Literary essay

The Camera and the Press: American Visual and Print Culture in the Age of the Daguerreotype

by Marcy Dinius

Through a wide-ranging examination of antebellum images and literature, The Camera and the Press shows how Americans' first encounter with photography was more textual than visual. This thoroughly illustrated...

Utopian Moments: Reading Utopian texts

by J C Davis & Miguel Avilés

Within literature, history, politics, philosophy and theology, the interpretation of utopian ideals has evolved constantly. Juxtaposing historical views on utopian diagnoses, prescriptions and on the character...

Multimodality, Cognition, and Experimental Literature

by Alison Gibbons

Since the turn of the millennium, there has seen an increase in the inclusion of typography, graphics and illustration in fiction. This book engages with visual and multimodal devices in twenty-first century...

Terrorism, Insurgency and Indian-English Literature, 1830-1947

by Alex Tickell

In this ground-breaking interdisciplinary study of terrorism, insurgency and the literature of colonial India, Alex Tickell re-envisages the political aesthetics of empire. Organized around key crisis moments...

Crossover Picturebooks

by Sandra Beckett

This book situates the picturebook genre within the widespread international phenomenon of crossover literature, examining an international corpus of picturebooks - including artists' books, wordless picturebooks,...

Dreams of Justice: Mysteries as Social Documents

by Dick Adler

Dick Adler reviews mysteries and thrillers every other week in his Crime Watch column for the Chicago Tribune. He is the co-author, with the late Edmund G. (Pat) Brown, of Public Justice, Private Mercy: A Governor's...

Enchantment: On Charisma and the Sublime in the Arts of the West

by C. Jaeger

This book examines charisma as the force in art, literature, and film that engages the reader's or viewer's consciousness and inspires admiration and imitation. Thirteen chapters analyze the workings of charisma...

The Goomba Diet: Living Large and Loving It

by Steven R. Schirripa

Hey, goomba! Are you on the Goomba Diet? Do you need to be?

• Do they put up crime scene tape after you visit the buffet table?

• Is the air freshener in your car a slice of provolone?

Stop crying! The Goomba...

The Annotated Emma

by Jane Austen & David M. Shapard

From the editor of the popular Annotated Pride and Prejudice comes an annotated edition of Jane Austen’s Emma that makes her beloved tale of an endearingly inept matchmaker an even more satisfying read. Here...

A Hero Of Our Time

by Mikhail Lermontov & Vladimir Nabokov

A brilliant new translation of a perennial favorite of Russian Literature

The first major Russian novel, A Hero of Our Time was both lauded and reviled upon publication. Its dissipated hero, twenty-five-year-old...

The Tales of the Heike

by Burton Watson & Haruo Shirane

Originally written in the mid-thirteenth century, The Tales of the Heike chronicles the epic Genpei war, a civil conflict that marked the end of the power of the Heike clan and changed the course of Japanese...

Orphan of Asia

by Zhuoliu Wu & Qiao Li

Born in Taiwan, raised in the scholarly traditions of ancient China but forced into the Japanese educational system, Hu Taiming, the protagonist of Orphan of Asia, ultimately finds himself estranged from all...

For All My Walking: Free-Verse Haiku of Taneda Santoka

by Burton Watson

Taneda Santoka's poetry attracted limited notice during his lifetime (1882--1940), but there has been a remarkable upsurge of interest in his life and writings. Including 245 poems and selected diary excerpts,...

It Looked Different on the Model: Epic Tales of Impending Shame and Infamy

by Laurie Notaro

Everyone’s favorite Idiot Girl, Laurie Notaro, is just trying to find the right fit, whether it’s in the adorable blouse that looks charming on the mannequin but leaves her in a literal bind or in her neighborhood...

A Companion to the American Novel

by Alfred Bendixen

Featuring 38 essays by distinguished literary scholars, A Companion to the American Novel provides a comprehensive single-volume treatment of the development of the novel in the United States from the late 18th...

Lynda Barry

by Susan E. Kirtley

Best known for her long-running comic strip Ernie Pook's Comeek, illustrated fiction (Cruddy, The Good Times Are Killing Me), and graphic novels (One! Hundred! Demons!), the art of Lynda Barry (b. 1956) has...

Theory After 'Theory'

by Jane Elliott & Derek Attridge

This volume argues that theory, far from being dead, has undergone major shifts in order to come to terms with the most urgent cultural and political questions of today. Offering an overview of theory's new...

The Adaptation Industry

by Simone Murray

Adaptation constitutes the driving force of contemporary culture, with stories adapted across an array of media formats. However, adaptation studies has been concerned almost exclusively with textual analysis,...

Travel and Dislocation in Contemporary American Fiction

by Aliki Varvogli

This book offers a critical study and analysis of American fiction at the beginning of the twenty-first century. It focuses on novels that 'go outward' literally and metaphorically, and it concentrates on narratives...

Here Comes the Bogeyman

by Andrew Melrose

Here Comes the Bogeyman is an essential text focussing on critical and contemporary issues surrounding writing for children. Containing a critically creative and a creatively critical investigation of the cult...