Literary Theory

Much Ado about Nothing has always been popular on the stage. This edition pays especial attention to the history and range of theatrical interpretation, in which famous actors, from the...

Mumsnet 'Best Books for Christmas 2016' 'Ideal for anyone who has ever wondered what on earth to read next' SJ WATSON 'Witty, engaging and informative. The sort of book you...

An individual desires an object, not for itself, but because another individual also desires it. This mimetic desire, Rene Girard contends, lies at the source of all human disorder and...

What to read and what to read next - over 100,000 copies sold; With 100,000 new books each year joining the enormous wealth of already published literature, finding more titles...

An extraordinary and hugely topical story of a Jewish man's passion for the Arab world. he Orientalist is the extraordinary story of a Jewish man's passion for the Arab world...

Samuel Pepys is as much a paragon of literature as Chaucer and Shakespeare. His Diary is one of the principal sources for many aspects of the history of its period....

Samuel Pepys is as much a paragon of literature as Chaucer and Shakespeare. His Diary is one of the principal sources for many aspects of the history of its period....

Samuel Pepys is as much a paragon of literature as Chaucer and Shakespeare. His Diary is one of the principal sources for many aspects of the history of its period....

In this book, Butler examines the 'trouble' with unproblematized appeals to sex/gender identities. She argues that the foundational categories of feminist and gender discourse are actually effects of unexamined relations...

This book describes in detail the main concepts of theoretical spectroscopy of transition metal and rare-earth ions. It shows how the energy levels of different electron configurations are formed and...

From journalist Michelle Dean, winner of the National Book Critics Circle's 2016 Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing, Sharp combines biography, original research, and critical reading into a powerful...

An exciting new anthology from the journal "Time "magazine called "the biggest 'little magazine' in history." To commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the venerable" Paris Review," Picador is proud to...

What does eating have to do with aesthetic taste? While most accounts of aesthetic history avoid the gustatory aspects of taste, this book rewrites standard history to uncover the constitutive...

These essays reveal Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975)-known in the West largely through his studies of Rabelais and Dostoevsky-as a philosopher of language, a cultural historian, and a major theoretician of the...

" . . . methodologically innovative . . . precise and perceptive and conscious . . . " -Text and Performance Quarterly "Woman, Native, Other is located at the juncture...

This volume brings together Nussbaum's published papers on the relationship between literature and philosophy, especially moral philosophy. The papers, many of them previously inaccessible to non-specialist readers, deal with such...

Is a tower block, your unmade bed, your lavatory basin, or the bicycle chained to the gate next door a work of art? Why should a novel have a beginning,...

According to Hirsch, poetry is not just a part of life - it is life, and expresses like no other art our most sublime emotions. In this book, he shows...

Tom Stoppard's reputation as a playwright was made when his dazzling debut, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead , opened at the National Theatre. Fifty years later, the play's wit, stagecraft...

At last, the undisputed grandmaster of horror, Stephen King, talks candidly and revealingly about the perils and passions of the writer's life, and, most of all, about terror -- as...

The editors have included traditional ballads about maternity and courtly elegies for or by mothers as well as landmark nineteenth-century tributes to mothers and early twentieth-century meditations on motherhood. MotherSongs...

This will be the first major biography of Sylvia Plath to be published in the UK, and will radically differ from the commonly held view of her tragic life (and...

Daniel Defoe's life (1660-1731) was packed with incident and drama. Born in the year of the Restoration of the Monarchy after the English Civil War, he remained a Nonconformist throughout...

A sparkling anthology of newly commissioned writing on the joys and rewards of reading non-fiction Why read non-fiction? Is it just to find things out? Or is it for pleasure,...

Anyone who cares to understand the cultural ferment of America in the later twentieth century must know of the writings and lives of those scruffy bohemians known as the Beats....

Newspaper articles written between 1911 and 1925 describe the author's life in the years following those covered in her children's books.

2005 Gold Medallion Award finalist! Was Jesus really married to Mary Magdalene? Did they actually have children who intermarried with the French royal family? Has the church been hiding the...

Seamus Heaney is often cited by critics as one of the most important poets writing in English since World War II. This study provides a detailed examination of Heaney's poetry...

Translating Myself and Others is a collection of candid and disarmingly personal essays by Pulitzer Prizewinning author Jhumpa Lahiri, who reflects on her emerging identity as a translator as well...

Vita Sackville-West, novelist, poet and biographer, is best known as the friend of Virginia Woolf, who transformed her into an androgenous time-traveller in "Orlando". This is the story of her...

Compelling new translation of the Annals, by Cynthia Damon Tacitus' Annals recounts the major historical events from the years shortly before the death of Augustus to the death of Nero...

Perfect for the general reader of poetry, students and teachers of literature, and aspiring poets, All the Fun's in How You Say a Thing is a lively and comprehensive study...

With an Introduction by J. H. Stape, St. Mary's University College, Strawberry Hill. Written in 1910 and first privately published in New York in 1916, Frank Harris's Oscar Wilde: His...

A must-have for every fan of literature and Paris. The Book Lover's Guide to Paris is an extensive and informative travel companion, shedding new light on an ever-popular subject and...

. Are you a xenophile? . Which book dedications make us cry? . What were the author events of Ancient Rome like? . Why did the U.S. post ban Chaucer?...

Thoroughly revised and expanded for a new generation of readers, this classic guide to enjoying literature to its fullest-a lively, enlightening, and entertaining introduction to a diverse range of writing...

Winner of the 1989 Whitbread Prize for Book of the Year, this is the first volume of Holmes's seminal two-part examination of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, one of Britain's greatest poets....

Think you already know the story of Charles Dickens' life? Think again. Almost everything you're familiar with was first mentioned in an authorised biography written by Dickens' close friend John...

The words of its writers are part of the texture of Dublin, an invisible counterpart to the bricks and pavement we see around us. Beyond the ever-present footsteps of James...

Bob Dylan has helped transform music, literature, pop culture, and even politics. The World of Bob Dylan chronicles a lifetime of creative invention that has made a global impact. Leading...

Joseph Conrad's centrality to modern literature is well established. The New Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad provides essential guidance to varied developments in the field of Conrad studies since the...

For this updated edition, David Bevington has included in his introductory section a thorough consideration of recent critical and stage interpretations of Antony and Cleopatra, demonstrating how the theatrical design...

Bill Bryson's biography of William Shakespeare unravels the superstitions, academic discoveries and myths surrounding the life of our greatest poet and playwright. Ever since he took the theatre of Elizabethan...

Brought together by award-winning crime author Marele Day, twelve crime writers and readers give invaluable insights into what they do, what they look for - and how you can do...

The career of Mikhail Bulgakov, the author of Master and Margarita - now regarded as one of the masterpieces of twentieth-century literature - was characterized by a constant and largely...