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Literature & Literary StudiesMarch 2017Asia in Western fiction
by Robin Winks
Any reader who has ever visited Asia knows that the great bulk of Western-language fiction about Asian cultures turns on stereotypes. This book, a collection of essays, explores the problem of entering Asian societies through Western fiction, since this is the major port of entry for most school children, university students and most adults. In the thirteenth century, serious attempts were made to understand Asian literature for its own sake. Hau Kioou Choaan, a typical Chinese novel, was quite different from the wild and magical pseudo-Oriental tales. European perceptions of the Muslim world are centuries old, originating in medieval Christendom's encounter with Islam in the age of the Crusades. There is explicit and sustained criticism of medieval mores and values in Scott's novels set in the Middle Ages, and this is to be true of much English-language historical fiction of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Even mediocre novels take on momentary importance because of the pervasive power of India. The awesome, remote and inaccessible Himalayas inevitably became for Western writers an idealised setting for novels of magic, romance and high adventure, and for travellers' tales that read like fiction. Chinese fictions flourish in many guises. Most contemporary Hong Kong fiction reinforced corrupt mandarins, barbaric punishments and heathens. Of the novels about Japan published after 1945, two may serve to frame a discussion of Japanese behaviour as it could be observed (or imagined) by prisoners of war: Black Fountains and Three Bamboos.
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Literature & Literary StudiesJune 2023
The politics of male friendship in contemporary American fiction
by Michael Kalisch
How might our friendships shape our politics? This book examines how contemporary American fiction has rediscovered the concept of civic friendship and revived a long tradition of imagining male friendship as interlinked with the promises and paradoxes of democracy in the United States. Bringing into dialogue the work of a wide range of authors - including Philip Roth, Paul Auster, Michael Chabon, Jonathan Lethem, Dinaw Mengestu, and Teju Cole - this innovative study advances a compelling new account of the political and intellectual fabric of the American novel today.
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Literature & Literary StudiesJuly 2021The politics of male friendship in contemporary American fiction
by Michael Kalisch, Sharon Monteith, Nahem Yousaf
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FictionJanuary 2009Library of Chinese Classics :The Romance of West Chamber
by Wang Shifu
The "West Chamber" of Wang Shih-fu in the Yuan Dynasty was a masterpiece of Chinese classical opera and a masterpiece of Chinese literature. The theme of the drama is the love story of the young scholar Zhang Huan and the late Ying-Ying, the daughter of the 19-year-old Cui Xianguo. The whole play is divided into five (screen) twenty (field). The first Zhang Ying and Ying Ying in the temple at first sight. The second to write Zaibing siege filled homes, Zhangsheng rescue, Mrs. Cui allow her daughter Yingying with Zhangsheng wife, then eat their own words. The third one to write a pair of lover Acacia sponge. The fourth the first Valentine's tryst Valentine's Day; the second letter of Mrs. Choi to Changsheng Beijing exam, the high school after the wedding; the third Valentine's leave, Zhang went to Beijing to attend the meeting; the fourth fold of the lover dream phase Will be done. The fifth to write a couple reunion. In short, "The Romance of the West Chamber" wrote the contradiction between love and family honor. The result was that Zhang Sheng would try high school, winning the honor and winning the love.
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August 2016The Romance of the Three Kingdoms
by Luo Guan Zhong
First of the five great works of traditional prose fiction, this master narrative transforms history into epic and has thereby educated and entertained readers of five centuries with unforgettable exemplars of martial and civic virtue, of personal fidelity and political treachery. "The empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide. Thus it has ever been." Echoing the rhythms of Chinese history itself, the monumental tale Three Kingdoms begins. As important for Chinese culture as the Homeric epics have been for the West, this fourteenth-century masterpiece continues to be loved and read throughout China today. Three Kingdoms portrays a fateful moment at the end of the Han Dynasty (206 B.C.-A.D. 220) when the future of the Chinese empire lay in the balance.
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Family & home stories (Children's/YA)February 1905Little Women
by Louise May Alcott
Little Women "has been read as a romance or as a quest, or both. It has been read as a family drama that validates virtue over wealth", but also "as a means of escaping that life by women who knew its gender constraints only too well".[6]:34 According to Sarah Elbert, Alcott created a new form of literature, one that took elements from Romantic children's fiction and combined it with others from sentimental novels, resulting in a totally new format. Elbert argued that within Little Women can be found the first vision of the "All-American girl" and that her multiple aspects are embodied in the differing March sisters.
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Literature & Literary StudiesMarch 2025
Through the fiction of Phebe Gibbes (1764–90)
Women, alienation, and prodigality in the long eighteenth century
by Kathryn Freeman
Through the Fiction of Phebe Gibbes places this prolific, newly recovered English writer at the centre of the revolutionary period. Gibbes's novels mark the struggles of women for agency in an expanding British empire, from the Seven Years' War to revolutions in American, Haiti and France. With Gibbes as a nexus in a lineage of women writers from Aphra Behn to Jane Austen, Kathryn S. Freeman offers a valuable perspective on the 'long eighteenth century', with Gibbes' own evolution mirroring that of the larger period. The study traces the development of Gibbes' authorial voice from satire to irony through a range of female characters subverting patriarchal oppression. Freeman guides the reader through patterns of narrative voice, concerns with gender and sexuality, and elements of wordplay through detailed discussion of five novels representing Gibbes' evolving representation of a subversive female subjectivity.
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Literature & Literary StudiesMarch 2022The quiet contemporary American novel
by Rachel Sykes, Sharon Monteith
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Literature & Literary StudiesJune 2021Passing into the present
Contemporary American fiction of racial and gender passing
by Sinead Moynihan
This book is the first full-length study of contemporary American fiction of passing. Its takes as its point of departure the return of racial and gender passing in the 1990s in order to make claims about wider trends in contemporary American fiction. The book accounts for the return of tropes of passing in fiction by Phillip Roth, Percival Everett, Louise Erdrich, Danzy Senna, Jeffrey Eugenides and Paul Beatty, by arguing meta-critical and meta-fictional tool. These writers are attracted to the trope of passing because passing narratives have always foregrounded the notion of textuality in relation to the (il)legibility of "black" subjects passing as white. The central argument of this book, then, is that contemporary narratives of passing are concerned with articulating and unpacking an analogy between passing and authorship. The title promises to inaugurate dialogue on the relationships between passing, postmodernism and authorship in contemporary American fiction.
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Literature & Literary StudiesOctober 2023
The penny politics of Victorian popular fiction
by Rob Breton
Penny politics offers a new way to read early Victorian popular fiction such as Jack Sheppard, Sweeney Todd, and The Mysteries of London. It locates forms of radical discourse in the popular literature that emerged simultaneously with Brittan's longest and most significant people's movement. It listens for echoes of Chartist fiction in popular fiction. The book rethinks the relationship between the popular and political, understanding that radical politics had popular appeal and that the lines separating a genuine radicalism from commercial success are complicated and never absolute. With archival work into Newgate calendars and Chartist periodicals, as well as media history and culture, it brings together histories of the popular and political so as to rewrite the radical canon.
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Literature & Literary StudiesJuly 2022Nordic Gothic
by Maria Holmgren Troy, Johan Hõglund, Yvonne Leffler, Sofia Wijkmark
Nordic Gothic traces Gothic fiction in the Nordic region from its beginnings in the nineteenth century, with a main focus on the development of Gothic from the 1990s onwards in literature, film, TV and new media. The volume gives an overview of Nordic Gothic fiction in relation to transnational developments and provides a number of case studies and in-depth analyses of individual narratives. It creates an understanding of this under-researched cultural phenomenon by showing how the narratives make visible cultural anxieties haunting the Nordic countries, their welfare systems, identities and ideologies. Nordic Gothic examines how figures from Nordic folklore function as metaphorical expressions of Gothic themes and Nordic settings are explored from perspectives such as ecocriticism and postcolonialism. The book will be of interest to researchers and post- and- undergraduate students in various fields within the Humanities.
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Literature & Literary StudiesMarch 2024Approaches to emotion in Middle English literature
by Carolyne Larrington
Over the last twenty-five years, the 'history of emotion' field has become one of the most dynamic and productive areas for humanities research. This designation, and the marked leadership of historians in the field, has had the unlooked-for consequence of sidelining literature - in particular secular literature - as evidence-source and object of emotion study. Secular literature, whether fable, novel, fantasy or romance, has been understood as prone to exaggeration, hyperbole, and thus as an unreliable indicator of the emotions of the past. The aim of this book is to decentre history of emotion research and asks new questions, ones that can be answered by literary scholars, using literary texts as sources: how do literary texts understand and depict emotion and, crucially, how do they generate emotion in their audiences - those who read them or hear them read or performed?
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Literature & Literary StudiesMay 2023
Suicide and the Gothic
by William Hughes, Andrew Smith
Suicide and the Gothic is the first protracted study of how the act of self-destruction recurs and functions within one of the most enduring and popular forms of fiction. Comprising eleven original essays and an authoritative introduction, this collection explores how the act of suicide has been portrayed, interrogated and pathologised from the eighteenth century to the present. The featured fictions embrace both canonical and the less-studied texts and examine the crisis of suicide - a crisis that has personal, familial, religious, legal and medical implications - in European, American and Asian contexts. Featuring detailed interventions into the understanding of texts as temporally distant as Thomas Percy's Reliques and Patricia Highsmith's crime fictions, and movements as diverse as Wertherism, Romanticism and fin-de-siècle decadence, Suicide and the Gothic provides a comprehensive and compelling overview of this recurrent crisis in fiction and culture.
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Literature & Literary StudiesJuly 2018European Erotic Romance
by Victor Skretkowicz, J. B. Lethbridge
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Business, Economics & LawAugust 2020Tourism Planning and Development in Latin America
by Carlos Monterrubio, Konstantinos Andriotis, Dimitrios Stylidis
Despite the significance of tourism to the economic, social and environmental structures of Central and South America, little has been documented in the English literature about tourism in this sub-region, which in terms of population size, ranks fourth in the world with 652 million inhabitants. The first of its kind, this book focuses exclusively on tourism development, planning and their impacts in a wide number of Central and South American countries. It covers experiences, challenges, successful and unsuccessful stories, specific cases, and other tourism related issues of twelve countries in total. Each chapter is authored by scholars who have done extensive research on tourism in the countries covered. This book:Examines the impact of tourism development and planning within Latin American countries.Takes a multidisciplinary approach including Anthropology, Development, Economics, Ecology, Policy, Sociology and Tourism Planning and Management.Is the first book in English to offer an insight into extensive research undertaken within the region.This book will provide a valuable insight for tourism researchers, practitioners and decision-makers in private and public organisations, not only from the regions of Central, South and North America, but also individuals from other parts of the world who want a more encompassing view of global tourism. Table of contents Chapter 1: Strategies for regional tourism development in Argentina. A path with new initiatives for tourism dispersal policies Chapter 2: The commitment to sustainable tourism and the development of indigenous tourism in Chile Chapter 3: Tourism development in Colombia: between conflict and peace Chapter 4: Ecotourism development in Costa Rica Chapter 5: The challenges of natural and cultural heritages of Galapagos and Quito, Ecuador Chapter 6: Tourism development in Mexico Chapter 7: Panama, the "affordable exotic destination": planned tourism success and its unplanned consequences Chapter 8: The impacts of tourism in economic growth and development in Uruguay Chapter 9: Peru and Nicaragua: tourism development in postconflict eras Chapter 10: Ecuador and Panama: Lifestyle mobilities, the golden years and the quest for paradise
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THE POLITICS OF HATE – A Piercing Insight into American Politics
by HUGO N. GERSTL
America is being systematically destroyed – not by terrorists from without, but by vested interests from within! It’s being destroyed by politicians, talk show hosts, media moguls, and populist rabble rousers who seek to preserve their “territory” at any cost – by obstructing the passage of beneficial laws, by scandalous lies and accusations, by negative campaigning, and by gratuitous insults. These “saviors” pose absolutely no constructive ideas of their own to resolve the morass in which our country now finds itself. The politicians think no further than getting themselves elected or re-elected. The lure of $100,000 in lecture fees is a powerful aphrodisiac. The lure of power is an even greater aphrodisiac. Politicians, fearmongers, “talking heads,” and captains of industry revel in their fame, their glory, and their self-styled wisdom when the country is in greater debt than any other nation in history, and when we are more and more quickly slipping toward becoming a third world nation each year. If the public starts putting two and two together, the answer should come out “four.” But so far, the “average” American can still be led to believe that 2+2 equals whatever number the spin masters want to make it. What is even worse, more than 40% of Americans are buying into the politics of fear, dissension, and abuse without stopping for even a moment to consider exactly what these political hatemongers are offering in exchange for turning one faction out and securing the benefits of power for themselves. But regardless of political infighting or outfighting, what we are doing is akin to two fleas fighting over who owns the dog. We don’t seem to realize that we have run out of time and money; that we no longer have the luxury of political gamesmanship and needless, stupid bickering. While this timely book points the finger at who’s to blame, it also goes one step further and tells how America, the most powerful nation on earth, can take back control of its destiny and cure its own disease! HUGO N. GERSTL earned a degree in political science and history at UCLA, then went on to graduate from the UCLA School of Law. He turned down an invitation to run for Congress on the Republican ticket as it meant running against his friend and fellow-lawyer, Leon Panetta, who was just finishing his first term in Congress. Gerstl has been a nationally known trial lawyer for forty-six years and remains eternally optimistic about the resilience of the American people. An English eBook Edition was published in fall 2012 by Samuel Wachtman's Sons INC., C.A. 454 pages, 15x22.5cm
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Literature & Literary StudiesOctober 2024The Legacy of John Polidori
The Romantic Vampire and its Progeny
by Sam George, Bill Hughes
John Polidori's novella The Vampyre (1819) is perhaps 'the most influential horror story of all time' (Frayling). Polidori's story transformed the shambling, mindless monster of folklore into a sophisticated, seductive aristocrat that stalked London society rather than being confined to the hinterlands of Eastern Europe. Polidori's Lord Ruthven was thus the ancestor of the vampire as we know it. This collection explores the genesis of Polidori's vampire. It then tracks his bloodsucking progeny across the centuries and maps his disquieting legacy. Texts discussed range from the Romantic period, including the fascinating and little-known The Black Vampyre (1819), through the melodramatic vampire theatricals in the 1820s, to contemporary vampire film, paranormal romance, and science fiction. They emphasise the background of colonial revolution and racial oppression in the early nineteenth century and the cultural shifts of postmodernity.
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Literature & Literary StudiesMarch 2023
Sleep and its spaces in Middle English literature
Emotions, ethics, dreams
by Megan Leitch
Middle English literature is intimately concerned with sleep and the spaces in which it takes place. In the medieval English imagination, sleep is an embodied and culturally determined act. It is both performed and interpreted by characters and contemporaries, subject to a particular habitus and understood through particular hermeneutic lenses. While illuminating the intersecting medical and moral discourses by which it is shaped, sleep also sheds light on subjects in favour of which it has hitherto been overlooked: what sleep can enable (dreams and dream poetry) or what it can stand in for or supersede (desire and sex). This book argues that sleep mediates thematic concerns and questions in ways that have ethical, affective and oneiric implications. At the same time, it offers important contributions to understanding different Middle English genres: romance, dream vision, drama and fabliau.
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Picture storybooksMay 2016Eye Spy Indian Art
by Ritu Khoda, Vanita Pai
The book introduces young readers to Indian modern art in a fun and engaging manner. This enriching activity-led book traces the development of modern art history from Pre-independence and unfolds in eight sections that feature prominent artists or styles under the various art movements.
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The ArtsFebruary 2025Screening Sherlock
A cultural history of the Great Detective on film and television
by James Chapman
Screening Sherlock is the first book-length academic study of the film and television career of the most famous detective in fiction. Chapman explores the contexts, adaptation strategies and critical reception of Sherlock Holmes (and Dr Watson) on film and television in Britain and the United States. The book includes case studies of such famous Holmes impersonators as William Gillette, Basil Rathbone, Peter Cushing, Jeremy Brett and Benedict Cumberbatch, as well as charting a path through many lesser-known productions. From early cinema to the Hollywood studio system, and from heritage drama to contemporary postmodern television, Screening Sherlock is an indispensible work for all aficionados of Arthur Conan Doyle's consulting detective of Baker Street.
