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      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        January 2019

        The secret life of romantic comedy

        by Celestino Deleyto

        The secret life of romantic comedy offers a new approach to one of the most popular and resilient genres in the history of Hollywood. Steering away from the rigidity and ideological determinism of traditional accounts of the genre, this book advocates a more flexible theory, which allows the student to explore the presence of the genre in unexpected places, extending the concept to encompass films that are not usually considered romantic comedies. Combining theory with detailed analyses of a selection of films, including To Be or Not to Be (1942), Rear Window (1954), Kiss Me Stupid (1964), Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989) and Before Sunset (2004), the book aims to provide a practical framework for the exploration of a key area of contemporary experience - intimate matters - through one of its most powerful filmic representations: the genre of romantic comedy. Original and entertaining, The secret life of romantic comedy is perfect for students and academics of film and film genre.

      • Trusted Partner
        Literary studies: plays & playwrights
        May 2017

        An Humorous Day's Mirth

        by George Chapman

        by Edited by Charles Edelman. Series edited by David Bevington, Richard Dutton, Alison Findlay, Helen Ostovich

        George Chapman is known today as a translator of Homer and as the author of dark tragedies such as Bussy D'Ambois. An Humorous Day's Mirth was one of the most popular plays of the Elizabethan era. Not only was it the Rose Theatre's greatest box-office success of 1597, it also presented an entirely new type of comedy, one that has profoundly influenced comic writing up to the present day. This play is the English theatre's first 'comedy of humours', in which the attitudes, behaviour, and social pretensions of contemporary men and women are satirised. Charles Edelman's is the first fully annotated, modern spelling edition of this long-neglected play. In his extensive introduction and commentary, Edelman discusses the intellectual, philosophical and theatrical background, and shows that the play would delight the readers and audiences of today as much as those in 1597.

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        July 2010

        An Humorous Day's Mirth

        by George Chapman

        by David Bevington, Charles Edelman, Richard Dutton, Alison Findlay, Helen Ostovich

        George Chapman is known today as a translator of Homer and as the author of dark tragedies such as Bussy D'Ambois. An Humorous Day's Mirth, written in 1597, was one of the most popular plays of the Elizabethan era. Not only was Chapman's play the Rose Theatre's greatest box-office success of that year, but it also presented an entirely new type of comedy, one that has profoundly influenced comic writing up to the present day. This play is the English theatre's first 'comedy of humours', in which the attitudes, behaviour, and social pretensions of contemporary men and women are satirised. Charles Edelman's is the first fully annotated, modern spelling edition of this long-neglected play. In his extensive introduction and commentary, Edelman discusses the intellectual, philosophical and theatrical background to Chapman's comedy, and shows that An Humorous Day's Mirth would delight the readers and audiences of today as much as it did those in 1597. ;

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        October 2022

        Comic Spenser

        by Victoria Coldham-Fussell, Joshua Samuel Reid

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        October 2018

        Clive Barker

        Dark imaginer

        by Sorcha Ní Fhlainn

        Clive Barker: Dark imaginer explores the diverse literary, film and visionary creations of the polymathic and influential British artist Clive Barker. In this necessary and timely collection, innovative essays by leading scholars in the fields of literature, film and popular culture explore Barker's contribution to gothic, fantasy and horror studies, interrogating his creative legacy. The volume consists of an extensive introduction and twelve groundbreaking essays that critically reevaluate Barker's oeuvre. These include in-depth analyses of his celebrated and lesser known novels, short stories, theme park designs, screen and comic book adaptations, film direction and production, sketches and book illustrations, as well as responses to his material from critics and fan communities. Clive Barker: Dark imaginer reveals the breadth and depth of Barker's distinctive dark vision, which continues to fascinate and flourish.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        December 2025

        Queer as folklore

        The hidden queer history of myths and monsters

        by Sacha Coward

        A celebration of queer history like you've never seen it before. Queer as folklore travels across centuries and continents to reveal the unsung heroes and villains of storytelling, magic and fantasy. Featuring images from archives, galleries and museums around the world, each chapter investigates the queer history of different mythic and folkloric characters, both old and new. Leaving no headstone unturned, Sacha Coward takes you on a wild ride through the night from ancient Greece to the main stage of RuPaul's Drag Race, visiting cross-dressing pirates, radical fairies and the graves of the 'queerly departed' along the way. Queer communities have often sought refuge in the shadows and created safe spaces in underworlds. But these forgotten narratives tell stories of resilience that deserve to be heard. Join any Pride march and you will see a glorious display of papier-mâché unicorn heads, drag queens in mermaid tails and more fairy wings than you can shake a trident at. These are not just accessories: they are queer symbols with historic roots. To truly understand who queer people are today, we must confront the twisted tales of the past.

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        June 2019

        Titus Andronicus

        by Jim Bulman, Michael Friedman, Carol Chillington Rutter, Alan Dessen

        Michael D. Friedman's second edition of this stage history of Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus adds an examination of twelve major theatrical productions and one film that appeared in the years 1989-2009. Friedman identifies four lines of descent in the recent performance history of the play: the stylised, realistic, darkly comic, and political approaches, which culminate in Julie Taymor's harrowing film Titus (1999). Aspects of Taymor's eclectic vision of ancient Rome under the grip of modern fascism were copied by several subsequent productions, making Titus the most characteristic, as well as the most influential, contemporary performance of the play. Friedman's work extends Alan Dessen's original study to include Taymor's film, along with chapters devoted to the efforts of international directors including Gregory Doran, Silviu Purcarete, and Yukio Ninagawa.

      • 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
        June 2025

        Leselöwen Comics 1. Klasse - Fußball, Tore, große Träume

        Die Nr. 1 für den Lesestart als Comic-Buch! - Mit Leselernschrift ABeZeh - Erstlesebuch für Kinder ab 6 Jahren

        by Michael Petrowitz, Kim Schmidt

        Tom und Emma lieben Fußball! Emma steht im Tor, würde aber am liebsten auf dem Feld mitmischen. Und Tom ist Stürmer, aber seine Hände landen irgendwie immer am Ball. So gewinnen sie nie den Pokal. Da hat ihr Trainer eine Idee. Ob die Mannschaft das Spiel doch noch gewinnen kann? Schenken Sie Ihrem Kind das bewährte Erfolgskonzept zum Lesenlernen - jetzt als Comic! Lesenlernen ganz einfach - mit den Leselöwen Comics für die 1. Klasse . Perfekt für Leseanfänger*innen ab 6 Jahren : Lesenlernen mit Comics = hohe Motivation und schneller Erfolg Kleine Texthäppchen für großen Lesespaß Eine tolle Fußballgeschichte, mit vielen spannenden Toren Neues Konzept angepasst an die Bedürfnisse von Erstleser*innen , die sich mit dem Lesen noch schwertun Großartiges Geschenk für Leseanfänger*innen Seit über 50 Jahren lernen Kinder mit den Leselöwen erfolgreich lesen Über 29 Millionen verkaufte Exemplare – Die Nr. 1 in Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz Spannende Erstlesebücher , unverzichtbar zum Lesenlernen mit Spaß Von Lehrer*innen mitentwickelt und empfohlen , von Grundschüler*innen getestet Einfache, kurze Sätze in großer Fibelschrift unterstützen optimal den Leselern-Prozess Genau auf die Interessen und Lesefähigkeiten von Grundschüler*innen ausgerichtet Mit Fragenteil zur Förderung des Textverständnisses

      • Trusted Partner
        Biography & True Stories
        November 2024

        Walking in the dark

        James Baldwin, my father and I

        by Douglas Field

        A moving exploration of the life and work of the celebrated American writer, blending biography and memoir with literary criticism. Since James Baldwin's death in 1987, his writing - including The Fire Next Time, one of the manifestoes of the Civil Rights Movement, and Giovanni's Room, a pioneering work of gay fiction - has only grown in relevance. Douglas Field was introduced to Baldwin's essays and novels by his father, who witnessed the writer's debate with William F. Buckley at Cambridge University in 1965. In Walking in the dark, he embarks on a journey to unravel his life-long fascination and to understand why Baldwin continues to enthral us decades after his death. Tracing Baldwin's footsteps in France, the US and Switzerland, and digging into archives, Field paints an intimate portrait of the writer's life and influence. At the same time, he offers a poignant account of coming to terms with his father's Alzheimer's disease. Interweaving Baldwin's writings on family, illness, memory and place, Walking in the dark is an eloquent testament to the enduring power of great literature to illuminate our paths.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        March 2022

        Comic empires

        Imperialism in cartoons, caricature, and satirical art

        by Richard Scully, Alan Lester, Andrekos Varnava

        Comic empires is a unique collection of new research exploring the relationship between imperialism and political cartoons, caricature, and satirical art. Edited by leading scholars across both fields (and with contributions from contexts as diverse as Egypt, Australia, the United States, and China, as well as Europe) the volume provides new perspectives on well-known events, and illuminates little-known players in the 'great game' of empire in modern times. Some of the finest comic art of the period is deployed as evidence, and examined seriously, in its own right, for the first time. Accessible to students of history at all levels, Comic empires is a major addition to the world-leading 'Studies in Imperialism' series, as well as standing alone as an innovative and significant contribution to the ever-growing international field of comics studies.

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        September 2019

        Queer Objects

        by Chris Brickell, Judith Collard

        Queer lives give rise to a vast array of objects: the things we fill our houses with, the gifts we share with our friends, the commodities we consume at work and at play, the clothes and accessories we wear, and the analogue and digital technologies we use to communicate with one another. But what makes an object queer? The sixty-three chapters in Queer Objects consider this question in relation to lesbian, gay and transgender communities across time, cultures and space. In this unique international collaboration, well-known and newer writers traverse world history to write about items ranging from ancient Egyptian tomb paintings and Roman artefacts to political placards, snapshots, sex toys and the smartphone. Fabulous, captivating, transgressive.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        January 2026

        A queer scrapbook

        Britain and Ireland since 1945

        by Justin Bengry, Matt Cook, Rebecca Jennings, E-J Scott

        A beautifully illustrated compendium of LGBTIQ+ life. A queer scrapbook offers a treasure trove of LGBTIQ+ histories from across Britain and Ireland. Packed with materials, from interviews and newspaper articles to photographs and flyers, the book explores urban, rural and regional queer life since 1945. Commentaries and short essays introduce a changing queer landscape, spotlighting four broad themes: home and family, sex and socialising, arts and culture and politics and activism. The book delves into the meaning and experiences of domesticity and parenting and explores the sometimes unexpected places LGBTIQ+ people met to have fun. It examines the importance of creative work in forming community and identity and shows how people fought injustice and advocated for equal rights. Collecting has been a way for the marginalised to explore and assert identity and community. A queer scrapbook vividly illustrates the diversity of queer and trans lives across the British and Irish isles since the Second World War.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        February 2013

        Comedy, caricature and the social order, 1820–50

        by Brian Maidment

        Offering an overview of the marketplace for comic images between 1820 and 1850, this book makes a case for the interest and importance of a largely neglected area of visual culture. It considers the impact on the development of print culture of the emergent, but soon widespread, use of lithography and wood engraving, both capable of integrating texts and images cheaply and imaginatively on the printed page. Drawing on a wide range of commercially produced print genres, including song books, play-texts, comic annuals and magazines as well as single plate and series of caricatures, this book traces the ways in which Regency and early Victorian visual humour both sustains some of the characteristics of an earlier caricature tradition while also beginning to develop new ways of analyzing and coping with social change through comic forms and genres. ;

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        March 2026

        Black socialities

        Urban resistance and the struggle beyond recognition in Paris

        by Vanessa Eileen Thompson

        From author: This is a cutting-edge exploration of black urban politics in Parisian racialized working class and working poor districts, the formation of abolition geography, and the possibilities of new forms of political blackness. In Black Socialities. Urban resistance and the struggle beyond recognition in Paris, Vanessa E. Thompson argues that black urban politics in the French banlieues are multi-racial and spatially grounded towards abolition. Based on a close engagement with urban black activist practices against racial imagery in the city, policing and state racism, and housing insecurity, she shows how radical anti-racism goes beyond struggles for recognition and unfolds alongside new formations of political blackness that is based on urban conviviality. This form of black politics has much to teach us in this current conjuncture of liberal anti-racism and state recognition politics.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        June 2021

        Acts of supremacy

        by J. Bratton, Richard Cave, Brendan Gregory, Michael Pickering

        Imperialist discourse interacted with regional and class discourses. Imperialism's incorporation of Welsh, Scots and Irish identities, was both necessary to its own success and one of its most powerful functions in terms of the control of British society. Most cultures have a place for the concept of heroism, and for the heroic figure in narrative fiction; stage heroes are part of the drama's definition of self, the exploration and understanding of personal identity. Theatrical and quasi-theatrical presentations, whether in music hall, clubroom, Shakespeare Memorial Theatre or the streets and ceremonial spaces of the capital, contributed to that much-discussed national mood. This book examines the theatre as the locus for nineteenth century discourses of power and the use of stereotype in productions of the Shakespearean history canon. It discusses the development of the working class and naval hero myth of Jack Tar, the portrayal of Ireland and the Irish, and the portrayal of British India on the spectacular exhibition stage. The racial implications of the ubiquitous black-face minstrelsy are focused upon. The ideology cluster which made up the imperial mindset had the capacity to re-arrange and re-interpret history and to influence the portrayal of the tragic or comic potential of personal dilemmas. Though the British may have prided themselves on having preceded America in the abolition of slavery and thus outpacing Brother Jonathan in humanitarian philanthropy, abnegation of hierarchisation and the acceptance of equality of status between black and white ethnic groups was not part of that achievement.

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        March 2021

        Queer exceptions

        Solo performance in neoliberal times

        by Stephen Greer

        Queer exceptions is a study of contemporary solo performance in the UK and Western Europe that explores the contentious relationship between identity, individuality and neoliberalism. With diverse case studies featuring the work of La Ribot, David Hoyle, Oreet Ashery, Bridget Christie, Tanja Ostojic, Adrian Howells and Nassim Soleimanpour, the book examines the role of singular or 'exceptional' subjects in constructing and challenging assumed notions of communal sociability and togetherness, while drawing fresh insight from the fields of sociology, gender studies and political philosophy to reconsider theatre's attachment to singular lives and experiences. Framed by a detailed exploration of arts festivals as encapsulating the material, entrepreneurial circumstances of contemporary performance-making, this is the first major critical study of solo work since the millennium.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        November 2021

        De-centering queer theory

        Communist sexuality in the flow during and after the Cold War

        by Bogdan Popa, Gurminder Bhambra

        De-centering queer theory seeks to reorient queer theory to a different conception of bodies and sexuality derived from Eastern European Marxism. The book articulates a contrast between the concept of the productive body, which draws its epistemology from Soviet and avant-garde theorists, and Cold War gender, which is defined as the social construction of the body. The first part of the book concentrates on the theoretical and visual production of Eastern European Marxism, which proposed an alternative version of sexuality to that of western liberalism. In doing so it offers a historical angle to understand the emergence not only of an alternative epistemology, but also of queer theory's vocabulary. The second part of the book provides a Marxist, anti-capitalist archive for queer studies, which often neglects to engage critically with its liberal and Cold War underpinnings.

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