Boulder Books
Livres Canada Books
View Rights PortalAny reader who has ever visited Asia knows that the great bulk of Western-language fiction about Asian cultures turns on stereotypes. This book, a collection of essays, explores the problem of entering Asian societies through Western fiction, since this is the major port of entry for most school children, university students and most adults. In the thirteenth century, serious attempts were made to understand Asian literature for its own sake. Hau Kioou Choaan, a typical Chinese novel, was quite different from the wild and magical pseudo-Oriental tales. European perceptions of the Muslim world are centuries old, originating in medieval Christendom's encounter with Islam in the age of the Crusades. There is explicit and sustained criticism of medieval mores and values in Scott's novels set in the Middle Ages, and this is to be true of much English-language historical fiction of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Even mediocre novels take on momentary importance because of the pervasive power of India. The awesome, remote and inaccessible Himalayas inevitably became for Western writers an idealised setting for novels of magic, romance and high adventure, and for travellers' tales that read like fiction. Chinese fictions flourish in many guises. Most contemporary Hong Kong fiction reinforced corrupt mandarins, barbaric punishments and heathens. Of the novels about Japan published after 1945, two may serve to frame a discussion of Japanese behaviour as it could be observed (or imagined) by prisoners of war: Black Fountains and Three Bamboos.
Penny politics offers a new way to read early Victorian popular fiction such as Jack Sheppard, Sweeney Todd, and The Mysteries of London. It locates forms of radical discourse in the popular literature that emerged simultaneously with Brittan's longest and most significant people's movement. It listens for echoes of Chartist fiction in popular fiction. The book rethinks the relationship between the popular and political, understanding that radical politics had popular appeal and that the lines separating a genuine radicalism from commercial success are complicated and never absolute. With archival work into Newgate calendars and Chartist periodicals, as well as media history and culture, it brings together histories of the popular and political so as to rewrite the radical canon.
Through the Fiction of Phebe Gibbes places this prolific, newly recovered English writer at the centre of the revolutionary period. Gibbes's novels mark the struggles of women for agency in an expanding British empire, from the Seven Years' War to revolutions in American, Haiti and France. With Gibbes as a nexus in a lineage of women writers from Aphra Behn to Jane Austen, Kathryn S. Freeman offers a valuable perspective on the 'long eighteenth century', with Gibbes' own evolution mirroring that of the larger period. The study traces the development of Gibbes' authorial voice from satire to irony through a range of female characters subverting patriarchal oppression. Freeman guides the reader through patterns of narrative voice, concerns with gender and sexuality, and elements of wordplay through detailed discussion of five novels representing Gibbes' evolving representation of a subversive female subjectivity.
The politics of Englishness provides a digest of the debates about England and Englishness and a unique perspective on those debates. Not only does the book provide readers with ready access to and interpretation of the significant literature on the English Question, it also enables them to make sense of the political, historical and cultural factors which constitute that question. The book addresses the condition of England in three interrelated parts. The first looks at traditional narratives of the English polity and reads them as variations of a legend of political Englishness, of England as the exemplary exception, exceptional in its constitutional tradition and exemplary in its political stability. The second considers how the decay of that legend has encouraged anxieties about English political identity and about how English identity can be recognised within the new complexity of British governance. The third revisits these narratives and anxieties, examining them in terms of actual and metaphorical 'locations' of Englishness: the regional, the European and the British. ;
The short fiction that flourished in nineteenth-century France has attracted relatively little critical attention compared with the novel. This study focuses on some key stories by major authors of contes and nouvelles from the late 1820s to the 1890s, taking as a starting-point, aspects of narrative technique as a way of exploring not just characteristic strategies of short fiction, but also the ends to which they were put: recurrent themes, and the vision of mankind. Each chapter looks in some detail at three or four stories, referring briefly to other tales for illustration. The underlying point that emerges from this study is that the interest of a tale lies in the telling, not the events. ;
"Die Fragestellung dieser Schrift betrifft die Haltung der Umwelt zum Künstler. Nicht der Lebenslauf des Künstlers, sondern das Urteil von Mit- und Nachwelt wird uns als Quelle dienen, die Künstlerbiographik im weitesten Sinn; in ihrem Mittelpunkt steht die Legende vom Künstler. Wir meinen aufzeigen zu können, daß in aller Biographik gewisse Grundvorstellungen vom bildenden Künstler nachzuweisen sind, die, ihrem Wesen nach aus einheitlicher Wurzel verständlich, sich bis in die Anfänge der Geschichtsschreibung zurückverfolgen lassen. Bei aller Abwandlung und Umgestaltung scheinen sie bis in die jüngste Vergangenheit ihre Bedeutung nie ganz eingebüßt zu haben."
Edmund Spenser famously conceded to his friend Walter Raleigh that his method in The Faerie Queene 'will seeme displeasaunt' to those who would 'rather have good discipline delivered plainly in way of precepts, or sermoned at large'. Spenser's allegory and Elizabethan biblical exegesis is the first book-length study to clarify Spenser's comparison by introducing readers to the biblical typologies of contemporary sermons and liturgies. The result demonstrates that 'precepts ... sermoned at large' from lecterns and pulpits were themselves often 'clowdily enwrapped in allegoricall devises'. In effect, routine churchgoing prepared Spenser's first readers to enjoy and interpret The Faerie Queene. A wealth of relevant quotations invites readers to adopt an Elizabethan mindset and encounter the poem afresh. The 'chronicle history' cantos, Florimell's adventures, the Souldan episode, Mercilla's judgment on Duessa and even the two stanzas that close the Mutabilitie fragment, all come into sharper focus when juxtaposed with contemporary religious rhetoric.
Marcus Hammerschmitt schreibt Science-fiction-Erzählungen, die technologische Phantasie, psychologische Einsicht, Lust am gedanklichen Experiment und poetische Erfindungskraft vereinen. Wie Herbert W. Franke oder Peter Schattschneider basiert er seine Geschichten auf einer soliden Grundlage, entwickelt seine Szenarios und Fabeln spielerisch, verknüpft sie aber dramatisch mit den größeren Problemen von Ökologie einerseits und den Zweifeln und inneren Konflikten des einzelnen andererseits.
How might our friendships shape our politics? This book examines how contemporary American fiction has rediscovered the concept of civic friendship and revived a long tradition of imagining male friendship as interlinked with the promises and paradoxes of democracy in the United States. Bringing into dialogue the work of a wide range of authors - including Philip Roth, Paul Auster, Michael Chabon, Jonathan Lethem, Dinaw Mengestu, and Teju Cole - this innovative study advances a compelling new account of the political and intellectual fabric of the American novel today.
Prousts Werk ist nicht nur die Erweckung einer subjektiven Welt, sondern zugleich eine »Legende der Zeiten«, die wie Victor Hugos großes lyrisches Epos La légende des siècles von den kulturellen Uranfängen bis in die Moderne reicht. Die in diesem Band versammelten Aufsätze gehen den großen überpersönlichen Schichtungen in Prousts Zeitkunstwerk nach: von der alttestamentarischen und antiken Welt über Mittelalter und Renaissance, das Zeitalter der französischen Klassik bis zu der noch im Werden begriffenen Moderne mit den jüngsten Errungenschaften der Technik: Auto, Flugzeug und Telephon. Der Band enthält die Beiträge des Konstanzer Symposiums der Marcel Proust Gesellschaft vom 1. bis 4. Juli 2004.
We all die at the end offers a survey of contemporary end-of-the-world fiction, spanning literature, children's fiction, video games, theatre and film. It draws on eco-critical philosophy and narrative theory to show ways in which the climate crisis is reorienting storytelling in the face of foreseeable human extinction. In the process, it argues that such stories have a role to play in helping us come to terms with the severity and scale of the crisis that we face.
Dieser Abschlussband von Lems Essays enthält nur Arbeiten, die in der Insel-Ausgabe der Essays (1981) nicht enthalten waren. Stärker als die früheren Bände ist dieser persönlich bestimmt. Einmal handelt es sich um Essays, die autobiografisch sind oder sich auf das eigene Werk beziehen. Zum anderen gibt es Vorworte zu Rezensionen von Büchern und Autoren, die Lem menschlich besonders nahestehen: Szymon Kobyliński, Władysław Bartoszewski und Jan Józef Szczepański. Neben Rezensionen, die Lem deutsche RIAS Berlin schrieb, vornehmlich über populärwissenschaftliche und pseudowissenschaftliche Bücher, aus denen Lems rationalistische Denkhaltung offenbar wird, und spekulativen Aufsätzen enthält dieser Band auch einige von Lems scharfsinnigsten Kritiken zu Autoren, denen er sich geistesverwandt fühlt oder die ihm widerstreben: Dick, Borges, die Strugatzkis und eine scharfe Abrechnung mit der Gattung, der der Großteil von Lems eigenem Werk zugezählt wird: der Science-Fiction. Eine beachtliche Anzahl der Essays schrieb Lem gleich in deutscher Sprache. Weitere Essays von Stanisław Lem liegen in den Bänden Sade und die Spieltheorie und Über außersinnliche Wahrnehmungen vor.
This edition breaks with the usual practice by presenting the 1601 quarto version of Ben Jonson's play, set in Florence, instead of the revised 1616 version, set in London. Robert S. Miola presents a meticulously edited and modernised version of the play as originally acted by the Lord Chamberlain's Men (with Shakespeare in the cast) in 1598. Miola explores the relevance of the Italian setting, particularly the potent, variegated, and fascinating body of myth and legend that constituted Italy for English audiences in 1598. The editor also illuminates the dramatic context of the play, while paying detailed attention to the social, political, and religious contexts. ;
Invasions is an ambitious, new and authoritative study of one of the defining cultural products of the Victorian and Edwardian eras. By the outbreak of war in 1914 invasion-scare fiction had profoundly changed British society, becoming not just a vibrant part of popular culture, but a reference point among military planners, advertisers, and politicians. This intersection between politics and culture, between entertainment and war planning, sets invasion-scare stories apart as one of the most versatile and interesting fictional products in modern British history. Building on recent work in both history and literature studies, Invasions is the first study of invasion-scare fiction to examine both the form (that is, fiction) and the function (the political argument) of the genre.
Manga-Style: Mit Ash und der Frostherz-Crew gegen Schneemonster. In einem Ozean aus Schnee erlebten Ash und die Crew der Frostherz, ein Schlitten voller tollkühner Pioniere, schon einige waghalsige Abenteuer. Doch nun, im Finale der Legende von Frostherz, müssen sie sich der größten Bedrohung ihrer bisherigen Reise stellen: Dämonenführer Shaard hat den Verschlinger befreit, den die Yetis nicht ohne Grund Weltenfresser nennen. Nur wenn die Völker des Schneemeers ihre Kräfte mit denen der Leviathane vereinen, können sie das Monster bezwingen. Doch die Stämme bleiben so gespalten wie immer und Ashs Mutter, die Kommandantin Sturmbändigerin, kann ihren Hass gegen die Leviathane nicht überwinden. In einem letzten, verzweifelten Versuch reisen Ash und die Frostherz zu den heiligen Yeti-Landen, deren Zutritt Menschen eigentlich verboten ist, um dort die Wahrheit über den Weltenfresser und seinen wunden Punkt zu entlarven. Das Finale der cool illustrierten Trilogie in den Yeti-Landen. Spannender Abenteuerroman für Comic- und Wenigleser, Fantasy- und Manga-Fans. Eine schneeweiße Wildnis voller Yetis und Monster – mega spannend und cool zugleich. Der Junge Ash ist ein sympathischer Held mit besonderen Talenten und komplizierten Familienverhältnissen. Höhepunkt der epischen Geschichte über Tapferkeit, Loyalität und Freundschaft. Mit zahlreichen Illustrationen im angesagten Manga-Stil – ein Riesen-Erfolg in Großbritannien.