Literary History

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The Origins of Chinese Literary Hermeneutics

Explores how China’s oldest poetry collection was interpreted in a Confucian exegetical text—the Mao Commentary—in the mid-second century BCE.

The Radical Isaac

Examines the Yiddish-Hebrew writer I. L. Peretz's alignment with the Jewish working-class in Eastern Europe and his devotion to progressive politics.

Spanish American Literature in the Age of Machines and Other Essays

Brings together and makes available in English for the first time some of Ángel Rama’s most important essays.

Feminism's Progress

Explores how popular novels, short stories, and television shows from the United States and Britain illustrate the positive effects of feminism and promote gender equity.

The Relay Race of Virtue

Demonstrates that Plato and Xenophon ought to be regarded less as rivals and more as engaged in a dialogue advancing a common goal of preserving the Socratic legacy.

The Future of Lenin

Essays that argue in favor of Lenin's continuing relevance for twenty-first century politics and thought.

Reading, Wanting, and Broken Economics

Uses a historical study of bookselling and readers as a way to question and rethink our understanding of the market for symbolic goods.

Super Schoolmaster

Traces the controversial poet’s thinking about teaching and learning throughout his career.

Medicine Is War

Examines how literature mediated a convergence of militarism and medicine in Victorian culture that continues into the present via a widespread martial metaphor.

Yiddish Plays for Reading and Performance

Three stageworthy plays and nine individual scenes that offer an introduction to Yiddish theater at its liveliest.

Black Cultural Mythology

Offers a new conceptual framework rooted in mythological analysis to ground the field of Africana cultural memory studies.

Argentina Noir

An engaging and insightful guide to Argentine crime fiction since 2000.

Figures of Time

Focuses on how nuances of poetic form alter how we have come to understand cultural aspects of time.

Writing in Witness

A comprehensive survey of the most important writing to come out of the Holocaust.

John Huston as Adaptor

Argues that understanding Huston’s film adaptations of literary works is essential to understanding his oeuvre as a filmmaker.

Witnessing beyond the Human

Provides an innovative and theoretically rigorous approach to the subject of testimony in Latin America.

Talking to the Gods

Explores occultism in the writings of four authors who were members of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.

Sufism and American Literary Masters

Explores the influence of Sufism on nineteenth- and early twentieth-century writers.

Uncoupling American Empire

A cultural studies consideration of marriage and those considered “deviant” in the nineteenth-century American imagination.

Mary Barnard, American Imagist

Uncovers a new chapter in the story of American modernist poetry.

The Everyday Atlantic

Rethinks the concepts of nation, imperialism, and globalization by examining the everyday writing of the newspaper chronicle and blog in Spain and Latin America.

The Teller's Tale

Edited by Sophie Raynard
Subjects: Literature

Intriguing, updated portraits of classic fairy tale authors.

Fairy Tales Framed

Edited by Ruth B. Bottigheimer
Subjects: History

Translations of the forewords and afterwords by original fairy tale authors and commentaries by their contemporaries, material that has not been widely published in English.

Colonizing the Realm of Words

Details the transformation of Tamil literary culture that came with colonialism and the encounter with Western modernity.

Walt Whitman's Mystical Ethics of Comradeship

Recovers Walt Whitman as a self-conscious religious figure with an ethic based in male comradeship, one at odds with the temper of his times.

Terror and Irish Modernism

Presents a new genealogy and synoptic overview of modern Irish fiction.

Logos and Muthos

Explores the philosophical dimensions present in the works of ancient Greek poets and playwrights.

Africa Writes Back to Self

By Evan M. Mwangi
Subjects: Literature

Explores the metafictional strategies of contemporary African novels rather than characterizing them primarily as a response to colonialism.

Byromania and the Birth of Celebrity Culture

Argues that Byron’s popularity marked the beginning of celebrity as a cultural identity.

Erotic Wisdom

A lively and highly readable commentary on one of Plato’s most beloved dialogues.

Fairy Tales

Overturns traditional views of the origins of fairy tales and documents their actual origins and transmission.

Decadent Culture in the United States

The paradoxes of the American decadent movement in the 1890s and 1920s.

Staging History

By Astrid Oesmann
Subjects: Literature

Examines Brecht's use of the theatre as a public arena for political change.

The Social Circulation of Poetry in the Mid-Northern Song

Explores how literati of China’s mid-Northern Song period developed a social and therapeutic tradition in poetry. Includes a number of translations of the witty poems of the period.

Restoring Paradise

Explores European and American esoteric traditions as reflected in literature and in art.

Writing the Radical Center

By John Beck
Subjects: Literature

Explores the cultural work of two important early-twentieth-century writers: the poet William Carlos Williams and the educator/philosopher John Dewey, both key figures in American democracy.

Historia de la donzella Teodor

The first English edition and critical study of an anonymous thirteenth-century text about the disputations of a learned young woman with a series of wise men.

Gambling, Game, and Psyche

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.

James Joyce and Heraldry

James Joyce and Heraldry demonstrates that heraldry is an essential key to the symbols of Joyce's major works. It is a clear, witty introduction to heraldry and the use of heraldic imagery by Western ...

Studies in Earlier Old English Prose

Edited by Paul E. Szarmach
Subjects: Literature

Old English prose before the late tenth century is examined in this collection of hitherto unpublished essays. Using a variety of techniques, the authors explore well-known and lesser-known texts in search ...