Columbia Critical Guides – serie

With excerpts from interviews and reviews, an exploration of the historical documents and slave narrative traditions on which Morrison drew, and an insightful juxtaposition of psychoanalytic and postcolonial approaches to the novel, this guide places Beloved in the contexts of Morrison's oeuvre and other works of African American literature. Chapters focus on the supernatural elements of the work, as well as the author's treatment of the physical self.

Nearly three centuries of Lear criticism provide insight into the play's merit and its place within Shakespeare's work and the canon of English literature. Highlights include excerpts from the neoclassical and Romantic receptions of King Lear -- material from John Dryden, Samuel Johnson, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Victor Hugo -- and a discussion of recent trends in criticism of the play.

More critical writing exists on The Great Gatsby than on any other work of American fiction. This Columbia Critical Guide introduces and contextualizes the key critical debates surrounding Fitzgerald's novel. The extracts and essays included here reflect The Great Gatsby's place as one of the first American novels to make significant use of modernist techniques and explore the influence of this "Lost Generation" work on later American writings. In considering secondary sources from the twenties to the present, this smart and sophisticated study guide offers readers an invaluable resource on this complex rendering of a moment in American history.

A guide to and excerpts from the critical commentary on the only novel this particular Brontd (1818-48) published. Stoneman (English, U. of Hull) arranges the commentary into sections on Victorian responses: power, propriety, and poetry; the rise and fall of the author: humanism, formalism, deconst

Spanning an impressive range of interpretations, the critical works in this collection analyze the complex narrative technique of Heart Of Darkness while exploring its evocation of myth, philosophy, and politics, its attitudes to empire, its images of Africa, and its representations of women. Examining secondary sources from the 1900s to the 1990s, this Guide is an indispensable resource for the study of one of Conrad's most potent works.

Surveying the key debates about a novel which has provoked an immensely rich critical response, the extracts and essays included here examine Great Expectations in structural, symbolic, social, political, psychological, and sexual terms, relating the novel to its own time and to a range of twentieth-century theoretical perspectives. Exploring secondary sources, from initial reviews in the 1860s to the most up-to-date critiques of the 1990s, the Guide is an essential resource for the study of one of Dickens's most complex works.

Taught in schools and universities around the world, and the constant subject of books, essays, and articles down the years, "The General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales" has long been central to the English literary canon. Jodi-Anne George provides a detailed introduction to the most important critical debates surrounding "The General Prologue". The extracts and essays included here date from early as 1368, when Eustace Deschamps paid the first recorded tribute to Chaucer's genius, and move chronologically through to the late 1990s. The selections address the opinions of early editors of Chaucer as well as the continuing interest in the poet by other writers throughout the ages. Sociological, gender-based, historical, and structural readings of "The Prologue" are also represented.

Now recognized as two of Faulkner's greatest novels, "The Sound and the Fury" (1929) and "As I Lay Dying" (1930) were commercial failures in the decade following their publication. By the end of the Second World War, however, the reputation of both novels had grown and Faulkner's great fictional creation, Yoknapatawpha County, had become as much a part of America as any real area of the Mississippi landscape. This guide explores the wealth of critical material generated by these two exceptional works of modernist fiction. From the initially mixed critical responses to the novels in the early 1930s, the guide follows the enormous growth of interest in Faulkner's work across six decades. New writings shaped by a range of critical theories are discussed, offering the reader a clear view of the place now given to one of America's most innovative and influential novelists.

Now recognized as two of Faulkner's greatest novels, "The Sound and the Fury" (1929) and "As I Lay Dying" (1930) were commercial failures in the decade following their publication. By the end of the Second World War, however, the reputation of both novels had grown and Faulkner's great fictional creation, Yoknapatawpha County, had become as much a part of America as any real area of the Mississippi landscape. This guide explores the wealth of critical material generated by these two exceptional works of modernist fiction. From the initially mixed critical responses to the novels in the early 1930s, the guide follows the enormous growth of interest in Faulkner's work across six decades. New writings shaped by a range of critical theories are discussed, offering the reader a clear view of the place now given to one of America's most innovative and influential novelists.

With the publication of "The Scarlet Letter" in 1850, Nathaniel Hawthorne achieved not only critical recognition in his native New England, but also an undisputed place amongst the newly emerging ranks of great American writers. This guide introduces and sets in context, the enormous range of critical arguments that have been generated by this enduring work. From the comments and reviews of Hawthorne's contemporaries through discussions of the novel by fellow artists such as Henry James and D.H. Lawrence to radical re-readings of the postwar decades, the reader is given an invaluable guide to the critical progress of this key American text.

Focusing on three of Eliot's most influential and widely read novels, this guide traces recent critical interpretations of her work as well as revisiting some of the perspectives offered by original reviewers and early critics.

Selby (American studies, U. of Wales, Swansea) considers the critical history of T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land . Selby contends that the poem "is a crucial document that marks and produces a change in sensibility from unity of thought to a modern even postmodern apprehension of the plurality of exper

This collection of reviews of the writing of Sylvia Plath is arranged in sections on reviews of The Colossus and Ariel , unifying strategies and early feminist readings of the 1970s, cultural and historical readings, feminist and psychoanalytic strategies, and new directions. Brief excerpts by nume