tokenistic, but this collection offers unity on several levels. For a start, many of the contributors ask similar questions of their material, approaching it with an informed awareness of the ways in which the city has been theorised as well as actually traversed from the medieval period to the present. While one would expect work of this type and standard from established and widely-published scholars such as Pamela Gilbert and Julian Wolfreys, it is refreshing to see how new researchers are blending the cartographic with the psychological to raise important questions about the perception, analysis, and mythologisation of urban and metropolitan space.
The collection is impressively eclectic, ranging from Petrarch’s Avignon to modern Los Angeles, and from 18th century Lichfield to operatic re-imaginings of Venice. As I said, however, the collection is unified at a deep level by the contributors’ shared interest in city writing, and by their conviction that there is a complex relationship between space, place, and self. This means that the book would be of use and interest to those working on individual writers (including contemporary novelists such as Niall Griffiths, on whom little has yet been published) and in the more general areas of urban and cultural studies and critical theory. The collection as a whole allows the reader to revisit the ideas of influential works from the previous decade, such as Keith Tester’s The Flâneur (1994), Sophie Watson and Katherine Gibson’s Postmodern Cities and Spaces (1995), and Susana Onega and John Stotesbury’s London in Literature: Visionary Mappings of the Metropolis (2002). It is therefore both a useful round-up of established ideas from various city-centred disciplines, and a starting point for the fresh consideration of enduringly suggestive material.""
—Dr Nick Freeman, Loughborough University, Author of Conceiving the City: London, Literature, and Art 1870-1914 

""In this substantial volume the editor has assembled an international line-up of scholars working on the city from the Renaissance to the present. This is an important and timely work that has depth as well as breadth. Interdisciplinary and cross-period collections like this which straddle several historical periods run the risk of appealing only in part to coherent scholarly communities, but Dr Fitzpatrick has structured the collection in a way which plays to the strength of critics working within particular periods while clearly displaying the latticework of links between the book's strongly marked sections. There is an excellent balance between historical and theoretical readings, between textual and contextual approaches, and between interventions that are author or text based and those that deal with broader themes and issues. The range of contributors is matched by the richness and variety of perspectives. I would strongly recommend this book to students working in the early modern period, and also to those interested in modern developments. It is a comprehensive, intelligently organized and richly researched volume that is likely to be well received, well reviewed and well read. I will certainly be ordering copies for my own University library and including it on reading lists for future courses."" 
—Professor Willy Maley, University of Glasgow




",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-02-01,Susan Brantly and Thomas A. DuBois,The Nordic Storyteller: Essays in Honour of Niels Ingwersen,Hardback,978-1-4438-0145-4,49.99,"The Nordic Storyteller: Essays in Honour of Niels Ingwersen consists of a set of nineteen research essays plus an introduction, written by colleagues and admirers of Niels and Faith Ingwersen, leaders in the field of Scandinavian Studies in North America for some four decades. 
A first section of seven essays, entitled “Songs and Tales in Oral Tradition,” presents research in the area of folklore studies, including balladry, saints’ lives, incantations, healing, legendry, and personal experience narrative.  Articles take up such issues as classification, thematics, cultural and historical change, and the effects of technology on daily life.  A closely related second section, “From Oral Tradition to Literature” includes three essays which examine the adaptation of oral tradition to literary forms, focusing on the works of P. Chr. Asbjørnsen, Esias Tegnér, Elias Lönnrot, F. R. Kreutzwald, and the illustrations of Arthur Rackham—all figures important in the rise of folklore as a key interest of Romantic nationalism.
	A further set of nine essays grouped under the title “Tales in Literary Form” examine aspects of the writings of some of the greatest storytellers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including H. C. Andersen, Herman Bang, Henrik Ibsen, Jóhann Magnús Bjarnason, Charles Dickens, Thomas Mann, Isak Dinesen, Martin Andersen Nexø, Billy August, Hans Scherfig, Peter Høeg, Klaus Rifbjerg, Leif Panduro, and Kjartan Fløgstad.  Articles address topics including autobiography, source criticism, symbolism, personal and national identities, and the representation of political ideals.  
Together the essays of this volume demonstrate the unflagging salience of narrative—of storytelling—in the personal lives and social experiences of Scandinavians and their neighbors, past and present.






","""The Nordic Storyteller offers a cornucopia of articles with a considerable historical range. We learn not only about saints, black books, strong wives, lumberjacks and hygiene, and about the role of storytellers across the Nordic region, but also about the rich cross-pollination between folklore and modern literature.""
—Karin Sanders, University of California at Berkeley.

""The serious engagement in these essays with questions of nationalism, colonialism, representations, cultural history, folklore methodology, and film studies-- all treated with the sort of sensible and sensitive approach characteristic of the man to whom they are dedicated-- make this anthology an important contribution to scholarship on the Nordic region specifically, as well as to the humanities more generally.""
—Steven Mitchell, Harvard University


",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-02-01,Laura Engel,The Public’s Open to Us All: Essays on Women and Performance in Eighteenth-Century England,Hardback,978-1-4438-0173-7,44.99,"“The Public’s Open to Us All”: Essays on Women and Performance in Eighteenth-Century England considers the relationship between British women and various modes of performance in the long eighteenth century. From the moment Charles II was restored to the English throne in 1660, the question of women’s status in the public world became the focus of cultural attention both on and off the stage. In addition to the appearance of the first actresses during this period female playwrights, novelists, poets, essayists, journalists, theatrical managers and entrepreneurs emerged as skillful and often demanding professionals. In this variety of new roles, eighteenth-century women redefined shifting notions of femininity by challenging traditional representations of female subjectivity and contributing to the shaping of eighteenth-century society’s attitudes, tastes, and cultural imagination.  Recent scholarship in eighteenth-century studies reflects a heightened interest in fame, the rise of celebrity culture, and new ways of understanding women’s participation as both private individuals and public professionals. What is unique to the body of essays presented here is the authors’ focus on performance as a means of thinking about the ways in which women occupied, negotiated, re-imagined, and challenged the world outside of the traditional domestic realm. The authors employ a range of historical, literary, and theoretical approaches to the connections among women and performance, and in doing so make significant contributions to the fields of eighteenth-century literary and cultural studies, theatre history, gender studies, and performance studies. 




","""'The Public’s Open to Us All: Essays on Women and Performance in Eighteenth-Century’ England' is a valuable resource for scholars and students interested in women studies, performance studies, and British drama.  By illuminating the careers of eighteenth-century actresses, authors, and managers, and analyzing modern performances of eighteenth-century works, the essays in this collection reaffirm the importance of eighteenth-century theatre and performance in contemporary culture.”

Marilyn Francus, Associate Professor, Department of English, West Virginia University

",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-02-01,Michelle Pacht,The Subversive Storyteller: The Short Story Cycle and the Politics of Identity in America,Hardback,978-1-4438-0165-2,34.99,"The Subversive Storyteller: The Short Story Cycle and the Politics of Identity in America examines how nineteenth- and twentieth-century American authors adapted and expanded the short story cycle to convey subversive or controversial ideas without alienating readers and threatening their ability to succeed within the literary marketplace. The twelve authors highlighted here come from a wide range of cultural, racial, and geographic backgrounds.  Their texts represent different, more advanced stages in the development of the short story cycle as each exploits the fragmentation and inherent lack of cohesion of the genre to reflect the changing realities of life in America during key moments in its history. 

In tracing the development of the short story cycle through the first two centuries of America’s literary tradition, The Subversive Storyteller fills a gap in existing scholarship on the genre.  It examines how short story cycles by Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Sarah Orne Jewett, Charles W. Chesnutt, Willa Cather, Henry James, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, Raymond Carver, Maxine Hong Kingston, and Louise Erdrich are held together, the publication history of each text (the parts as well as the whole), the revisions made by both authors and editors, and the state of the literary profession at the time each was written.  


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-02-01,Birgit Mersmann and Alexandra Schneider,Transmission Image: Visual Translation and Cultural Agency,Hardback,978-1-4438-0005-1,34.99,"Transmission Image: Visual Translation and Cultural Agency offers a challenging survey of the burgeoning debate about visual culture in a global perspective.

Bringing together scholarly perspectives on places ranging from China and India to Nigeria, and from the Philippines and Syria to Germany, this volume proposes a truly global outlook on the study of visual culture in both a contemporary and an historical perspective. Addressing key theoretical issues, the contributors cover a wide range of art forms and visual media, highlighting the complex cultural codification of images and its impact on the study of visual culture and globalization.








","""In the enormous literature on worldwide practices of art, it can often seem that the greatest challenges are in describing the distances between visual cultures. But there is also a large distance between Anglo-American and German-language scholarship. The English-language project of postcolonial studies is not as developed in German, and conversely the careful, technical discussion of image reception is not as often found in Anglo-American writing. This book is a very welcome bridge, combining attention to the precise construction of images with discussion of identity, gender, and ethnicity.""

- Prof. James Elkins, Department of Art History, Theory, and Criticism Department of Visual and Critical Studies School of the Art Institute of Chicago, USA





",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-02-01,Roderick Neilsen,Travellers’ Tales: The Expatriate English Language Teacher in the New Global Culture,Hardback,978-1-4438-0150-8,39.99,"Most of the research into ELT has focused on its linguistic and methodological aspects, which are based on Western scientific traditions. The contributions and experiences of English language teachers themselves, especially their work in overseas contexts, have frequently been overlooked. This volume aims to document the complexity of ELT as ‘work’ in new global economic and cultural conditions, and to explore how this complexity is realised in the everyday experiences of ELT teachers. The development of ELT from the colonial experience to its current status as a global commodity is explored; ELT is then situated in the discourses of globalisation, specifically within Appadurai’s theorisation of global flows of people, images, ideas, technology and money, or scapes. Within this framework, narratives are constructed from the experiences of Native-speaking English teachers. These reveal much about the personal, pedagogical and cultural dimensions of ELT work in non-Centre countries, and will contribute to a greater understanding of the intercultural dimensions of ELT for all those who work in it, and in related educational fields. 
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-02-01,Ann Hollinshead Hurley and Chanita Goodblatt,Women Editing/Editing Women: Early Modern Women Writers and the New Textualism,Hardback,978-1-4438-0178-2,44.99,"This collection of essays links current research in the writings and editing of early modern women and in those women who were themselves early editors with a new methodology of editing currently titled “the new textualism.”  As such, the collection seeks to solve two problems.  The first concerns the difficulty of editing the works of early modern women writers for whom there is little biographical data, a challenging task when the standard “life and works” format is thus inhibited.  Second, related but slightly different, occurs because, although we know that there were women who edited in the early modern and even later periods, we know little about them as well.  The new textualism approach to editing, which focuses on the material properties of the manuscript or book, its print or performance history and records of its dissemination, and the sociology of texts, provides a fruitful solution to both problems by broadening the concept of agency and hence provides a richer context for the production of a given text.

The collection includes two sets of essays.  One set has been reprinted from seminal works in the field of new textualism. These include writings by recognized figures like Jerome McGann, Leah Marcus, and Wendy Wall, among others. As such, that set provides background for the reading of the second, a group of six original essays by scholars now working in the field of early modern women writers who directly apply aspects of the new textualism in their research.  The fusion of the research field of retrieving early modern women writers with the practices of new textualist editing is thus the core of this collection of essays and is illustrative of what can be achieved in the field of editing when this new approach to texts is put into practice.


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-03-01,Eliza Borkowska,But He Talked of the Temple of Man’s Body: Blake’s Revelation Unlocked,Hardback,978-1-4438-0329-8,39.99,"Starting with Locke’s philosophy of language, which turns words into bricks and uses them to build a rigid system of science and morality, this book is a response to Blake’s un-Lockian thought through an analysis of his linguistic practices. It is an attempt to understand why Blake says what he says the way he does.

While being a study of Blake’s poetics, the book is at the same time a poetic study that never attempts to translate poetry into prose. It reads like a narrative, telling of an effort to build, an attempt to destroy, and then rebuild again. Primarily aimed at Blake readers, it will also interest those interested in Enlightenment and Romanticism, as well as students of art, religion or philosophy. And, since Blake’s criticism of Locke is in fact Blake’s criticism of the main assumptions of modernity, the book should prove a stimulating experience to all those who do not mind looking at the reality from some critical distance. 
","""… Written with sparkling critical acumen, Borkowska’s book is a passionate plea for Blake’s systematic search for the Living Ideal hidden behind the veil of human-made abstractions …""
—Małgorzata Grzegorzewska, Warsaw University

“… A lucid and eloquent investigation at the end of which we obtain interesting, sometimes surprising results which take us beyond the standard opinions about Blake's straightforward rejection of Locke's ideas. Blake who emerges from this book is not merely anti-Locke but, the point which Borkowska demonstrates with zest and intellectual passion, un-Locke, not a figure of non-reading or anti-reading but one of critical mis- or un-reading …”
—Tadeusz Sławek, University of Silesia

“Eliza Borkowska provides an erudite, lively discussion of the poetic strategies by which Blake disrupts and transforms Locke’s “temple of rationalism.”  Borkowska’s treatment of Locke is careful and respectful as she articulates precisely those aspects of his work that Blake felt compelled to reimagine.  Well informed by Blake scholarship from all eras, and displaying a rare command of the full Blake oeuvre, Borkowska constructs a theoretical defense of the neologisms and other linguistic subversions that have made his work seem almost perversely difficult.  The book will reward Blake scholars with fresh insights about familiar texts and images, but Borkowska’s analyses—for all their nuance and complexity—are always clear enough to serve as an advanced introduction to the study of Blake and the intellectual paradigm against which he reacted.”


- Wayne Glausser, Professor of English, DePauw University






",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-03-01,Jacek Wiśniewski,Edward Thomas: A Mirror of England,Hardback,978-1-4438-0210-9,44.99,"Edward Thomas volunteered when he was 37 years old and a father of three and was killed, as an artillery officer, during the first hour of the Arras offensive, on April 9th, 1917. In the two years before his death, he wrote the 144 poems which ensured a place for him among the poets of his generation. Though all his poems had been written “under storm’s wing”, Thomas was not a war poet in the sense that Owen, Sassoon or Rosenberg were war poets. Before he turned to poetry in December 1914, he had written and published about thirty prose books of different kinds: country books and nature studies, literary biographies and travel accounts, several short stories, one autobiographical novel and one autobiographical fragment. He was also a reviewer of contemporary poetry, literary editor and anthologist. There is a popular notion that Thomas’s friendship with the American poet Robert Frost “made him” a poet; an equally mistaken view places Thomas among the Georgian poets, while at the same time it fails to mention the powerful impact of the poetry of William Butler Yeats and Thomas Hardy.

Edward Thomas: A Mirror of England surveys the whole of Edward Thomas’s achievement, not only in verse, explaining the ways in which Thomas’s poetry continues to appeal to new generations of readers, while exerting great influence on new generations of poets. Wiśniewski discusses Thomas’s place in the “English line” of 20th century poetry, stemming from Thomas Hardy; he sheds new light on the literary friendship between Thomas and Robert Frost; he analyzes his nature books and provides new assessment of his role as critic. Wiśniewski argues against those who insist on placing Thomas’s poetry in the context of Georgian poetry, and in doing so provides new interpretations of well-known poems by Thomas. The book fully discusses the role the Great War played in making Thomas a poet and in a final chapter focuses on the best known poems by Thomas. Almost thirty years after Andrew Motion’s study, The Poetry of Edward Thomas,  A Mirror of England offers a fresh and timely reappraisal of one of England’s major poets. With scholarly thoroughness and lucidity Wiśniewski reveals an accessible and complex poet in ways which will bring Edward Thomas once again to whoever is interested in poetry. 


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-03-01,Jeffrey A. Sartain,Sacred and Immoral: On the Writings of Chuck Palahniuk,Hardback,978-1-4438-0328-1,39.99,"Sacred and Immoral: On the Writings of Chuck Palahniuk, edited by Jeffrey A. Sartain, combines the efforts of an international list of writers to explore the depths of Chuck Palahniuk’s fiction. Scholars have paid attention Palahniuk’s premiere novel, Fight Club, for years.  Sacred and Immoral is the first anthology dedicated to scholarship focused on Palahniuk’s work following Fight Club, which he has been producing at an average of a book a year for thirteen years. By collecting the work of an interdisciplinary group of scholars under a single cover, Sacred and Immoral extends the reach of Palahniuk scholarship beyond any previous publication. Sacred and Immoral provides the single most comprehensive and useful scholarly resource to date for anyone wishing to examine Chuck Palahniuk’s fiction in an academic context.
Some of the anthology’s chapters situate Palahniuk’s work within existing generic conventions, while other chapters are concerned with the theoretical underpinnings of Palahniuk’s writing and the philosophical implications of his work. With eleven new critical analyses of Palahniuk’s later novels, Sacred and Immoral drastically expands the range and depth of academic inquiry into Palahniuk’s fiction commensurate with the prominent and exciting position Palahniuk’s work occupies in contemporary culture. Sacred and Immoral also includes a new interview with Chuck Palahniuk, conducted by literary scholar Matt Kavanagh. Finally, Sacred and Immoral boasts the most complete primary and secondary bibliographies of Palahniuk-related materials to date. 
Sacred and Immoral is not an attempt to have the last word on Chuck Palahniuk’s literature. Rather, this volume is a springboard for other projects that relate to Palahniuk’s writings. The anthology provides a critical framework for Palahniuk’s later literature that students, teachers, and researchers can use in their own classrooms and writing.





",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-03-01,Lucie Doležalová,The Charm of a List: From the Sumerians to Computerised Data Processing,Hardback,978-1-4438-0237-6,34.99,"Lists, one of the most archaic literary genres, stand behind many of our complex mental or rhetorical structures and they often influence the way we conceptualize the world (even if we are unaware of it). They seem plain but may conceal a complicated inner logic. They are agrammatical but may tell a story. Their basic features – selection, order, and layout – may be enough to give them enormous power: by including they exclude, by ordering they create a hierarchy, by taking on particular physical aspects they place themselves into a specific context.
These and other issues are discussed in the present transdisciplinary volume collecting the best revised contributions to a workshop on lists held at the Center for Theoretical Study in Prague in November 2008. Each of the 13 articles by researchers from seven countries provides a case study on the subject of list. The fields covered include late antique, medieval and early modern history, philology, philosophy, cognitive and computer science. The contributors aim both at presenting particular cases – specific lists or list-types – and, at the same time, at addressing methodological issues: exploring the ways of researching lists in their particular disciplines, formulating relevant research themes and questions, contextualizing the subject. Since theoretical discourse on lists has not been established yet, this volume should be seen as a first step in the process, showing the variety of possible research directions on a transdisciplinary level, and raising interest in the topic, which, although it may seem a bit obscure at first, has indeed a lot to offer.  

","“This is a highly stimulating book on a text type rarely considered as such. Besides most interesting information of the specific cases discussed here, the reader is given many insights into human behaviour.”

- Peter Stotz, Professor Emeritus, Zurich University

“This book offers a first exploration of the functions and the interpretations of a fundamental way to give order to reality: the “list” in all its forms, from the catalogue of saints or virtues to the table of contents, from the inventories of properties to the catalogues of feelings or emoticons. A wide chronological overview runs from Middle Ages to contemporary computer-aided textual analysis. Intriguing historical or technical case-studies on the background of theoretical proposals demonstrate that documented lists of the same objects change in time according different contexts, but remain an indispensable tool for building identity and controlling our perception of world and history, so creating a fascination of seriality.”

- Francesco Stella, University of Siena

“What these diverse chapters share is an attention to how the list as form functions in a particular context, and how that context, in turn, helps continually define the surprisingly slippery genre of list. As a whole, then, the volume provides the first comprehensive examination of the genre, as well as an overview of the possible interpretive strategies that might be brought to bear upon it. Many of the chapters are also concerned with how readers read lists, that is, with reception – a subject of critical interest to everyone from advertisers who make use of search engines to historians who have too often taken lists factual contents for granted.”

- Kim Bowes, Cornell University

",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-03-01,Peter Cochran,The Gothic Byron,Hardback,978-1-4438-0244-4,39.99,"The Gothic Byron examines in detail the Gothic element in Byron’s work, arguing that it has traditionally been undervalued. It looks closely at his reading in the novels of Ann Radcliffe, Monk Lewis, and Charlotte Dacre, and then discusses the Gothic elements in his Turkish Tales, plays, and satirical poetry, ending with two essays on Don Juan. Further essays explore the indebtedness of several European and English writers, including Charlotte and Emily Brontë, to the Gothic element in Byron’s poetry.




",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-03-01,Monika Class and Terry F. Robinson,"Transnational England: Home and Abroad, 1780-1860",Hardback,978-1-4438-0196-6,39.99,"The rise of the modern English nation coincided with England’s increased encounters with other peoples, both at home and abroad.  Their cultures and ideas—artistic, religious, political, and philosophical—contributed, in turn, to the composition of England’s own domestic identity. Transnational England sheds light on this exchange through a close investigation of the literatures of the time, from dramas to novels, travel narratives to religious hymns, and poetry to prose, all of which reveal how connections between England and other world communities 1780-1860 simultaneously fostered and challenged the sovereignty of the English nation and the ideological boundaries that constituted it. 

Featuring essays from distinguished and emergent scholars that will enhance the literary, historical, and cultural knowledge of England's interaction with European, American, Eastern, and Asian nations during a time of increased travel and vast imperial expansion, this volume is valuable reading for academics and students alike.   




","“This absorbing collection brings to light the extent to which British Romantic and Victorian literary and performance culture was saturated by transnational influences. From the sacramental to the salacious, from the centralities of the canon to the creolizing peripheries, 'English Literature' in its most 'nationalist' phase is revealed as a dynamic palimpsest of cultural confluence. In a series of detailed and beautifully crafted essays the scholars represented here collectively make a compelling case for the interwoven presence of American, Asian and European elements at the heart of imperial Britain.”
—Susan Manning, Grierson Professor of English Literature and Director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH), University of Edinburgh


“In Transnational England, established scholars and newer voices discuss England's productive yet problematic international encounters as reflected in Romantic literature, and in the spheres of theatre, religion, and travel. Refreshingly original and often provocative, these essays propose that we recognize, among other things, a ‘women’s cosmopolitanism’ emerging in English Romantic drama and a transnational hymnody in the Anglican Church; they expose the difficulties involved in Blake’s patriotic stance and argue that Coleridge’s most distinctive achievements are most deeply engaged with German literature; they demonstrate how descriptions of foreign food and depictions of ‘home’ can call British national identity into question. This collection makes highly stimulating reading for students and scholars of Romanticism, especially those engaged with the compelling subjects of national identity, international relations, imperialism, and comparative literature.”
—Angela Esterhammer, Professor of English Literature, University of Zurich, and Distinguished University Professor of English and Comparative Literature, University of Western Ontario






",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-04-01,Eilene Hoft-March and Judith Holland Sarnecki,"Aimer et mourir: Love, Death and Women’s Lives in Texts of French Expression",Hardback,978-1-4438-0445-5,44.99,"Aimer et Mourir offers a wide-ranging selection of essays that collectively address how, from the Middle Ages to the present, the notions of love and death get inextricably associated with the narratives that are women’s lives. Some of the essays tackle male writers’ representations that link women and, in particular, women’s sexuality, with death, resulting in the figures of the femme fatale, the woman in parturition, and the desiring vampire.  A number of essays reiterate that women’s hyper-sexualized bodies have been used as a social construct and a psychological screen upon which to project a fear of death.  The challenges to this pat reduction of “woman’s” domain come from the mostly women writers represented here—and they span from Marguerite de Navarre to Amélie Nothomb.  These women writers rework the old formulae, giving us instead death-defying memories of love, love regenerative of language (as of bodies), love forcing the frontiers of death, or love creatively redefined within the parameters of death.  Nor are these new narratives imagined as belonging to women alone but rather as attesting to a richer, more varied, and greatly sensitized human experience.








","This collection should be of great interest to those researching and teaching French, Postcolonial and Comparative Literatures, Francophone and Women’s and Gender Studies…
A highly engaging and multi-dimensional text that invites fertile comparisons and extensions and … a much-appreciated addition to literary scholarship that is increasingly interdisciplinary in scope and approach.
—Cynthia Hahn, Professor of French at Lake Forest College in Illinois

",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-04-01,Robert Schechtman and Suin Roberts,Finding the Foreign,Paperback,978-1-4438-0354-0,19.99,"""Finding the Foreign"" includes the proceedings of the thirteenth annual Interdisciplinary German Studies Conference at the University of California, Berkeley (2005), which explored constructions of the “foreign” in the German-speaking context in language, literature, music, and visual media. The collected articles discuss how various tropes and rhetorical techniques have historically been employed to position cultural works on a spectrum from familiar to the strange. The multi-disciplinary range of approaches contained in this volume reveals how diverse the portrayals of the foreign have been, as well as how contingent and varying the delineation between the foreign and the familiar can become.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-04-01,Claire Taylor,"Identity, Nation, Discourse: Latin American Women Writers and Artists",Hardback,978-1-4438-0347-2,39.99,"This volume explores women’s literary and cultural production in Latin America, and suggests how such works engage with discourses of identity, nationhood, and gender. Including contributions by several prominent Latin American scholars themselves, it seeks to provide a vital insight into the analysis and reception of the works in a local context, and foster debate between Latin American and metropolitan academics.

The book is divided into two sections: Women and Nationhood, and Models and Genres. The first section comprises six chapters which examines women’s responses to, and attempts to carve out space within, national discourses in a Latin American context. Spanning the nineteenth century to the present day, the chapters offer an insight into the ways in which Latin American women have constructed themselves as modern subjects of the nation, and made use of the ambiguous spaces created by modernization and national discourses. The section starts firstly with a focus on the Southern Cone, covering Chile and Argentina, and then moves geographically northward, to Colombia and Bolivia.

The second section, Models and Genres, consists of six chapters that examine how women writers engage with, and critically re-work, existing literary discourses and paradigms. Considering phenomena such as detective fiction, fairy-tales, and classical mythological figures, the chapters illustrate how these genres and models–frequently coded as masculine–are given new inflections, both as a result of their deployment by women, and as a result of their re-working in a Latin American context.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-04-01,Agnieszka Rasmus and Magdalena Cieślak,Images of the City,Hardback,978-1-4438-0452-3,44.99,"Images of the City takes the reader on a fascinating journey through urban landscapes across centuries, literary periods, media, genres and borders. 27 essays gathered from Poland, UK, Romania, Italy, Hungary, and Portugal by researchers representing different academic environments and fields of speciality offer a truly interdisciplinary perspective on the issue of understanding, representing, and interpreting the city. In this respect, the volume complements other anthologies which discuss urban space without limiting itself to one unique theoretical perspective. Its neat division into chronological and thematic sections makes for easy yet informative and inclusive reading, encouraging cross-referencing and challenging interests and tastes of a wide array of readers. Images of the City provides essential reading for cityphiles everywhere. 





",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-04-01,Kenneth Harrow and Kizitus Mpoche,"Language, Literature and Education in Multicultural Societies: Collaborative Research on Africa",Paperback,978-1-4438-0344-1,19.99,"
This book presents a vivid overview of linguistic, literary and educational issues in a multicultural context from various perspectives. These range from large-scale surveys to specific analyses on aspects of language, literature and education. Contributions are very original and based on a common denominator: Multiculturalism. 
	Despite the numerical dominance of contributions from Cameroon (one of the most multilingual countries in the world), this book brings together views from specialists in the different domains from several parts of the world (Africa, Europe and the United States of America). These contributions exhibit not theoretical issues that underpin current academic debates in linguistic and literary research, but also empirical and interesting data that can further be exploited to other ends.
	Critical views on literature and postcolonialism, the fears of language death with the advent of globalisation and the spread of English language, the educational significance or influence of the internet, the wealth of Cameroon/African literature and the education of the Cameroonian/African child, and theoretical issues in language and literary education are themes handled here in an accessible manner to readers without previous knowledge of language science, literature and education.



","""The extent to which one’s representations of Africa result from multiple and interrelated discourses cannot be underestimated. Such discourses have been disseminated in the course of one’s personal history not only through the teaching of ‘official’ history at school (Ferro, 1981) but also through children’s literature. 
The issue is not simply that representations of Cameroon will be different depending on whether individuals are French, English, German, Irish or indeed, Cameroonians because they have been taught different ‘histories’ at school (Manceron, 2003) but that their own representations frame their interpretations, understandings and methodologies. If one takes a socio-cultural standpoint and assumes that learning and teaching situations need to be studied in their situated, cultural context (Bruner, 1996) the issue is far from trivial because the researcher’s meanings are constitutive of the research site.""

Prof Edith Esch



""A variety of perspectives on the globalization of English have been addressed and can be topics of linguistic research. … there are political issues, for instance attitudes towards the spread of English, and the question of which standards should be promoted in the political arena, with typical options including either the upholding of foreign, usually British, standards for international communication or the acceptance of indigenous varieties as expressions of local identities. … this translates directly into pedagogical needs. ""

Prof Edgar Schneider





",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-04-01,David Raizman and Carma R. Gorman,"Objects, Audiences, and Literatures: Alternative Narratives in the History of Design",Paperback,978-1-4438-0353-3,14.99,"In Objects, Audiences, and Literatures: Alternative Narratives in the History of Design, five art historians tap a variety of unexpected literary sources to reveal the dynamic relationship between intention and reception in architecture, interior design, costume, and the decorative arts. The essays consider both handcrafted and serially produced objects from the eighteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries, including a japanned high chest from colonial Boston, German and Austrian Artistic Dress, Tiffany lamps, the architecture of the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels in Paris, and the “dream homes” portrayed in two popular postwar American films.

The five chapters demonstrate that a complex and even contradictory mixture of stakeholders determines the meanings of designed objects. Each author examines popular forms of literature in order to reveal the preconceptions that viewers brought with them to the experience of looking at and using objects. The authors’ attentiveness to viewers’ class and gender provides a methodological model for approaching the study of reception within the field of design history.


""Objects, Audiences, and Literatures introduces a new generation of historians of design and decorative arts with five superb case studies. Looking beyond the laconic historical data that has formed the backbone of scholarship in this field these authors plumb popular culture—films, advertisements, and especially novels—to understand contemporaneous meanings of objects. Using these polyglot sources with an eye particularly on narrative and gender they suss out heretofore unnoticed dissonances between the prescriptive pronouncements of avant-garde “insiders” and the reception that design innovation found in broader publics. These wide-ranging essays are marked by imagination, exuberance, and acuity; I look forward to using it in my teaching.""
—Margaretta M. Lovell, University of California, Berkeley


""This is a welcome addition to the literature that addresses the growing scholarly and popular interest in design and design history.  Drawing on an impressive array of examples, the authors explore how class, gender, and cultural context shaped the reception of architecture, interior design, costume, and the decorative arts at various moments in the modern era. The collection is noteworthy for the way each of the contributors draws upon literary sources for insights into design and material culture that transcend the specific examples under review. Models of methodological rigor, these essays should appeal to scholars in multiple disciplines.""
—Dennis P. Doordan, University of Notre Dame




",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-04-01,"Márcia Zimmer, Rosane Silveira and Ubiratã Kickhöfel Alves",Pronunciation Instruction for Brazilians: Bringing Theory and Practice Together,Hardback,978-1-4438-0346-5,54.99,"Departing from an emergentist approach to Second Language Acquisition, Pronunciation Instruction:  Bringing Theory and Practice Together presents a discussion of the sources of difficulties which are likely to be faced by Brazilian learners during the process of acquiring English phonetics and phonology, by presenting empirical data garnered from Brazilian studies of this issue and by proposing communicative activities aimed at helping speakers of Brazilian Portuguese to overcome their pronunciation difficulties in English. 

This book is divided into three chapters. Chapter 1, Cognition and Second Language Acquisition, briefly introduces the reader into the world of cognition, focusing on issues such as L1-L2 transfer, the link between language perception and production, as well as the effects of explicit instruction. This chapter is of special interest for teachers who are interested in Second Language Acquisition or graduate students in the field of Applied Linguistics. Chapter 2 deals with transfer processes used by speakers of Brazilian Portuguese when undertaking the acquisition of North-American English L2 phonology. These transfer processes will be described and discussed, along with presentation of empirical data providing evidence of the need for explicit instruction. This will set the scene for the proposal laid out in the Chapter 3, which presents instructional activities designed to help students overcome the difficulties reported in the empirical findings. These practical classroom activities are organized in nine separate units – from Intro to Unit 8 – which can be worked from beginning to end or just by choosing some exercises in the range that is presented within each unit. The practical part can be used by Brazilian learners of English in the classroom or for self-study, as the book includes an answer key and CD.

The target readers of Pronunciation Instruction:  Bringing Theory and Practice Together are teachers and Brazilian students of English, living in Brazil or abroad, in any level of proficiency, who intend to work on their pronunciation, as well as undergraduate and graduate students in the areas of TSLA/TESL/TEFL and Applied Linguistics.






","""This captivating book is a precious resource for teachers and students interested in pronunciation matters. Specially designed for English teachers who have Brazilian Portuguese (BP) learners as their pupils, the book is extremely helpful to fill a common gap regarding phonological/phonetic instruction.  
It is very common to find English teachers who recognize the importance of pronunciation instruction, but do not feel confident enough to teach it in their classes or are not aware of many mispronunciation problems that may hinder communication in a foreign language. In the first chapter, the book is successful in providing teachers with the most relevant theories concerning cognition and second language acquisition, speech perception/production, and it also stresses the importance of explicit instruction to help learners improve their English pronunciation. In Chapter 2, the authors report the results of many empirical studies that reveal the main pronunciation difficulties faced by BP learners. This chapter calls the readers’ attention not only to well known pronunciation difficulties, such as the proper articulation of the th sounds or the pronunciation of –ed endings, but also to aspects which are not so commonly tackled in English classes to Brazilians, such as the pronunciation of the dark /l/ or the nasals in word-final position. After setting the theoretical background, the exercises and tips suggested in Chapter 3 help the teacher/instructor raise the learners’ awareness about sound articulation and/or perception, thus working on the differences between the native language sounds and the American English sounds which do not exist in Portuguese or which are slightly different from Portuguese. Activities are creative and simple, all possible to be applied in many teaching contexts at any school, i.e., no fancy technology is required.
This is definitely a well designed and appealing step-by-step guide for teachers who would like to improve their understanding about the pronunciation difficulties faced by their students (and by themselves!). The sets of exercises carefully prepared to overcome each difficulty are ready to be used, thus saving teachers’ time to prepare efficient tasks. Importantly, besides focusing on the perception/pronunciation of specific segments or structures, there are many creative contextualized exercises which help the learners practice the pronunciation of the learned information in a more natural way.
Enjoy the book and help your pupils improve their American English pronunciation as early as possible!""
—Andreia S. Rauber (University of Minho, Portugal)





",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-04-01,"Harri Veivo, Christina Ljungberg and Jørgen Dines Johansen",Redefining Literary Semiotics,Hardback,978-1-4438-0499-8,39.99,"This volume marks a shift. For it reveals how literary semiotics at present has moved toward methodological pluralism. The sharp lines of division, especially between the two most dominant approaches, those of C.S. Peirce and Ferdinand de Saussure, have dissolved and a manifest synergy has emerged from the deepening appreciating that the focal concern of literary scholarship is irreducibly heterogeneous. This heterogeneity necessitates a variety of approaches. The significance of literary texts is neither entirely identifiable with authorial intention nor susceptible to empirical verification. Even so, the possibility of shared meaning and mutual understanding, whether or not acknowledged, animates the work of literary scholars. Approaches and theories in which communication and representation are explained, rather than explained away, deserve a fuller hearing than they have received in the recent past. The contributors to this volume highlight the communicative functions of literary texts and, more controversially, the representational possibilities secured by literary production.

","""This is a learned, lucid, and innovative book edited by some of the leading scholars in the field. At once a very useful resource for students and also a major contribution to scholarly thinking, it offers a refreshing new perspective on key issues in literary semiotics and the theoretical debates these issues have sparked. Contributors display a consistent ability to explain clearly complex theoretical concepts while preserving the inherent difficulty of these ideas. The collection is clearly focused but wide-ranging,  providing is a stimulating account of the contemporary state of play in one of the most challenging and progressive fields of contemporary literary and cultural scholarship.

Redefining Literary Semiotics is the best study of its kind to date in literary semiotics.""

– Deborah L. Madsen, University of Geneva

",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-04-01,Ian Dieffenthaller,Snow on Sugarcane: The Evolution of West Indian Poetry in Britain,Hardback,978-1-4438-0355-7,44.99,"As recently as the early 1970s, scholars were able to argue conclusively for the existence of West Indian poetry as distinct from the English canon. Because much of its development occurred in Britain, hybridising with British practice was inevitable and this book makes a case for a West Indian British poetry which at first parallels and later becomes distinct from either of its parent bodies, relying instead on a cross-cultural aesthetic that continues to evolve. 

Early chapters examine the work of Claude McKay, Una Marson and Phyllis Allfrey in tandem with West Indian novels and calypsos of the 1950s and incipient critical practice fronted by Kamau Brathwaite. Subsequent chapters chart the influence of the Caribbean Artists Movement and poets such as John La Rose, Andrew Salkey and Faustin Charles. The politicising of the West Indian British community in the 1970s gave rise to the work of Linton Kwesi Johnson and ‘dub’ poetry. It also initiated the concept of ‘black Britain,’ which continues to obscure developments in West Indian British poetry into the twenty-first century. Later chapters examine these developments and chronicle the literary strategies of poets such as E. A. Markham, John Agard, James Berry, Fred D’Aguiar, Amryl Johnson and Grace Nichols, who along with poets from a non-West Indian heritage enrich the new hybrid voice and ensure its continued existence.

In History of the Voice, Kamau Brathwaite questioned the cultural basis of West Indian children in the 1950s who wrote of snow falling on cane fields. It is in West Indian British poetry that such collisions are made possible – and culturally viable.






","“As defined and established in  Snow on Sugarcane, “West Indian British poetry” has hardly been acknowledged by other commentators. Ian Dieffenthaller breaks new ground with his nuanced account of both the Caribbean roots and the contemporary British flowering of this “hybrid voice”. This original and important study, written with critical wit and real style, both complicates the conventional story and enriches our understanding of this distinctive body of work.”
 
- Dr. Stewart Brown, Reader in Caribbean Literature, Centre of West African Studies, University of  Birmingham.  Hon. Research Fellow, Centre of Caribbean Studies, University of Warwick. Editor: The Oxford Book of Caribbean Verse

""Impressive in its scope, this original study examines the development of West Indian poetry in Britain, spanning several decades from the 1920s to the present, and focuses on famous and lesser known voices. Dieffenthaller's wide-ranging analysis, both textual and contextual, traces the rise of a unique cross-cultural sensibility. Snow on Sugarcane is a source of precious information for any reader interested in the literature of the Caribbean diaspora."" 

Bénédicte Ledent
Université de Liège (Belgium)



",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-04-01,J. K. Lloyd Jones,Thomas Hardy and the Comic Muse,Hardback,978-1-4438-0486-8,39.99,"There has long been a tendency to regard Thomas Hardy as a great tragic writer and to ignore or underestimate the value of his comic works. This derives no doubt partly from the fact that comedy as an art form has been consistently undervalued ever since Aristotle dealt with it so slightly and so slightingly. It also stems from the evident inability of some readers and critics to allow an artist a wide scope and multiple voices. Thomas Hardy and the Comic Muse discusses the nature of comedy and the various theories that purport to explain or define it, and examines Hardy’s works — novels, short stories, and poetry — in terms of the categories of farce, humour, satire, and wit. It looks at where and why Hardy made use of these forms of comedy, what his historical sources were, and why this side of his work has been so frequently neglected. It also looks at what insights might be offered by Hardy — both directly and indirectly — to answer the difficult but always tantalizing question: what is comedy? The two subjects, Hardy and Comedy, are counterpointed throughout so that they prove to be mutually illuminating.





","""Most readers of Thomas Hardy, as one of his critics wrote, 'hail him as a great tragic novelist', and there is no doubt of the impact on the reader of the fate of characters like Tess or Jude. But, like Shakespeare, Hardy had an eye and an ear for the comic side of life, for situations or characters which make us smile rather than reach again for a handkerchief. It is the achievement of Jan Lloyd Jones's timely and persuasive study of the comic elements in Hardy's works, that reminds that while Hardy was undoubtedly a great tragic novelist, Wessex is a place where sunshine and laughter also demand our attention  and appreciation.""
—Ralph W. V. Elliott, Australian National University, author of Hardy's English (Blackwell 1984). 

“Jan Lloyd-Jones has written a sorely-needed book. We’re all much too poker-faced about Hardy, as if Tess, Jude, and the Mayor of Casterbridge were all he wrote. This is an overdue reminder that there is another side to him (even in those books): fresh, lively, funny. And this is itself a fresh and funny book, full of sharp and wry observation, comprehensive, iconoclastic, readable, reaching out even beyond Hardy to broader conceptions of the comic.  Highly recommended.”
—Professor Simon Haines of the English Department of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, author of Poetry and Philosophy from Homer to Rousseau. 

",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-04-01,Harry Edwin Eiss,Young Adult Literature and Culture,Hardback,978-1-4438-0493-6,34.99,"This book offers a multifaceted approach to the world of young adults, everything from Ray Schrock’s use of Walter Dean Myers’ sports stories to discuss race relations and cultural politics to Joyce Litton’s analysis of the highly popular Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants Quartet. The cover illustration is done by Joel Rudinger based on his experiences with the Inuit where he learned many of their legends and myths, resulting in his own excellent work on Sedna, the creation goddess, a story filled with deep tragedy, mystery and the world of the spirits. This mythic world slides into the discussion of Harry Eiss, one that focuses on The Isis Trilogy, best known of Monica Hughes many works, who writes, “Science fiction and fantasy in particular are valid carriers of myth for the 20th century, and most especially for young people.” Margaret Best and Susann deVries also give us literature that uses science. They begin, “The science fair project is the central metaphor and the reality in Paul Zindel’s The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds (1970), Christopher Paul Curtis’s Bucking the Sarge (2004), and Joyce Maynard’s The Cloud Chamber (2005). After providing an overview science fiction, Sally Sugarman offers a study of the entire genre. “For this study two hundred and thirty-nine high school students from two schools in Vermont and Massachusetts were surveyed.” Alethea K. Helbig provides an overview of her important activities promoting literature for the young. She was a seminal scholar and educator when colleges and universities were just beginning to take the study of such literature seriously, when English departments were initiating serious undergraduate and graduate classes in what previously had been seen as inferior literature.  Her life itself provides us with an entertaining and historically valuable autobiographical account of a person at the center of the change that has taken and continues to take place. Jerry Loving expands the horizons of the entire collection of essays, providing a firsthand account of how the young are educated in China, including a detailed history. It begins: “I have been traveling to mainland China at least 4 to 6 times a year as a teacher or education evaluator since 2002.   As the visits and years passed, I watched the education system of China slowly improve to the level my schools were like when I went to school in the 50’s and 60’s


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-05-01,Cathleen Maslen,Ferocious Things: Jean Rhys and the Politics of Women’s Melancholia,Hardback,9781847186614,34.99,"It’s fatal making a fuss  ... .
-Jean Rhys, Quartet.
Cathleen Maslen’s  Ferocious Things: Jean Rhys and the Politics of Women’s Melancholia closely engages with the most obvious theme of Rhys’s writing: the speaking and inscription of feminine anguish. Maslen resists easy generalisations with respect to Rhys’s portrayal of women’s psychic pain, attending carefully to the nuances of sexual, cultural and ethnic displacement which inform the suffering of Rhys’s protagonists.  Acknowledging the many fine recent critical engagements with Rhys’s  unique corpus of novels, Maslen insists that Rhys’s particular articulation of women’s pain presents a significant literary transgression, defying the intractable cultural interdiction against women ‘making a fuss.’ At the same time, this book engages with the  problematic privileging of melancholic and nostalgic discourse in the Western canon in general.  Rhys’s work, Maslen argues, simultaneously celebrates and resists fundamentally Eurocentric and anti-feminist paradigms of melancholia and nostalgia. In short, the ferocious melancholia of Jean Rhys’s female voices  poses constructive paradoxes and points of departure for feminist and post-colonial debates in the 21st century.





","“This book pursues an original and fascinating analysis of melancholic identification in Rhys’s fiction ... one of the pleasures of reading this book was Maslen’s excellent and subtle reading of the texts, again and again giving new and sophisticated explications of how they work”.
Helen Carr 

“Rhys’s heroines have always been a problem  for feminist critics ... this book offers a way to read both the profound alienation of these heroines and also Rhys’s narratives with their gaps between female subjective experience and brittle satirical surfaces.”
Coral Ann Howells

‘At all times deeply engaging ... this book is a major contribution to Rhys scholarship and is sure to establish Rhys – rightly – as a major, deeply moving and critical writer within the melancholic tradition.’
Sue Thomas




",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-05-01,Lance Weldy,From Colonialism to the Contemporary: Intertextual Transformation in World Children's and Youth Literature,Paperback,978-1-4438-0519-3,14.99,"“The compilation of this book has been carefully constructed to convey the essence of its title, From Colonialism to the Contemporary: Intertextual Transformation in World Children's and Youth Literature.  In other words, the different chapters have been selected and ordered to illustrate the chronological effects surrounding the phenomenon of Children’s and Youth Literature.  While this selection of essays as a whole does not seek to provide an exhaustive historical analysis of literature surrounding and written for children, it does seek to highlight several points in time that will give the reader a sound understanding of certain shifts in ideology found in children’s literature.  
“Furthermore, the focus of this book is multivalent and interconnecting.  While historically tracing a few texts from around the world along a timeline, this book also seeks to convey the transformative and intertextual nature of these respective texts, thereby revealing that children’s literature is not an isolated genre, but instead one that conveys—and is subject to—all the same ideologies as other genres of literature.  Furthermore, it is important to note that these chapters highlight texts from around the world, as the title expresses.  Therefore, the reader can see how audiences have responded to and transformed texts pertaining to such countries as India, the United States, and the United Kingdom as well as regions like Western Europe and Scandinavia.  Meta-narratively speaking, this book also reflects the multinational nature and audience of this book, with contributing scholars writing from and representing various parts of the world.  Most importantly, the thread that ties all of these topics together is Transformation.”

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-05-01,V.G. Julie Rajan and Sanja Bahun-Radunović,From Word to Canvas: Appropriations of Myth in Women’s Aesthetic Production,Hardback,978-1-4438-0537-7,34.99,"From Word to Canvas: Appropriations of Myth in Women’s Aesthetic Production is an innovative collection of essays on female aesthetic production and myth, examining the ways in which women artists and writers utilize myth to negotiate their perceptions of feminine identity and feminine representation in an increasingly complex and culturally hybrid world. The featured essays and artistic contributions address a variety of contemporary female productions, including literature, performance, and visual art, in a markedly global scope. Representing a wide range of cultures, languages, geographic locales, and social contexts—from Jewish-Hindu and Kenyan-German, through Irish, Italian, American, to Vietnamese folktales—this diversified selection underscores the agency of “the feminine gaze” across a historical and geopolitical span, a gaze through which myths from various cultures and different cultural amalgams speak to us with force and with significance. The potency of this gaze is linked to the potential of myth simultaneously to encompass and compress history, and to offer the result as a backdrop against which the move from word to canvas—or from a mythic tale to its aesthetic appropriation—is performed in female aesthetic production.

","Definitions of myth that are period- and culture-specific argue that myths are eternal and unchanging, and such definitions often result in patriarchal epistemic violence being done to women. This volume of essays, which ranges across a number of world cultures, argues rather for a definition of myth that allows for poetic reinvention and transvaluation of mythic narratives in new generations and cultural imaginaries. Focusing on the contemporary feminist transformation of the mythic narratives of Cassandra, Medusa, Persephone and Demeter, Orpheus and Eurydice, the story of Beatrice Cenci, and Vietnamese traditional folk tales, the essays in this anthology demonstrate beautifully how contemporary women artists, in art, performance, and narrative, reconfigure mythic subtexts and challenge the structures of control inherent in them, to provide a feminist reflective gaze on the “landscape of myth.”
—Professor Janet A. Walker, Rutgers University

""Rajan and Bahun assemble a series of new explorations of the roles of women as actors in, interpreters for and rewriters of mythology. From Word to Canvas: Appropriations of Myth in Women’s Aesthetic Production presents explorations in writing and art that interrogate the power relationships between the female archetypes that are represented in both traditional and rewritten texts and the readers, observers and consumers of those mythic representations. Addressing a diverse range of mythical systems and cross-pollinated engagements, this anthology gives voice to some of the most urgent and current interpretations.""
—Dr. Helen Asquine Fazio, HA Fazio Associates




",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-05-01,Meg Jensen and Jane Jordan,Life Writing: The Spirit of the Age and the State of the Art,Hardback,978-1-4438-0526-1,39.99,"In our age, self-publishing, self-broadcasting, and telling stories about our own lives and the lives of others are all-pervasive. This is also the age of the witness, the age of testimony in which first-hand accounts, personal experience, life change and evolution are valued, for good or ill, over distanced reflection. What are we to make of all this telling of lives? The essays collected in Life Writing: The Spirit of the Age and the State of the Art from writers and academics associated with the Centre for Life Narrative Studies at Kingston University in London, begin to address this very question, and in doing so demonstrate the fluidity and diversity of life writing itself. The remit of the Centre for Life Narratives is to rise to the challenge poised to writers, teachers and researchers alike by this very fluidity and diversity in our discipline and is exemplified here with contributions from academics, curators, editors and biographers, including Neal Ascherson,Victoria Glendinning, Professor Kathryn Hughes, Hanif Kureishi, Blake Morrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editor of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. This collection of essays from CLN offers the reader our founding contribution to the debates that surround this era-defining genre  and as such presents both the state of the art and the spirit of our age.







","“Do you speak life narrative? Does today’s confessional memoir signal the end of shame? And what was the truth about Mrs Beeton? Narratives of lives continue to fascinate in contemporary culture, and Life Writing the Spirit of the Age and the State of the Art offers cogent arguments as to why. While Hegel thought that the lives of leaders captured the spirit of his age, in the 21st century we are treated to insights from life stories across the arts, sciences and political scene. From Lawrence Goldman on the Dictionary of National Biography to Sarah Long on the life stories of museum objects to Suzette Henke on cosmic auto/biography, anyone interested in life writing will find much to enjoy in this fine collection.”
—Margaretta Jolly, Editor, The Encyclopedia of Life Writing, The Centre for Life History and Life Writing Research, University of Sussex

“This collection brings together writers, thinkers and artists in productive and imaginative ways. All the participants are consistently alert to language, experience and culture; the essays, interviews and reflections are wonderfully suggestive. The editors have arranged ideas creatively and wih critical sensitivity to old and new paradigms, so the whole book will offer much to scholars, students and everybody who has a life.”
—Clare Brant, Co-Director, Centre for Life-Writing Research, King's College London




",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-05-01,Xavier Pons,Messengers of Eros: Representations of Sex in Australian Writing,Paperback,978-1-4438-0523-0,29.99,"After decades of strict, puritanical censorship, Australian writers are free to address sexual issues. But sex remains a controversial and disturbing topic—its representation in poetry or fiction can never be free of ambiguities and still requires a variety of literary strategies to be made acceptable. 

Messengers of Eros examines those strategies and offers close readings of many Australian literary texts. It revisits classics such as Coonardoo, Capricornia or Such Is Life as well as major modern writers such as Patrick White, Peter Carey, David Malouf or Richard Flanagan, and engages with contemporary works whose status is still a matter for debate. It takes into account the postcolonial context of Australia’s culture, especially where Indigenous and multicultural writers are concerned. 

This original and compelling book draws on the lessons of French theory and, though its approach is sympathetic to postmodernism, it never falls into academic jargon, remaining easily accessible to the general reader.

Xavier Pons teaches Australian Studies at the University of Toulouse (France). A former President of the European Association for Studies on Australia, he has lectured and done research at several Australian universities.
He has published widely on many aspects of Australian culture (Out of Eden, 1984; A Sheltered Land, 1994; Departures, 2002) and has been described as ‘probably the best known and most highly respected Australian Studies scholar in Europe.’

Messengers of Eros, described as a 'challenging and risk-taking critical book,' was nominated as one of the ‘Best Books of the Year’ in the Australian Book Review, n°317, December 2009-January 2010, p. 22.


","‘timely, witty, and sharply analytical… a very important book in the annals of Australian literary critique’
—novelist Brian Castro, Chair of Creative Writing, University of Adelaide

‘extremely interesting… extremely well-written… brilliant’ 
—poet John Kinsella, Professor of English, Kenyon College

‘first rate… strong and original’
—Professor Peter Pierce, National Centre for Australian Studies, Monash University

‘Pons … is clearly an expert in his subject, and renders his explorations lucidly, at times with great insight, and intelligibly in non-specialist eyes… Readers will find in this book an assortment of ideas, speculations and suggestions that may be the starting points for imaginative journeys’ 
- Malcolm Knox, Australian Book Review, October 2009, p. 24

""French academic Xavier Pons is a long-standing, astute observer and commentator of Australian society and literature. He brings his considerable knowledge and insight to bear into this book, a thorough, racy, well-informed, at times amusing, investigation of concepts such as sex and transgression, sex and ethnicity, sex and post-colonialism, not so much in their historical reality as in their literary representations.""

Helene Jaccomard, University of Western Australia in Explorations, No. 47, Dec 2009

",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-05-01,Christopher Stuart and Stephanie Todd,New Essays on Life Writing and the Body,Hardback,978-1-4438-0500-1,39.99,"In light of materialist revisions of the Cartesian dual self and the increased recognition of memoir and autobiography as a crucial cultural index, the physical body has emerged in the last twenty-five years as an increasingly inescapable object of inquiry, speculation, and theory that intersects all of the various subgenres of life writing.   New Essays on Life Writing and the Body thus offers a timely, original, focused, and yet appropriately interdisciplinary study of life writing.   

This collection brings together new work by established authorities in autobiography, such as Timothy Dow Adams, G. Thomas Couser, Cynthia Huff, and others, along with  essays by emerging scholars in the field.  Subjects range from new interpretations of well-known autobiographies by Edith Wharton, Gertrude Stein, and Lucy Grealy, as well as scholarly surveys of more recently defined  subgenres, such as the numerous New Woman autobiographies of the late 19th century, adoption narratives, and sibling memoirs of the mentally impaired.  Due to their wide, interdisciplinary focus, these essay will prove valuable not only to more traditional literary scholars interested in the classic literary autobiography but also to those in Women’s Studies, Ethnic and African-American Studies, as well as in emerging fields such as Disability Studies and Cognitive Studies.  



",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-05-01,"Michelle MacArthur, Lydia Wilkinson and Keren Zaiontz",Performing Adaptations: Essays and Conversations on the Theory and Practice of Adaptation,Hardback,978-1-4438-0512-4,39.99,"Performing Adaptations: Conversations and Essays on the Theory and Practice of Adaptation brings together scholars and artists from across North America and the United Kingdom to contribute to the growing discourse on adaptation in the arts. An ideal text for students of theatre, drama, and performance studies, this volume offers a ground-breaking set of essays, interviews, and artistic reflections that assess adaptation from the perspective of live performance, an aspect of the field that has been under-explored until now. The diverse authors and interview subjects in this anthology take a variety of approaches to both creating and analyzing adaptations, demonstrating the form’s suitability for testing and speaking back to dominant models of creation, production, and analysis. Featuring articles by pioneering adaptation scholar Linda Hutcheon and critically acclaimed writer and critic George Elliott Clarke, Performing Adaptations advances the field of adaptation studies in new and exciting ways. 

The authors in Performing Adaptations do not comprise a comprehensive view of adaptation studies, but represent a collection of “gutsy” voices that use adaptation to test, and speak back to dominant models of creation, production, and analysis. Some of these perspectives include a group of artists from the African Diaspora, Europe, and Canada (the AfriCan Theatre Ensemble); the voice of Chinese-Canadian playwright, Marjorie Chan; the innovative storytelling of Beth Watkins, and her adaptation of letters written by transgendered student activist, Jesse Carr; the views of vanguard Canadian queer filmmaker, John Greyson; and African-Canadian poet, novelist, and critic, George Elliott Clarke. Their adaptation of sources to other genres, mediums, and cultural contexts represent the act of a radical, dialogical reading, writ large. 






",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-05-01,Jane Tormey and Gillian Whiteley,"Telling Stories: Countering Narrative in Art, Theory and Film ",Hardback,978-1-4438-0532-2,39.99,"Trespassing disciplines and binding together practice and theory, Telling Stories: Visual Practice, Theories and Narrative crosses strange territories and occupies liminal spaces. It addresses a contemporary preoccupation with narrative and narration, which is being played out across the arts, humanities and beyond, and considers how visual and performative encounters contribute to thinking. How might they tell theories? Telling Stories results from a series of symposia, held at Loughborough University School of Art and Design in 2007. The programme included papers, screenings and performances and was based around the convenors’ shared interests in Peggy Phelan’s notion of ‘performative writing’ and in the examination of inter-disciplinary forms of narrative and counter-narrative. It specifically focused on three aspects - experimental forms of Theories and Criticism, Objects and Narrative and the particular form of the Cinematic Essay and explored how the performative move could also be said to apply to forms of contemporary art practice: to what photography, film, objects wish to say. This resulting edited collection presents contemporary making and writing practices as multi-faceted, interdisciplinary and trans-medial and is indicative of an attitude that sets out to encounter the world, its social conditions, its global perspectives and the nature of aesthetic discussion that is no longer confined by formalism. 



",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-05-01,Fatima Festić,The Body of the Postmodernist Narrator: Between Violence and Artistry,Hardback,978-1-4438-0520-9,39.99,"The goal of this book is to elaborate the theoretical framework with regard to reading postmodern fiction from the perspective of the bodies of their narrators as textual occurrences. 
It centers on Lacanian psychoanalysis and the intersection between its various political interpretations and feminist theories. The emphasis is on the register of the real, on the domain of trauma as it appears in contemporary world, literature and history and on attempts at artistic resolution of its consequences. Since postmodernism is widely interpreted as a Western phenomenon, the book tries to show its dependence on much broader spatial, political, cultural and ideological dimensions, taking as index the darker side of literature, such as murder and destruction, dark courses of desire and the repercussions of their externalization in the reality of life. 
Focusing on the conditions that link contemporary cultures to the narratives and narrators’ bodies, the book exposes the potential of bodies revealed in the act of narrating and the ambiguities of their fictionalizing and subjectivizing aspects, taking the body as the site of repressed knowledge, traumas, resistance and manipulative desires. The analysis of the fictional works aims to point out a missing link between imagination and the real historical conditions from which imagination derives as well as the discursive struggle to save the tormented, territorialized body from the prismatic world by holding to the “absent referent” and prevent violence caused by the uncritical “pleasure principle”. 



","“Literature is fiction! However literature speaks of real murders and genocides. This is one of the basis of magic realism in Gabriel García Márquez’s novels. Then, what is fiction? The question is crucial particularly when one thinks that media and official discourses often deny genocides. René Girard focusing of the victimization process and the invention of scapegoats insists on the fact that mythical narratives speak of real murders and real violence. And the site of real violence is the body. Hence, literature connects violence, the body, the other and desire. These elements are the main focus of Fatima Festic in The Body of the Postmodernist Narrator. Reading Christa Wolf, J.M. Coetzee, Salman Rushdie, D.M. Thomas and an impressive number of theoreticians, Fatima Festic focuses on the place of the narrator and on the body as the place of repressed knowledge, traumas, resistance and manipulation of desires. Through her capacity to read trans-culturally different texts, she is able to focus on important dynamic in postmodern writing. For example on the performativity of texts which emphasizes the split inherent in subject, agent and author, that of the horrible, the abject as precised by Jacques Lacan. Thanks to her reading, Fatima Festić also transforms the critical and theoretical text, her text, into a performative text. It is based upon a speech act which is a promise. The promise is that the body of the victim will not have been thrown into a mass grave and lost in universal oblivion.”

- Patrick Imbert, Professor at the University of Ottawa and President of the Academy of Arts and Humanities of the Royal Society of Canada  

“Fatima Festić’s innovative, personal, feminist and exemplary scholarly approach to literary theories relating to violence, trauma and the body, sheds new light on important texts from Wolf to Coetzee, Rushdie and others.  In our chaotic, frightening world, she brilliantly gives us Hope against all hopes!”

- Evelyne Accad, Professor Emerita, University of Illinois, Urbana- Champaign 
    
“Fatima Festić explores an important subject in her examination of the liminal space between violence and artistry in terms of the body of postmodernist narrators. She discusses the externalization of the darker forces of desire in this context and the spaces between modernism and postmodernism. The issues of closeness and alienation and subjectivity and otherness arise in this discussion. This book ranges from novels such as Christa Wolf’s Cassandra and J. M. Coetzee’s Foe to Salman Rushdie’s  Shame and D. M. Thomas’ The White Hotel with an eye to the vital question of  the human body. Festić presents significant insights on recognition and knowledge as key aspects of the relation between sexuality and the body.  That body in narration becomes a crux in this study because it is the locus of repressed knowledge. Trauma and desire are central topics in Festić’s contribution to the theory and practice of literary and cultural studies and to a number of fields across the humanities and social sciences. The connexion between literature and everyday life is also at the heart of this book. The split in author, agent and subject and its relation to trauma concerns Festić, who has written a provocative, thoughtful and accomplished work.” 

- Jonathan Hart, Professor of English, Comparative Literature and History, University of Alberta

“This is a fascinating collection of essays on gender and trauma across history, nations and the disciplines. Violence as both product and process links war, genocide from 16th century South America to 20th century Europe and Asia, mastectomies, slavery, rape, pornography and refugee camps. This is a book that should be used in the interdisciplinary classroom to teach students how violence structures gendered, racial and sexual identities. It illustrates from a number of different angles how memory narratives break the silence around atrocities and create communities where before traumatized individuals had thought they were alone. The reader learns how the telling of an individual story stands in for collectively shared pain and allows mourning to play its role in therapy.”
—Miriam Cooke, Professor, Duke University








",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-05-01,Gilles Teulié and Laurence Lux-sterritt,War Sermons,Hardback,978-1-4438-0546-9,39.99,"This collection of essays ponders upon the intricate relations between the military and the spiritual from the Middle Ages to the present day. In order to analyse human attitudes towards conflicts, it is necessary to dwell upon the nebulous area where the religious and political spheres interweave so tightly that they become virtually impossible to distinguish. Indeed, despite remaining the responsibility of the state, the political decision to go to war depends heavily on some spiritual underpinning since, without a moral, ethical, or religious justification, it stands for gratuitous violence and is often equated with aggression. Situated as they are at the intersection of religious and political awareness, war sermons are an invaluable source of information regarding societies in times of conflict. Indeed, whether favourable or hostile to the waging of war, preachers participated in the edification of parishioners’ opinion. The writing, delivering or reading of sermons shaped the mental process of peoples who sought their ministers’ moral and spiritual guidance in times of crisis. This collection of essays offers contributions to the renewed debate on the function of war, its representations and its rhetoric as generators of identity.


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-05-01,Andrew Mangham,Wilkie Collins: Interdisciplinary Essays,Paperback,978-1-4438-0510-0,14.99,"This eclectic collection brings together a range of critical voices, from varying disciplinary backgrounds, to comment on the life and works of Wilkie Collins. 

A close friend of Dickens, Collins engaged with some of the nineteenth century’s most influential ideas and cultural developments. As this collection makes clear, he formed interesting connections with key figures in literature, art, theatre, medicine, and the law. As a result, his works often engaged with the period’s most influential ideas and cultural developments. 

Best remembered for spearheading the Sensation genre with The Woman in White and detective fiction with The Moonstone, Collins’s career actually encompassed a large amount of material that has remained relatively neglected until recently. Wilkie Collins: Interdisciplinary Essays offers readings of previously unstudied sources while offering new perspectives on the author’s most canonical works.

This second edition includes a new foreword and preface.

","Andrew Mangham's Wilkie Collins: Interdisciplinary Essays is an eclectic collection of essays on the popular Victorian writer. The book does not just consider Collins as a sensation novelist; it examines the legal, artistic, scientific or theatrical resonances of his novels and illuminates the variety of themes which mark Collins's work. There is no doubt that this highly varied collection of articles will prove useful to students and scholars interested in Wilkie Collins. It consistently points out how Collins engagedwith his own time, fuelling his plotswith contemporary legal or scientific debate, defying artistic and literary trends, and always challenging normality and conventionality.

Laurence Talairach-Vielmas - Gothic Studies, May 2008

",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-05-01,Margaret J-M Sönmez and Mine Özyurt Kılıç,Winterson Narrating Time and Space,Hardback,978-1-4438-0514-8,39.99,"In this book, scholars, students and aficionados of Jeanette Winterson will find ten analyses of time, space and narrative in her works. From her very first novel, Jeanette Winterson has made her characters move in time and in space, and she has always shown a sophisticated interest in narrative forms, and this is the first book to focus entirely on these central  concerns.  
	
The writers of the essays provide different perspectives on the three subjects, from postmodernism to quantum physics, queer theory to genre studies and the uncanny to stylistics.  In its section on time and narrative, the volume offers a fresh approach to Winterson's works, with a concentration on autobiographical elements, love, desire, the language of quantum physics, and the queer uncanny.  The next section, space and narrative, pursues the motifs of journeys, utopic spaces, cyberspace and labyrinths, and includes a chapter on the shorter fiction. The last section, which comprises essays that cover all three elements of time, space and narrative equally, examines these themes as they affect Winterson's representation of voices and corporeality, and her use of romance narrative in the children's fiction.

The volume covers Winterson's major fiction, with the Introduction connecting the images of huts, rivers and fire-gazing that are found extensively in her works to the themes of time and space, and bringing the discussion up to Winterson's latest novel, The Stone Gods.  A mixture of established and new scholars presents in this book an exciting array of the latest ideas on this respected and popular writer.





",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-06-01,"Artur K. Wardega, S.J.","Belief, History and the Individual in Modern Chinese Literary Culture",Hardback,978-1-4438-0571-1,34.99,"A value system in constant change; a longing for stability amid uncertainties about the future; a new consciousness about the unlimited challenges and aspirations in modern life: these are themes in modern Chinese literature that attract the attention of overseas readers as well as its domestic audience. They also provide Chinese and foreign literary researchers with complex questions about human life and achievements that search beyond national identities for global interaction and exchange. This volume presents ten outstanding essays by Chinese and European scholars who have undertaken such exchange for the purpose of examining the individual and society in modern Chinese literature.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-06-01,Roderick S. Speer,Byron and Scott: The Waverley Novels and Historical Engagement,Hardback,978-1-4438-0587-2,34.99,"Literary historians have repeatedly observed that while Scott as a poet was the first British literary lion of the nineteenth century, his fame was supplanted by Byron as a poet starting in 1812.  But that is as far as they take the relationship seriously, for the two writers are traditionally thought of as very different, even as political and temperamental opposites.  But in fact, the two writers met each other in 1815, liked each other, and cherished their friendship the rest of their lives.  The story of their relationship in personal terms was not over.

Nor was the literary relationship, this study ventures. Scott embarked on an entirely new career in 1814, inventing the historical novel.   Byron was swept away by these “Waverley novels,” and in his years of exile to the Continent from 1816 on, repeatedly beseeched his publisher to send Scott’s latest novels.   The position here is that those novels were important to Byron’s development in both literary and existential respects.   Byron’s historical dramas, his Don Juan,  The Island, and his final fling, into the Greek Revolution, show an evolution of both the Byronic Hero and Byron himself in a context his friend Scott had opened up for him.   



","“Longer than anyone else, Roderick Speer has thought about and lived with the interactions both personal and literary of the Byron-Scott relationship.  This rich and ever-fascinating subject has demanded a comprehensive study for decades.  Here it is at last.”
—John Clubbe

""A much-needed revision of the standard view of the Scott-Byron relationship, in life as well as in art. Speer's insights are new, and should cause us to read both authors afresh.""
—Peter Cochran



",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-06-01,Suzanne Bray and Richard Sturch,Charles Williams and his Contemporaries,Hardback,978-1-4438-0565-0,34.99,"Charles Williams (1886-1945), poet, novelist, critic, biographer, lay theologian, and 'Inkling'; exercised a great influence, both as a personality and through his writings, on English letters in his own day; and now, after a period of relative neglect, interest in him has grown once more. This international symposium, a product of this revival, is presented as a contribution to the serious study of Williams and his work. Its contents reflect not only the  extraordinarily wide range of his writing, but also the many contacts he made both personally and through his work at the Oxford University Press.
Contributors look at his literary background and context, describe the part he played in introducing Kierkegaard to the English-speaking public, discuss his theology of love, and compare his work with that of friends, disciples and associates. Two papers concentrate specifically on one of his remarkable novels, The Place of the Lion. Between them, they give a glimpse, or a series of glimpses, of an unusual man and a fascinating writer whose influence and importance are being recognized more and more.





","""The originality of Charles Williams's mind and diverse talents are beginning to be recognized as they deserve. These essays are an important stage 
towards the full appreciation of his achievement as a writer whose work impinges significantly on both literature and theology. A landmark in Williams studies, they should enlighten both newcomers to his work and those long acquainted with it.""

- Dr Glen Cavaliero, of the Faculty of English at Cambridge University


""This sampling of current scholarship from both sides of the Atlantic reminds us of the range of Williams's intellectual interests and the keenness, and impact, of his insights. It also illuminates the work of contemporaries (Sayers, Barfield, Lewis, Tolkien) and of older writers like Kierkegaard, Milton, Dante, and pseudo-Dionysius.""

- Professor Charles Huttar, of Hope College, Michigan


""The content is, in general, very good; the papers are substantial. The titular emphasis on Williams's contemporaries appears in six of the nine papers. Since Williams is one of the Mythopoetic Society's major interests, all of the material is of value.""

Joe R. Christopher, Mythlore 111/112, pg172, Winter 2010

",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-06-01,"Claudia Slate, with April Van Camp",Florida Studies: Proceedings of the 2008 Annual Meeting of the Florida College English Association,Hardback,978-1-4438-0617-6,39.99,"This volume contains a lot of variety, an eclectic mix of Florida literature and history by scholars from across the state representing every kind of institution of higher learning. The first section, Pedagogy, highlights essays about employing service learning, blogging, and primary archival research into the classroom, among other techniques. The Old Florida section includes essays exploring the following topics as diverse as the first black general in Florida (1791), poet Wallace Stevens, and the memoirs of colonial Florida women. The next section—Contemporary Florida—contains essays on EPCOT theme park, Florida newspapers, the rhetoric of Carl Haissen, and the stereotyped poor white Southerner. Jim Morrison’s use of Floridian imagery is the topic of the essay in Natural Florida, and the poem “Pineapple Grill” falls into the category Creative Showcase. 

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-06-01,"Carolyn Birdsall, Maria Boletsi, Itay Sapir and Pieter Verstraete",Inside Knowledge: (Un)doing Ways of Knowing in the Humanities,Hardback,978-1-4438-0577-3,44.99,"Inside Knowledge: (Un)doing Ways of Knowing in the Humanities is a collection of original essays proposing a fresh examination of epistemological questions relevant to scholars in any discipline of the humanities. Is objective knowledge still a viable ideal? Can art produce or express knowledge of any kind? Is the body a promising medium for a knowledge less abstract or logocentric than the kind Western culture has favoured so far? How are epistemological regimes maintained with the use of established linguistic tropes? Is knowledge to be resisted or employed as a tool of resistance? 

Distinguished as well as young, emerging scholars from disciplines such as philosophy, comparative literature, musicology and art theory discuss concrete case studies in which these questions arise. The essays share a commitment to interdisciplinary approaches and the close analysis of cultural objects, and refuse to take for granted the conventional methodologies that often guide research projects in their respective fields. The Inside Knowledge volume stages encounters between different ways of knowing, which contribute to an interdiciplinary understanding of the concept of knowledge and of epistemological questions in the humanities.






",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-06-01,Polina Mackay and Kathryn Nicol,Kathy Acker and Transnationalism,Hardback,978-1-4438-0570-4,39.99,"Since Kathy Acker's death in 1997 the body of critical work on her fiction has continued to grow, and even to flourish. The continuing critical attention that her work has received is testament both to the complexity and intellectual scope of her many artistic and critical projects, and to the continuing relevance of her concerns and ambitions in the recent and contemporary world; a world that her fictions prefigure and interrogate in ways that we perhaps could not have recognized during her lifetime. 

 

This collection of essays provides readers with access to a range of critical and theoretical essays that present a detailed analysis of transnationalism in Kathy Acker’s fiction. A wider aim of this book is to locate Acker’s work in the context of current debates on transnationalism, postnationalism, and global identity. Kathy Acker and Transnationalism therefore constitutes a timely re-appraisal of an important American writer, and a contribution to the growing field of studies in transnationalism.

 



","""This volume on travel and global transnational considerations in the texts of Kathy Acker is among the most sophisticated literary criticism on her work"" 
—Ellen G. Friedman, College of New Jersey




",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-06-01,Joseph A. Alvarez,Mark Twain’s Geographical Imagination,Hardback,978-1-4438-0585-8,34.99,"As early as the 1850s, when Samuel L. Clemens (before he became Mark Twain), as a teenager, traveled from his hometown of Hannibal, Missouri, to the east (Philadelphia, Washington, DC, and New York City) and south (St, Louis). In the 1860s, he traveled west to Nevada, California, and The Sandwich Islands (Hawai’I). He also traveled east to Europe and the Middle East. In between these early travels and his “around the world” lecture tour in the 1890s, he lived for periods of time in Europe. From these travels and sojourns abroad, Clemens often found that the imagined geography differed significantly from the reality. And, as most people know, he drew on his real and imagined “home” geography of the lower Mississippi River region to produce several works, including his masterpiece, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Although much has been published about his travels, this collection of essays marks a different approach to Twain’s use of geography and geography’s influence on Twain. The eleven essays use Twain’s concepts of space (geography) to help us understand (or to complicate our understanding of) some of Twain’s works, including Life on the Mississippi, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Prince and the Pauper, Roughing It, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, No. 44 The Mysterious Stranger, Tom Sawyer Abroad, and “The Private History of Campaign that Failed.” The contributors include veteran Twain scholars as well as a graduate student and a non-academic humorist. Their critical perspectives range from the biographical and historical to Althusserian Ideological.


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-06-01,Melissa Purdue and Stacey Floyd,"New Woman Writers, Authority and the Body",Hardback,978-1-4438-0613-8,34.99,"This collection of essays contributes to scholarship on the emerging voices of women writers during the fin de siècle. These “New Woman” writers created a distinctly different body of literature that reflected their concerns about women’s limited role in society. The essays cover a range of authors, shedding light on the ways New Woman texts also often offer new and progressive portrayals of women’s authority as connected to strong physical bodies. These scholars highlight how New Woman endings re-envision the marriage plot, self-destruction and even empowerment through pain. Additionally they help scholars, instructors and students contextualize the New Woman writers in terms of the Women’s Movement, nineteenth-century laws related to marriage, Darwinian theory, athletics for women, the New Woman’s navigation of urban life and even Jack the Ripper.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-06-01,Elisabetta Tarantino with the collaboration of Carlo Caruso,Nonsense and Other Senses: Regulated Absurdity in Literature,Hardback,978-1-4438-1006-7,49.99,"This book deals with a topic that is gaining increasing critical attention, the literature of nonsense and absurdity. The volume gathers together twenty-one essays on various aspects of literary nonsense, according to criteria that are deliberately inclusive and eclectic. Its purpose is to offer a gallery of “nonsense practices” in literature across periods and countries, in the conviction that important critical insights can be gained from these juxtapositions. Most of the cases presented here deal with linguistic nonsense, but in a few instances the nonsense operates at the higher level of the interpretation of reality on the part of the subject—or of the impossibility thereof.

The contributors to the volume are established and younger scholars from various countries. Chronologically, the chapters range widely from Dante to Václav Havel, and offer a large span of national literatures (Czech, English, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese) and literary genres (poetry, prose, and drama), inviting the readers to trace their own pathway and draw their own lines of connection. One point that emerges with particular force is the notion that what distinguishes literary nonsense is its somehow “regulated” nature. Literary nonsense thus sounds like a deliberate, last-ditch attempt to snatch order from the jaws of chaos—the speech of the “Fool” as opposed to the tale told by an idiot. It is this kind of post-Derridean retrieval of choice as the defining element in semantic transactions which is perhaps the most significant insight bequeathed by the study of nonsense to the analysis of poetry and literature in general.




",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-06-01,M. B. Hackler with the assistance of Ari J. Adipurwawidjana,On and Off the Page: Mapping Place in Text and Culture,Hardback,978-1-4438-0568-1,44.99,"This collection of essays, comprised of research first presented at the seventh annual Louisiana Conference on Literature, Language, and Culture, explores one of the most pervasive, vexing, and alluring concepts in the Humanities, that of place.   Including essays which encompass a broad range of research fields and methodologies, from Geography to Cybernetics, it presents a cross-section of approaches aimed revealing the complex cultural machinations behind what once may have seemed a static, one-dimensional topic.

Investigations into the function of place as a force in contemporary culture inevitably reveal a long history of the interplay between place and cultural product, between 'context' and 'text'. Just as traditional cultures mythologize sacred spaces, so too has Western culture sanctified its own places through its literature.  Imagined places such as Faulker’s Yoknapatawpha or Joyce’s Dublin become the focus of conferences and festivals; authors’ homes, birthplaces, and gravesites are transformed into sites of pilgrimage; locales created for television shows and movies become actual businesses catering to a public for whom the line between fantasy and reality is increasingly blurred; and persisting through the great cultural shifts of the past two hundred years is the popular and romantic notion that words, performances, narratives, and even national identities are always in some way an expression of the places in which they are created and set. With the idea of place foregrounded in so much contemporary discourse, this collection promises to enter into an already lively debate and one which, due to its relevance to where we live and how we make sense of our own “places” within them, does not show any signs of flagging.



",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-06-01,Laura Alba Juez,Perspectives on Discourse Analysis: Theory and Practice,Hardback,978-1-4438-0597-1,49.99,"Perspectives on Discourse Analysis: Theory and Practice provides the student/reader with the basic theoretical knowledge and the empirical tools of some of the most relevant approaches to the analysis of discourse. It has been mainly conceived of as a general (university) course on Discourse Analysis, but it can also be useful for any person or group whose main concern is to acquire the basic necessary knowledge and skills for analyzing any type of discourse. The subject matter of the book could not only be of use for linguists or prospective linguists: given its interdisciplinary character, its findings can be (and in fact are) used and applied by practitioners and scholars from different fields, such as sociology, psychology, medical science, computer science, and so on. Thus the book can be used by any person who, having certain linguistic knowledge, is interested in exploring the fascinating world of discourse.
All the chapters contain both a theoretical and an empirical section, the latter containing examples of analysis, as well as exercises (Practice) and self-evaluation questions, whose answers can be found at the end of the book (in the Practice key and Key to self-evaluation questions sections).
The book is divided into 12 chapters. The first two introduce basic information about discourse analysis and text linguistics, as well as the necessary techniques for gathering data, including a very brief introduction to corpus linguistics.  Chapters 3-11 present and discuss some of the most prominent and well-known approaches to discourse analysis, namely Pragmatics, Interactional Sociolinguistics, Conversation Analysis, The Ethnography of Communication, Variation Analysis and Narrative Analysis, Functional Sentence Perspective, Post-Structuralist Theory and Social Theory, Critical Discourse Analysis and Positive Discourse Analysis, and Mediated Discourse Analysis. Finally, Chapter 12 deals with crucial and further issues, such as the type of discourse chosen for the analysis, the strategies and functions of discourse, or the problem of choosing an appropriate unit of analysis which will suit the aims of research.  
Perspectives on Discourse Analysis: Theory and Practice may prove of value to all those who are professionally involved in the area of discourse and pragmatic studies, or simply to those who wish to acquire the necessary basic knowledge and techniques for analyzing any type of discourse, from medical, journalistic or political discourse to computer-mediated, humoristic, or hegemonic discourse (where the use and abuse of power is an important issue), just to name a few of the innumerable possibilities.
A desirable and intended effect of this book is also the development of an open and tolerant mind, which will eventually lead to a better understanding of the different and varied manifestations of language, culture and communication in human society.  




",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-06-01,Craig N. Owens,Pinter Et Cetera,Hardback,978-1-4438-0594-0,39.99,"PINTER ET CETERA, edited by Craig N. Owens, is among the first volumes published since playwright Harold Pinter's death to account for the many ways his poems, plays, fiction, screenwriting, and public statements have have influenced the creative work of artists and writers worldwide. It collects nine essays by nine scholars from five nations, each approaching Pinter's work from a different perspective. Together, these essays offer a compelling argument for thinking of Pinter not merely as a unique writer whose individual genius has introduced the world to a particular aesthetic, but more importantly, as an artist working within numerous traditions, influencing and influenced by the work of painters, installation artists, film directors, photographers, poets and, of course, theatre-makers. PINTER ET CETERA is a bold step toward expanding our understanding of Pinter and establishing its importance beyond the absurdist stage. Contributors include Judith Roof, Ubiratan Paiva de Oliveira, Kyounghye Kwon, Mark Taylor-Batty, Michael Stuart Lynch, Jeanne Colleran, Andrew Wyllie, Christopher Wixson, and Lance Norman.  




",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-06-01,Jopi Nyman ,Post-National Enquiries: Essays on Ethnic and Racial Border Crossings,Hardback,978-1-4438-0593-3,39.99,"The studies collected in this volume address a variety of cultural narratives of diverse border crossings. Through their focus on various historical and contemporary border phenomena in Europe and the United States, the essays show that the border-crossing migrant challenges the view that people belong to one particular nation-state and culture.  The essays in the first part of the volume explore of the problematics of “race” in theoretical and practical border crossings including the theories of sociologist Paul Gilroy, multicultural casting in American theatre, and the fiction of James Baldwin. In the second part the focus is on encounters with whiteness and problems of constructing ethnic identity in the cinema of Elia Kazan, Jewish American fiction, and Toni Morrison’s most recent novel A Mercy (2008). The third part of the volume explores the sites and practices of border by providing case analyses of the Muslim veil in Europe and the Finnish-Russian border. The final part of the volume is devoted to the problematization of borders in the fiction of the South Asian American writer Bharati Mukherjee.



",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-06-01,Marija Brala Vukanović and Lovorka Gruić Grmuša,Space and Time in Language and Literature,Hardback,978-1-4438-0567-4,34.99,"Space and time, their infiniteness and/or their limit(ation)s, their coding, conceptualization and the relationship between the two, have been intriguing people for millennia. Linguistics and literature are no exceptions in this sense. This book brings together eight essays which all deal with the expression of space and/or time in language and/or literature. 
     The book explores the issues of space, time and their interrelation from two different perspectives: the linguistic and the literary. The first section—Time and Space in Language—contains four papers which focus on linguistics, i.e. explore issues relative to the expression of time and space in natural languages. The topics under consideration include: typology regarding the expression of spatial information in languages around the world (Ch.1), space as expressed and conceptualized in neutral, postural and verbs of fictive motion (Ch. 2), prepositional semantics (Ch.3), aspectuality (in Tamil, Ch. 4). All articles propose innovative topics and/or approaches, crossreferring when possible between space and time. Given that all seem to propose at least some elements of “language universality” vs. “language variability”, the strong cognitivist nature of the approach (even when the paper is not written within a cognitive linguistic framework) represents a particularly strong feature of the section, with a strong appeal to experts from fields that need not necessarily be linguistic.
     The second section of this volume—Space and Time in Literature—brings together four essays dealing with literary topics. Inherent in each narrative are both temporal and spatial implications because a literary text testifies of a certain time, it is from and about a certain period, as well as about a certain space, even if virtual. A particularly strong feature of these papers is that they envision space and time as complementary parameters of experience and not as conceptual opposites, following the transfer of perspective through the whole century. Departing from the late nineteenth century England’s and Croatia’s fictive spaces (Ch. 5), the topic moves via the American Southern Gothic, focusing on Faulkner from the thirties to the early sixties (Ch. 6), via the post-WWII perspectives on history, probing the postmodern context of temporality (Ch 7), to finally reach the contemporary era of post 9/11 space-time (Ch 8). The voyage from chapter five to eight is thus a journey through space and time that allows for some answers to the nature of reality (of a variety of space-times) as conceived by both the authors of these essays as well as by the authors that these essays discuss.
	The main goal of the editors has been to bring together different scientific traditions which can contribute complementary concerns and methodologies to the issues under exam; from the literary and descriptive via the diachronic and typological explorations all the way to cognitive (linguistic) analyses, bordering psycholinguistics and neuroscience. One of the strengths of this volume thus lies in the diversity of perspectives articulated within it, where the agreements, but also the controversies and divergences demonstrate constant changes in society which, in turn, shapes our views of space-time/reality. All this also suggests that science and literature are not above or apart from their culture, but embedded within it, and that there exists a strong relativistic interrelation between (spatio-temporal) reality and culture. The only hope to objectively envisage any if not all of the above, is by learning how to move (our thought) through space, time or, to put it in simpler terms, how to shift perspectives. 






",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-06-01,Jonathan Himes,The Old English Epic of Waldere,Hardback,978-1-4438-0558-2,34.99,"The epic fragments of Waldere yield some of the earliest lore concerning migration-period heroes such as Attila the Hun, Theodoric the Ostrogoth, Walter son of Ælfhere, and Gunther and Hagen of the Nibelungs, while at the same time expressing political concerns that the Viking-age poet shared with his audience. Imagery and themes such as armaments and the worthiness of warriors to bear them point to the climax of Walter’s victory over Guðhere in single combat, a duel presenting an ethical dilemma for Hagen as indicated in both of the extant leaves.

This critical edition resolves some long-standing textual cruces while also providing background on Old English heroism, weapons, and versification.
","“Though long overshadowed by Beowulf, the romantically-discovered fragments of the Old English epic of Waldere give us our earliest vernacular glimpse of the Nibelungs and related legends. Jonathan Himes’s new edition now combines scholarly rigour with reader-accessibility, puts the case for identification of the speakers, and provides welcome expansion on the background of the legend, the problems of the manuscript, and issues both archaeological and literary. It will replace all previous editions and give a new stimulus to study of an often-bypassed poem.”
—Tom A. Shippey, Professor of English and Walter J. Ong Chair of Humanities (Retired), St. Louis University

“Although only a small part of its original length, the fragmented Old English poem Waldere contains a wealth of material for students of early medieval history; it is especially important for the study of early medieval arms, armor, and military history.  Yet up to now few have looked at the poem except as a work of language and literature.  That will now change thanks to Jonathan Himes’ insightful analysis of the poem.  With great skill Himes is able to pull out and interpret every bit of information Waldere has to offer.”
—Kelly DeVries, Loyola University, Maryland
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-07-01,Adam N. Bartley,Lucian’s Dialogi Marini,Hardback,978-1-4438-0960-3,34.99,"Lucian, born in approximately 125 AD, was a prolific satirical author from the city of Samosata in the province of Syria, now Samsat in Turkey. He was, apparently, not a native speaker of Greek, and yet went on to become an instructor in rhetoric, with posts in Greece, Gaul and Rome, before finally becoming an administrator in Egypt during the reign of the Emperor Commodus and passing away some time after 180 AD. He composed more than seventy works, including many satirical dialogues, speeches and even a short novel. The Dialogues of the Sea Gods are a collection of brief dialogues between famous figures in Greek myth that all have something to do with the sea, including Poseidon, Triton, the Nereids, the Winds and even the Cyclops. While they are cleverly written and amusing in their own right, these fifteen dialogues also have much to show us about the works of mythology that were popular in the second century AD, contemporary views on the many inconsistencies in Greek myth and those parts of the world where, despite being outside what we would consider ‘Greece’ in modern terms, Greek culture flourished under Roman rule.

This volume considers the developments of literary Greek language, the relationship between Greek Drama, Epic and Bucolic poetry in Lucian’s time, and the discussions of myth by philosophical and moralistic writers that Lucian both uses to critique myths and parodies in their own right. This has much to tell us about the works that survived into Lucian’s time from the Classical period, including many that we now know only from fragmentary material, and their relative popularity. There is also detailed examination of the way that the interaction between Greek and non-Greek culture has influenced Lucian’s depiction of ‘Greek’ myths.



","""This new edition of Lucian's ""Dialogues of the Sea-Gods"" is the first to provide a thorough commentary on these charming little texts. Dr. Bartley not only elucidates the often manifold literary traditions on which Lucian has drawn, but also traces the often very marked connections of these texts with ancient works of art (mostly paintings on vases and walls) and demonstrates in which ways Lucian also makes ample use of the philosophical and rhetorical trends of his age (the Second Sophistic) to give these (mostly well-known) mythical stories new and additional depth. The reader of this commentary will come away with the distinct impression that Lucian not only knew to use his literary predecessors in ways both masterly and playful, but also found room to make a number of interesting innovations (new view-points, hitherto neglected details etc.). All in all, this commentary renders a great service both to its ancient subjects and to its modern readers.""
— Professor Heinz-Günther Nesselrath, Geogr-August Universität, Göttingen, Germany

",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-07-01,Lynn DellaPietra,Perspectives on Creativity,Hardback,978-1-4438-0964-1,44.99,"Perspectives on Creativity explores the topic of creativity from multiple viewpoints, including those of the philosopher, psychologist, neuroscientist, therapist, educator, and artist.  The book is organized around a series of themes, beginning with a consideration of the nature of creativity and how it can be cultivated, with special attention to how creativity can be fostered in the classroom and work settings.  The second section presents qualitative studies of artists and asks what we can learn about creativity from the lives and work of these individuals, such as whether there exists a relationship between creativity and mental illness.  The third section examines the healing power of creativity within the therapeutic milieu, from the relatively more well-known music and art therapy to the less familiar drama therapy.  The final section of the book explores the relationship between creativity and the brain and presents studies to address whether the brains of creative individuals function differently from those of the less creative.  What makes this book unique is that the topic of creativity is considered in an interdisciplinary way from both theoretical and applied perspectives, making it appealing to individuals from a wide variety of backgrounds.






","“From the creative arts to the art of living, from novel products to the processes, people, traits, experiences, brain states, and environmental influences that can open minds and transform worlds, this book opens new doors on the human creative experience.  We see the power of the creative arts, and of creativity in many forms, on our health and healing, coping and resilience, teaching and learning, growth and aging, and learning to find the joys, challenges, and greater purpose that can make life worth living.”
- Ruth Richards, MD, PhD, Saybrook Graduate School, San Francisco, California; McLean Hospital, Belmont, Massachusetts; and Harvard Medical School

The sciences are governed by various principles, some explicit, some implicit.  One principle is essentially economic: The sciences supply what is in demand.  Creativity is currently in very high demand. Indeed, it has recently moved ahead of knowledge and information as a vital objective for business and high quality schools.  Yet creativity is not easy to define nor target.  It  requires a diverse and interdisciplinary perspective which is nearly impossible to maintain.  For that reason it is quite rare for one volume do justice to creativity and to creative studies.  The present volume does just that. Generally speaking it covers the therapeutic nature of creativity, lessons from research with creative individuals, how creativity can be supported and enhanced, and the neuropsychology of creativity.  Within these general topics it provides an enormous amount of detail about healing, ancient practices, modern technologies, divergent thinking, differences between artists and nonartists, incubation and the unconscious, music therapy, improvisation, and more.  Also admirable is its avoidance of biases which are apparent
when one perspective is used alone.  Unlike virtually every other volume, Perspectives on Creativity reports case studies and original empirical data from both eminent and everyday creators.  It is, then, an extremely good overview of what is known about creativity. It is also just plain good reading. 
- Mark Runco, PhD, Torrance Professor of Creative Studies, University of Georgia, Athens




",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-07-01,"Peter Cochran, Bill Johnston, Mirosława Modrzewska and Catherine O’Neil",Poland’s Angry Romantic: Two Poems and a Play by Juliusz Słowacki,Hardback,978-1-4438-0980-1,39.99,"Juliusz Słowacki is one of Poland’s most important writers, but his poetry and plays are little known in the West. This book provides a long-overdo, much-needed introduction to him. It contains his popular play Balladina, his meditative poem Agamemnon’s Tomb, and his hilarious mock-epic Beniowski, in the style of Byron’s Don Juan.




",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-07-01,Verena Theile and Marie Drews,"Reclaiming Home, Remembering Motherhood, Rewriting History: African American and Afro-Caribbean Women’s Literature in the Twentieth Century",Hardback,978-1-4438-0962-7,44.99,"Reclaiming Home, Remembering Motherhood, Rewriting History: African American and Afro-Caribbean Women’s Literature in the Twentieth Century offers a critical valuation of literature composed by black female writers and examines their projects of reclamation, rememory, and revision. As a collection, it engages black women writers’ efforts to create more inclusive conceptualizations of community, gender, and history, conceptualizations that take into account alternate lived and written experiences as well as imagined futures.

Contributors to this collection probe the realms of gender studies, postcolonialism, and post-structural theory and suggest important ways in which to explore connections between home, motherhood, and history across the multifarious narratives of African American and Afro-Caribbean experiences. Together they argue that it is through their female characters that black women writers demonstrate the tumultuous processes of deciphering home and homeland, of articulating the complexities of mothering relationships, and of locating their own personal history within local and national narratives.

Essays gathered in this collection consider the works of African American women writers (Pauline Hopkins, Toni Morrison, Jessie Redmon Fauset, Audre Lorde, Lalita Tademy, Lorene Cary, Octavia Butler, Zora Neale Hurston, and Sherley Anne Williams) alongside the works of black women writers from the Caribbean (Jamaica Kincaid and Gisèle Pineau), Guyana (Grace Nichols), and Cuba (María de los Reyes Castillo Bueno).
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-07-01,V.G. Julie Rajan and Atreyee Phukan,South Asia and its Others: Reading the “Exotic”,Hardback,978-1-4438-0991-7,34.99,"The essays in South Asia and Its Others: Reading the ""Exotic"" reveal fresh perspectives on the notion of exoticism in South Asia, and also challenge and extend existing scholarship in the broader discourse of what constitutes South Asia. Significantly, the anthology considers how the phenomenon of ""exoticization"" may be interpreted as a strategic methodology utilized by writers of South Asian descent to examine critically both the post-colonialist ramifications of casteism, religious intolerance, and gender violence across differing cultural contexts within the region, and how current perceptions of ""native"" and ""diasporic"" South Asian subjects problematize ideologies of authenticity across Western-Eastern divides. The papers in this collection show how authors of South Asian ethnicity construct their own version of an ""exotic"" South Asia globally and the colonialist discourse of ""exocitism"" is employed as a discursive tool that uncovers the ambiguity that continues to mark the marginality of identities even today.



","""V. G. Julie Rajan and Atreyee Phukan's latest South Asia and Its Others: Reading the ""Exotic"" offers searing insight on the historically over-determined subject of the Orient.  The scholars in this collection offer fresh and urgent theorization on how the ""other"" has been re-presented, and misrepresented, within western/non-western or external/internal accounts thereby rupturing the tired binaries and licit complicities that have kept the ""other"" industrial complex of exoticization, marginalization, and exploitation thriving in the new economy of transnational cyber-capitalism.  Traversing the canon from Arundhati Roy to Ardhasir Vakil, the editors, who begin with a discerning critique on the filmic discourse surrounding the recent Slumdog Millionaire, touch on all that is relevant rendering it luminous.  A must-read for academics, students and all who are interested in manifestations of South Asia on the global stage.""
—Shreerekha Subramanian, Assistant Professor of Humanities, University of Houston-Clear Lake

""By bringing diasporic imaginaries of South Asia in conversation with the vagaries of late capitalism, this book breaks new ground even as it dwells on familiar themes of exoticism and otherness. The authors forcefully argue for a reassessment of power and marginality as these are reconstituted through neo-orientalist literary aesthetics and practices and within emergent politics of inclusions and exclusions.""
—Mona Bhan, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, DePauw University





",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-07-01,Aoife Leahy,The Victorian Approach to Modernism in the Fiction of Dorothy L. Sayers,Hardback,978-1-4438-0993-1,34.99,"Dorothy L. Sayers wrote bestselling detective novels and short stories in the 1920s and 1930s. Working within a popular medium, Sayers promotes nineteenth century and modernist literature with skills learnt during a period of employment in an advertising agency. In much of her fiction she recommends her choice of good books by name. She also suggests that taking Victorian literature as a foundation can bring her reader to a better understanding of literary modernism. With a didactic intent, Sayers shows how Lewis Carroll’s Alice can help us to eventually read Virginia Woolf, for instance. Her approach to educating her readers is always through entertainment. Sayers worked briefly as a teacher before taking up copywriting and retained important insights on how to improve the learning experience for any reader.

Sayers’ admiration for the Victorian sensation author Wilkie Collins is widely recognised. This book examines Sayers’ attention to equally important Victorian influences from John Ruskin and George Eliot to Oscar Wilde, particularly in relation to the topic of education. She often questions the boundaries between “popular” and “serious” literature. Sayers’ personal views on the connections between mid-Victorian, late Victorian and high modernist authors are also considered. 




","“Oscar Wilde, Wilkie Collins, the Ruskins and Millais are skilfully interwoven with DLS’ characters in Dr Leahy’s fascinating chapter on The Documents in the Case.”  
- Christopher Dean, Chairman of The Dorothy L. Sayers Society

",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-08-01,Marc Jeannin,Anthony Burgess: Music in Literature and Literature in Music,Hardback,978-1-4438-1116-3,39.99,"This book, taking an interdisciplinary approach, proposes a new insight into the relationship between literature and music through the prism of Anthony Burgess’s works and those of his spiritual fathers, be they writers or composers. Exploring this relationship not only helps us to appreciate the complex mechanisms of certain artistic creations, but also demonstrates the parallels between these two major modes of artistic expression as well as showing the limits of trying to superimpose them. A selected panel of brilliant international scholars tackles the challenge of examining this relationship by providing original explanatory comments on the musicality of literature and the literary aspects of music. The book includes many pertinent references to a variety of artists ranging from musicians such as Mozart, Beethoven and Debussy to authors such as Joyce, Eliot and Huxley. Finally, it offers, through a wide spectrum of analyses, enrichment to scholars, students and general readers of the works of Burgess and of others in which literary and musical domains meet.


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-08-01,Gabriel Rosenstock,Haiku: The Gentle Art of Disappearing,Hardback,978-1-4438-1133-0,39.99,"In Haiku, the Gentle Art of Disappearing, a renowned Irish poet shows us how haiku may be used  as a powerful tool for spiritual interpenetration. This implies that we divest ourselves of the ever-chattering mind, shed the voracious ego and enjoy momentary glimpses of unity with natural phenomena. In the companion volume, Haiku Enlightenment, he further explores these thoroughly delightful experiences and invites us to disappear! Haiku is dynamically focussed on the present, from season to season, from day to day, from hour to hour, from second to second. But how illusory, how fleeting is that present moment? How caught up is it with the past, with the future? Can we stop its flow? Are there more ways than one of experiencing its essence? If we experience a moment intensely enough, might we disappear? Surprises await those readers who may have considered haiku to be nothing more than an innocuous three-line poem.

A renowned poet shares his experience of haiku and its potential to surprise us again and again into a sudden awakening and thus to a deeper sense of what it is to be truly alive. His remarkably refreshing insights have delighted confreres around the world.



","“Gabriel Rosenstock offers us a marvellous path into the essence of haiku and the state of being in harmony with the laws of the universe.”
—Ion Codrescu, Romania

“A learned, imaginative and profound commentary on haiku with many outstanding examples from around the globe, demonstrating the form’s universal appeal. Persons with little knowledge of haiku will be captivated, while those with expertise will feel renewed…”
—George Swede, Canada

“Rosenstock is an excellent teacher, wise enough to realise that in describing haiku (as in so many other things) examples are worth a million words. He spreads before us a variegated tapestry of haiku, by poets in all places and at all times since haiku began, as well as from his own ingenious pen, in which ‘the spirit of play and the play of spirit are simultaneous and one.’”
—David Cobb, England

“From the wealth of his experience, Rosenstock gives profound advice and useful tips for the wanderer on the haiku path, showing us how sudden enlightenment can happen in our ordinary life.”
—Ruth Franke, Germany

“With edifying purpose, the author subtly introduces examples of haiku’s apocalyptic potential of transfiguration, known in haiku and Zen as ‘spiritual interpenetration,’ and, by so doing, offers the reader an opportunity to witness—through numinous haiku moments—the entwining of the Universal Spirit with Its Self.”
—James W. Hackett, Hawaii



",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-08-01,Steven McLean,H. G. Wells: Interdisciplinary Essays,Paperback,978-1-4438-1126-2,19.99,"This eclectic collection brings together a range of essays on H. G. Wells (1866-1946). While he is best known for his early ‘scientific romances’, which are generally acknowledged as the precursors of modern science fiction, Wells was a polymath whose varied and prolific writings included science textbooks, journalism, social novels, utopias and short stories. H. G. Wells: Interdisciplinary Essays brings together a collection of mostly new essays from both established scholars and younger researchers and incorporates various aspects of Wells’s position as one of the most important writers of the late nineteenth century and early years of the twentieth century. 

The volume features essays examining well-known works such as The Time Machine, The Island of Doctor Moreau and The War of the Worlds in the context of the sustained recent interest in the interconnections between literature and science. Yet it also includes intriguing evaluations of novels that have received very little attention in academic criticism, such as The Wheels of Chance and Mr Blettsworthy on Rampole Island. Wells’s philosophical outlook and his political impact are assessed in essays that include an investigation of his relationship to the American philosopher William James and his intellectual influence on Winston Churchill. 







","""H.G. Wells: Interdisciplinary Essays is a fine collection that reminds us again of Wells' significance as an author. It also highlights the fact that Wells was a prolific author whose influence should not be underestimated, and whose oeuvre contains much that has been neglected and that needs revisiting, even reassessing. As a result, this reviewer, at least, will be seeking out a copy of Mr Blettsworthy and any other Wells novels that may still be lurking on the bookshop shelves.""

The Wellsian: The Journal of the H. G. Wells Society, No. 32, 2009

",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-08-01,"Joshua Parker, Lucie Tunkrova and Mohamed Bakari",Metamorphosis and Place,Hardback,978-1-4438-1104-0,39.99,"If personal and national identity is often constructed in terms of place, how do our identities and values change as places themselves are transformed? What happens to the spaces in which we live as societal values and identities change? These questions can be asked of almost any discipline, whether one is taking a photograph or mapping a literary topography, tracing linguistic change in a geographic region or language’s importance to our conception of a political territory, building a house or place of worship on a physical plot of land, or constructing them from words on a page or computer software.
Few places are ever uniquely our own. We share them, knowing that the geographic points stabilizing our own identities serve, on their reverse side, to support an entirely different set of meanings. We project our cultural (or disciplinary) markers onto landscapes which are already hardly blank, but full of others’ meanings. This collection brings together scholars from a range of disciplines including literary and cultural studies, history, political science, architecture, anthropology, photography and art history, communications, sociology, lexicography, linguistics, tourism management and theoretical psychoanalysis, each shedding light on how place is both a transforming subject and a transformed object. 



",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-08-01,Tudor Balinisteanu,"Narrative, Social Myth and Reality in Contemporary Scottish and Irish Women’s Writing: Kennedy, Lochhead, Bourke, Ní Dhuibhne, and Carr",Hardback,978-1-4438-1127-9,44.99,"This book offers an original interdisciplinary analysis of the relations between myth, identity and social reality, involving elements of narratology theory, linguistics, philosophy, anthropology and social theory, harnessed to support an argument firmly located in the area of literary criticism. This analysis yields a fairly extensive reinterpretation of the concept of myth, which is applied to the examination of the relationship between narrative and social reality as represented in texts by contemporary Scottish and Irish women writers.

The main theoretical sources are Mikhail Bakhtin’s theories of heteroglossia, Jacques Derrida’s theories of citationality and Judith Butler’s theories of subjectivity. The analysis framework developed in the book uses these theories to create a new way of understanding how literary texts change readers’ worldviews by enticing them to accept alternative possibilities of cultural expression of identity and social order. The texts analysed in this book reconfigure naturalised stories that have become normative and constraining in conveying identities and visions of legitimate social orders. The book’s focus on feminine identities places it alongside feminist analyses of reconstructions of fairy tales, myths or canonical stories that establish what counts as legitimate feminine identity.

Studied here for the first time together, the writers whose texts form the interest of this book continue the revisionist work begun by other women writers who engage with the male generated literary, philosophical and humanist tradition. They share a view of narratives as tools for continually negotiating our identities, social worlds and socialisation scenarios. While the high-level theoretical discourse of the first part of the book requires specialised knowledge, the second part of the book, offering close readings of the texts, is both lively and accessible and should engage the interest of the general reader and academic alike. This book is written for all those who are interested in the power words have to hold sway over our inner and outer (social) worlds.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-08-01,Savvas Neocleous,Papers from the First and Second Postgraduate Forums in Byzantine Studies: Sailing to Byzantium,Hardback,978-1-4438-1102-6,44.99,"Sailing to Byzantium brings together ten probing and pertinent critical papers, presented at the First and Second Postgraduate Forums in Byzantine Studies, held at Trinity College Dublin on 17-18 April 2007 and 15-16 May 2008 respectively. These essays engage with various facets of Byzantine history and culture. Many of them seek to shed new light on frequently controversial subject matters relating to history, historiography, and religion (the contentious nature of Jerusalem in Byzantine imperial ideology; medieval Western attitudes and perceptions of the Byzantine Empire; and the translation and use of Greek theologians in the West). Elsewhere, there are papers that tackle aspects of Byzantine literature (Encyclopaedism; the circulation of poetry; and a case study of political rhetoric in Manuel II’s Dialogue with the Empress-Mother on Marriage). Finally, history of art and cult come under the microscope in the last two essays of the volume (the meaning of the eight-century apsidal conch at Santa Maria Antiqua in Rome and the origins of the cult of Saint Martin in Dalmatia). Sailing to Byzantium is a provocative, wide-ranging collection and a must for students and academics who wish to broaden their understanding of one of history’s most fascinating civilizations.
","“This volume contains ten contributions to various aspects of Byzantine history, literature and mentality, all written by young scholars who show a high scholarly level and an impressive competence in handling important questions in a methodically correct and often new approach. Some of the articles are devoted to questions of the interrelationship between Byzantium and the medieval West in historiography and theology, others cover the fields of Byzantine encyclopaedism, of the circulation of poetry and of advices of the emperor. Two contributions deal with art history, again focusing on Byzantine-Western relations. Thus the volume shows a certain homogeneity and at the same time a rich variety of subject-matters. In its entirety it is a substantial contribution to our knowledge of the place of Byzantium within the framework of medieval literature and thought.” 
- Prof. Dr. Wolfram Hörandner, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Institut für Byzantinistik

“This volume offers a convenient as well as impressive selection of the finest papers performed at the model-setting Dublin Postgraduate Fora Sailing to Byzantium, uniting young scholars from a large number of excellent institutions and educational backgrounds, from Bucharest in the east to Buenos Aires in the west, with innovative papers covering an equally huge scope, stretching from Rome to Jerusalem, and the Crusader Levant more generally, geographically, from Late Antiquity – St John Chrysostom – to late Byzantium – Emperor Manuel II Palaiologos – chronologically, and from medieval translation and manuscript studies via close source readings to art history methodologically.”
-Prof. Niels Gaul, Department of Medieval Studies, CEU Budapest

",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-08-01,Karen Weekes,Privilege and Prejudice: Twenty Years with the Invisible Knapsack,Hardback,978-1-4438-1009-8,34.99,"“Privilege and Prejudice: Twenty Years with the Invisible Knapsack” explores various areas of contemporary American culture where sexism and racism still leave an indelible print. In 1988, Peggy McIntosh published her groundbreaking essay “White Privilege and Male Privilege,” an examination of white privilege and its role in perpetuating racism. Twenty years later, these seven essays reveal problems that persist even in systems that are ostensibly trying to address problems of inequality.  Beginning with a foreword by McIntosh on our society’s resistance to confronting privilege, this text then delves into a variety of fields. In the first section, on higher education, Simona Hill, Lucien Winegar, Juanita Johnson-Bailey and Ronald Cervero contribute two essays examining racism in the academy, while Donna Axel explores the stigma in law school alternative application processes.  The next section interrogates privilege and its effects on females’ choices, with Kyla Bender-Baird questioning global contraception policies and Mary Carney giving a historical overview to contextualize persistent gender inequities in computer technology. Media studies and stereotypes are considered in the final section, in which Janice Stapley analyzes children’s birthday cards for gender bias and Ellen Miller critiques male dance films. This text would be useful for social science and humanities scholars of all types with its explorations of the continuing ramifications of race, gender, class, and their intersections.





","""A valuable contribution to the work on privilege and inequality that continues to frame our understanding of life in the 21st Century.""
—Paula Rothenberg, Senior Fellow, Murphy Institute, City University of New York

""Celebrating two decades of Peggy McIntosh's influential work on invisible privilege, editor Karen Weekes has compiled a collection of fascinating articles that draw inspiration from McIntosh's work...this book is a strong addition to any social justice library.""

Diversity and Democracy, Volume 13, No. 2, 2010


",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-08-01,Zouheir Jamoussi,The Snare in the Constitution: Defoe and Swift on Liberty,Hardback,978-1-4438-1010-4,49.99,"This comparative study of Defoe’s and Swift’s treatments of liberty embraces what seemed the most significant parts of their vast, multifaceted oeuvres, both non-fictional and fictional. Defoe’s and Swift’s positions with regard to the English constitution and liberties are assessed here through a close examination of their views on contemporary religious and political issues. Moreover, their involvement in the debates on the liberties and constitutions of Scotland and Ireland, respectively, could not be left out of this comparative approach to their treatments of liberty in the broader sense. Also of primary concern is the liberty of expression and of the press underlined (though ambiguously) by both authors as an essential precondition for any debate, political or otherwise. 

The antithetic relationship between “snare” and “liberty” is examined in the context of the analogy between the political constitution (the body politic) and the human constitution (the natural body) commonly drawn in early 18th century political writings, including Defoe’s and Swift’s. This analogy provides appropriate means of identifying important links within, as well as between, the two authors’ works, since both focused on “snares” in the political and human constitutions. The part of the study devoted to the “snare” in human nature mainly considers the fictional works. Much attention has been given in this regard to the contrasting ways in which both authors have dealt with those “snares” and the interaction between the human and the political constitutions.

","“Professor Jamoussi's study has many outstanding merits, not least (a rare feat) that of offering a parallel view of two among the greatest literay geniuses of the early eighteenth century centered on the theme of liberty—especially at a time when liberty was an issue at the heart of the political debate. Throughout, Zouheir Jamoussi offers a juxtaposition of Swift's and Defoe's opinions, making them ‘respond to each other’.”
—Serge Soupel, Prof. (Emeritus), Sorbonne, Paris

"". . . is in keeping with Jalmoussi's approach, which is to provide an inclusive and generously documented survey of his subject, reviewing interperative points from recent scholarship, rather than to impose a closely argued thesis of his own. One reads his book therefore as a well-informed and well-documented commentary which opens up ideas for further consideration, rather than a conclusive account.""

Brian Tippett, Literature and History, Third series, 20/1

",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-08-01,Pascale Drouet,The Spectacular In and Around Shakespeare,Hardback,978-1-4438-1105-7,34.99,"This volume addresses the economy of the spectacular in and around Shakespeare’s plays, both in early modern England and in late-twentieth/twenty-first-century adaptations and appropriations. Apart from addressing issues such as (im)plausibility, tours de force arousing amazement, and excess for the sake of entertainment, it raises the question of intentionality—what is behind the spectacular? Is there always a manipulative purpose? How far-reaching are the political and ideological stakes?

The contributors to this volume investigate a broad spectrum of particular phenomena: the spectacular sound effects and pyrotechnics displayed for the opening of the Globe theatre with Julius Caesar on performance; George Gascoigne’s lavish 1575 pageant commissioned by the Earl of Leicester for the queen at Kenilworth (The Princely Pleasures); the relationship between the spectacular and scientific discoveries, as well as their dialectics of appropriation; the impact of Mannerist art on The Winter’s Tale; Coriolanus’ resistance to ostentation and political shows; the anti-spectacular counter-current running through Timon of Athens; Julia Pascal’s innovative 2007 stage production of The Merchant of Venice; apocalyptic screen adaptations of turn-of-the-century Jacobean tragedies, and Richard III’s potential to be graphically interpreted in 2008 as political satire and as a danse macabre.




",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-08-01,Axel Stähler and Klaus Stierstorfer ,Writing Fundamentalism,Hardback,978-1-4438-1121-7,39.99,"Given its discursive amplification and its very real impact on contemporary societies, fundamentalism has become the focus of much scholarly attention. However, whereas it is commonly recognized to be centred on texts, the complex and at times paradoxical relationship of fundamentalism with literature remains as yet largely unexplored. Based on new research by an international team of scholars working in the fields of literary and cultural studies, the essays gathered in this volume are based on a number of theoretical frameworks and debates and open up a historical perspective which engages critically with received notions of fundamentalism: by exploring literary representations of fundamentalisms and the function of literature in fundamentalism, they enquire into the underlying generic differences and incompatibilities as well as – perhaps more unexpected – the similarities and affinities between fundamentalism and literature. 
Opening up a historical perspective reaching back to the early sixteenth century, concepts of fundamentalism as a response to exclusively modernist tendencies since the beginning of the twentieth century are challenged in this volume and several contributors begin to explore the rise of fundamentalisms at various points in history characterized by the crisis experience of cultural change. While taking this conceptual base as a point of departure, the articles collected here then spread out on a plurality of theoretical frameworks. Alert to the productive friction between these discourses, which it aims to elicit, the volume confronts earlier research in the disciplines of theology, history of religion, sociology, political history, anthropology and – if less copious – literary studies with postcolonial and cultural studies. 
With its general focus on writing in English, including American and British literatures as well as the “new” literatures in English worldwide, the collection takes into account cultural and historical affinities and differences which have contributed to the ongoing negotiations of fundamentalism and literature in the English language and transcends borders of both nations and academic disciplines. In exploring new perspectives on fundamentalism and literature, the volume offers tools for a better understanding of this interrelation which should be of interest to scholars across all disciplines concerned with fundamentalism as a social and cultural phenomenon of ever growing global importance and impact.






",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-09-01,"Franca Ruggieri, John McCourt and Enrico Terrinoni with an afterword by Umberto Eco",Joyce in Progress: Proceedings of the 2008 James Joyce Graduate Conference in Rome,Hardback,978-1-4438-1235-1,39.99,"The essays gathered in Joyce in Progress are the fruit of the First Annual Graduate Conference in Joyce Studies held at the Università Roma Tre in February 2008, and organized by the Italian James Joyce Foundation. They are a testament to the enduring fascination of Joyce's writings and the ongoing liveliness of debate about the writer and his works and contexts.

There is a wide array of genuine research on show here, which looks at Joyce from a variety of angles, focusing on his deeply complex autobiographical fiction through genetic studies, post-colonial studies, eco-criticism and intertextual and multi-modal approaches.

This volume offers ground-breaking multi-disciplinary readings and usefully connects Joyce’s work with that of contemporary writers, rivals, followers, and successors.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-09-01,Sabrina Fuchs-Abrams,Literature of New York,Hardback,978-1-4438-1242-9,34.99,"Literature of New York is the first collection of critical essays to look at historical and contemporary images of New York through an examination of works of literature by New York writers about New York.  New York City is a study in contradictions; it offers at once a sense of possibility, cultivation, self-realization and a fear of corruption, decay,  and despair.  The literature of New York is representative of American national identity and of the unique nature of the metropolitan, urban experience.  

The essays are arranged chronologically to reflect the changing significance of the city in relation to various movements in American literary and cultural history.  It includes essays on the relation of urban public space to various editions of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass;  the theme of surveillance in the literature of New York by Herman Melville, Edith Wharton, and Ann Petry;  fear of the cultural Other within modern New York in Henry James’ ""The Jolly Corner"";  use of the setting of New York City to emphasize both the dynamic energy and increasing anxiety of the modern American cityscape in Dos Passos' Manhattan Transfer (1925); the satiric portrayal of New York society in the 1920s and 30s in Dorothy Parker's recently collected stories and sketches; the  response to post-WWII New York City in fictionalized autobiography in the personal narratives of Audre Lorde and Diane di Prima; the poetics of second generation New York School poet Ted Berrigan in relation to his predecessors; the representation of New York in postmodern fiction, depicting at once a sense of loss at the inability to return to the old neighborhood of the past in Don DeLillo's Cosmopolis and the possibility of reasserting order and meaning amidst the chaos and terror of post-911 New York in Jay McInerney’s The Good Life (2006).  Whether expressing nostalgia for the past, hope for the future, fear of the unknown, or the possibility of self-actualization, the literature of New York continues to draw inspiration from its locale and is as complex, contradictory, and creative as the City itself.  

Contributors include Karen Karbiener, Mark James Noonan, Jonathan Readey, Heidi E. Bollinger, Sabrina Fuchs-Abrams, Kirsten Bartholomew Ortega, Michael Angelo Tata, Jessica Maucione, and Sonia Baelo-Allué.


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-09-01,Ulrike Brisson and Bernard Schweizer,Not So Innocent Abroad: The Politics of Travel and Travel Writing,Hardback,978-1-4438-1297-9,39.99,"With its specific focus on the connections between politics, travel, and travel writing, Not So Innocent Abroad offers a fresh approach to the study of travel literature. The authors make clear that travel and travel writing are never an “innocent” enterprise; rather, journeying always occurs within political systems, and travel writing either reflects the traveler’s political stance, includes political aspects of foreign cultures, or directly or indirectly influences political decisions.

In contrast to most scholarly publications that primarily focus on travel literature of former colonial nations, this volume includes a broader range of travelogues depicting cultures worldwide, spanning from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century. It thus offers with its comparative approach not only a geographically wide selection but also an historical dimension to the political aspects of travel writing. 

Although most travel literature generally has followed the Horatian principle to instruct and delight the armchair traveler, the authors of this volume clearly address the broader political implications of travel and travel writing within networks of “naked” politics, such as international or interior conflicts, emigration laws, or national propaganda. They also reveal how insidiously political messages are dissimulated through travel writing.



","""Overall, the volume suggests a scholarly fascination with the fact that women travel authors did indeed discuss politics, and to a greater degree and depth than expected.

The eight individual chapters are well written and thought provoking and may be useful for students, scholars and instructors alike.

Beth Anne Muellener, College of Wooster, Women In German
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-09-01,Lopamudra Basu and Cynthia Leenerts,Passage to Manhattan: Critical Essays on Meena Alexander,Hardback,978-1-4438-1243-6,39.99,"Passage to Manhattan: Critical Essays on Meena Alexander is a unique compendium of scholarship on South Asian American writer Meena Alexander, who is recognized as one of the most influential and innovative contemporary South Asian American poets. Her poetry, memoirs, and fiction occupy a unique locus at the intersection of postcolonial and US multicultural studies. This anthology examines the importance of her contribution to both fields. It is the first sustained analysis of the entire Alexander oeuvre, employing a diverse array of critical methodologies. Drawing on feminist, Marxist, cultural studies, trauma studies, contemporary poetics, phenomenology, and psychoanalysis, the collection features fifteen chapters and an Afterword, by well-established scholars of postcolonial and Asian American literature like Roshni Rustomji, May Joseph, Anindyo Roy, and Amritjit Singh, as well as by emerging scholars like Ronaldo Wilson, Parvinder Mehta, and Kazim Ali.

The contributors offer insights on nearly all of Alexander’s major works, and the volume achieves a balance between Alexander’s diverse genres, covering the spectrum from early works like Nampally Road to her forthcoming book The Poetics of Dislocation. The essays engage with a variety of debates in postcolonial, feminist, and US multicultural studies, as well as providing many nuanced and detailed readings of Alexander’s mutli-layered texts.
","“In broad terms, the book Passage to Manhattan: Critical Essays on Meena Alexander edited by Lopamudra Basu and Cynthia Leenerts is welcome and long overdue. While much has been written about postcolonial theory and theorists, as well as fiction writers, the output in critical scholarship on postcolonial poetry and poets, especially from South Asia, has been distressingly thin. In this respect alone, this is a ‘project of illumination’ and deserves a careful consideration as it focuses on postcolonial South Asian poetry in English, but also straddles women’s and cultural studies, as well as literary theory. Summing up, the value of project lies, first, in that it fills a lacuna in Postcolonial Studies: a definitive examination of the poetry of Meena Alexander, one of the most original and compelling voices in postcolonial south Asian writing in English. Second, the book, with its judicious and carefully balanced mix of interviews, critical essays and commentaries, locates the postcolonial poetry of Alexander as enmeshed in an interconnected network of contact zones, which Mary Louise Pratt sees as invoking the spatial and temporal co-presence of people and cultures previously separated by geographical and historical disjunctures, but whose personal, cultural, and creative trajectories now come together or intersect.”
– Gautam Kundu, Professor of English, Georgia Southern University

“It is well past time for an anthology of critical writings on the poetry, fiction, and memoirs of Meena Alexander (1951–), and the 15 essays gathered here successfully offer balanced readings from feminist, Marxist, phenomenological, and cultural studies points of view that situate her notably on the ‘fault lines’ between postcolonial, ethnic American, and women’s studies. Following Jahan Ramazani’s suggestion in The Hybrid Muse (2001), Basu and Leenerts seek to broaden the treatment of poetry in postcolonial studies, and with Amritjit Singh and Peter Schmidt (Postcolonial Theory and the United States, 2000) they demonstrate that US ethnic studies pointedly intersect postcolonial work in writers like Alexander. Here is a writer who draws inspiration equally from Gloria Anzaldúa, Rumi, Akka Mahadevi, and Edouard Glissant: an exponent of cultural decolonization, the aesthetics of hybridity, and the task of expanding the notion of genre.”
– John C. Hawley, Professor and Chair of English, Santa Clara University

“This richly textured collection fully honors Meena Alexander, a writer of breath-taking complexity – poet, novelist, memoirist, essayist. Her aesthetic draws inspiration from multiple sources including South Asian poets and philosophers, English Romanticists, feminists, postcolonial and anti-racist theorists; her language foregrounds the female body as the landscape of struggle and memory. The contributors illuminate superbly the craft and ethics of Alexander’s poetic, fluid, and genre-shifting polyvocal articulations, calling attention to their transformative value in a time of violence. Willingly, we invest in the histories and conflicts of the diverse places and peoples that populate Alexander’s vast consciousness, which moves relentlessly across India, North Africa, England, and the United States.”
– Rajini Srikanth, Associate Professor of English, University of Massachusetts, Boston

“This excellent collection of essays and interviews analyzes the transnational feminist poetry, memoirs, fiction and philosophy of the South Asian American writer Meena Alexander. A single volume brings together the varied production of a cosmopolitan ‘woman cracked by multiple migrations,’ a writer whose oeuvre is situated at the intersection of postcolonial, ethnic American, and women’s studies. The contributors effectively chart the intellectual biography of an important poet philosopher activist who has constructed her writings as a home where all the different countries and languages that make up who she is are brought together and lived simultaneously and harmoniously.”
– Miriam Cooke, Professor of Arab Cultures, Duke University; Author of Dissident Syria: Making Oppositional Arts Official
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-09-01,"Claude Maisonnat, Josiane Paccaud-Huguet and Annie Ramel",Rewriting/Reprising in Literature: The Paradoxes of Intertextuality,Hardback,978-1-4438-1254-2,39.99,"This volumes includes a series of 17 selected essays, preceded by a methodological introduction, whose purpose is to offer a fresh outlook on the question of rewriting-reprising. The argument, taking for granted the phenomenon of intertextuality, develops along three main axes: the first one reconsiders the already debated issue of authority on post-structuralist premises, arguing that the origin of a text is untraceable. The second looks at a phenomenon often associated with reprising, especially in a post-colonial context: trauma, whether individual or historical, in relation to creative repetition. The third axis offers a re-reading of the question of voice, introducing the notion of the textual voice, understood as that part of the enunciative act over which the author has no control.

When writers make of reprising a deliberate practise, we are tempted to believe that their position, between homage and pillage, presupposes the existence of a traceable source of the literary Word. We must however face the problematic nature of enunciation, the void on which is is founded. Which leads us to the proposition that the act of reprising is a creation ex nihilo: a certain mode of organisation around that void. Besides, in a century of major man-made traumas, whose effect was the tearing up of social fabrics, reprising will assume a more complex significance: the symptomatic, repetitive stitching of what is being constantly ripped up. 




",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-09-01,Lucie Doležalová,Strategies of Remembrance: From Pindar to Hölderlin,Hardback,978-1-4438-1261-0,39.99,"Concentrated on the meanings and contexts of memory in literature, history, cognitive science and philosophy, primarily in the Middle Ages, this collective monograph offers a variety of ideas and approaches to memory in connection to identity, the past, and immortality. Contributors include Peter Agócs, Michal Ajvaz, Ivan M. Havel, Michael W. Herren, Gerhard Jaritz, Lenka Karfíková, Zsuzsanna Kiséry, Regina Koycheva, Csaba Németh, Sylvain Piron, Tamás Visi, and Rafał Wójcik.


","""A unique collection of contributions to the subject of memory and the various meanings of the concepts related to it. The impressive time-span of the studies makes it an inspiring starting point in any research related to memory. ""
- Farkas Gábor Kiss, University of Budapest

""A fine book about the past that echoes familiar concerns, present-day preoccupations with such trifles as the idea of immortality and the construction of historical patterns.""
- Laura Iseppi De Filippis, Università di Verona

""It is always fascinating to experience a transdisciplinary workshop at the CTS. The one on memory and remembrance was no exception, and the present book shows it in an excellent way.""
- Ivan Chvatík, Center for Theoretical Study, Prague




",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-09-01,Vanessa Guignery,Voices and Silence in the Contemporary Novel in English,Hardback,978-1-4438-1247-4,39.99,"This volume examines the various processes at work in expressing silence and excessive speech in contemporary novels in English, covering the whole spectrum from effusiveness to muteness. Even if in the postmodern episteme language is deemed inadequate for speaking the unspeakable, contemporary authors still rely on voice as a mode of representation and a performative tool, and exploit silence not only as a sign of absence, block or withdrawal, but also as a token of presence and resistance. Logorrhoea and reticence are not necessarily antithetical as compulsive verbosity may work as a smokescreen to sidestep the real issues, while silences and gaps may reveal more than they hide. By submitting their texts to both expansion and retention, hypertrophy and aphasia, writers persistently test the limits of language and its ability to make sense of individual and collective stories. The present volume analyses the complex poetics of silence and speech in fiction from the 1960’s to the present, with special focus on Will Self, Graham Swift, John Fowles, Kazuo Ishiguro, Jenny Diski, Lionel Shriver, Michèle Roberts, Margaret Atwood, Jonathan Safran Foer, Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy, Zadie Smith, Jamaica Kincaid, Ryhaan Shah and J.M. Coetzee.





",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-10-01,Amy Tak-yee Lai ,"Asian English Writers of Chinese Origin: Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong",Hardback,978-1-4438-1313-6,39.99,"This is the first book to bring together nine Asian English writers of Chinese descent from Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong: Catherine Lim, Christine Lim, Ee Tiang Hong, Kee Thuan Chye, Lee Kok Liang, Shirley Lim, Timothy Mo, Xu Xi and Agnes Lam. It discusses how the withdrawal of colonial power and the implementation of nation-building policies impact race/ethnicity, class and language in these former British colonies. The last chapters take a special look at postcolonialism and gender politics, and explore how Chinese women, at home or abroad, defy the Orientalist gaze and the native patriarchy.


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-10-01,Siân Adiseshiah,Churchill’s Socialism: Political Resistance in the Plays of Caryl Churchill,Hardback,978-1-4438-1318-1,39.99,"Although now celebrated as a world-leading playwright, Caryl Churchill has received little attention for her socialism, which has been frequently overlooked in favour of emphasising gendered identities and postmodernist themes. Churchill’s Socialism examines eight of Churchill’s plays with reference to socialist theories and political movements. This well-researched and dynamic new book reframes Churchill’s work, positioning her plays within socialist discourses, and producing persuasive political readings of her drama that reflect much more of the political challenge that the plays pose. It additionally explores her uneasy relationship with postmodernism, which presents itself particularly in Churchill’s later plays.

The book contains a very helpful chapter on socialist contexts, which outlines some of the key events, debates, and movements during the late 1960s up until the early 2000s. This chapter also offers an incisive critique of the easy acceptance by some socialists of a postmodernist rejection of grand narratives and political agency. An in depth examination of the rarely explored interconnections of utopianism and theatre, forms another chapter, where all eight of Churchill’s plays, Light Shining in Buckinghamshire, Vinegar Tom, Top Girls, Fen, Serious Money, Mad Forest, The Skriker, and Far Away, are introduced. The plays are then discussed in pairs in a further four chapters with reference to communist historiography, the class/gender intersection, the end-of-history thesis, ecocritical challenges and postmodernism.


","“By persuasively locating Churchill’s drama within the concerns of the British Left as they evolved from the optimistic 1960s to the fragmented present, Sian Adiseshiah uncovers the plays’ political bedrock, which has been unfortunately obscured by successive waves of critical fashion.  The result is a compelling reassessment of one of the world’s leading playwrights in light of the political tradition she herself explicitly embraces.  It is also an illuminating—if sobering—account of the fate of political theatre after the demise of collectivist politics.  This book performs an essential correction and expansion of our understanding of Churchill’s ambitious and principled drama.” 
—Una Chaudhuri, Collegiate Professor, Professor of English and Drama, New York University



",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-10-01,Rached Khalifa,Emblems of Adversity: Essays on the Aesthetics of Politics in W. B. Yeats and Others,Hardback,978-1-4438-1322-8,39.99,"The essays collected in Emblems of Adversity: Essays on the Aesthetics of Politics in W. B. Yeats and Others hinge on the question of political articulation in Yeats’s poetry.  Politics and history are paramount to our understanding of the Yeatsian poetic text.  They are inextricable from the poet's aesthetic philosophy.  Yet politics manifests itself in a complex and complicated form in his work.  It articulates itself both consciously and unconsciously.  It is at once latent and manifest; appropriated and yet rejected; unambiguously announced in the title but immediately muffled in the corpus.  Additionally, political articulation in Yeats’s poetry is multifarious, insofar as the biographical, the national and the historical are not only politicized but most often envisioned—apocalyptically—as emblems of adversity.  To put it differently, ageing, Irish politics and modernity are synonymous with a Time transmogrifying “ancestral houses” into “ruins”—a Time “half dead at the top.”  Self, Ireland and history are intermeshed in Yeats’s symbolism.  They are inseparable from his worldview.  His rage against ageing most often culminates in raging about the age—both modernity and Irish current reality.  These essays trace Yeats’s aestheticization of politics right from the beginning of his poetic career, from his early pastoral innocence to the later modernist experience.  Some of them examine Yeats comparatively with other modernists.



","""As well as Yeat's overarching philosophy, Khalifa is excellent at mapping out the actual techniques Yeats used. He shows how Yeats gradually found a method which would allow him to express his politics implicitly.

Because of the attention to the nuts and bolts of the texts, Khalifa's study is as good an introduction to poetic ideology in general as it is to Yeat's ideology in particular.""

Joe Heap, University of Glasgow, The Kelvingrove Review
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-10-01,"Maeve Tynan, Maria Beville and Marita Ryan ",Passages: Movements and Moments in Text and Theory,Hardback,978-1-4438-1306-8,39.99,"The multiplicity of interpretations available in the word ‘passages’ is engaged with in this collection of essays that perceptively navigate the ideas of literal and metaphorical crossings, sites of liminality and interstitial zones, the traversal of boundaries and the complex notion of rites and rights of passage. This passages topic is elucidated through discussions on writers as diverse as James Joyce and the Palestinian poet Tawfīq Sāyigh and genres that include the novel, short story, poetry and drama. The diversity of texts is matched by a diversity of theoretical readings that stimulate debate around central ideas such as: how are old texts revisited and re-imagined in the context of new theories? How do contemporary texts re-appropriate the past to critically appraise the present? How is identity renegotiated in cross-cultural texts and in translations?

The combination of close textual readings with broader philosophical and cultural deliberations allows for a vigorous examination of texts and theories. The authors, in capturing the cultural moment of their work while acknowledging the ongoing movement of the texts and theory, allow the reader to both contextualise the work and recognise the creative evolution of ideas that are simultaneously at play. 

	  Academically orientated, this collection is essential reading for anyone interested in changing theoretical ideas and how they are re-invigorating a reading of literature. It will be of interest especially to students and scholars of English literature, philosophy and cultural studies. Its close textual analysis and multiple perspectives will also make it a very useful classroom text in the aforementioned areas.   




",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-10-01,Biljana Čubrović and Tatjana Paunović,Ta(l)king English Phonetics Across Frontiers,Hardback,978-1-4438-1303-7,39.99,"Highlighting some interesting and intriguing aspects of English phonetics and phonology from a variety of perspectives, this book brings up a number of empirical questions in order to emphasize the necessity of taking a very broad view of what spoken English means in today's socio-cultural context. English has become a truly global means of communication, used as a first, second, or additional language by millions and millions of diverse speakers, in a multitude of different communicative contexts, so that the very notions of native and non-native seem to have changed profoundly, as have the notions of central/ peripheral and standard/ non-standard with regard to English varieties spoken around the globe. Therefore, today more than ever before, in studying English phonetics many small research steps need to be taken to provide diverse and broad empirical data from as many different standpoints as possible. This collection indeed looks at English phonetics from a wide spectrum of perspectives, including those of native or EFL speakers, language varieties, L2 language teaching and learning, as well as language contact, development, and change. 



","“This collection of research papers indeed takes the study of English phonetics across frontiers, bringing together different phonetic perspectives and different practical and theoretical approaches to the attention of an inquisitive reader.[…] This volume aims at drawing attention to well-known phonetic questions which have gained new facets in today's changed socio-cultural context of the 21st century. […] The kaleidoscopic picture this collection aims to paint emerges from the contributions addressing different aspects of English phonetics and phonology. Therefore, it offers valuable information to researchers in the fields of phonetics and phonology, but also in sociolinguistics, applied linguistics and translation studies. […] Covering a wide range of topics, research questions and English varieties, this mosaic collection vividly illustrates the diversity and complexity of questions the multi-faceted field of English phonetics has grown to cover.”

Dr. Boris Hlebec, Professor of English Linguistics, Faculty of Philology, University of Belgrade



“The present book […] makes the reader think once again over many intriguing and inspiring questions. Also, it highlights some areas for further studies, attracting researchers not only from the field of phonetics, but from the fields of psychology, general and applied linguistics, pragmatics, semantics, methodology, culture and others. […] This collection, bringing together researchers of different backgrounds, linguistic traditions and approaches, presents an important contribution not only to English phonetics, as it is marked in the title, but also to many other fields and disciplines, especially to general and applied linguistics.”

Dr. Snežana Gudurić, Professor of Phonetics and Phonology, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Novi Sad




",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-11-01,"Lindsay Eufusia, Elena Bellina and Paola Ugolini",About Face: Depicting the Self in the Written and Visual Arts,Hardback,978-1-4438-1374-7,39.99,"How do we represent ouselves and the cultures we live in? Is it possible to trace any boundaries between reality and self-representation? Because the self represented is the product of a process of selection and choice, in many ways to represent the self is, often simultaneously, to create the self and negate the self. What, then, becomes of the self once it is represented? 
Because the process of self-representation cumulates in a tangible result and given that any representation of the self is necessarily a construct which aims to render visible or knowable in concrete form the unseen and unknown, self-representation is vulnerable to assessments of its naturalness or artificiality, its honesty or deceit. Many issues affect the author or artist’s self-representation, both as process and form: the medium through which the self will be represented, the motivation for representing oneself, and the role of the audience, to name only a few relevant factors. 
This book explores the multifaceted nature of self-representation in relation to culture from the Middle Ages through the Renaissance up to contemporary Italian, American and Australian culture with reference to concepts and questions connected to literature, poetry, philosophy, theology, history, ethnicity studies, gender studies, and visual arts.



",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-11-01,"François Laroque, Pierre Iselin and Sophie Alatorre","""And that’s true too"": New Essays on King Lear",Hardback,978-1-4438-1367-9,39.99,"This collection of provocative new essays, mainly by French scholars, on Shakespeare’s great tragedy, focuses on linguistic, aesthetic and philosophical issues with specific attention paid to the dimension of  early modern desire, sexuality and gender relations.
King Lear is here re-examined in the perspective of Lucrece, Montaigne, Renaissance medicine and anatomy, the grotesque, myth and imagery as well as negative theology. It is hoped that this will serve to update our approaches to this elusive, undecided play, neither Christian nor as completely nihilistic as some critics have argued, which nevertheless remains quite popular on French and English stages alike.



",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-11-01,"Eugenio Bolongaro, Mark Epstein, and Rita Gagliano",Creative Interventions: The Role of Intellectuals in Contemporary Italy,Hardback,978-1-4438-1353-2,49.99,"Who are “intellectuals”? What do they think their role and function in contemporary society is? Are they on the endangered-species list? Is equating conservatism with conservation becoming their dominant survival strategy?

This book is a collection of essays that examines some of the changes in the activities, role, function and self-perception of Italian intellectuals since World War II (two major divides are considered to be the crisis of 1956–7 and the fall of the Berlin Wall). The first section examines some of the most influential figures in the early decades, the second the activities of contemporary intellectuals, a third gives voice to some contemporary writers, a fourth contains some comparative essays about the role of intellectuals in influential contemporary Western cultures and a final section is devoted to some cross-disciplinary forays and reflections on the relevance and possible future directions of these inquiries.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-11-01,William Gray,"Death and Fantasy: Essays on Philip Pullman, C. S. Lewis, George MacDonald and R. L. Stevenson",Paperback,978-1-4438-1347-1,14.99,"Drawing on philosophy, theology and psychoanalysis as well as on literary criticism, this collection of essays explores a range of fantasy texts with particular attention to the various ways in which they seek to deal with the reality of death. The essays uncover some fascinating links, and indeed tensions, between the writers discussed.    






","“Death and Fantasy is a concise and welcome gathering of work by William Gray on notable authors of fantasy: Philip Pullman, C. S. Lewis, George MacDonald, and Robert Louis Stevenson. In nine astute and insightful chapters the volume analyses texts ranging from Macdonald’s Phantastes to Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia and from Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde to Pullman’s His Dark Materials. Examining the ways in which death is both dealt with and used in these fantasies, Gray reveals fascinating interconnections between their authors.”

Dr Adrienne Gavin, Reader in English Literature, Canterbury Christ Church University


“This book makes a scholarly and very readable contribution to matters of current critical debate in the area of children’s fantasy. It displays how much children’s literature criticism has to gain from scholars who bring to it a background of knowledge of other disciplines. Supported throughout by useful close reading, Gray’s arguments are well-maintained and display knowledge of a very wide range of psychoanalytic, philosophical and theological sources, all brought to bear in a relevant and convincing manner. Perhaps the most interesting sections are those where Gray displays the affinities between George MacDonald and Philip Pullman. The suggestion that Pullman’s creative achievement depends on a misreading of C.S.Lewis, just as Lewis’s did on a misreading of MacDonald, is a particularly fertile area for further critical investigation. The book has much to offer to scholars and students alike.”

Dr Pat Pinsent, Senior Research Fellow, National Centre for Children’s Literature, Roehampton University

""...this is a valuable book for scholars interested in the relationship of one generation of fantasy writers with the next. ...this study is wonderfully fluent in style, and the comparative theology is magnificent""

Stacie L. Hanes, Journal of the Fantastic Arts, Vol. 21, No. 1, 2010

""Reflecting a multi-layered and sophisticated reading of these masters of fantasy, Gray draws on psychoanalysis, spirituality, and philosophy to support his arguments. Furthermore, he produces a work richly layered with references to other important scholars and theorists.

Gray's collection od essays offers a refreshing, fascinating perspective on important writers of children's fantasy in terms of their dialogue on death and spirituality. Much has been written about Lewis and Pullman, for example, but Gray provides a different perspective on how they engage with the concept of death. Additionally, framing the authors in relationship with one another activates an even more interesting exploration of these timeless classics of children's literature.""

Catherine Posey, The Pennsylvania State University in IRSCL, December 2010

",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-11-01,James Guignard and T. P. Murphy,"Literature, Writing, and the Natural World",Hardback,978-1-4438-1381-5,39.99,"The English Association of Pennsylvania State Universities held its annual meeting in 2006 at Mansfield University in Pennsylvania. The conference theme was “Literature, Writing, and the Natural World.” This collection grows out of the conference and indicates the desire to understand all aspects of our relationship with the natural world, the function of literature in clarifying that relationship (in ways science and politics cannot), and the role of the literature teacher-scholar wanting to respond to pressures of environmental change.

In these times, interpretation is a vital task, not only for the way it educates us about our attitudes toward nature, but because it develops the crucial skills of looking closely, engaging, reflecting, and responding. One could argue that, as a culture, Americans are behind the curve in understanding the ways we depend upon a healthy relationship with nature, and one way (among many) depends upon examining it through texts and textual representation. When the writers here dig into The Main Woods, Jayber Crow, the poetry of Pablo Guevara, or the movie Crash, they are contributing to our understanding of the ways in which we view nature and how that view plays a role in the way we relate to nature.

These days, many disciplines engage global warming and other environmental issues routinely, and the literature classroom should be no different. Just as we read a book and address fundamental themes such as “What does it mean to love?” or “How do we develop identity?” we should also be asking “What is my responsibility when I decide what resources to use?” If we understand literature as equipment for living in a warming world, we may be able to help students make some sense out of their world and some decisions about how to act.






","“The authors represented in this collection examine a variety of texts in an effort to better understand human relationships to nature and the environment...By demonstrating the connections among reading and interpreting literature and living ethically in the environments we inhabit, Literature, Writing, and the Natural World brings its audience closer to imagining healthier ways of relating to each other and to the natural world—and changing such imaginings into reality.”
- Melissa A Goldthwaite, Associate Professor of English, St. Joseph’s University

“The editors James Guignard and T. P. Murphy have assembled and shaped a collection of ecocritical explorations that is sophisticated, up-to-date, and venturesome...The consistent excellence of this collection, along with the illuminating manner in which its editors have both introduced and organized it, will certainly make the publication of Literature, Writing, and the Natural World an important event in the burgeoning realm of literary scholarship.”
- John Elder, Stewart Professor of English and Environmental Studies, Middlebury College

“This collection “offers new approaches to the topic...suggesting new avenues of research to an expanding field of literary studies in a manner accessible to scholars of various levels of experience and expertise....[Literature, Writing, and the Natural World]...would likely be of interest to a wider range of readers interested in American studies, cultural geography, and the environment—this being especially the case because it is often written in an accessible and engaging manner that entertains as it informs.”
- Patrick Barron, Assistant Professor of English, University of Massachusetts, Boston 




",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-11-01,Nathan Waddell,"Modern John Buchan: A Critical Introduction
",Hardback,978-1-4438-1370-9,34.99,"This book offers an introduction to the breadth and diversity of the literary and non-literary work of John Buchan (1875–1940). It stakes a claim for him as an engaged interpreter of twentieth-century modernity, and provides evaluative readings of his output. In addition to demonstrating how Buchan’s work complicates the reductive view of early twentieth-century literature as neatly cordoned-off into “low” and “high” forms of production, this book discusses his theories of empire and imperialism, his account of historiography, and his response to the First World War. In addition to his many roles as a journalist, propagandist, war reporter, editor, civil servant, and statesman, Buchan was a committed literary critic, philosopher, and writer of history. This book explores the many connections between his work and such modernists as Joseph Conrad, Ford Madox Ford, D. H. Lawrence, and Wyndham Lewis, and it situates Buchan as an intellectual figure who provided a distinctive set of readings of his modern times. Running throughout is a consideration of Buchan’s fascination with binaries, doubles, and duality, which his work variously upholds and investigates. It ends with a discussion of Buchan’s most famous work—The Thirty-Nine Steps (1915)—in relation to paranoia and pathology.
","He gives his subject measured and detailed attention, ensuring a balanced and authoritative approach that consolidates Buchan studies into an accepted discipline within literature and history. I envisage this book being required reading on any of the many undergraduate courses studying Buchan, and it will become a necessary part of the corpus of criticism on Buchan’s work.
—Kate Macdonald, University of Ghent, Belgium

Waddell presents a lucid introduction to Buchan’s writings, while at the same time presenting an original and persuasive thesis: that Buchan can and should be read in the company of his modern contemporaries, not as a “modernist” novelist, but as an identifiably modern writer whose fictions demonstrate his awareness of and reaction to the aesthetic and political currents of his day. 
—Scott Klein, Wake Forest University, USA

He has clearly done a lot of reading and thinking and his book is a welcome addition to Buchan studies – a piece of lit crit written lucidly and full of good sense. He has a fresh angle on Buchan’s response to modernity and I like the way he has captured the richness and complexity of Buchan’s writing. 
—Andrew Lownie, author of John Buchan: The Presbyterian Cavalier






",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-11-01,"Peter Cochran, Bill Johnston, Mirosława Modrzewska and Catherine O’Neil",Poland’s Angry Romantic: Two Poems and a Play by Juliusz Słowacki,Paperback,978-1-4438-1371-6,19.99,"Juliusz Słowacki is one of Poland’s most important writers, but his poetry and plays are little known in the West. This book provides a long-overdo, much-needed introduction to him. It contains his popular play Balladina, his meditative poem Agamemnon’s Tomb, and his hilarious mock-epic Beniowski, in the style of Byron’s Don Juan.





",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-11-01,Kathleen O’Dwyer,The Possibility of Love: An Interdisciplinary Analysis,Paperback,978-1-4438-1387-7,19.99,"The Possibility of Love is an exploration of a concept close to the human heart.  Grounded in the ordinary, everyday experiences of human living, the book provides an exploration of the diverse obstacles to the experience of love, the consequences of love’s absence, and the unquenchable desire for love which propels, influences and ultimately motivates much of human behaviour.
	
The Possibility of Love poses the question: is love actually possible between human beings, or is it an ideal, a fantasy, an illusion, or a comforting aspiration which enables a palliative denial and distortion of the reality of human being? This expansive question is approached through an interdisciplinary analysis. The author addresses the question of love’s possibility as it is explored in a selection of literature from the disciplines of philosophy, psychoanalysis and poetry. 
	
The interdisciplinary nature of the study is based on the assertion of an interconnection between the three disciplines, and that this interconnection enables a unique and insightful exploration of the question of love’s possibility. Thus, the question is explored from diverse view-points, and also from different time-frames; convergences and divergences are noted and discussed, and conclusions are drawn from the ensuing findings.
	
The book is essentially a philosophical analysis of an emotion that significantly impacts on human experience. It attests to the gradually increasing acknowledgement of the power of emotional experience in the search for knowledge, wisdom and truth. Thus, it is a uniquely honest exploration of human nature in contemporary times.




",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-12-01,Michael Hollington and Francesca Orestano,Dickens and Italy: Little Dorrit and Pictures from Italy,Hardback,978-1-4438-1443-0,39.99,"‘Dickens and America’ has been amply studied, his no less important relationship to Italy much less so, despite his friend Forster's assertion that his long stay in Genoa  represented ‘the turning-point of his career.’ This book, arising from a major conference held in Genoa in 2007, attempts to redress the balance, focusing primarily on Dickens's two major writings about Italy—the travel book Pictures from Italy of 1845, and Part Two of his great novel Little Dorrit of 1855–7. It falls into six sections: the first concerns Dickens's enjoyment of leisure for the first time in his life in Italy; the second, his response to the visual attractions of Italy, both natural and artistic; the third, his political stance about Italy in the period of the Risorgimento; the fourth, his preoccupation with death and decay in what he saw and experienced in Italy; the fifth, his representation of ‘Italianness’ in Little Dorrit and elsewhere; and the sixth, his relation to modern and contemporary writers about Italy. It thus aims to fill a vital gap in Dickens studies.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-12-01,Tim Wenzell,Emerald Green: An Ecocritical Study of Irish Literature,Hardback,978-1-4438-1633-5,34.99,"Emerald Green: An Ecocritical Study of Irish Literature analyzes a wide range of Irish literature whose themes tie into a reverence for the natural world of Ireland.  From an ecocritical perspective, these works, tied into an understanding of the landscape and particular aspects of nature, attain a fresh new meaning and foster a more relevant reflection of Ireland’s  beautiful  literary landscape. The analysis begins with the first Irish writers, the hermit poets, and examines the ways in which the Irish hermit and saint were connected spiritually, through both pagan and early Christian values, to the natural world.  The book then examines Irish literature from the perspective of the deforested landscape and the landscapes of farmland, divided property, famine, ruins, and a threatening natural world. Following the Famine, the book moves on to explore the establishment of the pastoral dream in this loss of landscape, and a re- connection to nature through the writers of the Irish Literary Renaissance.  From there, the analysis shifts to the nature writing of Ireland’s islands, including nature and community on Achill Island, storytelling on the Aran Islands, exile in nature on Skellig Michael, and the mythmaking of the Great Blasket Island.  Moving north and into the twentieth century, Emerald Green focuses on four nature poets from Northern Ireland: Patrick Kavanagh, Louis MacNeice, Seamus Heaney, and Michael Longley; all four are redeemed by nature through their returns to the rural landscape of Ireland’s west coast.  The book concludes with an examination of modern Irish environmental writers and naturalist poets, as well as journalists weighing in on current environmental concerns in Ireland. Emerald Green concludes with an assessment of the future of nature in Ireland, and how the significant reduction of this country’s  natural landscape will alter its literary landscape as well.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-12-01,Richard Ambrosini and Richard Dury ,European Stevenson,Hardback,978-1-4438-1436-2,39.99,"Edinburgh, late 1860s. Two young gentlemen, their heads buzzing with ideas and artistic ambitions, hang over North Bridge “watching the trains start southward and longing to start too,” the Walter Scott Monument a short way behind them, but their eyes fixed on the tracks leading South, to London and the Continent.

In their Introduction the editors see this scene with his painter cousin as symbolically significant for Robert Louis Stevenson’s writing career. Through his connection with Europe, and especially France, he participated in an international exchange of ideas on art which led him in the 1870s to reinvent his relationship with his national literary tradition by exploring a variety of essayistic forms. He would eventually confront the shadow of the Scott Monument when he turned to novel writing in the ‘80s, but the nature of his innovations as a novelist cannot be understood without taking into account the lessons he learned in France.

The papers that follow first explore the way Stevenson’s world-view and cultural background interacted with European landscape, literature and painting in that key early decade. Later chapters examine the influence of Stevenson on European writers (Proust, Cocteau, Brecht and Calvino) and on other creative artists. The volume aims to show how European culture contributed to Stevenson’s greatest achievements and then to explain why, with Stevenson ignored by Anglo-American critics for most of the twentieth century, he still remained an admired model for Europeans.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-12-01,Diana Patterson,Harry Potter’s World Wide Influence,Hardback,978-1-4438-1394-5,44.99,"The Harry Potter series forms a single epic story that has been published in nearly 70 languages, and has been examined in a large number of disciplines. This collection of essays contributes to the scholarly discourse that forms Potter Studies. 

	These essays take on the consideration of Rowling's work as being worthy of study as a phenomenon and influence, as well as a work of literary value. They add genuine statistical information about the reasons for the books' popularity, consider their effects on child readers, and examine some deep-rooted reasons for their having been manipulated in American publishing, in film adaptations, in musical complements, and in their thingification in popular culture around the world. Some of these essays take on the critics of the books' religion and considerations of psychological, as well as philosophical good and evil, and well as some stylistic anomalies.

	The fact that scholars from China, Germany, Poland, Romania, and Israel, in addition to  English-speaking nations, have felt compelled to examine these books in detail testifies in part to Harry Potter's world-wide influence.


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-12-01,"Lorna Bleach, Katariina Närä, Sian Prosser and Paola Scarpini",In Search of the Medieval Voice: Expressions of Identity in the Middle Ages,Hardback,9781443814348,39.99,"Organised in 2008 by four medievalists from the University of Sheffield, Locating the Voice: Expressions of Identity in the Middle Ages provided a theatre for dialogue between postgraduates and early career researchers from around the world. This collection of articles, born out of the conference, forms an intriguing and interesting way of looking at identity and reflects the editors’ desire to reconcile ideas within adjacent interdisciplinary fields of study. Reaching far beyond the domain of medieval literature, already familiar to so many, this book examines the authorial and pictorial voice, the voice of national identity and even the physical attributes a medieval voice may have had. Each contributor shows how, in locating the voice in their own field of research, it is possible to build a multi-disciplinary approach to individuality and identity in the medieval world.



","“In Search of the Medieval Voice: Expressions of Identity in the Middle Ages provides ample confirmation, if it were needed, that budding scholarship in the very broad field of Medieval Studies is in rude good health, even today. The co-editors of this exciting volume are to be congratulated for their initiative in organising such a well-managed and intellectually stimulating conference, and for bringing to press this absorbing collection of papers selected from the many contributions”. 
—Professor Peter Ainsworth

“This volume offers fresh insight and an approach at once focussed and ranging by approaching identity through the theme of the voice...The theme of identity is currently of great interest in medieval studies and other areas.  This volume offers fresh insight and an approach at once focussed and ranging by approaching identity through the theme of the voice.  The approach is highly appropriate for a culture such as that of the Middle Ages where so many texts were read aloud and consumed through the ear as much as the eye. The contributors, coming from a range of disciplines, extend the concept of voicing both within and beyond textual disciplines, ranging across literature, musicology, history, theology, arachaeology to do so, while the introduction reflects on the themes and history of thought about identity.  It is nowdays generally accepted, as the contributors to this project are well aware, that medieval concepts of identity vary considerably from modern models, often locating identity in what links or positions individuals as much as in what distinguishes them as personalities.  Within this framework, the essays recreate the voicing and the voices of medieval individual and group identity with intimacy and conviction and open up fresh and stimulating methods of enquiry to help us hear them.” 
—Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, Professor of Medieval Literature, Centre for Medieval Studies, The University of York




",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-12-01,Robert P. McParland,Music and Literary Modernism: Critical Essays and Comparative Studies 2nd Edition,Hardback,978-1-4438-1402-7,34.99,"In Music and Literary Modernism, the intersections of music, literature and language are examined by an international group of scholars who engage in studies of modernist art and practice. The essays collected here present the significant place of music in the writing of T.S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, James Weldon Johnson, Mina Loy, Stephen Mallarme, Ezra Pound, Marcel Proust, Gertrude Stein,Wallace Stevens and Virginia Woolf, as well as the importance of literary art for composers such as George Antheil, Pierre Boulez, Olivier Messaein, and The Beatles. Contributors explore the role of music and literary modernism in the postmodern sublime, sound and ""music"" in language, the uneasy alliance of jazz and pop song in high modernist work, the Beatles as modernists, and other topics.

This is a revised and updated second edition.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-12-01,Laura Alba Juez,Perspectives on Discourse Analysis: Theory and Practice,Paperback,978-1-4438-1632-8,29.99,"Perspectives on Discourse Analysis: Theory and Practice provides the student/reader with the basic theoretical knowledge and the empirical tools of some of the most relevant approaches to the analysis of discourse. It has been mainly conceived of as a general (university) course on Discourse Analysis, but it can also be useful for any person or group whose main concern is to acquire the basic necessary knowledge and skills for analyzing any type of discourse. The subject matter of the book could not only be of use for linguists or prospective linguists: given its interdisciplinary character, its findings can be (and in fact are) used and applied by practitioners and scholars from different fields, such as sociology, psychology, medical science, computer science, and so on. Thus the book can be used by any person who, having certain linguistic knowledge, is interested in exploring the fascinating world of discourse.
All the chapters contain both a theoretical and an empirical section, the latter containing examples of analysis, as well as exercises (Practice) and self-evaluation questions, whose answers can be found at the end of the book (in the Practice key and Key to self-evaluation questions sections).
The book is divided into 12 chapters. The first two introduce basic information about discourse analysis and text linguistics, as well as the necessary techniques for gathering data, including a very brief introduction to corpus linguistics.  Chapters 3-11 present and discuss some of the most prominent and well-known approaches to discourse analysis, namely Pragmatics, Interactional Sociolinguistics, Conversation Analysis, The Ethnography of Communication, Variation Analysis and Narrative Analysis, Functional Sentence Perspective, Post-Structuralist Theory and Social Theory, Critical Discourse Analysis and Positive Discourse Analysis, and Mediated Discourse Analysis. Finally, Chapter 12 deals with crucial and further issues, such as the type of discourse chosen for the analysis, the strategies and functions of discourse, or the problem of choosing an appropriate unit of analysis which will suit the aims of research.  
Perspectives on Discourse Analysis: Theory and Practice may prove of value to all those who are professionally involved in the area of discourse and pragmatic studies, or simply to those who wish to acquire the necessary basic knowledge and techniques for analyzing any type of discourse, from medical, journalistic or political discourse to computer-mediated, humoristic, or hegemonic discourse (where the use and abuse of power is an important issue), just to name a few of the innumerable possibilities.
A desirable and intended effect of this book is also the development of an open and tolerant mind, which will eventually lead to a better understanding of the different and varied manifestations of language, culture and communication in human society.  





",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-12-01,Sophie Chiari with a Preface by Sarah A. Brown,"Renaissance Tales of Desire: Hermaphroditus and Salmacis, Theseus and Ariadne, Ceyx and Alcione",Hardback,978-1-4438-1420-1,39.99,"This edition of three Ovidian tales translated and partly rewritten in the 1560s (Thomas Peend’s The Pleasant fable of Hermaphroditus and Salmacis, Thomas Underdowne’s The Excellent Historye of Theseus and Ariadne and William Hubbard’s The Tragicall and lamentable Histoire of two faithfull mates: Ceyx Kynge of Thracine and Alcione his wife) calls attention to the possible literary influence of such minor texts on later poets and playwrights like Marlowe and Shakespeare. Indeed, as narrative poems they deal with the popular themes of metamorphosis and desire. Even though they may well have been used as sources for such works as Hero and Leander, Venus and Adonis or A Midsummer Night’s Dream, they have never been re-edited since the sixteenth century. This volume may thus allow Renaissance scholars to rediscover the “embarrassment of riches” of poems which provide us with new details, developments and perspectives about the original myths, thereby refashioning Ovid’s stories in a typical Renaissance manner.





",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-12-01,Georges Letissier,Rewriting/Reprising: Plural Intertextualities,Hardback,978-1-4438-1388-4,39.99,"This volume comprises sixteen essays, preceded by an introductory chapter focusing on the diverse modalities of textual, and more widely, artistic transfer. Whereas the first Rewriting-Reprising volume (coord. by C. Maisonnat, J. Paccaud-Huguet & A. Ramel) underscored the crucial issue of origins, the second purports to address the specificities of hypertextual, and hyperartistic (Genette, 1982) practices. Its common denominator is therefore second degree literature and art.
A first section, titled “Pastiche, Parody, Genre and Gender,” delineates what amounts to a poetics of rewriting/reprising, by investigating a whole range of authorial stances, from homage – through a symphonic play of intertexts – to varying degrees of textual deviance, or dissidence. Some genres, like the fairy tale or the Gothic, through their very malleability, are indeed more apt to lend themselves to rewriting/reprising. However, hypertextuality is not merely ornamental, or purely aesthetic; its subversive potential is perceptible notably through its many attempts at emancipating the genre from the ideological fetters of gender. Over the past two decades, Victorian literature and culture has become an inescapable field of investigations to any study on intertextuality in the English-speaking world. In a second part, diversity has been preferred to any single, specific angle to approach the Victorian/neo-Victorian tropism. The purpose is to provide as complete a spectrum as is reasonably possible in such a volume. The practice of rewriting in the Victorian age is thus studied alongside contemporary appropriations of the Victorian canon. The question is raised of whether literary fetishism may not result in a form of counterfeit classicism, while the more challenging neo-Victorian rewritings would make a claim for the need to choose one’s literary heritage and ancestors. This is where the post-colonial agenda comes in. Precisely, the third part investigates the question of rewriting-reprising as a way of writing back. The myth of Frankenstein’s creature bent on wreaking vengeance on his creator is of course seminal as it offers a myth of transgression which, in its turn, becomes a “foundation myth.” Not only are post-colonial responses to their (disclaimed) parent-texts highly theory-informed, but they also evince an awareness of such contemporary issues which are direct consequences of the colonial past. In the last section of this volume, the scope of what comes within the range of intertextuality per se is widened to cover artistic dialogism.  In the exchanges between theatrical texts, reprise may be construed as a metaphor standing for the pleasure inherent in the process of recreation. The interaction between embedded paintings and the embedding canvas offers yet another variation on the reprise motif, as does the meta-aesthetic discourse of the critic on the work of art. What begins as mere repetition is soon colored by the personal inflections of the interpreter. In operatic performances, updating a classical text to make it suitable to contemporary audiences, and in close harmony with the role assigned to music, is liable to spur on the creativity of recreation.              




",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-12-01,Bruce C. Swaffield,Rising from the Ruins: Roman Antiquities in Neoclassic Literature,Hardback,978-1-4438-1400-3,34.99,"The neoclassic tendency to write about the ruins of Rome was both an attempt to recapture the grandeur of the “golden age” of man and a lament for the passing of a great civilization. John Dyer, who wrote The Ruins of Rome in 1740, was largely responsible for the eighteenth-century revival of a unique subgenre of landscape poetry dealing with ruins of the ancient world.

Few poems about the ruins had been written since Antiquités de Rome in 1558 by Joachim Du Bellay. Dyer was one of first neoclassic poets to return to the decaying stones of a past society as a source of poetic inspiration and imagination. He views the relics as monuments of grandeur and greatness, but also of impending death and destruction.

While following most of the rules and standards of neoclassicism—that of imitating nature and giving pleasure to a reader—Dyer also includes his personal reactions and emotions in The Ruins of Rome. The work is composed from the position of a poet who serves as interpreter and translator of the subject, a primary characteristic of “prospect” poetry in the eighteenth century. Numerous other writers quickly followed Dyer’s example, including George Keate, William Whitehead and William Parsons.

The tendency by these poets to write about the ruins of Rome from a subjective point of view was one of the strongest themes in what Northrop Frye has called the “Age of Sensibility.” Although the renewed interest in Roman ruins lasted well into the nineteenth century, influencing Romantic poets from Lord Byron to William Wordsworth, the evolution of this type of verse was a gradual process: it originated with Du Bellay’s poem, continued through seventeenth-century paintings by Claude Lorrain and Salvator Rosa (along with the later art of Piranesi and Pannini), and reached maturity with the poetic interest in the imagination in the eighteenth century.

All of these factors, especially the tendency of poets to record their subjective feelings and insights concerning the ruins, are elements that proved to be instrumental in the eventual development of Romanticism.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-12-01,Eugene Henry de Klerk,Subject to Reading: Literacy and Belief in the Work of Jacques Lacan and Paulo Freire,Hardback,978-1-4438-1423-2,39.99,"The book explores what it means for a human organism to be a “subject” and responds to what it sees as the contemporary ablation of subjectivity in favour of an impoverished “biopolitics” (a concept borrowed from Foucault). It is preoccupied with questions of ethics and education, arguing that Lacanian psychoanalysis, like Freirean literacy, constitutes first and foremost an education in responsible subjecthood. It identifies such an education as a very necessary intervention in what appears to be a global double bind between fanatical certainty and capitalist abstraction. The book asserts that, contrary to most trends concerning the appropriation of psychoanalysis or Freirean techniques for teaching, Freirean pedagogy and Lacanian psychoanalysis are not purely “toolboxes” but profound epistemological and philosophical arguments. These arguments also combine to suggest a new socio-political conception of theology.
In addition the book draws on examples from literature and popular culture to explicate certain ideas. In this regard the book primarily undertakes a reading of selected works by J.M. Coetzee. 


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-01-01,Maria-Angeles Ruiz Moneva,A Modest Proposal in the Context of Swift’s Irish Tracts: A Relevance-Theoretic Study,Hardback,978-1-4438-1662-5,49.99,"Swift's A Modest Proposal has always aroused the interest not just of literary critics, but also of linguists and pragmatists. Within the latter approaches, the study of irony, and more concretely, the intentions and attitudes that must have guided the production of such an intricate work, have always been paramount. However, it seems that within pragmatics the analysis has been restricted so far to the 1729 work itself. In the present author's view, it is interesting to contextualise this masterpiece of irony and satire within Swift's wider writing on Ireland, an approach that remains to be carried out. Accordingly, this work sets out to analyse a selection of Swift’s Irish Tracts, with a view to tracing the evolution within Swift's literary production of his views and attitudes towards the situation of his homeland.  Although different pragmatic approaches are applied, the emphasis is laid upon the contributions that the relevance-theoretical framework and its studies on irony may bring to the understanding of this particular Tract. The works selected are meant to cover and also be representative of the main phases currently distinguished within Swift's writing on the ""Irish Question"". It is therefore hoped that a deeper analysis of the former works by Swift on this topic will provide new insights for a better understanding of A Modest Proposal.






","""In this thought-provoking book, the author goes beyond established linguistic theories of irony to consider Swift's work in the literary and historical context in which it was created. The result is an unprecedented depth of analysis and a significant step forward for the study of irony.""
- Prof. Salvatore Attardo, Professor of Linguistics at the University of Texas A&M and editor-in-chief of HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research

""In this book, Ruiz-Moneva tackles the analysis of Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal, one of Swift’s most complex and intricate works, from a pragmatics standpoint. Ruiz-Moneva’s analysis focuses on irony. Swift’s use of irony and satire in A Modest Proposal has been regarded as masterful, and has attracted the attention of researchers in pragmatics. Ruiz-Moneva’s fundamental contribution is to refute Clark and Gerrig’s (1984) contention against Sperber and Wilson’s relevance-theoretical account of irony, namely that the source of echo is rather imprecise. In spite of Clark and Gerrig’s harsh criticism, based on an application of Pretense theory to uses of irony in A Modest Proposal, no Relevance scholars had previously undertaken the task to apply Relevance theory to this text, to ascertain whether it could indeed be used to account for the uses of irony therein. Using Hatim’s (1997) synthetic standpoint –that seeks to reconcile Grice’s and Sperber and Wilson’s divergent accounts of irony, and his intertextual echoes, Ruiz-Moneva argues that the source of echo in Swift’s work is not the text itself, but his previous work on the 'Irish question' and links her conclusions to discussion around the relevance theoretical notions of context and the concept of mutual manifestness, contrasting those with Clark and Carlson’s understanding of context and mutual knowledge. Ruiz-Moneva's groundbreaking, intelligent analysis will undoubtedly be of great interest to Relevance Theory scholars, pragmatists interested in irony and related fields, as well as practitioners of stylistics.""
- Prof. Pilar Garces-Conejos Blitvich, University of North Carolina at Charlotte
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-01-01,Patricia Donaher,Barbarians at the Gate: Studies in Language Attitudes,Hardback,978-1-4438-1703-5,44.99,"The study of language attitudes is the investigation of beliefs expressed about the nature of language and its diverse usages, how these attitudes came to exist and persist, and how these attitudes shape social action and policy. Language attitude studies have illuminated our understanding of racial issues, social and economic stratification, cultural stereotypes, educational issues, folk linguistics, and, more recently, popular culture. This volume is an examination of four intersections in language attitudes research: Authority, Affiliation, Authenticity, and Accommodation. In each section, the contributors introduce new dimensions to the study of language attitudes while providing examples of the ways in which the study of language attitudes can continue to inform and shape our understanding of language diversity.
","“Barbarians at the Gate is a cogent and provocative contribution to both popular culture studies and language attitudes studies.  The collection argues passionately for language diversity and for the importance of studying mass media for language attitudes.  Taken together, the lively articles examine thoroughly the factors and contexts at play in understandings of language diversity.  It does a particularly good job of addressing issues of identity construction, place, and cultural stereotyping.  From analysis of grammar guides to country music, the National Writing Project to popular television sitcoms, the collection covers a lot of ground and successfully demonstrates the importance of this kind of wide-ranging study to assessing language attitudes.  From the point of view of popular culture studies, it is exciting to see more of this kind of analysis by linguists and it how it can engage some shared enduring questions, particularly issues of authenticity and legitimacy.  The collection's specialized assessment of language use in popular culture is a significant contribution to both fields.”
—Leigh H. Edwards, Associate Professor, Department of English, Florida State University

“This engaging and accessible volume makes a valuable contribution to the field of sociolinguistics.  The essays argue persuasively that language variation reflects the diversity of human experience, that voices that are not always heard contain rich structures and ideas, and that their study may yield fresh insights and perspectives.  The reader is compelled to reconsider generally accepted prescriptive notions and stereotypes about the speech patterns of stigmatized groups and their languages.”
Dr. Stacey Katz, Director of Language Programs, Department of Romance Languages, Harvard University

“It has been far too long since the last book with this breadth on this subject. There is something here for just about anyone who has an interest in language. 
The book is consistently well written. That is important because I believe it will engage a larger audience, including teachers who do not do (and those who do not trust) empirical research. I cannot emphasize this too much. Teachers (K-12 and college) need to constantly be reminded of facts about language. For most of my academic life, I taught a linguistics course for future teachers (for most, it was the only linguistics course taken). We read many of the works cited in this book, and the students worked on dialect and grammar problem sets; some even
did research projects on dialect variance. But when I met those same students later, when they were teaching, many had reverted to the old attitudes of right/wrong. Not contextual right/wrong (e.g., style standards for journals or newspapers or even physics or linguistics professors) but absolute right/wrong. Bishop Lowth, John Simon, et al. paved easier roads to follow. 
My hope is that this book will inspire many others to begin doing their own research (and having their students conduct such research). As I read the book, I almost wished I were back in the trenches. With each new chapter came many researchable questions. I found myself saying,
""But what if we manipulated this or that variable?"" or ""Would the results be the same if we replicated on a different population"" or ""Do we really know that or do we just assume it (and how can I test it)?"" The best part, of course, is that the language and the speakers will change, so the research constantly has to redone.
Were I still teaching, especially graduate students, this would be a required book in several different courses. There is not just a range of foci, but a range of methodologies, so the book would also be useful in a research methods and design course. However, there is also an
important consistency: In each piece, the author's conclusions are based on the evidence. That is what we need to impress on everyone. Look to the evidence, not the ""convenient belief.""”
—William L. Smith, PhD, Professor Emeritus, Oregon Health & Science University 
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-01-01,Vasilis Papageorgiou,"Here, and Here: Essays on Affirmation and Tragic Awareness",Hardback,978-1-4438-1676-2,34.99,"Important to the essays here is the possibility of using logos without the negative, restricting and violent aspects of logos. In this respect I speak about affirmation and about tragic awareness rather than about the tragic itself or tragic conflict, as I read texts of a literary democracy that is already here, texts by Don DeLillo, Tomas Tranströmer, John Ashbery and Thanasis Valtinos, or see arrangements by Lo Snöfall. Indeed it is all about arrangements, about knowing how to affirm and doing it rather than using language and its codes in order to transcribe, however accurate this might be. Arrangements say yes, since they do not raise any absolute boundaries. The arrangement is a logos without logos: it is a cosmos, where affirming is a tragically aware cosmetics. Cosmos is neither the world nor any ordering or embellishment of this world, but an openness as the incalculable accumulation of arrangements that say yes in their awareness that they do not amount to an ontology.

","“Vasilis Papageorgiou writes about my work with outstanding sharpness and brilliant analytical understanding that unearths unexpected dimensions in my texts. Moreover he does that within a theoretical context that I find unique and inspiring, a very substantial and groundbreaking way for affirming texts.”
—Thanasis Valtinos, writer, member of the Academy of Athens

“In this rich, eclectic and impassioned volume, ranging from Euripides to John Ashbery and Tomas Tranströmer (with constant but never merely dutiful reference to Jacques Derrida), Vasilis Papageorgiou opens up new and provoking ways of thinking about the tragic, loss and affirmation, translation and hospitality, democracy and the cosmetic.”
—Professor Nicholas Royle, School of English, University of Sussex

",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-01-01,Myron Stagman,Shakespeare’s Double-Dealing Comedies: Deciphering the “Problem Plays”,Hardback,978-1-4438-1636-6,34.99,"Are some of Shakespeare’s romantic storybook heroines actually emoting sexually obscene (but very funny) lines?
{“Sexual quibbles (puns, play-on words), covertly uttered by precious-and-pure heroines, call for an immediate revision of viewpoint.”}

When Fernando (The Tempest) is described as bravely swimming for shore “in lusty stroke”, would he be disqualified for doing this in Olympic competition?

Before the walls of Harfleur, when Henry V threatens to “mow like grass your fresh-fair virgins” and  have “your naked infants spitted upon pikes”,  is he (and by inference his creator) barbarous? Or is he doing an hilarious comic imitation of Marlowe’s Tamburlaine before the walls of Damascus?

{“There exists an interesting Marlovian source for the Tamburlaine protagonist himself—Ivan the Terrible. He proposed marriage to Queen Elizabeth, who tactfully turned him down.”}

Rule Number 1: If a good writer seems surprisingly inept and has been known to be a wit or humorist, suspect parody or satire.

Well, esteemed readers, you decide where to place your bets. On the critics? Or on William Shakespeare?

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-01-01,"Susana Araújo, João Ferreira Duarte and Marta Pacheco Pinto","Trans/American, Trans/Oceanic, Trans/lation: Issues in International American Studies",Hardback,978-1-4438-1650-2,44.99,"I took a trip down to L’America To trade some beads for a pint of gold.
Jim Morrison

As the title indicates, Trans/American, Trans/Oceanic, Trans/lation points towards the International American Studies Society’s aims to promote cross-disciplinary study and teaching of the Americas regionally, hemispherically, nationally and transnationally. But it also reflects, less strategically but more forcefully, the heterogeneous and often unexpected themes, topics and motifs addressed in this forum.

These articles are revealing in that they give face and expression to the evolving trends and preoccupations in the field. In various ways and from different disciplinary angles, the essays explore key questions in International American Studies: what have been the symbolic and material relations between the “Americas” and the “USA,” and between “America” and the “World”? What are the meanings and workings of these four entities when examined across nations, cultures and languages? In what ways does American experience contribute to the global (re-)production of social, cultural and economic practices?






",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-01-01,Chandrani Chatterjee,"Translation Reconsidered: Culture, Genre and the “Colonial Encounter” in Nineteenth Century Bengal",Hardback,978-1-4438-1712-7,39.99,"The present work is an interdisciplinary study cutting across the disciplines of translation studies, genre studies, literary history and cultural history. It primarily deals with a phase of transition in the socio-cultural history of Bengal but has implications for the study of Indian literature as a whole. It takes the view that “translation” does not merely relocate the text in the target language, but negotiates several sets of relationships between the two cultures involved, altering the nature of relations between them. The study considers the mediating and shaping agency of “genre” in this context. Not only are works translated but genres are translated too, and assume striking and unprecedented shapes in the linguistic culture of the target audience.
","“The work draws upon long and arduous archival study and deserves in my opinion to be widely read. ... It contains important new material and that it opens up lines for future study. I have no doubt that many new researchers in the field will profit from a book such as this: it will also raise new scholarly questions and debates.”
—Amlan Das Gupta, Professor and Head, Department of English, Jadavpur University

“The present book is an insightful treatise on cultural translation at a crucial moment in the evolution of modern India, when Indian modernity was being conceptualized, defined and articulated in literary texts as well as political processes. Through close and nuanced readings of seminal texts from one of the dominant literary traditions of India, [Dr. Chatterjee] maps a territory that is a locus of several narratives such as tradition, region, class, caste, nation, genre, culture, translation, print and history.”
—E. V. Ramakrishnan, Professor and Head, Department of English, Veer Narmad South Gujarat University
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-01-10,Myron Stagman,The Mystery of Hamlet: A Solution,Hardback,978-1-4438-1440-9,34.99,"Hamlet kills Polonius thinking he is Claudius. Yet he cannot kill Claudius. Why?

Hamlet, angry, tells Ophelia: “Take thee to a nunnery!” [nunnery: Renaissance slang for brothel]

“There [in Heaven] is no shuffling; there the action lies in his true nature, and we ourselves compelled, even to the teeth and forehead of our faults, to give in evidence.” —King Claudius

“Why does Hamlet attend the German university at Wittenberg? Why study at a university at all? An incorrigible symbolist, Shakespeare must secretly import what he does not openly impart.”

Contrast resolute avenger Laertes, who would “cut [Hamlet’s] throat i’ the church”!

Shakespeare understood the Freudian slip centuries before Dr. Freud in Vienna. Twice he employs it to give us hints.

Queen Gertrude to her son Hamlet: “What wilt thou do? Thou wilt not murder me? ... Alas, he’s mad!”

“Prince Hamlet is a disillusioned idealist, a vital key to his generous, passionate, and tragically conscientious character.”

Camelot—“Shakespeare specifically ties the assassination of Hamlet to the death of King Arthur and the collapse of the fellowship of the Round Table.”
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-01-15,Myron Stagman,Metaphoric Resonance in Shakespearean Tragedy,Hardback,978-1-4438-1444-7,34.99,"An occasional prefigurement and echo was hardly unknown before Shakespeare. But the vast echoism—continuing forward and backward references—utilized in certain Shakespearean tragedies, was rare if unknown before him. Who, even now, does this?

Two examples of messages conveyed via metaphoric resonance:
	(1) an element of the weight metaphoric trail in Coriolanus:
	The protagonist says scornfully to the Citizens in the first Act:
	He that depends upon your favours swims with fins of lead.

In the second Act, Coriolanus more cautiously, deceptively, remarks to the plebeians' tribune Brutus:

	Your people, I love them as they weigh.

The full import of this statement would be lost without knowledge of the metaphoric resonance, which tells us he is not impartial.

(2) Richard II, Act II, scene 1:
John of Gaunt begins his famous prophesying-and-punning 
speech to King Richard:
“O, how [my] name fits my composition! ... gaunt in being old.
... and therein fasting, hast thou made me gaunt.
Gaunt am I for the grave, gaunt as a grave.”

Shakespeare set up other prophesies in the play with this one by John of Gaunt. Thus, in the fourth scene of Act II, a Captain declares, “And lean-look'd prophets whisper fearful change.”

The playwright has been criticized for having Gaunt pun at such a time, but name a better way for the playful Shakespeare to tip off the audience to a shrewdly resonant “lean-look'd prophets” two scenes away.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-01-15,Helen Groth and Paul Sheehan,Remaking Literary History,Hardback,978-1-4438-1424-9,39.99,"“History is always written wrong, and so always needs to be rewritten.” (George Santayana)

Enquiries into the relationship between literature and history continue to stir up intense critical and scholarly debate. Alongside the new hybrid categories that have emerged out of this ferment―life-writing, ficto-criticism, “history from below”, and so on―there has been a welter of new literary histories, new ways of tracking the connections between the written word and the historically bound world. This has resulted in renewed discussion about distinguishing the literary from the non-literary, about dialogues taking place between different national literatures, and about ascertaining the relative status of the literary text in relation to other cultural forms.

Remaking Literary History seeks to clarify the diversity of issues and positions that have arisen from these debates. Central to the book’s approach is a rigorous and constructive questioning of the past, across disciplinary boundaries. This is carried out through  four detailed and engrossing sections that explore the relationship between memory and forgetting; what it means to be ‘subject’ to history; the upsurge of interest in trauma and redemption; and the question of historical reinvention, which demonstrates how the overwriting of history continues to reinvigorate the literary imagination. 

As well as readers of literature and history, Remaking Literary History will be of interest to students of literary theory, legal studies and cultural and media studies.



",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-02-01,Agnieszka Gutthy,Exile and the Narrative/Poetic Imagination,Hardback,978-1-4438-1746-2,39.99,"Exile and the Narrative/Poetic Imagination is a collection of essays examining a variety of narrative and poetic responses to exile. Intended to complement existing scholarship on exile, these essays discuss works from very different parts of the world, some of them relatively rarely studied through the lens of exile, including Armenia, Egypt, Tibet, and Liberia. The book is divided into five parts, each discussing different aspects of this condition such as feelings of loss and loneliness, memories of trauma, and the search for identity.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-02-01,Madelena Gonzalez and Marie-Odile Pittin-Hédon,Generic Instability and Identity in the Contemporary Novel,Hardback,978-1-4438-1732-5,39.99,"Contemporary aesthetics is characterized by generic mixing on the level of both form and content. The barriers between different media and different genres have been broken down in all literary art forms, whether it be theatre, poetry, or the novel. While the publishing industry is increasingly keen to label novels according to genre or sub-genre (“Chick Lit”, “Lad Lit”, “Gay fiction”, “Scottish fiction”, “New Historical Fiction”, “Crime fiction”, “Post-9/11 Fiction”), the novel itself (and novelists) persist in resisting generic categorizations as well as inviting them. Is this a move towards a new artistic liberty or does it simply testify to a confusion of identity? The “aesthetic supermarket” evoked by Lodge in 1992 does indeed seem to sum up the variety of choices open to writers of fiction today and a literary landscape characterized by crossover and hybridization. The familiar dialectic of realism versus experimentation has segued into a middle ground of consensus which is neither radical nor populist, but both at the same time. The techniques of postmodernism have become selling points for novels, and the Postmodern Condition itself seems little more than a narrative posture marketed for an increasingly wide audience. Whether they have recourse to a “repertoire of imposture” (Amis, Self, Winterson), as Richard Bradford would have it (The Novel Now, 2007), in other words “the abandonment of any obligation to explain or justify their excursions from credulity and mimesis”, or, like the New Puritans, make use of narrative minimalism in order to foreground their own peculiarities, contemporary novelists consistently draw attention to the fundamental instability of narrative process and genre.

The much-feared apocalypse of the novel has failed to take place with the arrival of the new millennium, but generic game-playing and flickering, narrative hesitation and uncertainty continue to pose the question of what constitutes a novel today and to challenge its identity in a world where all culture is increasingly public, increasingly contested and increasingly multifarious. Thanks to theoretical approaches as well as analyses of specific works, this collection of essays aims to examine the concepts of generic instability and cross-fertilization, of narrative postures and impostures, and their constant redefinition of identity, which contaminates the very concept of genre. It demonstrates the diversity of generic practices in the novel today and furnishes us with undeniable evidence of how generic instability is fundamentally constitutive of the contemporary novel’s identity.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-02-01,Reverend Cheryl Anne Kincaid,Hearing the Gospel through Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol”,Hardback,978-1-4438-1714-1,34.99,"Most people don’t realize Charles Dickens has a biblical foundation. Each of the spirits that appear in A Christmas Carol directly correlates with an Advent lesson that is found in the Church of England’s Book of Common Prayer. Perhaps that is what attracts Christians to the story of A Christmas Carol. Every Advent Christians revisit this old Victorian moral story with its images of snow covered English cobblestone streets, the sentimentally portrayed ragged poor, and its familiar story line doesn’t seem to grow tiresome through the years. We revisit this story because it echoes with the ancient lessons of Advent.

Hearing the Gospel Through Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol” is a Christian devotional that uses A Christmas Carol as a tool to teach the ancient Advent lessons of Hope, Faith, Peace, Love and Joy. Each week’s devotion begins with a section from A Christmas Carol which dramatizes the Advent Lesson and is followed with a scriptural Advent lesson from the Church of England’s Book of Prayer. The word Ebenezer is defined in scripture as “The Lord is my help” (1 Samuel 7:1–2). As we travel through Ebenezer’s redemptive healing journey, the devotional invites the participants to examine how Christ is born in their past, present and future. As a Christian pastor, I am grieved that the modern evangelical church has diminished the Advent season to a single Christmas Eve service or Christmas Sunday service. As a community, we no longer spend time preparing our hearts for the season of “Christ coming.”

This devotional is for Christians to use as private and family devotions to prepare themselves for the Advent season.


","“Cheryl Kincaid has produced a fascinating and insightful reading of the lessons of Advent through the lens of one of the most beloved of Christmas stories, Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol. Preachers and teachers will find here a treasure trove of ideas for teaching and preaching, and every reader will be inspired to reflect on the great redemptive themes of Christmas embedded in Dickens' classic story.”
—Dr. Mark Strauss, Professor of New Testament, Bethel Seminary, San Diego


",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-02-01,Helena Peričić,"On the Red Horse, Peter and Paul—A Small Book about a Big War (Diary Entries, Articles, Letters, 1991–1998)",Paperback,978-1-4438-1766-0,24.99,"On the Red Horse, Peter and Paul is Helena Peričić's brave, utterly open-hearted and open-minded testimony of her private and intellectual experience of living and surviving the Homeland War in Croatia during the ’90.

This edition is bilingual and includes both the English translation and the original text in Croatian.




","“When the world is turned upside down, when a man is overcome by the cataclysm of war thrust into his life, his reaction will reveal his true personality. Because he will not act according to an adopted pattern, neither according to the recommendations of the politicians, nor according to the reaction of the majority—he will act according to his congenital affinity and his nature. This book by Helena Peričić is that kind of testimony: of one’s discintiveness.”
—Vesna Krmpotić

“Writing while exposed to deadly projectiles was an intellectual recourse of a person cognizant of the power of the written word...Helena Peričić develops a discourse that refrains from proving a point, or making any ideological commitment...Her  journal entitled On the Red Horse, Peter and Paul, a testimony on the war-time Zadar hardships and a piece of work highly acclaimed for its literary values, is recommended as an obligatory reading material in literature and history courses.”
—Vlatko Perković, author of Thematic Circle Completed: The Works of Helena Peričić

“Until recently, the writing of war diaries or dispatches was often the preserve of men. Helena Peričić has broken the mould in this regard. She has used her pen to dig through the blood-soaked ground, the shattered detritus of war and hatred. Her diaries, her dispatches—call them what you will—relate to the tragic events that circumscribed the Homeland War, the battle for independence which the Croatian people fought in the early 1990s. Strangely, this war is one which is already forgotten in the Western European imaginary. Her writing calls us back, however. It remonstrates with us; it demands that we remember and give testimony. Peričić’s writing is beautiful and perceptive. It is evocative. In an age when the beauty of the world is forgotten it reminds us of the power that is the written word. It is living, breathing poetry.”
—Mícheál Ó hAodha, writer, Limerick, Ireland



",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-02-01,Victoria Kuttainen,Unsettling Stories: Settler Postcolonialism and the Short Story Composite,Hardback,978-1-4438-1737-0,44.99,"The first study of the synergies between postcolonialism and the genre of the short story composite, Unsettling Stories considers how the form of the interconnected short story collection is well suited to expressing thematic aspects of postcolonial writing on settler terrain. Unique for its comparative considerations of American, Canadian, and Australian literature within the purview of postcolonial studies, this is also a considered study of the difficult place of the postcolonial settler subject within academic debates and literature. Close readings of work by Tim Winton, Margaret Laurence, William Faulkner, Stephen Leacock, Sherwood Anderson, Olga Masters, Scott R. Sanders, Thea Astley, Tim O’Brien and Sandra Birdsell are positioned alongside critical discussions of postcolonial theory to show how awkward affiliations of individuals to place, home, nation, culture, and history expressed in short story composites can be usefully positioned within the broader context of settler colonialism and its aftermath.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-02-01,Lisa Regan,"Winifred Holtby, “A Woman In Her Time”: Critical Essays",Hardback,978-1-4438-1760-8,39.99,"Winifred Holtby, “A Woman In Her Time”: Critical Essays brings together for the first time a range of scholarly perspectives on one of Britain’s best-loved regional authors. Remembered for her vivid portrayal of 1930s rural Yorkshire in her final novel, South Riding (1936) and for her friendship with Vera Brittain, Winifred Holtby (1898-1935) has become a key figure for those interested in British literature, politics, and culture between the wars. Epitomising the professional independence and political passion which we have come to associate with the newly emancipated women of her era, Holtby’s was a life devoted to myriad causes and directed to the pressing issues of her day. With fresh perspectives on Holtby’s better known novels alongside new critical forays into her short stories, drama, journalism, and historical writing, Winifred Holtby, “A Woman In Her Time” sheds new light on a woman who not only spoke out in support of feminism, peace, and racial equality at a time when fascism and war loomed, but who also shared with us her views on a wide spectrum of topical concerns from Virginia Woolf, D.H. Lawrence, H. G. Wells, psychology, spinsters, mothers, and the B.B.C., to her delight in clothes, films, and village gossip. 




",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-03-01,Peter Cochran,Byron and Bob: Lord Byron’s Relationship with Robert Southey,Hardback,978-1-4438-1844-5,39.99,"Byron and Bob is the first book ever to be dedicated to the most important literary relationship in Byron’s career – that with the Poet Laureate, Robert Southey, whom he hated, and to whom he “dedicated” his most important poem, Don Juan. Drawing on much unseen manuscript material, Peter Cochran shows that although Byron’s antipathy towards Southey was at first a normal literary distaste, it became, the more he ingested his private image of Southey, a projected self-distrust, a dislike of everything in himself with which he was unhappy.

The book has as appendix a double edition of the two Visions of Judgement, firstly Southey’s original, and then Byron’s travesty, in which he has succeeded in rendering his enemy ridiculous to all succeeding generations. These two important works have not been published together for many years.



",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-03-01,"Dorsía Smith, Tatiana Tagirova, and Suzanna Engman",Critical Perspectives on Caribbean Literature and Culture,Hardback,978-1-4438-2697-6,39.99,"Critical Perspectives on Caribbean Literature and Culture is a collection of a dozen essays by Caribbean scholars living in the Caribbean and around the world. Each of the three sections of the book explores the Caribbean as a diasporic space through the lenses of literary and cultural systems. “Negotiating Borders: Women, Sexuality, and Identity” examines the creolized identities of Caribbean societies, gender roles of women, impact of sexual tourism, and censorship of Latino gays and lesbians. The essayists in this section note that much work still needs to be done in academia to give voice to repressed Caribbean populations. “Creating Spaces of Caribbean Artistic Expression: Multiple Representations” focuses on how music, identity, art, and language depict the diversity of the Caribbean experience. In this section, the essayists examine how the process of creation extends to new cultural expressions. “Deconstructing the Diaspora: Caribbean Writers as Political Activists” takes into account the tension between oppressor and oppressed, a pressing issue for many Caribbean authors, and focuses on the role of writers in reconstructing Caribbean culture, politics, and history.

In pursuit of a more comprehensive West Indian view, this publication provides a novel perspective on Caribbean literary, cultural, and historical experience. The essays featured complement each other in their representation of the multiplicitous Caribbean region with all its claims and anxieties. They cover a wide range of writers and diverse cross-cultural encounters within the Caribbean region and reflect on issues such as Caribbean identity, migration, and artistic form of expression. This publication cuts across geographies, cultures, and disciplines, enriching Caribbean scholarship by recognizing the Caribbean’s tradition of resistance and courage.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-03-01,Julie Cairnie,“Imperialists in Broken Boots”: Poor Whites and Philanthropy in Southern African Writing,Hardback,978-1-4438-1852-0,34.99,"This book examines writing which is concerned with the period of the ‘poor white problem’ and the ‘poor white solution’ (1870s–1940s) in Southern Africa. It argues that ‘poor white’ is not a narrow economic category, but describes those who threaten to collapse boundaries—racial, sexual, and class boundaries. It studies four writers who migrate between Britain and Southern Africa, who engage with the ‘problem’ and the ‘solution,’ and who foreground ambiguity in their ambiguously genred texts. Olive Schreiner and Doris Leasing highlight the ‘problem’ as they embrace the threat posed by poor whites, while Robert Tressell and Daphne Anderson foreground the ‘solution’ as they argue for the incorporation of the poor into imperial myths about white homogeneity and upward mobility. Based on an historical approach, this book explores three premises. The first premise is that poor white is a liminal category, that it encompasses economic failures and social transgressors. The second premise is that Southern African life writing engages with its historical and political moment. The third premise is that philanthropy is central to the articulation of the ‘problem’ and the ‘solution.’ The final concluding chapter reflects upon the re-emergence of poor whiteism since the end of Apartheid and the collapse of Zimbabwe, and reflects upon the problem of black poverty.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-03-01,Joya Uraizee,In the Jaws of the Leviathan: Genocide Fiction and Film,Paperback,978-1-4438-1781-3,24.99,"This book analyzes representations of mass violence in film and fiction about African, South American, and Asian genocides, from the points of view of the bystander and the survivor. It argues that in commercial film and fiction, metaphors and looks represent the violence and trauma indirectly, even when the representation is quite graphic; whereas in experimental novels and films, looks used to describe the violence are individualized or interactive. 

Both Bapsi Sidhwa’s novel Cracking India and Deepa Mehta’s film Earth deal with the violence of the partition of India in 1947. While Cracking India educates us about the dangers of “the beast” (the violence), Earth shows us the impact the beast has on victims like the beautiful Ayah/nanny. Similarly, both Buchi Emecheta's novel Destination Biafra and Charles Enonchong's videos The Nigerian-Biafran War, Parts I, II & III, depict the Nigerian Civil War of 1966–69. Yet, while Emecheta’s metaphors of division and bestiality highlight the selfishness of politicians and the suffering of civilians like Debbie, looks exchanged by the survivors and the military in Enonchong’s videos highlight the tragic ways in which generals like Ojukwu betrayed and were betrayed. Metaphors and looks in Isabel Allende’s novel The House of the Spirits and Bille August’s movie, which is based on it, depict the terror of Pinochet’s 1973–89 dictatorship in Chile. Allende and August use metaphors and looks of sight and blindness to describe torture survivor Alba/Blanca’s trauma. Alba/Blanca re-tells the events of the past in order to survive. Photo journalist Alfredo Jaar’s photos and notes, Let There Be Light, and Terry George’s feature film Hotel Rwanda, both depict the Rwandan genocide of 1994, but their emphasis is on inability of the Western bystander/reader to hear or see the pain of the survivors. Accordingly, Jaar and George choose “dark” metaphors and looks to represent the violence, using diffuse lighting, fades, and absences to stand for the violence and trauma.  

Overall, representations of genocide that involve individualized metaphors and interactive looks are vitally important if the complexities of that violence are to be appreciated in the West.
","Joya Uiraizee’s In the Jaws of the Leviathan: Genocide Fiction and Film raises one of the hot issues for our times: how we deal with the representation of violence, and specifically with traumatic violence. Genocide, ethnic cleansing, and longterm conflict have made familiar the distressing features of child soldiers, rape, and massive population displacements. How are we not only to understand the Rwandan genocide, India’s partition, and Chile’s repressive state under Pinochet? How do we relate these events entailing massive destruction and brutality, often employed so as to control valuable resources or territory, to historical events like the Biafran Civil war of 1967-70 in Nigeria. Most importantly, how do we confront these conflicts in their various mediations? Joya Uraizee poses the central question of mediation by examining a range of key texts that serve to present the genocides and violent traumas endemic to conflict that have marked many postcolonial societies. Those texts range over well-known novels, like Isabelle Allende’s The House of the Spirits, films like Terry George’s Hotel Rwanda, Mehta’s Earth, and a number of other works that have given us some of the best-known representations of violent conflict. Additionally, she explore some lesser known novels or testimonies, like Sidwa’s Cracking India, Enonchong’s documentary video films on the Biafran war, and Alfredeo Jaar’s  book of photographs, that serve to elucidate her principal thesis.  Uraizee claims that we can best assess the representations of violence by asking whether we are given images, in the forms of metaphors and gazes, that permit us to engage and work through the violence, or that fetishize and avoid the direct physical realities of the violence. She analyzes a range of stratagems that serve to absolve our consciences without bringing home the truths we need to experience and engage the traumas.  Part of the truth we must face rests on the fact that we cannot help but be witness or observer. But there are many ways to look, and some leave us with insight and motivation while others merely satisfied, and with the structures of power undisturbed. The teaching about global violence today requires that we assess clearly how our positioning with relation to the texts of violence responds to this basic ethical imperative: though we cannot resolve the conflict, we are obliged to confront it unflinchingly if meaningful praxis is to follow. At that point, as Uraizee claims, our looking will become a “process” involving a “circle of gazes” in which the goals of oppositionality can become possible. 
—Kenneth W. Harrow, Professor of English, Michigan State University

""As the merciless flow of digital reality turns us all into numb spectators, Uraizee sets out here to re-imagine the role of the “observer” in a century of genocide.   A skeptical, and often emotional, testament to the ability of novels and films to make history’s literary bystanders more than voyeurs and less than the victims themselves.   Its subtitle might well read “the purifying power of empathy,” and its analysis of the different ways of seeing mass murder (interactive, circular, blinding) is wide-ranging, placing literature itself back in the world where it belongs.""  

- Professor Timothy Brennan, Department of Cultural Studies & Comparative Literature and English, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, USA




",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-03-01,Graham Gillespie,"Love, Sorrow and Joy: A New Voice in Irish Avant-Garde Poetry",Paperback,978-1-4438-1864-3,39.99,"This book serves to introduce a young and talented writer to a much wider audience and to situate his work within the more exciting and radical tradition that is the Irish avant-garde. The literary impetus evident in Graham Gillespie’s writing is similar to that of the mystical writers of old, whether Irish or Continental, Christian or Jewish. The beauty of the poetic and philosophic insights explored in this book is something new and fresh in Irish writing. Whether exploring the universal questions that are doubt and hope or stretching the sinews of language in the search for true self-identity and its expression, Gillespie’s art generates a new and profound experience. As with mystics such as Jabes, he has penetrated the silent desert of his own heart; he has bravely ventured into the unknowable, the unconscious, that same place where Merton found the “lush tangle of life and death, full of danger, yet where beautiful things move, the deer, and where there is a spring of sweet water buried.



",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-03-01,Françoise Besson,Mountains Figured and Disfigured in the English-Speaking World,Hardback,978-1-4438-1858-2,64.99,"The essays in this book, written by poets, novelists, mountain-climbers and academics from all over the world, evoke the representation of mountains in the English-speaking world as artists, writers, philosophers or mountain-climbers have represented them from the sixteenth to the twenty-first centuries.

From the Alps to the Pyrenees, from Mount Fuji to Mount Shasta, from the Himalayas to the Scottish Highlands, from Ikere in Nigeria to Devil's Tower in the United States, from Uluru in Australia to the most northern mountain of the Arctic, the shapes of the world speak the same language and tell the world its own story.

This interdisciplinary book, weaving together mountaineering, literature, philosophy, painting, cinema, ecology, history, palaeontology, geography, geopolitics, toponymy, law, religion and myth, invites people to an innovative reading of mountains: it reveals the close relationship existing between the shapes of the world and all forms of writing and, at the same time, it shows how the representations of the imagination may be instrumental in protecting the natural world.

The story told by the landscape inscribes a broken line in the shapes of the world, tearing the landscape like a fragile page whenever historical and political events (wars, mining or deforestation) leave scars in the landscape; but writers' and artists' representations of mountains constitute a path to awareness as they are not only a painting of beauty, but an image of our link to nature and a warning as well.

For centuries the image of the mountain has conveyed a symbolism telling the story of human thought, and this book shows to what extent literature and art play an essential part in our awareness of nature.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-03-01,Matthew Leone,"Shapes of Openness: Bakhtin, Lawrence, Laughter",Hardback,978-1-4438-1845-2,34.99,"Bakhtin and Lawrence share remarkable affinities. Bakhtinian dialogism is effectively a philosophy of potentiality, and Lawrence, or at least the Lawrence who authored Women in Love, may well be its High Priest. Both thinkers address questions of unity, newness, and the creative process. In this study they enter into complementary, genuinely Bakhinian dialogue, one in which “The word in language is half someone else’s.” One surprising result of this comparative examination is that some prevalent, deeply damaging biases about Lawrence are undermined: Is he a misogynist, or is he essentially, as he seems evidently to fear in Women in Love and rather consistently elsewhere, an over-compensating momma’s boy?

Here Bakhtinian theory is used as a means of testing pertinent criticism of Lawrence, and it provides a detailed conceptual basis for the readings of his fiction that follow. Is Women in Love a Bakhtinian ""open totality""? How is dialogic openness (as opposed to modernist indeterminacy) a ""form-shaping ideology"" of comic interrogation? Is Women in Love not only open-ended and unresolved, but also about its open-endedness or unfinalizability? In methods and meanings, in forming depths and explicit surfaces, this study explores the sum and substance of the novel’s dialogicality, and finds that the shape of its dialogic openness is interrogative.

Indeed, in Women in Love characters are identified by the self-shaping questions they ask: “’How much do you love me?’” asks Gudrun of Gerald, whose “’What do women want, at the bottom?’” like Ursula’s “’Do you really love me?’” have surprisingly revelatory depths. Birkin’s ludicrously encompassing and apocalyptic “Is our day of creative life finished?” not only expresses a fundamental authorial narrative intention, it simultaneously and self-correctively mocks itself for so doing, and does so in ways that may well suggest intuitive insights into the nature of Bakhtinian carnival laughter. In large measure, “character” in the Bakhtinian framework appropriated by this study is essentially a question personified, one that is made to walk and talk, so to speak, within the intersecting chronotopes or “time-space” zones of the novel. Such ambulatory interrogations then either connect or fail to do so with other characters-as-questions in “living conversation.”

Women in Love achieves a polyphonic or dialogic openness, one that Lawrence in his later fictions cannot always sustain. Subsequent to it, univocal, simplifying organizations in his work supervene. In his later fictions, dialogic process collapses into a stenographic report upon completed dialogue, over which the travel writer, the poet or the messianic martyr preside. There are, nevertheless, even in his later works, happy exceptions to this diminution of dialogic vitality. Lawrence’s consummate, dialogic openness of thought and expression can be discerned in the ambivalent laughter of The Captain's Doll, of St. Mawr, and of ""The Man Who Loved Islands."" In these retrospective variations on earlier themes, laughing openness of vision takes new, ""unfinalizable"" or “open” shapes.


","""Matthew Leone’s work is imaginative and original, an ambitious undertaking carried out with scholarly resourcefulness, critical energy, and tact.  It is not only an intelligent and appropriate exercise but also obviously a very personal inquiry that is presented as a cogent intellectual experiment.""

- Professor David Hensley, Department of English, McGill University, Montreal, CA

",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-03-01,William M. Etter,"The Good Body: Normalizing Visions in Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Culture, 1836-1867",Hardback,978-1-4438-1856-8,44.99,"The Good Body: Normalizing Visions in Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Culture, 1836–1867 examines literary and cultural representations of so-called “normal” and “abnormal” bodies in the antebellum and Civil War-era United States and the ways in which these representations operated as a means of justifying, critiquing, and problematizing prominent concerns of the period: the relationship between the health of American citizens and national progress, Western expansion, debates over slavery, the threatened dissolution of the Union in the Civil War, and the legitimation of the post-war reunified nation. Considering a wide range of sources—classic works of non-fiction, fiction, and poetry; health reform textbooks; proslavery documents; photographs of Civil War veterans; and Civil War medical records of the federal government—this study demonstrates that American literature of this period typically imagined real and fictional bodies as healthy, aesthetically pleasing, and symbolically coherent in relation to other bodies imagined as deviating from these “norms” to preserve existing political and social orders but also, at times, to challenge the hegemonic power of US institutions. In addition to the literary material considered, central in this book are critical approaches to history and disability studies which illuminate the construction of physical “normality” and contribute to recent scholarly attempts to assess the significance of physical differences in the literature and culture of the United States.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-04-01,"Anka Ryall, Johan Schimanski and Henning Howlid Wærp",Arctic Discourses,Hardback,978-1-4438-1959-6,44.99,"Both fictional and non-fictional accounts of the Arctic have long been a major source of powerful images of the region, and have thus had a crucial part to play in the history of human activities there. This volume provides a wide-reaching investigation into the discourses involved in such accounts, above all into the consolidation of a discourse of “Arcticism” (modelled on Edward Said’s concept of “Orientalism”), but also into the many intersecting discourses of imperialism, nationalism, masculinity, modernity, geography, science, race, ecology, indigeneity, aesthetics, etc.

Perspectives originating from inside and outside the Arctic, along with hybrid positions, are examined, with special attention being given to the textual genres, narratives and figures which they mobilize, together with to the close relationship between the Arctic as an unknown place and the literary imagination.

The different chapters address a wide geographical range of texts, providing a necessary supplement to most previous work in the field, and also address the wide variety of genres which flourish under the aegis of Arctic discourse, ranging from exploration accounts, travel-writing, political texts and journalism through diaries and historical documents to novels and novelizations, and including also other media, such as music and opera.
","“Arctic Discourses is recommended—even required—for those studying polar literature and for libraries with collections in northern studies. For fans of explorers’ accounts and other forms of arctic literature, the book offers new perspectives on familiar stories. Perhaps above all, this work is a salutary reminder that when we write we tell a story, whether or not we mean to; and that we are revealed alongside our subject matter.”
—Shelly Sommer in Arctic, Antarctic, and Alpine Research

“Arctic Discourses is complex, confronting and thoroughly engaging. It will have wide reader appeal because, although there are many technical aspects to the analyses, they are not impenetrable and therefore don’t exclude readers unfamiliar with the disciplines. Buy a copy; you’ll not be able to put it down!”
—Dr Julia Jabour, The Polar Journal, 1:2, 2011

“Pull apart explorer’s accounts, opera, and poetry for awhile instead of data. This volume of literary criticism traces how the Arctic is imagined and reimagined in literature and music, and how these representations confirm or counter prevailing images of identity, environment, and Arctic peoples.”
—Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR) blog

“. . . useful from a research [point of view], and genuinely enjoyable reading.”
—Steve Himmer on goodreads.com

 “Arctic Discourses makes a seminal contribution to relatively new but expanding studies that focus on the ice and cold above the Arctic Circle . . . Arctic Discourses is a pioneering and exploratory text representing an international circumpolar approach that, in contrast to previous studies, is not limited to a particular geographical area . . . a highly useful resource.”
—Caroline Schaumann, Arcadia
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-04-01,"Helena Gonçalves da Silva, Adriana Alves de Paula Martins, Filomena Viana Guarda and José Miguel Sardica","Conflict, Memory Transfers and the Reshaping of Europe",Hardback,978-1-4438-1914-5,44.99,"Conflict, Memory Transfers and the Reshaping of Europe discusses processes of memory construction associated with the realities of war and genocide, totalitarianism, colonialism as well as trans-border dialogues in the overcoming of conflict memories. It is based on the premise that there are no available clear-cut or definite positions to approach the problematic issues of conflict, memory and history. Consequently, it examines and articulates across several different media discourses, problems, contexts and considerations of value. Its scope is thus deliberately interdisciplinary, drawing on the cross-fertilization of diverse research methods. 

The book addresses a number of issues and raises questions that have been crucial to our modern thought, and problematic or even inexplicable to any cultural theory that approaches history with an ethical approach. It works through and evaluates ongoing representative processes, strategies and practices, next to longstanding constraints, dilemmas and taboos regarding discussions of contentious matters. The different perspectives from which the issues of conflict, identity and memory are examined, in authoritarian, new European and (post-) colonial contexts, provide examples of power and conflict memory intervening in discourse and areas of cultural practice, destabilizing fixed or encoded meaning. It examines how the “making sense” of our memories—so vital for the qualification of culture and social practices—is about concepts and ideas, as well as emotions and attachments, i.e. meaning resulting from effective social exchange framed by specific contexts of interpretation. As such, the book is also a contribution to a memory culture that is pushing forward the clarification of conflicts, crystallizations of tension and all sorts of threads that bind us, very often invisibly, to the past.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-04-01,Marianna D’Ezio,Hester Lynch Thrale Piozzi: A Taste for Eccentricity,Hardback,978-1-4438-1872-8,39.99,"Scholars and readers who are interested in eighteenth-century British literature are surely familiar with Hester Lynch Thrale Piozzi in the light she came to be known in her lifetime and after: first, as the “formidable hostess” of Streatham House, South London, and then as an outcast from respectable eighteenth-century society after she had married the Italian piano teacher of her daughter. As a writer, her importance has long been that of a footnote to Samuel Johnson and as a consequence, she has been part of the official British literary canon only as a character. This volume introduces Hester Lynch Thrale Piozzi as a whole, trying to link her fascinating and subversive biography to her development as a writer, emphasizing the innovative issues of her works, her style and her social and personal beliefs. Piozzi’s biography is an interesting example of the dynamic scene of the late eighteenth century, where she was both conservative and subversive: she was an eccentric, and although her decision to marry the Italian singer and composer Gabriele Piozzi disgraced her, it was through this act of subversion that Hester Thrale Piozzi could finally make her own entrance into the world as a public writer. Once she had transgressed the social codes of so-called “feminine” behaviour, she was also ready to move into the public sphere, publish her works and make money out of them, pioneering several traditional literary genres through her passionate search for professional independence in the literary canon of the eighteenth century.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-04-01,Jelena Jovicic,L’Intime épistolaire (1850-1900): genre et pratique culturelle,Hardback,978-1-4438-1867-4,39.99,"L’Intime épistolaire (1850-1900): genre et pratique culturelle is a study of private letters by eight Nineteenth-Century French authors—Flaubert, Zola, Sand, Baudelaire, Maupassant, Eberhardt, Bashkirtseff and Edmond de Goncourt—during the period of 1850 to 1900. Through in-depth analyses of these intriguing documents, the book demonstrates that personal correspondences cast fresh light on the concept of intimacy in Nineteenth-Century French culture. Since epistolary writing implies a necessary exchange between lived experience and the written word, the book’s intention is also to interpret “letter practice” as a specific textual form, with its own generic expectations and constraints which are distinct from other life-writing genres such as the diary, the autobiography, and the memoir. 

Divided into five chapters, the study begins with a short introduction to the “culture of individuality.” The four subsequent chapters explore the poetics of epistolary writing, including significant topics, the various roles of the letter writer, epistolary pacts and the problem of the signature. Addressing a wide range of epistolary situations, including daily life, health, money problems, love, travel, and even suicide notes, the book also offers new critical perspectives on six of the most interesting manuscript letters that have been chosen from the examined sources.
","“L’Intime épistolaire (1850-1900): genre et pratique culturelle is a valuable investigation of the construction of intimacy as modelled through the epistolary form in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Situating her work within the current theoretical corpus on intimacy, on epistolarity, and on the public/private structuring of the social–from Habermas’s theorizing of the public sphere through to Foucault’s concept of a ‘technology of the self’–Jovicic analyzes how the letter form is produced in the intersection between ‘private’ subjectivity and cultural practice. . . In its combining of precise archival research with theoretical insight, L’Intime épistolaire offers the best kind of grounded and original scholarship.”
- Chris Roulston, French Studies and Women’s Studies and Feminist Research, University of Western Ontario

“In addressing the subject of the late-19th century epistolary form, Jelena Jovicic has set herself a redoubtable and many-faceted task. Her dense and sophisticated (yet extremely readable) book nevertheless achieves its many goals, sweeping away any lingering perception of writers’ correspondence either as a kind of “slipper-wearing” (semi-)literary form or as a simple repository of documentary information, and demonstrating most convincingly that the modern researcher (be s/he literary critic, social theorist or cultural historian) should examine the letter, in all its cultural and poetic presence, as a genre unto itself: a vital and, in the case of the latter half of the 19th century, curiously undervalued form of literary self-representation which must take its place alongside the genres of autobiography and diary.”
- Jeremy Worth, Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures, University of Windsor 

«Prenant pour objets d’étude les correspondances de Sand, Flaubert, Hugo, Baudelaire, Eberhardt, Daudet, Goncourt et Zola, cet ouvrage fait revivre les dessous du monde littéraire du XIXe siècle, tout en les analysant avec beaucoup de finesse. S’appuyant sur une solide bibliographie, il s’avère porteur d’une grande richesse théorique, mêlant (et parfois conciliant) savamment les approches, comme la pragmatique, la sémiotique, l’histoire ou la philosophie, et les courants de pensées de Darwin à Cixous. Avec son approche pluridisciplinaire, il apportera une très belle contribution aux études de l’épistolaire et du XIXe siècle, et saura captiver un public averti.» 
- Roxane Petit-Rasselle, Department of French, Franklin & Marshall College
«Aborder l’intime épistolaire tel qu’inscrit dans les correspondances de la deuxième moitié du XIXe siècle, c’est faire la lumière sur plusieurs sujets à la fois car, au-delà du projet au départ individuel et intime de l’écriture épistolaire, ce sont une époque et une société qui sont mises à l’étude.»
- Philippe Basabose, Department of French and Spanish, Memorial University

",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-04-01,L. Adam Mekler and Lucy Morrison,Mary Shelley: Her Circle and Her Contemporaries,Hardback,9781443818681,39.99,"This collection of essays expands critical consideration of Mary Shelley’s placement within the age we call “Romantic,” wherein her texts converse with those of her family, her circle, and her contemporaries. Several essays address particularly how her texts interact with those of her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley, revealing new depth and breadth to their literary partnership. Others investigate interdisciplinary perspectives, such as her pieces in The Liberal or the ways in which the figure of Scheherezade haunts her works, while several essays also consider Mary Shelley’s textual relationships with contemporaries such as Thomas Moore and John Polidori. Still others tackle topics such as geopolitical relationships and the growth of opera as an art form, considering Mary Shelley’s commentary upon such contemporary issues, while William Godwin’s textual relationship with his daughter is further investigated. This collection suggests Mary Shelley’s texts merit further investigation not only for what they reveal about their author and her oeuvre, but for the ways in which they illuminate our understanding of the contexts in which they were composed.

","“The essays in this collection paint a rich and heterogeneous picture of Shelley's importance to and engagement with the Romantic public sphere. This volume clearly moves us beyond seeing Shelley as merely the author of Frankenstein or the wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Morrison, Mekler, and their contributors do Mary Shelley and Romantic scholarship a great service.”
—Joel Faflak, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of English, University of Western Ontario, London, Canada


",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-04-01,Kevin J. McGinley and Nicola Royan,The Apparelling of Truth: Literature and Literary Culture in the Reign of James VI; A Festschrift for Roderick J. Lyall,Hardback,978-1-4438-1873-5,44.99,"Prepared to honour the work of R. J. Lyall, this collection of essays offers new perspectives on the literature and culture of the reign of James VI, from his accession as an infant to the throne of Scotland, through the Union of the Crowns, to his final years as king of Great Britain. Its emphasis is on James’s reign as a whole, stressing the continuities in literary culture throughout the time of his rule, rather than the more familiar narrative of disjunction caused by his accession to the English throne in the 1603 Union of Crowns. In addition, the collection extends its focus beyond a concentration on the environment of James’s court to situate the literature of his reign in terms of both regional and international contexts. The essays range widely in their approaches and cover topics as diverse as book history and printing; textual scholarship and editing; language, rhetoric, and prosody; gender attitudes in James’s reign; travel writing and colonial contexts; Latin literary culture; and courtly culture and the politics of literary representation. Such variety is also evident in the languages discussed, which include Scots, English, Latin and French, in the generic range of the subject texts, from epic poetry to travel writing, and in the writers discussed, from the very familiar, such as John Knox and Robert Aytoun, to the currently less well-known, such as William Lithgow and Thomas Hudson. All the contributors are respected scholars in the discipline, including some of the most senior figures in the field. Taken as a whole, this collection is the most extensive and varied treatment of Scottish literary culture of this period to date, and will be a key collection for all students and specialists in the field. 


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-04-01,Amy Vail,The Last of Homer’s Children: Goethe Singing Epic,Hardback,978-1-4438-1938-1,39.99,"While Goethe loved Homeric epic, at the same time, the figure of Homer himself was a source of deep literary anxiety for him. Goethe could translate epic, even masterfully, but he shrunk back from attempting to compose a serious full-length epic of his own. “Who could vie with the great nonpareil?” he wrote.
            
Reading Wolf’s Prolegomena was a significant turning point for Goethe. So greatly had he revered his Homer, that at first, he angrily rejected the idea of an Iliad and Odyssey composed by a succession of illiterate rhapsodes.  Gradually, however, with the help of scholarly Weimar friends, he allowed himself to be convinced.

Once freed from the idea of a single, monolithic Homer, Goethe experienced a joyous creative rebirth. Why should he not be a rhapsode himself, if only the last of Homer’s children? The result was an idyll: Herman und Dorothea, which he adorned with nostalgic love, a hero and heroine on a truly Homeric scale, and a fruitful and thoroughly German landscape.  

With Hermann und Dorothea, Goethe honored not only Homer, but also his own people and times, celebrating what rhapsodes have always sung: the shadow of war and the love of home.



","“Amy E. K. Vail is sheds new light on Goethe’s responses to the Iliad and Odyssey, especially on his creation of Hermann und Dorothea, an epic perhaps as much Homeric as it is Goethean. Her study also revisits and gives a fresh reading to eighteenth-century German attitudes toward Homeric epic and on Goethe’s idiosyncratic and deeply personal engagement with classical texts. This book, to date the only full length study of Goethe’s reading’s of Homer, has profited greatly from the expertise of an outstanding Homeric scholar combined with that of an excellent reader of German eighteenth-century literature and Goethe.
	Amy Vail’s clearly articulated and systematically applied critical perspective  results in a perceptive and illuminating reading of Herman and Dorothea. Eloquently, convincingly, and with a wealth of insights, observations, and close readings drawn from a variety of Goethe texts, this book details how in his writings  Goethe brought to a creative and fruitful culmination all of his years of Homeric study.  The Last of Homer’s Children is a very important contribution to Homeric studies and to Goethe scholarship alike. For any scholar interested in understanding what E. M. Butler rhetorically called The Tyranny of Greece over German, Amy Vail’s perceptive and sensitive study is essential reading.”
—Barbara Becker-Cantarino is Research Professor in German at the Ohio State University; her publications contain articles on  Wilhelm Meister, demonism and infanticide in Faust,  Goethe as a critic of women writers ,  and Goethe and gender. Among her recent books publications are The Eighteenth Century. Enlightenment and Sentimentality, Vol. 5 of The Camden House History of German Literature, Boydell & Brewer: Rochester, NY, 2005, and Pietism and Women’s Autobiography. The Life of Lady Johanna Eleonora Petersen, Written by Herself (1689/1719). Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.


",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-04-01,Jessica Datema and Diane Krumrey,Wretched Refuge: Immigrants and Itinerants in the Postmodern,Hardback,978-1-4438-1904-6,34.99,"Recent literary expressions of the immigrant experience reveal the postmodern narrative obsession with the immigrant as cultural and political outlier. Wretched Refuge: Immigrants and Itinerants in the Postmodern asks us to reimagine this preoccupation with what Junot Diaz calls the “actual flows of third world bodies” as part of a larger, more pertinent motif of the postmodern itinerant. As a figure of cultural becoming, the itinerant stands for displacement and dispersion, exceeding the confines of physical location, political subjectivity, and relation to the natural world. Thus, Wretched Refuge seeks to map the cosmopolitan positionalities of an immigrant or exilic experience: the itinerant, the migrant, and other “foreign” bodies. The essays in Wretched Refuge consider fiction, memoir, and pop-culture genres that reconceive time, space, and the shifting situatedness of the subject within nature, politics, and culture. The book weaves together modern and postmodern visions of itinerancy in the writings of Cormac McCarthy, Bob Dylan, Junot Diaz, Edwidge Danticat, Jeffrey Eugenides, Jhumpa Lahiri, Roberto Bolaño, Paul Bowles, and Bill McKibben, among others. Throughout these radically different narratives, the trace of the itinerant suggests a cosmopolitan response to localized anxieties about global hegemony. 

","“Wretched Refuge is a great resource for a scholar seeking to reconcile the western longings of Frederick Jackson Turner with the dictatorial illusions of Duvalier and Trujillo; for a scholar looking for a new paradigm with which to discuss Dylan and Marley.”
—Ferentz Lafargue, Assistant Professor of Literary Studies, Eugene Lang College,
The New School for LIberal Arts,  New York, USA


",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-05-01,Saudi Sadiq,A Comparative Study of Four English Translations of Sûrat Ad-Dukhân on the Semantic Level,Hardback,978-1-4438-2060-8,39.99,"Through combining a knowledge of translation theory and application, the present book aims at holding a semantic comparison of four English translations attempted by Muhammad Marmaduke Pickthall, ‘Abdullâh Yûsuf ‘Alî, Arthur J. Arberry and Muhammad Mahmûd Ghâlî of Sûrat Ad-Dukhân (the Chapter of Smoke). As a theoretical framework, the book deals with several linguistic and cultural problems of translation, with special reference to Qur'ân translation, and the principles that should be considered on translating the Qur'ân. The core of the book is a comparison of sixty-eight lexical, syntactic and stylistic selections from Sûrat Ad-Dukhân. The comparison depends on various Qur’ân interpretations and Arabic dictionaries to decide the precise meaning(s) of the selections. Then, a translation is suggested, and the four translations are judged: the correct ones are acknowledged and the mistaken shown, along with the reasons underlying the mistake(s). To reach the precise meaning in English and judge the translations compared accurately, many English dictionaries are utilized. The comparison shows that the best translation in terms of meaning precision and easiness of expression is that of Ghâlî, followed by Pickthall's, Arberry’s and ‘Alî’s respectively. 



",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-05-01,"Gordon Spark, Laura Findlay, Pauline MacPherson and Andrew Wood",Alienation and Resistance: Representation in Text and Image,Hardback,978-1-4438-1964-0,44.99,"This collection draws together recent work by new and emerging scholars which examines the representation of alienation and resistance in texts and images, both modern and traditional. The essays collected here incorporate both “high” and “low” culture, covering a wide range of disciplines from traditional literary sources to the more modern mediums of film and comic. Informing each of the contributions is one overriding question: what are the roles, forms, and conditions of alienation and resistance in our culture and its diverse media? 

The contributors to this collection find examples of both alienation and resistance everywhere, from sixteenth century drama to contemporary fiction, from American comics to Eastern European cinema, from representations of the body to the site of the body itself. In seeking out these representations of alienation and resistance, the essays begin also to probe the limits and limitations of such terms. As such, the collection as a whole offers both a broad overview of the field of play as it stands today and makes tentative suggestions as to potential paths of future inquiry.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-05-01,J. P. Spicer-Escalante and Lara Anderson,Au Naturel: (Re)Reading Hispanic Naturalism,Hardback,978-1-4438-2067-7,44.99,"Literary naturalism, within the Hispanic context, has traditionally been read as a graphic realist school or movement linked predominantly to late nineteenth century literary production. The essays in Au Naturel: (Re)Reading Hispanic Naturalism—written by scholars from different generations, nationalities and ideological backgrounds—propose a major revisionist contribution to the study of Hispanic naturalism. Based on a theoretical proposal that re-semanticizes naturalismo as a diachronic counter-metanarrative phenomenon that transcends the chronological and geographic limitations imposed by traditional criticism on naturalism, the collection provides new readings of traditional naturalist fare as well as re-readings of works that have not been read, within the bounds of conventional criticism, as naturalist. Re-read within the proposed theoretical framework, its essays demonstrate the countless ways in which Hispanic naturalist texts–literary and more recently, filmic—continue to frankly engage the societal problematics that has impeded true social, political, economic and cultural progress from taking place in the Hispanic world from the turbulent fin-de-siècle period of the nineteenth century through the present day, globalized context. Au Naturel: (Re)Reading Hispanic Naturalism is thus also an open invitation to the scholarly community to re-consider other socio-critical works within the Hispanic naturalist context that observe and reflection upon social issues that continue to plague Hispanic society today.



","AU NATUREL: (RE)READING HISPANIC NATURALISM, in the words of J.P. Spicer-Escalante, proposes revisiting Hispanic naturalism as “a diachronic post modern socio-aesthetic phenomenon”. With the publication of this volume contemporary readers and scholars finally have a significant revisionist critical interpretation of Naturalism, traditionally viewed as a corpus or archive of late Nineteenth Century textual productions influenced by European models, especially the works of Zola.  In short, we have a more satisfying reading of Hispanic literature in the context of the inconclusive transnational modernizations of the Hispanic and Western world.  The diverse essays in this volume bear witness to Linda Hutcheon’s notion of a metafictive impulse that evidences the presence of the past in the texts of the present.  Naturalism’s fundamental nature in the essays of this volume is thus (re)ordered and (re)cast so that it constitutes a meaningful element of Hispanic Modernity conceived as one of the multitudinous manifestations of the modern world’s constant movements, rotations, and reinventions.
—Ivan A. Schulman, Professor Emeritus of Spanish & Comparative Literature, University of Illinois

‘The volume is a necessary and welcome addition to the existing scholarship on Hispanic naturalism.’


‘Au Naturel’. (Re)Reading Hispanic Naturalism proves to be a coherent and compelling study of the composite effects of naturalism on artist production…’
--Ellen Mayock, Washington and Lee University, Virginia

",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-05-01,Peter Cochran,Byron and Women [and men],Hardback,978-1-4438-1988-6,44.99,"Byron and Women [and men] is a compilation of new biographical and literary essays, examining the poet’s bisexuality and the ways in which it affected his poetry and drama. Areas covered are Byron and gender-studies (a general introduction); Byron’s Boyfriends (an aspect of his life which has traditionally been neglected); the Male Gaze in the Oriental Tales; homosexuality in Venice; Byron’s Nottinghamshire love-life; sex and gender in Don Juan; bisexuality in Byron and Shakespeare; and Byron’s heroines contrasted with those of Mozart. The volume has as appendices new editions of the notorious poems Don Leon and Leon to Annbella, with startling theories as to their authorship.

","""Byron and Women [And Men] is a welcome contribution to gay studies...The Volume has 12 chapters written by 10 different authors, as well as the first new edition of the Don Leon poems since 1934""

John Lauritsen, The Gay and Lesbian Review, Jan 2011
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-05-01,"Rosa Lorés-Sanz, Pilar Mur-Dueñas and Enrique Lafuente-Millán",Constructing Interpersonality: Multiple Perspectives on Written Academic Genres,Hardback,978-1-4438-1981-7,44.99,"The view that academic discourse is, by definition, impersonal has long been superseded. It seems unquestionable now that the interpersonal component of texts, that is, the ways in which the writers project themselves and their audience in the discourse, is an essential factor determining the success of scholarly communication and has become a fundamental issue in the field of English for Academic Purposes (EAP).

Interpersonality is the key issue around which the articles in this edited book focus on. The eighteen contributions included in this volume provide a wide exploratory view of the many academic genres in which interpersonality is manifested and the various analytical approaches from which the textual manifestation of that interpersonality can be studied. The varied origin of the contributors is also representative of the global interest that the issue of interpersonality arouses in the field of academic discourse analysis at an international level.

The present volume constitutes a highly valuable tool for applied linguists and discourse analysts with an interest in EAP as well as for students, instructors and language teachers interested in academic discourse. The book may also be of interest to other agents intervening in the research publication process, such as translators, proofreaders, reviewers and editors.

","""This is a wide-ranging volume in terms of the academic genres it covers, but yet remains tightly-focussed on what the editors call “interpersonality”. For them, this is an “umbrella term” for all the various means, covert, discreet and overt, employed by academic writers to establish their presence in their own texts. In consequence, this collection will be of interest to all those involved in written academic discourse, especially in English, whether as producers, analysts or instructors. Although the chapter authors come from many European countries, a majority are based in Spain, once again underlining that country’s current pre-eminence in this important and fast-growing field.""

- Professor John M. Swales, University of Michigan, USA

""Interpersonality is now widely recognized as a key feature of academic discourse.  To create knowledge, to get their ideas accepted and to establish their reputations, academics must present themselves and engage with their peers in ways readers find familiar and persuasive.  Exactly how this is done in different contexts has become a hot topic in applied linguistics and this book is a timely and authoritative contribution to the debate. Constructing Interpersonality: Multiple perspectives on written academic genres  provides an accessible and thought-provoking dimension to the issues surrounding questions of interpersonality, bringing together contributions from top scholars in the field to investigate the theoretical and empirical implications of taking interpersonality seriously. Featuring an array of theoretical positions, exploring contrasts across disciplines, languages, and genres, and covering a range of genres from research articles to academic weblogs, this book will be of considerable interest to students and researchers in EAP, discourse analysis, and applied linguistics.""

- Professor Ken Hyland, City University of Hong Kong

Focusing on a very specific theme, interpersonality in written academic discourse, was a major strength of the conference and consequently of the present volume too. The conference managed to create the perfect atmosphere for a fruitful dialogue among people in a perfect communication of ideas, metalanguage and goals. The present result is a monograph that provides authoritative, updated and forward-looking perspective on a major issue in the LSP and EAP fields. The different papers in the volume are not only of an outstanding academic robustness but also of much practical relevance for both EAP teachers and students. In our view, this brilliantly edited volume will be a landmark in the field, and an invaluable source of inspiration for researchers and scholars.""

Javier Fernandez Polo, Universidad de Santiago de Compostela in Miscelanea Journal, Vol. 41 (2011)





",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-05-01,"Said M. Shiyab, Marilyn Gaddis Rose, Juliane House and John Duval",Globalization and Aspects of Translation,Hardback,978-1-4438-1965-7,39.99,"This book is for students of translation, interpretation, linguistics and languages who would like to enhance their understanding of the relationship between these areas of study. More specifically, the book attempts to capture the quintessence or the epitome embodied in the concepts of translation and globalization. It also attempts to bridge the gap between the globalizing and globalized worlds. It brings to light the diversity of areas in globalization and aspects of translation that have impacted the notions of cultural communication, translator’s code of ethics, metaphorical meaning, code switching, media, etc. Scholars from different parts of the world contributed to this book, representing countries such as the US, Canada, Germany, Portugal, Switzerland, Belgium, Austria, Tunisia, Bahrain, Jordan, and United Arab Emirates. Those scholars have done their research in their home countries on other parts of the world. Because of this diversity, the editors believe this book genuinely offers an international experience.

Thirteen chapters cover different aspects of globalization in relation to translation. Areas covered include, but are not limited to, faces of globalization, English as the world’s most prestigious language in its role as a global lingua franca, ELF as a threat to multilingualism, on-line resources designed for trainee and practicing interpreters, translation as a paradigm, and aspects of literary translation.

Each chapter provides a blend of theory and practice, and a demonstration on how globalization impacted the profession and the notion of cultural communication. Examples are drawn from English, Arabic, French and other languages. This book can be used as a reference book, and it can also be used at both graduate and undergraduate levels.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-05-01,Maria Georgieva and Allan James,Globalization in English Studies,Hardback,978-1-4438-1992-3,39.99,"Globalization, the concept used to account for the multitude of linkages, interconnections and interdependences that currently transcend territorial and sociocultural boundaries in the world, has been in the centre of continual controversy over its meaning, scope, intensity and social significance for post-modern societies. However, whether considered from the narrow angle of current socio-economic developments, or from the broad perspective of evolutionary processes straddling all spheres of life, globalization is generally acknowledged to refer to a complex set of processes of modernization, technologization, liberalization and integration operationalized through language and in a language shared by all those involved. For a number of geo-historical, socio-political, economic and technological reasons the language that has firmly established itself as the language of international communication is English. As a result, Global English takes a primary place in discussions of the effect of globalization on world societies and culture.

The volume Globalization in English Studies addresses the issue of how globalization impacts upon culture, literature, language communication and language learning and use policies, which are taken to constitute the multiplex disciplinary space of English Studies. Written by authors with different language, cultural and theoretical backgrounds, this collection of eleven chapters throws light on how “global” and “local” entities are subtly intertwined, refashioned and rescaled in different geo-political and sociocultural contexts. The book is divided into four parts:

The first part, Globalization in Culture, dwells upon the effects of globalization in particular cultural domains and  the institutional attempts in some countries at reducing its negative consequences for local practices.

The second part, Globalization in Literature, examines the impact of global integration processes on social life. In particular, it focuses on new developments as the “hybridization” and “technologization” of  societies that tend to wipe out borders traditionally taken as reference points in building identity and a sense of belonging.

The third part, Globalization in Language Communication, focuses on intercultural communication and the opportunities different multi-modal settings offer for the the realisation of intertextuality and interdiscursivity. Of particular interest is how local people select, appropriate , and creatively  utilize  cultural entities designed for global consumption to make them appear as their “own”.

The last part, Global English and English Language Teaching/ Learning Policy, approaches the issue from a pedagogical perspective and examines the changes that globalization has caused for learners, learning environments and ways of speaking.

Ranging over a variety of domains subsumed within English Studies, this collection of studies can serve as a good base for the cross-disciplinary synergy of ideas and fruitful debate among scholars and practitioners with a vested interest in Global English.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-05-01,Grzegorz Moroz and Jolanta Sztachelska,"Metamorphoses of Travel Writing: Across Theories, Genres, Centuries and Literary Traditions",Hardback,978-1-4438-1985-5,39.99,"This book reflects, comments on and adds to a fast growing field of travel writing studies. The twenty-five papers in this volume rely on a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches and explore a diverse body of travel writing texts created over the last three hundred years in English, Polish, Hungarian and French. The book is divided into three parts. The first one includes papers which apply the findings of post-structuralism, generic and cultural criticism as well as narratology to explore theories, canons and genres in travel writing drawing material not only from non-fictional and fictional prose narratives but also from poetry and tragedy. The second and third parts contain papers on a wide selection of travel writing texts, both fictional and non-fictional, written in Anglophone, as well as other literary traditions. They are arranged chronologically: the second part is devoted to texts written in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, while the third part focuses on those written in the twentieth and twenty first centuries.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-05-01,Kathleen A. Bishop,Standing in the Shadow of the Master?  Chaucerian Influences and Interpretations,Hardback,978-1-4438-1958-9,44.99,"Standing in the Shadow of the Master? Chaucerian Influences and Interpretations grew out of a session at the 2008 International Medieval Congress at the University of Leeds. In this volume Editor Kathleen A. Bishop brings together a collection of essays contributed by a talented and diverse group of scholars from the United States, Canada, and Europe. 

The articles question the traditional supremacy of Chaucer in the canon while also reaffirming the lasting impact of this great English writer of the Middle Ages. Topics covered include Shakespeare, Lydgate, Gower, Henryson, Douglas, Clanvowe, Bokenham, and the Gawain Poet, as well as a modern psychoanalytic assessment of the Wife of Bath, and a dialogue on making Chaucer relevant to undergraduates immersed in 21st century culture.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-05-01,Micaela Muñoz-Calvo and Carmen Buesa-Gómez,Translation and Cultural Identity: Selected Essays on Translation and Cross-Cultural Communication,Hardback,978-1-4438-1989-3,34.99,"Translation and Cultural Identity: Selected Essays on Translation and Cross-Cultural Communication tackles the complexity of the concepts mentioned in its title through seven essays, written by most highly regarded experts in the field of Translation Studies: José Lambert (Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium), Raquel Merino (University of the Basque Country, Spain), Rosa Rabadán (University of Leon, Spain), Julio-César Santoyo (University of Leon, Spain), Christina Schäffner (Aston University, Birmingham, United Kingdom), Gideon Toury (Tel-Aviv University, Israel) and Patrick Zabalbeascoa (Pompeu Fabra University, Spain). The essays are varied and innovative. Their common feature is that they deal with various aspects of translation and cultural identity and that they contribute to the enrichment of the study of communication across cultures.

These major readings in translation studies will give readers food for thought and reflection and will promote research on translation, cultural identity and cross-cultural communication.

","“This collection brings together an impressive line-up of top scholars in Translation Studies. From the clear-headed erudition of its opening essay on literary self-translation to the polemical discussion of community-forming myths in Translation Studies in the final chapter, the book not only illustrates the nexus between translation, cross-cultural communication and cultural identities but also engages with current research models for studying these phenomena, critically reviewing methodologies and proposing new research avenues. This stimulating and often challenging volume is without a doubt a worthy companion to New Trends in Translation and Cultural Identity!”
—Dirk Delabastita, University of Namur and CETRA, Belgium

“The collective volume Translation and Cultural Identity: Selected Essays on Translation and Cross-Cultural Communication has, in my opinion, at least two major strengths. Firstly it gathers together the opinions of some of the most outstanding scholars, both international and national, in the field of Translation Studies. And secondly, thanks to this diversity of focus, it covers facets of these Studies that range from general overviews to very specific case studies, thus offering one of the most interesting state-of-the-art accounts of Translation Studies today.

I have no doubt that this collection of essays will become essential and enlightening reading for all those interested in this matter, and a work of reference in their research and teaching activities.”
—José Miguel Santamaría, University of the Basque Country, Spain

",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-06-01,Dan Farrelly,"Between Myth and Reality: Goethe, Anna Amalia, Charlotte von Stein",Hardback,978-1-4438-2122-3,34.99,"“In 2004 Ettore Ghibellino published his provocative thesis that Goethe’s beloved was not Charlotte von Stein but the Dowager Duchess, Anna Amalia. Ghibellino claimed that Charlotte, the former lady-in-waiting of Anna Amalia, acted as a ‘straw woman’ and that the many letters, and the love they expressed, were really meant for Anna Amalia herself. Dan Farrelly, who translated Ghibellino’s book, has been preoccupied with this thesis since 2005. Here he has undertaken a meticulous re-reading of Goethe’s letters to Charlotte von Stein from 1776 to 1786. He analyses the whereabouts of Charlotte and Anna Amalia at any given time, including their journeys, and concludes that Charlotte was the real addressee of the letters. This amounts to a refutation of one of Ghibellino’s central arguments. This book is to be recommended as a further contribution to discussion of Goethe’s early Weimar period.” 
—Ilse Nagelschmidt, Leipzig

“Although the image of Goethe in the popular imagination is quite different from the scholarly reception of Goethe’s life and work, the two worlds do cross over, and misconceptions about the poet are difficult to dispel once they become established in contemporary Goethean culture. In tackling Ghibellino’s recent misreading of Goethe’s relationship with Anna Amalia—which has recently merited attention in Die Zeit—Farrelly is able to give the high cultural and the colloquial equal credence. His combination of scholarship and a fundamental awareness of the plain sense of things has an intellectual hardness at its core. There is an unapologetic quality about Farrelly’s writing and a deep sense of intellectual responsibility and integrity.”
—Lorraine Byrne Bodley, Dublin
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-06-01,Lizzy Attree,Blood on the Page: Interviews with African Authors writing about HIV/AIDS,Hardback,978-1-4438-2077-6,39.99,"The fourteen interviews in this book form an unprecedented wealth of material on authors’ responses to HIV/AIDS in South Africa and Zimbabwe. They comprise a valuable archive which documents and contextualises the variety of views and opinions of different authors on their often ground-breaking choices in writing about HIV/AIDS. Each author ranks among the first to publish fiction on HIV/AIDS in their respective countries. These interviews are of particular merit as these issues have not been discussed at length with any of the authors before. Collectively they offer a unique range of approaches and opinions in response to the HIV/AIDS pandemic in southern Africa. Their significance lies in their specific literary, as well as their broader social, cultural and political perspectives on a disease which continues to spread despite extensive NGO, medical and government intervention. In both South Africa and Zimbabwe, government responses have failed to address the urgent need for new political and economic solutions to the challenge of HIV infection. Responses among the population have varied from widespread silence, shame and fear to political activism and outspoken critiques of government inaction. Writers give voice to this silence and contextualise the disparate reactions amongst diverse peoples.

Globally, AIDS killed approximately 2 million in 2008. In 1998, AIDS was the largest killer in southern Africa, nearly double the one million deaths from malaria and eight times the 209,000 deaths from tuberculosis. It has long been the case that of those dying globally of AIDS, the majority live in southern Africa. When the associated social and cultural implications of infection with HIV are considered, fictional representations contribute significantly to our understanding of the impact of HIV/AIDS on communities and individuals, and provide a much-needed basis for ‘humanising’ an epidemic which is unimaginable statistically. It has been said that the feelings and reactions that HIV/AIDS inspires are often ‘too unreal for words,’ and it is this very notion, that certain diseases are taboo, unmentionable, and hardly even named as such, that makes verbalisation of this epidemic a modern imperative.



","“Blood on the Page is a striking and important collection of interviews on HIV/AIDS and literature with contemporary South African and Zimbabwean writers reflecting on their own texts and lives in the Mbeki-Mugabe era. Rarely has the brutality and complexity of the question of writing in a post-Apartheid African world haunted by death and illness been confronted with as much directness and honesty. An absolutely must read for any one engaged with South Africa, Zimbabwe, HIV/AIDS and literature, or the difficulty of writing in the world of global health politics.”
—Sander L. Gilman, Distinguished Professor of the Liberal Arts and Sciences; Professor of Psychiatry, Emory University



",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-06-01,Lauren Watson,"Contingencies and Masterly Fictions: Countertextuality in Dickens, Contemporary Fiction and Theory",Hardback,978-1-4438-2074-5,39.99,"This book establishes deconstructive dialogues between texts which are generically, chronologically and stylistically very different. Each chapter aligns one of Dickens's later novels with a work of contemporary literature and a post structuralist theoretical text. Working from the premise of Derrida's contre, the relationship developed between these texts is not so much intertextual as countertextual: each text re-enacts the procedures of its counterparts, simultaneously rearticulating and interrogating their status. In this triangular mode of reading, the contact zone between countertexts becomes the site on which new readings are generated, readings that use the ambivalent relationship between writings to mark an analogous self-difference within writing itself.
This productive self difference is described as a “negotiation” of the contradictory drives of signification, a strategic management of the masterly and the contingent. This book argues that Dickens's texts perform their negotiations in an acutely strenuous manner, amplifying instability and exposing the means of literary production. This lack of discipline proves contagious as the reader re enacts the text's spasmodic shifts between mastery and contingency. As surrogate Dickensian readers in the countertextual economy, the contemporary novel and post structuralist theory also display this instability    an effect which allows this study to develop not only a theory of poetics but a poetics of theory.    
This dramatic self difference is not simply restricted to writing, however. In later chapters, this study examines how racial and gender identities are also marked by ambivalence, and how their instability is exacerbated after contact with a Dickensian contre.
In conclusion, the work is itself submitted to a ‘Dickensian’ reading. The author examines how the study’s own manoeuvres have been exposed through contact with many of the texts analysed within it, and how this dialogue deconstructs the ideal of academic writing. 


","""In bringing together certain unlikely figures, and placing them in unexpected juxtaposition, Lauren Watson has done Dickensians everywhere an inestimable service with Contingencies and Masterly Fictions’: Contextuality in Dickens, Contemporary Fiction and Theory. This adventurous intertextual study of Charles Dickens demonstrates with verve and commitment the extent to which Dickens was an experimental and profoundly engaged writer, whose practices destabilise repeatedly the reader's relationship with the text and the worlds the text constructs. Illuminating the ways in which Dickens anticipates various critical and authorial discourses of the late twentieth century, Lauren Watson offers us a fascinatingly different Dickens, a Dickens of difference. Producing a countersignature to the Dickensian text, Contingencies and Masterly Fictions’: Contextuality in Dickens, Contemporary Fiction and Theory traces Dickens's own countersignatures to the institutions and cultures of his times.""

- Julian Wolfreys, Professor of Modern Literature and Culture, Loughborough University


“This is a wonderful and, in many ways, monumental study.  It is intellectually ambitious in the very best possible sense, developing a very original triangular way with the work of Charles Dickens, as each of its four long chapters places one Dickens novel alongside not only a major literary theorist of the late-20th century but also a novel from this same era.  The result is a hugely demanding project, requiring a sophisticated grasp of such complex thinkers as Derrida, Kristeva and Bhabha as well such demanding meta-fictions as Ackroyd's Dickens, Carey's Jack Maggs, and Swift's Waterland.   Juggling so many texts and writers, Lauren Watson produces a wonderfully impressive labour of intellectual love in which she proves herself more than equal to the enormous challenge she sets herself.

Watson's grasp of the theory is outstanding; and just as strong is her capacity for the closest of reading.  The interpretive riches that flow from this combination are very considerable, as time and again the very specific juxtapositions and collisions that arise from each chapter's experiment in triangular reading issue in exhilarating moments of close reading.”

- John Schad, Professor of Modern Literature, Department of English and Creative Writing, University of Lancaster


",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-06-01,Claudia Slate and Carole Policy,Florida Studies: Proceedings of the 2009 Annual Meeting of the Florida College English Association,Hardback,978-1-4438-2132-2,39.99,"This volume contains a variety of essays about Florida literature and history by scholars from across the state representing every kind of institution of higher learning, from community colleges to small liberal arts institutions to large universities. The first section, Pedagogy, includes essays about using Florida’s environment to its fullest in the composition classroom. The essays in Old Florida explore Florida Cracker Westerns and slave shipwrecks off the Florida coast, as well as works by James Weldon Johnson, Rex Beach, and Zora Neale Hurston. Contemporary Florida is the largest section with essays that discuss, among other topics, Stephen King, Hunter Thompson, Elizabeth Bishop, and the “Dexter” novels. The essay in Natural Florida focuses on Florida ecocriticism.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-06-01,Loredana Frăţilă and Hortensia Pârlog,Language in Use: The Case of Youth Entertainment Magazines,Hardback,978-1-4438-2126-1,34.99,"Language in Use: The Case of Youth Entertainment Magazines is a collection of seven studies by several Romanian, Bulgarian and Slovenian linguists on the discourse of entertainment magazines targeted at young readers, and published in their respective countries. 

The starting point of the seven studies was the idea that  the discourse specific to the variety of printed media products selected for analysis was characterized by distinctive features and that these features might exert a manipulative influence on the linguistic and social behavior of the targeted readership. The scholars’ initial aim was to validate these hypotheses and to confirm their soundness across countries. However, they hope that, besides suggesting new perspectives on the discourse chosen for analysis and thus filling a gap in the eastern European literature in the field, they may also develop (admittedly, within limits) media literacy in young readers, by equipping them with skills that could transform them from passive media consumers into responsible readers, able to make informed decisions and thus be less vulnerable to the strategies of manipulation employed by those who control information.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-06-01,Pedro Guijarro-Fuentes and Laura Domínguez,New Directions in Language Acquisition: Romance Languages in the Generative Perspective,Hardback,978-1-4438-2123-0,49.99,"This volume presents sixteen new articles on the acquisition of Romance languages by both well-established researchers and vital new contributors to the field.  Under a generative umbrella, the articles in this collection investigate the acquisition of French, Romanian, Spanish, Catalan, Italian and Portuguese across different contexts including first language acquisition, bilingual acquisition, specifically impaired first language acquisition, child L2 acquisition, second language acquisition, as well as first language attrition. This volume advances our understanding of how languages are acquired and how the study of Romance languages contributes to clarifying challenging open questions on the acquisition of key functional categories and other related phenomena. In particular, the articles included assess complexity as a relevant factor shaping children’s acquisition of syntactic and phonological structures, they refine crucial theoretical constructs such as parameter setting and language transfer, and propose language change as another crucial factor affecting the process of language acquisition and attrition. 
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-06-01,Bennett Kravitz,Representations of Illness in Literature and Film,Hardback,978-1-4438-2083-7,34.99,"This book examines the ways that various syndromes, disorders and diseases appear in modern literature and film. What is especially interesting is that rather than be portrayed as an insurmountable handicap, limitation becomes the hero of the novels and films under discussion.

What once would have been rejected as flawed, ill, diseased or unworthy has now earned the opportunity to be included into mainstream society.
	
By accepting the other, these works of art allow previous outcasts of society into the mainstream to affirm their moral worth, skill and intelligence. Representations of Illness in Literature and Film analyzes the deconstruction of the above mentioned syndromes, disorders and diseases to describe their reception in the 21st-century, postmodern world.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-06-01,Nuala Finnegan and Jane E. Lavery,The Boom Femenino in Mexico: Reading Contemporary Women’s Writing,Hardback,978-1-4438-2125-4,44.99,"The Boom Femenino in Mexico: Reading Contemporary Women’s Writing is a collection of essays that focuses on literary production by women in Mexico over the last three decades. In its exploration of the boom femenino phenomenon, the book traces the history of the earlier boom in Latin American culture and investigates the implications of the use of the same term in the context of contemporary women’s writing from Mexico. In this way it engages critically with the cultural, historical and literary significance of the term illuminating the concept for a wide range of readers. It is clear that the entry of so many women writers into an arena traditionally reserved for men has prompted discussion around concepts such as ‘women’s writing’ and the very definition of ‘literature’ itself. Many of the contributors grapple with the theoretical tensions that such debates provoke offering an important opportunity to think critically about the texts produced during this period and the ways in which they have impacted on the Mexican and international cultural spheres.

The project is comprehensive in its scope and, for the first time, brings together scholars from Mexico, the U.S. and Europe in a transnational forum. The book posits that despite certain aesthetic and thematic commonalities, the increased output by women writers in Mexico cannot be appraised as a unified literary movement. Instead it embraces a wide range of different generic forms and the subjects under study in the essays in the book include the best-selling work of Ángeles Mastretta, Elena Poniatowska and Laura Esquivel as well as the social and political preoccupations of journalists, Rosanna Reguillo and Cristina Pacheco. Contributors offer readings of the aesthetic visions of writers as diverse as Carmen Boullosa, Ana García Bergua, and Eve Gil while other essays examine the nuances of contemporary gender identity in the work of Ana Clavel, Sabina Berman, Brianda Domecq and María Luisa Puga. There are essays devoted to poetry by indigenous Mayan women and an analysis of the complex place of poetry within the broader framework of literary production. The problems that emerge as a result of literary cataloguing based on gender politics are also considered at length in a number of essays that take a panoramic view of literary production over the period. Various critical approaches are employed throughout and the collection as a whole demonstrates that academic interest in Mexican women’s writing of the boom femenio is thriving. Above all, the essays here provide a space in which the location of women within prevailing cultural paradigms in Mexico and their role in the mapping of power in evolving textual canons may be interrogated. It is clear from the collection that interest in such issues is still alive and that the debate is far from over. 



",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-06-01,Giovanna Summerfield,Vendetta: Essays on Honor and Revenge,Hardback,978-1-4438-2080-6,34.99,"In spite of our clever and urban modern logic, our sharp common sense of destruction and reaction versus the more gratifying construction and proactive action, we still weave talionic plots that go beyond staged tragedies and past eras. Revenge continues to be popular in fiction as in non-fictional realms. As an audience, we enjoy films and books that hail the ‘getting even’ philosophy; even our most renowned children’s stories are seeded in vindication and retribution (Hansel and Gretel, Red Riding Hood, and Snow White, just to name a few), as our television programs, targeted to a more mature audience, are intended to be (see Charmed and Scrubs, as just two successful examples).

This volume provides a riveting account of the role of revenge as muse to many characters of modern literature from various national origins and of modern societies with their own embedded cultural reactions as well as a diversity of approaches to wishes of violent counterattacks. Through a plurality of literary subjects and perspectives, this publication provides an overview much needed in our libraries and bookstores. Departing from the psychological complexities in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the contributors of this volume focus on chivalric avenges, models for violence management, and reinterpretations of the code of honor through the analysis of Hispanic, Italian, and French texts; emphasize the patient craftiness and adroit deceit of which women are capable, outmaneuvering men and their cold manipulations; provide documented incidents involving more than fictitious personages as in the case of an Italian portraitist active between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This volume is a unique collection of topics, with a useful and practical approach to an abrasive phenomenon that remains relevant in our modern times.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-06-01,Elizabeth Boyle and Anne-Marie Evans,Writing America into the Twenty-First Century: Essays on the American Novel,Hardback,978-1-4438-2133-9,34.99,"Writing America into the Twenty-First Century: Essays on the American Novel seeks to explore an exciting period in American literary scholarship. Concentrating on novels written after 1990 and through to the new millennium and to the present day, this collection presents a refreshing and much-needed analysis of recent American fiction. Representing the work of established scholars and emerging critical voices, the essays interrogate a range of fiction including works by Philip Roth, Jeffrey Eugenides, Don DeLillo, Thomas Pynchon and Cormac McCarthy.

Accessible to students, scholars and the interested reader, this invigorating collection navigates the works of several key male American authors of the last twenty years and, in so doing, offers a new way of examining the American novel. This volume’s strength lies in its careful academic focus on recent American fiction and seeks to re-acquaint the reader with well-known authors and introduce them to new literary voices such as Christopher John Farley, Anthony Giardina and Daniel Suarez. The collection is organised into four large topic areas: ‘Youth and Age,’ ‘War and Crime,’ ‘Culture’ and ‘Spaces and Patterns.’ Each essay deals with its own particular subject and author but the full impact of each section on the concept of writing the American novel into the present day can only really be understood when read in conjunction with the others.

Writing America, a companion volume to Reading America: New Perspectives on the American Novel (2008) would be a valuable asset to any university or branch library. The volume will also attract strong interest from established academics, especially those researching the fields of literature, critical theory, cultural history and politics.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-06-02,Anton Krueger,Experiments in Freedom: Explorations of Identity in New South African Drama,Hardback,978-1-4438-1425-6,39.99,"Experiments in Freedom examines ways in which identities have been represented in recent South African play texts published in English. It begins by exploring descriptions of identity from various philosophical, psychological and anthropological perspectives and elaborates ways in which drama is uniquely suited to represent—as well as to effect—transformations of identity. In exploring the fraught terrain of identity studies, the book examines a selection of play texts in terms of five different discourse of identity—gender, nationalism, ethnicity, syncretism and race. Instead of building a sustained thesis throughout his text, Krueger writes in short bursts about a multiplicity of topics, extending his explorations rhizomatically into the crevices of a new South African society loath to relinquish its stranglehold on the politics of identity.

","“[W]ell written...maps an important field of research with intellectual rigour and exemplary fair-mindedness, and negotiates a complicated route through a plethora of contentious artistic manifestoes and critical opinions with sophistication and maturity.”
—Prof. Robert Gordon, Goldsmiths College, University of London

“[Experiments in Freedom] shows Krueger's ability to bring an insightful critical perspective not only towards the play texts that he examines, but to theory itself...The style of writing is lucid and avoids obfuscation, the ‘(mis)management’ of syntax and tortured logic, common to some authors writing in a postmodernist vein. This in no way distracts from the complexity of the subject matter or the profound insights that the text offers.”
—Prof. Fred Hagemann, Department of Drama, University of Pretoria

“[Experiments in Freedom] has been a pleasure to read...The writing exudes clarity and the arguments are cogently rehearsed...[It] guides the reader on a journey that is concomitantly innovative, challenging and informative...written eloquently and lucidly—it deserves a valuable place in its field [and] should be a compulsory text in South African and international libraries.”
—Prof. Marcia Blumberg, York University, Toronto

“The issues [Experiments in Freedom] addresses...could not be more relevant or topical...Krueger strikes a pleasing balance between the scholarly and the polemical...His tendentiousness is transparent, bold, even refreshing: it carries the force of his conviction and his experience as a South African and a dramatist in his own right...A further strength is that his style is clear and accessible throughout. He succeeds in being scholarly without resorting to jargon or the kind of stodgy academic writing which one encounters all too frequently.”
—Prof. David Medalie, Department of English, University of Pretoria

‘…a welcome addition to the field of cultural and performance studies. His [Krueger's] thorough survey of themes in post-apartheid drama provides a multiplicity of approaches to the problematic concept of “freedom”in a South African context.

Jamie DeAngelo- Boston University, Africana Book Review June 2010
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-07-01,Peter Cochran,Byron and Hobby-O: Lord Byron’s Relationship with John Cam Hobhouse,Hardback,978-1-4438-2149-0,44.99,"Byron and Hobby-O is about the relationship between Byron and his supposed best friend, John Cam Hobhouse. It is the first full-length biographical study of Hobhouse in over fifty years, and is much franker and more intimate than anything preceding. It shows how, while the two men were initially collaborators and rivals, Byron rapidly outstretched Hobhouse in poetry, while Hobhouse, in the longer term, outstretched Byron in politics.
 
It shows how long acquaintance with the elusive and chameleonic Byron turned Hobhouse into a canter and humbug of the kind Byron hated, and concludes with an account of the first English invasion of Afghanistan, which Hobhouse initiated.
 
The book is based in part on long study of Hobhouse’s diary, much of which Peter Cochran has edited.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-07-01,Cheleen Ann-Catherine Mahar,Cuisine and Symbolic Capital: Food in Film and Literature,Hardback,978-1-4438-2219-0,39.99,"This collection of interdisciplinary essays examines food as it mediates social relationships and self-presentation in a variety of international films and literature.   Authors explore the ways that making, eating and thinking about food reveals culture.  In doing so the essays highlight how food and foodways become a type of symbolic capital, which influences the larger concern of cultural identity.  Essays are organized into three central themes:  Culinary Translations of Identity: From Britain to China; Food as Metaphor in Contemporary German Writing; and Love, Feasting and the Symbolic Power of Food in French Writing.  Each essay investigates the uses of food as a way to apprehend cultural meaning.  The essays presented provide theoretical templates for the study of food in a wide range of international film and literature, 



",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-07-01,Andrzej Ciuk and Katarzyna Molek-Kozakowska,"Exploring Space: Spatial Notions in Cultural, Literary and Language Studies; Volume 1: Space in Cultural and Literary Studies",Hardback,978-1-4438-2143-8,49.99,"Exploring space: Spatial notions in cultural, literary and language studies falls into two volumes and is the result of the 18th PASE (Polish Association for the Study of English) Conference organized by the English Department of Opole University and held at Kamień Śląski in April 2009. The first volume embraces cultural and literary studies and offers papers on narrative fiction, poetry, theatre and drama, and post-colonial studies. The texts and contexts explored are either British, American or Commonwealth. The second volume refers to English language studies and covers papers on lexicography, general linguistics and rhetoric, discourse studies and translation, second language acquisition/foreign language learning, and the methodology of foreign language teaching. The book aims to offer a comprehensive insight into how the category of space can inform original philological research; thus, it may be of interest to those in search of novel applications of space-related concepts, and to those who wish to acquire an update on current developments in English Studies across Poland (from the Preface).


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-07-01,Andrzej Ciuk and Katarzyna Molek-Kozakowska,"Exploring Space: Spatial Notions in Cultural, Literary and Language Studies; Volume 2: Space in Language Studies",Hardback,978-1-4438-2144-5,44.99,"Exploring space: Spatial notions in cultural, literary and language studies falls into two volumes and is the result of the 18th PASE (Polish Association for the Study of English) Conference organized by the English Department of Opole University and held at Kamień Śląski in April 2009. The first volume embraces cultural and literary studies and offers papers on narrative fiction, poetry, theatre and drama, and post-colonial studies. The texts and contexts explored are either British, American or Commonwealth. The second volume refers to English language studies and covers papers on lexicography, general linguistics and rhetoric, discourse studies and translation, second language acquisition/foreign language learning, and the methodology of foreign language teaching. The book aims to offer a comprehensive insight into how the category of space can inform original philological research; thus, it may be of interest to those in search of novel applications of space-related concepts, and to those who wish to acquire an update on current developments in English Studies across Poland (from the Preface).


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-07-01,Marian F. Sia and Santiago Sia,From Question to Quest: Literary-Philosophical Enquiries into the Challenges of Life,Hardback,978-1-4438-2159-9,39.99,"In facing up to life and its challenges, questions inevitably arise. Different situations provoke specific questions—mostly trivial but frequently fundamental—always seeking some kind of answer. While the transition from question to quest is a rather natural one for human beings and the need for answers is a serious human demand, the quest itself is significant, precisely because it is a human task.

This book offers a number of literary-philosophical enquiries into these challenges of life. But it is the one set of quests—stimulated, deepened and widened by literature and philosophy as well as developed in a literary and philosophical way. Among the topics covered are: the search for meaning in life, the quest for wisdom, the aim of moral striving, the need for community life, the importance of relationships, the challenge of suffering, the desire for deliverance, and the longing for immortality.
","“This is truly a work of imaginative thinking. It confronts the great questions in a world in which we are all too often content with avoiding them in our obsession with particularity. It listens attentively to the great masters of philosophy and literature which have gone before, but knows that we can never truly think until we have summoned the courage to think for ourselves ... I really enjoyed reading this book!”
—Prof David Jasper, Professor of Literature and Theology, University of Glasgow; Changyang Chair Professor, Renmin University of China

“This book is a perfect illustration of Whitehead’s famous metaphor of the flight of an aeroplane. The authors start from the ground of solid observation of, and literary insights into, the challenges of everyday life; then they take a flight into the thin air of speculative thinking, using the resources of philosophy. And then, again, they land for a renewed and fresh interpretation of thorny issues, including suffering, death and immortality. An inspiring quest and a splendid work!”
—Prof Jan Van der Veken, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-07-01,"Thomas William Nielsen, Robert Fitzgerald and Mark Fettes",Imagination in Educational Theory and Practice: A Many-sided Vision,Hardback,978-1-4438-2142-1,44.99,"Inspired by papers developed for the 6th International Conference on Imagination and Education: Imaginative Practice, Imaginative Inquiry (Canberra, Australia, 2008), this book connects a cross-section of educators, researchers and administrators in a dialogue and exploration of imaginative and creative ways of teaching, learning and conducting educational inquiry.

Imagination is a concept that spans traditional disciplinary and professional boundaries. The authors in this book acknowledge diverse theoretical and practical allegiances, but they concur that imagination will play an essential role in the building of new foundations for education in the 21st century. From our conception of human development through our ways of educating teachers to the teaching of mathematics, they argue for the centrality of imagination in the realization of human potential, and for its relevance to the most urgent problems confronting our world.

Introduced by a wide-ranging literature review and extensively referenced, this volume makes an important contribution to a rapidly expanding field.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-07-01,Katarzyna Bazarnik and Bożena Kucała,James Joyce and After: Writer and Time,Hardback,978-1-4438-2072-1,39.99,"James Joyce and After: Writer and Time is a volume of essays examining various aspects of time in literature, starting with the modernist revolution in fictional time initiated, among others, by Joyce, up until the present. In Part One: “James Joyce and Commodius Vicus of Recirculation,” the largest group of essays offers new and insightful readings of Finnegans Wake, Ulysses, Dubliners and Pomes Penyeach, reflecting a variety of Joyce’s experiments with time as well as demonstrating patterns and cross-references in his lifelong artistic explorations.

Part Two: “Writer and Private Time,” focuses on selected literary responses to subjective experience of time. The articles analyse Joyce’s epiphanies, Elizabeth Bishop’s rendition of a lyrical moment in her poetry, as well as the interplay of fiction and autobiography in the writings of Joseph Conrad and J. M. Coetzee. Another article in this section uses the Bakhtinian concept of chronotope to emphasise simultaneity of reading and writing in the newly defined genre of liberature.

At the other end of the (temporal) spectrum, the articles in Part Three: “Writer and Public Time,” devoted to recent fiction, testify to the constant need for seeking new ways of recording the temporal dimension of collective experience. It is argued that the engagement with Victorianism in contemporary fiction has resulted in a special treatment of time involving duality of temporal levels, while the emerging post-9/11 genre takes account of the new audiovisual media in order to respond to one of the most traumatic experiences in contemporary history.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-07-01,"Costas Canakis, Venetia Kantsa and Kostas Yiannakopoulos",Language and Sexuality (through and) beyond Gender,Hardback,978-1-4438-2146-9,39.99,"This volume is a collection of papers on aspects of language and sexuality as understood and problematized by scholars in linguistics and anthropology. The idea behind this volume was to bring together people working on language-and-sexuality issues from within these two fields given that linguistic research on this topic is, more often than not, fieldwork-related and anthropological research characteristically focuses on issues of sexual onomasiology and semasiology, a concomitant of its preoccupation with social categories and categorization. This endeavor is in many respects a continuation of the discussion on the social constitution of gender while following up on a slowly but steadily growing tradition of research on language and sexuality, both in relation to gender and beyond it. Although gender and sexuality may be thought of as distinct, in principle, they interact not only in the framework provided by heteronormativity, but also in contexts where their presupposed alignment is questioned, if not summarily rebuked. Therefore, if there is, indeed, something to be said about language and sexuality beyond gender, any such discussion will also have to go through it. On the other hand, work on gendered language will have to co-estimate the findings of research on language-and-sexuality. Contributors in this volume have assumed a variety of theoretical positions from which to tackle their diverse topics, covering a wide range of sexually relevant language pertaining to heterosexual, lesbian, gay, and queer experience but also to voice, silence, the unconscious, and nationalism. Issues of identities and desires inevitably take center stage in many of the papers, reflecting dominant theoretical approaches and tensions in the field, even as authors may remain skeptical of the usefulness of the ensuing polarizations. At the same time, the polyphony envisioned by the editors and contributors in this volume will be operative in the ongoing critical appraisal of theoretical stances towards the intricate indexical relation between language, gender, and sexuality.

","Many of the chapters prove particularly revealing in terms of their analyses and certainly lending solid support to the claim made in the introduction that research on language and sexuality has managed to claim visibility for a field that goes against both social and academic’s ‘responsibility’ (p.7). This is the case not only because they report on original research in underground contexts, but also because they scrutinize the detailed and not always apparent indexical meanings of several taboo words and expressions, whose analysis might be considered provocative….In addition, of particular merit are the last two chapters, which suggest the incorporation of interdisciplinary perspectives in understanding the relationship among language, gender, and sexuality.


…with its diverse and deep analysis of interesting aspects of the relationship between language and sexuality, the volume can be hailed as a landmark in the field’s development. It will definitely appeal to scholars working not only in (socio) linguistics and (social) anthropology of gender and sexuality but also to people interested in other fields, such as political science and/or Modern Greek studies. 

Irene Theodoropoulou
Assistance Professor of Sociolinguistics and  
Discourse analysis at Qatar University
The Linguist Journal August 2011

",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-07-01,Andrea Kenesei,Poetry Translation through Reception and Cognition: The Proof of Translation is in the Reading,Hardback,978-1-4438-2145-2,34.99,"The observation of poetry translation is an interdisciplinary field, comprising the translation-linguistic aspects of poetic language and one or more supplementary methods which enable critical assessment. This necessitates the involvement of supplementary disciplines, for example, reader response and its amalgamation with cognitive linguistics. Chapter One provides a short historical review of text research, translation theory and cognitive linguistics, highlighting the common points where possible. Chapter Two outlines the practical implementation of the research. Chapter Three outlines the common points of information processing (as assumed in mental conceptual units) and readers’ interpretations. Chapter Four provides an outline of poetry translation with the cognitive approach to it. Chapter Five discusses the results of reception as measured through conceptualisation on the global level of the whole poem. Chapter Six is devoted to the observation of data as gained by conceptualisation on local level. Chapter Seven contains the model of poetry translation criticism, which is based on 9 categories.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-07-01,Katherine E. Russo,Practices of Proximity: The Appropriation of English in Australian Indigenous Literature,Hardback,978-1-4438-2161-2,39.99,"Practices of Proximity investigates the appropriation of the English language taking place in the Australian literary contact zone between an official ‘white’ Australia—the apparent owners of both the land and the English language—and Australian Indigenous peoples. Rescuing the debate from seemingly peripheral locations—the ‘empty’ Great Sandy Desert, or the abject urban margin—it insists on the complex, ultimately open-ended and multilateral ownership of the English language by all who inhabit the intersubjective space of literature, rendering the inherited authority of who ‘owns’ meaning problematical and ethically suspect. Documenting the complex practices of bricolage and re-lexification of a multi-accentuated Australia, the book invites readers to consider Australian Indigenous literature as a space from which a re-routing of issues of co-habitation, sovereignty, and being and becoming Australian might begin. This interdisciplinary study of Australian Indigenous practices of appropriation ranges from texts produced during the first encounters of Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples to the work of established and rising authors, such as Oodgeroo Noonuccal, Jack Davis, Lionel Fogarty, Romaine Moreton and Kim Scott.

","“Katherine Russo’s ground-breaking study is the first comprehensive analysis of the transformations of Aboriginal English in literature. Russo’s study goes deeper and further than anything yet produced and shows the development of Aboriginal English as a lived phenomenon. Practices of Proximity is a lively, sophisticated and compelling analysis of a central post-colonial phenomenon.”
—Bill Ashcroft, University of New South Wales, Sydney

“As an Italian Australian scholar Russo engages with Aboriginal literature within the parameters of her own complex intimacies. She brings a thoughtful, new perspective to bear upon the literature, analysing established foundational writers such as Oodgeroo and Jack Davis alongside rising stars such as Romaine Moreton. She examines these writers within the context of pressing global issues such as anxieties about border control and migration ... This is a compelling and thought-provoking read which changes the way we think about Aboriginal literature and sets it within current global conditions.”
—Anne Brewster, University of New South Wales, Sydney
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-07-01,"Shane Borrowman, Robert L. Lively and Marcia Kmetz",Rhetoric in the Rest of the West,Hardback,978-1-4438-2164-3,39.99,"While the study of the history of rhetoric has expanded to include an ever-growing range of rhetorical traditions, lesser-known figures, and under- and un-studied texts, it has continued to exist in the hermetically sealed binary of West and Rest.   Rhetorical scholars have begun uncovering the many marginalized rhetorical traditions silenced by the homogenous nature of our histories themselves, reading and writing new histories of the rhetorical tradition through frames from gender to geography.  Despite these substantial challenges to the traditionally received history of rhetoric, many voices are still silenced and many spaces are still excluded—voices speaking within the spaces of the less-than-monolithic West itself. This silencing and excluding continues, perhaps, because of assumptions that no texts exist from these marginalized voices or that substantial rhetorical activity was not conducted in these marginalized spaces—regardless of already extant evidence of rhetorical activity as diverse as rural civic ethos in Classical Greece and Etruscan influences on Roman rhetoric or long-standing passive knowledge of scholarly activity in Medieval Andalusia and Ireland. Rhetoric in the Rest of the West attempts to expand the conversation in those gaps in the history of rhetoric by examining the traditions that lost the cultural competition and have been shrouded in the shadow of the rhetorical tradition.


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-07-01,"Nicholas Brownlees, Gabriella Del Lungo and John Denton",The Language of Public and Private Communication in a Historical Perspective,Hardback,978-1-4438-2141-4,44.99,"This volume examines a fundamental concept of language within a historical perspective. The concept is that of public and private communication, the historical period ranges from the late middle ages to the late modern, and the language is English. In short, what are the linguistic traits, discursive practices, communicative settings and intentions which identify and contrast public from private communication, supposing it is possible to make such a fine distinction?

The volume contains contributions from top international scholars working in the fields of, for example, historical correspondence, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century print news, sixteenth-century liturgy and political discourse, the language of quack doctors, late modern travel writing, personal notebooks, and even the eighteenth-century public discourse of shopping.

As this ground-breaking volume is not just about key concepts in the history of the English language, but also examines at a more general level the concept of private and public communication, the various chapters will interest scholars working in language and communication generally as well as English historical discourse.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-07-01,"Patricia O’Byrne, Gabrielle Carty and Niamh Thornton","Transcultural Encounters amongst Women: Redrawing Boundaries in Hispanic and Lusophone Art, Literature and Film",Hardback,978-1-4438-2073-8,39.99,"Traditionally women have found recourse in artistic means to interrogate change and upheaval. This volume explores the experiences of women from Spain, Portugal and Latin America in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries who themselves have crossed cultural boundaries or have described this experience in their literature and film. Areas investigated in this collection of essays include the experience of the exiled or the immigrant and their personal or collective response to displacement and adaptation: the transcultural potential of cyberspace for women, how patterns and styles of the fashion industry have crossed borders, how women have crossed canonical cultural boundaries in search of identity and meaning, how global cultural influences have manifested in Hispanic and Lusophone cultural practices and production by or about women, and the challenging question of whether canine writing can be considered a branch of feminist theory. Common to most of the essays are the central issues of identity, values, conflict and interconnectedness and an analysis of the patterns that result from the transcultural encounter of these aspects.

","“Edited by three established scholars working in Irish universities and containing new essays by young scholars, this book focuses on cultural production by women in Spain, Portugal and Latin America connected by a common concern with transgressing mainly cultural, but also political and social, boundaries. The works and topics chosen are central to current critical concerns, and of course the richness and vitality of Ibero-American Studies today is due precisely to its being a site of conflict, engagement and hybridity. This book brings the story right up to date, will provoke debate and will be a stimulus for further study.“
—Professor John Macklin, University of Glasgow

“The authors draw on an impressive panoply of critical and cultural theorists, to broach such varied issues as female identity, mother-daughter relationships, censorship, racism, transpecies encounters and the Tlatelolco massacre of 1968. Reading through the essays is akin to a process of accretion in which multiple insights coalesce into a powerful set of testimonies that can only enhance our knowledge and understanding. With this publication, the whole is considerably greater than the sum of the parts, not only because of the unity of theme, but because of the intellectual commitment and integrity each of the authors has brought to their task.”
—Dr Patricia Anne Odber de Baubeta, University of Birmingham

“By engaging so productively with diverse understandings of the transcultural, the volume avoids simplistic and unhelpfully restrictive formulations of this notion. Instead, it allows for concrete practices–in the form of visual and written texts encompassing fine art, literature, oral history, journalism and cultural practices enabled specifically by new technologies–to interrogate existing theoretical articulations about the transcultural. The volume will be of great interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as established scholars in Luso-Hispanic cultural studies.” 
—Par Kumaraswami, Manchester University

",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-08-01,"Noritah Omar, Washima Che Dan, Jason Sanjeev Ganesan and Rosli Talif",Critical Perspectives on Literature and Culture in the New World Order,Hardback,978-1-4438-2265-7,39.99,"The fifteen chapters in this volume explore both new and tested theoretical perspectives on literature and culture at large; this multiplicity of discourses is a reflection of the implicit discontent in conforming to the New World Order, and a contestation against hierarchical relationships between countries, which inform the social, cultural and political climates of weaker nations. With the political and economic hegemony of stronger nations, weaker nations run the risk of being dominated, or at the very least, having their own national identity and sovereignty steeped in ambivalence in the face of a globalised culture. This volume hopes to bring together critical views in relation to the construction of cultural studies in the Western framework, the application of literary theory in the readings of vernacular literature, contestation of the mainstream scientistic methodology of cultural evaluation, the role of English literature in Asian cultures, the application of postcolonial theory in literature, literary ethics in relation to Islamic literature, as well as the Islamic and Western conceptions of democracy. More than half of the articles in this collection centre on Islam as a guiding principle, or as a context through which critical perspectives are made on literature and culture in today’s globalised world order. This inadvertent foregrounding of Islam reflects a continuing dialogue on and with Islam and its significant impact on existing academic discourses founded upon Western-style scholarship.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-08-01,Ethan Lewis,Modernist Image,Hardback,978-1-4438-2232-9,39.99,"This text will “make one see something new [by granting] new eyes to see with,” as Ezra Pound remarked of Imagism. Still he soon dissociated himself from the movement he helped found, to which T. S. Eliot never belonged.

Why, then, study Pound and Eliot as Imagists? As the former phrased it, to offer “language to think in” regarding their shared premium on precision; and to explicate differing reasons for this emphasis. Pound plies accuracy to carve distinctions. By carving, he sought to delineate components of a model culture. Conversely, and paradoxically, severances renderable through apt language enabled Eliot to intuit a divine “amalgamation”—which would displace inevitable confusions among objects, and between subject and object: turmoil dramatized in Eliot’s early work.

A book focusing this opposition requires concrete manifestations. Imagist poetics of the nineteen teens and twenties, as our authors understood it, informs exploring their disparate tendencies; and provides examples of that contrast.

Because they transcended it, Imagism initiates Pound’s and Eliot’s development. Poets wed to Imagism necessarily treat “small things” (Dasenbrock), due to their “poetic of stasis” (Kenner). Imagist techniques, however—presenting interactive “complexes”; creating illusions of spatio-temporal freedom—set the course for the Modernist long poem.

Our subjects extend a tradition, limned by several scholars, principally Sir Frank Kermode. Romantic Imag[ism] “animates ... the best writing between Coleridge and Blake ... and Pound and Eliot.” A parallel critical inheritance this study will humbly continue.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-08-01,Aleksandra Nikčević Batrićević and Marija Knežević,On the Borders of Convention,Hardback,978-1-4438-2224-4,39.99,"The research presented in this book is authored by scholars coming from as distant regions as South Africa, the United States of America, Great Britain, France, Italy, Belarus, the Balkans. Needless to say that one of the good things about this international cooperation is that owing to their different socio-cultural backgrounds, these scholars have contributed to producing an extremely varied picture of ways of approaching the challenge of a changing world. The papers on literature and culture collected in this book contribute a further element of rigour into the discussion of numerous and always varying and changing borders of convention in a literary text, literary genre, and literary theory, as well as in general culture and everyday paths of life. Starting with oral cultures, over the classic literary masters, modernist and postmodernist textual and theoretical phenomena, the twentieth century flouting of numerous social and gender convention, through painting, film, dance, contemporary music, as well as graffiti, We have sought to stress that what is most noticeable from the evidence of their studies is that scholars today concern these issues through a dynamic global process and beyond any preconceived design, or any strict set of theoretical prescriptions, which would otherwise lead them to ignore the ever-shifting borders in literature and culture, as well as in global socio-cultural reality in general. The variety and complexity of these essays offer fresh views to the problem posed in the title of the book. Therefore, we trust that they will stimulate intellectual confrontation and circulation of ideas within the field of literature and cultural studies.




",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-08-01,Silvia Nagy-Zekmi and Karyn Hollis,Truth to Power: Public Intellectuals In and Out of Academe,Hardback,978-1-4438-2260-2,34.99,"The notion that public intellectuals in the US are in decline has again become fashionable with their portrayal as trapped between Academe and the “real” world. The questions addressed by this volume are: How can the voices of scholars and erudite thinkers penetrate the globalized, corporate media and how does media receive and represent the contribution of intellectuals to the academic and public spheres, all the while recognizing what Paul Bové calls the “the nonidentity of intellectuals as a group.”

Dedicated to the memory of Howard Zinn, whose life work is a model for intellectual engagement, this collection of intriguing articles with an introduction by the editors and a foreword by Henry A. Giroux presents new scholarship on the role of the intellectual in a society, and specifically in Academe, from many different perspectives. Indeed, intellectuals have been negotiating access to public discourse for centuries, but never have their opinions been more crucial to the public good, because of the privately owned media’s domination of public discourse. The inspiration for this volume comes also from Edward Said’s notion of intellectuals whose role is to “uncover and elucidate the contest, to challenge and defeat both an imposed silence and the normalized quiet of unseen power, wherever and whenever possible.”
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-08-01,Beatrice Batson,Word and Rite: The Bible and Ceremony in Selected Shakespearean Works,Hardback,978-1-4438-2225-1,34.99,"This book is an attempt to show something of the ways in which the Bible and the Christian tradition intersect the language of Shakespeare. Word and Rite also focuses on the manner in which rites are efforts to illuminate mysteries: the mystery of marriage, the mystery of baptism, the mystery of confession, the mystery of the Eucharist, the mystery of funerals, and even the mystery of words, in their relation to the Word. Holy objects such as the Fountain of blood may also be considered. Maimed rites frequently occur in Shakespeare, but through ceremony there are attempts to turn mayhem into mystery--especially in comedies. In the words of the author of the Foreword to this book:"" In Shakespeare word and rite are as inseparable as word and sacrament in worship...so outward signs of inward truth are linked with words of these plays and with Scripture and with the Word incarnate."" This book also explores the ramifications of observing this insight.




","“Word and Rite: The Bible and Ceremony in Selected Shakespearean Dramas presents often stimulating and provocative revised papers from the 2008, well-known Shakespeare Institute at Wheaton College (IL), a periodic conference ably organized for almost twenty years by Professor Beatrice Batson, the Coordinator of the Shakespeare Special Collection in Buswell Library. This book amounts to a fitting capstone of the several previously published Institute volumes of high-quality papers.
Deserving special mention in this latest volume are Jeffrey Knapp’s fresh reading of Shakespeare’s sonnets as confessional autobiography, Grace Tiffany’s comprehensive analysis of the triumph of the English language over the French tongue in Shakespeare’s plays, Christopher Hodgkins’ eloquent account of Christian apocalyptic thought in The Tempest, and David George’s persuasive linking of the abbreviated rites and interrupted ceremonies typical of Shakespeare’s plays to the wars of religion waged in the playwright’s lifetime. The other papers in this book are also useful, notably Jack Heller’s rich documentation of the Christian Foundation of Life alluded to in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. Here we have a banquet—a smorgasbord—of commentary on Shakespeare’s art.”
—Maurice Hunt, Baylor University, Dept. of English

""Having known Dennis Taylor for a number of years, I am happy and in fact honoured, to endorse this book. Dennis has been a devoted servant to the brass band movement for many years and we are all indebted to his efforts. His accumulated experience and expertise on the subject is vast and his sincerity and passion is infectious. I look forward with great anticipation the reading of this book as an historical account and I am quite sure that, many will be using it for many years as an important authoritative reference.
	Before my arrival at Durham University in 2003 I was a practising conductor, arranger and adjudicator only vaguely aware of the value of research and academic writing. Since that time I have immersed myself in research and writing and realise how important it is, especially concerning the brass band movement with its rich history. Enormous amount of time and effort has been spent by authors such as Herbert, Newsome and Myers and we are all better enlightened because of their devotion. Here is a welcome addition to the bibliography on brass bands which will, I am sure, inspire many.""

- Ray Farr, Conductor in Residence, Durham University




“A rich collection of essays by influential Shakespeareans, including perceptive discussions on Shakespeare’s anti-Gallicism, valorizing of the English language due to the influence of the English Bible, on his use of maimed marriage rites as exploration of the parallel structures of marriage in Measure for Measure, on the use of baptismal and Eucharistic rites in Julius Caesar, on his self-identification as a ‘Will’ in the sonnets, and reflections on the apocalypse in The Tempest. Continual food for thought.”
—Dennis Taylor, Boston College, Emeritus Professor of English








",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-09-01,Jeff Shantz,A Creative Passion: Anarchism and Culture,Hardback,978-1-4438-2334-0,34.99,"The specter of anarchism is haunting statist and capitalist culture and politics in the 21st century. Anarchism—the idea that people can organize their lives on the basis of justice and equality free from political and economic rulers—has provided inspiration for a variety of contemporary social movements. Yet anarchism remains a misunderstood and misrepresented philosophy. A Creative Passion, edited by a longtime anarchist activist and scholar, offers important insights into anarchist cultural practices and worldviews.

The classical anarchist Mikhail Bakunin famously proclaimed that the passion for destruction is also a creative passion. Anarchists over the decades have sought to destroy the tyrannical, authoritarian, exploitative, and oppressive aspects of statist and capitalist societies and culture, while creating alternatives based on solidarity, justice, care, and mutual aid.

This innovative work provides exciting perspectives on current movements and ideas that seek a world free from authoritarian domination. It will be a welcome resource for students, faculty, artists, and community organizers alike. Chapters examine anarchism and dada, drama and anarchy, eco-anarchism and critiques of capitalist civilization, DIY and anarcho-punk assaults on corporate culture industries, and Wole Soyinka’s anarchism.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-09-01,Wissia Fiorucci,Anna Banti and the (Im)possibility of Love,Hardback,978-1-4438-2336-4,34.99,"This book looks into Banti’s stance on Italian feminism, with a specific focus on her interpretation of the concept of “equality” as well as of “sexual difference”. An analysis of a novel, A Piercing Cry (1981), and two short stories, The Women Are Dying (1951) and Je vous écris d’un pays lointain (1971), explores the aforementioned issues. The book also deals to some extent with the most famous of Banti’s works, the magnum opus Artemisia (1947). Because A Piercing Cry is a source of autobiographical elements, which therefore are particularly significant, the conclusions drawn from this novel are later applied to The Women Are Dying and Je vous écris d’un pays lointain. Certainly, A Piercing Cry expresses Banti’s faith in difference as being that which can preserve woman’s identity. By declaring “I am a woman writer”, she distances herself from a feminism of equality that, not without oscillations, she had supported throughout Artemisia. In so doing, she embraces a feminism of difference by adopting this concept herself. Drawing on these considerations, the book argues that in both The Women Are Dying, and in Je vous écris d’un pays lointain, Banti intended to support a personally elaborated and ante-litteram “feminism of difference”.


","“In this focused presentation of three of Anna Banti’s works (A Piercing Cry of 1981, Le donne muoiono (The Women are Dying of 1951) and Je vous écris d’un pays lointain (I Write to you from a Faraway Land of 1971)), Wissia Fiorucci sets out to examine Anna Banti’s representations of her male and female characters and their capacity for relationships, through the lens of Banti’s sometimes equivocal, and changing, relationship with feminisms and with the feminist movement (particularly in the Italian context).

A Piercing Cry is analysed here in its autobiographical dimensions; and, in Fiorucci’s view, the protagonist’s recognition of herself as ‘a woman writer’ encapsulates Banti’s recognition of the significance of sexual difference. Here Fiorucci draws ably on Adriana Cavarero’s theoretical writings on sexual difference to illustrate similarities between her thought and that of Banti. The analysis of The Women are Dying deals with ‘otherness’ as a characteristic of both women and explores Banti’s representation of otherness here through the lens of the 1970 manifesto of Rivolta femminile to interesting effect. Love for, and connectedness to, the Other proves crucial in this reading. Finally, Fiorucci’s incisive reading of Je vous écris shows how Banti problematises notions of equality, and its potentially terrifying annihilation of all differences. Again, connectedness and love for the Other are privileged here. Part and parcel of the exploration of difference, too, resides in Banti’s very modern concern for identity and how that might be defined. Through an insightful and theoretically astute analysis of these works by Banti, Fiorucci invites us to consider her anew, and differently.”
—Ursula Fanning, PhD, Senior Lecturer in Italian Studies, School of Languages and Literatures, University College Dublin, Republic of Ireland


",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-09-01,Yau Tsai and Stephanie Houghton,Becoming Intercultural: Inside and Outside the Classroom,Hardback,978-1-4438-2286-2,39.99,"As people move into the new era of the twenty-first century, they will have more and more opportunities to communicate and interact with others using foreign languages. While this will naturally generate wide-ranging intercultural experience, people may not be alert to it in everyday life, and teachers may not know how to address the issues that arise. This book starts by exploring what it means to be intercultural from different theoretical standpoints, before contrasting ways in which people do (or do not) become intercultural in both tutored and untutored ways, inside and outside the classroom. The main purpose of this book is to introduce the concept of interculturality, to examine how it can emerge in an unplanned way and to consider ways in which it can be more systematically addressed through education, particularly through foreign language education.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-09-01,Paul Salzman,Expanding the Canon of Early Modern Women’s Writing,Hardback,978-1-4438-2322-7,39.99,"This exciting collection of original essays on early modern women’s writing offers a range of approaches to a growing field. As a whole, the volume introduces readers to a number of writers, such as Mirabai and Liu Rushi, who are virtually invisible in Anglophone scholarship, and to writers who remain little known, such as Elizabeth Melville, Elizabeth Hatton, and Jane Sharpe. The volume also represents critical strategies designed to open up the emergent canon of early modern women’s writing to new approaches, especially those that have consolidated the integration of literary and intellectual history, with an emphasis on religion, legal issues, and questions of genre. The authors expand the methodological possibilities available to approach early modern women who wrote in a diverse number of genres, from letters to poetry, autobiography and prose fiction. The sixteen essays are a major contribution to an area that has attracted the interest of a number of fields, including literary studies, history, cultural studies, and women’s studies.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-09-01,"José Eduardo Franco, Ana Cristina da Costa Gomes and Beata Elzbieta Cieszynska",Gardens of Madeira—Gardens of the World: Contemporary Approaches,Hardback,978-1-4438-2275-6,44.99,"The volume Gardens of Madeira – Gardens of the World. Contemporary Approaches displays present tendencies in calling upon the idea of gardens, being a wide-range approach to their literary, sociological and cultural representations. The book`s four parts: “Madeira: A Garden in the Sea?”, “Gardens as Temporal and Spatial Category. Cultural and Literary Approaches”, “Gardens as an Expression. Socio-cultural Perspectives” and “Re-Creating the Archetypal Garden – Discourses and Practices” refer to vast geographical and cultural areas, starting with the very complex sample of the overseas-yet-European Island of Madeira, and then joining the exemplification material from historical and contemporary European communities (with some luso-centric accents), including  examples from the less known Slavonic and Eastern European countries. Those European issues are confronted with various non-European societies such as from Africa, Asia, and both Americas.  

Gardens evoke and express in many ways the present human condition, and - as such a process goes on - this book provides proposals for patterns to connect them to the modern and post-modern rules of self defining, reading the Other, interpreting world/national/cultural literatures, as well as to the various attempts to introduce the idea of gardens into the basic spatial and temporal aspects of contemporary communities. It also demonstrates the theoretical and practical attempts to project our “gardens` dependence” on to one of the essentials for contemporary societies which are multicultural, urbanised, technologically equipped and dependent, but which still are keen on reading and constructing paradises as environmental and cultural spaces for both asylum and encounter. 

The huge advantage of the book is showing to scholars and the wider public how discourses from the past meet with the quests of both the Humanities and the Sciences for gardening inspirations, not only for the sake of the today’s societies, but also when projecting the future of the Earth. 



","“This collection is a highly successful encounter of  interpretations of the idea of the garden in historical and present-day societies by joining different methods, points of view, research areas and perspectives well introduced by the titles of its four parts:  “Madeira: A Garden in the Sea?”, “Gardens as Temporal and Spatial Category. Cultural and Literary Approaches”,  “Gardens as an Expression. Sociocultural Perspectives” and “Re-Creating the Archetypal Garden – Discourses and Practices”.  
Among the advantages of the book Gardens of Madeira – Gardens of the world. Contemporary approaches one could point to the editors´ tendency to unite both practical and theoretical dimensions of the research field under discussion. It allows its readers to join the philosophical and literary analysis dedicated to gardens in the context of the triad “Nature – Art – Science” with the very concrete and actual attempts to introduce the archetypical aspects of gardens in various social activities, such as the search for recreational spaces or intergenerational approximation.” 
—Danuta Künstler-Langner (Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun, Poland)
 
“This book under review certainly could be of interest to a wider public with an interest in the Humanities as it offers a fresh attempt to reconstruct social and cultural spaces through the ideas of gardens.  
It is also worth mentioning that the Gardens of Madeira – Gardens of the world. Contemporary approaches  covers very wide topical and geographical areas, joining e. g. the  analysis from the well represented European communities (including noticeable representations from the less known former Eastern Bloc countries), and some non-European societies (American, African and Asian).  That certainly makes the referred book the widest present day approach to the literary, sociological and cultural representations of gardens. 
This book under review is also an excellent attempt to join leading research and social activity related to this topic. In fact, the volume provides a pattern to connect gardens to the modern and post-modern rules of self defining, reading the Other, interpreting the world/national/cultural literatures, as well as to the various attempts to introduce the idea of gardens into the basic spatial and temporal structures of contemporary mostly  urban societies.”
—Maria do Carme Fernández Pérez-Sanjulián (University of Coruña, Spain)




",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-09-01,Sonia Front and Katarzyna Nowak,Interiors: Interiority/Exteriority in Literary and Cultural Discourse,Hardback,978-1-4438-2280-0,39.99,"The essays gathered in the present collection provide textual explorations of the theoretical borderland between interiors and exteriors, undertaken from a variety of perspectives and representing varying approaches and understandings of these terms. In the realm of theory, the distinction between what we choose to include and what we exclude remains a political choice, often fraught with dilemmas that cannot be resolved. How to discern between interiors and exteriors? Where do we draw dividing lines? Do we want to draw them anymore? Or, alternately, can we afford not to divide and discern between the inside and outside, between here and there, between “us” and “them”? If the binary divisions, so much discredited, no longer hold, if we must include multiplicity and plurality of readings, is any distinction between these dimensions possible? Essays collected in the present volume attempt to present a wide plethora of answers to these questions.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-09-01,Steve Brie and William T. Rossiter,Literature and Ethics: From the Green Knight to the Dark Knight,Hardback,978-1-4438-2288-6,39.99,"This volume examines the crucial relationship between literature and ethics, as it has developed and changed from the late medieval period to the present day. The focus of the volume is predicated upon three interrelated themes: instruction, judgement, and justice. Previous studies of literature and ethics have often been restricted to a limited chronology and generic focus; the present volume covers a range of periods, texts and genres in order to provide a wider illustration of the relationship between the literary and the ethical.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-09-01,Marie Porter and Julie Kelso,Mother-Texts: Narratives and Counter-Narratives,Hardback,978-1-4438-2332-6,44.99,"Every day, human beings tell and are told stories, sometimes in obvious ways, sometimes not. Most of our communication with each other, direct or indirect, involves narrative production and reception. Narrative is constitutive of human being. However, whose narratives are heard? Feminists argue that the relations between language, knowledge, gender and power, particularly the question as to whether man-made and controlled language is a material fit to receive and convey woman’s stories, are critical issues, because historically, patriarchy has worked to silence women’s dialogue. Male knowledge, unsurprisingly, created and continues to create unrepresentative maternal narratives which lead to unreal expectations of mothers and motherwork. It is, therefore, disconcertingly significant for mothers that neither mothers nor their motherwork have been considered worthy of historical record; nor are historical records usually written from a mother’s perspective. Hence, the narrative research in this book, which gives recognition to motherhood, mothers and/or the work they do, is valuable.

It adds to the rapidly accumulating maternal research—research that is now available for the historical record. Mothers are speaking up, developing a canon of literature/research narrated in maternal language and claiming maternal knowledge and power.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-09-01,Darryl Chalk and Laurie Johnson,"""Rapt in Secret Studies"": Emerging Shakespeares",Hardback,978-1-4438-2328-9,44.99,"“Rapt in Secret Studies”: Emerging Shakespeares is a collection of new essays in Shakespeare Studies from a generation of scholars presently emerging out of Australia and New Zealand. These 18 essays respond in a myriad of ways to the challenge of Prospero’s phrase from The Tempest, in which he tells his daughter Miranda that in his life before the island he had been “rapt in secret studies”—to an early modern audience, these words were likely to mean much more than a predilection for the black arts, as modern audiences tend to hear in them. Each of the key words used by Prospero evoked a range of meanings in early modern times, to which the emerging scholars represented in this collection responded by imagining new pathways in Shakespeare Studies, a field of study that has in recent times risked being marginalised even within the traditional liberal arts. The “secret studies” of which Prospero speaks are, in fact, more liberal than dark, and so the response by new scholars to a challenge issued by one of Shakespeare’s characters more than four centuries ago has a renewed sense of relevance in the academy today.

The essays are divided into three sections, each of which is oriented toward meanings that are specifically associated with one of the key terms in Prospero’s phrase. The “rapt” section has essays concerned with excess in its various forms—jealousy, obsession, sex, violence, and even death—as well as with travel and its impact on ways of knowing about the world. In the “secret” section, the nature of things about which the early modern could scarcely speak are taken into consideration, with essays on prevailing early modern myths, infidelities, stillborn children, contagion, and the instruments of secrecy such as gossip and spies. Finally, in the “study” section, essays cover issues related both to early modern textual practice—the use of historical source materials in Shakespeare’s writing, questions of multiple authorship, and the issue of early modern style and kinds of drama—and to more modern scholarly practice, such as the role of Shakespeare in the New Bibliography and the New Historicism.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-09-01,Geoffrey Baker and Eva Aldea,Realism’s Others,Hardback,978-1-4438-2319-7,44.99,"For at least a century, scholarship on realist narrative, and occasional polemics against realist narrative, have assumed that realism promotes the values of sameness against those of otherness, and that it does so by use of a narrative mode that excludes certain epistemologies, ideologies, and ways of thinking. However, the truth is more complex than that, as the essays in this volume all demonstrate. Realism’s Others examines the various strategies by which realist narratives create the idea of difference, whether that difference is registered in terms of class, ethnicity, epistemology, nationality, or gender. The authors in this collection examine in detail not just the fact of otherness in some canonical realist and canonical magical-realist and postmodern novels, but the actual means by which that otherness is established by the text. These essays suggest that neither realist narrative nor narratives positioned as anti-realist take otherness for granted; rather, the texts discussed here actively create difference, and this creation of difference often occasions severe difficulties for the novels’ representational schema.

How does one represent different types of knowledge, other aesthetic modes or other spaces, for example, in texts whose epistemology has long been seen as secular and empirical, whose aesthetic mode has always been approached as pure descriptive mimesis, and whose settings are largely domestic? These essays all begin with a certain collision—of nationalities, of classes, of representational matrices, of religions—and go on to chart the challenges that this collision presents to our ideas or stereotypes of realism, or to the possibilities of writing against and beyond realism. This question motivates examination of key realist or social-realist texts, in some of these essays, by Honoré de Balzac, George Eliot, Franz Grillparzer, Theodor Storm, Gottfried Keller, Theodor Fontane, Wilhelm Raabe, María Amparo Ruiz de Burton, Henry James, William Dean Howells, Charles Chesnutt, Theodore Dreiser, H. T. Tsiang, Alan Sillitoe, and Richard Yates. However, it is no less central a question in certain non-realist texts which engage realist aims to a surprising degree, often to debate them openly; some of these essays discuss, in this light, fantastic, magical realist, and postmodern works by Abram Tertz, Paul Auster, Alejo Carpentier, Toni Morrison, Gabriel García Márquez, Salman Rushdie, and A. S. Byatt. Realism becomes more than an aesthetic aim or narrative mode. It becomes, rather, a value evoked and discussed by all of the works analyzed here, in order to reveal its impact on fiction’s treatment of ethnicity, nationality, ideology, space, gender, and social class.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-09-01,Alfred J. Drake,The New Criticism: Formalist Literary Theory in America,Hardback,978-1-4438-2330-2,34.99,"The New Criticism: Formalist Literary Theory in America covers a variety of authors and topics related to the New Criticism of the 1920s-1950s in America.  Contributors trace the history of the New Criticism as a movement, consider theoretical and practical aspects of various proponents, and assess the record of subsequent engagement with its tenets.  This volume should prove valuable for its renewed concentration not only on the New Critics themselves but also on the way they and their work have been contextualized, criticized, and valorized by theorists and educators during and after their period of greatest influence, both in the United States and abroad.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-09-01,Alex Baratta,Visual Writing,Hardback,978-1-4438-2327-2,39.99,"Considering the fact that the academic essay continues to be widely used as an assessment tool within education, there is a need for students to develop their skills in this area. However, it is often the case that students perceive instruction in academic writing, if it is offered at all, as boring. This book addresses these two issues.

First, the book can be used by students themselves, even in the absence of academic writing classes, as a self-help guide, from which they can develop their knowledge of academic writing and subsequent proficiency. Second, by discussing the components of academic writing in terms—such as film—which are familiar to today’s generation, students are enabled to relate to the material better and see what might have been perceived as dull from a brand new perspective.

Visual learners in particular will enjoy the analogous link between films and essays, and students today are arguably more visually literate than previous generations, being exposed to visuals on a daily basis through text message iconography, computer games and the Internet. The visual instruction provided in turn helps to facilitate mental visuals in students’ minds, from which their knowledge of essay writing can start to develop.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-09-01,Kate Walls,We Won’t Make It Out Alive: Patrick McCabe and the Horrors of the Irish Mundane,Hardback,978-1-4438-2333-3,34.99,"The first full length study of Patrick McCabe’s work, We Won’t Make It Out Alive, examines the mental instability and carefully constructed childhoods that McCabe has crafted for his various characters—the one eyed quasi Al Pacino, the sequin studded transvestite, the bachelor farmer who routinely exhumes his dead mother for a chat.

Beneath the grotesque and often very funny narratives of Irish border town life lurks startlingly similar pasts for these characters, spanning all of McCabe’s catalogue. As children, they were subject to the cruelty of the orphanage/workhouse or deadbeat parents numbed by alcohol. Many were victims of sexual abuse by priests and witnesses to the senseless violence brought on by political divides. The outrageous personalities and later actions of these characters often overshadow these very real beginnings, and in this book, Kate Walls discusses the impact of these social problems and how McCabe’s unfortunate (and usually well-meaning) narrators are driven crazy as a result.

We Won’t Make It Out Alive also discusses how these characters fare against the Troubles of the 1970s and, for the novels set in more contemporary times, the changing Ireland of the Celtic Tiger. Being on the fringes of society themselves, McCabe’s characters have a unique vantage point from which to comment on these defining moments of social upheaval.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-10-01,Kirsten Stirling and Martine Hennard Dutheil de la Rochère,After Satan: Essays in Honour of Neil Forsyth,Hardback,978-1-4438-2338-8,39.99,"This volume is the result of a collective desire to pay homage to Neil Forsyth, whose work has significantly contributed to scholarship on Satan. This volume is “after” Satan in more ways than one, tracing the afterlife of both the satanic figure in literature and of Neil Forsyth’s contribution to the field, particularly in his major books The Old Enemy: Satan and the Combat Myth (Princeton University Press, 1987, revised 1990) and The Satanic Epic (Princeton University Press, 2003). The essays in this volume draw on Forsyth’s work as a focus for their analyses of literary encounters with evil or with the Devil himself, reflecting the richness and variety of contemporary approaches to the age-old question of how to represent evil. All the contributors acknowledge Neil Forsyth’s influence in the study of both the Satan-figure and Milton’s Paradise Lost. But beyond simply paying homage to Neil Forsyth, the articles collected here trace the lineage of the Satan figure through literary history, showing how evil can function as a necessary other against which a community may define itself. They chart the demonised other through biblical history and medieval chronicle, Shakespeare and Milton, to nineteenth-century fiction and the contemporary novel. Many of the contributors find that literary evil is mediated through the lens of the Satan of Paradise Lost, and their articles address the notion, raised by Neil Forsyth in The Satanic Epic, that the literary Devil-figures under consideration are particularly interested in linguistic ambivalence and the twisted texture of literary works themselves. The multiple responses to evil and the continuous reinvention of the devil figure through the centuries all reaffirm the textual presence of the Devil, his changing forms necessarily inscribed in the shifting history of western literary culture. These essays are a tribute to the work of Neil Forsyth, whose scholarship has illuminated and guided the study of the Devil in English and other literatures.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-10-01,Helga Ramsey-Kurz and Ulla Ratheiser,Antipodean Childhoods: Growing Up in Australia and New Zealand,Hardback,978-1-4438-2372-2,39.99,"Though obvious, the productiveness of combining the three concepts of childhood, otherness and the postcolonial has not inspired much academic inquiry so far. The essays assembled in this book make up for this omission and address aspects of growing up in Australia and New Zealand from various angles. They base their argument on the premise that, whether in settler, migrant or indigenous communities, children tend to be ascribed a space of their own, mostly outside but never independent of that of adults. How adults configure this space both practically and imaginatively, for instance in the arts, in adult and children’s literature, in film and photography, or in historical documents, is one of the questions answered in the process. How these configurations have developed with time and under the influence of specific historical circumstances is another. Thus, the individual papers are more than a contribution to the current (re-)discovery of the theme of childhood in European cultures in that Antipodean Childhoods remains centrally concerned with the cultural specificity of childhoods lived in Australia and New Zealand and with the theoretical relevance of this specificity to postcolonial literary, cultural and historical studies.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-10-01,JoAnne C. Juett and David Jones,Coming Out to the Mainstream: New Queer Cinema in the 21st Century,Hardback,978-1-4438-2379-1,39.99,"Coming Out to the Mainstream is a collection of essays written from a range of perspectives, from scholars to film producers, who seek to contextualize and reframe New Queer Cinema from a 21st century perspective—decades after Stonewall, the emergence of the HIV-AIDS crisis, and the initial years of the gay marriage movement. These essays situate themselves in the 21st century as an attempt to assess what appears to be a mainstreaming of New Queer Cinema, a current wave of New Queer Cinema film that holds potential for influencing film viewers beyond the original limits of an independent film audience, critics, and the academy.

Specifically, these essays examine whether and how the filmmaking styles and themes of New Queer Cinema have been mainstreamed—rendered familiar as points of interest in popular culture of the 21st century, challenging a queer-phobic cultural climate, and providing an incisive set of visual representations that can help inform continuing debates over queerness in public culture. For instance, what do we make of the burgeoning number of queer stories that are circulating not just in arthouses but in mainstream media? How much of a transformation in our collective sensibilities does this trend represent, and will it carry us toward a cultural landscape where identity is commonly understood and valued as multiple, fluid, and performative? While the editors of this collection find there is significant evidence that New Queer Cinema has achieved success in forging greater mainstream acceptance of queer perspectives in cinema and everyday culture, the essays we present offer a variety of voices, a timely set of observations on queer images in film, television, and popular culture.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-10-01,Michael Duke,Detective Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte: His Life and Times,Hardback,978-1-4438-2375-3,39.99,"Bony was a “blacktracker” who became a police inspector and worked throughout mainland Australia. Ranging across five of Australia’s States, Dr Duke pursued Bony’s trail through desert and coast. He has tracked through the bush, its wonderful scenery and characters. He has climbed mountains and swum in inland seas.

For the first time the reader can learn of the real Bony and his antecedents. For the first time the Aboriginal background to so many of Bony’s cases is revealed. This biography displays the real spirit of Australia!


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-10-01,Clara Sarmento,From Here to Diversity: Globalization and Intercultural Dialogues,Hardback,978-1-4438-2366-1,49.99,"From Here to Diversity: Globalization and Intercultural Dialogues sees interculturalism as movement, transit, travel, and the dynamics between cultures. Contemporary intercultural travel is a global journey, a circumnavigation at the speed of light that underwrites all the comings and goings, the departures and arrivals, the transmissions and receptions that are implicit in this title. Hence, From Here to Diversity examines the motivations, characteristics and implications of cultural interactions in their perpetual movement, devoid of spatial or temporal borders, in a dangerous but stimulating indefinition of limits. 

In the contemporary intercultural dialogue, new voices are making themselves heard, as valuable sources of study: the voices of women; non-occidentals; the non-powerful; forgotten narratives of a past that was as intercultural as the present (after all, what is colonialism other than a perverse form of interculturality?); global entertainment; tourism; oral literature; diaries; mythical narratives; the cinema; ethnography; and new teachings, among so many others. 

Because this project is also intercultural at its source and subject, From Here to Diversity: Globalization and Intercultural Dialogues adds to the coherence of the project by including contributions from the most wide-ranging backgrounds and nationalities, without fear of the alterity that, after all, we propose to study.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-10-01,"Catherine Waters, Michael Hollington and John Jordan",Imagining Italy: Victorian Writers and Travellers,Hardback,978-1-4438-2384-5,39.99,"This book is a companion volume to Dickens and Italy, edited by Michael Hollington and Francesca Orestano, which aimed to fill an important gap in our understanding of England’s paramount novelist by studying his personal, political and literary relation to the foreign country he loved best of all of those he visited. Its focus is wider and its scope more ambitious and speculative. Without in any way leaving Dickens or his writings about Italy behind, the attempt here is to approach the Victorian fascination with that country from a broader, more theoretical perspective in which several current debates about travel writing are taken up and critically redeployed.

The book is articulated in three parts. Part One concerns what the writings of Dickens and other Victorians can tell us about the history and theory of travel and travel writing, and Part Two, what they can tell us about particular Victorian writers themselves and their work. In Part Three the focus shifts in order to compare writing and visual representations of the experience of ‘abroad’ in general and Italy in particular, in an era when what can be thought of as modern visual culture is gradually taking shape. The book aims to show that the study of how Victorians imagined Italy can lead to a deeper understanding of some of the stereotypes that continue to inform contemporary tourism.



",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-10-01,Marilette van der Colff,One is Never Alone with a Rubber Duck: Douglas Adams’s Absurd Fictional Universe,Hardback,978-1-4438-2363-0,34.99,"What do existential elevators, sentient mattresses, paranoid androids, humans and other aliens have in common?  For one thing, they want answers.  The fact (yes fact) that there are no answers (except, perhaps, for “42”) causes some humans (and other aliens) to face this empty madness we call life with Sisyphus-like defiance.  Others choose to sulk or skulk or annihilate themselves.   Another thing these creatures have in common is that they are all born mad, “and some remain so”.  

  One is never alone with a rubber duck explores the premise that Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker Series is not merely characterised by light-hearted comedy, but is underpinned by intricate philosophical ideas, especially those of twentieth century Existentialism and the related notion of absurdity.  It also investigates the interlaced functions of Adams’s fantasy and landscapes of alterity, and considers the ambiguous concept of madness as subjective reality.  Concepts related to alterity, such as simulation, the structure of reality, dreaming and parallel universes, are investigated as part of Adams’s fantastic story space.

In a science-fictional sense, Adams’s aliens satirise the human condition and the monstrosities that lurk at the heart of twentieth century society.            


","Lively and colloquial in tone, Marilette Van der Colff’s One is Never Alone with a Rubber Duck highlights the creative absurdity embedded in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.  One is Never Alone, with its unassuming scholarship, paradoxically exploits the marginal stance of science fiction to demonstrate the philosophical significance of the genre.
—Dr Ralph Goodman, Department of English, University of Stellenbosch, South Africa

Adams's many fans will be intrigued by this skillful and entertaining analysis of the philosophical ideas underpinning the extremely successful Hitchhiker series, while those who have been foolish enough to dismiss it as mere frivolous entertainment will be forced to eat their words or blush behind their towels.
—Molly Brown, Department of English, University of Pretoria, South Africa


",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-10-01,Myron Stagman,Shakespeare’s Double-Dealing Comedies: Deciphering the “Problem Plays”,Paperback,978-1-4438-2388-3,19.99,"Are some of Shakespeare’s romantic storybook heroines actually emoting sexually obscene (but very funny) lines?
{“Sexual quibbles (puns, play-on words), covertly uttered by precious-and-pure heroines, call for an immediate revision of viewpoint.”}

When Fernando (The Tempest) is described as bravely swimming for shore “in lusty stroke”, would he be disqualified for doing this in Olympic competition?

Before the walls of Harfleur, when Henry V threatens to “mow like grass your fresh-fair virgins” and  have “your naked infants spitted upon pikes”,  is he (and by inference his creator) barbarous? Or is he doing an hilarious comic imitation of Marlowe’s Tamburlaine before the walls of Damascus?

{“There exists an interesting Marlovian source for the Tamburlaine protagonist himself—Ivan the Terrible. He proposed marriage to Queen Elizabeth, who tactfully turned him down.”}

Rule Number 1: If a good writer seems surprisingly inept and has been known to be a wit or humorist, suspect parody or satire.

Well, esteemed readers, you decide where to place your bets. On the critics? Or on William Shakespeare?


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-10-01,Myron Stagman,Shakespeare’s Greek Drama Secret,Hardback,978-1-4438-2407-1,49.99,"To begin with, Shakespeare had a complete grammar school education, and Euripides, Sophocles and Aristophanes were assigned reading!!
 
This book presents voluminous, striking, unmediated textual correspondences between the Greek and Shakespearean plays, and illuminating historical background. Not only should this prove the Shakespeare-Greek Drama connection, but that William Shakespeare became “Shakespeare” because of his mastery of the ancient Greek treasury of Drama.

3. “Pluck’d my nipple from his boneless gums”

Many of us associate Lady Macbeth’s special temper with some of the most blood-curdling lines in literature:

I have given suck, and know
How tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me;
I would, while it was smiling in my face,
Have pluck’d my nipple from his boneless gums,
And dash’d the brains out, had I so sworn
As you have done to this.

Shakespeare’s precise action image appears in Euripides’ Iphigenia in Aulis, from verses spoken by Clytemnestra. She says to Agamemnon:

It was not of my own free will but by force that
Thou didst take and wed me, after slaying Tantalus,
My former husband, and dashing my babe on the ground
alive, When thou hadst torn him from my breast with brutal
violence. 

The derivation of Lady Macbeth’s dashing image cannot be in doubt.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-10-01,Loredana Salis,Stage Migrants: Representations of the Migrant Other in Modern Irish Drama,Paperback,978-1-4438-2382-1,29.99,"Ireland, north and south of the border, has witnessed volatile patterns of immigration in the past decade, and stage representations of these fluctuations have begun to emerge. In the Republic, immigration has coincided with, and it has been encouraged by the economic boom known as Celtic Tiger. In the North, the peace process and the easing off of the political tension has contributed to making the region more appealing and hospitable for newcomers. The media have played a significant role in this respect as they have helped re-launch the local tourist industry on the international scene, and consequently to attract both short- and long-term visitors. That Ireland has become the land of opportunities for thousands of people is a phenomenon which scholars from different academic backgrounds have been trying to explain given that mass immigration has had, and continues to have, a big impact on the local economy, social welfare and culture. This volume is dedicated to this final aspect. It investigates how migration has shaped and is reflected in Irish culture today; more specifically, it focuses on the representation of outsiders in Irish theatre and to the way in which theatre practitioners have dealt and engaged with debates of national and cultural identities, hybridity, multiculturalism and racism in post-nationalist Ireland up to 2008 – that is prior to the economic crisis that has swept the whole continent of Europe and the US over the past two years. Although multiculturalism has become an almost jaded theme in academia, much of the material presented here is fresh, original and highly relevant. Some plays are relatively unknown, and many of the texts remain unpublished. They have been staged on a small number of occasions, yet the topics they explore are central, not just to Irish society, but to any community in a global context that hosts immigrants.





","""Loredana Salis’ volume investigates how Irish artists and playwrights have reacted to the changing ‘face’ of Irish society, both North and South, as precipitated by the in-migration of large numbers of (primarily) economic migrants during the past decade. Their arrival has generated a new cultural impetus and energy in Ireland and has served to reinvigorate a well-established theatrical tradition which often saw the re-working of canonical texts as drawn from both the ‘ancient worlds’ of Greece and Rome and the richness and diversity characteristic of native Irish narrative traditions. This volume also explores how new and emerging Irish playwrights have engaged with the questions of racism, identity and the legacy of the stereotype tradition as directed towards the Irish and those who were/are deemed quintessential ‘outsiders’ or ‘strangers.’ Dr Salis convincingly demonstrates that Ireland was always a multicultural and diverse entity, a country which absorbed ‘outsiders’ as quickly as it cast off many of its own.""
—Mícheál Ó hAodha, University of Limerick
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-10-01,Myron Stagman,The Mystery of Hamlet: A Solution,Paperback,978-1-4438-2387-6,19.99,"Hamlet kills Polonius thinking he is Claudius. Yet he cannot kill Claudius. Why?

Hamlet, angry, tells Ophelia: “Take thee to a nunnery!” [nunnery: Renaissance slang for brothel]

“There [in Heaven] is no shuffling; there the action lies in his true nature, and we ourselves compelled, even to the teeth and forehead of our faults, to give in evidence.” —King Claudius

“Why does Hamlet attend the German university at Wittenberg? Why study at a university at all? An incorrigible symbolist, Shakespeare must secretly import what he does not openly impart.”

Contrast resolute avenger Laertes, who would “cut [Hamlet’s] throat i’ the church”!

Shakespeare understood the Freudian slip centuries before Dr. Freud in Vienna. Twice he employs it to give us hints.

Queen Gertrude to her son Hamlet: “What wilt thou do? Thou wilt not murder me? ... Alas, he’s mad!”

“Prince Hamlet is a disillusioned idealist, a vital key to his generous, passionate, and tragically conscientious character.”

Camelot—“Shakespeare specifically ties the assassination of Hamlet to the death of King Arthur and the collapse of the fellowship of the Round Table.”

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-10-01,Elizabeth Hicks,The Still Life in the Fiction of A. S. Byatt,Hardback,978-1-4438-2385-2,39.99,"This book explores the ways in which English writer A. S. Byatt’s visual still lifes (descriptions of real or imagined artworks) and what are termed “verbal still lifes” (scenes such as laid tables, rooms and market stalls) are informed by her veneration of both realism and writing. It examines Byatt’s adoption of the Barthesian concept of textual pleasure, showing how her ekphrastic descriptions involve consumption and take time to unfold for the reader, thereby highlighting the limitations of painting. It also investigates the ways in which Byatt’s still lifes demonstrate her debts to English modernist author Virginia Woolf, French writer Marcel Proust, and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood of nineteenth-century Britain. A number of Byatt’s verbal still lifes are read as semiotic markers of her characters, particularly with regard to economic status and class. Further, her descriptions uniting food and sexuality are perceived as part of her overall representation of pleasure. Finally, Byatt’s employment of vanitas iconography in many of her portrayals of death is discussed showing how her recurring motif of Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn” teases out the still life’s inherent tension between living passion and “cold” artwork.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-10-01,Justyna Wlodarczyk,Ungrateful Daughters: Third Wave Feminist Writings,Hardback,978-1-4438-2369-2,34.99,"Has the third wave of feminism in the United States spawned a literary movement? Is there a third wave equivalent of the consciousness-rasing novel? A lot has been written about the relationship of the third wave of feminism in the United States to the second wave, yet no one has examined works by young female writers as belonging to the third wave of feminism. This book fills the gap.

Using tools of literary criticism to analyze the literary output of third wave feminism in the United States, Ungrateful Daughters looks at the main anthologies of third wave writings, paying attention to their structure, production process and narrative forms used in the individual pieces. It also attempts to define third wave fiction and analyze the memoirs and novels coming from writers who could be classified as third wave (specifically, Rebecca Walker, Danzy Senna and Michelle Tea), tracing how these books exhibit “third wave sensibility” and reflect generational experiences of third wave writers. A lot of attention is devoted to comparisons of second and third wave feminism and the ambivalent relationship of third wave feminism to postfeminism.
     
Wendy Kaminer wrote in True Love Waits: “If it ultimately fails as a liberation movement, feminism will at least have achieved considerable literary success.” Ungrateful Daughters examines whether the literary success helps or hinders the cause of women’s liberation.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-11-01,Sara Sanchez,Discourse Dynamics,Hardback,978-1-4438-2486-6,39.99,"This volume presents a reasoned study of the discourse connectives of attainment of the French language. For the most part, the studies on connectives are based on referentialist descriptive frameworks, which are sustained more or less explicitly on what we have called the general problem of causality, the epistemological foundation of a scientific paradigm which has been used for centuries but which, in our opinion, is now outdated. In the first place, we have submitted this old paradigm to critical debate, showing the limits of its scientific validity. Next, we have placed ourselves in a non-referentialist linguistic framework, the Theory of Argumentation in the Language-System, developed by the French linguist Oswald Ducrot, in which we have formulated a new descriptive proposal for discourse connectives, taking into account both the argumentative configuration and the polyphonic configuration of each of the discourse dynamics generated around a given connective. We have described the argumentative configuration in terms of semantic blocks, and the polyphonic configuration in terms of discourse algorithms, original and innovative heuristic instruments with which we attempt to stimulate a new approach to language more in line with the general scientific approaches of the 21st century, and with the new scientific paradigm which is currently valid.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-11-01,Leonora Flis,Factual Fictions: Narrative Truth and the Contemporary American Documentary Novel,Hardback,978-1-4438-2413-2,39.99,"Factual Fictions: Narrative Truth and the Contemporary American Documentary Novel focuses on contemporary American documentary narratives, specifically the documentary novel, as it re-emerged in the 1960s and later developed into various other forms. The book explores the connections between the documentary novel and the concurrent rise of New Journalism (a.k.a. “literary journalism”) in the United States, situating the two genres in the cultural context of the tumultuous 1960s and an emerging postmodern ethos. Flis makes a comprehensive analysis of texts by Truman Capote, Norman Mailer, John Berendt, and Don DeLillo, while tackling discussions on various theoretical complexities with assurance and rigor. Interested in the precarious divide between fact and fiction, the author productively complicates traditional notions of the two poles. Furthermore, the book examines parallels between contemporary Slovene documentary narratives and their American counterparts. Flis’s work, with its systematic and innovative approach to the subject matter, adds an important historical dimension to the developing field of literary journalism studies as well as to the more established area of 20th Century American literature.


","“In an era when the boundaries between fact and fiction have become more permeable in public discourse, when distinctions between the memoir and novel are contested with increasing frequency, Flis’s book is provocative and timely.”
—Mark J. Madigan, Nazareth College of Rochester, Rochester, NY

“Factual Fictions offers a compelling and comprehensive new evaluation of the literary importance and the historical value of the modern version of the genre that is deeply rooted in the cultural, political, and social upheavals of the 1960s America—the nonfiction novel. It builds on various theoretical and socio–cultural premises and perspectives, emphasizing the precarious question of adherence to truth claims and referentiality in the nonfiction novel. Flis’s book represents a singularly welcome addition to literary scholarship in that it is a tool for rethinking the reader’s understanding of the fictional and the factual.”
—Jerneja Petrič, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia

",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-11-01,Robert D. Morritt,Fragments of Yesteryear,Hardback,978-1-4438-2499-6,34.99,"As a youth, the author obtained a scratchy old 78rpm record of “The Prisoner’s Song” sung by Vernon Dalhart. He also sang and played American Folk songs on an old acoustic guitar with a harmonica rest strapped around his neck. It was at that time that he wondered, who were these early recording artists?

What was their background? How old really, were these Folk and Country songs; How and where did they originate? Fragments of Yesteryear is intended to give some answers to these questions, in the hope it may enthuse others to enjoy this hobby, but moreover, to enjoy this rustic music.

The author is a specialist in early American rural recordings. Fragments of Yesteryear represents many years of first-hand research based on field trips to Appalachia and other rural areas in order to understand the the origin of rural musicians, and of their music. From his substantial private collection of obscure early country recordings, he is pleased to be able to share the information herein and to dedicate this book to the memory of a fellow collector, the late much loved Albert Shewmaker of Kentucky (formerly Indiana) who spent his entire life researching these musicians.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-11-01,Elbert Lenrow,Kerouac Ascending: Memorabilia of the Decade of On the Road,Hardback,978-1-4438-2416-3,29.99,"Kerouac Ascending: Memorabilia of the Decade of On the Road is a memoir written by Elbert Lenrow about his relationship with Jack Kerouac, whom he taught at the New School in New York when Jack was emerging as a writer, and with Allen Ginsberg, both of whom Lenrow befriended and encouraged. Lenrow writes with sympathy and charm about both writers and their “beat” friends, revealing Kerouac’s seriously academic side by sharing papers he wrote in his course and giving insight about both writers through letters and poems they shared or wrote in Lenrow’s apartment. In her preface, Katherine Burkman, editor and cousin to Lenrow, gives a context for the memoir, expanding on Lenrow’s gifts as a teacher while Lenrow’s niece, Barbara Phillips, adds further insights. Howard Cunnell’s Introduction offers excellent material on the young Kerouac’s development, partly under Lenrow’s tutelage. An appendix of Ginsberg’s handwritten letters to Elbert, typewritten in the memoir, reveals the drama of his own handwriting and the enormous warmth in his relationship with Lenrow over a period of many years.


With an introduction by Howard Cunnell.
","“Katherine Burkman, best known for her contributions to Harold Pinter, Samuel Beckett, and modern drama studies in general, now provides an essential reference for students of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and the beats through this memoir by Elbert Lenrow. A beloved teacher at the New School for Social Research, Lenrow met and taught Jack Kerouac in the late forties, befriending him and Allen Ginsberg as well. The book offers unprecedented insight into the beats in general and Kerouac’s development as a writer, thinker, and cultural force in American literature. Howard Cunnell, who introduces the book, notes that through his friendship with Kerouac, ‘Lenrow got to ride in what would become the most famous car in modern American literature.’ And thanks to this book, now readers of Kerouac Ascending do, too.”
—Ann C. Hall, Professor, Ohio Dominican University; President, Harold Pinter Society

“The larger significance of the sustained and sustaining friendship between Elbert Lenrow and  Kerouac and Ginsberg in this book is that it exhibits Jack and Allen in ways that are seldom, if ever, represented in accounts of their lives. As a bonus, from this fine, small book, the reader can acquire an enriched and enhanced understanding of the multifarious political, literary, and artistic relationships of virtually all the principal players in the cultural scene in the mid- to late 20th century.”
—James L. Battersby, Professor Emeritus of English, Ohio State University

“Always their affectionate elder, Lenrow presents Kerouac and Ginsberg mostly in their own words, making no broad claim or judgments beyond the recognition that both writers spoke for their time as Walt Whitman did for his and that they have become iconic figures for a literary movement. It is a modest but important work presenting original materials saved by a gentle, sensitive, and literate man.”
—Mark S. Auburn,  Professor Emeritus of English, former Senior Vice President and Provost at the University of Akron
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-11-01,Jørgen Bruhn,Lovely Violence: Chrétien de Troyes’ Critical Romances,Hardback,978-1-4438-2492-7,34.99,"In Lovely Violence: Chrétien de Troyes’ Critical Romances, Jørgen Bruhn rereads the well-known but still intriguing chivalric novels of the medieval French author Chrétien de Troyes (from the second half of the twelfth century, probably in northern France). Jørgen Bruhn—who is trained in modern comparative literature and literary theory—engages in a meeting with the medieval texts where the “strange” medieval contexts and texts are played up against more familiar contemporary concerns around textuality, gender and in particular the vexed question of violence.

After an introduction and an attempt to construct a useful context around the texts of Chrétien de Troyes, Bruhn discusses the five chivalric novels which are normally known under the names of the more or less heroic heroes: Erec, Cligès, Yvain, Lancelot and Perceval. The medieval characters turn out to behave in ways that are both shockingly strange and “medieval,” and at the same time resassuringly recognisable. The Middle Ages may not be so unmodern after all.

","""Chrétien de Troyes is a medieval author about whose works libraries have been written. Jørgen Bruhn provides a clear and attractive path through earlier research and sees him in terms of the richness and variety of twelfth-century European culture. This is a book which I think will become a landmark not only in Chrétien studies but in broader interpretations of what it is that makes the twelfth century so important in the formation of European identity.""
—Professor Brian Patrick McGuire


",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-11-01,"Marja Rytkönen, Kirsi Kurkijärvi, Urszula Chowaniec and Ursula Phillips",Mapping Experience in Polish and Russian Women’s Writing,Hardback,978-1-4438-2493-4,39.99,"The volume encompasses eleven articles which discuss the critical views that Polish and Russian women writers have articulated with regard to the notion of experience and constructions of femininity in the national imagination from the 19th to the 21st centuries. Major themes of the articles include women’s experiences as writers in the 19th century; women’s embodied experiences of a traumatic past; body and sexuality in the different ages of women; political and aesthetic discourses and femininity. Although the articles are arranged in chronological order, they do not form an absolute chronological or periodic continuum, i.e. from Romanticism to Postmodernism, although references to certain aesthetic periods are made. The authors of the articles reflect in detail on how the women writers and their literary texts represent different understandings and experiences in relation to dominant perceptions, for example, of the memory of war, of motherhood, of art and aesthetics, and so on. Readers are encouraged to seek parallels and continuities between the different historical times and spaces; between women’s writing in Russia and Poland; between different scholarly approaches and aims.

The articles of this volume bring together important critical standpoints in women’s writing in Poland and Russia, in which parallels, continuities, and resemblances can be traced, but in which discontinuities, breaks and differences also make themselves visible. Apart from the conspicuous resemblances between individual Russian and Polish women writers’ works, or even between groups of women writers, the articles document the diversity within Russian and Polish women’s writing, respectively, and even within individual writers.







","“Mapping Experience in Polish and Russian Women’s Writing is undoubtedly a breakthrough in feminist reflection. The book concentrates on problems considered from an innovative angle. … The book searches for the cultural, historical, political and poetic differences and similarities between the two Slavic countries and at the same time it does not confine itself to mere enumeration, rather it tends to expand its feminist comparative aspects with western feminist scholarship.”
—Professor Krystyna Klosinska, University of Silesia

“For readers generally familiar with East European cultures, this book offers fascinating new insights into the complex narrative of Polish and Russian women’s writing. For someone less knowledgeable with the culture of this part of the world, these essays provide a compelling introduction to important aspects of Polish and Russian literature through a gendered perspective.”
—Elena Sokol, Professor Emerita, Russian Studies, The College of Wooster, Ohio, U.S.A.


",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-11-01,Christa Mahalik,"Merchants, Barons, Sellers and Suits: The Changing Images of the Businessman through Literature",Hardback,978-1-4438-2419-4,44.99,"Merchants, Barons, Sellers and Suits: The Changing Images of the Businessman through Literature originally began as a conversation about a hybrid course at Quinnipiac University. Its purpose was to take an online English course for non-traditional business majors and create a theme that would be relevant to the business world. Being given the task to create this course from the ground up was exciting and intriguing. There turned out to be a lot more material that could be used for this theme than previously thought. To gauge the temperature of the topic, a panel was set up with the theme of businessmen (or women) and their changing image through literature.

At the 2009 NeMLA (Northeast Modern Language Association) conference in Boston, the panel was held and many ideas, such as some of the ones presented in this book, were discussed. A secondary theme evolved out of the construction of the first. Participants discussed the environment as a catalyst in the change of “what a person actually thinks a businessman (or woman) looks like.” Many of these images were formed based upon pop culture, such as the traveling salesman in the Looney Tunes cartoons who sells brushes door to door and hails from Walla Walla, Washington. Others were based on the images read about in books, such as Willy Loman from Death of a Salesman.

The essays included in this volume, presented by doctoral candidates and scholars from across a range of geographical regions and disciplines, result in a collection that investigates the idea of the changing image of the businessman throughout literature both in America and in Europe. The arrangement of the collection is a comparative timeline allowing the changing images of business to evolve with each essay.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-11-01,Myron Stagman,Metaphoric Resonance in Shakespearean Tragedy,Paperback,978-1-4438-2423-1,24.99,"An occasional prefigurement and echo was hardly unknown before Shakespeare. But the vast echoism—continuing forward and backward references—utilized in certain Shakespearean tragedies, was rare if unknown before him. Who, even now, does this?

Two examples of messages conveyed via metaphoric resonance:
	(1) an element of the weight metaphoric trail in Coriolanus:
	The protagonist says scornfully to the Citizens in the first Act:
	He that depends upon your favours swims with fins of lead.

In the second Act, Coriolanus more cautiously, deceptively, remarks to the plebeians' tribune Brutus:

	Your people, I love them as they weigh.

The full import of this statement would be lost without knowledge of the metaphoric resonance, which tells us he is not impartial.

(2) Richard II, Act II, scene 1:
John of Gaunt begins his famous prophesying-and-punning 
speech to King Richard:
“O, how [my] name fits my composition! ... gaunt in being old.
... and therein fasting, hast thou made me gaunt.
Gaunt am I for the grave, gaunt as a grave.”

Shakespeare set up other prophesies in the play with this one by John of Gaunt. Thus, in the fourth scene of Act II, a Captain declares, “And lean-look'd prophets whisper fearful change.”

The playwright has been criticized for having Gaunt pun at such a time, but name a better way for the playful Shakespeare to tip off the audience to a shrewdly resonant “lean-look'd prophets” two scenes away.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-11-01,Márta Pellérdi,Nabokov's Palace: The American Novels,Hardback,978-1-4438-2410-1,34.99,"Nabokov’s distinguished and unique position in American literature has always been indisputable, but paradoxical. There has always been an element of foreignness in his writing. Nabokov’s Palace, however, aims to discover those sub-texts and inter-textual patterns embedded in Nabokov’s American novels which undeniably contribute towards making these works an integral part of the Anglo-American literary tradition. Aware of this tradition, in some of his late novels Nabokov also provides a literary historical overview of particular themes, such as friendship, melancholy, madness and trance, as they surfaced in literary texts throughout the history of English and American literature.

To Nabokov “aesthetic bliss” meant “a sense of being somehow, somewhere, connected with other states of being where art (curiosity, tenderness, kindness, ecstasy) is the norm.” Most of Nabokov’s American novels express—through different elaborate literary structures, themes, motifs and metaphors—these “other states of being” where the “fantastic recurrence” of literary situations and communion with dead poets and writers (Poe, Shakespeare, Hawthorne and Melville, among many others) becomes possible. The American “reality” that some readers miss in his writings (with the exception of Lolita) and the absence of which questions whether Nabokov truly belongs to the Anglo-American tradition, is clearly to be found in the “wayside murmur” of the allusive sub-texts. Nabokov’s Palace is thus recommended for scholars, students and devotees of Nabokov’s fiction who wish to make further discoveries in the distinct “otherworld” of Art in Nabokov’s American novels.




","""If one was looking for a proof that the post-structuralist idea of reading one literary work through another one can with some authors be a splendid strategy of interpretation, Márta Pellérdi’s Nabokov’s Palace: The American Novels could serve as a welcome example. The title of this excellent contribution to the study of Nabokov’s work already suggests her thesis that the novels written since his emigration to the United States are “American Novels” in the sense that they are part of the “Anglo-American tradition”. In order to substantiate this view that so far has not received much attention, Pellérdi reads Nabokov’s novels from the perspective of works by American authors representing that tradition and in this way is able to shed new light even on works that have been widely discussed already. Particularly revealing I found her reading of Lolita in conjunction with Hawthorne’s The Marble Faun, of  Ada with Melville’s Pierre, and of Nabokov’s last  novels Transparent Things, Look at the Harlequins! and the fragmentary The Original of Laura with some tales and poems by Edgar Allan Poe.  Thanks to Pellérdi we now know much more about the influence on Nabokov’s work of the literary tradition of the country in which he found refuge. Yet when all is said, one also remembers the quotation  in her Introduction of the master plotter pointing out that he is “trilingual” whereas “all the writers I personally knew in America […] are strictly monolinguists” – a polite way of  saying that his literary horizon is so much wider than that of the American tradition.""
- Prof. Dr. (UWM) em. Herbert Grabes, Department of English Studies, Justus-Liebig-Universität Giessen

“Marta Pellerdi offers a fresh take on Nabokov's English novels. She makes a compelling argument that thematic and referential elements are crucially embedded in these works. Apart from illuminating examples in the English novels, Pellerdi persuasively analyzes an important avenue of nabokov's influences and extends our understanding of his layered artistry.”
—Julia Bader, Professor of English at U C Berkeley

…Nabokov’s place will be useful, certainly to undergraduates, as a starting point for further investigation…

Barbara Wyllie
UCL SSEES University
Seer, 90, 1, January 2012



",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-11-01,Vincenzo Moscati,Negation Raising: Logical Form and Linguistic Variation,Hardback,978-1-4438-2506-1,34.99,"With this book, the author explores the syntax of negative sentences, tracing the fine-grained contours of linguistic variation and offering a detailed cartographic representation of the distribution of negative markers.

The goal is to show the existing tension in language between the variable surface realization of negation and its stable logical representation. In order to solve this tension and to unify the interpretation of negative sentences, a mapping operation, LF-Negation Raising, is proposed.

Verbal arguments related to negation such as n-words, negative quantifiers and negative polarity items are also considered, in order to derive negative concord phenomena from the inner semantics of nominal constituents.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-11-01,Tanfer Emin Tunc and Elisabetta Marino,Positioning the New: Chinese American Literature and the Changing Image of the American Literary Canon,Hardback,978-1-4438-2485-9,39.99,"This ground-breaking edited volume includes chapters which explore the past, present and future position of Chinese American authors within the framework of what Harold Bloom identifies as the “Western literary canon.” These selections, which simultaneously represent the exciting “transnational turn” in American literary studies, not only examine whether or not Chinese American literature is inside or outside the canon, but also question if there is, or should be, a literary canon at all. Moreover, they dissect the canonicity of Chinese American literature by elucidating the social, political and cultural implications of inclusion in the canon. Ultimately, however, this collection is designed as a preliminary step towards exploring the impact of Chinese American literature on the white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant-dominated American literary world, and probing the by-products of both cultural fusion and cultural collision.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-11-01,"Bruno De Nicola, Yonatan Mendel and Husain Qutbuddin",Reflections on Knowledge and Language in Middle Eastern Societies,Hardback,978-1-4438-2430-9,44.99,"This book presents a collection of articles that put forward original research and significant insight regarding several key issues related to knowledge and language in Middle Eastern societies. The aspects studied include: the role of knowledge and language in affirming and negating political agendas and self-identities within areas of conflict and tension; ideas regarding the usefulness and interaction of religious and secular knowledge; and the attributes that render knowledge and language, especially that which is believed to be of divine origin, outstanding and worthy of admiration. The selection of studies has been purposefully diverse to include a variety of languages, including Arabic, Turkish, Hebrew and Persian, within multiple traditions, including Hellenism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, while focussing on a range of periods, from the classical to the mediaeval to the modern, and examining a range of issues, such as methods of analysing and interpreting Persian, Turkish and Arabic literature, literary and other attributes of the Bible and the Qur’an, diglossic languages, the Turkish modernisation project, Turkish-Kurdish tensions, Andalusian music, Azerbaijani politics, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

By underlining the substantial commonalities that exist between such seemingly different fields of research, the book highlights the idea—increasingly on the wane in departments of Middle Eastern Studies across many universities—that a shared area of study, viz. the Middle East, naturally and inherently entails a shared cultural, historical, and sociological milieu. It suggests that academics who engage in different branches of research related to this area should—rather than focussing singly on their own field—avail substantially and meaningfully of one another’s scholarship, learn from each other’s methodologies, and collectively build upon a body of knowledge that should never be seen as dissociated.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-11-01,Carmen Casaliggi and Paul March-Russell,Ruskin in Perspective: Contemporary Essays,Paperback,978-1-4438-2501-6,24.99,"Moving laterally across John Ruskin’s complete work, this new anthology draws his ideas together around the common theme of perspective. Grouped into three parts (Art and Literature, Aesthetics and Politics, Geography and Landscape), the essays examine Ruskin’s critical intervention both within its own period and in relation to its contemporary legacy. Drawing upon literary theory, art criticism, political, social and cultural history and biographical studies, the essays offer a new and exciting interdisciplinary approach to understanding the scale and relevance of Ruskin’s thought. Topics include the role of the reader in Ruskin’s work, Anglo-European encounters, Ruskin’s style and political influence, national and cultural heritage, the aesthetics of painting, perspective and the sublime, and the impact of geology and evolutionary theory upon Ruskin and nineteenth-century culture. Illustrated throughout with examples from Ruskin’s own art-work as well as the artists admired by him (such as J.M.W. Turner), the anthology will be invaluable for readers interested not only in Ruskin as writer, critic and commentator but also in his position within the changing currents of nineteenth and twentieth-century intellectual thought.

This collection shows how Ruskin can still teach us to read and see. It breathes enthusiasm and scholarly care in a way that will appeal to a wide range of readers. I am very impressed by the wealth of illustration in the book, which seems to me indispensable for an understanding of Ruskin's thought and its relevance to us. The choice of contributors is harmonious and refreshing - established authorities rub shoulders with rising scholars. This really is an unusually vibrant, well thought-through and valuable collection on a key formative figure in the history of literature, art and criticism. 
Dr. Sarah Wood, University of Kent.

""Ruskin studies are currently flourishing (...) There is a wide ranging interest, on both sides of the Atlantic, reflected in the essays here by established European names as well as younger scholars. 

The compilation is well focused, which will give Ruskin in Perspective a distinctive character in its consideration of literature, aesthetics and geography, thereby appealing to a genuinely interdisciplinary audience. 

—Stephen Wildman, Director and Curator, The Ruskin Library, Lancaster University









",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-11-01,Alain Kerhervé,The Ladies Complete Letter-Writer (1763),Hardback,978-1-4438-2497-2,49.99,"How did people learn to write letters in the eighteenth century? Among other books, letter-writing manuals provided a possible solution. Although more than 160 editions can be traced for the eighteenth century, most manuals were largely intended for men. As a consequence, when The Ladies Complete Letter-Writer was released in London in 1763, it was the first manual to be exclusively destined for women in eighteenth-century Britain.

Even though it was published anonymously, several elements tend to show that it must have been edited by Edward Kimber. It was reprinted in Dublin in 1763 and in London in 1765 and largely circulated. The reasons for its success may have come from its concern in epistolary rhetoric, its original organisation, or the entertainment provided by examples coming from different sources, among which letters by Eliza Haywood, Samuel Richardson, Mary Collier, or the Marquise de Lambert. It also provided women with a variety of subjects which were supposed to be part of their sphere of interest, and others which were not, thus questioning a number of pre-conceived ideas on women and their way of writing with or without propriety.

Unedited since 1765, the manual is now presented with introduction, notes and two indices focusing on the issues of sources, society and epistolary writing.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-11-01,Nicoletta Di Ciolla,Uncertain Justice: Crimes and Retribution in Contemporary Italian Crime Fiction,Hardback,978-1-4438-2420-0,39.99,"The crime genre entered Italy in the late nineteenth century, and if initially Italian authors followed models developed abroad—principally in the United States, England and France—a uniquely Italian brand began to emerge soon.

Il giallo, as the crime genre has been known in Italy since the 1930s, proved to be the ideal instrument to confront pressing and often uncomfortable issues which were pertinent to the Italian context: it became a useful tool to restore, symbolically at least, the truth and justice that were, and still are, perceived by a large part of the Italian reading public to be systematically denied in reality. In today’s Italy, the crime genre, and particularly its noir sub-genre, narrates so that readers might remember, so that they might take heed and action, turning cognition into an act of resistance against oblivion and of rebellion against injustice. 

Uncertain Justice explores three broad areas that contemporary Italian noir literature appears particularly keen to debate, retrieving them from the silence to which they might otherwise be consigned: unresolved historical and political legacies, the repercussions of which still inform and affect life and practices in the present times; the problematic institution of the family, considered as the bedrock of Italian culture and the founding principle of Italian society, with specific attendant questions of gender politics; and the justice system seen through some of its operators, nominally in charge of putting the wrongs right and frequently accused of preventing this from happening. These explorations are conducted through an analysis of texts published in the last twenty years, which represent an effort to expose and counter injustice through the power of the word.

Crime literature authors often revisit recent Italian history in their novels, and genre fiction plays a prominent role in acts of resistance against cover-ups or revisionist views of history. The volume starts with an analysis of this role, through novels that look back at the years of the fascist regime and, more recently, at the period from the anni di piombo onwards. It then considers the contribution made to the giallo and noir genre by women writers, looking at the effects that female practitioners in Italy have had on the ethics and aesthetics of a genre that, in other cultures, has traditionally been firmly conservative. A further section examines novels set in a familial context and looks at a range of family dynamics, expressed in the relationships between mothers and sons, mothers and daughters, large extended families or small nuclear ones. If some of the texts expose the devastating effects of the violence perpetrated “in the name of love,” others more positively offer hope, demonstrating how more desirable options do exist and can be pursued. Finally the volume looks at justice as a system and at its practitioners, as, in an interesting development peculiar to Italy, a significant number of judges, lawyers and senior police officers have recently become involved in crime fiction writing. The concluding chapter investigates the contribution that these “specialists,” who have extensive theoretical and technical knowledge in a field which crime fiction routinely frequents, can make to the genre; it also analyses whether these authors, who bring together the moral function of unveiling the truth (prerogative of the investigator) and the social function of rectifying a wrong (prerogative of the upholders of the law), may have a role in forming a more ethically and socially aware Italian citizen.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-11-01,"J. Derrick McClure, Karoline Szatek-Tudor and Rosa E. Penna","""What Countrey’s This?  And Whither Are We Gone?"": Papers presented at the Twelfth International Conference on the Literature of Region and Nation (Aberdeen University, 30th July – 2nd August 2008)",Hardback,978-1-4438-2484-2,49.99,"In the summer of 2008, the twelfth in a series of biennial conferences on the Literature of Region and Nation was held at Aberdeen University in the North-East of Scotland. Over fifty scholars, representing no fewer than twenty different countries, convened for the occasion; and twenty-two of the papers presented are included in this volume.

As at previous conferences in the series, the papers range widely in approach, in subject-matter and in geographical coverage: readers of this book will find explorations of literature from all five continents. The papers are arranged thematically: the central concepts of region and nation are examined in the first section; and subsequent sets of papers go on to consider literary and pictorial representations of places and peoples, literature of diaspora and exile (a keynote topic of the conference), the use of language (particularly non-standard languages) in literary texts, and artistic interactions between cultures. All the papers have been peer-reviewed, and some extensively revised. The collection demonstrates the vitality of scholarship in the field of regional literary studies.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-12-01,Ryan Barnett and Serena Trowbridge,Acts of Memory: The Victorians and Beyond,Hardback,978-1-4438-2567-2,34.99,"As various critics have noted, the concept of memory was a topic of immense importance for the Victorians; be it in the form of remembrance, nostalgia, amnesia, or mourning. This is nowhere more evident than in the literature of the period where acts of memory provide the focal point in numerous Victorian literary texts. For the Victorians, it seems, the act of memory was indissociable from the art of literature. Acts of Memory: The Victorians and Beyond engages with the interconnections that existed between literature and memory in the nineteenth century with nine lively, informative, and accessible essays written by a combination of established academics and up-and-coming scholars, as well as an “Afterword” by Professor Roger Ebbatson. The essays in this collection arise from an international conference held in Birmingham in 2007, which generated considerable academic interest and vibrant new work, and from selected papers a refined and considered collection has been produced. Discussing well-known literary figures, texts, and movements (as well as some less well-known), alongside key theoretical, psychological, and philosophical works, the essays in this collection offer a rich, stimulating, and diverse exploration of the concept of memory within (and at times beyond) the Victorian era.  





","""The conception of Acts of Memory opens the discussion of memory and the Victorians both temporally and spatially, offering new perspectives and insights on both well-known and lesser-known authors...the strength of Acts of Memory lies in the desire it evokes to re-engage with the Victorians from a new perspective.""
Folkert Degenring, University of Kassel, Germany

Overall this is a book with an interesting remit and one which will be of use and interest both to family historians and also to historians of the family.

The Chapter by Anderson is a useful addition to the historian understands of the field, and Caunce’s on evidence makes value reading for anyone using these many types of narrative….sets up an interesting agenda of other possible ways of contextualising family histories which will be of particular relevance to many readers of Local Population Studies.                                                                              
Alysa Levene
Oxford Brookes University 
Local Population Studies Journal
Spring 2011 


",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-12-01,Gay Lynch,Apocryphal and Literary Influences on Galway Diasporic History,Hardback,978-1-4438-2560-3,39.99,"Apocryphal and Literary Influences on Galway Diasporic History establishes that apocryphal stories, in all their transformations, contribute to collective memory. Common characteristics frame their analysis: irreducible and enduring elements, often embedded in archetypal drama; lack of historical verification; establishment in collective memory; revivals after periods of dormancy; subjection to political and economic manipulation; implicit speculation; and literary transformations.

This book contextualises Unsettled, an Australian novel about a convict play, derived from the Irish apocryphal story of The Magistrate of Galway, and documents previously unpublished primary material, including apocryphal stories passed through generations of descendents of settlers, Martin and Maria Lynch, and The Hibernian Father, a play by Irish convict, Edward Geoghegan.

It puts forward new hypotheses: that the Irish hero Cuchulain may have provided a template for the archetypal and apocryphal story of the Magistrate of Galway; that disgraced Trinity College medical student and aspiring writer, Edward Geoghegan, enacted and recounted the same father-son archetypal conflict when he was transported to Botany Bay in 1839, and wrote the The Hibernian Father based on the Magistrate of Galway; that working-class Irish families were marginalised in South-east South Australian historical records; that oral apocryphal Lynch stories may be true; that Kate Grenville’s The Secret River (2006) offers an alternative history of the Hawkesbury River settlement, by some definitions apocryphal. The mystery of Geoghegan’s disappearance is solved, and knowledge about his life increased. French theorist Gerard Genette’s notion, advanced in Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree (1997), of all novels being transtextual, provides a model for the analysis of relationships between these key apocryphal texts.






","“Dr Lynch structures her separate arguments to evoke parallels, echoes and resonances amongst the different research strands, the whole coming together as an astute exegetical study of the layering of influences that goes into building a complex creative product.”
—Nigel Krauth, Griffith University

""[This book] will be of great interest to those working in Irish theatre studies especially, as it provides an insight into a lost Irish playwright, Edward Geoghegan, and his successful play 'The Hibernian Father'. Its main focus, however, is on the role of apocryphal stories in shaping Irish-Australian texts and the insights provided are intriguing.""
—Dr. Dymphna Lonergan, Flinders University, Australia.

""Apocryphal and Literary Influences on Galway Diasporic History by Dr Gay Lynch provides useful strategies for creative writers in the transformation of history and apocryphal texts into fiction.""
—Jeri Kroll, Professor of English and Creative writing, Flinders University, September 2010

“Gay Lynch has competently pursued convict playwright Edward Geoghegan's Irish origins and later life in Australia. Her detailed research has not only informed her Irish-settler novel but will enlighten future scholars of The Hibernian Father, his most successful play.”
—Janette Pelosi, Senior Archivist, NSW Archives Department



",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-12-01,Dvir Abramovich,Back to the Future: Israeli Literature of the 1980s and 1990s,Hardback,978-1-4438-2562-7,39.99,"This book provides a wide-ranging survey of a large number of Israeli novels and short stories written in the 1980s and 1990s and brings together a range of fresh critical perspectives that will benefit teachers and students of Hebrew literature and fans of literature in general.

This eye-opening and vibrant study furnishes the reader with insights about three dominant genres that emerged during these norm-defying decades and provides new understanding about how modern Israeli fiction evolved to be what it is today. 

Abramovich provides the social and political background for the dramatic and broad transformations that took place in Israeli society during this period of transition¬¬— the Yom Kippur War, the election of the Likkud Party, The Lebanon War, the rise of postmodernism, the impact of feminism, the collapse of national consensus— and links those developments to the literary changes that seeped into the fabric of Israeli writing of that time.   

The book deals with three pivotal areas that emerged and flowered in the 1980s and 1990s — Second Generation Holocaust literature, the Mizrachi novel, and detective fiction — and meticulously and comprehensively analyses the works’ subject-matters, ideas and aesthetic strategies.  Extensively discussed and evaluated are the groundbreaking themes found in the stories of authors David Grossman, Sami Michael, Ronit Matalon, Savyon Liebrecht, Batya Gur, Eli Amir, Shulamit Lapid, Itamar Levy, Gila Almagor, Nava Semel, Dorit Rabinyan, Yitzhak Gormezano Goren, Dorit Peleg and Lily Peri Amitai. 

From best-sellers to cult-classics, from the mainstream to the marginal, Back to the Future: Israeli Literature of the 1980s and 1990s is a significant and praiseworthy effort that celebrates the creative energy of Israeli culture and is sure to engage readers of many tastes.






","“In this ambitious new study, Dvir Abramovich takes for his subject hitherto marginalized but certainly not marginal works of recent Israeli fiction, and makes not only the  works themselves but the cultural context in which they appeared interesting and accessible to the general reader. What is fascinating in his approach is how Abramovich traces the acceptance of such disparate ethnic and genre fictions into mainstream modern Hebrew literature back to historical events and social phenomena in the early years of Israeli statehood. . . . The aim of Abramovich’s excellent study is to highlight the social context as well as  the artistic achievement of these voices of recent Israeli fiction, and to make those insights available to English-language readers.”
—Professor David Mesher, Department of English and comparative Literature, San José State University, USA

“Dvir Abramovich’s book is a lively and provocative study of Israeli-Hebrew literature in the 1980s and 1990s. . . . Selective and intelligent close-readings of several representative novels and stories from those two transitional decades display the kaleidoscopic differences in the ever-changing landscape of Israeli experiences and Abramovich masterfully negotiates the twists and turns of this multilane and layered highway that is modern Israel.”
—Professor Norman Simms, Department of Humanities and English at the University of Waikato in Hamilton, New Zealand

“Dvir Abramovich’s new book provides the reader with in-depth insights into novels and short story collections penned by Hebrew writers during the 1980s and 1990s, opening a wide window into Israeli society and culture. . . . Abramovich succeeds in presenting the complexity and uniqueness of the new Israeli identity, or better, identities, which under the impact of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the ideological, socioeconomic, and cultural tensions between different sections of Israeli society, and the intense globalization, have undergone extensive deconstruction and reconstruction.”
—Professor Reuven Snir, Dean of the Faculty of Humanities, University of Haifa, Israel

“Abramovich’s inspiring book makes a most important contribution to the exposure of contemporary Hebrew and Israeli literature to readers around the world . . . this is a welcome and wide ranging addition to the growing contemporary research on Hebrew literature written in the last decades.”
—Dr Adia Mendelson-Maoz, Head of Hebrew Literature Section, The Open University of Israel
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-12-01,Vesna Lopičić and Biljana Mišić Ilić,Identity Issues: Literary and Linguistic Landscapes,Hardback,978-1-4438-2557-3,44.99,"The book Identity Issues: Literary and Linguistic Landscapes is a collection of essays, set out to explore the notion of identity as a constantly relevant, very complex, multi-faceted phenomenon. Understanding identity in a very broad sense, the authors approach it from various angles, highlighting its various aspects. The first section includes literary explorations that discuss identity issues of class, race, nation and history, as depicted in several works of, mostly, contemporary Anglo-American literature. The second section brings various linguistic studies of identity, starting with the usual sociolinguistic issues, but also including a range of other research routes, which draw upon insights from psychology, sociology, historical linguistics, cognitive linguistics, lexicology, functional grammar, and applied linguistics.

The book addresses a broad academic audience. Due to its wide scope, both in topics covered and in varied theoretical approaches, it is not only aimed towards literary scholars studying modern Anglo-American literature, nor only at sociolinguists interested in language identity, but at numerous academics, as well as undergraduate and graduate students, who are interested in some of the disciplines that provided the framework for various articles (literary studies, sociology, cognitive linguistics, lexicology, functional grammar, academic writing, and English teaching). The book would be particularly appealing to all those who are interested in examining a variety of identity issues from diverse angles.

The authors of the articles come from Serbia, the UK, Canada, Japan, Norway, and Romania.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-12-01,Vincent Broqua and Guillaume Marche,L'épuisement du biographique?,Hardback,978-1-4438-2572-6,49.99,"Pourquoi penser le biographique ? N’est-il pas épuisé ? Le siècle passé semble l’avoir vidé de son contenu et de sa substance et l’a réduit à un état d’affaiblissement presque complet dans le domaine des sciences sociales comme dans celui de la critique littéraire. L’enjeu de cet ouvrage est d’affirmer que le biographique déborde la biographie et de considérer le biographique comme une condition du retour de la biographie au moyen de son dépassement.

Cet ouvrage rassemble des travaux abordant des questions historiques et littéraires dans une multiplicité d’aires géographiques (pays de langue allemande, anglaise, espagnole et italienne) : penser la spécificité du biographique suppose de prendre en compte plusieurs disciplines et aires culturelles, diversité nécessaire, car le biographique se trouve au croisement des sciences sociales et de la littérature, au point de rencontre entre science et fiction. Ce livre propose un état de la réflexion sur le sujet.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-12-01,Kathleen Dubs and Janka Kaščáková,Middle-earth and Beyond: Essays on the World of J. R. R. Tolkien,Hardback,978-1-4438-2558-0,34.99,"One wonders whether there really is a need for another volume of essays on the works of J. R. R. Tolkien. Clearly there is. Especially when the volume takes new directions, employs new approaches, focuses on different texts, or reviews and then challenges received wisdom. This volume intends to do all that. The entries on sources and analogues in The Lord of the Rings, a favorite topic, are still able to take new directions. The analyses of Tolkien’s literary art, less common in Tolkien criticism, focus on character—especially that of Tom Bombadil—in which two different conclusions are reached. But characterization is also seen in the light of different literary techniques, motifs, and symbols. A unique contribution examines the place of linguistics in Tolkien’s literary art, employing Gricean concepts in an analysis of The Lay of the Children of Húrin. And a quite timely essay presents a new interpretation of Tolkien’s attitude toward the environment, especially in the character of Tom Bombadil. In sum, this volume covers new ground, and treads some well-worn paths; but here the well-worn path takes a new turn, taking not only scholars but general readers further into the complex and provocative world of Middle-earth, and beyond.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-12-01,"Dale Sullivan, Bruce Maylath and Russel Hirst",Revisiting the Past through Rhetorics of Memory and Amnesia: Selected Papers from the 50th Meeting of the Linguistic Circle of Manitoba and North Dakota,Hardback,978-1-4438-2555-9,39.99,"As the 21st century’s first decade draws to a close, we are reminded of events of the past, both distant and recent. Many resulted in violent conflict. This volume investigates how our memories are shaped by rhetorics crafted by people who want audiences to remember events in specific ways. From the pivotal battle between Americans and British and their Loyalist allies during the American Revolution to North America’s First Nations conflicts with the White mainstream to current memories and rhetoric about the recent war in Iraq, the authors of this book examine the ways in which rhetoric acts as a catalyst not only for cultural memory but also cultural amnesia.  

Both scholars and the general public will find the analyses in these chapters informative, insightful, and provocative. The authors delve into literary fiction, accounts of history, and even the vocabulary of the English language to examine what and how we remember and forget. 

Assembled from coast to coast across the US and Canada, the authors demonstrate how several rhetorics at once are often at play, from Wallace Stegner’s fiction to the architecture of urban Toronto, the US Air Force Memorial in Arlington, Virginia, and even in rural cemeteries.
","""The essays collected in Revisiting the Past through Rhetorics of Memory and Amnesia contribute to a transformation taking place in classical rhetorical theory and criticism. Drawing upon what few would argue has been the least attended of the five parts of classical rhetoric, the canon of memory, the studies in the collection connect with emerging work in rhetoric, literary criticism, and visual communication. Studies in the rhetoric and politics of space and place have been prominent in the past decade. This collection contributes to this movement, linking such studies to the ways that inhabited spaces, historic places, and ceremonial sites are rhetorically constructed to perpetuate as well as to erase memories. The first part of the collection looks at public places and the ways they are articulated to retain, refresh, and revise memory—primarily collective memory.  For example, Sally Booth investigates the rhetoric of walking tours in Toronto, describing “a narration of history that distorts the specificity of place and ignores certain aspects of history in order to mythologize a past that is more easily consumed.” 

But memory functions rhetorically at the site of the individual as well. We see this particularly in literary works, as Sarah Himsel-Burcon explores in her analysis of Gayl Jones’ novel Corregidora, the story of four generations of Brazilian slaves and their determination to keep alive the memory of what they suffered and thereby situate themselves within a history from which they might otherwise have been excluded. 

Visual memory is examined in Mary Fitzgerald and Elizabethada Wright’s essay comparing different ways in which deceased human bodies are situated can affect whether they awaken memory, as when an unknown burial ground is discovered and those interred there are given a place they had lost in a community’s history, or whether their situation erases memory, as when bodies are displayed as representations of human biology. 

Although we might find studies elsewhere that are similar to some in this collection, it would be difficult to find works in one place that at once encompass the scope and at the same time the unifying focus that we encounter here. The larger argument made by editors Dale Sullivan, Bruce Maylath, and Russell Hirst, which makes the collection important, is the significance of memory in the ideological processes of shaping and transforming personal and cultural identity and values.""
—Gerald Savage, Professor of English, Illinois State University

""In contrast to the classical interest in memory as a skill, or the psychological interest in the neurological and cognitive schema enabling individual recall,  contemporary  interest, as represented in this collection, examines the collective and communicative nature of memory.  In this respect, The Rhetorics of Memory is consistent with a burgeoning, multi-disciplinary literature focused on the social nature of remembering, on the symbolic constitution of memory, and the political and cultural consequences of memory.  Much theorizing has been done across the humanities and social sciences in this respect.  Where this volume of essays stands to make a significant contribution is in its focus on the particular “sites” in which memory is accomplished. Ranging from literary works to “body works,” from historical tours to battlefield monuments, The Rhetorics of Memory considers the range of sites, multiple media, and social contexts within which remembrance is accomplished. It’s passionate and detailed analyses are more than simple applications of established theories, they comprise a rich effort to interrogate theoretical assumptions, to test them in the crucible of everyday encounters with memory. Rhetorics of Memory seeks collective memory where it happens in order to understand how it happens, why we remember as we do, and to what effect. The essays in this volume are accessible enough to enrich students’ introduction to both theoretical and methodological questions associated with the study of collective memory from a rhetorical perspective, yet they are rich enough to bear the scrutiny of scholars interested in the study of memory.""
—Gordon Coonfield, Associate Professor of Communication, Villanova University

""Even though it is one of the parts of classical rhetoric, memory has been ignored in rhetoric studies for centuries. Revisiting the Past Through Rhetorics of Memory and Amnesia introduces the reader to the current reclamation of memory in rhetoric studies. The essays cover nearly every aspect of memory studies, and the book’s introduction and organization serve as a primer for memory theory. Indeed, one of the book’s strengths is that it contains no overt theorizing. Instead theory emerges from specific empirical case studies of memory (or amnesia). For example, Michael Halloran’s study of the accounts of the battle of Saratoga illustrates the disfigurement of memory to suit ideology. Miriam Raethel’s study of traumatic memory breaks new ground in studies of Holocaust literature. Mary Fitzgerald and Elizabethada Wright’s “Rhetorical Situation of the Sacred: Exigences of the Human Body” confronts anthropological and religious attitudes toward the dead and sees a conflict between two value-laden definitions of memory. The essays not only present the most current thinking in memory studies but also reveal how memory studies can reconfigure approaches to problems that bedevil history and the social sciences.""
—John D. Schaeffer, Professor of English, Northern Illinois University

",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-12-01,Christiana Purdy Moudarres,Table Talk: Perspectives on Food in Medieval Italian Literature,Hardback,978-1-4438-2511-5,34.99,"This volume is comprised of a selection of revised and expanded papers presented at “Table Talk: Perspectives on Food in Medieval Italian Literature,” a panel held at the 40th annual convention of the Northeast Modern Langauge Association (Boston, February 26–March 1, 2009). Taken together, these essays explore the multifaceted role of food within medieval Italian culture through a variety of literary genres, from the poetry and prose of Dante and Boccaccio to the medical and religious writings of Michele Savonarola and Catherine of Siena. By examining the complexity of food consumption and distribution in the late medieval cultural imagination, the authors seek to advance the recent movement of food studies from the margins of social history to a fertile cross-section of the humanities and social sciences. The four sections into which the work is divided reflect the medical, religious, social and political circumstances that placed Italy at the vanguard of late medieval Europe’s dynamic foodways. In embracing the interdisciplinarity that distinguishes food studies as an area of scholarly interest, the essays collected in this volume aim to stimulate further inquiry into the fertile field of food in medieval Italian literature.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-12-01,Rajan Barrett,The Self and the Sonnet,Hardback,978-1-4438-2514-6,49.99,"The Self and the Sonnet is an interdisciplinary study which considers the sonnet, a near eight hundred year old form, and looks at the historical meanderings and the popularity of the form among cultures that are far removed from the location of its origin in Italy. The book tracks the notion of the self from its Platonic beginnings to the Postmodern, using insights from Charles Taylor, Brian Morris and Calvin O. Schrag so as to work out a model of the self. Jan Patočka’s phenomenological notions of the self and Chaos Theory are important cohesive elements in the composition of this model.

A limit point in Mathematics is a point that is not in the set around which all the points cluster. The book looks at the self from the limit points of the body, mind, world and language. It  analyzes sonnets which predominantly show a tendency to one of these limit points.  However, it keeps in mind the other limit points as possibilities of a comprehensive analysis.

The motivation for this body of research comes primarily from the notion of the sonnet being a form that initially exists along with the epic as canonical writers of literary epics also write sonnets. The historic and narrative moment of self in sonnet form calls for a questioning of both the self and the sonnet. The book tries to address the questions: ‘What changes in the notion of self prompt the origin and persistence of the sonnet across cultures?’ and ‘Why and how is this form compatible with a self that is postmodern and global?’ The Anglo-American sonnet, for the most, is addressed but cultures and their attendant forms are also addressed when considering the sonnet. The Arabic zajal, the Persian ghazal, the Chinese sonnet and the Korean Sijo-sonnet are forms that are touched upon along with the Indian postcolonial versions like the forms of the sonnet in Modern Indian Languages such as  Bangla, Gujarati and Marathi.


","“The quest for the human self is an odyssey dating back to the hoary past and spanning a diversity of nations and cultures, both oriental and western. In this compelling and erudite work Dr Rajan Barrett explores from an oriental standpoint the self as revealed in sonnet form. Adopting ideas of Jan Patočka he probes the western notions of the human subject as revealed in the sonnet, and using English sonnets covering a period of five hundred years, he demonstrates the fact that sonneteers, in experimenting with the form and ideas of the self, have both adopted and disputed notions of the self and the sonnet. His work reveals fresh insights into the concept of the sonnet and the self, insights bound to be of value to researchers.”
—Dr. Cyril Veliath S.J., Professor of Indian Philosophy, Sophia University, Tokyo, Japan

“Poetry is a literary form with a long generic memory, unlike the novel and drama which tend to reinvent themselves constantly. The sonnet form is a case in point where change and continuity have been constantly negotiated without deviating from its native rigour. The sonnet articulates the interface between the inner and the outer, the word and the world, the self and the other, the break between the octave and the sestet often providing a crack through which the intangible and the subliminal is apprehended in a moment of epiphany. Rajan Barrett’s book maps the evolution of the form through its historical trajectory from the medieval to the modern and demonstrates the resilience of the form in assimilating new thematic contours away from its time and place of origin. He admirably demonstrates how the dynamics of the sonnet can embody the changing paradigms of the self through the epoch-making transitions of the world during the last five centuries. I will strongly recommend this book to those in humanities and social sciences who have an interest in the social and psychological dimensions of literature as well as the larger points of intersections between tradition and modernity, time and space, the physical and the spiritual/mental.”
—E.V. Ramakrishnan, Professor and Dean, Central University of Gujarat, Gandhinagar, India

“In his quite remarkable book, The Self and the Sonnet, Rajan Barrett has succeeded in coupling the history of the search for the structure and dynamics of the human subject with a hermeneutics of the literary form of the sonnet. Carefully researched across the disciplines of philosophical and literary inquiry, the work is at once a display of meticulous scholarship and imaginative interpretation. Although the topics and themes addressed throughout the book are technically complex, the author's style is distinguished by its clarity making the contents accessible for the general lay reader.”
—Calvin O. Schrag, George Ade Distinguished Professor of Philosophy Emeritus, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana USA
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-01-01,Christina Ionescu ,Book Illustration in the Long Eighteenth Century: Reconfiguring the Visual Periphery of the Text,Hardback,978-1-4438-2585-6,64.99,"Hitherto relegated to the closets of art history and literary studies, book illustration has entered mainstream scholarship. The chapters of this collection offer only a glimpse of where a complete reconfiguration of the visual periphery of eighteenth-century texts might ultimately take us. The use of the gerund of the verb “to reconfigure” in the subtitle of this collection, instead of the corresponding noun, underlines the work-in-progress character of this interdisciplinary endeavour, which aims above all to discern new vistas while charting or revisiting landmarks in the rich field of eighteenth-century book illustration. The specific interpretive lenses through which contributors to this collection re-evaluate the visual periphery of the text cover an array of disciplines and areas of interest; among these, the most prominent are book history and print culture, art history and image theory, material and visual culture, word and image interaction, feminist theory and gender studies, history of medicine and technology. This spectrum could have been even less restrictive and more colourful if it were not for pragmatic and editorial considerations. Nonetheless, its plurality of vision provides a framework for an inclusive and multifaceted approach to eighteenth-century book illustration. Perhaps these essays are most valuable in the practical models they provide on how to tackle the interdisciplinary challenge that is the study of the eighteenth-century illustrated book. The collection as such is the first formal step in an effort to rethink or reconfigure the visual periphery of eighteenth-century texts. It has become clear that the study of the illustrated book of the Age of Enlightenment has the potential of yielding multiple findings, perspectives and discourses about a society immersed in visual culture, skilled in visual communication and reflected in the visual legacy it left behind.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-01-01,Colleen Ryan and Nicoletta Marini-Maio,"Dramatic Interactions: Teaching Languages, Literatures, and Cultures through Theater—Theoretical Approaches and Classroom Practices",Hardback,978-1-4438-2650-1,49.99,"Dramatic Interactions is a collection of essays on the flourishing and interdisciplinary subject of teaching foreign languages, literatures, and cultures through theater. With rich examples from a variety of commonly and less commonly taught languages, this book affirms both the relevance and effectiveness of using theater for foreign language learning in the most comprehensive sense of the term. It includes innovative approaches to specific theatrical texts and addresses numerous aspects of foreign language learning such as oral proficiency and communication, intercultural competence, the role of affect and motivation in foreign language study, multiple literacies, regional variations and dialect, literary analysis and adaptation, and the overall liberating effects of verbal and non-verbal self-expression in the foreign language.

Dramatic Interactions renders accessible, efficacious, and enjoyable the study of languages, literatures, and cultures through theater with the hope of inspiring and facilitating the greater incorporation of theatrical texts and techniques in foreign language courses at every level.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-01-01,Scott M. Powers,Evil in Contemporary French and Francophone Literature,Hardback,978-1-4438-2587-0,39.99,"Evil remains a primary source of inquiry in contemporary literature of French expression, even among its most secular writers. In considering French-speaking authors from France, Belgium, the United States, the Maghreb, and Sub-Saharan Africa, this collection delineates a rich international perspective on some of the most disturbing events of our time. Each essay testifies to the urgency expressed in works of fiction to give an account of human catastrophes, from the Shoah and the Rwandan genocide to the terrorist attacks of September 11, and the ongoing oppression of women in Islamic nations. Themes underlying this volume include an investigation into the origins of evil, its representations in writing, and the ethical responsibilities of authors who write on human suffering. Contemporary fiction on evil confronts us with fundamental questions: Can evil be attributed to intentionality, is evil “subconscious,” or is it the result of impersonal forces? Which styles of writing are ethically appropriate or effective for depicting evil? Can we speak of a veritable “poetics of evil” shared by contemporary authors? When does a literary text on evil become “evil”? In providing informed and nuanced answers to these important questions, the scholars engage in crucial theories of psychoanalysis, post-structuralism, and post-modernism, address a number of issues raised by trauma and genocide studies, and draw from critical frameworks in literary theory on testimony, the limits of representing the extreme, and “transgressive” writing.


","“Scott M. Powers has brought together an original and brilliant collection of essays on the representation of evil in contemporary French literary texts by a range of international writers from diverse traditions inside and outside the French Hexagon. Contributors to Evil in Contemporary French and Francophone Literature explore the multi-faceted, complex and often paradoxical nature of this concept from psychological, linguistic and ethical perspectives. The success of the collection can be measured in the way each contributor has identified a different dimension to the concept of evil (evil as necessity, as recuperation of a right, as silence, as (mis)communication, as intentionality, including the tensions in the binary of good and evil) and mapped its respective significance within the literary production of a key novelist. This collection is a living testament to the relevance of evil as a meaningful source of inquiry at the centre of the French literary mindset in the twenty-first century.”
—Dr Enda McCaffrey, Reader in French Studies, Nottingham Trent University, UK

“Confronting the twentieth century of the Christian Era, a century of horrors and marvels, Scott Powers has assembled a diverse group of young scholars to explore literary representations of evil in the French language, beginning with Jean-Paul Sartre but global in its perspective. Works studied include French, Belgian, Algerian, and Guinean writers, ending with two major chapters on The Kindly Ones, the controversial prize-winning masterpiece of the Franco-American Jonathan Littell, the Holocaust being the prime test for the adequacy of verbal narrative. Urgently relevant for its moral scope, taking into account poststructuralist/postmodern theories, and quite readable, Evil in Contemporary French and Francophone Literature is a book of wisdom, courage, and lucid interpretation.”
—Edward K. Kaplan, Brandeis University


",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-01-01,"Deb N. Bandyopadhyay, Paul Brown and Christopher Conti","Landscape, Place and Culture: Linkages between Australia and India",Hardback,978-1-4438-2632-7,44.99,"This collection of essays takes an interdisciplinary approach to the ecological, social, economic and, in particular, the cultural dimensions of the Australia-India relationship. The essays provide many levels of focus on environment, place and culture. Some evoke appreciation of particular “places,” either in India or Australia. Many explore how literature has treated “landscape,” while some are comparative studies of cultural, historical and political development.

The essays arise from a particular gathering of scholars: The East India chapter of the Indian Association for the Study of Australia (IASA) held its inaugural international conference in Kolkata on 22–23 January 2009. Much of the work is comparative, exploring common Indian and Australian themes of colonial and postcolonial experience, implications of migration and diaspora, and shared language and literature. The work also explores shared environmental crisis, manifest in landscapes such as the Mouths of the Ganges and Australia’s Murray Darling Basin. Such comparisons indicate our shared experience of the “crisis” of ecological, social, economic and cultural sustainability.

As human future is colonized through environmental degradation, and determined by human migration and shared culture and values, our relationship to “place” is revitalized and reassessed. We seek simultaneously a reconciliation between humans and a realignment of the human-nature relationship. This is the most basic meaning of social and ecological sustainability.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-01-01,Isabel Balteiro,New Approaches to Specialized English Lexicology and Lexicography,Hardback,978-1-4438-2577-1,39.99,"This book gathers some of the latest approaches to Lexicology and Lexicography, which span from research on language for specific purposes to the study of lexical constellations and translation. It aims to present a multifaceted insight on current trends and, thus, includes papers that explore lexical processes in several areas, which comprise fields so diverse and riveting such as the language of cinema, fashion, tourism, and even comics. In addition, other papers examine the lexicon of well-established professional languages, such as the language of law, medicine and business, by revealing leading-edge perspectives on topics such as translation, word-formation, cultural clashes, or lexical selection. Key issues on learning and teaching are also considered, as part of a long tradition in the study of professional and academic languages that posits users’ learning needs as the cornerstone to the study of these languages. Therefore, this work proposes a strong emphasis on lexis and terminology, which are highlighted as the fundamental core of the definition and analysis of specialized languages. All in all, this publication intends, on the one hand, to embrace current trends in the study of specialized lexicon and terminology from the perspective of both Lexicology and Lexicography, and, on the other hand, to open new possibilities for future research.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-01-01,Graham H. Roberts,Other Voices: Three Centuries of Cultural Dialogue between Russia and Western Europe,Hardback,978-1-4438-2644-0,39.99,"This volume highlights the diversity and complexity of cultural dialogue between Russia and Western Europe since the end of the eighteenth century. Part one contains contributions which focus on how these cultures have viewed each other. There are chapters on the myth of Dumas père in Russia, the Russian travelogues of Henry Lansdell, Konstantin Leont’ev’s views on Great Britain and France, and the Russian Symbolists’ construction of a mythical European past. Authors in the second part compare the account of the year 1793 in novels by Hugo, Dickens and Dostoevsky, and the representation of female beauty by Bunin and Proust. Part three looks at ways in which these different cultures have influenced each other. Subjects include echoes of French Impressionism in Soviet painting, John McGahern’s rewriting of a Tolstoy play, and actress Renata Litvinova’s reworking of the story of Marguerite Gauthier from La Dame aux Camélias. The subject of part four is the actual physical encounters between Russia and Western Europe. There are contributions on Karamzin’s experiences in revolutionary Alsace, the impression on Russian national consciousness made by invading French soldiers in 1812, and the experiences of leading French émigrés in inter-war Paris.
","“Other Voices is a timely and welcome addition to the literature on a particularly interesting and important topic, namely cultural dialogue between Russia and Western Europe. The book is divided into four sections which, although not of equal length (the section ‘Comparisons’ contains just two chapters), complement each other perfectly. The contributions, from Russian, West European and North American scholars, are of a uniformly high standard. A number of them are outstanding. The broad range of topic—from Karamzin’s stay in Alsace to star of post-Soviet cinema Renata Litvinova—is especially impressive. Scholarly and informative, this volume will be of great interest to students and academics in Slavic studies, comparative literature, and cultural history.”
—Professor Rosalind Marsh, Professor of Russian Studies, Department of European Studies and Modern Languages, University of Bath, England
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-01-01,Ágnes Lehóczky,"Poetry, the Geometry of the Living Substance: Four Essays on Ágnes Nemes Nagy",Hardback,978-1-4438-2631-0,39.99,"Poetry, the Geometry of the Living Substance is the first serious and sustained study in English of one of the most important Hungarian writers of the 20th century, the modernist poet Ágnes Nemes Nagy. The book captures the dual nature of poetry, as a discourse of the infinite and the abyssal, through close readings of her  poetry and prose. These four essays draw parallels between Ágnes Nemes Nagy and other thinkers and theorists, such as Rilke, Celan, Heidegger, Derrida, Beckett and Blanchot. The monograph explores the poetic paradigm changes of Nemes Nagy in her whole work, including her collections of poems, essays on poetics and other posthumous miscellaneous fragments. Drawing indirect parallels between the fields of poetics and epistemology, the central focus of the book is the parergonal relation between language and the external world, the psyche and the objective environment, trauma and memory within the poetic space.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-01-01,Thapelo J. Otlogetswe,Text Variability Measures in Corpus Design for Setswana Lexicography,Hardback,978-1-4438-2637-2,44.99,"This book is about the design of a Setswana corpus for lexicography. While various corpora have been compiled and a variety of corpora-based research has been attempted in African languages, no effort has been made towards corpus design. Additionally, although extensive analysis of the Setswana language has been done by missionaries, grammarians and linguists since the 1800s, none of this research is in corpus design. Most research has been largely on the grammatical study of the language.

The recent corpora research in African languages in general has been on the use of corpora for the compilation of dictionaries and little of it is in corpus design. Pioneers of this kind of corpora research in African languages are Prinsloo and De Schryver (1999), De Schryver and Prisloo (2000 and 2001) and Gouws and Prisloo (2005).

Because of a lack of research in corpora design particularly in African languages, this book attempts to fill that gap, especially for Setswana. It is hoped that the finding of this study will inspire similar designs in other languages comparable to Setswana.

We explore corpus design by focusing on measuring a variety of text types for lexical richness at comparable token points.

The study explores the question of whether a corpus compiled for lexicography must comprise a variety of texts drawn from different text types or whether the quality of retrieved information for lexicographic purposes from a corpus comprising diverse text varieties could be equally extracted from a corpus with a single text type. This study therefore determines whether linguistic variability is crucial in corpus design for lexicography.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-01-01,Stefania Ciocia and Jesús A. González,The Invention of Illusions: International Perspectives on Paul Auster,Hardback,978-1-4438-2580-1,39.99,"The Invention of Illusions: International Perspectives on Paul Auster is a collection of essays on Auster’s recent novels and films. Following the example of Beyond the Red Notebook (1995), STEFANIA CIOCIA and JESÚS A. GONZÁLEZ have assembled an international group of scholars to provide a rich and insightful examination of Auster’s twenty-first-century output and draw connections between the author’s early and later production.
 
Adopting various (inter)disciplinary approaches, the contributors—Michelle Banks, Alan Bilton, Mark Brown, Stefania Ciocia, Anita Durkin, Ginevra Geraci, Jesús A. González, François Hugonnier, Ulrich Meurer, James Peacock, Paolo Simonetti, and Aliki Varvogli—contextualize Auster’s position not only in the American canon, but also on the global artistic scene. 

This volume invites us to take another look at Auster as an inventor of illusions in the most positive sense of the word: not as short-lived, deceitful gimmickry, but rather as an imaginative testing of possibilities, a wilful establishment of real bonds between people, even when these bonds are rooted in the world of storytelling.

The Invention of Illusions: International Perspectives on Paul Auster will be of interest to students and scholars of contemporary literature as well as the general reader willing to learn more about Paul Auster’s world.







","“The twelve essays in The Invention of Illusions provide a rich means for understanding Paul Auster’s twenty-first century fictions.  In doing so, these readings of novels, films, and other projects also add to our appreciation for the earlier works by this profound and complex author.  After reading The Invention of Illusions a reader will return to Auster’s work illumined, enthused to apply new insight to Moon Palace or Man in the Dark or The Inner Life of Martin Frost”
- Dennis Barone, author of Beyond the Red Notebook

“Keeping up with the rate of Paul Auster’s fertile literary production is a struggle. As Auster’s prolific writing trajectory continues to provoke international fascination and controversy, the closely argued essays in The Invention of Illusions provide excellent assistance to understanding the sweep of that arc. Forgery, romance, 9/11, race, gender, hermeneutics, cinema - embracing a range of topical cultural issues, Ciocia and González have assembled a first-class set of critical perspectives on the work of a seminal American author, a writer who demands our intellectual and human engagement. Risking a cliché, this collection is required reading for scholars of American fiction in the 21st century.”
— Professor Tim Woods, Professor in English and American Studies at the University of Aberystwyth





",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-02-01,Kiran Toor,"Coleridge’s Chrysopoetics: Alchemy, Authorship and Imagination",Hardback,978-1-4438-2656-3,39.99,"This book is an attempt to assess the creative potential of alchemy as a master trope in Coleridge’s conception of authorship and imagination. It begins with a challenge to the idea that an autonomous author is at the centre of a literary work. This idea is crucial to the reception of literature and to the way in which concepts of “originality” and “authorship” are typically understood. Against this marking out of an author as a singular, autonomous, and uniquely privileged “self,” it is posited that, for Coleridge, authorship occurs in a transformative or alchemical interspace between the desire for self-expression and the necessarily other-determined nature of creativity. Offering an alternative trajectory for the author, Coleridge elaborates an imaginative strategy in which the dislocation of the self from itself is the truest path to self-expression, and the author must become other in order to become more fully himself. Demonstrating a unique link between plagiarism and creativity, this book suggests that alchemy, better than any other system, accounts for Coleridge’s propensity for plagiarism and for an aesthetic of artifice. In an attempt to trace Coleridge’s familiarity with Hermetic and alchemical discourses throughout his life, it has been necessary to review works as varied as those of Plato, Marsilio Ficino, Ralph Cudworth, Jacob Boehme, Herman Boerhaave, and F. W. J. Schelling. It is then suggested how Coleridge appropriates alchemical terminology to his own aesthetic and imaginative ends. Unable to resolve the desire for aesthetic autonomy with the impossibility of asserting the self in one’s own voice, Coleridge “plays” in the hermeneutic interspace between selfhood and otherness, creativity and counterfeit, authority and artifice in order to arrive at an entirely unique strategy of alchemical self-exposition. Arriving at authorial selfhood through the odyssey of alterity, Coleridge’s “play”giarisms, in this view, do not violate the principles of originality, but redefine them. The book ends with a consideration of the necessarily negotiated fiction of all acts of imagination and authorship.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-02-01,Kenneth B. Newell,Conrad’s Destructive Element: The Metaphysical World-View Unifying Lord Jim,Hardback,978-1-4438-2667-9,34.99,"This book presents a new interpretation of Joseph Conrad’s novel Lord Jim based on readings from not only its published text but also its principal manuscript text. Extensive use of the manuscript text has not been a feature of any other work on Lord Jim, and such use helps bring into focus a fixed pattern of meaning and an implicit unity that Conrad said the novel has. This result controverts not only postmodern critics, who say that the novel lacks any fixed pattern of meaning, but almost all critics since its publication, who have said that it lacks unity—specifically, that it separates into two halves, the Patna half and the Patusan half. However, with the help of the manuscript text, a detailed interpretation extending over the whole of Lord Jim shows it to be a unified whole. As Conrad wrote to his publisher four days after completing the novel, it is “the development of one situation, only one really from beginning to end.”

Most recent Lord Jim criticism discusses the novel from a standpoint critical of the author and in political or epistemological terms, whereas the present book discusses it from a standpoint sympathetic to the author and in symbolic and metaphysical terms. The metaphysical question that pervades the novel and helps unify it is whether the “destructive element” that is the “spirit” of the Universe has intention—and, beyond that, malevolent intention—toward any particular individual or is, instead, indiscriminate, impartial, and indifferent. Depending (as a corollary) on the answer to that question is the degree to which the particular individual can be judged responsible for what he does or does not do. Variant responses to the question or its corollary are provided not only by several characters and voices in Lord Jim but also by a letter of Conrad’s and by excerpts from works by Arthur Schopenhauer, Thomas Hardy, James Thomson (“B. V.”), and John Stuart Mill.

The present book is written in a lay vocabulary free of the diction of postmodern theory and so would be understandable to non-academic as well as academic readers. It is intended for anyone interested in gaining a coherent nonpolitical understanding of Lord Jim.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-02-01,Lance Weldy,Crossing Textual Boundaries in International Children’s Literature,Hardback,978-1-4438-2679-2,54.99,"“As the first part of the title indicates, my interest in looking at intertextuality and transformation still maintains a prominent place throughout this book as well. If we believe that ‘no text is an island,’ then we will understand that the relationships between and within texts across the years become a fascinating place for academic inquiry. I included the word ‘boundaries’ into the title because we never get tired of voicing our opinions about texts which traverse relegated boundaries, such as genre or medium. Not only am I interested in discussing what these changes across boundaries mean socially, historically, and culturally, but also what they mean geographically, which accounts for the second part of my title.

“I am very excited that this book will be placing even more emphasis on children’s literature in an international scene than my first book did, in the sense that I have added more scholars on an international level. I hesitate to list the nationalities of all of the contributors here because quite a few have themselves crossed international boundaries in different ways, by either studying abroad or finding permanent residency in foreign countries. Nevertheless, the writers have lived extensively in or identify as being from Australia, Canada, England, Finland, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, the United States of America, and Wales.”
—Introduction
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-02-01,Kathleen Dubs and Janka Kaščáková,Does It Really Mean That? Interpreting the Literary Ambiguous,Hardback,978-1-4438-2661-7,39.99,"However disconnected the essays in the volume might appear to be at first glance, the unifying factor is the very notion of ambiguity—which is one of the essential features of the postmodern age: how it can be defined as opposed to what it means or is, where it can be found, to what purposes it can be put, including questions of whether it is a positive or negative factor. But this, of course, is not a new phenomenon. Writers have always depended on equivocation, multiplicity of meaning, uncertainty of meaning—deliberate mystification one might say. Language itself is the base of ambiguity not only in literature but in everyday public discourse. Thus the papers in the volume should appeal not only to scholars  working in the fields of modern or postmodern literature, but those who see the importance of ambiguity in the earlier texts, and perhaps their influences in later writing. Finally the essays included here not only provide specific analyses and proposed solutions for specific works or authors they also open the reader to other appearances of ambiguity, often not simply in literature or critical theory, but in the kinds of social issues the literary works deals with.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-02-01,Olga Karpova,English Author Dictionaries (the XVIth – the XXIst cc.),Hardback,978-1-4438-2659-4,39.99,"This book is devoted to the description of typical trends in development, formation and the present state of English Author Lexicography, the roots of which go back to concordances to the Bible and glossaries of the complete works of Chaucer (xvi c.). Part I, “Linguistic Dictionaries to English Writers,” presents lexicographic analysis of old and new concordances, indices, glossaries and lexicons of famous English writers with special reference to Chaucer, Milton, Shakespeare, and Dickens. It presents a modern scene of author glossaries for unfamiliar words, terms and other groups of writers’ vocabulary (e.g. Shakespeare’s insults and his erotic language). The reader is offered a detailed review of author concordances, glossaries and lexicons on the Internet, along with criticism of printed dictionaries. Part II, “Encyclopedic Reference Works to English Writers,” deals with English author encyclopedic reference books, i.e. encyclopedias, guides and companions; dictionaries of characters and place names; quotations and proverbs, and Internet encyclopedic resources. The book also provides a comprehensive list of references on author lexicography and an Index of Dictionaries to the English Writers (xvi–xxi cc.), including 300 titles of linguistic and encyclopedic dictionaries, which is a reliable user guide in the world of English author lexicography.


","“The book ”English Author Dictionaries (the XVIth- the XXIst cc.) by Olga Karpova is due to see print in some weeks it is sure to become a bestseller among the manuals on lexicography. 

The book is written in plain English, the ideas are rendered logically, the illustrations are numerous and ample, but the greatest merit of the book is that the scholar managed to make it clear to the reader how English author dictionaries covered the way from linguistic dictionaries to outstanding English writers up .o encyclopaedic reference books (indexes, calendars and other references) whose compilation required all the experience of national English lexicography.”

F.I. Kartashkova 
Ivanovo State University


",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-02-01,Ioana Raluca Larco and Fabiana Cecchini,"Italian Women and Autobiography: Ideology, Discourse and Identity in Female Life Narratives from Fascism to the Present",Hardback,978-1-4438-2655-6,34.99,"The essays included in this collection examine issues such as identity and ideology which are at play in the female autobiography practice, along with the problematicity that these trigger in terms of self-representation and traditional formal boundaries. The women writers analyzed here through mainly historical, literary, feminist and psychoanalytic lenses cover a long period in the history of Italy, spanning from the Fascist era to our time. In an attempt to organize and connect these texts which are chronologically far apart, we have divided our contributions into two main parts. The first, “Shapes of Ideology,” includes authors interacting primarily with political ideology in a way that eventually entails the challenge of the official “technologies of gender” (De Lauretis, 1987) and implicitly, a reflection on the gendered identity. In the second part, “Reconsidering ideology, negotiating autobiography,” while the political ideology is not completely excluded, it becomes however something more internalized and relevant to the writers’ quest for identity. Such process bears consequences with respect to the canon of autobiography, as authors experiment with new forms of autobiographical narratives and readers become more and more an integral component of this personal endeavor.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-02-01,Robert D. Morritt,Lost in the Antebellum,Hardback,978-1-4438-2685-3,39.99,"This volume is a compendium of the thoughts and works of authors, and of prose and scientific thought prior to the American Civil War.

Featured are Maury the oceanographer; the author William Gilmore Simms, of whom Edgar Allen Poe remarked was the best American novelist in recent decades; the Hutchinson Family Singers whose concert tours in the USA and Britain did much to serve the cause of emancipation; the “real” story of Davy Crockett, the American frontiersman who died with Jim Bowie at the Alamo, which is more interesting than the old fictional accounts of his life; and “Six Days in the Moon,” a tale of an event that allegedly occurred in June 1844, by “an Aerio-Nautical Man” who has just returned from the Moon. Also featured are contemporary composers, explorers, poets and filibusters.

This book is a concise view of pre-Civil War America.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-02-01,Jennifer Sattaur,Perceptions of Childhood in the Victorian Fin-de-Siècle,Hardback,978-1-4438-2688-4,34.99,"This book reads Victorian fin de siècle literature through the medium of perceptions of childhood. It examines the connection between ‘monstrous’ and idealistic symbolic representations of childhood represented by key cultural discourses of the Victorian fin-de-siècle. Specifically, anxieties about change are linked closely to anxieties about childhood, procreation, and maturation in a range of Children’s and Adults’ texts from the 1860s to the 1890s. The book demonstrates the ways in which the emergent social movements which have come to define and represent change in the fin-de-siècle period were inherently concerned with the ideas of childhood and parenthood and the ways in which they represented both the promise and the threat of the future. The texts are arranged by theme, and grouped according to whether they are seen primarily as intended for children, or for adults. In texts intended for adult readers, images of childhood are more covert and more metaphorical than those texts aimed at child readers, in which overt pedagogical concerns are often brought to bear. Nothing embodies the idea of the future more than the children who stand as a bridge between ‘now’ and ‘then.’ This book analyses the connections between Victorian perceptions of childhood and the anxieties and upheavals of the Victorian Fin-de-Siècle.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-02-01,Elena Tarasheva,Repetitions of Word Forms in Texts: An Approach to Establishing Text Structure,Hardback,978-1-4438-2662-4,34.99,"This book explores how experienced authors repeat word forms in three different genres: research articles, short stories and political speeches. Methods from corpus linguistics are used to elicit all the repeated word forms in each text and then the material is analysed to establish the nature of the repetitions. The analysis seeks answers to the questions: in what naming complexes are the words repeated; is the same concept evoked; is the referential type repeated; are there metaphoric, pragmatic or other shifts in the meaning of the word? Taxonomy of repetition types is evolved which leads to conclusions about the role of repetition in creating coherent texts.

The book provides evidence that repetitions amount to about 60% of the words in a text and they form groups of chains typical for each genre. Thus the way words are repeated serves to create the skeleton of a genre. Comparisons show that in texts written by inexperienced authors the repetitions are considerably fewer than in the work of the experienced ones. The study also reveals which types of repetition decrease the quality of the text.

Specific applications of the theory are suggested for assessing the quality of a text, creating short summaries and building good texts in the respective genres.

The study is placed within the framework of discourse studies of lexical repetitions and presents a brief non-technical description of the linguistic field. Inasmuch as the issue of how words relate to objects in reality is one of the criteria for assessing the repetitions, an overview is given and the analysis elicits specific reference types.


","""The book is full of attention-grabbing insights. The idea of categorising lexical chains is most interesting, but I also value the interplay between corpus linguistic and discourse analytical approaches. Actually, some details of the analysis are arguable but this is an almost inevitable side-effect of the interplay between the two approaches.""
—Michael Hoey, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Internationalisation, The University of Liverpool



",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-02-01,Patricia ‘Iolana and Samuel Tongue,"Testing the Boundaries: Self, Faith, Interpretation and Changing Trends in Religious Studies",Hardback,978-1-4438-2669-3,39.99,"As individuals, we have the ability (although not always the opportunity) to create our own paradigmatic image of the Divine; moreover, as a society we can alter, transform, or even replace those paradigms. Progressive movements exist in nearly every faith tradition—moving towards the future of our world and our belief systems; these movements include both radical and reformist thinkers, and they are challenging the lenses that we employ to image, worship, connect with and understand the Divine.

With so many possible interpretations and paradigms competing for social acceptance and support, the choice must be made carefully and wisely, bearing in mind the inevitability of change whilst remaining open to pluralities of thought and practice. This is especially important when it comes to the future of theology and religious studies—in particular to the relations between the various global faith traditions.  

In Testing the Boundaries, ten scholars explore the praxis of faith including our image of Self in relation to the Divine, our relation to the religious Other, our struggle for religious identity in new locales, the limits of language and translations in sacred texts, our responsibility to nature, our nomadic and transitory tendencies, traditions in the academy, and our interreligious relationships. They test the boundaries of traditional theology and their interdisciplinary fields—dancing in the liminal space where possibilities gather.
","“Deftly joined together by the editors, these highly accomplished essays collectively reflect on the re-imagining of religious/post-religious structures in a multicultural world. Each essay fully deserves to be consulted by specialists in its own disciplinary and cultural terrain(s).  As a whole, the book augurs extremely well for the futures of the mobile and versatile interdisciplinary spaces that it begins to map.”
—Professor Yvonne Sherwood, Professor of Bible, Religion and Culture, Department of Theology and Religious Studies, School of Critical Studies, University of Glasgow

“This is a remarkable collection of essays by a community of younger scholars who here give us hope for the future at a time of bleak outlook for the study of the humanity. Written with assurance and sound good learning, they cross many boundaries of disciplines, as well as faiths and cultures. They have the virtue of not being afraid of some of the categories that impose themselves on more established writers, combining good scholarship with imagination and a willingness to think outside boundaries without losing the discipline that boundaries establish and require. They will be of interest to a wide number of people within the fields of religion, women’s studies, cultural studies and more. I am deeply impressed.”
—Professor David Jasper, FRSE, University of Glasgow and Renmin University of China
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-03-01,Rédouane Abouddahab and Josiane Paccaud-Huguet,"Fiction, Crime, and the Feminine",Hardback,978-1-4438-2710-2,39.99,"The form of art called fiction has always been the privileged framework providing the perfect alibi for facing, framing, and containing the Other’s desire and the strange libido attached to violence: in other words, there is an ambivalent dimension inherent in the scenarios and fantasies we enjoy by proxy. Are not the fairy tales of our childhood full of images of death and violence, whose fascinating presence is paradoxically meant to make us feel all the more safely tucked up in bed? After all, the wolf or the Little Red Riding Hood, the monstrous killer or the unfortunate victim are but fictitious characters, mere shifting positions: they are “not me”—therefore, thanks to the willing suspension of disbelief process, any reading “I” may shift into their speech or thoughts on the fictional screen, a stage both for projection of and protection from such forbidden enjoyments.

Crime fiction has also for a long time been the genre for such containment. Ever since Victorian “craniology,” criminal violence has remained as resistant as ever to scientific measurement—even to the more recent techniques of investigation of the brain. Where women are concerned they were first and mostly fascinating victims but they also nowadays feature in the role of the criminals, adding to the first fascination the mystery of a woman’s desire beyond the pale of societal expectations. Indeed, more and more pieces of crime fiction nowadays refuse to grant the simple pleasures of old: what if, for example, the text refuses to comply to the “whodunnit” convention? What about those stories that instead of closure, will diffuse a mist, a sense of unrest by their emphasis on the inexplicable lure of violence? In other words, gone are the days of the satisfaction granted by traditional closure and return to a solidly structured society, made safe again by the disposal of the scene of violence.

But writing as such is also to be taken into consideration, and what forcefully determines the writing is not only the historical trauma (whose active presence in the fiction cannot be denied), but especially some unresolved traumatic event or exclusion that makes one write and, through the writing, quest bliss, but that also makes one renounce the attachment to the inevitably lost bliss.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-03-01,Dolores Fernández Martínez,Introducing Discourse Analysis in Class,Hardback,978-1-4438-2717-1,34.99,"Introducing Discourse Analysis in Class is a practical introduction to discourse analysis for undergraduates in linguistics degrees or any reader who is interested in how texts function.

Introducing Discourse Analysis in Class

·     gives a balanced insight into basic theoretical concepts within discourse analysis;
·     offers a set of tools for analysing texts, especially cohesive devices;
·     contains numerous practical activities;
·     provides a wide variety of authentic texts for analysis.

Introducing Discourse Analysis in Class encourages the use of discourse analysis as an instrument to develop students’ critical thinking skills.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-03-01,Kenneth B. Newell,New Conservative Explications: Reasoning with some Classic English Poems,Hardback,978-1-4438-2715-7,34.99,"Because of the triumph of postmodern studies, explication of classic poems by great dead white male English poets of preceding centuries has greatly declined in the last several decades, even though many of the poems may still be puzzling to interested readers, young and old. This book is addressed to both audiences in the hope that new explications of twelve classic poems (or sections of these poems) by Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Shelley, Tennyson, Browning, Arnold, Hardy, Yeats, and Auden may help sustain interest in the poems.

Although the explication procedure is now unpopular in theory and held to be as subjective as interpretation, the procedure is based on the experience that, if a puzzling poem is reasoned with, it can often be found to make sense on a basic level of understanding—a sense perhaps complex, ambiguous, or ambivalent but not self-contradictory.

In essence, then, this is a book of poetry explications having esthetic aims but written in an era of unesthetic political and cultural studies. The term conservative in the title refers to explicatory rather than political conservatism as well as to critical and literary conservation—i.e., to conserving the practice of explication whether upon literary works old or new, and so also conserving esthetic interest in the old works themselves. The book also attempts to show that new conservative explications are still possible and can be still useful—even in the postmodern era and even on classic poems already much explicated—and that therefore explication still has much to do in the work of literary studies in the postmodern era.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-03-01,Robert D. Morritt,Olde New Mexico,Hardback,978-1-4438-2709-6,34.99,"This book affords the reader an in-depth history of New Mexico, from the earliest Paleographical era. It covers the early Pueblo societies, the Spanish incursions and development of the area. Also contained herein are accounts of the indigenous people and their history and fortitude during various incursions, at first by Spanish conquistadors, and later by early American “Frontier” soldiers.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-03-01,"Jessica L. Wilkinson, Eric Parisot and David McInnis",Refashioning Myth: Poetic Transformations and Metamorphoses,Hardback,978-1-4438-2722-5,44.99,"Robert Graves tells us that “the poet’s first enrichment is a knowledge and understanding of myths.” Certainly, as this collection of essays, poems and visual images affirms, mythology has been a field richly mined by poets and artists from antiquity through to the present day. It is testament to both the enduring power of myth, as well as the adaptability of its form, that poets and writers continually turn to the mythic for both inspiration and guidance. This volume presents a diverse collection of analytical and creative works by scholars, poets and visual artists, in response to their varied explorations of the prolific dialogue that exists between myth and poetry.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-04-01,Amy Tak-yee Lai ,"Asian English Writers of Chinese Origin: Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong",Paperback,978-1-4438-2848-2,24.99,"This is the first book to bring together nine Asian English writers of Chinese descent from Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong: Catherine Lim, Christine Lim, Ee Tiang Hong, Kee Thuan Chye, Lee Kok Liang, Shirley Lim, Timothy Mo, Xu Xi and Agnes Lam. It discusses how the withdrawal of colonial power and the implementation of nation-building policies impact race/ethnicity, class and language in these former British colonies. The last chapters take a special look at postcolonialism and gender politics, and explore how Chinese women, at home or abroad, defy the Orientalist gaze and the native patriarchy.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-04-01,Peter Cochran,Byron’s Religions,Hardback,978-1-4438-2849-9,44.99,"Byron’s Religions is the most comprehensive study yet of the poet’s deep, diverse and eclectic attitude to religion. The articles, by several well-known and distinguished scholars, cover many of his poems and plays, taking in Anglicanism, Catholicism, Blasphemy, Calvinism, Gnosticism, Islam, and Zoroastrianism. The tentative conclusion is that Byron was never the atheist which the cliché has him to be, but a man whose profound need for a faith clashed always with an equally profound scepticism.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-04-01,Amy Tak-yee Lai,"Chinese Women Writers in Diaspora: Jung Chang, Xinran, Hong Ying, Anchee Min, Adeline Yen Mah",Paperback,978-1-4438-2847-5,19.99,"The mention of Chinese women writers in diaspora immediately brings to mind Jung Chang (b. 1952) and her Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China (1991), which won the 1992 NCR book award and the 1993 British Book of the Year Award, and got officially banned in China. Despite its popular reception and crucial acclaim, Chang’s work has invited a lot of attacks. Among the most common is the contention that it merely focuses on the experience of the privileged and does not tell the reader what other memoirs have not already revealed. 

Chinese Women Writers in Diaspora is a pioneering study that focuses on four Chinese women writers currently living in the United States and England, whose works have been popularly received—and are in many cases, highly controversial—but have received little scholarly attention: Xinran (b. 1958), Hong Ying (b. 1962), Anchee Min (b. 1957), and Adeline Yen Mah (b. 1937). The chapters illuminate how Xinran constructs her identity and her fellow Chinese women in dialectics of self and other; how Hong Ying evokes cycles of return that blend Western and Chinese philosophical concepts; how Min employs images of theatre and theatrical conventions to depict the entrapment and transgression of her protagonists; and how Mah transliterates and appropriates both Western and Chinese fairy tale motifs to fashion her Chinese feminist utopia. While Jung Chang’s memoir seems confining, it has aroused interest in the genre of Chinese female autobiography, and Chinese women writers who live and write between cultures.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-04-01,Marian F. Sia and Santiago Sia,From Question to Quest: Literary-Philosophical Enquiries into the Challenges of Life,Paperback,978-1-4438-2836-9,19.99,"In facing up to life and its challenges, questions inevitably arise. Different situations provoke specific questions—mostly trivial but frequently fundamental—always seeking some kind of answer. While the transition from question to quest is a rather natural one for human beings and the need for answers is a serious human demand, the quest itself is significant, precisely because it is a human task.

This book offers a number of literary-philosophical enquiries into these challenges of life. But it is the one set of quests—stimulated, deepened and widened by literature and philosophy as well as developed in a literary and philosophical way. Among the topics covered are: the search for meaning in life, the quest for wisdom, the aim of moral striving, the need for community life, the importance of relationships, the challenge of suffering, the desire for deliverance, and the longing for immortality.

","“This is truly a work of imaginative thinking. It confronts the great questions in a world in which we are all too often content with avoiding them in our obsession with particularity. It listens attentively to the great masters of philosophy and literature which have gone before, but knows that we can never truly think until we have summoned the courage to think for ourselves ... I really enjoyed reading this book!”
—Prof David Jasper, Professor of Literature and Theology, University of Glasgow; Changyang Chair Professor, Renmin University of China

“This book is a perfect illustration of Whitehead’s famous metaphor of the flight of an aeroplane. The authors start from the ground of solid observation of, and literary insights into, the challenges of everyday life; then they take a flight into the thin air of speculative thinking, using the resources of philosophy. And then, again, they land for a renewed and fresh interpretation of thorny issues, including suffering, death and immortality. An inspiring quest and a splendid work!”
—Prof Jan Van der Veken, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium

",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-04-01,Maeve Tynan,Postcolonial Odysseys: Derek Walcott’s Voyages of Homecoming,Hardback,978-1-4438-2842-0,39.99,"Postcolonial Odysseys: Derek Walcott’s Voyages of Homecoming highlights the importance of the trope of voyaging in Derek Walcott’s poetics, primarily as it pertains to the poet’s engagement with classical verse. Focusing specifically on the engagement with Homeric myth, and The Odyssey in particular, it articulates the manner in which Walcott’s postcolonial reconfigurations of epic verse both highlights the endurance of the classics as well as demonstrating how cultural practices can remake and transform ancient texts. Concomitant with the poet’s presentation of self as divided, this study traces opposing forces in operation within this trope: a centrifugal force that corresponds to the outward journey away from his island home in search of greater publishing opportunities and broader readerships, and a centripetal force corresponding to the return journey, or homecoming. The enabling potential of Greek myth is marked by a similar to-ing and fro-ing in Walcott’s verse as he repeatedly engages with, and simultaneously disavows, Homeric configurations. Insisting on the reciprocal nature of poetic appropriation, the act of rewriting also signalling new ways of rereading, Walcott’s appropriations effectively enter into a critical dialogue with Homeric verse. 

Further depth to Walcott’s rewriting of Homer is provided by an analysis of the mediating influence of Euro-American modernism. Through an examination of the postcolonial aftermath of modernism, it challenges the perceived exclusivity of each, illustrating this premise through case studies of Walcott’s relation to both Romare Bearden and James Joyce. This study is therefore interdisciplinary and inter-artistic in nature, transgressing the borderline between poetry and prose, and that of literary and artistic disciplines. Highlighting the permeability of such boundaries, it investigates the journey of Odysseus, as prototypical wanderer, through time and space, from oral to print culture, from word to image.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-04-01,Nicholas Brownlees,The Language of Periodical News in Seventeenth-Century England,Hardback,978-1-4438-2855-0,39.99,"This volume follows the beginnings and development of seventeenth-century English periodical print news and sees how contemporary news writers shaped their news discourse over the decades. Interdisciplinary in its approach, the volume analyses the different strategies employed by news writers of the day as they determined how best to present and write up both foreign and domestic events for a news-obsessed English readership.

In his examination of the language used in corantos, newsbooks and gazettes—the first forms of periodical news in the English press—Nicholas Brownlees provides innovative analyses regarding a rich variety of topics including: the role of translation in early periodical news; the language of hard news in corantos and news pamphlets; forms and styles of epistolary news; fluctuating editorial strategies used to address and involve the reader; text structure and prototypical headlines; English news discourse within a wider European news context; the language of propaganda in the English Civil War; periodicity and the reporting of the Tuscan crisis in 1653; the language of ‘Advertisements’ in The London Gazette; the changing fortunes and semantics of News, Intelligence and Advice.

In its focus on how news writers worked and experimented with seventeenth-century English language structures and discourse conventions to forge a style of news rhetoric that could inform, persuade and even entertain, this volume is essential reading for all historians, news analysts and historical linguists working in the early modern period.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-04-01,Andrew Mangham ,The Poetry of Menotti Lerro,Hardback,978-1-4438-2844-4,29.99,"Menotti Lerro is one of the most interesting poets of modern-day Europe. Born in a small village just outside of Salerno, Southern Italy, in 1980, he has produced an impressive range of publications, including essays, poetry, fiction, autobiography, and drama. His is a poetry concerned with powerful imagery, the physicality and vulnerability of the body, the meaning of objects, the interpretation of memories, and the philosophical importance of identity. For the first time, the rich colours and textures of Lerro’s verse are available in English. This volume presents the power of the poet’s voice in all its aching magnificence and demonstrates how it represents the sounds and rhythms of a new generation.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-04-01,Geetha Ganapathy-Doré,The Postcolonial Indian Novel in English ,Hardback,978-1-4438-2723-2,39.99,"Indian writers of English such as G. V. Desani, Salman Rushdie, Amit Chaudhuri, Amitav Ghosh, Vikram Seth, Allan Sealy, Shashi Tharoor, Arundhati Roy, Vikram Chandra and Jhumpa Lahiri have taken the potentialities of the novel form to new heights. Against the background of the genre’s macro-history, this study attempts to explain the stunning vitality, colourful diversity, and the outstanding but sometimes controversial success of postcolonial Indian novels in the light of ongoing debates in postcolonial studies. It analyses the warp and woof of the novelistic text through a cross-sectional scrutiny of the issues of democracy, the poetics of space, the times of empire, nation and globalization, self-writing in the auto/meta/docu-fictional modes, the musical, pictorial, cinematic and culinary intertextualities that run through this hyperpalimpsestic practice and the politics of gender, caste and language that gives it an inimitable stamp. This concise and readable survey gives us intimations of a truly world literature as imagined by Francophone writers because the postcolonial Indian novel is a concrete illustration of how “language liberated from its exclusive pact with the nation can enter into a dialogue with a vast polyphonic ensemble.”
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-05-01,Catriona McAra and David Calvin,Anti-Tales: The Uses of Disenchantment,Hardback,978-1-4438-2869-7,44.99,"The anti-(fairy) tale has long existed in the shadow of the traditional fairy tale as its flipside or evil twin. According to André Jolles in Einfache Formen (1930), such Antimärchen are contemporaneous with some of the earliest known oral variants of familiar tales. While fairy tales are generally characterised by a “spirit of optimism” (Tolkien) the anti-tale offers us no such assurances; for every “happily ever after,” there is a dissenting “they all died horribly.” The anti-tale is, however, rarely an outright opposition to the traditional form itself. Inasmuch as the anti-hero is not a villain, but may possess attributes of the hero, the anti-tale appropriates aspects of the fairy tale form, (and its equivalent genres) and re-imagines, subverts, inverts, deconstructs or satirises elements of these to present an alternate narrative interpretation, outcome or morality. In this collection, Little Red Riding Hood retaliates against the wolf, Cinderella’s stepmother provides her own account of events, and “Snow White” evolves into a postmodern vampire tale. The familiar becomes unfamiliar, revealing the underlying structures, dynamics, fractures and contradictions within the borrowed tales.

Over the last half century, this dissident tradition has become increasingly popular, inspiring numerous writers, artists, musicians and filmmakers. Although anti-tales abound in contemporary art and popular culture, the term has been used sporadically in scholarship without being developed or defined. While it is clear that the aesthetics of postmodernism have provided fertile creative grounds for this tradition, the anti-tale is not just a postmodern phenomenon; rather, the “postmodern fairy tale” is only part of the picture. Broadly interdisciplinary in scope, this collection of twenty-two essays and artwork explores various manifestations of the anti-tale, from the ancient to the modern including romanticism, realism and surrealism along the way.

","“Books like Anti-Tales are important, taking a cold look at the complex, often dark affect at fairy tales and broadening the contemporary lens onto theories about their appearances in art, literature, film. The idea of anti-tale has been so important to me, and I’m delighted to see this volume enter the conversation and whisper its fragments of spells. The fairy tale is real; long live the anti-fairy-tale.”
—Kate Bernheimer, author of The Complete Tales of Lucy Gold and editor of My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me: Forty New Fairy Tales

“This valuable collection of essays, oriented around the idea of the ‘anti-tale,’ offers a much needed formal as well as analytic focus on the dark side of the fairy-tale genre.”
—Professor Aidan Day, University of Dundee

“The essays in this collection discuss an abundance of anti-tales from literature, film and art. Retellings, reimaginings and new tales from across centuries and around the world are all explored in relation to the critical term ‘anti-tale,’ uncovering new paths through the forest. Where the fairy tale leaves us with answers the anti-tale leaves us with questions and Anti-Tales: The Uses of Disenchantment is a valuable text for scholars, readers and writers who wish to engage with this wonderfully subversive form.”
—Claire Massey, Editor of New Fairy Tales

",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-05-01,Marianna D’Ezio,"Claudine Alexandrine Guérin de Tencin, The History of the Count de Comminge, translated by Charlotte Lennox
",Paperback,978-1-4438-2868-0,29.99,"In 1756 Charlotte Lennox, already a celebrated novelist—she had just published her most renowned work, The Female Quixote, a year before—translated from the original French one of the most successful novels written by Madame Claudine Gérin, the marquise de Tencin, Mémoires du comte de Comminge (1735). At the time, Madame de Tencin was a controversial public figure, an intellectual woman and one of the most distinguished salonnières in eighteenth-century France. Although Tencin’s name as the authoress of the novel was kept secret until after her death, notwithstanding the outstanding success of her Mémoires, Charlotte Lennox knew that the novel had been penned by a woman and decided to translate it and later serialize it in her feminist magazine The Lady’s Museum, a periodical wholly devoted to women’s literary and cultural education. Lennox’s translation of Tencin’s short novel is here reprinted for the first time after two centuries with critical notes and an introduction, in an edition that takes into account a close comparison between Lennox’s translation and Madame de Tencin’s original French version, and analyses all the variations and addenda that appeared in Lennox’s own version of The History of the Count de Comminge.


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-05-01,Rıza Öztürk,Evolutionary Aesthetics of Human Ethics in Hardy’s Tragic Narratives,Hardback,978-1-4438-2897-0,34.99,"Treatment of Hardy’s tragic narratives under the objective lens of evolutionary literary theory has led to three basic findings: First, within the scope of the analysis of the five major tragic narratives, representation of Hardy’s evolutionary aesthetics of human ethics, in terms of altruistic sympathy and compassion, shows that adapted parental investment in children indicates the reason why women submit to pain and suffering more than the men do. The costly investment of women in maternal behaviour leads to submission in many cases, but in return they gain better fitness for survival and reproduction than men. This is implicitly highlighted as a force of superiority in the tragedies studied, as the male characters often invest in heroic deeds over their children. Second, that which has for many years been identified as pessimism in Hardy’s tragic narratives is in fact a surface cognitive layer, under which is an implicit teaching of evolutionary aesthetics of human ethics, which guides to a true fitness of human life. Third, sympathy and particularly compassion are not only human emotions but also adapted cognitive virtues that centre on ethical teaching.

Thus, an integrated model of science and humanities for art and literary analysis is required to address not only those of English language and literature departments, but also those aligned to the idea of integrating the two methods. A scientific and objective view of human life is in opposition to postmodern and structuralist approaches, which have generally been considered as the centre of interest during the latter half of the 20th century.
","“Professor Rıza Öztürk’s new book, Evolutionary Aesthetics of Human Ethics in Hardy’s Tragic Narratives, represents the cutting-edge thinking about narratives in terms of evolutionary science. The book reflects the best knowledge in this area (e.g., Paul Ekman, Leda Cosmides and John Tooby) as well as the best thinking on literary Darwinism (e.g., Joseph Carroll). In a well-written and well-organized book, Öztürk carefully delineates how aesthetics interacts with chance and selection in the work of Thomas Hardy, who embodies tragic figures with altruistic behavior to render reader response. Öztürk skillfully outlines how (evolved) emotions influence intention, attention, and consciousness; emotions are adapted functions designed to deliver aesthetic response (which means that art is not necessarily a human byproduct but is a necessary, evolved need). Stories (in both the telling and listening) are cognitive adaptations driven by aesthetics (and with significance for ordinary life). From aesthetics come ethics. Aesthetics is part of the process of selection so that triggered behaviors are put into play; such behaviors indicate fitness. Furthermore, Öztürk demonstrates, Hardy epitomizes how total ecological forces tap into basic (adapted) human emotions: Hardy’s natural world embodies evolutionary fitness to evince adapted behaviors in society and culture.  For Hardy, nature is a complex web of real and cognitive inter-weavings: that is, selection (competition to attract a sexual partner) operates on (and within) individuals.  Öztürk concludes that we find two categories of characters in Hardy: outsiders whose selfishness limits control; those who strive for fitness (even if failure is inevitable).  While there is suffering in Hardy’s novels, such pain and grief exist to illustrate altruistic fitness – sympathy and compassion.  Thomas Hardy does not create this suffering (it is in nature – or in society), which serves to reveal (or not) an individual’s adaptability (or not).  Thus, Öztürk explains, Hardy helps make readers sympathetic to characters; he is hopeful regarding his characters and demonstrates how to be humane in extraordinarily difficult circumstances.  Because we feel sympathy and compassion we are not, then, vulnerable but active, and such an emotional state prepares readers for survival (and reproduction).  For Hardy, the facts of life help us develop (seen through Öztürk’s evolutionary approach) ethical sensibilities.  As Joseph Carroll has remarked, the linguistic and textual poststructuralist readings of the 1970s and 1980s have yielded, ultimately, unsatisfactory results.  Now, along with names such as Carroll’s, Rıza Öztürk will rank among the top scholars of this important, robust meeting of the sciences and humanities.”
—Gregory F. Tague, PhD, Professor of English, St. Francis College, New York, USA; Author of Character and Consciousness (2005) and Ethos and Behavior (2008)
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-05-01,William Gray,"Fantasy, Art and Life: Essays on George MacDonald, Robert Louis Stevenson and Other Fantasy Writers",Hardback,978-1-4438-2899-4,34.99,"In part a sequel to his earlier Death and Fantasy, William Gray’s Fantasy, Art and Life: Essays on George MacDonald, Robert Louis Stevenson and Other Fantasy Writers examines the ways in which “Life” in its various senses is affirmed, explored and enhanced through the work of the creative imagination, especially in fantasy literature. The discussion includes a range of fantasy writers, but focuses chiefly on two writers of the Victorian period, George MacDonald and Robert Louis Stevenson, whose Scottish (and particularly Calvinist) backgrounds deeply affected their engagement with what MacDonald called “The Fantastic Imagination.”


","“This impressive book is in part a companion-piece to the author’s earlier Death and Fantasy, after finishing which he felt ‘almost a compulsion to produce a sequel.’ Originally a series of separately-published essays, lectures and book-reviews, the various chapters of the book together consider how far fantasy can draw us back towards life rather than away from it. Gray takes as his main authors the Victorian Scottish writers of fantasy George MacDonald and Robert Louis Stevenson, while referring also to C.S. Lewis, Philip Pullman and Neil Gaiman. MacDonald’s belief in the power of fantasy to heal the spirit, his unsentimental ideal of the childlike in life and literature, and his continuing sense of the need to relate the experience of fantasy to the real world, are traced in such works as his Adela Cathcart, ‘The Golden Key’ and Lilith; while Stevenson’s The Wrecker, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and his more macabre short stories serve to explore the mixture of romanticism and realism in his work, and his strong sense of the immediate reality of evil. Throughout, Gray’s knowledge of philosophy, theology and literary theory deepen and contextualise his arguments. This is a book to savour and reread, by the author of several noted recent studies of fantasy literature.”
—Colin Manlove, Formerly Reader at Edinburgh University; Author of Modern Fantasy (1975), The Impulse of Fantasy Literature (1982), Christian Fantasy (1992), Scottish Fantasy Literature (1999) and Alice to Harry Potter: Children’s Fantasy in England (2003)


",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-05-01,Pádraic Whyte,Irish Childhoods: Children’s Fiction and Irish History,Hardback,978-1-4438-2861-1,39.99,"While much has been written about Irish culture’s apparent obsession with the past and with representing childhood, few critics have explored in detail the position of children’s fiction within such discourses. This book serves to redress these imbalances, illuminating both the manner in which children’s texts engage with complex cultural discourses in contemporary Ireland and the significant contribution that children’s novels and films can make to broader debates concerning Irish identity at the end of the twentieth and beginning of the twenty-first centuries. 
Through close analysis of specific books and films published or produced since 1990, Irish Childhoods offers an insight into contrasting approaches to the representation of Irish history and childhood in recent children’s fiction.  Each chapter interrogates the unique manner in which an author or filmmaker engages with twentieth century Irish history from a contemporary perspective, and reveals that constructions of childhood in Irish children’s fiction are often used to explore aspects of Ireland’s past and present. 



",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-05-01,Sofia de Melo Araújo and Fátima Vieira,"Iris Murdoch, Philosopher Meets Novelist",Hardback,978-1-4438-2883-3,34.99,"Iris Murdoch, Philosopher Meets Novelist aims to gather some of the world’s present experts on Iris Murdoch, in an effort to promote dialogue between philosophy and literature. This is due not only to the nature of Iris Murdoch’s work itself, but also to our belief that within Humanistic Studies there is a constant need for breaking down disciplinarian barriers and reaching a deeper, fuller awareness of human thinking. Thus, the book brings together scholars from a variety of fields and places—Brazil, England, Iran, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Turkey, Taiwan, and the United States—and testifies to the interest that the work of Murdoch continues to inspire.

The book is divided into two major sections: Part A, Reading Philosophies in Literature, includes articles focusing on Iris Murdoch’s philosophical concerns and their general influence in her work; Part B, Reading Literature through Philosophy, is intended as a sort of application ground, a series of case-studies wherein authors depart from novels to retrieve the underlying philosophical thinking.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-05-01,Nevio Cristante,Machiavellis Revivus: Slashing a Sword on the Western Classical Tradition,Hardback,978-1-4438-2892-5,39.99,"From an intensive academic study based primarily on Machiavelli’s works, critical arguments arise in this text that undermine not only the current-day political mind-set, framework, and practices, but also the views established academically, up to the point where the “body politic” formed by the Western classical tradition is dissipated and dispersed. Comprised in a contrary unconventional manner similar to Machiavelli, the basic essential factors of history, religion, power, and authority were formulated as the four main chapters in this work by Nevio Cristante. From it, one can readily see the flaws today in the false praise in nostalgic historical hubris, the forgetting of a brand of religion that is essential for healthy politics, the overlooking of coercive forces that reduce politics to power, and the loss of true authority. In this book, Cristante comprises Machiavelli as a virtuous, unprecedented, “extreme humanist,” in stark contrast to the common incessant interpretations of him being a “teacher of evil,” a “diabolical,” “soulless” political advisor. A subversive satirical interpretation of The Prince has been formed herein, extending from the generated knowledge of history and the history of Machiavelli’s own experience. From the vivacious and unraveling Italian Renaissance, a cogent force prompted Machiavelli to create his literary works in order to form an educational cure for the deteriorating human condition, of his time, and any time. There is in Machiavelli, a differing sense of newness from that which is commonly known today, which circumvents its worth in this distinct educative interpretation. Machiavelli goes back in time in order to produce lessons applicable to correct the shortages in his, and every, present-day. With a divergent view of the works of art and literature outlined in this analysis, Machiavelli’s education becomes revived today in creating a virtuous political, spiritual, and cultural dynamism as a battle-cry to repel the ignorance and great misfortunes in our human condition.
","“In this book, Dr. Cristante argues that contemporary times that we are witnessing correspond to one of crisis and chaos. This crisis is largely due to the modern ‘faith’ in reason and the associated belief in the progress in history. However, the events of the 20th and the 21st centuries so far have shown the falsity of these modern assumptions. Thus, we witness the end of modernity. We are at the threshold of a new age the particulars of which are yet unknown. At this critical point, Dr. Cristante persuasively asserts that we can turn to Machiavelli to get inspiration to cope with uncertainties of this new era. Accordingly, Machiavelli lived and contemplated through a similar transitional period, namely, between the medieval and the modern times. As Dr. Cristante indicates, Machiavelli elaborated his views around four themes: history, religion, power and authority. Dr. Cristante powerfully argues that a careful examination of Machiavelli’s thought provides many insights as to the nature of the conflicts and their possible resolutions in our contemporary world as well. As one of the prominent founders of political science, Machiavelli is indispensable to understanding the recurring problems of humanity. Congratulations to Dr. Cristante for having produced such a thought-provoking and enlightening work.”
—Bican Şahin, Assoc. Prof. of Political Science at Hacettepe University, Ankara, Turkey, and the President of Association for Liberal Thinking, Turkey. He is the author of Toleration: The Liberal Virtue (Lexington Books, 2010).

“Being his colleague and friend for a number of years, I must state with confidence that Professor Cristante has displayed academic success in a wide range of academic fields, combining politics, history, literature, and philosophy together in making a productive educational direction. He also has creatively assimilated the experiences of living through various cultural, political, and religious spectrums. Having been present in many of his presentations at various conferences, I can state, with admiration, that his remarkable argumentations, his command of the intricacies of various critical theories he uses, and his eloquence, have always impressed the academic community. His presentation, for example, in Turkey's first international conference on Ecocriticism that I have organized with three other colleagues in 2009 (‘The Future of Ecocriticism: New Horizons’) was highly appreciated and sparked off lively debates.  He uses these diverse experiences to educate fruitfully on the nature of the human condition for the present-day. Professor Cristante has attributed these merits onto his interpretation of Machiavelli, one that is unique and original, invoking a new and relevant understanding of Machiavelli by clarifying a lot of confusion for his proper reading.”
—Prof. Dr. Serpil Oppermann, English Language and Literature, Dept,, Faculty of Letters, Hacettepe University, Ankara, Turkey.

“In this book, Prof. Cristante provides a convincing interpretation of Machiavelli. Re-visiting the primary texts,  Cristante questions the validity of many commonplace readings. From the first chapter on ‘History’, with its intricate understanding of the cyclical and exemplary, readers will see the instrumental value Machiavelli's works have for the present day historian. Subsequent chapters on ‘Religion’ and ‘Power’ present persuasive re-considerations of Machiavelli's thoughts on secular life, religious faith and their connection to the sanctity of the natural world. Moreover, Cristante's chapter on ‘Authority’ discloses a crucial element in Machiavelli's political theory that is too often neglected by readings—especially of the famous and/or infamous text, Il Principe -- which reduce all the nuances of this work to the workings of power politics. Prof. Cristante provides a true revival of the significance of Machiavelli's work for the present day.”
—Prof. Herminio Teixiera, Political Science Department, Nipissing University, North Bay Ontario,Canada
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-05-01,Marta Goszczyńska and Katarzyna Poloczek,The Playful Air of Light(ness) in Irish Literature and Culture,Hardback,978-1-4438-2893-2,39.99,"While discussions in the field of Irish Studies traditionally gravitate towards themes of struggle, oppression and death, the present book originates from a contradictory impulse. Without losing sight of Ireland’s troubled history and the complexities that shape its present, it centres on instances of playfulness, light(ness) and air in Irish literature and culture. Refracted through the prism of contemporary philosophy (notably of Italo Calvino, Luce Irigaray and María Lugones), these categories serve as the basis for thirteen essays by academics from Poland, the UK, Germany and Spain. Some of these offer fresh readings of such seminal authors as W. B. Yeats, Louis MacNeice, Seamus Heaney and John Banville; others look at lesser-known figures, such as Eimar O’Duffy and Forrest Reid, who, before now, have received little scholarly attention.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-05-01,Frederic Will,"Time, Accounts, Surplus Meaning: Settings of the Theophanic",Hardback,978-1-4438-2890-1,44.99,"This book harvests the author’s work, over several decades, on narrative and time, the place of imagination in conceptual thinking, and the underlying nature of historical accounts.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-05-01,Paul Douglass,"T. S. Eliot, Dante, and the Idea of Europe",Hardback,978-1-4438-2878-9,39.99,"T. S. Eliot greatly enhanced Dante's profound influence on European literature. The essays in this volume explore Dante's importance through a focus on Eliot. Probing the questions what Eliot made of Dante, and what Dante meant to Eliot, the essays here assess the legacy of modernism by engaging its ""classicist"" roots, covering a wide spectrum of topics stemming from Dante's relevance to the poetry and criticism of Eliot. The essays reflect on Eliot's aesthetic, philosophical, and religious convictions in relation to Dante, his influence upon literary modernism through his embracing and championing of the Florentine, and his desire to promote European unity.

The first section of the book deals with aesthetic and philosophical issues related to Eliot's engagement with Dante, beginning with Jewel Spears Brooker's masterful essay on the concepts of immediate experience and primary consciousness in Eliot's work, and moving on to essays considering his idea of a ""unified sensibility,"" as well as Eliot's engagement with Hindu-Buddhist and Christian themes and motifs. The second part of the book focuses on Dante's importance to Eliot's founding work in the modernist movement.  In what ways did Dante directly and indirectly influence the exemplary path that Eliot blazed for his contemporaries, especially Ezra Pound? How early did Dante's influence show itself in Eliot's work?  Why was he unable to complete the great trilogy he seems to have sought to write, based on Dante's Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso?

These questions and their answers lead to the book's final section, which considers Eliot's (and Dante's) role in the formation of a twentieth-century concept of Europe. Incisive essays on Eliot's varied sources of ""tradition"" in his attempt to promote the idea of a European union and his anxiety over the heritage of Romanticism are capped by a magisterial contribution from Dominic Manganiello showing precisely how Eliot's reformulation of the Dantesque ""European Epic"" continues to influence the work of Anglo-European and Commonwealth writers.


","“A valuable and timely collection of essays that illuminates and deepens our understanding of Eliot’s lifelong creative debt to Dante, bringing an impressive array of texts and traditions—Eastern and Western, medieval and postmodern—to bear upon Dante’s dynamic, tutelary presence, not only in Eliot’s work, but in the innovations of modern literature throughout Europe and America. It is a great service to scholarship and teaching to bring together so many lucid and thoughtful essays by both established scholars and new voices. The essays collected here will enjoy a wide and continued readership.”
—Anthony Cuda, University of North Carolina at Greensboro; Author, The Passions of Modernism, Co-editor, The Complete Prose of T. S. Eliot, Vol. 2


",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-06-01,Rainer Vesterinen,"A Cognitive Approach to Adverbial Subordination in European Portuguese: The Infinitive, the Clitic Pronoun Se and Finite Verb Forms",Hardback,978-1-4438-2928-1,34.99,"The study of adverbial clauses in Portuguese is related to the fact that the Portuguese speaker may chose between three different structures, i.e. the adverbial clause may contain the plain infinitive, the inflected infinitive or a finite verb form. In the field of Portuguese Linguistics, the analysis of these structures has traditionally been conducted from a Generative Grammar perspective postulating abstract rules and transformations in order to explain the variation between these structures.  As a result, focus has been put on purely structural aspects, while conceptual differences have been highly neglected.

The present book challenges this view of linguistic analysis. Instead of proposing a general semantic content for finite and infinitive adverbial clauses in Portuguese—traditionally based on notions like deep structure and surface structure—the hypothesis put forward is that these clauses evoke different meanings and that the use of one adverbial structure or another can be explained by the context in which it occurs and by the conceptual content it designates. From a Cognitive Grammar perspective of linguistic analysis, it is shown that Portuguese adverbial structures illustrate the iconic nature of language and that their conceptual meaning can be explained by notions such as prominence, mental spaces, control and subjectification.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-06-01,Christine Amanda Müller,A Glasgow Voice: James Kelman’s Literary Language,Hardback,978-1-4438-2945-8,44.99,"This book focuses on James Kelman, a leading Scottish author, and his use of language. It examines how Kelman presents a spoken Glasgow working-class voice in his stories while breaking down the traditional distinction made between speech and writing in literature. Three main themes are explored: the use of Glaswegian/Scots language, the inclusion of working-class discourse features, and an expressive preference for spoken over written forms. Kelman’s writing is approached through an examination of his use of punctuation, spelling, vocabulary, grammar, swearing, and body language. Throughout, examples from Kelman’s writing are analysed and statistical comparisons are made between his writing and the Scots Corpus of Texts and Speech. In summary, the reader will find a detailed and systematic analysis of Kelman’s use of language in literature, showing linguistic patterns, identifying key textual strategies and features, and comparing these to the standards that precede him and those that surround his work.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-06-01,Emanuele Occhipinti,"Travelling In and Out of Italy: 19th and 20th-Century Notebooks, Letters and Essays",Hardback,978-1-4438-2919-9,34.99,"Travel has often been taken as a metaphor for human life, and the concept of travel and the traveller has varied across centuries, cultural traditions, and social groups. Following a diachronic overview of travel writing, this study considers some of the most important Italian writers of the late nineteenth and twentieth-centuries, such as D’Annunzio, Pirandello, Svevo, with particular focus on their note-books, letters, travel diaries, and reportage. An analysis of this material indicates that these authors collect their miscellaneous notes, in some cases, as private and personal documents, and in other instances to possibly develop future articles, essays or novels. It goes on to focus on the journey par excellence, the trip to America, regarded as an Eden. In many of their works, writers such as Ojetti, Giacosa, Cecchi, Piovene express their ambivalence towards a place often idealized as a land of freedom and opportunity, yet also acknowledged as a land where oppression and violence are all too real. The study attempts to demonstrate how all the traveller-writers discussed “translate” their sense of discovery in their books, and the extent to which that sense affects the conception of each of the texts.
","“Professor Occhipinti’s engaging in-depth analysis of nineteenth- and twentieth-century travel writing in Italy sheds invaluable light on a resoundingly successful phenomenon, destined to constitute a literary genre in its own right. The book effectively explores thought-provoking themes such as: the links of travel-literature with journalism, the epistolary and the narrative genre; the socio-geographical, political and cultural implications linked to travel; as well as the fascinating theme of the journey viewed as a metaphor of the human self, and thus as an experience in self-cognition and self-analysis.”
—Prof. Maria Cristina Cignatta, English Language Lecturer, University of Parma, Italy
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-07-01,Rebecca DeWald and Dorette Sobolewski,"Bonds and Borders: Identity, Imagination and Transformation in Literature",Hardback,978-1-4438-2953-3,34.99,"The essays in this collection exemplify the relevance of bonds and borders in literature and contribute each in their own individual ways to the discourse between literary studies and Border studies. The scope of contributions ranges from revisiting older works from colonial times to discovering current narratives in post-9/11 literature; from the search for a national identity in Welsh poetry to self-transformation and the trans-cultural journeys of individuals in the literature of migration; and from the cosmopolitanism of Black Britain to gendered readings of Arab-American war narratives. Although not conceived and/or constructed as a whole, this collection gains particularly through disunity: topics cross over where one would least expect them to; borders are trespassed in order to give rise to new ideas and points of study. These essays by young researchers from a variety of disciplines and geographical backgrounds effectively work as a unit to dissect, subvert, challenge, or perhaps validate pre-conceived understandings of identity in an international society. They present a polydialectic approach to Literature and the supposedly borderless society of the Western world and its profound impact on individual identity.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-07-01,Nick Smart and Nina Goss,Dylan at Play,Hardback,978-1-4438-2974-8,34.99,"Dylan at Play offers a selection of writings that can challenge and engross readers eager for new ways to meet the singularity of Bob Dylan’s work. We have no interest in competing with the almost numberless and ever-increasing quantity of critical and encyclopedic writing on Dylan. Our goal with this collection has been play and not categorizing or defining. We solicited material that might, in sum, create a vision of both reverent scrutiny and mischief. In this collection, you’ll find writers who generally are not already fixtures in the Dylan Criticism industry. Here you’ll meet a webmaster, theologians, a linguist, a poet, a polyglot, scholars and teachers. The writers in this collection have heard Dylan’s art calling to them through their particular frameworks of meaning and expression, and the pieces here are a result of their abilities to find the voices to respond to that call. We hope above all that readers of Dylan at Play will become inspired to invent and play with their own experiences of this artist.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-07-01,Reverend Cheryl Anne Kincaid,Hearing the Gospel through Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol” Second Edition,Hardback,978-1-4438-2957-1,34.99,"Most people don’t realize Charles Dickens has a biblical foundation. Each of the spirits that appear in A Christmas Carol directly correlates with an Advent lesson that is found in the Church of England’s Book of Common Prayer. Perhaps that is what attracts Christians to the story of A Christmas Carol. Every Advent Christians revisit this old Victorian moral story with its images of snow covered English cobblestone streets, the sentimentally portrayed ragged poor, and its familiar story line doesn’t seem to grow tiresome through the years. We revisit this story because it echoes with the ancient lessons of Advent.

Hearing the Gospel Through Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol” is a Christian devotional that uses A Christmas Carol as a tool to teach the ancient Advent lessons of Hope, Faith, Peace, Love and Joy. Each week’s devotion begins with a section from A Christmas Carol which dramatizes the Advent Lesson and is followed with a scriptural Advent lesson from the Church of England’s Book of Prayer. The word Ebenezer is defined in scripture as “The Lord is my help” (1 Samuel 7:1–2). As we travel through Ebenezer’s redemptive healing journey, the devotional invites the participants to examine how Christ is born in their past, present and future. As a Christian pastor, I am grieved that the modern evangelical church has diminished the Advent season to a single Christmas Eve service or Christmas Sunday service. As a community, we no longer spend time preparing our hearts for the season of “Christ coming.”

This devotional is for Christians to use as private and family devotions to prepare themselves for the Advent season.

","""Pastor Cheryl Kincaid is the author of the book, Hearing The Gospel Through Charles Dickens ""A Christmas Carol,"" in which she delves into the Christianity of Charles Dickens, and the beautiful way the Good News is presented within the pages of his beloved classic novel. Her research and the insights gained are both intriguing and enlightening, and—while to hear about all of them, one would need to read her book. ""
—Aimee Herd, Breaking Christian News

“Cheryl Kincaid has produced a fascinating and insightful reading of the lessons of Advent through the lens of one of the most beloved of Christmas stories, Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol. Preachers and teachers will find here a treasure trove of ideas for teaching and preaching, and every reader will be inspired to reflect on the great redemptive themes of Christmas embedded in Dickens' classic story.”
—Dr. Mark Strauss, Professor of New Testament, Bethel Seminary, San Diego; Author of The Davidic Messiah in Luke-Acts; Distorting Scripture? The Challenge of Bible Translation and Gender Accuracy; “Luke” in the Illustrated Bible Background Commentary; The Essential Bible Companion; and Four Portraits, One Jesus: An Introduction to Jesus and the Gospels

",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-07-01,Wit Pietrzak,"Myth, Language and Tradition: A Study of Yeats, Stevens, and Eliot in the Context of Heidegger’s Search for Being",Hardback,978-1-4438-2947-2,44.99,"Myth, Language and Tradition is an in-depth study of three modernist poets: W. B. Yeats, Wallace Stevens and T. S. Eliot with regard to the concepts of myth, poetic language and tradition. These are analysed against the later philosophy of Martin Heidegger. Each part of the book is devoted to one poet and one of the abovementioned aspects; the conclusion seeks to consolidate the various ideas explored throughout the book and to propose a new reading of the literary modernism.

The main objective of the book is to reconsider modernism in relation to the three poets so as to reveal that during the first half of the twentieth century a change took place, shifting the intellectual emphasis from thinking the world as finite to instigating a question at the root of reality. This transition is analysed on the basis of Heidegger’s search for Being and it is this key notion that allows us to reformulate the ideas of myth in Yeats, poetic language in Stevens and tradition in Eliot. Along with the macro-scale restructuration of modernist principles, a thorough re-reading of the three poets’ work is conducted with a view to indicating that the individual changes totalised into a grand effort of poetic dwelling.

This book seeks to enter into a debate with the long-standing interpretations of modernism, offering a critical revaluation of both poetry and philosophy of the period in a joint project. The customary views on both areas are observed and noted but then the author seeks to lay focus on other possibilities to be considered when reading modernist poetry.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-07-01,Meagan Tyler,Selling Sex Short: The Pornographic and Sexological Construction of Women’s Sexuality in the West,Hardback,978-1-4438-2965-6,39.99,"Pornography and the ‘science of sex’ – sexology – are redefining sexuality in the West today, but is the model of sexuality promoted by these two industries selling sex short? In this, the first book to fully investigate the connections between the industries of pornography and sexology, they are found to promote a very similar type of sexual ideal.

Sex therapists now recommend hard-core pornography to patients and porn stars have become sex-advice ‘experts’ offering bestselling self-help books. With reports of the increasing ‘pornification’ of popular culture and an epidemic of ‘Female Sexual Dysfunction,’ it is more important than ever to understand the influence of pornography and sexology on our sexual lives.

Through a feminist critique of current trends in pornography, in sexological research, and in sex self-help books, it is shown that the type of sex being promoted by these industries closely resembles the model of sex found in systems of prostitution. This is a model in which women are bought and sold and yet it is being held up as an ideal for couples to mimic in their everyday heterosexual relationships. Ultimately, this is an unethical model of sexuality that sells sex short.

","“At last, a book that gets to grips with the harm that porn does to women. It should be compulsory reading for anyone who still thinks porn can be defended. Meagan Tyler writes with sophistication, great clarity and originality. She has a depth of knowledge and understanding, and does not equivocate, but tells it like it is. She shows how two very powerful industries, pornography and sexology, combine to construct heterosexual practice in ways that do great damage to women’s status and experience. This is the sort of magnificent scholarship that gives me confidence that a powerful new wave of feminism is underway!”
– Sheila Jeffreys, Professor, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Melbourne

“Selling Sex Short is a much needed intervention into the increasingly intellectually barren and ethically compromised realm of academic scholarship on pornography (and related issues). It should be required reading for anyone pursuing scholarship not only on pornography or sexology, but on virtually any aspect of sexuality in the contemporary West.”
– Rebecca Whisnant, Director of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Dayton

",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-07-01,Ronald Gray,"Shakespeare on Love: The Sonnets and Plays in Relation to Plato’s Symposium, Alchemy, Christianity and Renaissance Neo-Platonism",Hardback,978-1-4438-2711-9,34.99,"Dr Ronald Gray, Fellow of Emmanuel College, lectured at Cambridge University on German Literature and Philosophy for 33 years, and now expands his article, “Will in the Universe: Shakespeare’s Sonnets, Plato’s Symposium, Alchemy and Renaissance Neo-Platonism,” published in Shakespeare Survey 59 (Cambridge University Press, 2006). This developed from his Goethe the Alchemist: A Study of Alchemical Symbolism in Goethe’s Literary and Scientific Works, 1952, greeted on publication as “a major contribution to Goethe Studies.”

Diotima’s vision of universal love in The Symposium is echoed not only in Castiglione’s The Courtier but in alchemy, in its symbolical sense; these, together with Christian ideas combined in Shakespeare’s imagination, strongly influenced the Sonnets. Where possible, Shakespeare inserted themes of the Sonnets in his plays. The result is a paradoxical combination of mysticism, sometimes erotic, in the Sonnets, with real situations and real lovers in both Sonnets and plays. The supreme realisation of the Dark Lady is Cleopatra, but the Lady also has mythic dimensions.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-07-01,Dániel Z. Kádár,Xue-guanhua 學官話: A Ryūkyūan Source of Language Education,Hardback,978-1-4438-2950-2,34.99,"The Sino-Japonic manuscript Xue-guanhua/Gaku-kanwa 學官話 (Learning Mandarin Chinese), compiled for students from the Ryūkyū Kingdom, is a noteworthy historical Chinese educational source. It represents historical cross-cultural interactions between Okinawan residents in China and the locals in a wide variety of speech situations, and as such it is one of the few historical cross-cultural sources available on Chinese communication and social behaviour. Along with revealing norms of historical Chinese communication, Xue-guanhua provides a vivid description of Chinese social and cultural customs.

The present volume, which provides a detailed introduction and annotated translation of Xue-guanhua, is relevant not only to researchers but also to readers with interest in Chinese and Okinawan language and culture.
","“The present book serves as a sourcebook of Chinese historical pragmatics, for language use before modernization, a guide on Chinese etiquette, morale and mores, a testimony to international contact in pre-modernity, and, due to English translation, as an excellent Chinese as a Foreign Language textbook for speakers of English. More than anything else, however, the Ryūkyūan–Chinese relationship comes alive in this book . . . I must confess to envying Dániel Kádár for the excellent philological work he has done with this translation and publication.”
—Patrick Heinrich, Dokkyo University
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-08-01,Katy Shaw,Analysing David Peace,Hardback,978-1-4438-2990-8,34.99,"Analysing David Peace provides an exciting, challenging and accessible critical introduction to the work of contemporary British novelist David Peace. Through a detailed analysis of his writings, as well as the socio-cultural contexts of their production and dissemination, the collection explores Peace’s attempts to capture the sensibilities of late twentieth century society and contributes to an ongoing debate in the media about his representations. 

Peace is an emerging author who is widely read and taught and whose novels are increasingly celebrated. In the past decade Peace has won the James Tait Black Memorial Award and was named as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists. The four novels of his Red Riding Quartet interrogate British society of the 1970s/80s through the prism of the hunt for the serial killer dubbed the Yorkshire Ripper. GB84 examines the machinations of the 1984–5 UK miners’ strike, while The Damned United explores relationships between masculinity and football through the doomed reign of manager Brian Clough at British football club Leeds United in 1974. In the Tokyo Trilogy, Peace develops an interest in occupation and the occult, interrogating Japan’s post-war legacy of defeat and its resonance to our contemporary world. This collection offers an essential guide to the work of David Peace, as well as a unique insight into his canon to date.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-08-01,Rogério Miguel Puga,Chronology of Portuguese Literature: 1128-2000,Hardback,978-1-4438-3003-4,39.99,"This is the first Chronology of Portuguese Literature to be published in any language. It presents a comprehensive year-by-year list of significant and representative works of literature published mainly in Portuguese from 1128 to the beginning of the current millennium. As a reference tool, it displays the continuity and variety of the literature of the oldest European country, and documents the development of Portuguese letters from their origins to the year 2000, while also presenting the year of birth and death of each author. This book is an ideal resource for students and academics of Portuguese literature and Lusophone cultures.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-08-01,Evrim Doğan Adanur,IDEA: Studies in English,Hardback,978-1-4438-2993-9,54.99,"This collection brings together a variety of essays by prominent academicians from around the world to project on the current trends in the vast area of English Studies. Dealing with issues ranging from Shakespeare to translation, postcolonial studies to comparative literature, the essays present a diversity of perspectives from theoretical, gendered, cultural and linguistic standpoints. The essays are selected from the papers presented at the fifth IDEA Conference at Atılım University.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-08-01,Biljana Đorić-Francuski,Image_Identity_Reality,Hardback,978-1-4438-2977-9,34.99,"This book is a result of the international conference English Language and Literature Studies: Image, Identity, Reality (ELLSIIR), held at the English Department of the Belgrade Faculty of Philology to mark its 80th Anniversary.

The conference covered a wide range of topics from extremely diverse fields, namely: theoretical linguistics, applied language studies, literature and cultural studies. This book comprises papers covering all of these areas, divided into three sections according to the shared topic: Image, Identity and Reality.

Owing to its interdisciplinarity, its argumentative and theoretically founded wealth of knowledge, and the outstandingly interesting topics, the book will be very useful for academic study, and a valuable resource in understanding the range of subjects covered in its three chapters, not only to experts interested in scholarly research, but also to the general public, as a reliable and trustworthy source of information.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-08-01,Alejandro Cortazar and Rafael Orozco,"Lenguaje, arte y revoluciones ayer y hoy: New Approaches to Hispanic Linguistic, Literary, and Cultural Studies",Hardback,978-1-4438-2984-7,44.99,"This book depicts new paradigms in Hispanic linguistic, literary and cultural studies. Part I: Literary and Cultural Studies includes eight essays focusing on a new trend of cultural representation attempting to find new meaning(s). They explore a series of reflections on some of those moments – from the period that begins with the cry for independence in 1810 and that spans beyond 2010 – textually translated as new approaches of analysis on the “recollections of things to come.” The contexts examined evince critical occurrences related to periods of change toward democracy and social justice that eventually lead to “revolutionary” or “emancipating” ends, by way of artistic, textual manifestations. Part II: Linguistic and Cultural Studies contains nine articles representative of the most current, ground breaking research on Hispanic linguistics. It focuses on important linguistic and cultural issues pertaining, geographically, to various corners of the Hispanic world, spanning from central Florida and New York City, to Bolivia, and on to the Prince Islands in Turkey. The issues explored include the sociolinguistic and cultural identity of Puerto Ricans in the United States, the pragmatics of humor in Mexican film, the effects of language evolution on modern Spanish, and the acquisition of Spanish by English speakers.
","“This rich collection of articles, covering an impressive span of historical and geographical contexts, explores the construction and contestation of cultural, national and linguistic identities. By bringing together scholars of literary studies, cultural studies, linguistics and pedagogy, the editors showcase the interdisciplinary nature of Hispanic Studies and promote a necessary dialogue across methodological boundaries and research specializations.”
– Amy Robinson, Bowling Green State University

“A refreshing 21st-century collection of groundbreaking explorations into the (r)evolution of the Spanish language, literature, and culture in the New World and beyond.”
– Armin Schwegler, University of California, Irvine

“Lenguaje, arte y revoluciones is an interdisciplinary survey of contemporary approaches to Hispanic studies in language, literature, and culture.  The ‘revolutions’ of the title are sometimes literal (cf. Padilla’s chapter on the Mexican American novel of the Mexican Revolution), sometimes social (cf. Lamboy’s study of the “new wave” of Puerto Rican migration to the US, with major changes in the geographic distribution and social profile of Puerto Ricans on the mainland), and sometimes linguistic (cf. Sessarego’s analysis of the restructuring that gave rise to Yungueño Spanish).  Overall, this volume provides a delightful and thought-provoking encounter with cutting-edge work on the concepts, content, and conversations of the Hispanic world.”
– Gregory R. Guy, New York University

“This volume sheds light on some of the core dynamics of the revolutionary processes [that] impacted national literatures and national languages, paramount arenas where the desires and anxieties regarding the protracted process of nation-state building played out. It is a collective meditation on the present of those two cultural artifacts (literature and language), and what it means for Latin America as it faces the challenges and uncertainties of the twenty-first century. This is an outstanding collection that does justice to its ambitious goal.”
– Juan Pablo Davobe, The University of Colorado at Boulder
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-08-01,Steve Brie and William T. Rossiter,Literature and Ethics: From the Green Knight to the Dark Knight,Paperback,978-1-4438-2996-0,24.99,"This volume examines the crucial relationship between literature and ethics, as it has developed and changed from the late medieval period to the present day. The focus of the volume is predicated upon three interrelated themes: instruction, judgement, and justice. Previous studies of literature and ethics have often been restricted to a limited chronology and generic focus; the present volume covers a range of periods, texts and genres in order to provide a wider illustration of the relationship between the literary and the ethical.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-08-01,"Cecilia Alvstad, Stefan Helgesson and David Watson","Literature, Geography, Translation: Studies in World Writing",Hardback,978-1-4438-3010-2,39.99,"The present volume connects three academic fields that share central concerns but remain surprisingly isolated from each other: world literature studies, postcolonial studies, and translation studies. It approaches translation not as a vague metaphor but as a distinct and socially embedded practice that connects literatures. In similar vein, it interrogates the smoothness of many versions of “global” theory by insisting on the specificity of place and the resistance to translatibility among languages, oeuvres and genres.

The topics covered in the chapters include the formation of world literature as a progamme of study, the French concept of littérature-monde, the rise of English in nineteenth-century Sweden, the translation of Arabic literature in Europe, and the transnationalism of the avant-garde. Through such case studies, and by drawing on the theoretical frameworks of Édouard Glissant, Pierre Bourdieu and David Damrosch, among others, the international group of contributors add substantially to the theoretical and methodological consolidation of world literature as a field of research.

","“This important volume puts translation on the map – literally and figuratively – showing how concerns with place, movement and transfer have become central to our understanding of literature today.”
– Sherry Simon, Concordia University, Canada

",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-08-01,Aino Mäkikalli and Andreas K. E. Mueller,"Positioning Daniel Defoe’s Non-Fiction: Form, Function, Genre",Hardback,978-1-4438-3005-8,39.99,"This volume analyses the form, structure and genre of a selection of non-fictional works by Daniel Defoe. Directing our scholarly gaze away from the much studied novels, the essays explore the rhetorical strategies and generic inventiveness on display in Defoe’s better known non-fictional texts, such as The Shortest Way with the Dissenters and A Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain, and some of his lesser known publications, such as his Complete English Tradesman and An Essay on the History and Reality of Apparitions. What emerges from the collection is the picture of an author who responded to early eighteenth-century debates and events with outstanding authorial skill and energy, and to whom matters of form and style were of great importance.

","“The nine essays in this book accurately analyze not only the contexts of Defoe’s writing on topics as diverse as England’s union with Scotland, the present and future growth of London, Jacobite threats, religious bigotry, convergence of masculine and feminine psychology in the conduct of tradesmen, the devastation wrought by a fierce storm in 1703, and what he took to be the oddly constituted reality of ghosts. Even more importantly, these essays explain the large repertoire  of genres and rhetorical strategies Defoe had mastered for use as he thought different occasions demanded. What results is better understanding of his great skill as a professional writer on matters of fact or speculation, and therefore better appreciation of an author whose strange, surprising leap of genius to Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders can neither be chalked off to lucky amateur accident nor, even in retrospect, viewed as a predictable, inevitable progress from capable journalism to innovative artistry.”
—Paul K. Alkon, Bing Professor Emeritus of English and American Literature, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA

",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-08-01,Melanie Hackney and Aaron Emmitte,"Sexuality, Eroticism, and Gender in French and Francophone Literature",Hardback,978-1-4438-3157-4,34.99,"This study explores the diverse representations of sexuality, eroticism, and gender as expressed in French and Francophone literary thought – both past and present. From Françoise de Graffigny’s epistolary “refusal” of eroticism – to the challenge of nineteenth-century notions of rape in the novels of Emile Zola, Victor Hugo, and Eugène Sue – to desire and eroticism as social taboo in the surrealist works of Georges Bataille and Luis Buñuel – its historical focus demonstrates that issues of sexuality, eroticism, and gender existed at the heart of France’s literary tradition long before they became a staple in its universities. Taking a more contemporary view, it examines the notion of écriture féminine in such authors as Monique Wittig, Anne F. Garréta, Nina Bouraoui, Assia Djebar, and Luce Iragaray, and also challenges accusations of misogyny in the works of Michel Houellebecq.

While glimpsing the evolution of, challenges to, and conceptions regarding sexuality, eroticism, and gender, each chapter’s author focuses on language as both the obstacle and catalyst for change. For example, feminist strategies to avoid linguistic gender markers that subvert the phallogocentric paradigm, literary portrayals of rape as a means to affect French penal code, and use of the female body as language demonstrate that these notions are not only shaped by language but that language represents the key to deconstructing and redefining them. Whether picking this up to read about familiar authors such as Hugo and Djebar or discovering Graffigny and Houellebecq for the first time, each chapter promises to shed new light on its subject matter in regards to sexuality, eroticism, and/or gender.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-08-01,Eric Martone,The Black Musketeer: Reevaluating Alexandre Dumas within the Francophone World,Hardback,978-1-4438-2997-7,39.99,"Alexandre Dumas, author of The Three Musketeers, The Count of Monte Cristo, and The Man in the Iron Mask, is the most famous French writer of the nineteenth century. In 2002, his remains were transferred to the Panthéon, a mausoleum reserved for the greatest French citizens, amidst much national hype during his bicentennial. Contemporary France, struggling with the legacies of colonialism and growing diversity, has transformed Dumas, grandson of a slave from St. Domingue (now Haiti), into a symbol of the colonies and the larger francophone world in an attempt to integrate its immigrants and migrants from its former Caribbean, African, and Asian colonies to improve race relations and to promote French globality. Such a reconception of Dumas has made him a major figure in debates on French identity and colonial history.

Ten tears after Dumas’s interment in the Panthéon, the time is ripe to re-evaluate Dumas within this context of being a representative of la Francophonie. The French re-evaluation of Dumas, therefore, invites a reassessment of his life, works, legacy, and previous scholarship. This interdisciplinary collection is the first major work to take up this task. It is unique for being the first scholarly work to bring Dumas into the center of debates about French identity and France’s relations with its former colonies.

For the purposes of this collection, to analyze Dumas in a “francophone” context means to explore Dumas as a symbol of a “French” culture shaped by, and inclusive of, its (former) colonies and current overseas departments. The seven entries in this collection, which focus on providing new ways of interpreting The Three Musketeers, The Man in the Iron Mask, The Count of Monte Cristo, and Georges, are categorized into two broad groups. The first group focuses on Dumas’s relationship with the francophone colonial world during his lifetime, which was characterized by the slave trade, and provides a postcolonial re-examination of his work, which was impacted profoundly by his status as an individual of black colonial descent in metropolitan France. The second part of this collection, which is centered broadly around Dumas’s francophone legacy, examines the way he has been remembered in the larger French-speaking (postcolonial) world, which includes metropolitan France, in the past century to explore questions about French identity in an emerging global age.
","“Although Alexandre Dumas remains one of the most popular nineteenth-century authors in the world, surprisingly little serious attention has been given to his works. This collection of essays, the first of its kind in English, offers new critical perspectives on Dumas as a ‘man of color’ and the relevance of his work to an increasingly multicultural society. These essays also focus deserved attention on his lesser-known novel Georges, whose biracial hero combated prejudices still with us today.”
– Mary Anne Garnett, Professor of French, University of Arkansas at Little Rock

“It is about time that academic scholarship has begun to catch up with Dumas. When one considers the impact of his plays on his contemporaries and the numerous adaptations of his novels to stage and screen over the last century – not only in France but in several other cultures – and the fecundity and range of his imagination, the silence that has greeted his work is both shameful and astounding. At a time when writing about popular culture is in vogue, to omit one of its greatest forces is very puzzling. A hundred and fifty years after Dumas’s death, d’Artagnan and Monte Cristo are still very much alive, but receive less critical attention than Superman and Sherlock Holmes.”  
– Frank J. Morlock, accomplished translator and 2006 North American Jules Verne Society award recipient
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-09-01,Kenneth B. Newell,"A Theory of Literary Explication: Specifying a Relativistic Foundation in Epistemic Probability, Cognitive Science, and Second-Order Logic",Hardback,978-1-4438-3147-5,39.99,"This book presents current multidisciplinary research and theory from 17 different fields (most of them never before applied to literary explication) in order to provide (1) justification for the practice of a relative-probability type of explication as distinguished from interpretation, (2) a relativistic foundation for the preference of some explication(s) of a literary work over others, and thereby (3) a middle way between the postmodern pluralist view that a work has only an unlimited number of equally acceptable though different explications and the modern intentionalist view that it has only one acceptable explication (the author’s). Nine of the 17 fields are of primary relevance: critical theory, hermeneutics, probability theory, philosophy of science, second-order logic, and four fields of cognitive science (linguistics, epistemology, neuropsychology, and artificial intelligence). But the book also touches upon textual criticism, legal theory, measure theory, fuzzy logic, animal learning behavior, developmental psychology, evolutionary epistemology, and neurobiology.

The book shows that those using a relative-probability type of explication on a literary work can achieve consensus because the healthy, adult human brain has an evolved, uniform, and probably innate ability to form relative-probability judgments and to form them in the practice of activities (like reading and explicating) that are not uniform and innate.

Lastly, the book contributes to the scholarly areas of explication theory and practice, first, by providing a relativistic foundation for a craft (explication) that currently is not acknowledged to have any foundation but nonetheless continues and will continue to be practiced and, second, by presenting a means (relative epistemic probability) by which judging some explication(s) of a literary work to be more acceptable than others may be justified philosophically—an uncommon circumstance in this postmodern era in which philosophical justification of many beliefs and practices is thought to be untenable.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-09-01,Roberta Trapè,Imaging Italy Through the Eyes of Contemporary Australian Travellers (1990-2010),Hardback,978-1-4438-3197-0,34.99,"For centuries Italy has been the destination of a lifetime for an endless stream of travellers. This book – focussing on the experience of contemporary Australian intellectuals – explores an aspect as of yet scarcely studied within the global phenomenon of travel to Italy, and discovers an image of the country starkly different from the one that prevailed in previous writings. From the beginning of the 1990s onwards there has been a sizeable output of books by Australian writers set in or about Italy. After a meticulous examination of these works, Roberta Trapè has selected and analysed those that she considers the most interesting examples of Australians’ continuing fascination with Italy – works of Jeffrey Smart and Shirley Hazzard, and of Robert Dessaix and Peter Robb. Examining the ways the four authors describe Italian places, Imaging Italy looks into what it is that continues to attract Australian writers and artists to the country, and tries to detect new trends in their attitude towards it. The image of Italy that emerges from the most recent works is, no doubt, a superb picture – not flattering but certainly not false – of its contemporary times.
","“Roberta Trapè’s thought provoking study is a timely investigation into the most recent stage of Australian travel to Italy; her hypothesis of the beginning of a new phase which has broken away from the traditional view, makes her work a significant catalyst for further critical thinking.”
– Prof. John Hajek, School of Languages and Linguistics, University of Melbourne

“Roberta Trapè’s study is an exploration of contemporary Australian travel literature about Italy. She concentrates on writings of these last twenty years in order to identify possible new trends in Australian intellectuals’ attitudes towards Italy and in their way of approaching and responding to this country. By building up a thought-stimulating image of contemporary Italy, Imaging Italy is an important contribution to the history of the unexhausted (because inexhaustible?) fascination this country exerts on travellers from all over the world. Her purpose is mainly achieved through the juxtaposition of works of four authors, and is developed over three chapters, which highlight the differences between Jeffrey Smart and Shirley Hazzard on the one side, and two writers of a younger generation, Robert Dessaix and Peter Robb, on the other. Trapè analyses the four writers’ views of Italy by focussing on the ways their narrators describe the country, making the most of her interviews with Dessaix and Robb as well as of an unpublished notebook the former kept during his 1991 and 1995 visit to Italy. By building up a thought-stimulating image of contemporary Italy, Imaging Italy is an important contribution to the history of the unexhausted (because inexhaustible?) fascination this country exerts on travellers from all over the world.”
– Prof. Gaetano Prampolini, Università degli Studi di Firenze
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-09-01,Niu Qiang and Martin Wolff,The Lowdown on China’s Higher Education,Hardback,978-1-4438-3199-4,44.99,"“Obviously, you are not chanting the exultations of China which many of my country people are used to listening to.” A Chinese scholar recognizes that this book is not a further attempt to curry favor with China by tickling its leaders’ ears. This book examines what is right and the truth about what is wrong with English language education in Chinese colleges and universities. As our Chinese colleague further states, “Most Chinese are learning English like one learning swimming ashore.”

We have been writing about these shortcomings for ten years. It arises because administrators posted to their positions due to party affiliation and good standing, are basically ignorant of administration and educational matters. “The VIPs of EEC believe that they know, while they don’t, what are under their supervision; the professionals of EEC believe that what they are doing academically is helpful while it’s not. The two types are making the common non-professional people believe that they are knowingly reliable while they are not. . . . The educated, as well as the illiterate, do not know what to do and what not to do, what is correct and what is wrong, what is worthy and what is not, etc. The weakness, from the historical perspective, is also a consequence of modern Chinese history whose knowledge most Chinese people are poor at but reluctant to admit.”

This book could not be published within China due to its truthfulness.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-09-01,"Christine DeVine and Marie Hendry; Associate Editors: Amanda Anderson, Jennifer Page and Jennifer Roy","Turning Points and Transformations: Essays on Language, Literature and Culture",Hardback,978-1-4438-3177-2,39.99,"From the Irish Cailleach and other shape-shifters of folk legends to modern movie “transformers”; from Ovid’s Metamorphoses to the moment when Gregor Samsa woke up one morning to find himself transformed into an insect in Kafka’s novella; from conversion narratives to slave narratives, turning points and transformations have always been central to literary works and to cultural developments. In fact, with Freytag’s pyramid in mind, one could claim that all literary works focus on the trope of a transformation born of a turning point, because such moments comprise the very essence and vitality of human life and culture. But why are turning points necessarily transformational and in what way? And what brings about those turning points in language, literature, culture and human lives? These are essentially the questions the essays in this volume seek to answer. The contributors examine turning points and transformations – personal, literary and cultural – brought about through the randomness of the universe as well as through human interference, and discuss ways in which humans in general and writers in particular, through their art, experience and cope with the ineluctable results.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-10-01,Peter Cochran,Byron’s Romantic Politics: The Problem of Metahistory,Hardback,978-1-4438-3283-0,44.99,"Byron exists in two incompatible dimensions: as fully-documented history, and as romantic myth. Often the myth predominates, describing him as a passionate lover, a staunch friend, a great romantic poet, a champion of the working man, a loyal author to his publisher, and a fighter for democracy who sacrificed his life for the Freedom of Greece.

This book attempts to prove that the verifiable truth often proves him to be the opposite. Using letters from Byron’s family, friends, and associates which have never been transcribed, collected and sequenced before, Peter Cochran argues that the poet was an unscrupulous sponger on his relatives and friends, that he harboured a horror at the idea of empowering the working man, had no time for democracy, and despised his publisher. His contempt for the Greeks is clear from everything he writes about them, and his motives for going to Greece at the end of his life (which Cochran analyses in more depth than they have ever been analysed before), were a disturbing mixture of self-indulgent fantasy and death-wish.

Using large amounts of manuscript evidence, Cochran further argues that almost all editions of Byron’s writing do his style very poor service, constituting not contributions to knowledge of him, but additions to the obfuscating myth.


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-10-01,Catherine O’Leary and Alberto Lázaro,Censorship across Borders: The Reception of English Literature in Twentieth-Century Europe,Hardback,978-1-4438-3218-2,39.99,"This volume brings together twelve essays which explore European censorship of English literature in the last century. Taking into consideration the various social, political and historical contexts in which literary controls were imposed and the extent to which they were determined by national and international concerns, these essays comment on political and moral censorship, self-censorship, and the role of the translator as censor. Besides systematic state control, other hidden and insidious forms of censorship are also surveyed in the essays. This study considers why certain works and authors, many of them now regarded as canonical, were targeted in various states and often under opposing ideologies, such as those dominated by conservative Catholic morality and those governed by communism or socialism.

The essays contain previously unpublished material, cover a wide range of authors – including Beckett, Eliot, Joyce and Orwell – and analyse diverse censorship systems operating across Europe, thus serving as a useful comparative resource. Despite the variety of structures of suppression, the study shows that certain common practices can be discerned across national borders and that general conclusions can be drawn about the complex and ambiguous nature of the state’s relationship with culture and about the immediate and long-term impact of censorship, not only on the author and publisher but on society as a whole. Finally, the essays are also significant for what they tell us about the survival of literature, despite the best efforts of the censors.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-10-01,Natalie McKnight,Fathers in Victorian Fiction,Hardback,978-1-4438-3291-5,39.99,"This book examines the changing roles of fathers in the nineteenth century as seen in the lives and fiction of Victorian authors. Fatherhood underwent unprecedented change during this period. The Industrial Revolution moved work out of the home for many men, diminishing contact between fathers and their children. Yet fatherhood continued to be seen as the ultimate expression of masculinity, and being involved with the lives of one’s children was essential to being a good father. Conflicting and frustrating expectations of fathers and the growing disillusionment with other paternal authorities such as church and state yielded memorable portrayals of fathers from the best novelists of the age.

The essays in this volume explore how Victorian authors (the Brontës, Dickens, Gaskell, Trollope, Eliot, Hardy, and Elizabeth Sewall and Mary Augusta Ward) responded to these tensions in their lives and in their fiction. The stern Victorian father cliché persisted, but it was countered by imaginative, involved, albeit faulty fathers and surrogate fathers. This volume poses fathering questions that are still relevant today: What does it mean to be a good father? And, with distrust in patriarchal authorities continuing to increase, are there any sources of authority left that one can trust?
","“The collection Fathers in Victorian Fiction provides stimulating, informed discussions of Victorian views regarding diverse models of fatherhood in fiction and actual life: biological, adoptive, surrogate, and spiritual, the last of these being especially relevant in the cases of clergymen who acted paternally with any children of their own and also with their congregants. Focusing on the complexities inherent in this very basic human role, the book’s eleven complementary essays consider ways in which the Brontës, Dickens, Gaskell, Trollope, George Eliot, Hardy, and two minor religious novelists explore the duties, pleasures, and influences of fatherhood. A major interest throughout the volume is the extent to which Victorian fictional fathers reflect historical social changes that extend to our own time.”
– Stanley Friedman, co-editor of Dickens Studies Annual and author of Dickens’s Fictions: Tapestries of Conscience

“A stimulating collection of essays, which makes a welcome addition to the field of gender studies. Major and less widely studied authors – Mary Augusta Ward and Elizabeth Sewell – together with Gaskell and Trollope, come under scrutiny with oeuvres, paired or single texts the object of rewarding attention, as contributors consider how shifting historical and sociological changes play into the constantly evolving role of the Victorian father. Excellent reading for students and general readers.”
– David Paroissien, editor of Dickens Quarterly, Blackwell’s Companion to Charles Dickens and general editor, with Susan Shatto, of Helm’s Dickens Companions series
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-10-01,Igor Ž. Žagar and Matejka Grgič,How to Do Things with Tense and Aspect: Performativity before Austin,Hardback,978-1-4438-3212-0,34.99,"Almost all verbs in Slovene (one of the least researched Slavic languages) have two aspectually different forms, the perfective (PF) and the imperfective (IF). But in institutional settings or settings strongly marked with social hierarchy, only the second, the imperfective form, is used by Slovene speakers in a performative sense.

Why is that? And what, in fact, has a Slovene speaker said if (s)he has used the imperfective verb in “performative circumstances”? No doubt that (s)he may be in the process of accomplishing such an act. But at the same time, having the possibility of choosing between the PF and the IF form, (s)he may have also indicated that this act hasn’t been accomplished (yet): as long as we are only promising (IF), we have not really promised anything yet, and if we are only promising (IF), we cannot take anything as having been really promised. That was how Stanislav Škrabec, the 19th century Slovene linguist and the central figure of this book, saw the role of verbal aspect within language use.

Being caught in such a dilemma, a question inevitably arises: how do we accomplish an act of promise (or any other performative act) in Slovene? That dilemma – whether to use the perfective or imperfective aspect when accomplishing performative acts – may seem more than artificial at first, but it was very much alive among Slovene linguists at the end of the 19th century. And it was that very dilemma that quite unexpectedly gave rise to the foundations of performativity in Slovene, half a century before Austin!

In the present book, the authors try to shed light on this controversy that involved different Slovene scholars for about thirty years, and propose a delocutive hypothesis as a solution for the performative dilemma this controversy unveiled.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-10-01,Terri Doughty and Dawn Thompson,Knowing Their Place? Identity and Space in Children’s Literature,Hardback,978-1-4438-3214-4,39.99,"Traditionally in the West, children were expected to “know their place,” but what does this comprise in a contemporary, globalized world? Does it mean to continue to accept subordination to those larger and more powerful? Does it mean to espouse unthinkingly a notion of national identity? Or is it about gaining an awareness of the ways in which identity is derived from a sense of place? Where individuals are situated matters as much if not more than it ever has. In children’s literature, the physical places and psychological spaces inhabited by children and young adults are also key elements in the developing identity formation of characters and, through engagement, of readers too. The contributors to this collection map a broad range of historical and present-day workings of this process: exploring indigeneity and place, tracing the intertwining of place and identity in diasporic literature, analyzing the relationship of the child to the natural world, and studying the role of fantastic spaces in children’s construction of the self. They address fresh topics and texts, ranging from the indigenization of the Gothic by Canadian mixed-blood Anishinabe writer Drew Hayden Taylor to the lesser-known children’s books of George Mackay Brown, to eco-feminist analysis of contemporary verse novels. The essays on more canonical texts, such as Peter Pan and the Harry Potter series, provide new angles from which to revision them. Readers of this collection will gain understanding of the complex interactions of place, space, and identity in children’s literature.

Essays in this book will appeal to those interested in Children’s Literature, Aboriginal Studies, Environmentalism and literature, and Fantasy literature.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-10-01,"Alasdair Archibald, Alessia Cogo and Jennifer Jenkins",Latest Trends in ELF Research,Paperback,978-1-4438-3299-1,24.99,"English as a Lingua Franca, or ELF for short, is currently one of the most dynamic topics in the fields of applied and socio-linguistics and English Language Teaching. It has been a thriving field of research for the last twenty years with a growing number of books and journals dedicated to the subject. The field has also seen the foundation of an annual international ELF conference series, which started in 2008 and attracts growing numbers year on year. This book has developed out of contributions to the Second International ELF conference held in Southampton (UK) in 2009. The papers in this volume provide new insights into ELF, by presenting and exploring the implications of some of the latest findings of empirical research in key ELF research areas including business and academic ELF, intercultural communication, language attitudes and ideologies, code-switching, and accommodation. These papers will have a broad appeal among applied- and socio-linguists, both academics and under/post-graduate students, as well as ELT practitioners around the world. They will also be of interest to language planners because of the potential of the research to inform English language policies and practices.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-10-01,John R. Leo and Marek Paryz,"Projecting Words, Writing Images: Intersections of the Textual and the Visual in American Cultural Practices",Hardback,978-1-4438-3293-9,44.99,"This compilation of essays by 20 scholars trained in comparative literatures, art history, critical theory, and American cultural studies further explores and expands the spirited and energetic field of visual cultural studies and its cognate or supplemental projects of “visual practices” and “visual literacy.” Their topics and perspectives engage contemporary re-theorizations of “text,” of “word” and “image,” while their alignments, ruptures, slippages and aporias fall across a range of media practices and institutions. These include photography and exhibition, film, television, entertainment, journalism, poetry and literature as visual and spectacular performances, and graphic narratives, but also their discursive intersections with “race” and ethnicity, their conjugations of gender, their tense and constitutive relations within multiple public spheres and (post)modernities.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-10-01,Drago Momcilovic,"Resounding Pasts: Essays in Literature, Popular Music, and Cultural Memory",Hardback,978-1-4438-0032-7,39.99,"The field of memory studies has long been preoccupied with the manner in which events from the past are commemorated, forgotten, re-fashioned, or worked through on both the individual and collective level. Yet in an age when various modes of artistic and cultural commemoration have begun to overlap with and respond to one another, the dynamics of cultural remembering and forgetting become bound up in an increasingly elaborate network of representations that operate both within and outside temporal, cultural, and national borders.

As publicly circulating texts that straddle the line between cultural artifact and artistic object, both musical and literary works, both individually and often in conjunction with one another, help shape cultural memories and individual experiences of those events. Troping their cultural milieux through specific aesthetic and social forms, genres, and modes of dissemination, music and literature become part of a growing global panoply of raw materials upon which we might begin to pose questions regarding the way we remember, the consequences of sharing and passing on those memories, and the aesthetic and cultural pressures attendant upon the circulation and interpretation of texts that (re-)sound the past.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-10-01,Ewa Borkowska and Tomasz Burzyński,"The Surplus of Culture: Sense, Common-sense, Non-sense",Hardback,978-1-4438-3213-7,39.99,"This multifaceted volume presents the elusive surplus of culture in the spotlight of theory and academic practice. Despite its overtly economic implications, the concept alludes to the added value of sense, common sense and nonsense which is represented as languages of irony, irrationality and absurdity potentially subverting traditional and mainstream “regimes” of culture. Consequently, the “moment of surplus” is inherent in critical interpretation in which supposedly well-entrenched notions suddenly reveal their implicitly shattering and subversive nature.

The surplus of culture dwells at the risky intersection of untamed interpretation and tradition. It is the space of the “third” in which literary canons are re-visited, language reveals its hidden political agendas, the Orient reclaims its own cognitive perspective and established structures of cognition are questioned in the tragic-comic gesture of insight. The volume is a must for scholars and researchers in the fields of cultural studies, literature and arts as well as literary theory.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-10-01,Shirley A. Stave and Justine Tally,Toni Morrison’s A Mercy: Critical Approaches,Hardback,978-1-4438-3300-4,34.99,"Toni Morrison’s ninth novel, A Mercy, has been received with much acclaim by both the critical and lay reading public. Hailed as her best novel after the award-winning Beloved, most critics to date have concentrated on its setting in the late seventeenth century, a time in which, according to the author herself, slavery was “pre-racial,” a time before the “Terrible Transformation” irrevocably linked slavery to skin-color or “race.” Though a slender, easy to read novel, A Mercy is in fact a richly-layered text, full of multiple meanings and possibilities, a work of art that has only just begun to be “mined” for its critical import. The present volume is the first to deal with these possibilities, presenting a variety of critical approaches that include narrative theory, the eco-critical, the geographical, the allegorical, the Miltonian, the feminist, the metaphorical, and the Lacanian. As such, not only is it conceived to enrich the work of Morrison scholars and students, but also to illuminate the use of critical theory in elucidating a complex literary text. A Mercy clamors for close reading and thoughtful interrogation and promises to reward the perceptive reader.
","“This volume presents a series of bold interrogations of Morrison’s ninth novel, which is both her shortest and in many ways her most enigmatic. Combining familiar approaches to Morrison with a range of innovative readings, the essays offer a perceptive and penetrating study of one of Morrison’s most significant texts.”
– Prof. Marc Conner, Author of The Aesthetics of Toni Morrison: Speaking the Unspeakable (2000) and Co-author with Wm. R. Nash of Charles Johnson: The Novelist as Philosopher (2007)

“The multiple perspectives  found here – ecocritical, feminist, intertextual, psychoanalytic – yield fascinating and original insights into diverse aspects of Morrison’s text: orphanhood as metaphor of the African American experience, bodies of water as reflections of African diasporic history, the American wilderness as mirror of the ego, and Morrison’s rewriting of American myths of origin. The collection will be essential reading not only for readers of Morrison’s work, but for students of slavery and of the American colonial environment.”
– Jean Wyatt, Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies Occidental College; Author of Risking Difference: Identification, Race, and Community in Contemporary Fiction and Feminism (2004) and Reconstructing Desire: The Role of the Unconscious in Women's Reading and Writing (1992)
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-10-01,Kamille Stone Stanton and Julie A. Chappell,Transatlantic Literature of the Long Eighteenth Century,Hardback,978-1-4438-3288-5,34.99,"In 1789, before the abolition of slavery in Great Britain or the United States of America, poet William Blake quietly appealed to the public’s sense of humanity in Songs of Innocence with the poem, “The Little Black Boy.” In that same year, a former slave named Olaudah Equiano was catapulted to fame as a sympathetic face for the abolitionist movement with the publication of his autobiography. Olaudah Equiano became an internationally sought after public speaker and enjoyed the remarkable success of nine editions of his book within the five year span between 1789 and 1794, making him the wealthiest black man in the English-speaking world.

Transatlantic Literature of the Long Eighteenth Century, edited by Kamille Stone Stanton and Julie A. Chappell, contributes to that growing body of nuanced textual criticism seeking to prove that the progress of the anti-slavery movement was actually no single-authored sensation but rather part of a broader transatlantic discourse spanning the entirety of the long eighteenth century.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-11-01,Sabrina Brancato,Afroeurope@n Configurations: Readings and Projects,Hardback,978-1-4438-3337-0,39.99,"This volume brings together contributions from various disciplines in the humanities exploring a variety of cultural, social and political configurations produced by the African presence in Europe, and attempting to consolidate a comparative framework for the study of contemporary black literatures and identities across different national and linguistic contexts. From the circumstances of black students in Russia to the recovery of a forgotten African identity in the Canary Islands, from the specificities of Portuguese postcoloniality to the representations of Africans in Iceland, the essays collected here provide a wide spectrum of research on African Diasporas in Eastern, Western, Southern and Northern Europe offering insights into previously little explored areas.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-11-01,Dvir Abramovich,Back to the Future: Israeli Literature of the 1980s and 1990s,Paperback,978-1-4438-3338-7,24.99,"This book provides a wide-ranging survey of a large number of Israeli novels and short stories written in the 1980s and 1990s and brings together a range of fresh critical perspectives that will benefit teachers and students of Hebrew literature and fans of literature in general.

This eye-opening and vibrant study furnishes the reader with insights about three dominant genres that emerged during these norm-defying decades and provides new understanding about how modern Israeli fiction evolved to be what it is today. 

Abramovich provides the social and political background for the dramatic and broad transformations that took place in Israeli society during this period of transition¬¬— the Yom Kippur War, the election of the Likkud Party, The Lebanon War, the rise of postmodernism, the impact of feminism, the collapse of national consensus— and links those developments to the literary changes that seeped into the fabric of Israeli writing of that time.   

The book deals with three pivotal areas that emerged and flowered in the 1980s and 1990s — Second Generation Holocaust literature, the Mizrachi novel, and detective fiction — and meticulously and comprehensively analyses the works’ subject-matters, ideas and aesthetic strategies.  Extensively discussed and evaluated are the groundbreaking themes found in the stories of authors David Grossman, Sami Michael, Ronit Matalon, Savyon Liebrecht, Batya Gur, Eli Amir, Shulamit Lapid, Itamar Levy, Gila Almagor, Nava Semel, Dorit Rabinyan, Yitzhak Gormezano Goren, Dorit Peleg and Lily Peri Amitai. 

From best-sellers to cult-classics, from the mainstream to the marginal, Back to the Future: Israeli Literature of the 1980s and 1990s is a significant and praiseworthy effort that celebrates the creative energy of Israeli culture and is sure to engage readers of many tastes.







","“In this ambitious new study, Dvir Abramovich takes for his subject hitherto marginalized but certainly not marginal works of recent Israeli fiction, and makes not only the  works themselves but the cultural context in which they appeared interesting and accessible to the general reader. What is fascinating in his approach is how Abramovich traces the acceptance of such disparate ethnic and genre fictions into mainstream modern Hebrew literature back to historical events and social phenomena in the early years of Israeli statehood. . . . The aim of Abramovich’s excellent study is to highlight the social context as well as  the artistic achievement of these voices of recent Israeli fiction, and to make those insights available to English-language readers.”
—Professor David Mesher, Department of English and comparative Literature, San José State University, USA

“Dvir Abramovich’s book is a lively and provocative study of Israeli-Hebrew literature in the 1980s and 1990s. . . . Selective and intelligent close-readings of several representative novels and stories from those two transitional decades display the kaleidoscopic differences in the ever-changing landscape of Israeli experiences and Abramovich masterfully negotiates the twists and turns of this multilane and layered highway that is modern Israel.”
—Professor Norman Simms, Department of Humanities and English at the University of Waikato in Hamilton, New Zealand

“Dvir Abramovich’s new book provides the reader with in-depth insights into novels and short story collections penned by Hebrew writers during the 1980s and 1990s, opening a wide window into Israeli society and culture. . . . Abramovich succeeds in presenting the complexity and uniqueness of the new Israeli identity, or better, identities, which under the impact of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the ideological, socioeconomic, and cultural tensions between different sections of Israeli society, and the intense globalization, have undergone extensive deconstruction and reconstruction.”
—Professor Reuven Snir, Dean of the Faculty of Humanities, University of Haifa, Israel

“Abramovich’s inspiring book makes a most important contribution to the exposure of contemporary Hebrew and Israeli literature to readers around the world . . . this is a welcome and wide ranging addition to the growing contemporary research on Hebrew literature written in the last decades.”
—Dr Adia Mendelson-Maoz, Head of Hebrew Literature Section, The Open University of Israel

",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-11-01,Dan Farrelly,"Between Myth and Reality: Goethe, Anna Amalia, Charlotte von Stein",Paperback,978-1-4438-3310-3,24.99,"“In 2004 Ettore Ghibellino published his provocative thesis that Goethe’s beloved was not Charlotte von Stein but the Dowager Duchess, Anna Amalia. Ghibellino claimed that Charlotte, the former lady-in-waiting of Anna Amalia, acted as a ‘straw woman’ and that the many letters, and the love they expressed, were really meant for Anna Amalia herself. Dan Farrelly, who translated Ghibellino’s book, has been preoccupied with this thesis since 2005. Here he has undertaken a meticulous re-reading of Goethe’s letters to Charlotte von Stein from 1776 to 1786. He analyses the whereabouts of Charlotte and Anna Amalia at any given time, including their journeys, and concludes that Charlotte was the real addressee of the letters. This amounts to a refutation of one of Ghibellino’s central arguments. This book is to be recommended as a further contribution to discussion of Goethe’s early Weimar period.” 
—Ilse Nagelschmidt, Leipzig

“Although the image of Goethe in the popular imagination is quite different from the scholarly reception of Goethe’s life and work, the two worlds do cross over, and misconceptions about the poet are difficult to dispel once they become established in contemporary Goethean culture. In tackling Ghibellino’s recent misreading of Goethe’s relationship with Anna Amalia—which has recently merited attention in Die Zeit—Farrelly is able to give the high cultural and the colloquial equal credence. His combination of scholarship and a fundamental awareness of the plain sense of things has an intellectual hardness at its core. There is an unapologetic quality about Farrelly’s writing and a deep sense of intellectual responsibility and integrity.”
—Lorraine Byrne Bodley, Dublin
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-11-01,"Vanessa Guignery, Catherine Pesso-Miquel and François Specq",Hybridity: Forms and Figures in Literature and the Visual Arts,Hardback,978-1-4438-3346-2,44.99,"Over the last two decades, the unstable notion of hybridity has been the focus of a number of debates in cultural and literary studies, and has been discussed in connection with such notions as métissage, creolization, syncretism, diaspora, transculturation and in-betweeness. The aim of this volume is to form a critical assessment of the scope, significance and role of the notion in literature and the visual arts from the eighteenth century to the present day. The contributors propose to examine the development and various manifestations of the concept as a principle held in contempt by the partisans of racial purity, a process enthusiastically promoted by adepts of mixing and syncretism, but also a notion viewed with suspicion by those who decry its multifarious and triumphalist dimensions and its lack of political roots. The notion of hybridity is analysed in relation to the concepts of identity, nationhood, language and culture, drawing from the theories of Mikhail Bakhtin, Homi Bhabha, Robert Young, Paul Gilroy and Edouard Glissant, among others. Contributors examine forms of hybridity in the work of such canonical writers as Daniel Defoe, Robert Louis Stevenson, Thomas De Quincey and Victor Hugo, as well as in contemporary American and British fiction, Neo-Victorian and postcolonial literature.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-11-01,Bahaa-eddin Abulhassan Hassan,Literary Translation: Aspects of Pragmatic Meaning,Hardback,978-1-4438-3358-5,34.99,"This is a manual of literary translation and as such will be invaluable to students of linguistics, translation, literary theory and cultural studies. Translation plays an important role in increasing understanding among diverse cultures and nations. Literary translations in particular help different cultures reach a compromise. Beginning with the relationship between pragmatics and translation, the book introduces the major areas of linguistic pragmatics – speech acts, presupposition, implicature, deixis and politeness and how they can be applied in the field of translation. It balances theory and application through the examples of Arabic/English translation using a wide range of texts from The Cairo Trilogy by the Noble Literature laureate Naguib Mahfouz. Mahfouz’s trilogy has certainly lost much of its meaning in Hutchin et al.’s translation into English. Their translation fails to assess the effectiveness of the source text and to preserve its implied meaning. All these problematic renderings have contributed to the distortion or loss of meaning. The major concern of the study is to examine the pragmatic meanings involved in a literary translation. The attention given to pragmatic facts and principles in the course of translation can enhance the understanding of the text and improve the quality of translation.
","“Literary Translation: Aspects of Pragmatic Meaning provides a definitive survey of an important and influential approach to translation theory and research, with an emphasis on the developments of pragmatics in translation studies. The book places a wide range of seminal and innovative pragmatic translations within their thematic, cultural and historical contexts. This study has been fully updated and revised.”
– Prof. Ibrahim Maghraby, Mansoura University

“Literary Translation: Aspects of Pragmatic Meaning is a comprehensive resource book which provides students and researchers with support for advanced study of literary translation. The author examines the theory and practice of translation from a pragmatic point of view. He explores examples from Mahfouz's trilogy.”
– Prof. Mustafa Riyad, Ain Shams University

“Literary Translation: Aspects of Pragmatic Meaning is one of the pioneering studies in the field of translation studies and I found it very helpful as a resource book. The author obviously indicates what students or practitioners would need to research or study further in literary translation. He discusses the key tenets of literary translation practice and theory.”
– Prof. Ahmed-Sokarno Abdel-Hafiz, South Valley University
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-11-01,R.C. Richardson,"Receptions and Re-visitings: Review Articles, 1978-2011",Hardback,978-1-4438-3309-7,34.99,"The shorter pieces reproduced here are drawn chiefly from the author’s large output of review articles and reviews of the last fifteen years. Though there is some shared subject matter with R.C. Richardson’s new collection on Social History, Local History and Historiography (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011), this volume significantly enlarges the range of the other in addressing, for example, issues relating to politics and political thinking, London, gendered worlds, servants and servant-keeping, the writing of diaries, and early modern reading habits. Many of the essays have a pronounced historiographical dimension, and a number of them focus on the period of the English Revolution. The two final essays – on ‘Epic Historiography’ and ‘Historians, History Brokers and English Historical Culture’ – extend the coverage to modern times. General readers, not just specialists, will find this book a helpful and accessibly written guide to the subjects under review.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-12-01,Gert Reifarth and Philip Morrissey,Aesopic Voices: Re-framing Truth through Concealed Ways of Presentation in the 20th and 21st Centuries,Hardback,978-1-4438-3443-8,49.99,"What do critical thinkers do when political, social or religious circumstances are hostile to truth and open discussion? One possibility is to seek refuge in the realm of the Aesopic and veil opinions about the ruling authorities in symbolic and coded terms, retreating to fairy tales and fables, and employing myths and elements of folklore. Such Aesopic voices create an alternative discursive form of protest and subversion.

This collection attempts to break new academic ground. While Aesop has now been a ‘household name’ (and as such mostly been related to children’s stories) for at least a century and a half, academic recognition of Aesopic art and writing has been relatively sparse. Our book intends to fuel systematic analysis and appreciation of such examples of Aesopic creation.

The contributions offer thought-provoking insights which span the five continents of the globe and more than a century. The book brings together historians, literary scholars, film theorists, scholars from Australian Indigenous studies, cultural theorists and arts practitioners.


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-12-01,Kristen Guest,Black Beauty: His Grooms and Companions.  The Autobiography of a Horse by Anna Sewell,Hardback,978-1-4438-3382-0,39.99,"Continuously in print and translated into multiple languages since it was first published, Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty is a classic work of children’s literature that is also an important text in the fields of Victorian studies and animal studies. The new Cambridge Scholars Publishing critical edition reproduces the first edition of 1877, restoring material often abridged in other modern editions. It also includes a critical introduction; contextual material that places the novel in historical context; a chronology of Anna Sewell; and notes on the text that illuminate references to Victorian society and contemporary practices of animal husbandry.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-12-01,William Gray,"Fantasy, Art and Life: Essays on George MacDonald, Robert Louis Stevenson and Other Fantasy Writers",Paperback,978-1-4438-3385-1,19.99,"In part a sequel to his earlier Death and Fantasy, William Gray’s Fantasy, Art and Life: Essays on George MacDonald, Robert Louis Stevenson and Other Fantasy Writers examines the ways in which “Life” in its various senses is affirmed, explored and enhanced through the work of the creative imagination, especially in fantasy literature. The discussion includes a range of fantasy writers, but focuses chiefly on two writers of the Victorian period, George MacDonald and Robert Louis Stevenson, whose Scottish (and particularly Calvinist) backgrounds deeply affected their engagement with what MacDonald called “The Fantastic Imagination.”



","“This impressive book is in part a companion-piece to the author’s earlier Death and Fantasy, after finishing which he felt ‘almost a compulsion to produce a sequel.’ Originally a series of separately-published essays, lectures and book-reviews, the various chapters of the book together consider how far fantasy can draw us back towards life rather than away from it. Gray takes as his main authors the Victorian Scottish writers of fantasy George MacDonald and Robert Louis Stevenson, while referring also to C.S. Lewis, Philip Pullman and Neil Gaiman. MacDonald’s belief in the power of fantasy to heal the spirit, his unsentimental ideal of the childlike in life and literature, and his continuing sense of the need to relate the experience of fantasy to the real world, are traced in such works as his Adela Cathcart, ‘The Golden Key’ and Lilith; while Stevenson’s The Wrecker, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and his more macabre short stories serve to explore the mixture of romanticism and realism in his work, and his strong sense of the immediate reality of evil. Throughout, Gray’s knowledge of philosophy, theology and literary theory deepen and contextualise his arguments. This is a book to savour and reread, by the author of several noted recent studies of fantasy literature.”
—Colin Manlove, Formerly Reader at Edinburgh University; Author of Modern Fantasy (1975), The Impulse of Fantasy Literature (1982), Christian Fantasy (1992), Scottish Fantasy Literature (1999) and Alice to Harry Potter: Children’s Fantasy in England (2003)



",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-12-01,Gabriel Rosenstock,Haiku: The Gentle Art of Disappearing,Paperback,978-1-4438-3378-3,24.99,"In Haiku, the Gentle Art of Disappearing, a renowned Irish poet shows us how haiku may be used  as a powerful tool for spiritual interpenetration. This implies that we divest ourselves of the ever-chattering mind, shed the voracious ego and enjoy momentary glimpses of unity with natural phenomena. In the companion volume, Haiku Enlightenment, he further explores these thoroughly delightful experiences and invites us to disappear! Haiku is dynamically focussed on the present, from season to season, from day to day, from hour to hour, from second to second. But how illusory, how fleeting is that present moment? How caught up is it with the past, with the future? Can we stop its flow? Are there more ways than one of experiencing its essence? If we experience a moment intensely enough, might we disappear? Surprises await those readers who may have considered haiku to be nothing more than an innocuous three-line poem.

A renowned poet shares his experience of haiku and its potential to surprise us again and again into a sudden awakening and thus to a deeper sense of what it is to be truly alive. His remarkably refreshing insights have delighted confreres around the world.




","“Gabriel Rosenstock offers us a marvellous path into the essence of haiku and the state of being in harmony with the laws of the universe.”
—Ion Codrescu, Romania

“A learned, imaginative and profound commentary on haiku with many outstanding examples from around the globe, demonstrating the form’s universal appeal. Persons with little knowledge of haiku will be captivated, while those with expertise will feel renewed…”
—George Swede, Canada

“Rosenstock is an excellent teacher, wise enough to realise that in describing haiku (as in so many other things) examples are worth a million words. He spreads before us a variegated tapestry of haiku, by poets in all places and at all times since haiku began, as well as from his own ingenious pen, in which ‘the spirit of play and the play of spirit are simultaneous and one.’”
—David Cobb, England

“From the wealth of his experience, Rosenstock gives profound advice and useful tips for the wanderer on the haiku path, showing us how sudden enlightenment can happen in our ordinary life.”
—Ruth Franke, Germany

“With edifying purpose, the author subtly introduces examples of haiku’s apocalyptic potential of transfiguration, known in haiku and Zen as ‘spiritual interpenetration,’ and, by so doing, offers the reader an opportunity to witness—through numinous haiku moments—the entwining of the Universal Spirit with Its Self.”
—James W. Hackett, Hawaii




",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-12-01,Wataru Nakamura,New Perspectives in Role and Reference Grammar,Hardback,978-1-4438-3388-2,44.99,"New Perspectives in Role and Reference Grammar presents a broad picture of current developments in Role and Reference Grammar (RRG), a version of parallel structure grammar with an emphasis on typological adequacy. Since its inception, RRG has been applied to a wide range of languages, in particular to case marking, complex clauses (e.g. control, raising, and serial verb constructions), unaccusativity/unergativity, and the interplay between syntax and information structure.

The present book is a continued investigation of the intermodular correspondence in a variety of languages and comprises 13 papers, which not only contribute to the further development of the theory, but also investigate controversial areas of linguistic theory including inflectional and derivational morphology, verbal semantics and argument structure (anticausative and serial verb constructions), the argument-adjunct distinction, an extended typology of complex clauses, the syntax-information structure interface, and interactions between the lexicon and constructions. In addition, three papers illustrate how RRG may be applied to sign languages, language acquisition, and machine translation from Arabic to English.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-12-01,Lynn DellaPietra,Perspectives on Creativity: Volume 2,Hardback,978-1-4438-3447-6,39.99,"Perspectives on Creativity: Volume 2 extends the work of the first volume and examines creativity from multiple viewpoints. The volume contains contributions from writers, therapists, artists, and scholars from disciplines as diverse as psychology and French. The first section addresses the nature of creativity and highlights the role of self-discipline in the creative process. The second section asks what we can learn from studying artists and presents qualitative, phenomenological, quantitative, and archival research on both individuals and groups of artists. The third section discusses the use of creativity within the therapeutic setting, as well as the particular therapeutic needs of creative individuals. The final section of the book presents research exploring creative cognition and its relationship to mood and perception. What makes this book unique is the interdisciplinary consideration of the topic of creativity, the inclusion of works ranging from case studies to theoretical essays, making it appealing to individuals from a wide variety of backgrounds.

","“With this second Perspectives on Creativity volume, Lynn DellaPietra brings together the professional experiences of writers and visual artists, therapeutic practitioners and behavioral researchers toward more fully framing the challenges and rewards of creativity in thought and action. Each chapter unpacks an additional puzzle piece toward understanding this uniquely human quality while several challenge social myths and previously established research. As a whole, the collection exposes the complexity that creativity rouses for diversely focused individuals and for society.”
– Nevin Mercede, Visual Artist/Educator

“Reading this book made me regret not attending the conference at which these papers were presented. Based on my perspective (problem-solving), I found many things to agree with, many to argue with, much to digest, little to dismiss. Others will have other reactions, also based on their perspectives.  Reactions are what make reading valuable.  This is a valuable read.”
– Patricia D. Stokes, PhD, Adjunct Professor of Psychology, Barnard College, Columbia University; Author of Creativity from Constraints: The Psychology of Breakthrough

“In the second volume of Perspectives on Creativity, Dr DellaPietra’s contribution is unusually practical while being scholarly and imaginative. Her authors include artists, writers, psychoanalysts, and researchers who explore questions of creativity in everyday life, the role of beauty and aesthetics, psychotherapy with artists, and the relation of art and madness. They look at the relation between creativity and thinking and affect, the role of creativity in treating trauma, the balance between structure and inspiration in the creative act, and the role of creativity in innovation and problem-solving in other areas of life. Most important is her understanding of the creative person and the need to protect him or her in a culture that is not always hospitable to creative people. This book will be very useful to academics, artists, psychotherapists, creative arts therapists, and everyone who is interested in bringing creativity and innovation to real-life situations.”
– Ilene A. Serlin, PhD, BC-DMT, Psychologist and Dance/Movement Therapist; Past-President San Francisco Psychological Association; Editor of Whole Person Healthcare

",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-12-01,Pat Wheeler,Re-reading Pat Barker,Hardback,978-1-4438-3441-4,34.99,"Re-Reading Pat Barker brings together a number of scholars from across the world who explore in detail the work of one of Britain’s most notable contemporary novelists. The essays both acknowledge and engage with previous scholarship, re-establishing Barker’s eminence as a writer and adding to existing critical perspectives. In the collection, established Barker scholars return to her work, re-reading her novels to offer fresh and innovative readings, and other critics who have not previously published on Barker offer new insights into her body of work. The contributors examine a number of thematic concerns including matrilineal heritage, masculinity, the body, ways of seeing, institutional and personal violence, psychoanalysis and gender and class. The essays in the collection explore the broader social and historical aspects of Barker’s novels and the aesthetics and ethical issues in her work, drawing our attention to the ways that she engages with the world, gesturing towards new ways of seeing and to the possibilities of personal and political regeneration. The collection shows there is still much to say about the novels and the ways in which we choose to read them.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-12-01,Irma Ratiani,Totalitarianism and Literary Discourse: 20th Century Experience,Hardback,978-1-4438-3445-2,54.99,"The collection Totalitarianism and Literary Discourse represents selected proceedings from the conference, Totalitarianism and Literary Discourse: 20th Century Experience, held in Tbilisi, Georgia, in October 2009. The Tbilisi conference pioneered scholarly inquiry into post-Soviet space, which evaluated political and cultural realia, emphasizing the challenges facing literature and culture in totalitarian strangleholds, various kinds of ideological diktat, their possible forms and consequences. The Soviet type of totalitarianism was especially accentuated.

Decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union, full comprehension of the process of Sovietization has become possible, and in the field of literary studies scholars have worked on a number of issues: assessing conceptual and motivational models of Soviet-period texts; demonstrating the reaction of literary discourse to intellectual terror and systematizing alternative models offered by anti-Soviet discourse; exhibiting the myths and stereotypes of the totalitarian epoch; and classifying literary genres.

The collection Soviet Totalitarianism and Literary Discourse has gathered papers by scholars from almost all of the post-Soviet states, as well as of some other countries. It is a first attempt to solve the above-mentioned issues and offers a wide array of questions.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-12-01,Gene H. Bell-Villada and Nina Sichel with Faith Eidse and Elaine Neil Orr,"Writing Out of Limbo: International Childhoods, Global Nomads and Third Culture Kids",Hardback,978-1-4438-3360-8,49.99,"Crossing borders and boundaries, countries and cultures, they are the children of the military, diplomatic corps, international business, education and missions communities. They are called Third Culture Kids or Global Nomads, and the many benefits of their lifestyle – expanded worldview, multiplicity of languages, tolerance for difference – are often mitigated by recurring losses – of relationships, of stability, of permanent roots. They are part of an accelerating demographic that is only recently coming into visibility.

In this groundbreaking collection, writers from around the world address issues of language acquisition and identity formation, childhood mobility and adaptation, memory and grief, and the artist’s struggle to articulate the experience of growing up global. And, woven like a thread through the entire collection, runs the individual’s search for belonging and a place called “home.”

This book provides a major leap in understanding what it’s like to grow up among worlds. It is invaluable reading for the new global age.
","“This terrific and substantial volume is a vital step in clarifying the experiences, gifts, and struggles of those who grew up around the world, or with those who grew up elsewhere. I can’t wait to teach with it.”
– Wendy Laura Belcher, PhD, Professor of Literature, Princeton University

“Well-grounded in classical perspectives and new visions of what it means to live in an intercultural world, the book offers a wonderful array of memoir, research, interviews, theory and even poetry. There’s something for everyone here!”
– Anne P. Copeland, PhD, Director, The Interchange Institute

“The selections here, varied as they are, share the quiet, profound, and rich experiences of people writing on the most innocent years, transcendent of cultural boundaries. Reading this book is a travel across the globe with an impressive group of worldly citizens.”
– Morten Ender, PhD, Professor of Sociology, United States Military Academy at West Point

“I recommend this book to all parents who are creating TCKs; to teachers and professors of TCKs; for general reading and understanding of the making of a citizen of the world; and, finally, to TCKs themselves, who will see that their experiences are shared with many others.”
– Linda A. Garvelink, President, Foreign Service Youth Foundation

“This book is an essential contribution to the discussion of migration and the art of finding a home between borders. In vivid prose, the authors reveal the value of cultural negotiation and the complexity of identities formed on the margins.”
– Neela Vaswani,  PhD, Author of You Have Given Me a Country
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-01-01,"James Carney, Leonard Madden, Michael O’Sullivan, and Karl White",Beckett Re-Membered: After the Centenary,Hardback,978-1-4438-3500-8,39.99,"Beckett Re-Membered showcases some of the most recent scholarship on the Irish novelist, poet, and playwright, Samuel Beckett. As well as essays on Beckett’s literary output, it contains a section on the philosophical dimension of his work – an important addition, given the profound impact Beckett has had on European philosophy. Rather than attempting to circumscribe Beckett scholarship by advocating a theoretical position or thematic focus, Beckett Re-Membered reflects the exciting and diverse range of critical interventions that Beckett studies continues to generate. In the nineteen essays that comprise this volume, every major articulation of Beckett’s work is addressed, with the result that that it offers an unusually comprehensive survey of its target author. Beckett Re-Membered will appeal to any reader who is interested in provocative responses to one of the twentieth century’s most important European writers.
","“This fresh and exciting collection of essays on Samuel Beckett amounts to a vital intervention within the field of Beckett Studies. By bringing several threads of scholarly investigation together, Beckett Re-membered examines not only the philosophical, theoretical, and aesthetic influences that informed the Irish writer’s work, but it also considers the author’s legacy within a new and original framework. Coherently arranged and offering sharp insight from an international field of well-known and energetic young scholars alike, the collection attends to a stunning array of critical questions and brings new intellectual depth to Beckett scholarship. Collectively, the nineteen essays outline Beckett’s engagement with European philosophy, modernism, and literary theory, and map the influence of each onto his fiction and plays. Skillfully ordered and intellectually challenging throughout, this book brings further light to Samuel Beckett’s life and work.”
– Padraig Kirwan, Department of English and Comparative Literature, Goldsmiths, University of London

“Now that the publication of the four-volume Letters of Samuel Beckett is well underway, we are all the more in need of volumes like Beckett Re-Membered, which maps Beckett’s complex literary project in terms of his intellectual commitments. The surprising unity of this multi-authored study is primarily an effect of Beckett’s own powers of concentration – although a certain faithfulness of the authors to the spirit of Beckett is crucial. The editors divide the essays into four sections, Philosophy, Poetry, Drama, and Fiction, placing philosophy where it belongs in studies of Beckett – at the foundation of his work. Beckett’s letters have shown how his lifelong dedication to reading, study, and thinking, his pursuit of the difficult questions of human existence, supports and permeates his imaginative writing. Beckett Re-Membered acknowledges and demonstrates the full range of Beckett’s talents and interests – his imaginative achievements and his engagement with fundamental questions of art and life. The knowledgeable, concise introductions and the insightful, highly readable essays comprise an ideal resource for university faculty and students. But the book is also for lovers of literature who crave the kind of open and questioning conversations that Beckett’s writing has always provoked.”
– Joseph R. Chaney, Director of the Master of Liberal Studies Program, Associate Professor of English, Indiana University South Bend
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-01-01,Daniel Meyer-Dinkgräfe,"Consciousness, Theatre, Literature and the Arts 2011",Hardback,978-1-4438-3458-2,44.99,"The essays collected in this volume were initially presented at the Fourth International Conference on Consciousness, Theatre, Literature and the Arts, held at the University of Lincoln, May 28–30, 2011. The conference was organised on the basis of the success of its predecessors in 2005, 2007 and 2009, and on the basis of the success of the Rodopi book series Consciousness, Literature and the Arts, which has to date seen thirty volumes in print, with another twelve in press or in the process of being written. The 2011 conference and the book series highlight the continuing growth of interest within the interdisciplinary field of consciousness studies, and in the distinct disciplines of theatre studies, literary studies, film studies, fine arts and music in the relationship between the object of these disciplines and human consciousness. Fifty-five delegates from twenty-eight countries across the world attended the May 2011 conference in Lincoln; their range of disciplines and approaches is reflected well in this book.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-01-01,David Newby,Insights into the European Portfolio for Student Teachers of Languages (EPOSTL),Hardback,978-1-4438-3503-9,39.99,"2007 saw the publication of the European Portfolio for Student Teachers of Languages (EPOSTL) by the Council of Europe, the result of a project carried out under the auspices of the European Centre for Modern Languages. The central aim of this project was to produce a document which would contribute to the harmonisation of teacher education in Europe.

The EPOSTL is a portfolio intended for students undergoing their initial teacher education which encourages them to reflect on the didactic knowledge and skills necessary to teach languages, helps them to self-assess their own didactic competences and enables them to monitor their progress and to record their experiences of teaching during the course of their teacher education. At its heart are 195 “I can” descriptors of didactic competences, which teachers strive to attain. The EPOSTL has since been translated into 13 languages and is used widely across Europe and beyond.

The main aim of Insights into the European Portfolio for Student Teachers of Languages (EPOSTL) is to explore important theoretical issues, an understanding of which is necessary to support the use of the EPOSTL in teacher education programmes. The first part of the book provides discussions of relevant theoretical areas: the role of reflection, learner autonomy and intercultural awareness. In the second part, the focus is on the relationship between the EPOSTL and other European publications, such as the Common European Framework of Reference and the European Profile for Language Teacher Education. Suggestions are made as to how they can be used together in teacher education. The final section provides case studies on the use of the EPOSTL in three European countries.

Whether users of the EPOSTL or not, both teacher educators and their students will find that the discussions of this book provide important insights into key aspects of teacher education.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-01-01,Kees de Hoog and Carol Hetherington,Investigating Arthur Upfield: A Centenary Collection of Critical Essays,Hardback,9781443834520,39.99,"Arthur Upfield created Detective Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte (Bony) who features in twenty-nine novels written from the 1920s to the the 1960s, mostly set in the Australian Outback. He was the first Australian professional writer of crime detection novels. Upfield arrived in Australia from England on 4 November 1911, and this collection of twenty-two critical essays by academics and scholars has been published to celebrate the centenary of his arrival.

The essays were all written after Upfield’s death in 1964 and provide a wide range of responses to his fiction. The contributors, from Australia, Europe and the United States, include journalist Pamela Ruskin who was Upfield’s agent for fifteen years, anthropologists, literary scholars, pioneers in the academic study of popular culture such as John G. Cawelti and Ray B. Browne, and novelists Tony Hillerman and Mudrooroo whose own works have been inspired by Upfield’s.

The collection sheds light on the extent and nature of critical responses to Upfield over time, demonstrates the type of recognition he has received and highlights the way in which different preoccupations and critical trends have dealt with his work. The essays provide the basis for an assessment of Upfield’s place not only in the international annals of crime fiction but also in the literary and cultural history of Australia.


","“This book is an essential for Arthur Upfield fans. Edited by two leading Upfield scholars, it contains articles from the best in the field and celebrates Australia’s most widely read detective fiction author. A must-have for anyone interested in detective fiction.”
– Toni Johnson-Woods, President, Popular Culture Association of Australia and New Zealand

“One of Australia’s most enduringly popular authors, Arthur W. Upfield also, in his creation of the Aboriginal detective Napoleon Bonaparte, started a discussion of race and representation in Australian fiction that persists to this day. This compilation, featuring scholars of distinction and range, will be the authoritative critical guide for all Upfield fans.”
– Nicholas Birns, the New School, New York

",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-01-01,Sławomir Zdziebko,Issues in Scottish Vowel Quantity,Hardback,978-1-4438-3463-6,39.99,"This book primarily provides a detailed description and interpretation of one of the most fascinating and poorly understood processes in English accentology, i.e. Aitken’s Law, also known as the Scottish Vowel Length Rule by which vowel quantity in Scottish English is fully predictable, as opposed to the other regional accents of English speakers. The research also contributes to the understanding of the working of long-short vowel distinctions in the languages of the world and argues that all phenomena observed in connection with the presence and absence vowel quantity contrasts are a direct consequence of the working of a relatively small set of universal and inviolable principles of grammar.

","“It is my immense pleasure to recommend the book ‘Issues in Scottish Vowel Quantity’ by Mr Slawomir Zdziebko to your publishing house.
   Mr Zdziebko’s book is a priceless and detailed documentation of the long standing debate about one of the most intriguing problems of English dialectology, i.e Aitken’s Law. It also constitutes a brave, innovative, and successful attempt at understanding the abovementioned phenomenon based on a meticulous investigation of empirical data and historical records.
Apart from that, ‘Issues in Scottish Vowel Quantity’ is a substantial contribution to the understanding of the working of vowel quantity in the languages of the world.
   I strongly recommend the book for publishing.”
          

Sincerely Cyran

Head of the Institute of English Studies
Faculty of Humanities
The John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin. 

",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-01-01,Hye-Joon Yoon,"Metropolis and Experience: Defoe, Dickens, Joyce",Hardback,978-1-4438-3455-1,44.99,"Metropolis and Experience: Defoe, Dickens, Joyce offers a close reading of the major texts of Defoe, Dickens, and Joyce, in their respective historical contexts and in comparison with their intertextual companions, from seventeenth-century “character” pamphlets through Baudelaire to Calvino. In doing so, it challenges the quietist complacency of specialization prevalent in current academia to contribute to a critique of urban modernity in the tradition of Simmel, Benjamin, and Lefebvre. Taking its cue from Benjamin’s bisection of “experience” into subjective sensory Erlebnis and communal reflective Erfahrung, Metropolis and Experience uses this binary pair as a categorical guide in its analysis of the stylistic and thematic adventures of the three centerpiece authors. Whereas Defoe’s novels embody a Simmelian metropolitan mentality through its narration of lived experience in paratactic prose, Dickens strives to humanize the sprawling Victorian metropolis into an experience for communal sharing. In Joyce’s works, the colonial dejections and belatedness of the Hibernian metropolis are transformed into an exuberant excess where both Erlebnis and Erfahrung meet their joyous end. This investigation of the interconnections between the metropolis, experience, and the novel takes place in tandem with a sustained query on non-literary subtopics such as finance capitalism and urban class antagonism. This is literary criticism charged with relevance for the age of “Occupy Wall Street.”
","“In Metropolis and Experience, Prof. Hye-Joon Yoon has brilliantly traced a history of city life as viewed from street level in the literary accounts of authors as diverse as St Augustine and Italo Calvino.  The authors taking center stage—Defoe, Dickens, and Joyce—are products of the modern metropolis of international credit, capitalist expansion, and colonial subjection.  Here where the effort to secure a private life means losing oneself in the crowd, we follow the career of the flanner though detailed accounts of all the major works of the centerpiece authors in pursuit of “meaningful human relationship” than can only “unfold in the margins and interstices.”  The character of such lived experience can best be apprehended in a manner of prose Prof Yoon identifies as “conjunctive disjunction,” while the demands of expressing the meaning of that experience encounters the obstacles of journalistic and scientific idioms, a confrontation which in the end exposes the inadequacies of the latter.   Metropolis and Experience brings together the daunting qualifications of what experience means with a rigor that makes it absolutely convincing that experience (which is revealed to be itself a dialectic) should be the concept to mediate the linguistic field of the novel and the economic field of the historical metropolis.”  
—Peter J. Grieco, PhD, poet and independent scholar

“Hye-Joon Yoon’s Metropolis and Experience: Defoe, Dickens, Joyce admits to being a little out-of-step with current trends in literary criticism, especially in its ambition to do justice to three very different authors (Defoe, Dickens, and Joyce) across three different centuries. It takes a lot of training, deep thought, and a fair amount of chutzpah to perform complex readings of each of these three, not to mention placing them in dialogue about the nature of city life and how to give it adequate representation in narrative form. The book succeeds because its author adopts a detached perspective, as someone who knows London and Dublin very well but isn’t an invested resident of either; by the same token, he isn’t a special advocate for any of his three novelists, or for the strategies they deploy, and is thus sympathetically attuned to what each tried to do and why. It’s not, then, a case of using the Victorian Dickens to highlight a more radical Joyce, or the earlier authors to draw out the blindspots of modernism. Each author gets to plead his case, articulated through intensive close reading and contextualization.

The key term in the book is ‘experience,’ and here too, there’s a pay-off to focusing its analysis around such a seemingly dated old-humanist term. Really, it’s about ‘lived experience’ in Benjamin’s sense: how the form of the novel might give articulate form to something that’s still (just about) collective, and yet increasingly felt as individualized and contingent. Cities have always been the place where the problem is most deeply present, of course: an urban experience that’s excessive, fleeting, hard to pin down, and even harder to communicate to others—even as we know that great numbers of fellow human beings are going through exactly the same thing. Approaching the concept of experience via German philosophy and critical theory, Hye-Joon maps out a trajectory of responses from Defoe (whose tendency is to embrace the dizzying contingencies of city life) through Dickens (who looks for larger patterns of general meaning, but is also a journalist at heart), and up to Joyce (whose work thematizes precisely the problems of fragmentation and totality).  Metropolis and Experience is stimulating and bracing as a work of literary scholarship, and timely in its revisiting of a range of urban aesthetics at a moment when global economic crisis once again threatens to reconfigure what it means to live in cities.”
—Simon Joyce, Professor of English, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia, USA
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-01-01,Heather M. Morgan and Ruth Morris,Moving Forward: Tradition and Transformation,Hardback,978-1-4438-3462-9,34.99,"This book has been compiled following the quality and reception of papers presented at the Moving Forward Postgraduate Conference, held at the University of Aberdeen, 21–22 July 2009. The volume comprises editorial and seven substantive papers on the themes of ‘tradition and transformation’, carefully chosen by the editorial team from in excess of fifty full written papers. These represent and tender a wide range of scholarly approaches to and within the arts and social sciences; the remit of Moving Forward. Each paper has been catered to a non-specialist audience in order to make the collection more widely accessible. Although ‘tradition and transformation’ seems loose terminology in many respects, it struck the editors that the dichotomy between past and future, the desire to respect history but also to effect change, and the presence of the present, were three issues that resounded throughout the conference contributions, but were those specifically captured within the selected papers. From each of six disciplinary areas, ranging across the arts and social sciences, delegates use the freedom of their positions as early-career researchers to boldly explore relations between these concepts without fear of censure, but with enthusiasm and energy for academic knowledge development and contribution. Indeed, through the papers chosen for inclusion here, distinct in their disciplinary origins, approaches and foci, we emphasise the many similarities that exist among the arts and social sciences subjects.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-01-01,"Sandrine Ferré, Philippe Prévost, Laurice Tuller, and Rasha Zebib",Selected Proceedings of the Romance Turn IV Workshop on the Acquisition of Romance Languages,Hardback,978-1-4438-3498-8,44.99,"This edited collection contains 13 selected papers presented at the Romance Turn IV conference, which was held at Université François Rabelais, Tours, France, in 2010. The volume reflects the diversity of interests of the contributors, not only in the learning contexts investigated (first language acquisition, typical or impaired, and bilingualism), but also in the linguistic properties being explored, in both syntax and phonology, and the languages under examination (work not only on Romance languages such as French, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese, European Portuguese, Romanian, and Spanish, but also comparative studies involving Basque, Modern Greek, and Cypriot Greek). Such a variety allows for multiple comparisons, which corresponds to the objective of the Romance Turn: providing an interactive platform for exchanges between researchers on the acquisition of Romance languages from a generative perspective. The volume is divided into two parts: the first part includes two papers presented as plenaries, one on L1 acquisition of morphophonology in European Portuguese (by M. João Freitas) and one on L1 acquisition of relative clauses in Italian (by Adriana Belletti), while the second part comprises 11 papers by Nikos Amvrazis, Isabel García del Real and Maria José Ezeizabarrena, Giuliana Giusti, Kleanthes Grohmann, Elaine Grolla, Virginia Hill and Mihaela Pirvulescu, Tihana Kraš, Juana Liceras, Anca Sevcenco and Larisa Avram, Katérina Palasis, and Francesca Volpato.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-01-01,"Diana Glenn, Md Rezaul Haque, Ben Kooyman and Nena Bierbaum",The Shadow of the Precursor,Hardback,978-1-4438-3461-2,44.99,"A shadow, in its most literal sense, is the projection of a silhouette against a surface and the obstruction of direct light from hitting that surface. For writers and artists, the shadows cast by their precursors can be either a welcome influence, one consciously evoked in textual production via homage or bricolage, or can manifest as an intrusive, haunting, prohibitive presence, one which threatens to engulf the successor. Many writers and artists are affected by an anxious and ambiguous relationship with their precursors, while others are energised by this relationship. The role that intertextuality plays in creative production invites interrogation, and this publication explores a range of conscious and unconscious influences informing relations between texts and contexts, between predecessors and successors. The chapters revolve around intertextual influence, ranging from conscious imitation and intentional allusion to Julia Kristeva’s idea of intertextuality. Do all texts contain references to and even quotations from other texts? Do such references help shape how we read? This multidisciplinary work includes chapters on the long shadows cast by Shakespeare, Dante, Scott, Virgil and Ovid, the shadows of colonial precursors on postcolonial successors, the shadows cast over Kipling and Murdoch, and chapters on other writers, dramatists and filmmakers and their relationships with precursor figures. With its focus on intertextual relationships, this book contributes to the thriving fields of adaptation studies and studies of intertextuality.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-01-02,Peter Quigley,"Housing the Environmental Imagination: Politics, Beauty, and Refuge in American Nature Writing",Hardback,978-1-4438-3446-9,39.99,"The last few decades have seen an explosion of interest in literature and the sense of place. Many essays, books and presentations have explored the aesthetics, politics, and urgency of understanding and appreciating the unique qualities of coasts, mountains, deserts, bioregions, and more. Little attention, however, has been given to the process of establishing residence in these special places and what it means to make a life there. Housing the Environmental Imagination focuses directly on this omission by examining the writing, houses, and lives of Thoreau, Robinson Jeffers, Gary Snyder, Wendell Berry, Scott Russell Sanders, Arne Naess, Mary Austin, Jack London, and many others. In addition to addressing the lack of study on this theme of living in place, Quigley adds a crucial additional element: living and writing in place. The unique aspect of this study is the selection of those writers whose writing project is inseparable from the living project. In other words, without the cabin at the pond, there would be no Walden. The same can be said of Snyder’s Kitkitdizze and Jeffers’ Tor House and Hawk Tower. Therefore, it’s Quigley’s intention to throw open the issue of the meaning of houses and to explore the role houses play in the lives of some of the more well-known nature writers. Thoreau is cited by Quigley as a good point of departure for examining the meaning and role of houses: “Most men appear never to have considered what a house is.” In this way, Quigley claims to have identified a new genre of writing and in the process pushes back against postmodern approaches. This writing, connected inseparably to house and region, depends on and is anchored in experience and to a world of natural processes and values. An interesting aspect of the book is the way Quigley takes this basic formula (place, house, writing) and examines how lifestyle and ritual are associated with place, house and writing. In addition, this triad also is seen to work its way forward in different historical times and pressures. Quigley examines the different political, social and architectural pressures felt by these writers in the 19th, and early and late 20th centuries. The conclusion of this study points forward, however, as the title of the last chapter suggests: “Alternative Futures.”

Quigley takes as his guiding theme throughout, two polar thoughts from Thoreau that govern the writers under examination as well as Quigley’s approach. Thoreau championed the heroic virtue of the imagination in practical terms by urging folks to move “confidently in the direction of [one’s] dreams.” By doing so, if one “endeavors to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.” Again the practical and the imaginative are brought together with Thoreau’s other claim that it is “vain to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.” Nature, war, individualism, love, family, stone, wood, glass, ocean, mountains, farming, community and more come together in this broad ranging discussion. This is a book about writers in place, but it also is about rethinking how we might live the best lives we can, every day. Essentially this book addresses the long standing question “And how shall we live?”

 http://housesinthepoeticwild.org/

","“Housing the Environmental Imagination is a compelling, independent-minded book that explores the house of a poet not only as aesthetic object or utilitarian shelter, but as the vital record of the imagination’s contact with physical nature. Quigley shows that the houses he discusses do not represent closings-off but rather reachings-out. Along with many original, illuminating observations on environment and architecture, the book is filled with pointed, fortifying, and revelatory criticisms of postmodernist cultural and literary theory.”
—David Copland Morris, University of Washington, Tacoma

“In ‘The Metaphysical Poets,’ T. S. Eliot argued that, for poets, ‘In the seventeenth century a dissociation of sensibility set in, from which we have never recovered.’ Yet Peter Quigley shows us how a number of our strongest writers have dared to re-imagine thinking and feeling as simultaneous, to reintegrate who they are with where they are and what they are doing as they live their daily lives. Going beyond the words on the page to examine how these figures sought to live out their poetics in the homes they built, he makes a major contribution to our understanding of what it means for a poet to be at home in the world.”
—David J. Rothman, Western State College of Colorado, Former President of the Robinson Jeffers Association


",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-02-01,Emilie Sitzia,"Art in Literature, Literature in Art in 19th Century France",Hardback,978-1-4438-3565-7,44.99,"The traditional relationship between painting and literature underwent a profound change in nineteenth-century France. Painting progressively asserted its independence from literature as it liberated itself from narrative obligations whilst interrogating the concept of subject matter itself. Simultaneously the influence of art on the writing styles of authors increased and the character of the artist established itself as a recurring motif in French literature.

This book offers a panoramic review of the relationship between art and literature in nineteenth-century France. By means of a series of case studies chosen from key moments throughout the nineteenth century, the aim of this study is to provide a focused analysis of specific examples of this relationship, revealing both its multifaceted nature as well as offering a panorama of the development of this on-going and increasingly complex cultural relationship. From Jacques Louis David’s irreverence for classical texts to Victor Hugo’s graphic works, from Edouard Manet’s illustrations to Vincent Van Gogh’s paintings of books, from Honoré de Balzac’s Unknown Masterpiece to Joris-Karl Huysmans’s A Rebours, this interdisciplinary investigation of the links between literature and art in France throws new light on both fields of creative endeavour during a critical phase of France’s cultural history.

","“This book offers a thorough and precise study of the links between literature and art. In this very rich and stimulating period in terms of creation and of rethinking the mores of literature, painting offered a mirror in which literature could gaze at itself and vice-versa. Such masters as Manet, for instance, a forefather of modernity, triggered literary creation but was also inspired by it (Baudelaire, Mallarmé). Emilie Sitzia follows the complex relationships between milieux, individual choices and private quest, through the prism of intermedial relationships: illustration, the integration of text within image and the workings of image-in-text. Doing so she hits on one of the main subjects of nineteenth century literature. Not only does E. Sitiza scrupulously examine the different workings and interactions between art and literature but she also renders unto theory what theory gave her. Thus she adds one more stone to the building of intermedial criticism.”
—Professor Liliane Louvel, Poitiers University, France

""This genuinely interdisciplinary book provides a clearly organized introduction to the visual arts and literature of the French nineteenth century for humanities students and, for specialists, a stimulating critical engagement with the rich dialogue between image and text.  The author combines methodological breadth with detailed case studies so as to map the development of ut poesis pictura.""
—Professor Marilyn Brown specialist of 19th century French Art at the University of Colorado Boulder


",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-02-01,Jim Daems,“A Warr So Desperate”: John Milton and Some Contemporaries on the Irish Rebellion,Hardback,978-1-4438-3510-7,34.99,"“A Warr So Desperate”: John Milton and Some Contemporaries on the Irish Rebellion examines the political and colonial contexts of Milton’s Observations Upon the Articles of Peace, as well as the relatively brief, but significant comments on the Irish Rebellion that occur elsewhere in his work. Commissioned by the Council of State in March, 1649, Milton’s Observations puts forward the Commonwealth’s justifications for the reconquest of Ireland which would soon follow with Oliver Cromwell’s campaign. In doing so, Milton covers some familiar ground – for example, the trial and execution of Charles I, and the intolerance and political hypocrisy of the Presbyterians. However, the Irish Rebellion leads Milton to engage with these in a way which does not fit particularly well with how his views of personal, political, and religious liberties are generally perceived. Beginning with Milton’s pragmatic reading of the documents he cogently critiques in the tract, this book then situates Observations within the polemical contexts of the 1640s and early 1650s, particularly the frequent representation of Irish atrocities (reliant on both anti-Catholic and ethnic prejudices) and Eikon Basilike’s justification of Charles I’s handling of the rebellion, arguing both Milton’s agreement with and complicity in the reconquest.
","“No Miltonist has written so expansively and incisively on Milton and the Irish Rebellion as does Jim Daems in ‘A Warr So Desperate’, which compels its readers to revisit the issue of Milton’s complicity in the military schemes of Cromwell. Daems grippingly disrupts any naïvely conceived vision of Milton as a blameless voice crying out for liberty and tolerance during the civil wars and early years of the Commonwealth by foregrounding the link between the rhetorical force of Milton’s political pamphlets and the brutality of English military forces in Ireland in the 1640s. In so doing, he insightfully delves into Milton’s role as Cromwell’s spinmaster during periods of state-sanctioned violence. For anyone interested in the rich complexity of Milton’s political vision, his rhetorical constitution of a warring and fragile nation, and the ongoing debate on his collusion with ‘terrorists’ or support of ‘terrorism,’ this book is essential reading.”
– Holly Faith Nelson, PhD, Professor of English, Trinity Western University

“Milton’s view of Ireland, fascinating in itself, played a major part in the development of his political thought and in shaping the complexity of his epic poetry. In this, the first book-length study of Milton and Ireland, Jim Daems, in a series of elegant and assured readings, illustrates the subtle and vexed ways in which colonialism, nationalism, and religion are interwoven in the polemical Irish writings of England’s greatest poet.”
– Willy Maley, Professor of Renaissance Studies, University of Glasgow
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-02-01,Chris Baratta,Environmentalism in the Realm of Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature,Hardback,978-1-4438-3513-8,34.99,"The collection of essays titled Environmentalism in the Realm of Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature discusses the environmental and ecocritical themes found in works of science-fiction and fantasy literature. It focuses on an analysis of important literary works in these genres to yield an understanding of how they address the environmental issues we are facing today. Organized into four sections titled “Industrial Dilemmas,” “The Natural World, Community, and the Self,” “Materialism, Capitalism, and Environmentalism,” and “Dystopian Futures,” the essays included also investigate the solutions that these works present to ensure the sustainability of our natural world and, in turn, the sustainability of humanity.

This collection will appeal to a broad range of scholars, including those who focus their studies on one of, or all of, the following fields: Ecocriticism, Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature, and Environmentalism in Literature. The essays investigate the myriad ways that science fiction and fantasy literature address environmental concerns, with a focus on the detrimental effects – on humanity, on society – of environmental destruction. With topics ranging from the dangers of industrial progress to the connection between environmental degradation and the destruction of the individual, to environmental dangers posed by capitalistic societies to ignored warnings of ecological crises, the essays each tactfully analyze the relationship between the environmental themes in literature and how readers and scholars can learn from the irresponsible treatment of the environment, while also considering solutions to this crisis that are found in science fiction and fantasy literature.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-02-01,Tatjana Paunović and Biljana Čubrović,Exploring English Phonetics,Hardback,978-1-4438-3515-2,39.99,"Exploring English Phonetics is conceived as a meeting point of the diverse perspectives, approaches and interests of scholars working in the field of English Phonetics worldwide. The focus of the volume is on the topics in the domain of language varieties, mutual language influences, and also on issues pertaining to the research, study, and teaching of English to speakers from other language backgrounds. Authors raise a number of novel, motivating and noteworthy questions, relevant from the point of view of either phonetic research or phonetic training and EFL teaching. These questions cover a wide range of phonetic topics: the nature of vowels and consonants in several dominating varieties of English, the phenomena of connected speech and the nature of intonation, issues in the methodology of phonetic research, problems encountered by speakers of other languages striving to acquire English pronunciation, and attitudes to different native and non-native varieties of English. Despite such a broad variety of topics, the volume offers a unifying approach to the study of speech and puts forward intriguing results gained by original research. Whatever their focus and sample size, most chapters deal with the English spoken and learned by speakers of other languages, thus highlighting both the current status of English as the language of global communication, and the international orientation of this volume.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-02-01,Burç İdem Dinçel,Last Tape on Stage in Translation: Unwinding Beckett’s Spool in Turkey,Hardback,978-1-4438-3514-5,34.99,"Samuel Beckett’s theatrical works maintain a prominent position within contemporary theatre. His plays provide a prodigious potential to study several forms of acting, staging, and dramaturgy, as well as language and translation, thereby setting a fertile ground to tackle the problematic issue of the relationship between theatre criticism and theatre-translation criticism.

That is precisely what this study aims at by drawing attention to the fundamental characteristics of translated theatre texts as blueprints for productions and taking several aspects into account from directing to acting, from staging to performance, together with the language factor. To that end, Burç İdem Dinçel focuses on one of Beckett’s significant plays, namely, Krapp’s Last Tape, situating it within the author’s oeuvre and along the way scrutinising not only the theatrical pieces but also the prose.

By looking into the Turkish translations and productions of the play, this book brings forth a new dimension into approaching theatre through translation.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-02-01,Peter Marks,Literature and Politics: Pushing the World in Certain Directions,Hardback,978-1-4438-3574-9,39.99,"George Orwell argued that one of the four great motives for a prose writer was the desire ‘to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other people’s idea of the kind of society that they should strive after’. This book contains exciting new work by established and emerging scholars that explores political literature over the last century and a half. It shows how, from The Communist Manifesto to the dystopian future of Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake, writers have attempted to alter people’s ideas, not always successfully. Eighteen chapters deal with a global array of writers and topics, from 1890s Australian bohemians and the anti-Peronism of Argentina’s Julio Cortázar to Aris Alexandrou’s Greek utopia and the harsh modern Zimbabwe of Yvonne Vera’s The Stone Virgins. Other contributors critically examine the sexual politics of nineteenth century aestheticism, Theodor Adorno and Cultural Studies, Paul Auster and the altermodern, Yeats’s poetry, Celan and the Holocaust, the postmodernism of former-Yugoslavia’s Dubravka Ugrešić, or the socialism of Australian Jean Devanny. Whether through informed studies of poetry and politics in Heidegger, Richard Marsh's gothic novel The Beetle, how Thomas Pynchon and Don DeLillo deal with 9/11, the cultural politics of child abuse in Christos Tsiolkas's The Slap, or how the German politician Joschka Fischer lost weight, readers will be stimulated by a collection that shows political literature’s continuing ability to inform, enrage and engage readers from around the world. 


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-02-01,"Roberta Facchinetti, Nicholas Brownlees, Birte Bös and Udo Fries","News as Changing Texts: Corpora, Methodologies and Analysis",Hardback,978-1-4438-3566-4,39.99,"This book focuses on the dialectic interrelation between ‘news’ and ‘change’, whereby news is intended as a textual type in its evolutionary – and revolutionary – development, while change is discussed with reference to the form, content and structure of such typological variety explored across the centuries, largely in the British environment.

The time spans in the chapters have been distributed according to (a) historical key moments in the process of news-writing changes, and (b) extant computerized corpora covering such periods, thereby permitting specific linguistic analyses. Indeed, each chapter makes use of a set of corpora specifically devised to suit the needs of scholars studying the periods under scrutiny.

The topics discussed and the corpora exploited to analyze them call into question basic methodological issues that are tackled from different perspectives in the book, while the epicentre of all research remains the news itself, in a continuous process of adjustment and renewal.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-02-01,Sophie Chiari ,"Renaissance Tales of Desire: Hermaphroditus and Salmacis, Theseus and Ariadne, Ceyx and Alcione and Orpheus his Journey to Hell. A Revised and Augmented Edition",Paperback,978-1-4438-3668-5,24.99,"This revised and augmented edition of four mythological tales translated from Ovid during the Elizabethan period calls attention to the genre of the epyllion and suggests a possible literary influence on later poets and playwrights such as Marlowe and Shakespeare. Indeed, while openly concerned with the central theme of metamorphosis, these short narrative poems express deep male anxiety about female desire. Elizabethan epyllia always seemed prone to renegociate the orthodoxy of early modern desire in a masculine, somewhat misogynous sphere, addressing the issues of mutability in a world of large-scale social changes. Finally, beyond the restricted readership of the spheres of the Inns of court for which they were originally intended, these works reached a much wider audience. And as students of early modern English poetry and Renaisance scholars in general are likely to find out, these witty poetic variations and rhetorical displays represent a real embarrassment of riches.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-02-01,"Claire Maniez, Ronan Ludot-Vlasak and Frédéric Dumas",Science and American Literature in the 20th and 21st Centuries: From Henry Adams to John Adams,Hardback,978-1-4438-3519-0,39.99,"Since its origin, American literature has always had an uneasy relationship with science: born at a time when science was becoming a profession, it repeatedly referred to it, implicitly or explicitly, in order to assert its difference or, on the contrary, to gain a certain form of legitimacy. The purpose of this book is to show how scientific discourse informs literary writing, and to consider the relationship the two types of discourse have maintained: mutual metaphorization, questioning or legitimating. Focusing on the literary production of the United States in the 20th and 21st centuries, the book is organized in four parts: the first one, which concerns the works of Henry Adams and Thomas Pynchon, examines the way in which literature writes a history of science; the second deals with the relationship between literature and the developing field of neurosciences, first from a theoretical perspective, then through the study of science-fiction novels; the third one includes essays which, one way or another, raise the issue of the ethics of science and offer a literary answer to the dilemmas raised by scientific progress; the two essays in the last part analyze how digital technology has influenced recent American writing and the consequences of this new mode on reading procedures.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-03-01,Hugues Steve Ndinga-Koumba-Binza,A Phonetic and Phonological Account of the Civili Vowel Duration,Hardback,978-1-4438-3609-8,44.99,"This is an experimental phonetic investigation into the vowel duration system of Civili, an indigenous language spoken in Gabon and some of its neighboring countries. Apart from providing insight into how mother-tongue speakers articulate and perceive certain vowels, it contributes significantly to the establishment of a credible orthography for this language. Speech data acquired through extensive fieldwork were analyzed acoustically to determine sound qualities, after which perception tests were administered to determine how listeners perceive vowel sounds in different environments. The findings are of significance for linguistic descriptions per se, as well as for eventual use in the field of human language technologies. This seven-chapter book is mainly intended for an expert readership and for students of phonetics and phonology.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-03-01,Peter Cochran,Byron and Italy,Hardback,978-1-4438-3576-3,44.99,"Byron and Italy tackles a subject to which no book has been devoted exclusively since the early 1940s. Peter Cochran writes not just about Byron’s relationships with Italian literature, not just about his relationships with Italian women, and not just about his relationship with Italian politics. He writes about Byron’s relationship with Italy as a whole, seeing the poet’s sojourn in Italy as a vain attempt to forge a new identity for himself. Drawing on a wide range of up-to-date research, including his own as editor of Teresa Guiccioli’s Lord Byron’s Life in Italy and the diary of John Cam Hobhouse, Cochran traces numerous threads of evidence showing how the critical reception Byron’s poetry received from Italian critics gave him a new sense of self-worth, and how his experience of Italian Carnival, and of the Italian mock-heroic tradition in verse, gave him a new idea of who he was, and of what poetry was about.

Among much else, the book includes new material on the Carbonari and on Byron’s reading of Ugo Foscolo, and an appendix containing translations of all known Italian and Austrian police-reports on Byron and his entourage.


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-03-01,Isabel Moskowich and Begoña Crespo ,"Encoding the Past, Decoding the Future: Corpora in the 21st Century",Hardback,978-1-4438-3581-7,39.99,"In the first decade of the twenty first century, Corpus Linguistics as a methodology had already proved to be an impeccable one, and is probably the most elaborate way to approach empirical studies on languages. At present this seems to be essential to formulate general theories about most aspects of languages in different stages of their evolution.

Corpora and Corpus Linguistics have been present in research for a reasonably long time now. The evolution of the discipline has been assessed by conferences, new publications and all sorts of events related to the field. Therefore, it seems most convenient to offer an outline of the advances made in the past decade as well as to try and make a guess as for what is yet to come.

The editors have used their experience to collect a volume that certainly will have something to offer to the scientific community. Their work as compilers of the Coruña Corpus of English Scientific Writing has made them familiar with corpus-compilation and the time-consuming tasks it entails. As users of this and other corpora, they can also appreciate the tools modern technology offers researchers and what the possibilities of exploitation are. In this way, the selection of papers contained in this volume address a wide range of scholars interested in the discipline, both corpus compilers and users.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-03-01,"Ken Gale, Ronald J. Pelias, Larry Russell, Tami Spry, Jonathan Wyatt",How Writing Touches: An Intimate Scholarly Collaboration,Hardback,978-1-4438-3625-8,34.99,"Five scholars met as writers at a workshop at the 2007 International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry and made a commitment to write over the following year to, for and with each other. It became an experiment in the craft of autoethnography, exploring questions of intimacy and connection manifested through collaborative writing. Each year since then, the authors have returned to the Congress to read a small anthology of the year’s writing—and to decide whether or not to continue. This book covers the first two years of that writing, offering stories of how writing touches, how it writes bodies into being and in between. It is an affecting, radical work, exploring love and intimacy as scholarly, messy, complex methodology—writing that often affirms and sometimes disturbs.
","“How Writing Touches is testament to the power of writing together. If it doesn’t make you envious, it will at least make you want to form the kind of writing relationships that emerge among and between the authors—who transform before the reader’s eyes with the kind of enduring magic only performance provides. Read for writing, read for performance, read above all for friendships framed by a collective commitment to performing writing.”
—Della Pollock, Professor of Performance and Cultural Studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

“What rare and wonderful gifts these authors have given us—a quintet of voices, each distinct, introducing a new form of collaborative work that reveals the vulnerability of each writer, the support of the others, and invites the reader to listen, partake. I highly recommend this book for its engaging writing and inspiring venture into community creation.”
—Laurel Richardson, Professor Emeritus of Sociology, The Ohio State University

“This is a pathbreaking book. Collaborative writing, the intersection of multiple writing selves, is brilliantly wrought in these chapters. Collaborative writing is a relatively new writing form, in which writers write themselves into one another’s lives. Coming together as friends, sharing identities as writers, the co-authors create a shared performance space. In this space they offer readers narratives filled with compassion, feeling, care and mutual concern. Out of this space emerges an ethics of love, and imaginings of a militant utopianism. Collaborative writing becomes a way of moving into a world that is ethical, and just. Future projects will stand [on] the shoulders of this book.”
—Norman K. Denzin, College of Communications Scholar, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

“This is an enchanting book. The reader is reminded that writing is a soulful, courageous, and loving act. Writing can break you open for the taking. Steal your heart away. It can be a necessary point of no return to make you more—more vulnerable, more curious, or just more . . . It can charge you with breath, light, and language. All this is what the reader will witness and bear witness to in How Writing Touches. This book helps me know again and better that we are all here for each other and writing can make us and re-make us to be and do more than we imagined for ourselves, others, and the world—the glory of writing and its unrelenting reward. This book shows us that writing is always to be in communion with oneself and others, but to write within the circle of these blessed friends was more than being in ‘good company,’ it was a commitment to care—to respond, to answer back, to keep a promise and heed the call—for those moments that cannot bear the terror of silence, of nothing said. The reader is inside the unfolding generosity of this call and response among friends. This writing across distance that they do for each other is hard work. It is anxious work. It is generative and happy work. The reader is crossing distances with them—embodied and present—with every call and with every response we are turning the pages in anticipation and gratitude.”
—D. Soyini Madison, Professor of Performance Studies, Northwestern University
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-03-01,Leena Eilittä with Liliane Louvel and Sabine Kim,"Intermedial Arts: Disrupting, Remembering and Transforming Media",Hardback,978-1-4438-3285-4,39.99,"The essays in this collection, which were written by European and North American specialists, position intermediality as a praxis of interpretative analysis in order to show how intermediality challenges our notion of art. The writers examine the various intermedial relations between the arts, which may take the form of reference to another form of art, a combination of two or more forms of art or a generic transformation from one form of art to another. In such cases, an intermedial approach helps us to grasp the changing relationship between the arts, which affects our reception of experience.

Intermediality has profoundly changed our understanding of interdisciplinary relations, formerly examined in the field of interart studies. By introducing a medial aspect, intermediality has succeeded in making a “leap” from past practices of artistic interrelatedness to our contemporary medial age, in which literature along with other arts may be understood as a medium. This ambitious undertaking has contributed to the liberation of literature and other arts from an isolated position in the established scholarly landscape with its clear-cut borderlines between disciplines.

The essays in this collection are a valuable contribution to this on-going discussion about the relationships between the arts. The variety of essays published in this collection makes it an excellent introduction to academics and university students in such disciplines as literature, music, theatre, art history and media studies. Due to its clarity – which does not sacrifice philosophical depth concerning the role of intermedial studies for several forms of art – this book will also be of interest to academics and students who are currently working at advanced level art schools.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-03-01,Toni Johnson-Woods and Amit Sarwal,Sold by the Millions: Australia’s Bestsellers,Hardback,978-1-4438-3584-8,39.99,"Australian genre fiction writers have successfully exploited the Australian landscape and peoples and as a result their books are today “sold by the millions” across boundaries. They have created stories that are imaginative, visionary, and diverse. They appeal to local and international readerships and, most importantly, are thoroughly entertaining, thus making them a strong presence in the popular fiction bazaar.

Sold by the Millions: Australia’s Bestsellers is the first collection to concentrate on Australia’s best-selling material that forms the armchair reading of many Australians. Leading experts of popular fiction provide introspective pieces on Romance, Horror, Crime, Science Fiction, Western, Comics, Travel, Sports and Children’s writing so that a wholesome picture emerges of the wide range of reading and research options available for scholars.
","“Sold by the Millions is a timely and significant contribution to Australian book history and cultural studies. Diverse as well as entertaining, these essays on popular genre publishing entice the reader into the underworld cornucopia that is Australian pulp fiction.”
– Dr Craig Munro, Co-editor of Paper Empires: A History of the Book in Australia 1946–2005

“This is the story of those Australians who, quite literally, sold out. True to the objects of their study, the authors thrill with tales of staggering sales achieved by Australian writers you’ve never heard of and delight with impossible literary thirsts, such as Scandinavia’s for Australian cowboy stories. And in more strictly scholarly terms this volume represents a timely re-evaluation of the place of popular fiction both in the canon and academia.”
– Dr Alistair Rolls, University of Newcastle

“Australian popular fiction has a broad impact on Australian and international readerships, but has thus far been undertheorized in the academy. This much-needed collection takes Australian popular fiction as its focus, covering a range of topics and genres. A more complete picture of Australian literature is emerging, and it is a very exciting picture indeed.”
– Dr Kim Wilkins, University of Queensland
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-03-01,Precious McKenzie,The Right Sort of Woman: Victorian Travel Writers and the Fitness of an Empire,Hardback,978-1-4438-3637-1,34.99,"The rhetoric surrounding Empire, freedom, and adventure are nowhere more striking than in nineteenth-century British women’s travel writing. The Right Sort of Woman charts the progression of British feminism in relationship to exploration of the Empire. Precious McKenzie introduces us to the lesser known writings of Florence Douglas Dixie, Mrs. Aubrey Le Blond, and Isabel Savory, and also revisits the more widely read travel texts of Isabella Bird Bishop and Mary Kingsley. Their travel writings explore the hotly debated Victorian ideologies of femininity, equality, and fitness.

McKenzie contends that British women travel writers found opportunities for freedom when traveling abroad. Women travelers could participate in what were traditionally men’s sports – hunting, riding, canoeing, shooting, mountaineering – when far away from strict Victorian social codes of behavior. Because of their athletic pursuits while abroad, British women travelers found their health improved as did their self-reliance and self-confidence. McKenzie considers how sports shaped the British feminist movement and then became integral to the revolutionary image of the New Woman at the fin de siècle.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-03-01,Ewa Piechurska-Kuciel and Liliana Piasecka,Variability and Stability in Foreign and Second Language Learning Contexts: Volume 1,Hardback,978-1-4438-3579-4,44.99,"This book contains a wide spectrum of topics organized within a relatively fixed framework of Applied Linguistics theory and practice, revolving around the concepts of stability and variability that capture the dynamic nature of the phenomena characterizing language, learning and teaching. The primary strength of individual chapters lies in the fact that the vast majority report original empirical studies carried out in diverse second/foreign language learning contexts – investigating interesting issues across various nationalities, ages, educational and professional groups of language learners, and teachers. The issues under scrutiny entail the ‘classic’ recurrent topics related to language learning and teaching, such as communicative competence, input, orality and literacy, learner characteristics and strategies, and teacher development – to mention just a few. In addition, ‘recent arrivals,’ to borrow a marketing metaphor, are also present, as the authors consider learning and teaching implications resulting from the status of English as a language of international communication, and discuss related concepts of intercultural competence along with language learners’ identity and creativity. The multilingual and multicultural contributors to the present volume are researchers – foreign and second language learners and teachers themselves – who offer the reader a range of methodological designs that have been successfully used in Applied Linguistics research. The framework of stability and variability suggests that changes leading to progress and development derive from stable foundations that account for the sense of continuity and belonging in applied linguists’ communities of practice.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-03-01,Ewa Piechurska-Kuciel and Liliana Piasecka,Variability and Stability in Foreign and Second Language Learning Contexts: Volume 2,Hardback,978-1-4438-3580-0,44.99,"This book contains a wide spectrum of topics organized within a relatively fixed framework of Applied Linguistics theory and practice, revolving around the concepts of stability and variability that capture the dynamic nature of the phenomena characterizing language, learning and teaching. The primary strength of individual chapters lies in the fact that the vast majority report original empirical studies carried out in diverse second/foreign language learning contexts – investigating interesting issues across various nationalities, ages, educational and professional groups of language learners, and teachers. The issues under scrutiny entail the ‘classic’ recurrent topics related to language learning and teaching, such as communicative competence, input, orality and literacy, learner characteristics and strategies, and teacher development – to mention just a few. In addition, ‘recent arrivals,’ to borrow a marketing metaphor, are also present, as the authors consider learning and teaching implications resulting from the status of English as a language of international communication, and discuss related concepts of intercultural competence along with language learners’ identity and creativity. The multilingual and multicultural contributors to the present volume are researchers – foreign and second language learners and teachers themselves – who offer the reader a range of methodological designs that have been successfully used in Applied Linguistics research. The framework of stability and variability suggests that changes leading to progress and development derive from stable foundations that account for the sense of continuity and belonging in applied linguists’ communities of practice.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-03-03,Diane Dubois,Northrop Frye in Context,Hardback,978-1-4438-3356-1,39.99,"“Diane Dubois takes a contextual approach to Northrop Frye’s work and claims that it is best assessed in relation to his biographical circumstances. In context and in specific details, Dubois’ book seeks to illuminate Frye’s œuvre as a personal, lifelong project. This volume successfully situates Frye’s work within the social, political, religious and philosophical conditions of the time and place of conception and writing. Dubois ranges from Frye’s critical utopia and views on criticism and education through the university, church and William Blake to politics and the Canadian and academic milieu. This book, which is particularly good at tracing Frye’s academic influences and his roots in Methodism and Canada, will have a strong appeal to an international audience of general readers, students, teachers and specialists. Frye is a key figure in the cultural and literary theory of the twentieth century, and Dubois’ accomplished discussion helps us to see his work anew.”
– Jonathan Hart, author of Northrop Frye: The Theoretical Imagination (1994), Interpreting Cultures (2006), Empires and Colonies (2008) and Literature, Theory, History (2011)
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-04-01,Vladimir Polyakov and Valery Solovyev,Cognitive Modeling in Linguistics,Hardback,978-1-4438-3653-1,34.99,"Created as intercultural and interdisciplinary, conferences of the series “Cognitive Modeling in Linguistics” have been successfully held since 1998. Over the years, CML has visited a number of countries, attracting more and more scientists from all over the world and thus broadening the scope of its topics.

The conference has worked out its scientific character and now it has a constant core of participants; and the term “cognitive modeling” has become a popular topic of high profile conferences in linguistics and artificial intelligence, which affirms the CML’s direction of movement.

The present volume gathers the most outstanding and interesting articles from participants of the XIIIth International Conference “Cognitive Modeling in Linguistics”, whose studies will no doubt be of interest to both scientists who have tied their lives with linguistics, as well as to those people who treat it as a hobby.

For information about CML conferences, please visit www.cml.msisa.ru
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-04-01,Vanja Kljajevic,Comprehension of Wh-Dependencies in Broca’s Aphasia,Hardback,978-1-4438-3666-1,34.99,"This book investigates whether Croatian aphasics, in particular those diagnosed with Broca’s aphasia, have difficulty comprehending wh-dependencies. The tested structures include subject and object direct, embedded, long-distance and passivized who and which questions as well as relative clauses introduced by which.

It is shown that differences in the deficit patterns between English- and Croatian-speaking Broca’s aphasics are due to structural as well as processing differences. The Croatian data are explained in terms of a case-cueing comprehension strategy and the competition model.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-04-01,N. H. Reeve,Elizabeth Taylor: A Centenary Celebration,Hardback,978-1-4438-3656-2,34.99,"Elizabeth Taylor (1912–75) is increasingly being recognised as one of the leading English novelists and short story writers of the middle of the twentieth century. Successive generations of readers have delighted in her subtle and penetrating exposures of the vanities and self-delusions of everyday life, her special sensitivity to frustration and disappointment, and the marvellous freshness of her wit and humour. Now, to mark the centenary of her birth, Elizabeth Taylor: A Centenary Celebration presents several new critical assessments of her work by leading academics, together with a sizeable number of Taylor’s uncollected or unpublished writings: short stories, including the first and the last she completed, essays on writers and writing, and a selection of letters to various correspondents, including Virginia Woolf and Elizabeth Bowen. Opening many previously unexplored perspectives on Taylor’s work, this volume will be essential reading for her admirers and for the wider study of the literature of her time.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-04-01,Roberta Facchinetti,English Dictionaries as Cultural Mines,Hardback,978-1-4438-3647-0,39.99,"Dictionaries are mines whose word-gems encapsulate centuries of language history and cultural traditions; they are store-houses of meanings and uses, ‘lamp genies’ to be set free at the very moment readers set their eyes on their entries.

This book is an attempt to free such lamp genies, by discussing the role of dictionaries in the identification and expression of cultural aspects in language, with special reference to English. As such, its eleven chapters have been arranged to focus on general, genre-specific, monolingual and bilingual lexicography, both from a diachronic and a synchronic perspective.

The book will be of use to lexicographers and lexicologists, as well as to corpus linguists, historical and contemporary English scholars, students of English, and anybody interested in the juice of culture(s) that can be fruitfully extracted from dictionary entries.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-04-01,C. A. DeCoursey,"Language Arts in Asia: Literature and Drama in English, Putonghua and Cantonese",Hardback,978-1-4438-3669-2,49.99,"This volume is the first of a series contributing to the academic study of Language Arts, as an English-language teaching paradigm. Language Arts has been widely used in native English-speaking countries including Australia and New Zealand. Its recent adoption into the second-language teaching curriculum in Hong Kong, as well as similar initiatives within secondary and tertiary education in mainland China, enhances its interest to scholars studying second-language teaching and learning in Asian contexts. This book offers many papers and discussions of interest to teachers, language professionals, scholars and administrators. Its chapters explore current topics in Language Arts research including trends in the rapprochment of stylistics and linguistics, teaching approaches and learning outcomes. At the same time, they offer diverse theoretical and methodological aproaches, of interest to the practitioner and policy-maker as well as the researcher. The value of this volume lies particularly in strengthening the theoretical and methodological foundations of Language Arts.

The use of literature and the arts in humanist education has a long history within Europe, being traditionally appreciated for its ability to transform leaders, instill finer sensibilities and question social ills. In its postcolonial incarnations, as the traditional subject areas were informed by critical and linguistic theories, language arts subject areas were less often used, as they were understood to offer opportunities to analyse their functions as apology for leaders, coopting the young, and pacifying dissent but less often used to teach second language skills. Language Arts curricula arising since the 1980s have increasingly embraced authentic voices, styles and genres. Contemporary Language Arts curricula use literature to teach reading-based and communication skills, in conjunction with critical and creative thinking. The movement of English-language education beyond native English shores has placed Language Arts into a World Englishes frame, and therefore its curricula have included the teaching ethics, civics and intercultural sensitivity. The explosion of media and digital communications of the 1990s led to the adoption of media literacy as a crucial Language Arts skill. As digital innovations continue to impact the teaching of English, Language Arts has adopted multiliteracies. These developments are represented in the papers included in this volume.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-04-01,Yael Almog and Erik Born,Neighbors and Neighborhoods: Living Together in the German-Speaking World,Hardback,978-1-4438-3733-0,34.99,"Neighbors and Neighborhoods: Living Together in the German-Speaking World is a bilingual collection of nine essays on culture, film, language, literature, and theory. The essays in this collection address questions of community and cohesion in the modern German-speaking world, a complex sociolinguistic community that is no longer defined by territorial boundaries but that remains, in many respects, a neighborhood. How can neighborliness be possible for this world in an age of mass migration and increasing globalization? Given the fluidity of modern identity, what could make communities uniform, harmonious, or even cohesive, if they can be created and dissolved in an instant? To what extent do modern technology and mass communication facilitate and/or inhibit the ability to inhabit multiple cultures and multiple worlds?
Examining the specific constitution of the modern German-speaking world, this volume contributes to recent scholarship in critical theory on the figure of the neighbor and the biblical injunction to love one’s neighbor as oneself. The essays in this volume, proceeding in a roughly chronological order, expose how images of neighbors and neighborhoods have developed in the German-speaking world over the course of the twentieth century. The examination of these developments should enrich both the study of multiculturalism and (trans-)nationalism in German Studies and that of subjectivity and political theology in critical theory. Offering a wide range of approaches to one critical topic, the essays in this volume should be useful to students and scholars in the fields of German Studies, cultural studies, language & literature, and film & media, especially those with an interest in secularism and globalization.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-04-01,Maria González Davies and Annarita Taronna,"New Trends in Early Foreign Language Learning: The Age Factor, CLIL and Languages in Contact. Bridging Research and Good Practices",Hardback,978-1-4438-3651-7,39.99,"This volume is the result of the presentations and discussions carried out at the Conference on “Early Foreign Language Learning in Educational Contexts. Bridging Good Practices and Research” organized by the University Ramon Lull, the University of Bari and LEND (Lingua e Nuova Didattica) in March 2010.

At the Conference, both teachers and researchers met to examine recent language teaching theories and practices from a transnational and intercultural perspective, on the one hand, and on the other, to fill the gap in the field of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in schools and to pave the way for a wider platform of discussion between School and University. Since these two institutions have often had little contact and, as there is excellent work carried out in both, our attempt was to build more solid bridges across their contexts, engaging school teachers in ongoing research and bringing everyday classroom practice nearer to university theoreticians in an open exchange forum so that the reflection on teaching and learning becomes relevant and rewarding for the participants involved in Early Foreign Language Learning in 21st century contexts.

Drawing on the main topics presented throughout the Conference, this book has been structured around three main thematic areas: 1) the Age Factor, 2) CLIL and Content-based research and practices, and 3) developing intercultural competence: use of the L1 and translation as mediation skills.

Each of these sections encompasses high quality contributions, all informed by salient and recent research, clear and justified theoretical standpoints and good practices which are appealing to an international audience and setting.

The editors sincerely hope that this volume contributes to widen the field of foreign language teaching and learning to include studies on young learners’ perceptions and performance. At the same time, they would like to highlight the decisive new focus on language learning adopted in the 21st century: the inclusion of a wider vision of language acquisition, one that highlights the relevance of using languages not only to communicate but, more relevantly, to mediate between cultures, as a means to bring together the plurilingual and pluricultural citizens of our future.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-04-01,Ignacio López-Calvo,Peripheral Transmodernities: South-to-South Intercultural Dialogues between the Luso-Hispanic World and “the Orient”,Hardback,978-1-4438-3714-9,44.99,"This volume is a collection of essays dealing with the critical dialogue between the cultural production of the Hispanic/Latino world and that of the so-called Orient or the Orient itself, including the Asian and Arab worlds. As we see in these essays, the Europeans’ cultural others (peripheral nations and former colonies) have established an intercultural and intercontinental dialogue among themselves, without feeling the need to resort to the center-metropolis’ mediation. These South-to-South dialogues tend not to be as asymmetric as the old dialogue between the (former) metropolis (the hegemonic, Eurocentric center) and the colonies.

These essays about Hispanic and Latino cultural production (most of them dealing with literature, but some covering urban art, music, and film) provide vivid examples of de-colonizing impetus and cultural resistance. In some of them, we can find peripheral subjectivities’ perception of other peripheral, racialized, and (post)colonial subjects and their cultures.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-04-01,Dana Percec,Romance: The History of a Genre,Hardback,978-1-4438-3734-7,39.99,"Romance: The History of a Genre is a collection of essays devoted to the highly popular and no less controversial genre of romance. A genre often disregarded for its stereotypical language, shallow characters, and predictable plots, dismissed as “women’s” fiction, accused of conventionalism, romance is a genre which, after ups and downs in its millennial history, is now holding a leading position on the international bookselling market. This achievement has also been possible with the endorsement of contemporary media and modern technology, cinema, television, the Internet, etc. Much has been written in both traditional and more recent literary theory about the origins and evolution of the early forms of romance, from the classical Antiquity, through the Middle Ages, and into the Renaissance and early modernity in Western Europe. A corpus, which is becoming more and more substantial today, is already available about the gendered status of contemporary romance, both in terms of the writing ethos and in terms of reader response, with theories coming from the combined areas of feminism, social sciences, and psychoanalysis. The aim of the present volume is that of noting the fluid character of the genre, with the great number of subcategories, mixed and hybrid, bringing evidence to the polymorphous nature of contemporary popular culture.

This book proposes, in four parts and twelve chapters, a fascinating and multifaceted journey into the history, substance and geography of romance. From its origins to the latest developments, from its subgenres to its features, from print to film, from television to Facebook, romance comes in various shapes and colours, which the reader can fully explore. The journey in the world of romance takes the reader from familiar corners to less familiar ones: from North America, Great Britain, Romania, or Turkey, to India or South Africa. The numerous approaches to romance generate diverse data, varied analytical frameworks and interesting, fresh and solidly grounded findings.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-04-01,Benito Pérez Galdós,The Forbidden,Paperback,978-1-4438-3800-9,29.99,"Benito Pérez Galdós, considered Spain’s most important novelist after Cervantes, wrote 77 novels, several works of theater and a number of other tomes during his lifetime (1843–1920). His works have been translated into all major languages of the world, and many of his most highly regarded novels, those of the contemporary period, have been translated into English two, three and even four times over. Of the few “contemporary novels” of Galdós that until now have not come to light in English, The Forbidden is certainly among the most noteworthy.

The story line concerns a wealthy philanderer, José María Bueno de Guzmán, who attempts to buy the favors of his three beautiful married cousins. He is successful with the first, Eloísa, a grasping materialist who falls deeply in love with him. Then he rejects her in order to attempt to seduce the youngest, Camila. Meanwhile, the third, the pseudo-intellectual María Juana, jealous, seduces José María. But it is Camila, healthy, impetuous and wild, who resists his temptations and holds our attention. The novelist and critic Leopoldo Alas, Galdós’s contemporary, calls her “the most feminine, graceful, lively female character that any modern novelist has painted.”

As a naturalistic study, in the manner of Balzac in particular, principal characters of Galdós’s other novels (El doctor Centeno, La de Bringas, La familia de León Roch) become fleetingly visible in The Forbidden. In addition, the entire Bueno de Guzmán family gives evidence of the naturalistic emphasis on heredity: they all display certain physical or mental disorders. Eloísa has a morbid fear of feathers, María Juana often feels that she has a tiny piece of cloth caught in her teeth, José María suffers bouts of depression, an uncle is a kleptomaniac, one of the relatives writes letters to himself, etc. At the same time, this novel shows the foibles of Spanish society where status is determined by one’s associates, by the wearing of finery, and by living on borrowed money. In their history of Spanish literature, Chandler and Schwartz call Galdós “the greatest novelist of the nineteenth century and the only one who deserves to be mentioned in the same breath with great novelists like Balzac, Dickens and Dostoievsky.” The Forbidden, written at the height of the author’s creative powers, is a major work and its publication for an English-speaking audience is long overdue.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-04-01,Peter Baofu,The Future of Post-Human Semantics: A Preface to a New Theory of Internality and Externality,Hardback,978-1-4438-3648-7,54.99,"Is semantics really so indeterminate that, as W. V. Quine (1960) once argued in Word and Object, in the example about a previously undocumented, primitive tribe, “it is impossible in principle to be absolutely certain of the meaning or reference that a speaker of the primitive tribe’s language attaches to an utterance”? (WK 2011)

This thought-provoking stand in semantics can be contrasted with an opposing view like “literal translation” (or “metaphrase,” in contrast with “paraphrase”), in that, as John Dryden put it, “when [words] appear . . . literally graceful, it were an injury to the author that they should be changed.” (WK 2011a; C. Kasparek 1983)

Contrary to these opposing ideas (and other views as will be discussed in the book), semantics, in relation to internality and externality, is neither possible or impossible, nor desirable or undesirable to the extent that the respective ideologues on different sides would like us to believe.

Surely, the challenge to these opposing ideas in semantics does not mean that semantics is useless, or that those fields of study related to semantics like philosophy of language, linguistics, psychology, communication studies, hermeneutics, logic, computer science, semiotics, pragmaticism, and so on should be rejected too. Of course, neither of these extreme views is reasonable.

Instead, this book provides an alternative, better way of understanding the future of semantics, especially in the dialectic context of internality and externality—while learning from different approaches in the literature but without favoring any one of them or integrating them, since they are not necessarily compatible with each other. In other words, this book offers a new theory (that is, the interactive theory of semantics) to go beyond the existing approaches in a novel way.

If successful, this seminal project will fundamentally change the way that we think about semantics, from the combined perspectives of the mind, nature, society, and culture, with enormous implications for the human future and what the author originally called its “post-human” fate.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-04-01,Stephanie Laggini Fiore,The Heroic Female: Redefining the Role of the Heroine in the Tragedies of Vittorio Alfieri,Hardback,978-1-4438-3660-9,34.99,"The Heroic Female: Redefining the Role of the Heroine in the Tragedies of Vittorio Alfieri, fills a void in critical inquiry on the works of eighteenth-century tragedian Vittorio Alfieriperhaps the most important figure of the Italian Enlightenmentby exploring in depth the often neglected female characters and their function within the tragic structure. In this re-reading of the Alfierian tragedies, the author redefines the role of the heroine, and challenges traditional analyses that marginalize the female character and orient her to an abstract ideal characterized by fragility and tragic victimization.
The author argues persuasively that, in Alfieri's search for psychological realism, he undermines traditional assumptions of gender roles by his modern portrayal of the tragic characters. The heroine’s different orientation towards reality endows her with intuitive and intelligent reasoning that contradicts eighteenth-century views of women as catalysts of anarchy and disorder. Alfieri’s tragic heroines are represented also as surprisingly independent and powerful. The resultant image of determined, active, and intelligent women refutes the traditional critical view. In exploring Vittorio Alfieri’s pre-modern sensibilities in the representation of his tragic heroines, this book is an important contribution to the growing body of critical works that study the representation of gender in post-Renaissance and pre-modern Italian literature.

This book will be of particular interest to:
Scholars of Italian lterature, especially the Enlightenment and    Romantic periods.
Scholars of 18th century European, American and other literatures
Scholars of 18th century history and sociology.
Women’s Studies and Gender Studies scholars.
The Heroic Female: Redefining the Role of the Heroine in the Tragedies of Vittorio Alfieri, fills a void in critical inquiry on the works of eighteenth-century tragedian Vittorio Alfieriperhaps the most important figure of the Italian Enlightenmentby exploring in depth the often neglected female characters and their function within the tragic structure. In this re-reading of the Alfierian tragedies, the author redefines the role of the heroine, and challenges traditional analyses that marginalize the female character and orient her to an abstract ideal characterized by fragility and tragic victimization.
The author argues persuasively that, in Alfieri's search for psychological realism, he undermines traditional assumptions of gender roles by his modern portrayal of the tragic characters. The heroine’s different orientation towards reality endows her with intuitive and intelligent reasoning that contradicts eighteenth-century views of women as catalysts of anarchy and disorder. Alfieri’s tragic heroines are represented also as surprisingly independent and powerful. The resultant image of determined, active, and intelligent women refutes the traditional critical view. In exploring Vittorio Alfieri’s pre-modern sensibilities in the representation of his tragic heroines, this book is an important contribution to the growing body of critical works that study the representation of gender in post-Renaissance and pre-modern Italian literature.

This book will be of particular interest to:
Scholars of Italian lterature, especially the Enlightenment and    Romantic periods.
Scholars of 18th century European, American and other literatures
Scholars of 18th century history and sociology.
Women’s Studies and Gender Studies scholars.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-04-01,Melissa Barchi Panek,The Postmodern Mythology of Michel Tournier,Hardback,978-1-4438-3737-8,34.99,"Michel Tournier defines the supreme mission of a writer to be the creation of a mythology which allows for interaction with his readers, who seem to be losing their critical faculties in our contemporary, postmodern world dominated by consumption and dizzying technological advances. Our contemporary society has changed due to the end of the modern era with its reigning ideologies. Collapsing after the atrocities of the Second World War, Modernity and the artistic and literary reactions referred to as modernism, have likewise been transformed. Myth continues to represent the collectivity of human existence, yet, in the short stories and novels of Michel Tournier, myth represents the collapse of the all-encompassing ideologies inherent to the Modern era. The grand narratives of Modernity such as Christianity and Man’s reason have been deconstructed in the postmodern era. The mythology of Michel Tournier expresses these trends towards the dissolution of Modernity and creates individual, mini narratives which emphasize the particularity of individual existence.

Tournier takes established mythical models rooted in Christianity, fables and legends of Western Civilization and re-contextualizes them. Through a semiotic reworking of core binary pairs of a myth, Tournier creates a third-order level of representation which modifies the mythical model. The works of le Roi des Aulnes, Gilles et Jeanne, and Vendredi are illustrious of this third-order level of signification. According to Ferdinand de Saussure, Roland Barthes and Claude Lévi-Strauss, the structural make-up of myth transforms established meanings according to the dominant cultural code. Barthes’ semiological study of myth reveals the levels of representation through which myth creates meaning. Myth builds upon the denotative first-order level of language and through a connotative process, creates a second-order level. This connotative process does not end on this second-order, for in the writings of Tournier, this semiological process is continued to a third-order which re-contextualizes the myth again. Tournier adapts myth to the unique traits of the postmodern era including deconstruction and playfulness by allowing the reader to provide the context of the story. As such we, the reader, take the place as author of our own individual mythology.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-04-01,Jamaluddin Aziz,Transgressing Women: Space and The Body in Contemporary Noir Thrillers,Hardback,978-1-4438-3662-3,44.99,"Transgressing Women focuses on the literary and cinematic representation of female characters in contemporary noir thrillers. The book argues that as the genre has grown, expanded and been subverted since its initial conception, along with the changing definition of gender, the representation of a female character has also inevitably gone through some dramatic changes. So, the book asks some important questions: What links the female characters in canonical noir to their contemporary counterparts? Is gender division still relevant in a text that transgresses gender boundaries? What happens when it is the human body itself that betrays the traditional definition or constitution of a human being?

While many have written about the male protagonists and the femmes fatales in the noir genre, little attention has been given to the ‘other’ female characters who inhabit the noir world and are transgressors themselves. The main concern of the book is to trace the transgressive female characters in contemporary noir thrillers – both novels and films – by engaging itself with some of the most topical debates within both (post)feminist and postmodernist theories.

The book is structured around two key concepts – space and the body. These temporal and spatial indicators are central in contemporary cultural theories such as postmodernism and post-feminism, along with other theorizations of gender and the noir genre. This means that the analysis is drawn from the classical noir examples and will then arrive at the neo-noir sub-genre, and then will move on to the most recent phenomenon in the genre, ‘future noir’.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-04-01,Maria Sidiropoulou,Translating Identities on Stage and Screen: Pragmatic Perspectives and Discoursal Tendencies,Hardback,978-1-4438-3717-0,44.99,"This book takes a pragmatic/semiotic approach to real-life translating for the stage and screen, with a view to showing the potential of systematic linguistic analysis to reveal aspects of meaning-making. Functionalist, interpretive and critical perspectives merge to describe shifting aspects of phenomena in acculturating Pinter, Shakespeare, Wilde, Leonard, Shaw, Austen, etc., in the second half of the 20th century, for the Greek stage and/or screen. More specifically, the book tackles rendition of politeness in staging Pinter, implementation of narrative perspectives in stage and screen versions of Hamlet, rendition of semantic oppositions for humour generation across versions in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, rendition of subcultural linguistic variety in Shaw’s Pygmalion on stage and screen, target identity inscription in versions of Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest and Leonard’s Da, rendition of phenomena in subtitling and dubbing The Hunchback of Notre Dame animation film for the young, and the similarities between translation and cinematic adaptation of Austen’s Sense and Sensibility and Hislop’s The Island. Awareness of specificities in the treatment of linguistic phenomena is expected to inform the agenda of what is to be further explored in Translation Studies.
","“Maria Sidiropoulou draws on a number of key theories from a variety of disciplines to illuminate the intricacies and power of translation in two highly influential media: drama and film. The range of features analysed and the attention paid to the impact of translation choices on identity formation make this an important contribution to a field of study in which interdisciplinarity holds the key to further innovation.”
– Mona Baker, Professor of Translation Studies, Centre for Translation and Intercultural Studies, School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures, University of Manchester

“. . . An excellent, innovative exploration of translation shifts that can occur when literary works written in English are translated (and adapted) in Greek for performance on stage and screen . . . A theoretically and linguistically sophisticated and empirically well informed study of an important current sub-field of translation studies: translating for the stage and the screen. The author is a highly competent and well-known translation scholar with a number of influential publications . . .”
– Prof. Dr. Dr. h. c. Juliane House, Institut für allgemeine und angewandte Sprachwissenschaft Abteilung Sprachlehrforschung, Fakultät 5//SLMII, Universitӓt Hamburg

“At a time when audiovisual translation has established itself as a subfield of research within Translation Studies, Maria Sidiropoulou offers a fresh insight into elements that have often been neglected . . . Prof. Sidiropoulou studies a variety of texts that form part of the Western culture and that have made an impact upon generations of readers and viewers. Her book delves into how translation modifies original texts for the benefit of the audience, but also explores how translation manipulates them for ideological reasons. From the theatre to the cinema, from play adaptation to subtitling, the vast array of examples and the wide scope of her approach certainly provides the readers with a new understanding of how translation shapes our perception of media texts.”
– Roberto A. Valdeón, Profesor Titular, Universidad de Oviedo; Visiting Professor, University of Massachusetts Amherst; Senior Research Fellow, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven; Editor-in-Chief, Perspectives Studies in Translatology
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-05-01,Azamat Akbarov,Communication Approach in English Through the Internet,Hardback,978-1-4438-3759-0,34.99,"Communication Approach in English Through the Internet carefully prepares students to read university-level texts. It teaches students the strategies and the vocabulary-building skills to help them grow in confidence and progress to higher levels of linguistic proficiency.

The exercises will help students develop their four basic academic skills and express themselves in a mature and appropriate way that is relevant to the context, whether it be a report, conversation or other form of discourse. Each unit plan provides, step-by-step, a variety of lively exercises for brainstorming ideas and planning a structure that can be used directly from the book or as a springboard for innovative Internet resources. The author emphasizes active learning and addresses the needs of EFL students. This is the perfect coursebook for weaving the excitement and usefulness of the Internet into your daily English communication.

Features
•	A skills and strategies sections that teach essential linguistic skills
•	Tasks that encourage students to interact with the text and practice using internet resources
•	Activities that take students “beyond the classroom,” and can be used for discussion and communication
","“A novel approach to teaching English as a foreign language that combines the strengths of the communicative syllabus with the flexibility and richness of internet resources to deliver an accessible and down-to-earth coursebook.”
– Dr Mona Baker, Professor of Translation Studies, School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures, University of Manchester, UK

“This book introduces fundamental linguistic skills and strategies such as indentifying main ideas, interpreting information [from] internet resources, and preparing for reading and presentation skills.”
– Prof Dr Mehmet Demirezen, Head of the ELT Department, Hacettepe University, Turkey

“The coursebook will help students to make the transition from the way they have been learning and using English at college to the approach expected at university. The book is principally designed for classroom use, but it can be used for independent study.”
– Dr Patrick Roberts, Professor of Education, National Louis University, USA
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-05-01,Ligia Tomoiagă,Elements of the Picaresque in Contemporary British Fiction,Hardback,978-1-4438-3777-4,39.99,"This study looks back at the picaresque, with its Spanish roots, and especially with its tradition in English literature; then, it comes to contemporary times, and identifies elements of the picaresque in contemporary novels. The main thesis of the author is that the picaresque has never left the literary scene in Britain, being an aesthetic invariant, which expresses a natural inclination of the British authors towards the picaresque story. Postcolonial authors also favour this genre as a consequence of their own literary tradition, which includes particular variants of the picaresque, and as a result of their own situation as immigrant/displaced authors, which gives them material for stories of displaced characters – rogues. The study rigorously identifies the sources of the contemporary protocols of the picaresque, as well as a few variants of picaresque stories in a selection of novels the author accounts for theoretically. 


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-05-01,Karim Achab,Internal Structure of Verb Meaning: A Study of Verbs in Tamazight (Berber),Hardback,978-1-4438-3751-4,39.99,"Internal Structure of Verb meaning: A Study of verbs in Tamazight (Berber) makes available to a wide audience years of academic research in linguistics. It is written in such a way that it serves as an introduction to the domains of lexical semantics and the organization of grammar for students. The book investigates the internal structure and the predicate-argument structure of verbs of (change of) state, including unaccusatives, verbs of spatial configuration, causatives, and those traditionally referred to as verbs of quality in the linguistic literature on Tamazight. The Tamazight data investigated is so peculiar that it reveals a lot about the construction and derivation of verb meaning from both the ontogenetic and the phylogenetic views. The analysis provided in this book also shows in a parsimonious and most lucid way how lexical semantics interacts with other syntactic approaches including Government and Binding and the Minimalist program.

As most of the literature available on Tamazight is written in French, the author also made a pledge to inform the English speaking world about the reality of Tamazight not only as a living language but also as a culture and an identity that is still cherished and defended by its owners across North Africa, from Morocco to Egypt and in some Sub-Saharan countries including Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso in a variety known as Tuareg. Although the language is still spoken by some 40 million people in these two regions, political regimes in these various have had enough of a nerve to even deny its existence (see some quotes p. iv). You will be surprised to find out that Sheshonq, the founder of the 22nd dynasty of Pharaohs in Egypt, was an Amazigh (Berber) from Libya, or how this multi-millennium language has resisted some of the most oppressive tyrants and regimes of our era.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-05-01,Charles S. Kraszewski,"Irresolute Heresiarch: Catholicism, Gnosticism and Paganism in the Poetry of Czesław Miłosz",Hardback,978-1-4438-3761-3,39.99,"In the midst of a multi-national comparative study of modern Catholic poets, Charles S. Kraszewski was more than a little surprised at the difficulty he encountered in finding a representative poet from that ostensibly most Catholic of European nations, Poland. With but two guiding criteria in mind – the poet had to be possessed of a Catholic world view and have a significant impact on the development of modern poetry – it seemed that Polish poets were either very good . . . or Catholic. Then, in 2004, during the funeral of the Nobel Prize winning poet Czesław Miłosz, it was revealed that the poet had written a recent letter to the Pope, declaring his intent, in his later writings, to express a Catholic viewpoint.

This was a surprising admission, given the rather heterodox reputation that characterized the poet during his long lifetime. Irresolute Heresiarch: Catholicism, Gnosticism and Paganism in the Poetry of Czesław Miłosz is the fruit of Kraszewski’s research into the religious themes expressed in the poetry of the great bard. Beginning with his earliest published poems and continuing through the posthumously printed collections, the book is a careful consideration of the religious claims set forth in Miłosz’s works, which range from orthodox Christianity, through dualism and gnostic thought, with a healthy dose of pagan appraisal of the wonder of the natural world.

In response to the question “Was Miłosz a Catholic poet?” Kraszewski first attempts to define that category, on the basis of Catholic core beliefs, and later, in a comparative discussion of indubitably Catholic greats, such as T. S. Eliot, Jan Zahradníček, and Hector de Saint-Denys Garneau. Although for the sake of clarity he focuses only on the poems, and not the prose works, of Czesław Miłosz, the answer to the question is made all the more difficult by the very personal lyrical “I” adopted by Miłosz in his poetic practice. Which “I” is speaking, when Manichean thought is expressed, and which “I” is it, that invokes the saints at moments of temptation? Whatever the answer to these questions may be, Irresolute Heresiarch is successful in highlighting the wide range, and complex nature, of one of the most influential and important poets of our time.
","“There is a strange contrast between the tenor of much of the poetry of Czesław Miłosz, and his concern at least towards the end of his life ‘to write poetry that should not depart from Catholic orthodoxy.’ In his ground breaking book Dr Kraszewski considers by careful analysis of the poet’s works whether he succeeded. However, the book’s importance goes beyond this particular poet. By considering Miłosz’s poetry in the context of three other writers who were both modern (in the literary sense of the word) and whose work was recognizably Catholic, Kraszewski addresses the general question of Catholicism and modern (or modernist) poetry in general, and thus provides criteria for other scholars to follow.” 	
– Rev. Janusz A. Ihnatowicz, STD, Professor Emeritus of Theology, University of Saint Thomas; Poet, recipient of the 2011 Literary Award of the Union of Polish Writers in Emigration

“Charles Kraszewski’s Irresolute Heresiarch is a deeply probing, erudite, and splendidly written exploration of the complex nature of Czesław Miłosz’s attitudes toward Christianity and Catholicism in the entire body of his poetry. While respectful of Miłosz’s achievement and legacy, Kraszewski is not a blind worshipper as others who have written on him. He lays bare his inconsistencies, contradictions, and weaknesses as a poet, and as a Catholic, and demonstrates how these have shaped his views of man, God, and Christ. Enriched by his thorough knowledge of the Catholic tradition, Kraszewski is well equipped to deal with so central an issue as the belief that despair lies at the very foundation of Miłosz’s poetic creation. Irresolute Heresiarch abounds in meaningful and enlightening references to other poets from Dante to the postmoderns. In an excellent concluding chapter, Kraszewski places the Polish Nobel Prize laureate in the context of such other Catholic modern poets as T. S. Eliot, the Czech Jan Zahradníček, and the Québécois Hector de Saint-Denys Garneau, and shows how the persistent presence of anti-Christian themes in his poetry differentiates Miłosz from these other poets. For anyone interested in a revealing yet balanced understanding of one of the great poets of our age, Irresolute Heresiarch – its title well chosen – is must reading.”
– Harold B. Segel, Professor Emeritus of Slavic Literatures and of Comparative Literature, Columbia University
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-05-01,José Manuel Losada Goya and Marta Guirao Ochoa,Myth and Subversion in the Contemporary Novel,Hardback,978-1-4438-3746-0,54.99,"This bilingual work aims to identify and explain the subversive rewriting of ancient, medieval and modern myths in contemporary novels.

The book opens with two theoretical essays on the subject of subversive tendencies and myth reinvention in the contemporary novel. From there, it moves on to the analysis of essential texts. Firstly, classical myths in works by authors such as André Gide, Thomas Pynchon, Julio Cortázar, Italo Calvino or Christa Wolf (for instance, Theseus, Oedipus or Medea) are discussed. Then, myths of biblical origin – such as the Flood or the Golem – are revisited in the work of Giorgio Bassani, Julian Barnes and Cynthia Ozick. A further section is concerned with the place of modern myths (Faust, the ghost, Ophelia…) in the fiction of Günter Grass, Paul Auster, or Clara Janés. The contributors have also delved into the relationship between myth and art – especially in the discourse of contemporary advertising, painting and cinema – and myth’s intercultural dimensions: hybridity in the Latin American novels of Augusto Roa Bastos and Carlos Fuentes, and in the Hindu-themed novels of Bharati Mukherjee.

This volume emerges from the careful selection of 37 essays out of over 200 which were put forward by outstanding scholars from 25 different countries for the Madrid International Conference on Myth and Subversion (March 2011).


Este volumen bilingüe identifica y explica la práctica subversiva aplicada a los mitos antiguos, medievales y modernos en la novela contemporánea.

Abren el libro dos estudios teóricos sobre la tendencia subversiva y la reinvención de mitos en la actualidad. Prosigue el análisis de diversos textos de primera importancia. En primer lugar se revisan los mitos clásicos en autores como André Gide, Thomas Pynchon, Julio Cortázar, Italo Calvino o Christa Wolf (p. ej., Teseo, Edipo, Medea). En segundo lugar, la reescritura de los mitos bíblicos según Giorgio Bassani, Julian Barnes o Cynthia Ozick (p. ej., el diluvio o el Golem). En tercer lugar, mitos modernos en la ficción de Günter Grass, Paul Auster o Clara Janés (p. ej., Fausto, el fantasma, Ofelia). El volumen presta igualmente atención a las relaciones entre mito y arte (su recurrencia en la publicidad, la pintura y el cine contemporáneos) y a la vertiente intercultural de los mitos: el mestizaje en la novela latinoamericana de Augusto Roa Bastos y Carlos Fuentes, o en la de temática hindú de Bharati Mukherjee.

La compilación resulta de una exquisita selección de 37 textos entre los más de 200 propuestos para el Congreso Internacional Mito y Subversión (Madrid, marzo de 2011) por investigadores de prestigio procedentes de 25 países.

","“Subversion appears to be the very condition for the freedom of human mind. Consequently, subversion refashions mythical narratives, their structures and ideologies. Deconstruction and demystification of myths, particularly in contemporary novels, both call for a reinvented myth criticism, a noble task completed with great mastery in this thoroughly researched volume, with 36 essays in English and in Spanish.”
– Metka Zupančič, Professor of French/Modern Languages, Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques, University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, USA

“He leído con mucho interés el volumen Myth and Subversion in the Contemporary Novel y sostengo calurosamente el proyecto de su publicación en su editorial. El libro posee una estructura unitaria y una división clara y convincente. Es preciso alabar la variedad geográfica y metodológica del volumen, tanto por su perspectiva multiculturalista como por sus acercamientos deconstruccionistas, postcoloniales, polifónicos, feministas y mitopoéticos. Por todos estos motivos reitero mi apoyo a la oportunidad y la necesidad de la publicación de este libro.”
– Dr Víctor Ivanovici, Profesor Asociado, de Literatura Hispánica, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad Aristóteles de Salónica, Grecia

",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-05-01,Marzena Sokołowska-Paryż,"Reimagining the War Memorial, Reinterpreting the Great War: The Formats of British Commemorative Fiction",Hardback,978-1-4438-3764-4,39.99,"Reimagining the War Memorial, Reinterpreting the Great War: The Formats of British Commemorative Fiction is an in-depth analysis of the role of British war memorials in literature and film, in the wider context of the commemorative trend in contemporary culture. The Sheffield City Battalion Memorial, the Menin Gate Memorial, the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing of the Somme, the Royal Artillery Memorial, and the Shot at Dawn Memorial are the focus of the discussion, which aims to show how the meanings assigned to specific war memorials create ideologically diverse interpretations of the British experience of the Great War, ranging from the futility myth to the imperial sublime. The epistemological ambivalence of the war memorial lies at the heart of the analysis of the selected novels, films and plays, for the condemnation of a military conflict as a historical evil does not necessarily exclude the possibility of honouring the men who fought in it.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-05-01,Rachel Falconer and Andrew Oliver,Re-reading / La relecture: Essays in honour of Graham Falconer,Hardback,978-1-4438-3760-6,44.99,"What happens when we re-read a familiar book? Does the second encounter turn us into experts, more knowing and confident in our relation to the text? Or conversely, does it expose the gaps and limits of each reading experience? Does re-reading affirm our own sense of identity, reconnecting us to earlier memories, or does it shock and destabilize, revealing discontinuities between past and present selves? Is re-reading uncanny, a discovery of the familiar in the unfamiliar, or the reverse? Do certain literary devices and tropes – symbols, allegories, for example, depend on re-reading to be activated? Are there some texts that can only be re-read? Re-reading is rarely discussed in depth yet it forms the core of most conversations about literature, for we rarely become passionate or critical about books we have only read once. It is also re-reading that consolidates a core of texts into what we recognise to be a canon of literature, and it is re-reading, again, that breaks open the canon and reshapes it. We re-read alone, but we also re-read communally, in the shared space of the theatre, or in the translation of a text from one culture to another, or one medium to another. Re-reading is a necessary part of the professional reader’s life yet there is often, in the history of the individual scholar, some formative relationship with a text read obsessively in childhood.

This bilingual volume of essays brings together an international group of eminent scholars in order to reflect on this process of re-reading, in honour of Graham Falconer, Professor of 19th century French literature, and long-term re-reader. The essays vary from personal reflections on formative childhood reading, and self-reflexive scholarly re-readings, to analysis of the theme of re-reading in texts, and presentation of new theories of re-reading. Gustave Flaubert, Honoré de Balzac, Stendhal, Eugène Fromentin, Guy de Maupassant, Marcel Proust, Samuel Beckett, Dostoevsky, Mikhail Bakhtin, W. B. Yeats, William Blake, Roland Petit, H. G. Wells and Anthony Hope are amongst the authors re-visited in these reflections on the practice of re-reading.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-05-01,Sue Matheson and John Butler,The Fictional North: Ten Discussions of Stereotypes and Icons Above the 53rd Parallel,Hardback,978-1-4438-3769-9,34.99,"Western culture may have enshrined North as a touchstone by which all other directions are defined, but the North is not one but a number of Netherlands; like all frontiers, the North is, in its essence, imaginative, magicked out of ice and snow, muskeg and tundra. Storytelling is its generative principle, the activity through which the North and Northerners call themselves into being.

In essays on topics ranging from the Aboriginal justice system in Canada to the search for the Northwest Passage to the cultural paradigms of medieval Iceland, The Fictional North examines stereotypes and iconic images of the North, the relationship of North to South, and ethnographic and fictional models of “Northerness.” This diversity of subjects and methodologies not only introduces readers to the diversity found above the 53rd Parallel, but also reflects the catholicity of the North itself. Interdisciplinary and timely, The Fictional North offers insights into the North’s past as well as its present to those interested in circumpolar issues and the areas of culture, literature, history, film, sociology, and education.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-05-01,Liberty Stanavage and Paxton Hehmeyer,Titus out of Joint: Reading the Fragmented Titus Andronicus,Hardback,978-1-4438-3762-0,34.99,"Cannibalism, severed hands and severed heads, rape, murder, tragedy and – of course – the Classics. These are a few of the delights audiences have to look forward to in Titus Andronicus. It’s a play of extremes, as likely to provoke severe discomfort as severe delight. Titus has claimed its fair share of critical attention. In particular, its florid violence and the striking, tragic figure of Lavinia have proven a potent touchstone of modern Shakespearean criticism. But, for critics, the play is often just that: a touchstone, a way station to bigger and better things. In it, critics find portents of Lear in intransigent Titus or premonitions of Richard and Iago in Aaron. We believe, however, that Titus deserves a more sustained and eclectic analysis. This collection – the first full length work devoted to Titus in a decade – does just that.    

Rather than seeking a unifying vision in the play, Titus out of Joint: Reading the Fragmented Titus Andronicus approaches the play as inherently dissonant, a text that draws our attention directly to how it pulls apart rather than coheres. The essays in this volume examine Titus from a wide variety of theoretical and critical perspectives including: disability studies, history of the book, psychoanalysis, gender studies, and theater history.  A conversation emerges in these pages between these different and often contrasting approaches to the play, a conversation that we hope will continue outside the covers of our collection. 




",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-06-01,Peter Cochran,Byron’s Poetry,Hardback,978-1-4438-3893-1,39.99,"Byron’s dubious status as a sex object, and his even more dubious status as a political icon, serves to disguise the fact that he is one of the greatest of all English poets, with a European reputation second only to Shakespeare. The fact that writers such as Goethe and Pushkin held him in the highest regard ensures that the English continue to despise him, and ignore his verse as much as possible.
This book ignores his sexuality, his politics, and his iconography, and concentrates on his poems. Written by leading authorities such as Bernard Beatty, Germaine Greer and Michael O’Neill, it contains essays on his verse-forms and his comic rhymes, as well as thematic analyses on such recurrent Byronic themes as the Sea, Will-o-th-Wisps, and Love versus Knowledge. In the face of many modern books which translate his verse into prose and try without success to analyse the result, Byron’s Poetry puts his real achievement – as a creative writer – back into the focus of discussion.


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-06-01,Rosemary A. Peters  ,Criminal Papers: Reading Crime in the French Nineteenth Century,Hardback,978-1-4438-3789-7,39.99,"Throughout the nineteenth century, shady characters appear in French writings from one end of the literary spectrum to another. While Paris gleams through the night, the City of Lights has a darker underside with its own infrastructure, its own rules and traditions – and its own literature. In the shadows of the capital, thieves, murderers, addicts, shoplifters, seducers, and smugglers carry out their nefarious acts, pursued by detectives (both police and private) who seek to apprehend and analyze them. These novels pave the way for a new genre, the detective novel or roman polar, which gains ever-increasing popularity as the nineteenth century moves toward its close and the twentieth dawns with developments in literature and other genres. These stories are experimental by nature, and lend themselves to further innovations, both apertures (to borrow Barthes’s term) and departures. In addition, the detective stories of the nineteenth century contribute to the creation of a new art in the twentieth century: they are part and parcel of the work of film, especially film noir.

This volume considers literature of the criminal underworld and its encounters with society, in the city and the popular imagination. The twelve essays compiled here examine the intersections between law and literature in the nineteenth century, from the newly adjusted property laws after the Revolution of 1789 through the scientific discourse around kleptomania in the fin-de-siècle. The authors question how texts, both canonical and “paraliterary,” are inscribed into the social, political, economic and artistic dialogues of the period. Other questions come up in these textual examinations: how are real-life criminals and the spaces they inhabit translated into literary ones? How do crimes in novels reflect or produce social tensions and preoccupations around issues of gender, education, class, and ideology? And, perhaps most importantly, what does it mean to be the “author of a crime”?

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-06-01,A. V. C. Schmidt,Earthly Honest Things: Collected Essays on Piers Plowman,Hardback,978-1-4438-3791-0,49.99,"Earthly Honest Things brings together the complete shorter writings of a leading international authority on William Langland.  Of A. V. C. Schmidt’s recent two-volume Piers Plowman: A Parallel Text Edition Derek Pearsall has said in Speculum that ‘By any standards, it is a monumental achievement … resolute, patient, deeply learned … magisterial… Schmidt…is always interesting and writes with a controlled passion’. Lawrence Warner in The Medieval Review has called this edition ‘nothing short of awe-inspiring’ and Andrew Galloway in The Yearbook of Langland Studies has noted how ‘under Schmidt’s brilliant attention to the poem’s scenic and poetic originality, an editorial and literary attentiveness shines luminously throughout.’ 
Including four that are completely new, these twenty-five pieces cover a wide range of topics, from critical essays on the poem’s imagery, structure, themes and intellectual and literary background (including the philosophical, devotional and mystical traditions) to more technical studies of its text and metre. 
The previously published essays have been thoroughly revised, updated and cross-referenced, and are provided with a full Bibliography and an Index. Together they represent an indispensable companion to the poem for Langland specialists and an exciting introduction for students to one of the most challenging and rewarding masterpieces of medieval English literature.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-06-01,Alan Schwerin,Hume’s Labyrinth: A Search for the Self,Hardback,978-1-4438-3895-5,44.99,"In his magnum opus, David Hume asserts that a person is “nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement.” (Treatise 252) Hume is clearly proud of his bold thesis, as is borne out by his categorical arguments and analyses on the self. Contributions like this will, in his opinion, help establish a new science of human nature, “which will not be inferior in certainty, and will be much superior in utility to any other of human comprehension.” (Treatise xix) Unfortunately for Hume, the bundle theory of the self subsequently elicits substantial criticism and hostility from numerous critics, both philosophical and non-philosophical. As confident as the young Scot is about the merits of his theory when he first proposes it, the sharp critical responses to his thought on the self ultimately compel him to withdraw his controversial views from public scrutiny. The irony is that the author of the bundle theory of the self himself acknowledges that his account of the self is seriously defective. In his appendix to the Treatise, Hume decries the labyrinth that his views on the self have driven him into. Five years in the making, Hume’s Labyrinth: A Search for the Self explores in detail both Hume’s views on the self and his critical reservations on an account of the self that would subsequently become highly influential in the philosophy of mind.

Central to Hume’s Labyrinth is the suggestion that a careful analysis of the appendix to the Treatise throws an invaluable light on a number of elements fundamental to Hume’s views on the self, not least of which is the role of Berkeley’s views on language. While Hume often acknowledges the significance of Berkeley’s philosophy in the Treatise, the argument here is that Berkeley’s account of terms is the foundation of Hume’s philosophy of the mind, with its contentious bundle theory of the self. And when this influence is assayed a new dimension of Hume’s views on the self emerges. For now it appears that the bundle theory of the self is nothing but a heuristic device adopted by Hume to help further philosophical investigations into the mind. In short, it turns out that Hume is a pragmatist, intent on presenting an account of the self that researchers interested in the problems of human nature will find useful.
","“One of the boldest aspects of Alan Schwerin’s study of Hume’s philosophy is his exposition of the bundle theory of the self, in which the binding principle that links successive states that would synthesize a continuous self-identical person, without the need to call on any mysterious spiritual substances for this purpose [is considered]. These reflections lead to a potent suggestion – that Hume has realized that his project is ultimately a study of the uses of words, and not an excursion into metaphysics. There is no solution to the problem of the metaphysical identity of the self because there is no such entity as the self. In the end, Schwerin seems to be hinting, that Hume is anticipating the 20th century in the attempt to construct a conceptual framework in which to discuss what it is to be [a] person. This is an interesting, fruitful and provocative idea.”
– Rom Harré, Emeritus Professor, Oxford University, London School of Economics, Georgetown University

“I think that Hume’s Labyrinth is very good and very important. Schwerin’s thesis on the bundle theory of the self is reasonable and underlines the value of that part of the Treatise. The analysis improves our understanding of the appendix and the bit on personal identity and is a good example of the usefulness of analysis and logical empiricism. Finally, it is well-written, easy to follow, and carefully constructed. Schwerin must be congratulated for an excellent piece of scholarship . . . This is a wonderful achievement.”
– John Shosky, American University
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-06-01,Jan Chovanec and Isabel Ermida,Language and Humour in the Media,Hardback,978-1-4438-3894-8,39.99,,,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-06-01,Gabrielle Malcolm and Kelli Marshall,Locating Shakespeare in the Twenty-First Century,Hardback,978-1-4438-3787-3,39.99,"The first decade of the new century has certainly been a busy one for diversity in Shakespearean performance and interpretation, yielding, for example, global, virtual, digital, interactive, televisual, and cinematic Shakespeares. In Locating Shakespeare in the Twenty-First Century, Gabrielle Malcolm and Kelli Marshall assess this active world of Shakespeare adaptation and commercialization as they consider both novel and traditional forms: from experimental presentations (in-person and online) and literal rewritings of the plays/playwright to televised and filmic Shakespeares.

More specifically, contributors in Locating Shakespeare in the Twenty-First Century examine the BBC's ShakespeaRE-Told series, Canada's television program Slings and Arrows, the Mumbai-based film Maqbool, and graphic novels in Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series as well as the future of adaptation, performance, digitization, and translation via such projects as National Theatre Live, the Victoria & Albert Museum’s Archive of Digital Performance, and the British Library’s online presentation of the complete Folios. Other authors consider the place of Shakespeare in the classroom, in the Kenneth Branagh canon, in Jewish revenge films (Quentin Tarantino's included), in comic books, in Young Adult literature, and in episodes of the BBC's popular sci-fi television program Dr. Who. Ultimately, this collection sheds light, at least partially, on where critics think Shakespeare is now and where he and his works might be going in the near future and long-term. One conclusion is certain: however far we progress into the new century Shakespeare will be there.


More specifically, contributors in Locating Shakespeare in the Twenty-First Century examine the BBC's ShakespeaRE-Told series, Canada's television program Slings and Arrows, the Mumbai-based film Maqbool, and graphic novels in Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series as well as the future of adaptation, performance, digitization, and translation via such projects as National Theatre Live, the Victoria & Albert Museum’s Archive of Digital Performance, and the British Library’s online presentation of the complete Folios. Other authors consider the place of Shakespeare in the classroom, in the Kenneth Branagh canon, in Jewish revenge films (Quentin Tarantino's included), in comic books, in Young Adult literature, and in episodes of the BBC's popular sci-fi television program Dr. Who. Ultimately, this collection sheds light, at least partially, on where critics think Shakespeare is now and where he and his works might be going in the near future and long-term. One conclusion is certain: however far we progress into the new century Shakespeare will be there.



",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-06-01,Mohammad Akbar,Media Translation ,Hardback,978-1-4438-3884-9,34.99,"This book deals with a specific type of translation that has been the subject of several books in Arabic, namely media translation, which has been gaining prominence lately.

It is divided into two sections. The first deals with the history, importance, role, and major theories and types of translation. The second offers some applications in Arabic and English for the benefit of those working in the field of media translation.

The book seeks to help those interested in studying the science and history of translation and wishing to acquire skills for this profession and engage in it after achieving proficiency in the two languages: the target language and the source language. The book hopes to fill a void in the Arabic library, especially in the field of media translation.



",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-06-01,Cristina Vertan and Walther v.Hahn ,Multilingual Processing in Eastern and Southern EU Languages: Low-Resourced Technologies and Translation ,Hardback,978-1-4438-3878-8,49.99,"W.v.Hahn received his PhD in linguistics in Marburg/Lahn and is
professor for linguistics  and computer science in Hamburg/Germany. His research fields are specialized languages and machine translation.


C. Vertan has a Ph.D in Computer Science from the University of Bucharest ans is senior researcher at the university of Hamburg /Germany. Her major research fields are: machine translation and crosslingual retrieval.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-06-01,Jeffrey M. Leatherwood,Nine from Aberdeen,Hardback,978-1-4438-3786-6,44.99,"In Tunisia with II Corps, Lt. John Randall locates a downed German plane and demolishes two live bombs still mounted on the wreckage…  In Italy, Capt. Ronald Felton’s team contends with dreaded “Butterfly Bombs” left behind to menace the U.S. 5th Army…  Landing with the 6th U.S. Special Engineers Brigade, Capt. Jesse Donovan’s squad braves deadly 88mm shells in pursuit of enemy rockets on Utah Beach…  Serving with the 9th Army Air Force, Capt. Thomas Reece survives a close encounter with a German landmine in France…  Capt. Joseph Pilcher joins in the 78th Infantry’s final assault on a dam guarding the approaches to Germany…  Sweeping the 11th Airborne Division’s trail on Luzon, Lt. Carl Cirocco’s team is ambushed by the Japanese…  Capt. Richard Metress is dispatched by the U.S. 6th Army to tackle enemy depth charges on Mindanao…  Capt. Clifford Sarauw covers the U.S. 10th Army’s fateful landing on Okinawa…
These aforementioned exploits are among the notable events contained in Nine from Aberdeen, the first academic history solely devoted to the U.S. Army’s Ordnance Bomb Disposal Branch from World War II.  Shortly after Pearl Harbor, nine U.S. Army officers and sergeants were sent from Aberdeen Proving Ground to war-torn England in order to learn the invaluable technical skills pioneered by the British Royal Engineers.  Led by the colorful Thomas J. Kane, these nine men inaugurated the new Ordnance Bomb Disposal School.  Conceived initially for homeland defense, Col. Kane’s branch eventually fielded over two hundred Army and Air Force bomb squads for overseas service.  These courageous officers and men were forerunners of today’s Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) specialists, responsible for supporting the U.S. military during combat operations and for preserving the lives of noncombatants at all other times.
Using documents and photographs – many from personal collections – as well as oral interviews, this work presents a cross-section of U.S. Army and Air Force operations spanning three major theaters; Mediterranean, European, and the Pacific.  Special emphasis is given to the European Theater, where Col. Kane served as Eisenhower’s chief ETO bomb disposal officer.  Nine from Aberdeen also contains charts detailing campaign participations, ordnance statistics, and other significant data.  Retired Army Command Sergeant Major James H. Clifford, military consultant for the award-winning film, The Hurt Locker, provides an afterword on EOD continuity.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-06-01,RoseAnna Mueller ,Teresa de la Parra: A Literary Life ,Hardback,978-1-4438-3799-6,44.99,"This book is the first comprehensive study of Teresa de la Parra for English-speaking readers.   The volume includes a biographical chapter and analyses of de la Parra’s two novels, Iphigenia: the diary of a young lady who wrote because she was bored and Mama Blanca’s Memoirs.
An annotated version of the Three Colombian Lectures: Women’s Influence in the Formation of the American Soul reveals the importance of Latin American women’s contributions in Latin American history and speaks to gender issues sparked by critical reactions to Iphigenia. 
Translations of de la Parra’s selected letters, short stories, and entries from the “Bellevue-Fuenfria-Madrid Diary” provide a more complete picture of the writer and help tie her works to her life. The book reviews literary criticism on de la Parra, providing an overview of what Venezuelan, Latin American and American critics and biographers have to say about the author and her works.  De la Parra bridged the gap between Venezuelan and European traditions, and this book examines the author’s contribution to Venezuelan and Latin American literary traditions while showcasing her as a model of Latin American women’s writing whose influence is being rediscovered and reevaluated.

As RoseAnna Mueller tells us in her Preface, she happened upon Teresa de la Parra’s work quite by chance, something that is common to all of us who work with literature. Just as it happens to many of us, Mueller became enchanted by de la Parra’s work, and included it in her syllabus. But Mueller went further ahead, making De la Parra’s writings a subject of serious study, and the result is this book. For any person interested in becoming better acquainted with the literature of Latin America, this book is a must read: it brings an in-depth, careful reading of one of the most interesting and most original thinkers of the last hundred years. Through Teresa de la Parra’s lenses, as Mueller presents them, the reader will see how gender, race, and class are interwoven in the history of Venezuela and, by extension, of the whole continent.



",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-06-01,Jean-Jacques Chardin ,"The Déjà-vu and the Authentic: Reprise, Recycling, Recuperating in Anglophone Literature and Culture ",Hardback,978-1-4438-3879-5,39.99,"The correlated concepts of the déjà-vu and the authentic suggest that all cultural productions are per se palimpsests whose construction is the result of such processes as reprise, recycling, and recuperating.  Reprise is approached as various forms of citation, reference and intertextuality, recycling is defined as commodification and intellectual impoverishment, while recuperating implies the ideological process that makes reappropriation possible. 
By covering a wide spectrum of research interests, from literature to music, art and the cinema, the seventeen contributions in English or in French explore the political and ethical implications inherent in the creation of culture

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-06-01,Hanna Boguta-Marchel,"The Evil, the Fated, the Biblical: The Latent Metaphysics of Cormac McCarthy ",Hardback,978-1-4438-3882-5,39.99,"The most intriguing aspect of Cormac McCarthy’s writing is the irresistible premonition that his sentences carry an exceptional potential, that after each subsequent reading they surprise us with increasingly deeper layers of meaning, which are often in complete contradiction to the readers’ initial intuitions. His novels belong to the kind that we dream about at night, that follow us and do not let themselves be forgotten. 
Cormac McCarthy’s prose has been read in the light of a variety of theories, ranging from Marxist criticism, the pastoral tradition, Gnostic theology, the revisionist approach to the American Western, to feminist and eco-critical methodology. The perspective offered in The Evil, the Fated, the Biblical is an existentialist theological approach, which proposes a reading of McCarthy that focuses on the issue of evil and violence as it is dealt with in his novels. “Evil,” unquestionably being a metaphysical category and, as a result, quite commonly pronounced passé, is a challenging and overwhelming topic, which nevertheless deeply concerns all of us. Boguta-Marchel’s book is therefore an attempt to confront a theme that is an unpopular object of scholarly examination and, at the same time, a commonly shared experience in the everyday life of all human beings.   

The problem of evil is 
“Evil” is obviously a metaphysical category, and, therefore, quite. It tends to be not only relativized and viewed as utterly subjective, but also otherwise termed and defined solely through its specifically contextualized (i.e. practical) manifestations. This is the first and most fundamental impediment one stumbles upon when attempting to theorize about evil.  And yet the experience of evil as something external, a reality existing outside and, to some extent, despite the individual, is quite commonplace and familiar. Such an experience is, obviously, by definition subjective, though in itself it does render evil’s very existence as, in a sense, objective.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-06-01,Ciara Ní Bhroin and Patricia Kennon,What Do We Tell the Children? Critical Essays on Children’s Literature,Hardback,978-1-4438-3788-0,39.99,"This peer- reviewed collection of critical essays on children’s literature addresses contemporary debates regarding what constitutes “suitable” texts for young audiences. The volume examines what adult writers “tell” their child readers with particular focus on the following areas: the representation of sexuality, gender and the body; the treatment of death and trauma; concepts of race, prejudice and national identity; and the use of children’s literature as a tool for socializing, acculturating, politicizing and educating children. The focus of the collection is on Irish and international fiction addressed at readers from mid-childhood to young adulthood. One section of the book examines what child readers were told in the past while the final section examines young readers’ capacity for self-invention through the participatory culture of the twenty-first century.  Topics explored include the controversial issue of teenage prostitution and the commodification of the male body in contemporary young adult fiction, the allure of celebrity and the impact of today’s surveillance culture on young people, the representation of the Holocaust for young readers and representations of Muslim characters and culture in a post-9/11 mediascape. Subject matter ranges from the contemporary realistic fiction of Melvin Burgess to Joy Kogawa’s historical narrative, Obasan and its subsequent adaptations for children, to print material produced by Inghinidhe na hÉreann aimed at politicizing young Irish readers in the early twentieth century. 

Contributors are all respected academics in their field and include international experts such as Professor Kimberley Reynolds, Professor Kerry Mallan, Professor Norma Clarke and Professor Kay Sambell.

Contributors: Jane Suzanne Carroll, Norma Clarke, Shehrazade Emmambokus, Michele Gill, Marnie Hay, Eimear Hegarty, Nora Maguire, Kerry Mallan, Anne Markey, Kimberley Reynolds, Beth Rodgers, Kay Sambell.

This is the fifth publication of the Irish Society for the Study of Children’s Literature (ISSCL).
It follows the Society’s publication of Studies in Children’s Literature 1500-2000 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2004), Treasure Islands: studies in children’s literature (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2006), Divided Worlds: studies in children literature (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2007) and Young Irelands: studies in children’s literature (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2011).

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-07-01,Nicola Darwood,A World of Lost Innocence: The Fiction of Elizabeth Bowen,Hardback,978-1-4438-3909-9,39.99,"Elizabeth Bowen was a prolific writer; her publishing career spanned five decades and during this time she wrote ten novels, over one hundred short stories and countless reviews and journal articles.  While earlier novels are now acknowledged as Modernist texts, her later novels can be read through the lens of postmodernism; they can be considered variously as romantic fiction, marriage novels, war time spy thrillers and psychological drama but, throughout her novels, she consistently questioned notions of identity, sexuality and the loss of innocence.  A World of Lost Innocence: the fiction of Elizabeth Bowen offers a reading of Elizabeth Bowen’s fiction which focuses specifically on this loss, foregrounding the psychological conflicts experienced by her protagonists.  It examines the subject not only across the range of her fiction but also in relation to her unfolding narrative structures through a chronologically based discussion of her novels and selected short stories, interwoven with biographical information and drawing on unpublished letters.  This book investigates the dominant kinds of innocence that Bowen represents throughout her fiction: the innocence attributed to childhood, sexual innocence and sexual morality, and political innocence and argues that the transition from innocence to experience plays an important role in the epistemological journey faced both by Bowen’s characters and her readers.   


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-07-01,Vesna Lopičić and Biljana Mišić Ilić,Challenging Change: Literary and Linguistic Responses,Hardback,978-1-4438-3900-6,44.99,"The book Challenging Change: Literary and Linguistic Responses is a collection of twenty three articles which examine change understood in the broadest sense as the need of the modern man to redefine, revise, deconstruct and reconstruct previous theories, histories, moralities, social relationships, forms of language and language use. In our times of great changes, when the only constant seems to be the change itself, the authors of these essays respond to the challenge and approach the notion of change from the perspectives of literary studies and linguistics. The book opens with an introductory overview, followed by twenty three articles divided into two sections. 
The authors of the articles come from Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Romania, United States, Canada, Japan, and Norway.  


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-07-01,Amy Bright,“Curious if True”: The Fantastic in Literature,Hardback,978-1-4438-3971-6,39.99,"he fantastic has occupied the literary imagination of readers and scholars across historical, theoretical and cultural contexts. Representations of the fantastic in literature rely on formal and generic types, tropes, and archetypes to mediate between depictions of “fantasy” and “reality.” Present in myth and folklore, the gothic and neo-gothic, and contemporary and mainstream fantasy, the fantastic reach stretches into many conceptions of literature over time. “Curious, if True”: The Fantastic in Literature” presents recent articles by graduate students on the fantastic to make connections across category, genre, and historical period. These essays explore the complexity and the breath of fantasy and science fiction through groupings of text, close reading, and theoretical orientation. Fantasy is used as an organizing topic, a genre that has always allowed for a broad interpretation of its meaning. From magic realism, to high fantasy, and the interpretations of realistic novels under a fantastic lens, this collection furthers the reach of fantasy in the study of English Literature. Northrup Frye writes, “the world of literature is a world where there is no reality except that of the human imagination” (470). This volume expands our vision of imagination as readers and scholars of English Literature. The authors value tradition in their reading and their writing but are not afraid to reach across genre borders to show their understanding of “the fantastical in literature.” The ideas presented span years and literary periods, texts and genres, and show the undeniably value of interdisciplinary study to expand perspectives in the field of English
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-07-01,"Ligia Tomoiagă, Minodora Barbul and Ramona Demarcsek",From Francis Bacon to William Golding: Utopias and Dystopias of Today and of Yore,Hardback,978-1-4438-3913-6,39.99,"This volume is dedicated to Francis Bacon, to William Golding and to the tradition of writing utopias and dystopias. Although some of the articles were presented at the conference, there are other contributions in the volume that come to complete a 21st century vision on utopia, from the point of view of specialists in philology, philosophy, anthropology, etc. The novelty of such an undertaking consists exactly in the fact that the editors allowed researchers of different fields come together and create an interdisciplinary volume which contains both very rigorous academic work alongside more relaxed essays.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-07-01,Tom Grimwood,"Irony, Misogyny and Interpretation: Ambiguous Authority in Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche",Hardback,978-1-4438-3977-8,34.99,"What is it to claim that “misogyny” might be “ironic”? Why is it that, in the works of Nietzsche, Kierkegaard and Schopenhauer, the possibility of irony constantly interferes with a conclusive ethical judgement over the meaning of their “misogyny”? How do we hold our interpretations of such ambiguous texts ethically accountable? 
This book brings together the driving concerns of hermeneutics, feminist philosophy and the history of philosophy in dealing with the “problem of irony”. It develops a thematic account of the concept of irony as a philosophical form of interpretation, and explores this through close readings of three key sites of controversy regarding the relationship between irony and misogyny: Schopenhauer's ""On Women"", Kierkegaard's ""In Vino Veritas"" and Nietzsche's ""Woman and Child"". Rather than aiming to “rescue” their misogynistic texts by appealing to irony, the book suggests that ironic ambiguity is a formative, rather than distractive, aspect of these text's misogyny. Working from the productive intersection between hermeneutics and deconstruction, the book explores the substantial ways in which authority and value are constructed in terms of ironic possiblity.


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-07-01,Andrew Littlejohn and Sandhya Rao Mehta,Language Studies: Stretching the Boundaries,Hardback,978-1-4438-3972-3,39.99,"As a defining characteristic of what it means to be human, the use of language plays a central role in almost all human activity. Language functions as a cornerstone in the construction of our identity and in the relationships we build. It takes a central role in facilitating every enterprise we undertake, creates the thread which forms our own biographies, and enables us to play a part in the transmission and maintenance of our culture. 

This pervasive nature of language means that it may form the starting point for an investigation into virtually any aspect of social life. In recent years, this has led to a stretching of the boundaries of language studies, prompted by an intense cross-fertilisation of ideas with a wide range of disciplines. It is this cross-fertilisation which forms the focus of the present collection. Taken together, the thirteen papers it contains provide an absorbing, rich array of subjects touched by the centrality of language. Encompassing themes from social psychology, translation theory, computer science, forensics, educational policy, language change, archaeology, and literature, the collection demonstrates that the study of language offers limitless possibilities to aid an understanding of the world in which we live. 

International in scope, the collection includes contributions from scholars well-established in their fields, at work in Europe, the USA, the Middle East and Asia. As such, the collection offers a stimulating perspective for readers in a wide range of contexts, whether they themselves are principally concerned with language or are simply eager to see how the study of language may be relevant to their own discipline. 



",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-07-01,Jakub Kazecki,Laughter in the Trenches: Humour and Front Experience in German First World War Narratives,Hardback,978-1-4438-3899-3,39.99,"aughter in the Trenches: Humour and Front Experience in German First World War Narratives explores the appearances and functions of humour and laughter in selected novels and short stories based on autobiographical experiences written by authors during the war and in the Weimar Era (1919-1933).

The book focuses on popular and lesser-known works of German literature that played an important role in the socio-political life of the Weimar Republic: Storm of Steel by Ernst Jünger (1920), Advance from Mons 1914 by Walter Bloem (1916), The Case of Sergeant Grischa by Arnold Zweig (1927), and All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque (1929). The author shows that these works often share surprisingly similar narrative strategies in describing humorous experiences and soldier laughter to justify direct violence and oppressive power structures, regardless of the books' ideological assignment and their popular and critical reception.

This book also examines the parodic imitations of All Quiet on the Western Front—the German text All Quiet on the Trojan Front by Emil Marius Requark (1930) and the American film So Quiet on the Canine Front by Zion Myers and Jules White (1931)—as significant polemical contributions that use humoristic strategies to stress or undermine the elements of the original text.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-07-01,Martine Sekali and Anne Trévise,Mapping Parameters of Meaning,Hardback,978-1-4438-3897-9,34.99,"he present volume contains a selection of papers presented at the conference Mapping Parameters of Meaning, an event organized by the GReG linguistics research group at the Language Department of the University of Paris Ouest Nanterre on November 19-20, 2010. The volume addresses the description of meaning construction processes, and the necessity for new linguistic interface-tools to analyze it in its dynamic and multi-dimensional aspect. Syntax, grammar, prosody, discourse organization, subjective and situational filters are not considered as autonomous systems; on the contrary, they are shown to systematically converge in the process of meaning construction and interpretation. The notion of context is discussed throughout the volume, a major concern being to try and define the precise nature of the link between variable contextual parameters and stable linguistic systems.
The volume is accordingly divided into three parts. Part I, Core operations and contextual filters, considers the contribution of various linguistic operators of English (aspectual forms, prepositions, conjunctions, etc.) to the construction of meaning in context. The approach chosen in the four chapters goes from close observation of contextual and situational filters to a few leads for the formalization of parameters incorporating the meaning potentiality of linguistic signs. Part II, Semantics and Cognition contains two chapters relating to the problem of how the mind retrieves meaning in specific linguistic contexts. The three chapters that make up Part III, Language contacts and meaning construction, are then concerned with the phenomenon of inter-linguistic contact zones, observed in contrastive work on cross-linguistic notions expressed in specific language systems, code-switching by bilinguals or diglossic writings. This final part offers a sort of magnifying glass for the study linguistic interfaces in the process of meaning construction. 
The book is of value to anyone interested in the interaction between syntax, semantics and pragmatics in the gradual construction and interpretation of meaning in natural languages, including researchers, students and scholars of formal linguistics, cognitive linguistics and discourse analysis. The research community in the field of interface linguistics will undoubtedly find it helpful to consider the methodological discussion around new cross-theoretical interface tools for the analysis of such complex phenomena as the emergence of meaning in discourse.
","“This volume is a stimulating contribution to the growing body of research published in English representing contemporary French theoretical perspectives on language. It offers wonderful grounds to develop the dialogue with other cognitive and discursive theoretical approaches.
The authors each attempt at mapping filters of meaning in various contexts in order to show regularities across corpora and to formalize the parameters of meaning construction. Three important assets of this collection of original contributions are 1) the use of actual data(mostly in English and French and as varied as the BNC, various media, literature extracts, text messaging, Renaissance paintings and spontaneous oral bilingual conversations); 2) the focus on the dynamics of language’s multi-dimensional aspects and the attempt to grasp the construction of meaning at the interface of syntax, semantics and pragmatics; 3) the demonstration that linguistic systems are shaped by and infused with subjective and inter-subjective representations.
This unusual and multifaceted book will be an inspiration for all those who reflect on the relation between linguistic systems, speakers’ subjectivity and the extra-linguistic world.”
 
— Aliyah Morgenstern,  Professor of Linguistics, University  of Paris Sorbonne Nouvelle

 “This volume addresses the problem of interpretation of meaning in natural languages. It convincingly shows how syntax, discourse organization, prosody and situational filters, among others, interact in the interpretation of meaning. Special emphasis is laid on the role of context. It offers a stimulating read for all linguists interested in the puzzling link between variable contextual parameters and stable linguistic systems.”

— Wilfrid Rotgé, Professor of Linguistics, University of Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense


",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-07-01,Guadalupe Ruiz-Farjardo,Methodological Developments in Teaching Spanish as a Second and Foreign Language,Hardback,978-1-4438-3973-0,44.99,"This book on applied linguistics presents new trends and improvements on the teaching of Spanish. It deals with two major scopes in the field of linguistics that have a crucial role in the development of language teaching in general and of the teaching of Spanish in particular: Interaction and Grammar.

The topics chosen coincide with the areas in which the communicative approach to language teaching dominant in European and American colleges and universities since the 1970s and 80s has been the object of most revision. In its first part, The book appeals both to pragmatics and to discourse analysis to research the specifics of classroom discourse and classroom interaction, as well as the differences between interactions among Spanish native speakers and interaction among non natives, in order to develop methodologies for the effective reincorporation of these aspects to the Spanish language classroom, such as tasks to teach interaction or techniques to implement learner-centered interactive class dynamics and cooperative learning.

 In its second part, this book reviews the pedagogical advantages of language description based on Cognitive Grammar theory and explains different aspects of the Spanish grammar. The main purpose of our contribution is to show how taking into account different dimensions of construal and perspective in linguistic representations helps teachers to elucidate idiosyncratic and subtle contrasts of Spanish structure that other views and approaches cannot clarify on a meaningful base, such as the aspectual opposition between preterits or the modal opposition between indicative and subjunctive, both of high importance for the English speaking student.

The work selected for this book, done by experts from Columbia University and from several universities in Spain, represents the most current lines of inquiry in this “post-communicative” approach as applied specifically to the teaching of Spanish. This book seeks to be to be a “must-read” for present and future. It tackles unexplored territory, for journals and applied linguistics collections have mainly addressed these problems in relation to English language and instruction.


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-07-01,Suzanne Bray and William Gray,"Persona and Paradox: Issues of Identity for C.S. Lewis, his Friends and Associates",Hardback,978-1-4438-3966-2,39.99,,,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-07-01,"Saija Isomaa, Sari Kivistö, Pirjo Lyytikäinen, Sanna Nyqvist, Merja Polvinen and Riikka Rossi",Rethinking Mimesis: Concepts and Practices of Literary Representation,Hardback,978-1-4438-3901-3,44.99,"Literary mimesis is an age-old concept which has been variously interpreted and at times highly 
contested, and which has recently been brought back to the forefront of scholarly interest. The debate around mimesis has been reactivated by approaches that re-evaluate its meaning both in the ancient texts in which it first appeared, and in the contemporary discussions of the power of literary representation. This volume presents a selection of central contributions to both the theoretical debate on mimesis and to its up-to-date critical practice.

This volume approaches mimesis by emphasising the principles of knowledge, understanding and imagination that have been associated with mimesis since Aristotle’s Poetics. The articles consider the various aspects of the concept throughout history, and explore the ways in which literature produces its peculiar reality effects and negotiates its relationship to value systems connecting it to the world of everyday experience and ethics, as well as to different ideologies, emotions, world views and fields of knowledge. Building on this rich theoretical background, the articles examine the limits and possibilities of mimesis through detailed textual analyses that present acute challenges to our current understanding of literary representation.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-07-01,James Oldfield,Sources of Desire: Essays on Aristotle’s Theoretical Works,Hardback,978-1-4438-3963-1,34.99,,,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-07-01,Matthew Gumpert,The End of Meaning: Studies in Catastrophe,Hardback,978-1-4438-3915-0,54.99,"The specter of the apocalypse has always been a semiotic proposition: only at the end of all things, we are told, is their meaning laid bare. Our long-standing romance with catastrophe is inseparable from the Western hermeneutical tradition: our search for an elusive truth, one that can only be uncovered through the work of interpretation.  Catastrophe terrifies and tantalizes to the extent it promises an end to this task. 

9/11 is this book’s beginning, but not its end.  Here was the apocalypse America had long been waiting for.  The American dream: the fantasy--or nightmare--of fashioning meaning anew, upon some pristine tabula rasa or ground zero wiped clean by cataclysm.  But the real lesson of 9/11 may be that catastrophe is the purest form of the event itself; every event is an infinitesimal catastrophe: or the sign of catastrophe to come. 
 
From the poetry of classical Greece to the popular culture of contemporary America, The End of Meaning seeks to show that catastrophe, precisely as the notion of the sui generis, has always been generic.  This is not a book on the great catastrophes of the West; it offers no canon of catastrophe, no history of the catastrophic; to single out catastrophe, thus, as the exceptional, or the monstrous, or the modern, runs contrary to the essential proposition underlying the essays in this collection: that meaning itself is catastrophic. 

","“The catastrophe is everywhere,"" writes Professor Gumpert , and this marvelous book, with its breathtaking array of subjects ranging from Homer's Iliad to Angels in America, belongs among a growing number of works arguing for a new, post-modern notion of catastrophe as the rule rather than the exception, not only of art and literature, but of life itself. As a comparatist, a classicist, and a semiotician, Gumpert's close rhetorical analyses of his many subjects are at once detailed, intricate, fresh and authoritative.”
—Paul Gordon, Professor, Humanities/Comparative Literature, University of Colorado, Boulder



",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-07-01,Norman Saadi Nikro,"The Fragmenting Force of Memory: Self, Literary Style, and Civil War in Lebanon",Hardback,978-1-4438-3908-2,39.99,"This study is about earlier, largely experimental forms of cultural production that situate and work through personal experiences of the civil war in Lebanon. It addresses selected works of literature, autobiography and memoir of Jean Said Makdisi, Rashid al-Daif, Elias Khoury, Mai Ghoussoub, and the civil war trilogy of documentary films by Mohamed Soueid. From a phenomenological, hermeneutical perspective the book is concerned with how they give accounts of themselves as remnants, leftovers, undigested remains of the civil war and related trajectories of ideological attachment to symbolic mandates. Constrained to reposition their sense of self from an agent of history to a casualty of history, their acutely personal works of cultural production initiate an unraveling of both self and circumstance through the fragmenting force of memory. 
Drawing on a broad range of phenomenological critical theory (within the research fields of postcolonial, memory, psychoanalytic, gender and literary studies) attuned to subjectivity as a field of social production and exchange, I explore how my writers and filmmaker employ a non-presentist, anachronic or paratactic register of memory to excavate both a historical understanding of self and related modalities of being. I discuss how the symptomatic style of their work embodies, creatively and critically situates, a refusal to package and normalize any idealized account of the war, related assemblages of temporal succession, or else a presentation of self as discrete and omniscient.
.





","""Saadi Nikro’s timely study is an interdisciplinary and theoretically complex exploration of postwar Lebanese cultural production in both Arabic and English. Focusing on the works of one documentary filmmaker and four writers, he interprets their reflections on the effects of Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil war, including its undermining of their formerly leftist beliefs. At the same time, Nikro argues that their critical uses of memories as events have become forces to combat state-sponsored amnesia of the mayhem. This is an erudite foray into a new and still developing area of academic research and, therefore, a welcome addition.""
 
Syrine Hout, Associate Professor of English, American University of Beirut   

'Rarely has someone as theoretically well-read as Saadi Nikro subjected Arab literature to such an intimate analysis. The result is an intellectually stimulating interrogation of both form and content that brings out the decentered and decentring relation between identity, memory and temporality that lies at the heart of the creative practices of the Arab authors and film makers analysed. This work is of interest not only to those working in Arab literary studies, but to all who want to deepen their understanding of Arab cultural forms as a whole.'
—Ghassan Hage is Future Generation Professor of Anthropology and Social Theory, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Melbourne






",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-07-01,Ruth J. Owen,The Hamlet Zone: Reworking Hamlet for European Cultures,Hardback,978-1-4438-3974-7,39.99,,,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-07-01,Francesca Saggini and Anna Enrichetta Soccio,The House of Fiction as the House of Life: Representations of the House from Richardson to Woolf,Hardback,978-1-4438-3976-1,39.99,,,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-07-01,Helen Goethals,The Unassuming Sky: The Life and Poetry of Timothy Corsellis,Hardback,978-1-4438-3975-4,39.99,,,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-07-01,"María Alonso Alonso, Jeannette Bello Mota, Alba de Béjar Muíños and Laura Torrado Mariñas ",Weaving New Perspectives Together: Some Reflections on Literary Studies,Hardback,978-1-4438-3911-2,39.99,"The present volume seeks to offer a novel and interdisciplinary overview on the question of literary interpretation and the numerous perspectives current in the field today. Written by early-career researchers and enriched with the important contributions of three senior lecturers, the articles contained in this compilation are devised to work as a multi-faceted whole that may at the same time give inspiration to students and constitute a guide to more experienced scholars. 

Acting as an integrating entity that agglutinates works from scholars across Europe, we consider this book to be a clear example of the dynamism of present-day literary studies and of the numerous ways in which literature can speak to people. Following Margaret Atwood’s statement about the fact that “The answers you get from literature depend on the questions you pose”, this volume may be said to possess the potential to provide as many answers as it poses new questions which will stimulate future research in the field. 

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-08-01,Jon Dietrick,Bad Pennies and Dead Presidents: Money in Modern American Drama,Hardback,978-1-4438-3996-9,39.99,,,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-08-01,Alfonso Muñoz Corcuera and Elisa T. Di Biase,"Barrie, Hook, and Peter Pan: Studies in Contemporary Myth; Estudios sobre un mito contemporáneo",Hardback,978-1-4438-4002-6,49.99,,,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-08-01,Geetha Ganapathy-Doré and Helga Ramsey Kurz,On the Move: The Journey of Refugees in New Literatures in English,Hardback,978-1-4438-3990-7,39.99,"In the postcommunist world of organized mobility, commodified hospitality and portable devices, the category of people labelled as migrants, the displaced and refugees symbolize a different kind of movement. Among them, the postnational figure of the refugee stands out. Fleeing their land alone or in a group, on foot or in buses and trains or via makeshift boats and commercial flights, dressed in unfamiliar clothes and borrowed identities, the refugees travel “to dare a future from the taken roads.” Their journey of escape is fraught with danger and despair, their survival complicated by the politics of suspicion and their right to return compromised by the power game between sovereign states. Waiting for ever in transit zones or living underground like animals but exploited for their labour, the refugees are the “untouchables” of the 21st century who put to test the universal and moral duty of hospitality. When the international legal regime of human and humanitarian rights does not come to their rescue, refugee women and children feel twice abandoned.

This volume of collected essays tries to explore the journey of refugees as represented in New Literatures in English. Who are these refugees? What circumstances triggered their movement? At what point in history? Where do they go? How do they cope?  What are their dreams? When does refugees’ silence break into speech and story? How does life assert itself in spite of impending death? Could the death of a refugee be as insignificant as her bare life of exile? Scholars from Europe, Africa, India and Sri Lanka give here a comprehensive picture of the refugee movement across the globe since the Second World War. The refugee narratives highlight the need to extend the logic of protection from persecution to asylum from economic crisis and ecological imbalance in order to offset the after effects of imperial outreach and industrial expansion.

With a short story by Chika Unigwe by way of foreword and contributions from Petra Tournay-Theodotu, Helga Ramsey-Kurz, Marta Cariello, Stavros Karayanni, Jean-Marie Soungoua, Federico Fabris, Evelyne Hanquart-Turner, Annie Cottier, Geetha Ganapathy-Doré, G. Sujatha and Vinod Kumar.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-08-01,Antony Webb,Poems and Verse of Winifred Holtby,Hardback,978-1-4438-4000-2,34.99,,,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-08-01,Ethan Lewis,Reflexive Poetics: A Critical Anthology,Hardback,978-1-4438-3998-3,44.99,,,Cambridge Scholars Publishing