This head volume of the ´Narrating Futures` series defines and identifies Future Narratives. It parses their characteristic features and aims at an abstract classification of the whole corpus, irrespective of its concrete manifestations across the media. Drawing on different theorems and approaches, it offers a unified theory and a poetics of Future Narratives. Locating the media-historical mo…
Ruth M. Ames’s The Fulfillment of Scriptures approaches Langland’s key medieval text, Piers Plowman, using critical literary methods developed in interdisciplinary programs that explore the intersections of religion and literature. Ames draws on the history of the development of Christian doctrine as she explores the ways that the allegory of Piers parallels the story of Jesus in Christian …
Fictions of African Dictatorship examines the fictional representation of the African dictator and the performance of dictatorship across genres. The volume includes contributions focusing on literature, theatre and film, all of which examine the relationship between the fictional and the political. Among the questions the contributors ask: what are the implications of reading a novel for its h…
Ethics, Politics and Justice in Dante presents new research by international scholars on the themes of ethics, politics and justice in the works of Dante Alighieri, including chapters on Dante’s modern ‘afterlife’. Together the chapters explore how Dante’s writings engage with the contemporary culture of medieval Florence and Italy, and how and why his political and moral thought still …
Since the late twentieth century, letters in literature have seen a remarkable renaissance. The prominence of letters in recent fiction is due in part to the rediscovery, by contemporary writers, of letters as an effective tool for rendering aspects of historicity, liminality, marginalization and the expression of subjectivity vis-à-vis an ‘other’; it is also due, however, to the artistica…
Can education play a role in fostering economic growth and simultaneously decrease pressure on forests? The aim of this study is to show that it can. Human capital formation is a key element in a development strategy that includes natural resource conservation within the framework of sustained economic growth and poverty alleviation. Consequently, it is not by chance that Guatemala is experienc…
"Schiller’s Don Carlos, written ten years before his great Wallenstein trilogy, testifies to the young playwright’s growing power. First performed in 1787, it stands at the culmination of Schiller’s formative development as a dramatist and is the first play written in his characteristic iambic pentameter. Don Carlos plunges the audience into the dangerous political and personal struggles …
Dante's intranslatability paradoxically causes a steady flux of translations, overwhelming in America, much more modest in the Netherlands. However, the tiny Netherlands witnessed a remarkable boom of Dante translations around the year 2000: within a short period seven cantiche were translated by Dutchmen and seven by Americans. This historic moment gave rise to a seminar about these recent tra…
Dark Conceit is the first book in English to treat allegory seriously in terms of literary creation and criticism. The study explores the methods and ideas that go into the making of allegory, discusses the misconceptions that have obscured the subject, and surveys the changing concept of allegory. The greater part of the book concerns the typical features of allegorical fiction, focusing on a …
In D. H. Lawrence, Eliseo Vivas examines the aesthetic triumphs and failures of Lawrence’s major works through a literary device that he coins the constitutive symbol. Understanding how Lawrence uses the constitutive symbol provides new insight into his world views. Vivas covers a wide range of Lawrence’s work, including Aaron’s Rod, Kangaroo, The Plumed Serpent, Lady Chatterley’s Lover…