Critical Perspectives on English and American Literature, Communication and Culture – serie

This book is a major source for scholars of the latest American poetry. These exciting essays comprise energy and documented discussions on experimentalism, multiculturalism, hyperspace, and gender. Anthologies and little magazines form the matrix for this exploration on conceptual issues surrounding language. The author widens the perspective in which a great deal of writing forced the limits of poetry in this kind of publications. At the same time, he analyzes new contexts and enters into conversation with other sources for inspiration found through other disciplines such as social theory, philosophy, linguistics, and art generated at both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. Reflective, taut with alertness, and exploding the postmodern concept of word/object as a liberating experience, this book becomes a driving force to address poetry and challenging political issues with admirable depth.

Despite the considerable amount of criticism that Vladimir Nabokov’s literary legacy has produced since the sixties, the studies on his female characters are scarce, except the ones on Lolita. This volume delves into Nabokov’s women from different perspectives and points of view. The contributions are from different parts of the world, some from prominent scholars. These Nabokovians study the gender issue in Nabokov’s life and art, paying tribute to his women. The volume has two closely connected parts. In the first one, the reader can find biographical essays that discuss the role of the real women in Nabokov’s life and how their love, support and suffering are reflected in his prose. The second part deals with Nabokov’s women in his fiction. There is a discussion of the representation of female voices.

This book argues that a profound shift can be found in the works of Virginia Woolf, from an early «pursuit of the individual» to a late «pursuit of the collective». Evidence for this shift is found both in the narrative modes she employed and the methods by which thought is represented in the works themselves, and in ideas and ruminations found in Woolf’s diaries and essays. The stylistic analysis covers works from The Voyage Out (1915) to the posthumously published Between the Acts (1941), and shows how several of the shorter pieces can be considered to be experiments with techniques that were fully employed in Woolf’s longer, major fictions. This shift arises from changes in Woolf’s concept of the conscious and unconscious over time, and the argument shows how she took deliberate steps to reflect these changes in her fiction. This framework provides key insights for new interpretations of her works.

Cultural Hybrids of (Post)Modernism starts from the premise that the literary-cultural milieu we live in is characteristically hybrid. To develop that premise, the present volume focuses on explaining the strong impact that Japanese culture, especially Japanese aesthetics, bore on Western intellectuals, Modernist literary writers and artists from the second half of the nineteenth century onwards, and, conversely, the impact of Western modernity on Japanese cultural modernization from the Meiji Era onwards. Such intercultural contact has brought on a renewal of cultural formats that can be explained in terms of hybridity as regards both the aesthetic and the intellectual production of the artists and thinkers from Japan and the West throughout the twentieth century and to the present. The outcome of modernization was the creation of new cultural standards in Japan and the West and, with it, new ways of understanding pedagogy and education, a reconceptualization of the Nation versus the individual, a redefinition of the role of women in modernizing society, also a revision of philosophical thought and a new approach to the role of linguistic signs in the production of meaning.

Literary studies and their associated critical theories offer a refreshing viewpoint from which humanist-oriented studies of ageing may be re-conceptualized, and an integrated view of ageing and gender can be developed. The present volume builds on the work of seminal authors in the field of literary gerontology, while it also elaborates on important theories that age-critics have developed in the broader field of cultural gerontology, to present the experience of ageing, and old age in particular, as a creative phase of the life course that completes the older person’s identity and, specifically, that of the older woman. As a contrast to stereotypical views of ageing women that are still sustained in both gerontological and social domains, the essays in this collection focus on the works of eleven women writers whose careers were or have been prolonged into their old age, and whose later literary creativity reveals fascinating aspects about both the complex, contradictory, and enriching experience of growing older, and especially of doing so as an artist and as a woman.

Since Forster’s death in 1970, many British novelists and film directors have acknowledged and even claimed the influence of the novelist of the English soul (in Woolf’s terms) and of a renewed faith in both human relationships and a quintessentially British liberal-humanism. After the ethical turn at the end of the twentieth century, British literature today seems to go back even more drastically to the figure of the individual human being, and to turn the narrative space into some laboratory of a new form of empowerment of the other’s political autonomy. It is in this context that the references to Forster are more and more frequent, both in British fiction and in academia. This book does not only aim at spotting and theorising this return to Forster today. Rather we endeavour to trace its genealogy and shed light on the successive modes of the legacy, from Forster’s first novel, Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905) onwards, to the novelisation of Forster himself by Damon Galgut. How can the principle of connection, of correspondences and echoes, which informed Forster’s private life and approach to writing so much, equally characterise the aesthetic and political influence of his œuvre?

Further to the first book, Writers of the Spanish Civil War: The Testimony of Their Auto/Biographies (2011), which featured the writings on the war (1936–39) of six key British and American authors: Gerald Brenan, Robert Graves, Ernest Hemingway, George Orwell, Stephen Spender and Laurie Lee, this new work studies the actions in the war of those physically involved and writings focused on the war, either at the time or later, by eight more foreign authors: Virginia Woolf, John Dos Passos, Franz Borkenau, V. S. Pritchett, André Malraux, Arthur Koestler, Martha Gellhorn and Peter Kemp. In addition to comparing their autobiographies with what their biographers said, in order to show up any discrepancies, as had been done in the first book, here, the texts are scrutinized to detect use of stereotypes or adaptation of the material to other purposes in the writing. New perspectives are introduced now in that two of the authors are women, one writing from a distance but deeply affected by the war (Virginia Woolf) and one active in journalism on the spot (Martha Gellhorn), and our final author, Peter Kemp, went to Spain to fight on the side of the Nationalists under Franco as opposed to the Republicans.

This collection of essays brings together an international team of scholars with the aim to shed new light on various interconnected aspects of the Gothic through the lens of converging critical and methodological approaches. With its wide-ranging interdisciplinary perspective, the book explores the domains of literary, pictorial, filmic, televisual and popular cultural texts in English from the eighteenth century to the present day. Within these pages, the Gothic is discussed as a dynamic form that exceeds the concept of literary genre, proving able to renovate and adapt through constant processes of hybridisation. Investigating the hypothesis that the Gothic returns in times of cultural crisis, this study maps out transgressive and experimental modes conducive to alternative experiences of the intricacies of the human (and post-human) condition.

This study of Voss by the Anglo-Australian Patrick White analyses the historical novel, set in the 1850s and concerning Voss’s exploration of the interior of Australia, as a parable of the writer’s exploration of the Australian historical, social and cultural context of the 1950s. The study employs a variety of critical apparatus including a post-structuralist and postcolonial approach, which also encompasses linguistics, sociolinguistics and comparative studies. This multi-level critical aid allows the examination of four levels of exploration utilised by the author. Following an analysis of the protagonist’s geographical movement into the desert and his personal transformation, the study moves on to an exploration of the narrative itself. It explores how the novel becomes subject to change, absorbing and contesting a variety of literary genres ranging from the ‘chronicle’ to the parable. Through this multi-level approach, the study demonstrates the variety of readings the novel stimulates and displays its rich intertextual and subtextual elements and links.

Romance continues to stand as the most profitable literary genre and the second most read book category. The developments reshaping the conventions and marketing practices of popular fiction, both inside and beyond the books themselves, have affected the romance genre in specific ways that demand critical attention. This book brings together a collection of twelve chapters on postmillennial developments in contemporary popular romance fiction produced in different countries in order to prove how the genre, which has always been sensitive to customer demands and market trends, has continued to evolve accordingly. The chapters focus on how traditional formulae are being reshaped and adapted to meet readers’ expectations and market demands within this thriving transnational industry.

The portrayal of nature in the genre of fantasy fiction, from the Middle Ages to more modern times, has been conditioned by the diverging social, political and historical contexts. This book seeks to disclose how the natural world has been depicted within this genre during different periods, drawing a comparison between the British tradition of fantasy literature and Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea cycle. Le Guin adheres to the general traits of the genre up to a point, but as a woman of the 20th century living in the American West, her works also deviate from the received tradition in many significant ways.

Taking as its common thread the overtly theatrical nature of early modern society and its cultural and political manifestations this book studies dramatic texts, dedications, autobiographies, adaptations and performative practices, to prove that the boundaries between on and off stage performances of gender are blurred. Thus, the limits that separate theatre and life are highly permeable and the relations between both are bidirectional: the performativity of gender and identity is an idea that the theatre takes from and transfers to society. This concept is applied to a wide timeframe creating a dialogue between different historical times and cultural backgrounds. Furthermore, the authors explore sexualities as written and performed by both men and women, offering a wider scope to determine whether and to what extent normative gender roles are being questioned, contested or reinforced.

Throughout the history of human civilization, the definition of the animal and its relationship to humans have been contentious issues. This book investigates the notion of what constituted an animal in Early Medieval English culture as well as how the animal-human interaction is portrayed in the Anglo-Saxon literary corpus. In this regard, the animal’s portrayals in the Exeter Book Riddles and of monstrous creatures in the Wonders of the East provided a fertile field for research because these texts, rarely connected to allegorical readings and offering viewpoints that might be seen as complementary, deal with fundamental issues regarding what it meant to be human for Early Medieval English society.This study offers fresh insights into the characters and themes explored in the Exeter Book collection and in the Wonders of the East, looking for the spaces of Anglo-Saxon thought in which animality and humanity appear to meet. The author not only discovers the peculiar features in the definition of humanity with regard to animal and non-human figures, but is able to demonstrate that a strong anthropocentric vocation can coexist with an outlook that recognizes a close affinity among different species.

When the book titled Poems. By the Incomparable Mrs K.P. was published in 1664 Katherine Philips herself defined it as "those fugitive papers that have escap'd my hands", expressing her reluctance to publish them and her aversion to her works appearing in print. Despite her (apparent) modesty, Orinda and her work definitely occupied an important position in the literary field of that time. This book studies the life and work of Katherine Philips (1632-1664) from a historicist and socio-critical perspective. It posits that 'the Matchless Orinda' embodies the literary shift from manuscript to printed literature, and shows how a woman poet, following in the footsteps of successful male counterparts, such as Abraham Cowley and John Dryden, was able to achieve fame in the male-dominated literary world.

This volume delves into the study of the American West from a Spanish perspective. Starting from the premise that the West as a geographical space and as a concept is undergoing a profound revision and that its impact, both in the USA and internationally, is unquestionable, it aims to contribute to this re-description through a contemporary Spanish standpoint. It looks into the hypothesis that, just as the "Old West" as myth and reality served as a cohesive element of "the American identity" and its values, and that its international impact was spectacular, the "New West" is currently being exported and assimilated internationally, extending the revision of the myth, and thus, its relationship with said identity.

The difference between modernism and postmodernism has been object to constant revision from a variety of critical perspectives. The present collection of essays on women’s short fiction tackles anew this thorny distinction from the theoretical perspective sketched by psychoanalytical philosopher Slavoj Žižek. According to Žižek, modernism hints at the incompleteness of the Symbolic Order, but does so from a separate, marginal and alternative sphere of enjoyment. Postmodernism, on the contrary, exposes the fundamental inconsistency of the Symbolic Order by giving it a central place at the very core of the text. The key distinguishing feature is the mutation of the status of paternal authority throughout a century to which modernist and postmodernist texts are responsive. Starting from this theoretical premise, this volume analyses the work of five major women practitioners of the short story – Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield, Elizabeth Bowen, Angela Carter, and Ali Smith – to offer fresh critical readings of canonical pieces that exhibit either a modernist or a postmodernist sensibility. The volume has, therefore, both critical and theoretical value: it redefines Woolf ’s and Mansfield’s modernist status, the transitional character of Bowen’s short stories, and the different versions of postmodernism found in the work of Carter and Smith, while, at once, contributing to the reassessment of modernism and postmodernism from a new theoretical angle. The methodological consistency of the book – half-way between collection of essays and monograph – places it at a remove from the usual collection of critical pieces from disparate perspectives around a particular issue.