Argues that Victorian legal, linguistic, and cultural attitudes toward promises--especially promises to marry--had a formative effect on novels of the period.

The fate of the hero-gambler, as described by Dostoevsky, Balzac, Poe, and others, is the focus of this unprecedented exploration of gambling and the human psyche.

Examines the ambiguous constructions of the Orient in the works of four major twentieth-century French writers.

This exhilarating tale of natural history illuminates the evolution of matter, life, and consciousness. In Everybody’s Story, Loyal Rue finds the means for global solidarity and cooperation in the shared story of humanity.

Explores the wounded body in literature from Homer to Toni Morrison, examining how it functions archetypally as both a cultural metaphor and a poetic image.

Explores the multiple, often contradictory identifications and fantasies that distinguish Lawrence's fiction, casting fresh light on his relationship with women.

Explores the connections between Onetti, a foundational figure of the 1960s "Boom" in Latin American literature, and other relevant writers and texts from Latin America and beyond.

Re-evaluates Jose Marti's contribution to Latin America's literature and political evolution.

Explicates the worldviews of comedy and tragedy, and analyzes world religions, finding some to be more comic, others more tragic.

Argues against the persistent view of Romantic lyricism as inherently introspective by relating the poems of William Wordsworth, John Clare, and Charlotte Smith, as well as the letters and prose works of Dorothy Wordsworth, to their historical and literary contexts.

Explores the mythology of memory, involuntary memory, and the relation between time and memory in the context of questions prominent in contemporary thought.

Explores the nature and significance of Petrarch’s indebtedness to Dante in the Rime sparse.

Examines the myths and realities of narcissism in the life and work of Percy Bysshe Shelley, and explores how Shelley combated what he called “the principle of Self” by embracing the ideals of Christlike self-sacrifice and sisterly love.

Explores the role of shame as an important affect in the complex psychodynamics of literary and philosophical works.

Reexamines the notion of the "hyphenate writer," and offers a specific reading strategy that we may consider the Italian/American writer in the age of semiotics, poststructuralism, and the like.

Combines Western theories of the sublime (from Longinus to Lyotard) with indigenous Indian modes of reading in order to construct a comprehensive theory of both the Indian sublime and Indian devotional verse.

An essential guide for those who seek to reconsider the theoretical problems of (trans-civilizational) comparative literature, those who are interested in the literary and cultural history of modern East Asian countries, and those with a general interest in issues of sexuality.

Provides a clear account of the issues in Spanish American fiction in the last quarter-century by attempting to answer questions on the Boom, Post-Boom, and its relation to Postmodernism.

Considers the tales of Reb Nahman of Bratslav within a broad cultural milieu, including the romanticism of Reb Nahman's time, contemporary feminist hermeneutics, and the fantastic in various contexts.

In this first English translation of a classic text by one of the foremost commentators on Lacan's work, Nasio eloquently demonstrates the clinical and practical import of Lacan's theory, even in its most difficult or obscure moments.

Rapp mounts a devastating critique against the notion that literary and cultural theory since the 1960s has succeeded in effecting, or at least reporting, both the demise of philosophy and the emergence of a genuinely post-philosophical culture.

Explores the literary, philosophical, and cultural implications of Cabala during the Renaissance.

Makes available, for the first time in English, the work of a major modern Arab poet, providing a framework for understanding his experience not only as an Arab writer but as a postcolonial one.

Interprets Plato's Charmides as a microcosm of Socratic philosophy that presents Plato's vision of the life of critical reason and of its uneasy relation to political life in the ancient city.

Using Bakhtinian theory, this study reveals how and why readers routinely refer to the words and ideas of others to interpret the meanings and implications of the books they read.