Michael Greaney – författare

In this re-evaluation of the writings of Joseph Conrad, Michael Greaney places language and narrative at the heart of his literary achievement. A trilingual Polish expatriate, Conrad brought a formidable linguistic self-consciousness to the English novel; tensions between speech and writing are the defining obsessions of his career. He sought very early on to develop a 'writing of the voice' based on oral or communal modes of storytelling. Greaney argues that the 'yarns' of his nautical raconteur Marlow are the most challenging expression of this voice-centred aesthetic. But Conrad's suspicion that words are fundamentally untrustworthy is present in everything he wrote. The political novels of his middle period represent a breakthrough from traditional storytelling into the writerly aesthetic of high modernism. Greaney offers an examination of a wide range of Conrad's work which combines recent critical approaches to language in post-structuralism with an impressive command of linguistic theory.

In this re-evaluation of the writings of Joseph Conrad, Michael Greaney places language and narrative at the heart of his literary achievement. A trilingual Polish expatriate, Conrad brought a formidable linguistic self-consciousness to the English novel; tensions between speech and writing are the defining obsessions of his career. He sought very early on to develop a 'writing of the voice' based on oral or communal modes of storytelling. Greaney argues that the 'yarns' of his nautical raconteur Marlow are the most challenging expression of this voice-centred aesthetic. But Conrad's suspicion that words are fundamentally untrustworthy is present in everything he wrote. The political novels of his middle period represent a breakthrough from traditional storytelling into the writerly aesthetic of high modernism. Greaney offers an examination of a wide range of Conrad's work which combines recent critical approaches to language in post-structuralism with an impressive command of linguistic theory.

Jane Austen's richly textured worlds have enchanted readers for centuries and this neatly organised, playful book provides Austen enthusiasts and students alike with a unique insight into the much-loved writer's way with words. Using a lively A-Z structure, Greaney provides fresh angles on familiar Austen themes (D is for dance; M is for matchmaking), casts light on under-examined corners of her imagination (R is for risk; S is for servant), and shows how current social and cultural concerns are re-shaping our understanding of her work (Q is for queer; W is for West Indies). Through this approach, we learn how attention to the tiniest linguistic detail in Austen's work can yield rewarding new perspectives on the achievements of one of our most celebrated authors.Sharply focused on textual detail but broad in scope it broaches questions that, like Austen's work, will intrigue, delight and inspire: Why are children so marginal in her storylines? Who is the best exponent of matchmaking in her fiction? Why are many of her female characters – but none of her heroines – called Jane? Providing a new close-up encounter with one of our most celebrated writers, this book invites a renewed appreciation of the infinite subtlety and endless re-readability of a body of writing in which every word counts.

Jane Austen's richly textured worlds have enchanted readers for centuries and this neatly organised, playful book provides Austen enthusiasts and students alike with a unique insight into the much-loved writer's way with words. Using a lively A-Z structure, Greaney provides fresh angles on familiar Austen themes (D is for dance; M is for matchmaking), casts light on under-examined corners of her imagination (R is for risk; S is for servant), and shows how current social and cultural concerns are re-shaping our understanding of her work (Q is for queer; W is for West Indies). Through this approach, we learn how attention to the tiniest linguistic detail in Austen's work can yield rewarding new perspectives on the achievements of one of our most celebrated authors.Sharply focused on textual detail but broad in scope it broaches questions that, like Austen's work, will intrigue, delight and inspire: Why are children so marginal in her storylines? Who is the best exponent of matchmaking in her fiction? Why are many of her female characters – but none of her heroines – called Jane? Providing a new close-up encounter with one of our most celebrated writers, this book invites a renewed appreciation of the infinite subtlety and endless re-readability of a body of writing in which every word counts.

Sleep and the Novel is a study of representations of the sleeping body in fiction from 1800 to the present day which traces the ways in which novelists have engaged with this universal, indispensable -- but seemingly nondescript -- region of human experience. Covering the narrativization of sleep in Austen, the politicization of sleep in Dickens, the queering of sleep in Goncharov, the aestheticization of sleep in Proust, and the medicalization of sleep in contemporary fiction, it examines the ways in which novelists envision the figure of the sleeper, the meanings they discover in human sleep, and the values they attach to it. It argues that literary fiction harbours, on its margins, a “sleeping partner”, one that we can nickname the Schlafroman or “sleep-novel”, whose quiet absorption in the wordlessness and passivity of human slumber subtly complicates the imperatives of self-awareness and purposive action that traditionally govern the novel.

This book draws on a variety of substantive examples from science, technology, medicine, literature, and popular culture to highlight how a new technoscientifically mediated and modified phase and form of technosleep is now in the making – in the global north at least; and to discuss the consequences for our relationships to sleep, the values we accord sleep and the very nature and normativities of sleep itself.The authors discuss how technosleep, at its simplest denotes the ‘coming together’ or ‘entanglements’ of sleep and technology and sensitizes us to various shifts in sleep–technology relations through culture, time and place. In doing so, it pays close attention to the salience and significance of these trends and transformations to date in everyday/night life, their implications for sleep inequalities and the related issues of sleep and social justice they suggest.