Critical Insights – serie

A great starting point for students seeking an introduction to Orwell and the critical discussions surrounding his work. ""Big Brother Is Watching You,"" ""Two plus two make five,"" ""Some animals are more equal than others""… George Orwell's two famous novels, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, have added numerous phrases to the lexicon we use to describe our world. Though both novels were written as critiques of communist Russia, their relevance has endured for decades after the end of the Cold War. With the advent of surveillance, the spread of euphemistic corporate and political jargon, and the growing prevalence of demagogic rhetoric, the early decades of the twenty first century have shown Orwell to have been right about much more than the dangers of communism. His prescience cast such a long shadow over twentieth century that we are in many ways still living within it today. Edited by John Rodden, a renowned Orwell scholar, this volume in the Critical Insights series presents a variety of new essays on the British writer. For readers who are studying Orwell for the first time, a biographical sketch relates the details of his life and four essays survey the critical reception of Orwell's work, explore its cultural and historical contexts, situate Orwell among his contemporaries, and review key themes in his work. Readers seeking a deeper understanding of the writer can then move on to other essays that explore topics like Orwell's politics; his use of fable, satire and allegory; his outlook on science and technology; his reputation as a public intellectual; and his accomplishments as a journalist and documentarian. Uniquely, this volume also contains a short memoir by Dione Venables, whose cousin was a close childhood friend of Orwell. Works discussed include Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, Homage to Catalonia and The Road to Wigan Pier, and some Orwell's most memorable essays, like ""Politics and the English Language"" and ""Why I Write."" Among the contributors are Peter Davison, Eugene Goodheart, Gorman Beauchamp, Peter Stansky, and Loraine Saunders. Rounding out the volume are a chronology of Orwell's life and a list of his principle publications as well as a bibliography for readers seeking to study this seminal author in greater depth.

Great starting point for students seeking an introduction to the theme and the critical discussions surrounding it. The addition of the word ""dystopia"" to our common, everyday vocabulary is indicative of both a dark turn taken by our popular culture, and a broader pessimistic turn in the general mood. As evidenced by the success of dark cinematic visions of the future-from Blade Runner (1982), to the Terminator sequence, to the Matrix trilogy-something in our natures respond to stories based in such visions of the future. The events of recent times -- September 11, 2001 being the most telling example - and their attendant sharpening of focus on such concepts as national security versus the privacy of citizens, have certainly contributed to the pervasive sense of anxiety that seems to have developed in our society, and which seems so readily to find catharsis in dystopian dramas. However, as this volume shows, the concept of dystopia is much older. To be dystopian, a work needs to foreground the oppressive society in which it is set, using that setting as an opportunity to comment in a critical way on some other society, typically that of the author and/or the audience. In other worlds, the bleak dystopian world should encourage the reader or viewer to think critically about it, then to transfer this critical thinking to his or her own world. Edited by M. Keith Booker, Professor of English at the University of Arkansas, this volume in the Critical Insights series presents a variety of new essays on the perennial theme. For readers who are studying it for the first time, a four essays survey the critical conversation regarding the theme, explore its cultural and historical contexts, and offer close and comparative readings of key texts in the genre. Readers seeking a deeper understanding of the theme can then move on to other essays that explore it in depth through a variety of critical approaches to both literature and film. Works discussed include Utopia; Looking Backward; We; Brave New World; Anthem; A Clockwork Orange; Make Room! Make Room!; Fahrenheit 451; Nineteen Eighty-Four; The Handmaid's Tale; and Little Brother. Rounding out the volume are a list of literary works not mentioned in the book that concern the theme of dystopia and as well as a bibliography of critical sources for readers seeking to study this timeless theme in greater depth.

Explores the ""weird"" and diverse fiction of popular pulp writers such as H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, A. Merritt, as well as pulp magazines such as Weird Tales.From their origin at the end of the nineteenth century to their decline in the 1950s, ""pulp"" magazines entertained the masses with lurid stories in such genres as adventure, Western, romance, crime, fantasy, horror, and science fiction. Notable publications, such as Weird Tales, also served as apprenticeships for many new writers, including H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, and Clark Ashton Smith.This volume in the Critical Insights series presents a variety of new essays on the topic of popular pulp fiction and writers of the 1920s and 1930s, focusing on those major contributors to the Weird Tales school, which not only included Lovecraft, Howard, and Smith, but also Seabury Quinn, C.L. Moore, Robert Bloch, August Derleth, and others. For readers who are studying pulp fiction for the first time, four essays survey the critical conversation regarding the subject, explore its cultural and historical contexts, and offer close and comparative readings of key texts. Readers seeking a deeper understanding can then move on to other essays that explore it in depth through a variety of critical approaches. Among the contributors are S.T. Joshi, Jeffrey H. Shanks, Andrew J. Wilson, Garyn Roberts, and Richard Bleiler. Rounding out the volume are a list of literary works not mentioned in the book that concern the theme as well as a bibliography of critical sources for readers seeking to study this timeless theme in greater depth. Each essay is 2,500 to 5,000 words in length, and all essays conclude with a list of ""Works Cited,"" along with endnotes. Finally, the volume's appendixes offer a section of useful reference resources:About This VolumeCritical Context: Original Introductory EssaysCritical Readings: Original In-Depth EssaysFurther ReadingsDetailed BibliographyDetailed Bio of the EditorGeneral Subject Index

This title contains in-depth critical discussions of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel. Representing a variety of critical approaches and edited by one of the leading critics on 20th Century American literature, this collection focuses on one of the most widely taught works of American literature. The critical viewpoints presented in the volume cover a wide array of topics from issues of race in the novel to individual character studies. The Editor's Introduction explores the deceptive simplicity of the plot and the complex underpinnings of what makes the novel a true masterpiece. This volume of criticism begins simply enough with essays that provide the reader with cultural, historical, comparative, and critical contexts for understanding ""Gatsby"". Several essays consider the cultural and historical contexts of Fitzgerald's work while critical comparisons link the novel to the poetry of Keats and the novels ""Daisy Miller"" and ""Passing"". The section of contextual readings is followed by a selection of critical overviews, including Robert Roulston and Helen H. Roulston's consideration of Gatsby as a type of culmination of Fitzgerald's writings and Ruth Prigozy's comprehensive introduction to the Oxford World Classic edition of ""Gatsby"". The critical overviews are followed by a series of critical readings that focus on narrative style, color symbolism, and character analysis among other topics. Spanning nearly 40 years of critical study, the selection of essays contained in this volume provide the ideal introduction for any one seeking an introduction to this American classic. Each essay is 5,000 words in length, and all essays conclude with a list of ""Works Cited,"" along with endnotes.

This title includes in-depth critical discussions of Edgar Allan Poe's work. This is a collection of sixteen essays by leading scholars examining the short stories and life of the 19th century American writer Edgar Allan Poe. Representing the best of a broad range of critical perspectives from the psychoanalytical to the postcolonial, the volume serves as an excellent introduction to Poe's tales and the critical conversation surrounding them. The volume is introduced by Steven Frye, Professor of English at California State University, Bakersfield, the author of ""Historiography and the American Romance: A Study of Four Authors"" (2001) and the editor of ""Poe Studies/Dark Romanticism: History, Theory, Interpretation"" (2008). Original essays illuminate the influences that shaped Poe, contextualize his work, and assess his enduring impact on American and Continental poetry and fiction. A sketch of the historical and cultural forces surrounding Poe illuminates their influence on his aesthetic; a reception history examines Poe's enduring contributions to the short story genre, the French Symbolist movement, and modernist aesthetics; a comparison of Poe's and Baudelaire's works reveals how the two authors exploited the duplicitous possibilities within the writer-reader relationship; and a critical reading of ""The Fall of the House of Usher,"" ""The Black Cat,"" ""The Tell-Tale Heart,"" ""Ligeia,"" and ""Bernice"" seeks to expose the stories' unifying aesthetic principles. Further, a varied selection of critical views offers detailed analyses of Poe's most essential tales like ""The Murders in the Rue Morgue"", ""The Fall of the House of Usher"", ""The Cask of Amontillado"", ""The Gold Bug"", and ""Ligeia"". Uniquely, the collection also contains an original essay by Nathaniel Rich, senior editor of ""The Paris Review"". Reflecting on Poe's insight into and fascination with the perverse instincts of humanity, Rich offers a writer's perspective on one of America's most enigmatic writers. Finally, a wealth of reference material, including a complete list of Poe's publications and a full biography, rounds out the volume by giving readers ample sources for continuing their studies. Edited and with an introduction by Steven Frye, the collection is a gateway into the best of Poe and his critics. Each essay is 5,000 words in length, and all essays conclude with a list of 'Works Cited', along with endnotes.

This title includes in-depth discussions of Margaret Atwood's ""The Handmaid's Tale"". ""The Handmaid's Tale"" won international acclaim when it was first published in 1985; with it, Margaret Atwood won Canada's Governor General's Award as well as the Arthur C. Clarke Award and was nominated for the Booker Prize. Written in the midst of the anti-feminist backlash and the culture wars of the 1980s, readers recognized it as a timely and chilling dystopian novel depicting a future in which the American government has been overthrown by religious fundamentalists who have, in turn, erected a patriarchal theocracy. Though Atwood had doubts about the novel when she was writing it, and though both conservative and liberal critics have found fault with it, the years following ""The Handmaid's Tale""'s publication have been rich with critical discussion. Edited and with an introduction by J. Brooks Bouson, a widely recognized Atwood scholar, this volume in the ""Critical Insights"" series collects some the novel's best critics to introduce high school students and undergraduates to one of Atwood's most widely read novels. Original essays by Lisa Jadwin and Dominick Grace lend context to the novel by surveying the political and cultural events out of which the novel grew as well as how Atwood's critics have responded to the novel. Two other original essays by Matthew Bolton and Jennifer E. Dunn explore the novel in light the dystopian literary tradition and feminist literary theory. This collection of republished essays continues the conversation as Coral Ann Howells considers the novel's narrative structure and Madonne Miner and Shirley Neuman examine the role of love in the novel. Chinmoy Banerjee addresses the topic of criticism as commodity in the novel, Elisabeth Hansot and Hilde Staels investigate hegemonic and subversive discourses, and Danita J. Dodson reads the story in light of America's Puritanistic past. Finally, Eleonora Rao offers a psychoanalytic reading that focuses on narrative gaps and ambiguities, and Karen F. Stein and Joseph Andriano consider the novel's metafictional elements. Each essay is 5,000 words in length, and all essays conclude with a list of 'Works Cited', along with endnotes. Finally, the volume's appendixes offer a section of useful reference resources: a chronology of the author's life; a complete list of the author's works and their original dates of publication; a general bibliography; a detailed paragraph on the volume's editor; notes on the individual chapter authors; and, a subject index.

This title includes in-depth critical discussions of Maya Angelou's novel. Maya Angelou's ""I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings"" took the world by storm when it was published in 1969. As it shot to the top of best-seller lists, it made Angelou one of the most recognized black women in America. Despite controversy over its frank depiction of sexual abuse, the autobiography is still widely read in high schools and colleges across the country. Three decades after it was published, readers continue to admire Angelou's artistry, wit, and indomitable spirit. Edited by Mildred R. Mickle, Assistant Professor of English at Penn State Greater Allegheny, this volume brings together a variety of critical offerings on Angelou's famous autobiography. Mickle's introduction pays tribute to Angelou's achievement and examines the inspiration she drew from Phillis Wheatley's civil rights advocacy as well as the similarities between ""Caged Bird"" and Harriet Jacobs' ""Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl"" and Paul Lawrence Dunbar's poetry. ""The Paris Review""'s Christopher Cox reminds readers of how revolutionary Angelou's autobiography was when it was published and recounts the comments Angelou made on her work in an interview with George Plimpton. Four original essays by Amy Sickels, Pamela Loos, Neil Heims, and Robert C. Evans provide valuable context for reader's new to Angelou's work. Sickels discusses the historical events that surround Angelou's life: the civil rights, black power, and black arts movements as well as the emergence of black women's literature with the first publications of Toni Morrison, Nikki Giovanni, Alice Walker, and Lucille Clifton. Loos provides a survey of the major pieces of criticism on ""Caged Bird"", paying special attention to the book's early reception and how it fits in the autobiographical genre and slave narratives, as well as issues of race, gender, aesthetics, and identity. Neil Heims discusses the struggle for a black identity through readings of both ""Caged Bird"" and James Baldwin's ""If Beale Street Could Talk"". Finally, Robert C. Evans examines the role that both formal and informal education play in the young Maya's maturation. The collection also includes ten previously published essays that examine ""Caged Bird"" through a variety of lenses. Critics examine the character of young Maya, noting how her rootlessness contributes to her perseverance and adaptability, as well as how Angelou's narrative technique allows her to recount the details of incredible life without being controlled by them. The book's treatment of sexual abuse is also investigated in the larger context of other black women's narratives of sexual abuse. Other critics attend to ""Caged Bird""'s place in the genre of ethnic autobiography and the particular challenges it presents to teachers seeking to expose students multicultural literature; the childhood roots of Angelou's political activism; the influence of blues music on the narrative's structure; and, the young Maya's relationships with the black community, literature, and the women in her life.

This title includes in-depth critical discussions of her life and works. By all accounts, Jane Austen seems to have lived a quiet, circumscribed life. The daughter of a Hampshire clergyman, she never married and rarely ventured outside the close-knit circle of her family and friends. But while her life may have been uneventful, her novels reveal a keen wit, an acute eye for social foibles, and a masterful prose style. Never out of print, her six novels have attracted a legion of enthusiastic fans and spawned multiple unofficial sequels and prequels as well as television and film adaptations. Edited and with an introduction by Jack Lynch, Associate Professor of English at Rutgers University, this volume brings together a variety of essays discussing Austen and her work. Original essays offer readers an introduction to Austen by explicating the culture and time period during which Austen wrote her classic novels and the long history of Austen criticism as well as by offering close readings of two of her novels, ""Pride and Prejudice"" and ""Persuasion"". Nine other essays are reprinted here to deepen readers' understanding of Austen and strengthen their engagement with the critical concerns surrounding her and her work. These essays examine Austen's artistry and aesthetics; discuss her relationship with 18th century authors like Samuel Richardson, Fanny Burney, and Eliza Haywood; illuminate her treatment of gender, courtship, and sex; investigate her portrayals of the English class system; and, reveal her engagement with prominent religious and philosophical questions of the early 19th century. Uniquely, the volume also contains an original essay by ""Paris Review"" contributor Radhika Jones, who discusses Austen's enduring appeal and her influence on modern novel genres. Finally, a chronology of Austen's life, a thorough list of her published works, and an extensive bibliography of critical offerings provide a wealth of resources for readers desiring to study Austen in greater depth. Contributors include Bernard Paris, Professor Emeritus at the University of Florida and the author of numerous studies of 19th century literature; Susan Morgan, Professor of English at Miami University of Ohio and author of ""In the Meantime: Character and Perception in Jane Austen's Fiction"" (1980); Jill Heydt-Stevenson, Associate Professor of English and Humanities at the University of Colorado and author of ""Austen's Unbecoming Conjunctions: Subversive Laughter, Embodied History"" (2005); and William Deresiewicz, a former Associate Professor of English at Yale University, a contributor to ""The American Scholar"", ""The Nation"", and ""The New York Times"", and author of ""Jane Austen and the Romantic Poets"" (2004). Each essay is 5,000 words in length, and all essays conclude with a list of 'Works Cited', along with endnotes.

The border between fact and fiction has always been a porous one for Isabel Allende. Her acclaimed first novel, The House of the Spirits, began as a letter to her dying grandfather yet is filled with ghosts and green-haired and clairvoyant women; her memoir Paula, though ostensibly nonfiction, is a moving and highly imaginative account of her family history and the illness and death of her daughter, Paula. Even in the many interviews she has given, Allende has embellished the details of her life to captivate and charm her readers. She has more than succeeded. Around the world, readers have flocked to both her fiction and her nonfiction, making her one of the best-selling women novelists in the world today. Edited and with an introduction by John Rodden, a celebrated Allende scholar, this volume in the Critical Insights series brings together a variety of essays on this Chilean Scheherazade. Rodden's introduction assesses the phases of Allende's career and her growth as a writer, and Michael Wood, writing on behalf of The Paris Review, considers Allende's relation to magical realism. Amanda Hopkinson, in turn, provides a comprehensive biography of Allende and a measured examination of how her life has informed her work.For students encountering Allende for the first time, four introductory essays provide a valuable framework for studying her in greater depth. Beth E. Jörgenson surveys the range of critical opinions and the major strands of critical thought on Allende's work, and Charles Rossman's close reading of The House of the Spirits analyzes in depth the novel's setting, characters, and plot. María Roof compares Allende's use of the family saga novel to Maryse Condé's, and Carrie Sheffield describes the context in which Allende wrote her first and most popular novel, The House of the Spirits.Next, a collection of essays on key works and subjects deepens readers' understanding of Allende. The House of the Spirits is treated by Sara E. Cooper, who uses family systems theory to explicate the novel's major themes, and Barbara Foley Buedel considers the magical realist aspects of Eva Luna and The Stories of Eva Luna. Linda S. Maier and Cherie Meacham both explore Paula, with Maier focusing on how the memoir acted as a catharsis for Allende and Meacham relating the work to The House of the Spirits.Allende's prequels to The House of the Spirits—Daughter of Fortune and Portrait in Sepia—are then taken up by John Rodden and Nadia Avendaño. Rodden examines the autobiographical facets of both novels while Avendaño considers how Allende breaks down gender barriers in Daughter of Fortune. Linda Gould Levine extends Avendaño's insights with a broad study of how Allende has transgressed boundaries of race, class, gender, and nationality throughout her career. Vincent Kling seeks to overturn the common perception of Allende as little more than a popular novelist by revealing how she continually draws on myth, archetype, and paradox to lend depth and nuance to her writing.A quartet of essays then treat a few of Allende's lesser known works. Philip Swanson examines Zorro, while Luz María Umpierre analyzes one of the short stories, "Two Words." Don Latham discusses the magical realist facets of Allende's young adult novels, and John Rodden considers Allende's self-presentation in her interviews.Rounding out the volume are a chronology of Allende's life and a list of her principal publications as well as a bibliography for readers seeking to study this fascinating author in greater depth.Finally, the volume's appendixes offer a section of useful reference resources:A chronology of the author's lifeA complete list of the author's works and their original dates of publicationA general bibliographyA detailed paragraph on the volume's editorNotes on the individual chapter authorsA subject index

There is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre," Kurt Vonnegut writes in the first chapter of Slaughterhouse-Five, his novel about the firebombing of Dresden during World War II. "Everybody is supposed to be dead, to never say anything or want anything ever again." Fittingly, Slaughterhouse-Five is an odd sort of book—both an antiwar novel and science fiction, a dark comedy as well as a tragedy. Published at the height of the Vietnam War protests, it seized the imaginations of thousands of young people and made Vonnegut into an overnight sensation. Now, more than forty years after its publication, scholars are only beginning to assess Vonnegut's unique achievement with this stoic yet compassionate treatment of what remains one of the most deadly military strikes in European history.Edited and with an introduction by Leonard Mustazza, Distinguished Professor of English and American Studies at Penn State Abington, this volume in the Critical Insights series brings together some of the best classic and contemporary criticism on Vonnegut's famous novel. Mustazza's introduction describes the cultural moment in which Slaughterhouse-Five appeared, and Sarah Fay, writing forThe Paris Review, analyzes Vonnegut's unique comic sensibility.For readers studying Slaughterhouse-Five for the first time, a quartet of introductory essays provide a framework for gaining a deeper understanding of the novel. Jerome Klinkowitz first reviews the vicissitudes of the novel's reputation among critics, readers, and scholars. Kevin Alexander Boon then demonstrates how Vonnegut borrows techniques from film to hold together his fragmented narrative. David Simmons compares Slaughterhouse-Five with another classic antiwar novel, Joseph Heller's Catch-22, and Christina Jarvis explains how the Vietnam War and the antiwar movement influenced both Vonnegut and Thomas Pychon as they wrote their novels about World War II.The volume then continues with a selection of classic and contemporary essays. William Rodney Allen offers a comprehensive overview of the novel and its composition, and Donald J. Greiner, Jerome Klinkowtiz, and Maurice J. O'Sullivan, Jr., all examine the autobiographical nature of Slaughterhouse-Five and Vonnegut's attempts to come to terms with the events he witnessed in Dresden. James Lundquist describes the formal techniques Vonnegut devised to meet the challenge of writing about such an unimaginable tragedy as Dresden, and Wayne D. McGinnis treats the novel's unusual structure, showing how its unresolved circularity mimics the irresolution and circularity of death and time. T. J. Matheson also offers an analysis of the novel's formal elements, concentrating in particular on how its first chapter sets up the themes Vonnegut will follow throughout the book.C. Barry Chabot also takes up Vonnegut's treatment of death and his perpetual comment on it, "so it goes," and Hans van Stralen examines Vonnegut's postmodern renewal of existentialist themes. The novel's science-fiction elements are treated by Arnold Edelstein, who argues that Billy Pilgrim's "time traveling" is actually a fantasy Billy concocted to escape his memories and responsibilities, and Susanne Vees-Gulani extends this argument in a psychoanalytic reading of Billy and his creator. Dolores K. Gros Louis, Donald E. Morse, and Leonard Mustazza find biblical allusions in the novel. Gros Louis reads Billy Pilgrim as an ironic Christ figure, while Morse draws parallels between the destruction of Dresden and the book of Job, and Mustazza finds further connections between Eden and the alien world Tralfamador. Joyce Nelson makes a comparative analysis of the novel and its film adaptation.Rounding out the volume are a brief biography of Vonnegut, a chronology of his life, and a comprehensive bibliography of the major pieces of criticism on Slaughterhouse-Five for readers wishing to study the novel in greater depth.

Camus attracted the interest of scholars from many disciplines— specialists in literature, theater, philosophy, theology, political science, history, psychology, medicine, and law. This volume offers original contributions, while also reprinting a sampling of some of the more trenchant earlier essays about the man and his work.

The purpose of this collection of sixteen essays on William Faulkner's multi-faceted novel is to provide the reader who has read or is about to read Absalom, Absalom! with as much of a multi-faceted perspective as possible.Faulkner created a novel so complex that every interpretation of his "little postage stamp of native soil" is as valid as a single postage stamp in a postal system. Each essay is limited by its premise, but that very limitation enables the critic to focus the reader's attention upon an aspect of this multifaceted novel. The value of each of these pieces is not only what it reveals but what it does not reveal, enabling the reader to participate in the critical process by questioning, disagreeing, conjuring his or her own insights along the way.The opening six original essays offer basic, clearly stated perspectives: a brief view of Faulkner's life and works; and two close readings of Absalom, Absalom! that apply specific critical methods. The novel in a cultural-historical context is also discussed, as is the novel's critical reception. Many more narrowly-focused essays discuss the novel from a feminist standpoint, its relationship to The Great Gatsby and All the King's Men.The narrative perspective and the storytelling themes that pervade the novel are discussed at length as is the interwoven web of facts that enriches Absalom, Absalom! with countless dimensions. Tensions between the old south and the modern era are explored. Faulkner's structure and prose style are meticulously investigated. In sum, this reference provides a remarkably rich, deeply varied number of perspectives on a novel that continues to offer new insight into its complex design and execution.Each essay is 5,000 words in length, and all essays conclude with a list of "Works Cited," along with endnotes. Finally, the volume's appendixes offer a section of useful reference resources:

For more than fifty years, Catcher fans have found a friend in the lonely misfit Holden Caulfield. The essays in this volume offer an examination of the novel's impact over time, and include discussions of the reach of Salinger's influence, Catcher's tumultuous history, and the culture and politics of the post-war era.

Tolstoy’s epic novel is one of the most famous pieces of Russian literature and is on the short list of the most important works of literature in the world. This volume examines Tolstoy’s unique achievement through a number of thought-provoking essays, and the interplay of the many genres of the text, including historical fiction, war drama, romance and realism.

Edited by Kimberly Drake, who directs the writing program and teaches writing and American literature and culture at Scripps College, this volume includes chapters on the more widely read slave narratives, including those by Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, and Solomon Northup, but also relatively lesser-known narratives, such as neo-slave narrative novels and slave narratives about slavery outside the U.S. Individual chapters will provide researchers with a wide range of approaches to the slave narrative genre, and the volume's Preface will discuss the history of the slave narrative genre from its origins to the present day, where it makes its way into popular films and novels.

Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick is often considered the greatest American novel – a vast epic that combines deep philosophy and high adventure as well as rich comedy and profound tragedy. Moby-Dick also offers a particularly diverse array of characters of various types, personalities, and ethnic backgrounds, and its styles are as varied as the people it depicts. Full of humorous dialects and idioms and brimming with probing, impassioned, poetic speeches, Melville’s novel explores the fascinating world of whale-hunting in the mid-nineteenth century, even as it also explores some of the most perennial questions about the purposes and meanings of life. The final impact of the book, when enraged whale meets pursuing ship, is one of the most memorable episodes in all of American literature.This volume and author of nearly 30 books and over 300 essays) is designed to help make Melville’s great novel more readily accessible to a wide audience, especially students and everyday readers. Containing numerous essays by many prominent Melville scholars, the book places Melville and his epic novel in their various historical contexts while also showing how the novel continues to be relevant – and powerful – today. The volume seeks to show that Moby-Dick is no mere period piece but instead fully deserves its reputation as perhaps the greatest work of American fiction.

Diverse in theme, style and cultural context, the American short story can take many forms. The only common theme is the short story’s unique ability to captivate an audience. This volume discusses the origin and popularity of the short story. Original critical essays on a diverse collection of writers highlight Edgar Allen Poe, Herman Melville, Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce, O. Henry, Kate Chopin and many others.Each essay is 2,500 to 5,000 words in length, and all essays conclude with a list of ""Works Cited,"" along with endnotes. Finally, the volume's appendixes offer a section of useful reference resources.

Jack Kerouac's On the Road is one of the most famous works produced by a so-called ""beat"" writer—one of a group of nonconformists who shocked many of their contemporaries not only because of the works they produced but also because of the lives they lived. Initially attacked for its celebration of seemingly free-spirited attitudes and behavior, On the Road has lately been increasingly criticized for its allegedly outdated views, especially involving women. This volume examines, among many other topics, why On the Road remained popular for decades after it was published, and why it has been the target of strong criticism, and how that criticism has changed, over the years.

Outstanding, in-depth scholarship by renowned literary critics; great starting point for students seeking an introduction to the theme and the critical discussions surrounding it.Critical Insights: Harlem Renaissance presents the period of unparallel growth in art and literature from the African American Community, also known as the Harlem Renaissance. With its production of key authors, from Langston Hughes to Claude McKay, among others, the Harlem Renaissance saw the rise in creative endeavors by black artists and writers eager to celebrate the unique characteristics of black life and to challenge the institutionalized racial hierarchy pervasive within twentieth-century American society. These creative thinkers, certainly intellectuals in their own right, used their poetry, short stories, novels, and plays as a vehicle to critique the longstanding issues within society that limited socioeconomic mobility for blacks, while perpetuating startling stereotypes about a community too long oppressed. Because of its undeniable impact in shaping the American cultural imagination regarding blacks and on the larger American literary canon, the Harlem Renaissance has since been heavily studied as the most significant period of artistic as well as cultural development the African American community has ever experienced.This title seeks to offer not only expanded readings of the central themes that have long captivated the attention of scholars across time, but also providing valuable insight into the texts, authors, and critical perspectives too often overlooked.Each essay is 2,500 to 5,000 words in length, and all essays conclude with a list of ""Works Cited,"" along with endnotes. Finally, the volume's appendixes offer a section of useful reference resources: About This Volume; Critical Context: Original Introductory Essays; Critical Readings: Original In-Depth Essays; Further Readings; Detailed Bibliography; Detailed Bio of the Editor; General Subject Index.

Toni Morrison's 1987 tale of Sethe, an escaped slave living in Cincinnati and struggling to overcome her past, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1988 along with instant international acclaim. Several essays in this volume study major themes of Beloved, including motherhood, the psychological impacts of slavery, and repression of memory, as well as connections to the real-life slave who inspired Morrison's story.Taken together, the essays presented in this volume give special attention to the traumatic horrors of slavery. Indeed, although their authors examine Sethe's act of infanticide from various perspectives, it is evident that the recurring theme throughout the volume is not the question of rightness or the wrongness of the act itself, but the ways in which the characters contend with and survive a dehumanizing and absurd historical movement. Beloved, the narrative, and Beloved the character, become Morrison's conduits for confronting a story that is impossible to tell but needs to be told.Each essay is 2,500 to 5,000 words in length, and all essays conclude with a list of ""Works Cited,"" along with endnotes. Finally, the volume's appendixes offer a section of useful reference resources:About This VolumeCritical Context: Original Introductory EssaysCritical Readings: Original In-Depth EssaysFurther ReadingsDetailed BibliographyDetailed Bio of the EditorGeneral Subject Index

Patriotism has long been an important theme in world literature, especially during the era of the so-called "nation-state." Millions of people, motivated by patriotism, have served their countries in many different ways, including in military service in which millions have died. What is patriotism? How has it been defined, embraced, and sometimes rejected? How are various attitudes toward it reflected in literature? These are the kinds of questions this volume will explore from deliberately diverse perspectives.

Thomas Hardy is now universally regarded as one of the most important novelists and poets of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His works often reflect --and helped to create and reinforce --a relatively dark vision of human life, a vision highly characteristic of his era. This volume explores numerous works by Hardy from a rich variety of perspectives. The book examines his writings by relating them to history, philosophy, sociology, economics, gender, and, especially, aesthetics.

Julius Caesar is one of William Shakespeare's most famous and important plays, and one of the most frequently taught, especially in high schools. Dealing with one of the most significant events in the history of Rome, the assassination of Julius Caesar and the subsequent end of the Roman Republic, the play has been performed and filmed numerous times. This volume examines the play from many different perspectives, including historical, aesthetic, and comparative points of view, among others, to add to the ongoing lively conversation the play has always stimulated.

Alice Walker's The Color Purple is one of the most celebrated and influential novels in American and African American literature, a rare winner of both the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award for Fiction, and the inspiration for an acclaimed film adaptation and Broadway musical. In celebration of The Color Purple's fortieth anniversary, this volume offers new readings of the classic literary work from biographical, cultural, historical, and spiritual points of view, with additional analyses devoted to art, adaptations, comparative texts, ethics, linguistics, masculinity, motherhood, poetry, and social activism and movements such as Black Lives Matter.

J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings quickly became one of the most popular and influential novels of the twentieth century. It inspired not just one film but a series of well-received movies that brought Tolkien's highly imaginative fantasy epic to life on the big screen. This volume about the novel discusses the work from numerous points of view, employing biographical, historical, cultural, mythic, and aesthetic approaches, among others.

The Brontë sisters, Charlotte, Emily, and Anne, are well known English poets and novelists of the nineteenth century. This volume closely examines Charlotte's masterpiece Jane Eyre, Emily's influential Wuthering Heights, and Anne's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, to give readers a deeper sense of the themes throughout these important works and the influences behind their creation. Common themes throughout the sisters' works are love, gender, class, and the intersections of all three, and this volume explores these topics and more, setting the work of the Brontë sisters into various contexts, such as biographical, historical, social, cultural, and aesthetic.

Although J.D. Salinger is especially renowned for his novel The Catcher in the Rye, he has also authored many other noteworthy works, including a number of significant short stories. Salinger is also known for his mysteriously reclusive lifestyle—a lifestyle that only stimulated people's interest in his personality and personal habits. Catcher is one of the most widely-read novels about young people ever written, and today, after 70 years, still remains a celebrated work about alienated youth. This volume examines Salinger and his works from numerous points of view, adopting biographical, historical, sociological, and aesthetic perspectives, among others.

Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, a late work in this important writer's long career, has often been examined not only in relation to his previous works but also as a new departure. An unusually brief novel, this book has been discussed not only in relation to the novella genre but also in connection to Hemingway's own life, with the author himself often being compared to the ""old man"" of the title. This volume offers a wide range of approaches to the text, exploring it in terms of history, psychology, sociology, and—last but not least—artistic achievement.