Literary Criticism : European

The nationally motivated hostility towards Jews did not just start with Richard Wagner or the anti-Semitic writings produced in Imperial Germany from 1871 onwards. As the study shows, even the writers of the Romantic generation in the early 19th century drew up their idea of a “German character” which was rigorously delineated from alleged Jewish characteristics. This is shown in the study using both essayistic and fictional texts by Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano among others. more...

Price: $196.00

During her lifetime, the gifted writer Marie le Jars de Gournay (1565-1645) was celebrated as one of the "seventy most famous women of all time" in Jean de la Forge's Circle of Learned Women (1663). The adopted daughter of Montaigne, as well as his editor, Gournay was a major literary force and a pioneering feminist voice during a tumultuous period in France. This volume presents translations of four of Gournay's works that address feminist issues. Two of these appear here in English for the first time—The Promenade of Monsieur de Montaigne and The Apology for the Woman Writing. One of the first modern psychological novels, the best-selling Promenade was also the first to explore female sexual feeling. With the autobiographical Apology, Gournay defended every aspect of her life, from her moral conduct to her household management. The book also includes Gournay's last revisions (1641) of her two best-known feminist treatises, The Equality of Men and Women and The Ladies' Complaint. The editors provide a general overview of Gournay's career, as well as individual introductions and extensive annotations for each work. more...

Price: $21.00

This volume of Arthurian Literature continues the tradition of the journal, combining critical studies with editions of primary Arthurian texts. Varied in their linguistic and chronological coverage, the articles deal with major areas of Arthurian studies, from early French romance through late medieval English chronicle to contemporary fiction. Topics include Béroul's Tristan, Tristan de Nanteuil, the Anglo-Norman Brut, and the Morte, while an edition of the text of an extrait of Chrétien's Erec et Enide prepared by the eighteenth-century scholar La Curne de Sainte-Palaye offers important insights into both scholarship on Chrétien, and our understanding of the Enlightenment. more...

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This book describes a tradition of English literary figures from 1776 to the present day who have either emigrated to the United States or whose writing has been shaped by American ideas. The writers discussed include Lord Byron, Charles Dickens, D. H. Lawrence, P. G. Wodehouse, and Angela Carter. - ;Atlantic Republic traces the legacy of the United States both as a place and as an idea in the work of English writers from 1776 to the present day. Seeing the disputes of the Reformation as a precursor to this transatlantic divide, it argues that America has operated since the Revolution as a focal point for various traditions of dissent within English culture. By ranging over writers from Richard Price and Susanna Rowson in the 1790s to Angela Carter and Salman Rushdie at. the turn of the twenty-first century, the book argues that America haunts the English literary tradition as a parallel space where ideology and aesthetics are configured differently. Consequently, it suggests, many of the key episodes in British history-parliamentary reform in the 1830s, the imperial designs. of the Victorian era, the twentieth-century conflict with fascism, the advance of globalization since 1980-have been shaped by implicit dialogues with American cultural models. Rather than simply reinforcing the benign myth of a 'special relationship', Paul Giles considers how various English writers over the past 200 years have engaged with America for various complicated reasons: its promise of political republicanism (Byron, Mary Shelley); its emphasis on religious disestablishment (Clough,. Gissing); its prospect of pastoral regeneration (Ruxton, Lawrence); its vision of scientific futurism (Huxley, Ballard). The book also analyses the complex cultural relations between Britain and the United States around the time of the Second World War, suggesting that writers such as Wodehouse,. Isherwood, and Auden understood the United States and Germany to offer alternative versions of the ki more...

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The first comparative study of its kind, The Augustan Art of Poetry uses translations to explore the artistic influence of the Roman poetry of the Augustan age upon English neoclassical poetry. The book foregrounds the artistry of central texts such as Dryden's translation of Virgil and Pope's Homer. Comparisons are also made with modern versions. - ;While previous studies have concentrated largely upon political concerns, The Augustan Art of Poetry is an exploration of the influence of the Roman Augustan aesthetic on English neo-classical poets of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. At the conclusion of his translation of Virgil, Dryden claims implicitly to have given English poetry the kind of refinement in language and style that Virgil had given the Latin. In this timely new study Robin Sowerby offers a strong. apologia for the fine artistry of the Augustans, concentrating in particular on the period's translations, a topic and method not hitherto ventured in any full-length comparative study. The mediation of the Augustan aesthetic is explored through the De Arte Poetica of Vida represented in the Augustan version. of Pitt, and its culmination is represented by examination of Dryden's Virgil in relation to predecessors. The effect of the Augustan aesthetic upon versions of silver Latin poets and upon Pope's Homer is also assessed and comparisons are drawn with modern translations. - ;Sowerby's performance is exemplary:his belief in the validity of an English Augustan aesthetic, and in the excellence of its best products, shines forth on every page of this earnest study. - James A. Winn, Translation and Literature;a stimulating book, richly crammed with matter...a major contribution to the study of literary translation. - John Talbot, Essays in Criticism;He has argued his case well. - Contemporary Review, Volume 288;...this is an important study of literary translations - Michael J. Franklin, MLR, 103.1 more...

Price: $145.00