Showing titles in Literary History & Criticism

Some of the most rewarding pages in Henry Miller's books concern his self-education as a writer. He tells, as few great writers ever have, how he set his goals, how he discovered the excitement of using words, how the books he read influenced him, and how he learned to draw on his own experience.

Fairy tales shape how we see the world, so what happens when you identify more with the Beast than Beauty? Amanda Leduc looks at fairy tales from the Brothers Grimm to Disney, showing us how they influence our expectations and behaviour and linking the quest for disability rights to new kinds of stories that celebrate difference.

Science fiction can often seem to be pure imaginative fantasy, but many authors are more fluent in real science than many readers and viewers may realize. Professor Charles L. Adler of St. Mary’s College of Maryland was the perfect choice for this subject, as he is both a longtime science-fiction fan and a real-world scientist. Professor Adler’s talent for using literature to shine a light on science - both the accurate and not-so-accurate versions employed by creators, spanning two centuries - makes this course a great survey for fans of both science fact and science fiction.

When her body began to change at 11 years old, Febos understood immediately that her meaning to other people had changed with it. By her teens, she defined herself based on these perceptions and by the romantic relationships she threw herself into headlong. Over time, Febos increasingly questioned the stories she’d been told about herself and the habits and defences she’d developed over years of trying to meet others’ expectations.

Richard Ellmann has revised and expanded his definitive work on Joyce's life to include newly discovered primary material, including details of a failed love affair, a limerick about Samuel Beckett, a dream notebook, previously unknown letters, and much more.

The Prince of Hazel & Oak by John Lenahan Part 2 of the Shadowmagic Series Podiobooks no. 1 voted podcast returns for another action and laugh packed sequel. Finally listeners can find out what happened to Conor on his return to the Real World from Tir na Nog. (He was arrested for his father’s murder.) Join Conor (and a very confused Scranton cop) as they try to survive The Prince of Duir's chaotic return to The Land. The Prince of Hazel & Oak is the second novel from real life magician and comedian - John Lenahan. John’s first novel, Shadowmagic, is available in paperback, epub and Kindle...

مجموعة من الكتب الصوتية الكاملة وأشهر المؤلفات للدكتور مصطفى محمود مصطفى محمود (27 ديسمبر 1921 - 31 أكتوبر 2009)، فيلسوف وطبيب وكاتب مصري. هو مصطفى كمال محمود حسين آل محفوظ، من الأشراف وينتهي نسبه إلى علي زين العابدين. توفي والده عام 1939 بعد سنوات من الشلل، درس الطب وتخرج عام 1953 وتخصَّص في الأمراض الصدرية، ولكنه تفرغ للكتابة والبحث عام ...

Once a week, in late 18th-century London, writers of contrasting politics and personalities gathered around a dining table. The veal and boiled vegetables on offer at 72 St Pauls Churchyard may have been unappetising, but the company was convivial and the conversation was at once brilliant, unpredictable and profound. The host was Joseph Johnson, publisher and bookseller: a man at the heart of literary life.

When the Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to Bob Dylan in 2016, the literary world was up in arms. How could the world's most prestigious book prize be awarded to a famously cantankerous singer-songwriter in his 70s, who wouldn't even deign to make a victory speech? In Why Dylan Matters, Harvard professor Richard F. Thomas answers that question with magisterial erudition.

The chances of Cornish gentlewoman Maria Branwell even meeting the poor Irish curate Patrick Brontë in Regency England, let alone falling passionately in love, were remote. Yet Maria and Patrick did meet, making a life together in the heartland of the industrial revolution. An unlikely romance and novel wedding were soon followed by the birth of six children. They included Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë, the most gifted literary siblings the world has ever known. Yet Maria has remained an enigma, while the fame of her family spread across the world.

Harold Bloom explores our Western literary tradition by concentrating on the works of twenty-six authors central to the Canon. He argues against ideology in literary criticism; he laments the loss of intellectual and aesthetic standards; he deplores multiculturalism, Marxism, feminism, neoconservatism, Afrocentrism, and the New Historicism. Insisting instead upon "the autonomy of aesthetic," Bloom places Shakespeare at the center of the Western Canon.....

Fairy tales are not just fairy tales: they are records of historical phenomena, telling us something about how Western civilisation was formed. In The Fairy-Tellers, award-winning travel-writer Nick Jubber explores their secret history of fairy tales: the people who told them, the landscapes that forged them and the cultures that formed them.

The Scarlet Letter is a classic novel set in 17th-century Puritan Massachusetts. It tells the story of Hester Prynne, who bears an illegitimate child and is condemned to wear a scarlet "A" (for "adulteress") on her chest as punishment. Hester bravely endures the public shame while raising her daughter, Pearl. Her secret lover, the town minister Arthur Dimmesdale, is wracked with guilt, while her estranged husband, Roger Chillingworth, seeks revenge. Through themes of sin, guilt, and redemption, Hawthorne critiques the rigid moral codes of the Puritan society. The novel explores the ...

This is Virginia Woolf’s first collection of essays, published in 1925. In them, she attempts to see literature from the point of view of the ‘common reader’ - someone whom she, with Dr Johnson, distinguished from the critic and the scholar. She read, and wrote, as an outsider: a woman set to school in her father’s library, denied the educational privileges of her male siblings - and with no fixed view of what constitutes ‘English literature’. What she produced is an eccentric and unofficial literary and social history from the 14th to the 20th centuries.

In Sophocles’ tragedy Oedipus the Tyrant, a messenger arrives to report that Jocasta, queen of Thebes, has killed herself. To prepare listeners for this terrible news, he announces, “The tragedies that hurt the most are those that sufferers have chosen for themselves.” Edith Hall, whose own life and psyche have been shaped by such loss—her mother’s grandfather, mother, and first cousin all took their own lives—traces the philosophical arguments on suicide, from Plato and Aristotle to David Hume and Albert Camus.

Sarah Churchwell examines one of the most enduringly popular stories of all time, Gone with the Wind, to help explain the divisions ripping the United States apart today. Separating fact from fiction, she shows how histories of mythmaking have informed America's racial and gender politics, the controversies over Confederate statues, the resurgence of white nationalism, the Black Lives Matter movement, the enduring power of the American Dream, and the violence of Trumpism.

To the Maas fans that listen—and the podcasters that answer. Join us as two friends + special guests talk through each of the SJM books and all of the characters because we can’t get enough of it!! Main episodes are spoiler free. Minis are full of spoilers. Come Firehearts and Valkyries for the epic journey through Throne of Glass, A Court of Thorns and Roses, and Crescent City! Find us on Instagram at @faeriesandfangirls and on Patreon at www.patreon.com/faeriesandfangirls

English novelist Barbara Pym’s career was defined, in many senses, by rejection. Her first novel Some Tame Gazelle was turned down by every publisher she sent it out in 1935, finally published only 15 years later. Though she picked up a publisher from there and received modest praise, the publishing industry grew restless and her sales spiralled downwards. By her seventh novel, she had been dropped. This brilliant biography, brimming with Pym’s private diaries and intimate letters, offers a first full insight into Barbara Pym’s life and how it informed her writing.

First published in 1986 and updated several times since, Don’t Panic is in an in-depth exploration of Douglas Adams’s cultural phenomenon The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - from its beginnings as a UK radio series, to its expansion into a wildly popular book trilogy, and onto incarnations in various media including stage, records, film, computer games, and even, um, tea towels.

Take a Firebolt ride on our podcast as each week we delve chapter by chapter through the Harry Potter universe!