Literary Criticism

22626 books

Orwell: Essays: Introduction by John Carey - Hardcover

$50.00

by George Orwell (Author), John Carey (Introduction by), John Carey (Selected by)A generous and varied selection-the only hardcover edition available-of the literary and political writings of one of the greatest essayists of the twentieth century. Although best known as the author of Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-four, George Orwell left an even more lastingly significant achievement in his voluminous essays, which dealt with all the great social, political, and literary questions of the da...

Victorian Ethical Optics: Innocent Eyes and Aberrant Bodies - Hardcover

$179.55

by Natalie Prizel (Author)Victorian Ethical Optics asks how artists and authors in the Victorian period answer the ethical question of how one should live with others by turning to a more specific one: how should one look at others? Looking would seem to necessarily lead to interpretation and judgment, but this book shows how Victorian artists and authors imagined other ethical and optical relations. In an era in which aberrant, deformed, and disabled bodies proliferated--particularly those b...

Othello: No Fear Shakespeare Side-By-Side Plain English - Paperback

$7.99

by William Shakespeare (Author), Sparknotes (Author)Read Shakespeare's plays in all their brilliance--and understand what every word means! Don't be intimidated by Shakespeare! These popular guides make the Bard's plays accessible and enjoyable. Each No Fear guide contains: The complete text of the original play A line-by-line translation that puts the words into everyday language A complete list of characters, with descriptions Plenty of helpful commentary Author BiographyWILLIAM SHAKES...

$20.00

by Jacqueline Susann (Author)The 50th Anniversary Edition of Jacqueline Susann's All-Time Pop-Culture Classic The perfect gift for any Valley fan or your favorite Doll, featuring a new cover design - introduction by Simon Doonan - never-before-seen archival material - an essay from Jackie, "My Book Is Not Dirty " At a time when women were destined to become housewives, Jacqueline Susann let us dream. Anne, Neely, and Jennifer become best friends as struggling young women in New York City tryi...

The Book of Yokai, Expanded Second Edition: Mysterious Creatures of Japanese Folklore - Paperback

$32.95

by Michael Dylan Foster (Author), Shinonome Kijin (Illustrator)Significantly expanded and updated--a lively excursion into Japanese folklore and its increasing influence within global popular culture. Monsters, spirits, fantastic beings, and supernatural creatures haunt the folklore and popular culture of Japan. Broadly labeled yōkai, they appear in many forms, from tengu mountain goblins and kappa water sprites, to shape-shifting kitsune foxes and long-tongued ceiling-lickers. Popular toda...

Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of '70s and '80s Horror Fiction - Paperback

$26.99

by Grady Hendrix (Author)From the New York Times best-selling author of The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires comes a nostalgic and unflinchingly funny celebration of the horror fiction boom of the 1970s and '80s. Take a tour through the horror paperback novels of two iconic decades . . . if you dare. Page through dozens and dozens of amazing book covers featuring well-dressed skeletons, evil dolls, and knife-wielding killer crabs! Read shocking plot summaries that invoke devil ...

Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature - New and Expanded Edition - Paperback

$27.95

by Erich Auerbach (Author), Edward W. Said (Author), Willard R. Trask (Translator)More than half a century after its translation into English, Erich Auerbach's Mimesis remains a masterpiece of literary criticism. A brilliant display of erudition, wit, and wisdom, his exploration of how great European writers from Homer to Virginia Woolf depicted reality has taught generations how to read Western literature. This new expanded edition includes a substantial essay in introduction by Edward Said ...

$10.00

by Valerie Solanas (Author)First circulated on the streets of Greenwich Village in 1967, the SCUM Manifesto is a searing indictment of patriarchal culture in all its forms. Shifting fluidly between the worlds of satire and straightforward critique, this classic is a call to action--a radical feminist vision for a different world. This is an update of the essential AK Press edition, with a new foreword. "To see the SCUM Manifesto's humor, to let it crack you up page after page, is not to read ...

The Book of Yokai, Expanded Second Edition: Mysterious Creatures of Japanese Folklore - Hardcover

$45.00

Trollope the Traveller: Selections from Anthony Trollope's Travel Writings - Paperback

$27.38

by Anthony Trollope (Author), Graham Handley (Editor), Graham Handley (Introduction by)One of the most popular and beloved writers of the nineteenth century, Anthony Trollope was also an insatiably curious traveler. He was the quintessential Victorian voyager -- adventurous and energetic, with a fine sense of humor and irony -- and his career in the General Post Office gave him the opportunity, to travel widely. By 1882 he had been twice around the world.These selections from his reports on N...

Franz Kafka and Michel Foucault: Power, Resistance, and the Art of Self-Creation - Paperback

$93.94

by Nicholas Dungey (Author)Franz Kafka and Michel Foucault: Power, Resistance, and the Art of Self-Creation engages with important themes such as power, language, subjectivity and the possibility of fully developed postmodern account of the subject, resistance to power, and an aesthetic interpretation of life.Author BiographyNicholas Dungey is professor of political philosophy in the Department of Political Science at California State University, Northridge. Number of Pages: 186 Dimensions: 0...

Naming Jhumpa Lahiri: Canons and Controversies - Paperback

$93.94

by Lavina Dhingra (Editor), Floyd Cheung (Editor)This collection of nine essays by scholars in the fields of postcolonial, Asian American, and other literary studies explains why categorizing the best-selling, award-winning work of Jhumpa Lahiri as either universally "great" and/or ethnically specific matters, to whom, and how paying attention to these questions can deepen students', general readers', and academic scholars' appreciation for the politics surrounding Lahiri's works and understa...

The Hound of the Baskervilles - Paperback

$7.95

by Arthur Conan Doyle (Author), Darryl Jones (Author)'Mr Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic hound!' The mysterious death of Sir Charles Baskerville brings Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson to Dartmoor in the most famous of all of Arthur Conan Doyle's books. Is Sir Charles the latest victim of the ancestral Curse of the Baskervilles, which summons a demonic hound to stalk the moor and exact vengeance for a past misdeed, or is there a more modern, more prosaic explanation for the sudden...

Alfred Tennyson: The Major Works - Paperback

$14.95

by Alfred Tennyson (Author), Adam Roberts (Editor)Tennyson was the chief poetic voice of his age, and he remains one of the most highly regarded masters of the music and mood of verse. This authoritative edition brings together a unique combination of Tennyson's poetry and prose, spanning his entire career, from his striking juvenilia, through his career as Poet Laureate, to the powerful poetry he wrote in his ninth decade. It contains such classics as "The Lady of Shalott," "Morte d'Arthur,"...

$17.95

by Luis Valdez (Author)Drama. Latino American Studies. Luis Valdez is a leading figure in Hispanic theater with outstanding achievements from a variety of venues from flatbed truck and conventional stages to the silver and small screens. With his many successes Valdez has remained a rebel and an innovator, as well as the re-creator of Hispanic traditions. This book contains three of the most important and critically acclaimed Valdez plays. "Zoot Suit" is a play that deals with the infamous "P...

Witness Against the Beast: William Blake and the Moral Law - Paperback

$17.00

Report copyright infringementby E. P. Thompson (Author)Witness Against the Beast is a groundbreaking interdisciplinary study in which the renowned social historian E.P. Thompson contends that most of the assumptions scholars have made about William Blake are misleading and unfounded. Brilliantly reexamining Blake's cultural milieu and intellectual background, Thompson detects in Blake's poetry a repeated call to resist the usury and commercialism of the "Antichrist" embodied by contemporary s...

Ancient Greek Athletics: Primary Sources in Translation - Paperback

$71.80

by Charles H. Stocking (Author), Susan A. Stephens (Author)The Sourcebook of Ancient Greek Athletics offers the most comprehensive collection to date of primary sources in translation for the study of ancient Greek athletics. Because Greek athletics was such an essential feature of both Greek and Roman culture, there is an especially strong need for proper treatment and understanding of the texts and other media used to reconstruct practices and ideologies of ancient athletics. The sources in...

$16.15

by Philip Howell (Author), Ian Bogost (Editor), Christopher Schaberg (Editor)Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. The pub is an English institution. Yet its history has been obscured by myth and nostalgia. In this unique book, Philip Howell takes the public house as an object, or rather as a series of objects: he takes the pub apart and examines its constituent elements, from pub signs to the bar staff to the calling of "ti...

$24.46

Report copyright infringementby Van N. Eden (Author)Peripety by Van Eden is not just a memoir-it's a literary kaleidoscope, a genre-bending experiment that blurs the lines between reality and imagination, memoir and manifesto, satire and sincerity.Told through an epistolary dialogue with Calliope-the Greek Muse of epic poetry-this audacious narrative takes readers on a deeply personal yet wildly inventive journey through the author's life. From a law student thrust into the chaos of Vietnam t...

Jin Yong's Martial Arts Fiction and the Kungfu Industrial Complex - Paperback

$68.38

by Paul B. Foster (Author)Jin Yong's Martial Arts Fiction and the Kungfu Industrial Complex is an analysis of the role of Jin Yong's stories and characters in the construction of the "kungfu industrial complex"--a complicated, multi-dimensional cultural/business matrix related to the production and consumption of martial arts fiction, film, and legacy. The author first explicates the "kungfu cultural literacy" that makes Jin Yong's characters and stories intelligible and compelling to a wide ...

Gothic: An Illustrated History - Hardcover

$38.00

by Roger Luckhurst (Author)A richly illustrated history of the Gothic across a wide range of media, including architecture, literature, and film The word Gothic conjures associations with the dark and melancholy, the weird and feared, and haunted places and people. In Gothic, Roger Luckhurst offers readers an unprecedented look at the ways this uncanny style has manifested itself through architecture, literature, film, art, video games, and more. From the works of Victor Hugo and E. T. A. Hof...

Doctor Zhivago: Introdcution by John Bayley - Hardcover

$30.00

by Boris Pasternak (Author), Max Hayward (Translator), Manya Harari (Translator) In the grand tradition of the epic novel, Boris Pasternak's masterpiece brings to life the drama and immensity of the Russian Revolution through the story of the gifted physician-poet, Zhivago; the revolutionary, Strelnikov; and Lara, the passionate woman they both love. Caught up in the great events of politics and war that eventually destroy him and millions of others, Zhivago clings to the private world of fam...

The Spirit of Controversy: And Other Essays - Paperback

$12.95

by William Hazlitt (Author), Jon Mee (Editor), James Grande (Editor)William Hazlitt (1778-1830) is among the most brilliant critics and essayists to have ever written in the English language. Combative and insightful, he was close to two generations of romantic poets. His early friendship with Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth as a young man inspired him to a literary career, but he became disillusioned with them as apostates from the cause of liberty he associated with the Frenc...

Food and Emotions in Italian Women's Writing: A Reassessment - Hardcover

$113.40

by Patrizia Sambuco (Author)Food and Emotions in Italian Women's Writing discusses the relevance of food imagery in the writing of Italian women over a period of one hundred years, from the 1920s to the present day, while offering new ways to narrate women's history and creativity. In this groundbreaking work, Patrizia Sambuco shows how food imagery in different historical periods challenge established political discourses by conveying unexpressed, alternative, or transgressive emotions.Throu...

James Baldwin: The Last Interview: And Other Conversations - Paperback

$16.99

by James Baldwin (Author)Never before available, the unexpurgated last interview with James Baldwin "I was not born to be what someone said I was. I was not born to be defined by someone else, but by myself, and myself only." When, in the fall of 1987, the poet Quincy Troupe traveled to the south of France to interview James Baldwin, Baldwin's brother David told him to ask Baldwin about everything--Baldwin was critically ill and David knew that this might be the writer's last chance to speak ...

Reading Children's Literature: A Critical Introduction - Second Edition - Paperback

$101.99

by Carrie Hintz (Author), Eric L. Tribunella (Author)"Reading Children's Literature: A Critical Introduction offers insights into the major discussions and debates currently animating the field of children's literature. Informed by recent scholarship and interest in cultural studies and critical theory, it is a compact core text that introduces students to the historical contexts, genres, and issues of children's literature. A beautifully designed and illustrated supplement to individual lite...

The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction - Paperback

$9.99

by Ursula K. Le Guin (Author), Donna J. Haraway (Introduction by), Lee Bul (Illustrator)In The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, visionary author Ursula K. Le Guin retells the story of human origin by redefining technology as a cultural carrier bag rather than a weapon of domination. Hacking the linear, progressive mode of the Techno-Heroic, the Carrier Bag Theory of human evolution proposes: 'before the tool that forces energy outward, we made the tool that brings energy home.' Prior to the pr...

$9.65

by Thomas Carlyle (Author), David R. Sorensen (Author), Brent E. Kinser (Author)Thomas Carlyle's Past and Present (1843) was a prophetic warning of impending disaster for mid-Victorian Britain that was delivered in what the author described as a 'miraculous thunder-voice, from out of the centre of the world.' The impact of Carlyle's social criticism was immediate and profound, shaping debate about the 'The Condition of England' question well into the twentieth century and beyond, and serving ...

Samuel Johnson: The Major Works - Paperback

$16.95

by Samuel Johnson (Author), Donald Greene (Editor)Samuel Johnson's literary reputation rests on such a varied output that he defies easy description: poet, critic, lexicographer, travel writer, essayist, editor, and, thanks to his good friend Boswell, the subject of one of the most famous English biographies. This volume celebrates Johnson's astonishing talent by selecting widely across the full range of his work. It includes "London" and "The Vanity of Human Wishes" among other poems, and ma...

$17.00

by Aeschylus (Author), Robert Fagles (Translator), Robert Fagles (Introduction by)In the Oresteia Aeschylus addressed the bloody chain of murder and revenge within the royal family of Argos. As they move from darkness to light, from rage to self-governance, from primitive ritual to civilized institution, their spirit of struggle and regeneration becomes an everlasting song of celebration. In Agamemnon, a king's decision to sacrifice his daughter and turn the tide of war inflicts lasting damag...

$10.73

by Herman Melville (Author), Hester Blum (Editor)"It will be a strange sort of a book, tho', I fear; blubber is blubber you know; tho' you may get oil out of it, the poetry runs as hard as sap from a frozen maple tree;--& to cook the thing up, one must needs throw in a little fancy.... Yet I mean to give the truth of the thing, spite of this." Moby-Dick has a monumental reputation. Less well known are the novel's unexpectedly weird, funny, tantalizing, messy, and wondrous moments. Narrato...

$11.95

by Theocritus (Author), Anthony Verity (Translator), Richard Hunter (Introduction by)A key figure in the development of Western literature, the Greek poet Theocritus of Syracuse, was the inventor of "bucolic" or pastoral poetry in the first half of the third century BC. These vignettes of country life, which center on competitions of song and love are the foundational poems of the western pastoral tradition. They were the principal model for Virgil in the Eclogues and their influence can be s...