Literature: History & Criticism

The African American slave narrative is popularly viewed as the story of a lone male's flight from slavery to freedom, best exemplified by the Narr...

Through close examination of the formal as well as thematic organization of Cormac McCarthy's eight novels, this volume offers a radically new asse...

How can the most silent member of the family carry the message of subversion against venerated institutions of state and society? Why would two pla...

Although the odyssey has long been recognized as a crucial characteristic of the epic, scant attention has been paid to it as a telling device with...

Women face different psychological issues at different ages. But these issues and the experience of confronting them depend on cultural contexts. L...

African American writers of the Harlem Renaissance generally fall into three aesthetic categories: the folk, which emphasizes oral traditions, Afri...

Asian America has produced numerous short-story writers in the 20th century. Some emerged after World War II, yet most of these writers have flouri...

The 19th century novel typically examines social problems and values. Several novels of that period treat adulterous relationships; in doing so, th...

Some of the greatest English novels were written during the Victorian era, and many are still widely read and taught today. But many others written...

The phrase literature and environment only achieved popularity in recent decades, yet writers dating back to the explorers of the 1500s—and later s...

This revised edition of an award-winning resource celebrates the lives and works of 35 Latina and Latino authors who write for today's young reader...

The volume approaches Greeleys novels by comparing him to the 19th-century French writer Honoré de Balzac. A prolific and popular author, Balzac re...

Few contemporary writers are as enigmatic as J. D. Salinger. Best known for The Catcher in the Rye, which continues to be read and discussed by sec...

Gender-oriented studies of 19th-century Russian literature have struggled with how to determine the feminism or misogyny of particular authors. Thi...

In America, the long 1950s were marked by an intense skepticism toward utopian alternatives to the existing capitalist order. This skepticism was c...

Since the publication of his first short stories in the 1950s, Kurt Vonnegut has enjoyed much popular acclaim and has, since the 1970s, gained grow...

Poe, Whitman, and Dickinson form an engaging triad of poets who, considered together, enrich the poetics of each other; the works of the three poet...

Treating the cultural giants of the 20th century, this volume traces their reading habits and intellectual development, as well as their contributi...

Wherever vampires existed in the imaginations of different peoples, they adapted themselves to the customs of the local culture. As a result, vampi...

Much of contemporary critical theory holds that meaning is relative and subjective. This book scrutinizes the principal assumptions and beliefs abo...