Literature

In this work, the author argues that Renaissance humanism created a system of bigotry and eroded the practice of Christianity, and that Shakespeare, through his works, attempted to expose and ridicule that shift. The book examines six of Shakespeare's plays - "Titus Andronicus", "The Merchant of Venice", "Hamlet", "Othello", "King Lear" and "Macbeth" - and explores how they satirized humanism's grounding in Aristotle's philosophy of slavery and supremacy.

In "Viennese Jewish Modernism", Abigail Gillman challenges the conventional understanding of modernism as simply a break from tradition. Until recently, the study of Jewish modernism has centered on questions of Jewish and non-Jewish identity, generally ignoring the role Judaism played in the formulation of European modernism as a whole. By focusing on the works of major Viennese authors and thinkers - Freud, Hofmannsthal, Beer-Hofmann, and Schnitzler - both within and outside the contexts of Jewish identity, Abigail Gillman provides a profound new perspective on modernism.

Vivid characters and first-rate storytelling are the hallmarks of good popular fiction. "Encyclopedia of American Popular Fiction" is a new A-to-Z resource that covers those contemporary authors and works that have enjoyed commercial success in the United States but are typically neglected by more 'literary' guides.

This title discusses reviving forgotten twentieth-century novels.Despite the vigorous study of modern American fiction, today's readers are only familiar with a partial shelf of a vast library. Gordon Hutner describes the distorted, canonized history of the twentieth-century American novel as a record of modern classics insufficiently appreciated in their day but recuperated by scholars in order to shape the grand tradition of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Faulkner.

"Telling Images" investigates certain symbolic traditions in Geoffrey Chaucer's major poetry and their relationship to the visual culture of his time. With more than 150 illustrations, it continues an inquiry begun in the author's prize-winning study, "Chaucer and the Imagery of Narrative: The First Five Canterbury Tales".

This reference book is intended to acquaint and reacquaint readers with the brilliant short stories of Ring Lardner, who was the first and remains one of the best contemporary baseball writers - accurate, colloquial, and funny. His characters, both real and fictional, are handled here, as are the plots and details of some 35 short stories devoted almost exclusively to baseball.

This is a long-awaited study of the poetry of Venantius Fortunatus. In "The Humblest Sparrow", Michael Roberts illuminates the poetry of the sixth-century bishop and poet Venantius Fortunatus. Often regarded as an important transitional figure, Fortunatus wrote poetry that is seen to bridge the late classical and earlier medieval periods. Written in Latin, his poems combined the influences of classical Latin poets with a medieval tone, giving him a special place in literary history.

This is a geography of Faulkner's Mississippi.Charles S. Aiken, a native of Mississippi who was born a few miles from Oxford, has been thinking and writing about the geography of Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County for more than thirty years. "William Faulkner and the Southern Landscape" is the culmination of that long-term scholarly project. It is a fresh approach to a much-studied writer and a provocative meditation on the relationship between literary imagination and place.Four main geographical questions shape Aiken's journey to the family seat of the Compsons and the Snopeses.

This book examines Lee Smith's novel-length fiction and its powerful reflection of her personal search for and journey toward spiritual reconciliation. The protagonists of Smith's novels feel estranged from any sense of feminine sacredness as they struggle in their individual searches for a belief system that offers them hope and validation.

Spanish conquistadors attempted to conquer the New World nearly a century before the English colonists established a permanent settlement at Jamestown. This book examines the unsuccessful elements of Spain's attempt at expanding its empire in the Americas, focusing particularly on the misadventures of three conquistadors.