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      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        August 2022

        Edmund Spenser and the romance of space

        by Tamsin Badcoe

        Edmund Spenser and the romance of space advances the exploration of literary space into new areas, firstly by taking advantage of recent interdisciplinary interests in the spatial qualities of early modern thought and culture, and secondly by reading literature concerning the art of cosmography and navigation alongside imaginative literature with the purpose of identifying shared modes and preoccupations. The book looks to the work of cultural and historical geographers in order to gauge the roles that aesthetic subjectivity and the imagination play in the development of geographical knowledge: contexts ultimately employed by the study to achieve a better understanding of the place of Ireland in Spenser's writing. The study also engages with recent ecocritical approaches to literary environments, such as coastlines, wetlands, and islands, thus framing fresh readings of Spenser's handling of mixed genres.

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        October 2024

        Queer cinema in contemporary France

        Five directors

        by Todd Reeser

        Jacques Martineau, Olivier Ducastel, Alain Guiraudie, Sébastien Lifshitz and Céline Sciamma. The films of these five major French directors exemplify queer cinema in the twenty-first century. Comprehensive in scope, Queer cinema in contemporary France traces the development of the meaning of queer across these directors' careers, from their earliest, often unknown films to their later, major films with wide international release. Whether having sex on the beach or kissing in the high school swimming pool, these cinematic characters create or embody forward-looking, open-ended and optimistic forms of queerness and modes of living, loving and desiring. Whether they are white, beur or black, whether they are lesbian, gay, trans* or queer, they open up hetero- and cisnormativity to new ways of being a gendered subject.

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        March 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.

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        January 2023

        The gift of narrative in medieval England

        by Nicholas Perkins

        This invigorating study places medieval romance narrative in dialogue with theories and practices of gift and exchange, opening new approaches to questions of storytelling, agency, gender and materiality in some of the most engaging literature from the Middle Ages. It argues that the dynamics of the gift are powerfully at work in romances: through exchanges of objects and people; repeated patterns of love, loyalty and revenge; promises made or broken; and the complex effects that time works on such objects, exchanges and promises. Ranging from the twelfth century to the fifteenth, and including close discussions of poetry by Chaucer, the Gawain-Poet and romances in the Auchinleck Manuscript, this book will prompt new ideas and debate amongst students and scholars of medieval literature, as well as anyone curious about the pleasures that romance narratives bring.

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        March 2024

        Approaches 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?

      • Trusted Partner
        November 2019

        Find me in the Storm

        by Kira Mohn

        Not a single soul as far as the eye can see. Just sea, cliffs and the beach. And a lighthouse. It’s a wondrously beautiful place – not that Airin has a chance to enjoy it. The lighthouse has been converted into a cosy living space available for rent, and 24-year-old Airin has to look after the property while at the same time running her own bed and breakfast in Castledunn. It’s a lot of work for one person, but normally everything runs smoothly. Until Joshua, the nephew of the lighthouse owner, moves in. Arrogant and priggish, he complains ceaselessly about everything. Airin feels like strangling him. Or kissing him. Who cares, just as long as he stops talking!   16+ years The third volume of a unique romance trilogy about three young women, a lighthouse and love. All titles can be read separately! Rousing characters and a fine dry humor For all fans of Mona Kasten, Laura Kneidl and Colleen Hoover! More than 60.000 copies of this series were sold!

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        February 2024

        Sir Philip Sidney: The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia

        The New Arcadia, Second Revised Edition

        by Victor Skretkowicz, Elisabeth Chaghafi, J. B. Lethbridge

        Shipwrecks, gory battle scenes, cross-dressing, toxic relationships, abduction, torture (psychological and physical), comical country bumpkins, and, of course, love and poetry -Sir Philip Sidney's witty pastoral romance The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia is the classic that has it all in terms of entertainment factors. Modern readers mostly know Arcadia in its complete 'old' version, but it is the New Arcadia (published in 1590) that was the most influential and most widely imitated literary text of the sixteenth century. While preserving the basic plot - a ruler attempts to escape an alarming oracle by moving his family to the countryside and engaging in shepherd-cosplay until the arrival of two foreign princes triggers a chain of events leading to the fulfilment of the oracle - this version adds further narrative strands and introduces ambitious revisions that showcase Sidney's stylistic brilliance as a prose writer.

      • Trusted Partner
        September 2019

        Save me from the Night

        by Kira Mohn

        After a terrible blow of fate throws her life into confusion, Seanna needs desperately to get away from it all. She’s come to the village of Castledunn in the hope of getting her life back in order. The wild countryside of Ireland’s west coast and the slow pace of rural life give her new energy. Her job behind the bar in the village’s only pub provides a comforting sense of routine. Then the pub changes hands, bought by the attractive, but stubborn Neall Kennan, who throws Seanna’s feelings into turmoil. Not only is she attracted to him, she’s also reminded of her own past. It’s more than Seanna can bear.   16+ years The second volume of a unique romance trilogy about three young women, a lighthouse and love. All titles can be read separately! Rousing characters and a fine dry humor For all fans of Mona Kasten, Laura Kneidl and Colleen Hoover! More than 60.000 copies of this series were sold!

      • Trusted Partner
        July 2019

        Show me the Stars

        by Kira Mohn

        Take Some Time Out! The headline grabs Liv’s attention as she browses, depressed, through the job ads. Although she’s only 22 and just starting out in journalism, a recent disastrous interview cost her a new job. The ad sounds like a dream come true: someone needs a house-sitter to mind a lighthouse on the Irish coast for six months!    Taking time out is exactly what Liv needs to clear her head and recharge her batteries. She sends off her application and a few weeks later finds herself standing in front of her new home. Next to a good-looking Irishman who makes her heart beat faster. She doesn’t know it yet, but he’ll break her heart, too…   16+ years The beginning of a unique romance trilogy about three young women, a lighthouse and love. All titles can be read separately. Rousing characters and a fine dry humor For all fans of Mona Kasten, Laura Kneidl and Colleen Hoover! More than 60.000 copies of this series were sold!

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        November 2024

        Queer beyond London

        by Matt Cook, Alison Oram

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        March 2024

        How to be multiple

        The philosophy of twins

        by Helena de Bres, Julia de Bres

        In How to be multiple, Helena de Bres - a twin herself - argues that twinhood is a unique lens for examining our place in the world and how we relate to other people. The way we think about twins offers remarkable insights into some of the deepest questions of our existence, from what is a person? to how should we treat one another? Deftly weaving together literary and cultural history, philosophical enquiry and personal experience, de Bres examines such thorny issues as binary thinking, objectification, romantic love and friendship, revealing the limits of our individualistic perspectives. In this illuminating, entertaining book, wittily illustrated by her twin sister, de Bres ultimately suggests that to consider twinhood is to imagine the possibility of a more interconnected, capacious human future.

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        October 2024

        The 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.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        March 2023

        Love and revolution

        A politics for the deep commons

        by Matt York

        Based on award-winning research, Love and revolution brings classical and contemporary anarchist thought into a mutually beneficial dialogue with a global cross-section of ecological, anti-capitalist, feminist and anti-racist activists - discussing real-life examples of the loving-caring relations that underpin many contemporary struggles. Such a (r)evolutionary love is discovered to be a common embodied experience among the activists contributing to this collective vision, manifested as a radical solidarity, as political direct action, as long-term processes of struggle, and as a deeply relational more-than-human ethics. This book provides an essential resource for all those interested in building a free society grounded in solidarity and care, and offers a timely contribution to contemporary movement discourse.

      • Trusted Partner
      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        June 2017

        Queering the Gothic

        by William Hughes, Andrew Smith

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        January 2020

        The Shakespearean comic and tragicomic

        by Richard Hillman

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        September 2023

        Dido, Queen of Carthage

        by Christopher Marlowe

        by Ruth Lunney

        A city burns, and a queen burns for love: Dido, Queen of Carthage re-imagines one of the great legendary stories. The encounter between a wandering hero and an African queen engenders love and loss, eroticism and absurdity, childish simplicity and compelling eloquence. Written for children to perform in the 1580s, Dido is nonetheless a remarkable play, revolutionary in its approach to character, blank verse, and audiences. This volume is the first single-text scholarly edition in English. It is an indispensable resource for scholars, students, and theatre practitioners. The edition features an accessible text, lightly punctuated for ease of reading and speaking. It incorporates new research into authorship (which indicates that Marlowe wrote the play), a detailed analysis of Dido's sources, and a survey of criticism; it assesses the evidence for early performances and provides extensive information about modern productions.

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        May 2023

        Counterfactual Romanticism

        by Damian Walford Davies

        Innovatively extending counterfactual thought experiments from history and the social sciences to literary historiography, criticism and theory, Counterfactual Romanticism reveals the ways in which the shapes of Romanticism are conditioned by that which did not come to pass. Exploring various modalities of counterfactual speculation and inquiry across a range of Romantic-period authors, genres and concerns, this collection offers a radical new purchase on literary history, on the relationship between history and fiction, and on our historicist methods to date - and thus on the Romanticisms we (think we) have inherited. Counterfactual Romanticism provides a ground-breaking method of re-reading literary pasts and our own reading presents; in the process, literary production, texts and reading practices are unfossilised and defamiliarised.

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