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Languages : en
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Book Description
Routledge Library Editions
Author: The Unresolvable Plot
Author: Elizabeth DipplePublisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000639134
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 426
Book Description
Originally published in 1988, the last few decades had seen the appearance of some brilliant and complex new kinds of fiction. The ambitious experiments of writers such as Greene, Garcia Márquez, Borges, Nabakov, Calvino, Beckett, Eco, Spark, Hoban, Murdoch, Bellow, Ozick, and Lessing among others had all proved the vitality of contemporary fiction in discovering exciting new forms and styles. Yet because of the difficulty of many of the texts, contemporary fiction as a genre had acquired an undeservedly unpopular reputation among students and other readers. In a very real way, the reader had become nervous rather than confident in the face of a literature that in fact is more aware of and generous to that reader than earlier and more apparently accessible literature ever managed to be. And the new fiction’s seeming remoteness from the reader is exaggerated, in a sense, by the critical academic response at the time, which tended to obscure the texts themselves behind the many aesthetic and cultural theories which had sprung up in the study of fictionalizing or narrativity in general. Elizabeth Dipple is anxious to dispel readers’ fears about these texts. She has chosen an international list of major writers of the time and presents a detailed discussion of each. Beginning each chapter with a brief explanation of the context in which each fictionist is to be examined, she then concentrates on an analysis of key texts, aiming always to look beyond jargon and theory back to the sources themselves. Professor Dipple’s purpose was to convey to the reader some of her own admiration and enthusiasm for contemporary fiction and to persuade him or her to take a fresh look at a group of writers who were producing what she felt would surely be seen by future generations as among the most sophisticated and accomplished fiction of our time.
Feminine Fictions
Author: Patricia WaughPublisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136321241
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 256
Book Description
‘Postmodernism’ and ‘feminism’ have become familiar terms since the 1960s, developing alongside one another and clearly sharing many strong points of contact. Why then have the critical debates arising out of these movements had so little to say about each other? Patricia Waugh addresses the relationship between feminist and postmodernist writing and theory through the insights of psychoanalysis and in the context of the development of modern fiction in Britain and America. She attempts to uncover the reasons why women writers have been excluded from the considerations of postmodern art. Her route takes her through the theorization of self offered by Freud and Lacan and on to the concept of subjectivity articulated by Kleinian and later object-relations psychoanalysts. She argues that much women’s writing has been inappropriately placed and interpreted within a predominantly formalist-orientated aesthetic and a post-Freudian/liberal, individualist conceptualization of subjectivity and artistic expression. This tendency has been intensified in discussions of postmodernism, and a new feminist aesthetic is thus badly needed. In the second part of the book Patricia Waugh analyses the work of six ‘traditional’ and six ‘experimental’ writers, challenging the restrictive definitions of ‘realist’, ‘modernist’, ‘postmodernist’ in the light of the theoretical position developed in part one. Authors covered include: Woolf (viewed as a postmodernist ‘precursor’ rather than a ‘high’ modernist), Drabble, Tyler, Plath, Brookner, Paley, Lessing, Weldon, Atwood, Walker, Spark, Russ, and Piercy.
Contemporary Publishing and the Culture of Books
Author: Alison BaverstockPublisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317696301
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 353
Book Description
Contemporary Publishing and the Culture of Books is a comprehensive resource that builds bridges between the traditional focus and methodologies of literary studies and the actualities of modern and contemporary literature, including the realities of professional writing, the conventions and practicalities of the publishing world, and its connections between literary publishing and other media. Focusing on the relationship between modern literature and the publishing industry, the volume enables students and academics to extend the text-based framework of modules on contemporary writing into detailed expositions of the culture and industry which bring these texts into existence; it brings economic considerations into line alongside creative issues, and examines how employing marketing strategies are utilized to promote and sell books. Sections cover: The standard university-course specifications of contemporary writing, offering an extensive picture of the social, economic, and cultural contexts of these literary genres The impact and status of non-literary writing, and how this compares with certain literary genres as an index to contemporary culture and a reflection of the state of the publishing industry The practicalities and conventions of the publishing industry Contextual aspects of literary culture and the book industry, visiting the broader spheres of publishing, promotion, bookselling, and literary culture Carefully linked chapters allow readers to tie key elements of the publishing industry to the particular demands and features of contemporary literary genres and writing, offering a detailed guide to the ways in which the three core areas of culture, economics, and pragmatics intersect in the world of publishing. Further to being a valuable resource for those studying English or Creative Writing, the volume is a key text for degrees in which Publishing is a component, and is relevant to those aspects of Media Studies that look at interactions between the media and literature/publishing.
Magical Realism and the Fantastic
Author: Amaryll Beatrice ChanadyPublisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000639053
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 209
Book Description
Every reader of literature interprets the literary text on the basis of information they have acquired from previous reading, and according to norms they have established, either consciously or not, with regard to a work of literature. In this study, originally published in 1985, the author clarifies the concepts of magical realism and the fantastic, and establishes a series of guidelines that will allow us to distinguish between the two similar yet independent modes. The reader will thus be able to identify the implicit framework upon which the author of the fantastic and of magical realism bases their text.
Modern German Literature
Author: Jethro BithellPublisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000765407
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 484
Book Description
Originally published in 1939 and revised in 1959, this book traces back to their origins the literary movements and phases of German literature of 1880 to 1950 as they occur and shows how and why they pass over into succeeding phases. It closely analyses Naturalism, Impressionism, Neo-romanticism and Expressionism as well as dealing exhaustively with Surrealism, Magic Realism and Existentialism. The book includes discussion of post-war Anglo-American and French literature.
Routledge Library Editions: Joseph Conrad
Author: VariousPublisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000519139
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 6801
Book Description
Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) is widely considered one the great modern writers in English literature. This 21-volume set contains titles, originally published between 1976 and 1990 as well as a biography from 1957 written by one of his closest friends. The first 18 books are a set of concordances and indexes to Conrad’s printed works, which were part of a project directed by Todd K. Bender at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA and are among the first attempts to use the power of computers to enhance our reading environment and assist in lexicography, scholarly editing, and literary analysis. The set also contains a meticulously compiled bibliography of writings on Joseph Conrad, as well as an original and powerful analysis of his major work.
The Uses of the Future in Early Modern Europe
Author: Andrea BradyPublisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135191956
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 538
Book Description
Is modernity synonymous with progress? Did the Renaissance really break with the cyclical, agrarian time of the Middle Ages, inaugurating a new concept of irreversible time in a secular culture defined by development? How does methodology affect scholarly responses to the idea of the future in the past? This collection of interdisciplinary essays from the fields of literary criticism, cultural studies, politics and intellectual history offers new answers to these commonplace questions. They explore elite and popular culture, women and men’s experiences, and the encounter between East and West, providing a comparative view on the range of personal, political and social practices with which early modern people planned for, imagined, manipulated or even rejected the future. Examining poetry, architecture, colonial exploration, technology, drama, satire, wills, childbirth and deathbed rituals, humanism, religious radicalism and republicanism, this collection provides new readings of canonical early modern texts and insights into popular culture. With a foreword by Peter Burke.
John Fowles
Author: Peter ConradiPublisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000652424
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 120
Book Description
John Fowles had gained great popularity as a contemporary novelist on both sides of the Atlantic. In this comprehensive study of his work, originally published in 1982, Peter Conradi relates his work to his life, his ideas and his place in contemporary English fiction at the time. Conradi sees him as both realist and experimental, and in detailed analyses of The Magus and The French Lieutenant’s Woman illuminates Fowles’s use of literary genres – the romance (in particular), the detective story, the thriller, the Victorian novel, the tale of courtly love – to exploit and explode the conventions of that particular genre. Seduction, erotic quest, capture and betrayal are among the most important themes in Fowles’s work to be considered here.
Thomas Pynchon
Author: Tony TannerPublisher: Routledge
ISBN: 100064992X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 117
Book Description
Thomas Pynchon is now recognized as a major contemporary novelist and perhaps the most important American writer since Melville. His work is both richly imaginative and amazingly erudite and can be compared, in its complexity, linguistic playfulness and experimentation and wealth of allusion, to the work of James Joyce. Aspects of history, psychology, technology and science, cultural and political movements, problems of identity and society and the status and function of fiction and narrative in the modern world are all dramatized with extraordinary wit and power. Tony Tanner provides a brief, comprehensive introduction to his work. Against the background of Pynchon the man, this book, originally published in 1982, examines in detail his early short stories (some of which are not easily accessible) and offers a guide to the reading of his novels, V., The Crying of Lot 49 and Gravity’s Rainbow. Many of Pynchon’s recurrent themes, from entropy and information theory to his interest in the operations and divisions of power in the world since the Second World War, are considered. Finally, Tony Tanner places Pynchon and his work in a broader cultural and literary context.
