Sabine Planka - Böcker

Our language is full of 'sweet' terms to describe situations (‘a bittersweet moment’), things (‘popcorn brain’), behaviour (‘to have a sweet tooth’), or even loved ones (‘sweety’, ‘sweetheart’, ‘honey’) that are originally not linked to food. What seems to be common to almost all cultures, is reflected in the fact that we humans are born with a taste for sweets, and that sweets have shaped our cultures and our language. This has also been reflected in children's literature and media. This is the starting point for this invaluable collection of essays, which deals specifically with sweets and the spectrum of hedonistic and regulated indulgence in different cultures and media for children. The contributions analyse classics of children’s literature, but also more recent texts and other media such as magazines, films, television programmes and computer games. Cultural Perspectives on Sweets in Children’s Literature and Media creates a kaleidoscope of the various functions of sweets and their significance for children’s culture, thus providing an overview of the diversity of the subject.

Food Places in Children’s Literature analyses how food, place and social interactions are intertwined in children’s and young adult novels. This book sets out to analyse a range of children’s books from across the 20th and 21st centuries, each of which relate to specific kinds of places, from the kitchen to the restaurant to the ad hoc picnic place, by using selected spatial theories, but also considering, for example, theories of communication. Examining how food is an object of material culture and shapes identities in a way similar to places, the book explores what happens when food and place meet and become intertwined within children’s narratives. This book is for scholars, academics, and postgraduate students in the arts and humanities with a special focus on children’s literature and media (literature, film and media studies) as well as academics and students with a special interest in food studies.

A Critical Companion to Terry Gilliam provides a fresh, up-to-date exploration of the director’s films and artistic practices, ranging from his first film Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) to his recently released and latest film The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (2018). This volume presents Gilliam as a director whose films weave together an avant-garde cinematic style, imaginative exaggeration, and social critique. Consequently, while his films can seem artistically chaotic and thus have the effect of frustrating and upsetting the viewer, the essays in this volume show that this is part of a very disciplined creative plan to achieve the defamiliarization of various accepted notions of human and social life.

Death and Garden Narratives in Literature, Art and Film: Song of Death in Paradise explores the combination of two motifs, death and gardens, to show how the two subjects are intertwined and used in various media and cultural contexts. Using cultural, literary, film, and art history theories, the contributors analyze various death and garden sceneries in literary works by Arthur Machen, Agatha Christie, J.K. Rowling, as well as in superhero comics, films, and cultural and art contexts such as Ian Hamilton Finley's “Little Sparta,” the poetic verses from the Karoo Desert National Botanical Garden in South Africa, and the Australian wilderness.