Browse by Subject: Literature

Randall Jarrell was the critic whose taste defined American poetry after World War II. Poetry and the Age, his first collection of criticism, was published in 1953. It has been in and out of print over the past 40 years and has become a classic of

The Dublin Helix is a puzzle book, taking as its method James Joyce's own playful manipulations of language and matching them with entertaining word searches, acrostics, and other enigmas. Knowles finds ways into Ulysses that have never before

These essays explore the various manifestations of the heroine in medieval French literature and her multiple relationships with discourse, both medieval and modern. From a discussion of 12th-century saints’ lives to an examination of 15th-century farce, they span the Middle Ages, both chronologically and generically. Focused yet considering a wide range of texts, they shine new light on the heroine and how she behaves, including how she herself uses discourse.

In the first book-length study of the comedic in "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man," Roy Gottfried argues that far from being a solemn work, Joyce's early masterpiece is covertly but determinedly comic. Specifically, he looks at the Portrait's

This lively retelling of the medieval Grail legend presents a unified version of the hero Perceval's quest. Illustrated with 34 miniatures from 13th- and 14th-century manuscripts, it offers a concise and coherent version of a myth that has fascinated

First published in 1928, Elizabeth Banks' autobiography tells the story of a pioneering, American woman journalist in London at a time when women wrote only for the society & fashion pages. A regular contributor to Punch, & the Daily News, Banks created a

Most analyses of Wharton's work describe her early triumph as a realist and her decline in the 1920s into sentimental fiction. Hoeller shows that Wharton created a dialogue between the two traditions & used the sentimental voice to express the truth of fe

Examines Shaw's work in the theater and the use of theater in his work. Part I, "Bernard Shaw, Director" was originally published in 1971 and remains the most authoritative work on this aspect of Shaw. Part II: "The Director as Interpreter:

Drawing on exhaustive study of over 100 manuscripts and several versions of Aesop's fables, Wheatley traces the use of the standard medieval Latin fable collection across Europe, the constructions of Aesop that affected that use, and the scholastic

In this introduction to the work of Italo Calvino, the author, a friend of Calvino's, traces his development as of one of the first and most defining of the postmodernists. Examines his ties to authors Beckett, Borges, Kafka, Conrad, and Twain.