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The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time GCSE Student Guide (GCSE Student Guides)
by Jacqueline BoltonWritten specifically for GCSE students by academics in the field, the Methuen Drama GCSE Guides conveniently gather indispensable resources and tips for successful understanding and writing all in one place, preparing students to approach their exams with confidence.Key features include a critical commentary of the play with extensive, clearly labelled analyses on themes, characters and context. They take studying drama even further with sections on dramatic technique, critical reception, related works, fascinating behind-the-scenes interviews with playwrights, directors or actors, and a helpful glossary of dramatic terms.In Simon Stephens's multi-award-winning stage adaptation of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, based on Mark Haddon's novel, Christopher's investigation into the death of the neighbour's dog tears his world apart and confronts him with the struggle to survive when everything feels foreign.Carefully following the requirements of GCSE English Literature assessment objectives, these studies include expert advice on how to write about modern drama. With featured activities for group study and independent work, they are versatile and valuable to students and teachers alike.
Shakespeare and New Historicist Theory (Shakespeare and Theory)
by Neema ParviniOver the past three decades, no critical movement has been more prominent in Shakespeare Studies than new historicism. And yet, it remains notoriously difficult to pin down, define and explain, let alone analyze. Shakespeare and New Historicist Theory provides a comprehensive scholarly analysis of new historicism as a development in Shakespeare studies while asking fundamental questions about its status as literary theory and its continued usefulness as a method of approaching Shakespeare's plays.
Shakespeare in the Theatre: Olivier and Hall (Shakespeare in the Theatre)
by Robert ShaughnessyThe National Theatre's years at the Old Vic were the most Shakespearean period in its history, one which included Laurence Olivier's Othello and Shylock, a radical all-male As You Like It, the Berliner Ensemble's Coriolanus and Tom Stoppard's classic offshoot, Rosencrantz and Guildernstern are Dead. Drawing extensively upon the company archives, this book tells the interlinked stories of the National's relationship with Shakespeare through a series of production case studies. Between them these illuminate Olivier's significance as actor and director, the National's pioneering accommodation of European theatre practitioners, and its ways of engaging Shakespeare with the contemporary.
Women and the Gothic: An Edinburgh Companion (Edinburgh Companions to the Gothic)
by Avril Horner Sue ZlosnikA re-assessment of the Gothic in relation to the female, the ‘feminine’, feminism and post-feminism This collection of newly commissioned essays brings together major scholars in the field of Gothic studies in order to re-think the topic of ‘Women and the Gothic’. The 14 chapters in this volume engage with debates about ‘Female Gothic’ from the 1970s and ’80s, through second wave feminism, theorisations of gender and a long interrogation of the ‘women’ category as well as with the problematics of post-feminism, now itself being interrogated by a younger generation of women. The contributors explore Gothic works †“ from established classics to recent films and novels †“ from feminist and post-feminist perspectives. The result is a lively book that combines rigorous close readings with elegant use of theory in order to question some ingrained assumptions about women, the Gothic and identity. Key Features Revitalises the long-running debate about women, the Gothic and identity Engages with the political agendas of feminism and post-feminism Prioritises the concerns of woman as reader, author and critic Offers fresh readings of both classic and recent Gothic works
The Making and Unmaking of Francoist Kitsch Cinema: From Raza to Pan´s Labyrinth
by Alejandro YarzaAnalyses what makes an acting performance excellent, through a range of examples from world cinema
Anthony Trollope's Late Style: Victorian Liberalism and Literary Form (Edinburgh Critical Studies in Victorian Culture (PDF))
by Frederik Van DamThis study focuses on Anthony Trollope’s stylistic innovations in relation to Victorian liberalism In his biography of William Makepeace Thackeray, Anthony Trollope posits the ideal of a man without style: ‘I hold that gentleman to be the best dressed whose dress no one observes. I am not sure but that the same may be said of an author’s written language’. Trollope’s own appearance, unlike his written language, did not pass without observation, however. A contemporary poet recollects that he was ‘hirsute and taurine of aspect’. This study unravels this paradox. It disentangles the many threads in Trollope’s ostensibly transparent writing and reassembles the political and intellectual fabric that they weave, thus showing how Trollope’s language exceeds and questions the concepts provided by contemporary ideologies. Key Features: Shows how Trollope’s stylistic peculiarities perform his inflection of Victorian liberalism Reads Victorian literature through the lens of German (post-)Romantic thinkers such as Goethe and Walter Benjamin Presents a panorama of Victorian liberalism in its literary, intellectual, and political context Examines the writings from the last decade of Trollope’s life that have received only scant critical attention, such as his novellas and his biographies
New Critical Thinking: Criticism to Come
by Julian WolfreysFollowing a scene-setting Introduction which reflects on the state of ‘theory’ today, the 11 chapters in this volume introduce new areas of critical thinking which go beyond the standard ‘isms’: Literary Reading in a Digital Age; Critical Making in the Digital Humanities; Thing Theory; Memory Work and Criticism; Body, Objects, Technology; Criticism and ‘The Animal’; Multimodality and Linguistic Approaches to Literary Study; Critical and Creative Practice: Conditions for Success in the Writing Workshop; Affect Theory; Spectrality; Critical Climate Change.A final rounding off chapter on Historicising presents debates around historically oriented criticism, including a ‘round table’ among the contributors. Each chapter also provides a critical ‘case study’ of a text or texts, including poetry writing guides, a Seamus Heaney poem, film adaptations of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, e-readers and kindles, First World War poetry and prose, steampunk, and Robert Macfarlane’s The Old Ways. From ‘Thing Theory’ to animal theory, multimodality to film adaptation, and from acts of reading in a digital age to the creative writing workshop, the volume reflects a radical reorientation in critical modes of thinking.
The Voice of the People: Hamish Henderson and Scottish Cultural Politics
by Corey GibsonExamining Hamish Henderson’s search for the radical voice of the people in modern Scotland How might the alienation of the artist in modern Scotland be overcome? How do you incite a popular folk revival? Can a poet truly speak with the ‘voice of the people’? And what happens to the writer who rejects print culture in favour of becoming Anon.? The life and times of polymath, scholar, author and folk-hero, Hamish Henderson (1919-2002), poses, and helps us to answer, these questions. This book examines his life-long commitment to finding a form of artistic expression suitable for post-war Europe. Though Henderson is a major figure in Scottish cultural history, his reputation is largely maintained through anecdotes and radical folk songs. This study explores his ideas in their intellectual, cultural and political contexts. It describes how all of his works †“ in war poetry, song collection, folklore scholarship, folksong revivalism, literary translation, and vicious public debates †“ reflect this desire to see the artist fully reintegrated in society. Key Features: Reclaims Hamish Henderson from the marginalia of Scottish literary history Provides a hitherto unexplored perspective on twentieth-century Scottish cultural history Situates Scottish literary and cultural debates in the broader context of intellectual and cultural developments in twentieth-century Europe and the US Directly tackles the question of national identity in twentieth-century Scotland
Animalities: Literary and Cultural Studies Beyond the Human
by Michael LundbladRepresentations of animality continue to proliferate in various kinds of literary and cultural texts. This pioneering volume explores the critical interface between animal and animality studies, marking out the terrain in relation to twentieth-century literature and film. The range of texts considered here is intentionally broad, answering questions like, how do contemporary writers such as Amitav Ghosh, Terry Tempest Williams, and Indra Sinha help us to think about not only animals but also humans as animals? What kinds of creatures are being constructed by contemporary artists such as Patricia Piccinini, Alexis Rockman, and Michael Pestel? How do ‘animalities’ animate such diverse texts as the poetry of two women publishing under the name of ‘Michael Field’, or an early film by Thomas Edison depicting the electrocution of a circus elephant named Topsy? Connecting these issues to fields as diverse as environmental studies and ecocriticism, queer theory, gender studies, feminist theory, illness and disability studies, postcolonial theory, and biopolitics, the volume also raises further questions about disciplinarity itself, while hoping to inspire further work ‘beyond the human’ in future interdisciplinary scholarship.
Modern Dutch Studies: Essays in honour of Professor Peter King on the occasion of his retirement (History: Bloomsbury Academic Collections)
by M. J. WintleThese essays by leading scholars explore the integration of language and literature study in the fields of art history and social sciences, exploring as a result the scope and nature of the discipline of Dutch Studies today.
Imagining Surveillance: Utopian and Dystopian Literature and Film
by Peter MarksCritically assesses how literary and cinematic eutopias and dystopias have imagined and evaluated surveillance. Imagining Surveillance presents the first full-length study of the depiction and assessment of surveillance in literature and film. Focusing on the utopian genre (which includes positive and negative worlds), this book offers an in-depth account of the ways in which the most creative writers, filmmakers and thinkers have envisioned alternative worlds in which surveillance in various forms plays a key concern. Ranging from Thomas More’s genre-defining Utopia to Spike Jones’ provocative film Her, Imagining Surveillance explores the long history of surveillance in creative texts well before and after George Orwell’s iconic Nineteen Eighty-Four. It fits that key novel into a five hundred year narrative that includes some of the most provocative and inventive accounts of surveillance as it is and as it might be in the future. The book explains the sustained use of these works by surveillance scholars, but goes much further and deeper in explicating their brilliant and challenging diversity. With chapters on surveillance studies, surveillance in utopias before Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four itself, and utopian texts post-Orwell that deal with visibility, spaces, identity, technology and the shape of things to come, Imagining Surveillance sits firmly in the emerging cultural studies of surveillance. Key Features: The first sustained account of the representation of surveillance in eutopian and dystopian literature and film Charts surveillance’s historical development and creative responses to that development Provides a detailed critical account of the ways that surveillance studies has utilised utopias to formulate its ideas Offers new readings of literary texts and films from More’s Utopia through George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four to Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake and films from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis to Neil Blomkamp’s Elysium and beyond
Katherine Mansfield and Translation (Katherine Mansfield Studies)
by Claire Davison Gerri KimberThis volume enables students and scholars to appreciate Mansfield’s central place in various trans-European networks of modernism working in or through translation and translated idioms. Katherine Mansfield had a lifelong interest in literatures in translation and in literary translating. From her early notebooks until letters written just before her death, she records the joy of learning foreign languages and exploring literatures outside the mainstream Anglophone tradition, often using transformative, inter-lingual games of her own as a source of creativity. Meanwhile, her enduring popularity abroad is ensured by translations of her works, all of which reveal sociological and even ideological agendas of their own.
The Politics of Romanticism: The Social Contract and Literature (Edinburgh Critical Studies in Romanticism)
by Zoe BeenstockRedefines Romantic sociability through a reading of social contract theory The Politics of Romanticism examines the relationship between two major traditions which have not been considered in conjunction: British Romanticism and social contract philosophy. She argues that an emerging political vocabulary was translated into a literary vocabulary in social contract theory, which shaped the literature of Romantic Britain, as well as German Idealism, the philosophical tradition through which Romanticism is more usually understood. Beenstock locates the Romantic movement’s coherence in contract theory’s definitive dilemma: the critical disruption of the individual and the social collective. By looking at the intersection of the social contract, Scottish Enlightenment philosophy, and canonical works of Romanticism and its political culture, her book provides an alternative to the model of retreat which has dominated accounts of Romanticism of the last century. Key Features Develops new understanding of Romanticism as political movement Offers fresh readings of canonical works by Coleridge, Wordsworth, Godwin, Mary Shelley and Carlyle by tracing their implicit dialogue with the political philosophy of Rousseau and other Enlightenment political theorists Shows that the philosophical routes of Romanticism and its ties to German Idealism originate in empiricism Carries important consequences for the contemporary understanding of the self, an understanding that is partly rooted in notions that originated with the Romantics
Ivy Compton-Burnett (Midcentury Modern Writers)
by Barbara HardyThe first fully detailed and critically contextualised study of the novels of Ivy Compton-Burnett Ivy Compton-Burnett is a strikingly original novelist, writing conversation-novels in which talk is the medium and subject. She is innovative like Joyce and Woolf but more accessible and less theoretical, a modernist unawares. She makes readers think and her terse cool witty style reminds us that the novel is an art. To read most living writers of fiction after reading her is to feel novelists have become lazy and made their readers lazy. She requires attention, and she doesn’t write to pass the time or invite identification, but she is amusing and challenging. This re-valuation of a neglected artist is a close analysis of forms, ideas and language in novels which range from her first conventionally moral love-story, Dolores, which she tried to suppress, to startling stories about landed gentry in Victorian and Edwardian England. Key Features Provides incisive and accessible close readings of Compton-Burnett’s language, life-narratives, emotional expression and thought Presents new work of a leading critic Places Compton-Burnett in the context of Modernist writing
British Women Short Story Writers: The New Woman to Now
by Emma Young James BaileyEssays tracing the evolving relationship between British women writers and the short story genre from the late Nineteenth Century to the present day. What is the relationship between the British woman writer and the short story? This collection examines what this versatile genre offers women writers, and what this can tell us about the society and culture they inhabit. From the rise of the modern printing press at the end of the Nineteenth Century through to the present digital age, these essays examine how the short story has been deployed and reworked by women writers and how they have influenced and shaped the genre’s development. Considering the effect of literary inheritances, societal and cultural change, and shifting publishing demands, this collection traces the evolution of the genre through to its continued appeal to women writing today. From the New Woman to contemporary feminisms, women's anthologies to microfiction, modernist writers to the contemporary works of Sarah Hall and Helen Simpson, the chapters in this collection investigate a crucial yet under-examined field of British literature. Key Features and Benefits 12 chapters discussing a range of gender and genre issues since the fin-de-siècle to the present day. Sets out a clear trajectory to map both the historical and literary connections and divergences between British women short story writers. Offers a comprehensive account of the genre’s development to provide scholars with a unique insight into a largely neglected aspect of women’s writing. Includes new readings of canonical authors alongside more recent theoretical approaches, innovations and lesser-discussed writers.
Essential Skills in Arabic: From Intermediate to Advanced
by El Mustapha Lahlali Radia KesseiriA cultural and historical philosophy of fashion in economic and social life from the 1830s to the present day
American Gothic: An Edinburgh Companion (Edinburgh Companions to the Gothic)
by Jason Haslam Joel FaflakA new critical companion to the Gothic traditions of American Culture This new Companion surveys the traditions and conventions of the dark side of American culture †“ its repressed memories, its anxieties and panics, its fears and horrors, its obsessions and paranoias. Featuring new critical essays by established and emerging academics from a range of national backgrounds, this collection offers new discussions and analyses of canonical and lesser-known texts in literature and film, television, photography, and video games. Its scope ranges from the earliest manifestations of American Gothic traditions in frontier narratives and colonial myths, to its recent responses to contemporary global events. Key Features Features original critical writing by established and emerging scholars Surveys the full range of American Gothic, from its earliest texts to 21st Century works Includes critical analyses of American Gothic in new media and technologies Will establish new benchmarks for the critical understanding of American Gothic traditions
Seamus Heaney: An Introduction
by Richard Rankin RussellThis study will enable readers to gain clearer understanding of the life and major works of Seamus Heaney. It considers literary influences on Heaney, ranging from English poets such as Wordsworth, Hughes, and Auden to Irish poets such as Kavanagh and Yeats to world poets such as Virgil and Dante. It shows how Heaney was closely attuned to poetry's impact on daily life and current events even as he articulated a convincing apologia for poetry's own life and integrity. Discussing Heaney's deep immersion in Irish Catholicism, this book demonstrates how faith influenced his belief system, poetry and politics. Finally, it also considers how deeply Heaney's artistic endeavours were intertwined with politics in Northern Ireland, especially through his embrace of constitutional nationalism but rejection of physical force republicanism.
Queer Bloomsbury
by Brenda S. Helt Madelyn DetloffThe first collection to bring together contemporary and classic writings on queer Bloomsbury This anthology presents important early essays that laid the foundation for queer studies of the Bloomsbury Group together with new essays that build upon this foundation to provide ground-breaking work on Bloomsbury figures and cultural achievements. As a whole, Queer Bloomsbury stands alone as a wide-ranging and critical resource that traces the cultural, ideological, and aesthetic facets of Bloomsbury’s development as a queer intellectual and aesthetic subculture. Key Features Fifteen wide-ranging readings that trace the cultural, ideological, and aesthetic facets of Bloomsbury’s development as a queer subculture Includes Carolyn Heilbrun’s influential essay on the sexual dissidence of the Bloomsbury Group with an introduction by scholar Brenda Silver Moves beyond LGBT studies of Bloomsbury to provide substantive information on the queer philosophical and ethical underpinnings of the Bloomsbury Group Rarely seen reproductions of Duncan Grant’s work from the Charleston archives as well as Dora Carrington’s work from archives and a private collection
Jack and the Beanstalk (Modern Plays)
by Mark Cameron Jez BondFollowing the success of Sleeping Beauty, Park Theatre's annual Christmas show returns with their second instalment of The Chronicles of Waa. With original music, magic and plenty of laughter for the whole family, Jack and the Beanstalk is a tale of friendship, love and Tupperware: lots of Tupperware!In Gazoob, the land of the Giants, evil inventor Ms Grimm wants world domination and it seems there is nothing her lovely daughter Grenthel and Geoff, the smallest giant in the world, can do to stop her.Meanwhile in Nowen, a peaceful but poor Kingdom, Jack and his mum Tina struggle to pay the rent. To make matters worse, they have to get rid of their trusted cow, Daisy. When Grimm's evil plan lands at their feet, all seems doomed. But what will save the day and unite these two kingdoms? Jack's heroic deeds at the Nowenthian Sports festival? Tina's extensive knowledge of antique Tupperware? Or will the musical, Mariachi oracles known as 'The Shepherds Gonzales' have the answer?The future of the Land of Waa is at stake!
Gertrude Stein in Europe: Reconfigurations Across Media, Disciplines, and Traditions
by Sarah Posman Laura Luise SchultzAlthough often hailed as a 'quintessentially American' writer, the modernist poet, novelist and playwright Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) spent most of her life in France. With chapters written by leading international scholars, Gertrude Stein in Europe is the first sustained exploration of the European artistic and intellectual networks in which Stein's work was first developed and circulated. Along the way, the book investigates the European contexts of Stein's writing, how her own work intersected with European thought, including phenomenology and the vitalist work of Henri Bergson, and ultimately how it was received by scholars and artists across the continent. Gertrude Stein in Europe opens up new perspectives on Stein as a writer and on the centrality of artistic and intellectual networks to European modernism.
1990s, The: A Decade Of Contemporary British Fiction (The Decades Series)
by Nick Hubble Philip Tew Leigh WilsonHow did social, cultural and political events in Britain during the 1990s shape contemporary British Fiction? From the fall of the Berlin Wall to the turn of the millennium, the 1990s witnessed a realignment of global politics. Against the changing international scene, this volume uses events abroad and in Britain to examine and explain the changes taking place in British fiction, including: the celebration of national identities, fuelled by the move toward political devolution in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales; the literary optimism in urban ethnic fictions written by a new generation of authors, born and raised in Britain; the popularity of neo-Victorian fiction. Critical surveys are balanced by in-depth readings of work by the authors who defined the decade, including A.S. Byatt, Hanif Kureishi, Will Self, Caryl Phillips and Irvine Welsh: an approach that illustrates exactly how their key themes and concerns fit within the social and political circumstances of the decade.
In Arden: Editing Shakespeare - Essays In Honour of Richard Proudfoot
by Gordon McMullan Ann ThompsonA collection of new and specially commissioned essays by an eminent team of Shakespeare scholars, focusing on the particular issues relating to the editing of Shakespeare and other Renaissance texts. The editing of dramatic and other literary texts has always been an important aspect of literary studies. In recent years, editing and the theoretical frameworks that underlie editing practices have become a lively and controversial focus of debate, sparked both by philosophical discussions on 'the death of the author' and by the technological challenges presented by the possibilities of electronic texts. Most national and international conferences on literature and drama include sessions on textual studies and editing, and a number of monographs address particular issues relating to the editing of Shakespeare and other Renaissance texts, but this is the first overall survey of the current state of the field. The essays have been commissioned to honour Professor Richard Proudfoot, Senior General Editor of the Arden Shakespeare, and an internationally recognised authority in the field of Shakespeare textual scholarship, who retired from King's College London in 1999 after 35 years. This is a well-planned, focused and co-ordinated volume makes a significant contribution to Shakespeare studies. The contributors are a formidable and global group of scholars, representing both traditional and contemporary viewpoints. They include a number of Arden editors, past and present, as well as scholars who have edited texts for the main competitors.
Shakespeare: Text, Stage & Canon
by Richard ProudfootBased on three lectures given by Professor Richard Proudfoot in October 1999 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of The Globe, The Arden Shakespeare's centenary and Professor Proudfoot's retirement from King's College; this enjoyable volume aims to give a general and non-specialist audience some sense of what scholarship has achieved in three critical areas of Shakespeare studies at the end of the twentieth century. Freshly and engagingly written, this lively volume will appeal to all those with an interest in Shakespeare studies.
Brecht In Context
by John WillettNew edition, revised for the centenary of Brecht's birth, containing additional updated materialIn this classic study, John Willett sets in context not only Brecht the theatre practitioner but Brecht the writer and man of his time. Through chapters on Brecht's relationships and attitudes to contemporary politics, English and American literature, Expressionism, music, art and cinema, as well as to such figures as Auden, Kipling and Piscator, the book presents a detailed and wide-ranging account of one of the most significant men of this century."An outstanding introduction to its subject. . . will immeasurably enrich Brechtians young and old, especially those who think they know it all" (Times Educational Supplement); "Economical, witty and unpretentious in a way that Brecht would have liked, but immensely well-informed and thoroughly documented, seems certain to become required reading for anyone seriously interested in the dramatist" (London Review of Books); "An extraordinarily rich volume, which succeeds in being packed but uncrowded" (New Statesman)