The Argentine Jorge Luis Borges, one of the most sophisticated writers of the twentieth century, suffered from sexual impotence. This emotionally overwhelming condition shaped his literary experience in ways that have not been understood. Until now Borges has largely been considered an asexual author who could not read, think, or write about desire and sex, but in this book historian Ariel de l…
One of the foremost French intellectuals of the post-war era, Bourdieu has become a standard point of reference in the fields of anthropology, linguistics, art history, cultural studies, politics, and sociology, but his longstanding interest in literature has often been overlooked. This study explores the impact of literature on Bourdieu's intellectual itinerary, and how his literary understand…
Russian Formalism, one of the twentieth century's most important movements in literary criticism, has received far less attention than most of its rivals. Examining Formalism in light of more recent developments in literary theory, Peter Steiner here offers the most comprehensive critique of Formalism to date. Steiner studies the work of the Formalists in terms of the major tropes that characte…
E. M. Forster first encountered Billy Budd in 1926. Some twenty years later, he embarked on a collaboration with Benjamin Britten and Eric Crozier, adapting Melville’s novella for the opera stage. The libretto they produced poignantly reaffirms the Forsterian creed of salvation through personal relationships. This study presents an extensive exploration of Forster’s involvement in the inter…
This collection of essays offers evolutionary psychological analysis of selected works from the American literary tradition. Application of evolutionary theory to writing by Ben Franklin, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, Edith Wharton, F. Scot Fitzgerald, Zora Neal Hurston, and others creates an interdisciplinary framework for examining key textual features: plot, theme, tone, set…
This new critical edition of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was developed by leading scholars for aspiring scientists, engineers, and medical professionals. This unique framing will make this a core text in promoting and enhancing interdisciplinary dialogue on the nature, roles, and responsibilities of scientists and engineers in society. To be published in time for the 2018 bicentennial of its …
Excerpt h we were travelling, although uninhabited and almost unexplored by the Mexican Spaniards, was yet part of their territory; and such objects as were known to them, through hunters or others, had received names in their language. We crossed the Pecos, and travelled for some days up its left bank, in hopes of reaching some other stream that might run into it from the east, which we could …
‘Darwin, Tennyson and Their Readers: Explorations in Victorian Literature and Science' is an edited collection of essays from leading authorities in the field of Victorian literature and science, including Gillian Beer and George Levine. Darwin, Tennyson, Huxley, Ruskin, Richard Owen, Meredith, Wilde and other major writers are discussed, as established scholars in this area explore the i…
Each time a border is crossed there are cultural, political and social issues to be considered. Applying the metaphor of the ‘border crossing' from one temporal or spatial territory into another, this book examines the way classic Russian texts have been altered to suit new cinematic environments. In these essays, international scholars examine how political and economic circumstances ââ…
This work aims to develop new readings of the poetics and the politics of Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories (1979) in the light of the bodily metamorphoses represented in the fairy tales. Metamorphic processes can be said to inform the stories of the collection both in a thematic and a stylistic perspective and address the need to rethink human experience altogether, especi…