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The Cambridge Companion to American Science Fiction
by Eric Carl Link Gerry CanavanThe Cambridge Companion to American Science Fiction explores the relationship between the ideas and themes of American science fiction and their roots in the American cultural experience. Science fiction in America has long served to reflect the country's hopes, desires, ambitions, and fears. The ideas and conventions associated with science fiction are pervasive throughout American film and television, comics and visual arts, games and gaming, and fandom, as well as across the culture writ large. Through essays that address not only the history of science fiction in America but also the influence and significance of American science fiction throughout media and fan culture, this companion serves as a key resource for scholars, teachers, students, and fans of science fiction.
The Cambridge Companion to American Travel Writing
by Alfred Bendixen Judith HameraTravel writing has always been intimately linked with the construction of American identity. Occupying the space between fact and fiction, it exposes cultural fault lines and reveals the changing desires and anxieties of both the traveller and the reading public. These specially-commissioned essays trace the journeys taken by writers from the pre-revolutionary period right up to the present. They examine a wide range of responses to the problems posed by landscapes found both at home and abroad, from the Mississippi and the Southwest to Europe and the Holy Land. Throughout, the contributors focus on the role played by travel writing in the definition and formulation of national identity, and consider the experiences of minority writers as well as canonical authors. This Companion forms an invaluable guide for students approaching this new, important and exciting subject for the first time.
The Cambridge Companion to American Utopian Literature and Culture since 1945 (Cambridge Companions to Literature)
by Sherryl VintProviding a comprehensive overview of American thought in the period following World War II, after which the US became a global military and economic leader, this book explores the origins of American utopianism and provides a trenchant critique from the point of view of those left out of the hegemonic ideal. Centring the voices of those oppressed by or omitted from the consumerist American Dream, this book celebrates alternative ways of thinking about how to create a better world through daily practices of generosity, justice, and care. The chapters collected here emphasize utopianism as a practice of social transformation, not as a literary genre depicting a putatively perfect society, and urgently make the case for why we need utopian thought today. With chapters on climate change, economic justice, technology, and more, alongside chapters exploring utopian traditions outside Western frameworks, this book opens a new discussion in utopian thought and theory.
The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Rhetoric
by Erik GundersonRhetoric thoroughly infused the world and literature of Graeco-Roman antiquity. This Companion provides a comprehensive overview of rhetorical theory and practice in that world, from Homer to early Christianity, accessible to students and non-specialists, whether within classics or from other periods and disciplines. Its basic premise is that rhetoric is less a discrete object to be grasped and mastered than a hotly contested set of practices that include disputes over the very definition of rhetoric itself. Standard treatments of ancient oratory tend to take it too much in its own terms and to isolate it unduly from other social and cultural concerns. This volume provides an overview of the shape and scope of the problems while also identifying core themes and propositions: for example, persuasion, virtue, and public life are virtual constants. But they mix and mingle differently, and the contents designated by each of these terms can also shift.
The Cambridge Companion to Andrew Marvell
by Derek Hirst Steven N. ZwickerAndrew Marvell is one of the greatest English lyric poets of the seventeenth century and one of its leading polemicists. This Companion brings a set of fresh questions and perspectives to bear on the varied career and diverse writings of a remarkable writer and elusive man. Drawing on important new editions of Marvell's poetry and of his prose, scholars of both history and literature examine Marvell's work in the contexts of Restoration politics and religion, and of the seventeenth-century publishing world in both manuscript and print. The essays, individually and collectively, address Marvell within his literary and cultural traditions and communities; his almost prescient sense of the economy and ecology of the country; his interest in visual arts and architecture; his opaque political and spiritual identities; his manners in controversy and polemic; the character of his erotic and transgressive imagination and his biography, still full of intriguing gaps.
The Cambridge Companion to Anthony Trollope
by Carolyn Dever Lisa NilesAnthony Trollope was among the most prolific, popular, and richly diverse writers of the mid-Victorian period, with forty-seven novels and a variety of other writings to his name. Both a serial and series writer whose novels traversed Ireland, England, Australia and New Zealand, and genres from realism to science fiction, Trollope also published criticism, short fiction, travel writing and biography. The Cambridge Companion to Anthony Trollope provides a state-of-the-field review of critical perspectives on his work, with the volume's sixteen essays addressing Trollope's biography, autobiography, canonical fiction, short stories and travel writing, as well as surveying diverse topics including gender, sexuality, vulgarity, and the law.
The Cambridge Companion to Aphra Behn
by Derek Hughes Janet ToddTraditionally known as the first professional woman writer in English, Aphra Behn has now emerged as one of the major figures of the Restoration. She provided more plays for the stage than any other author and greatly influenced the development of the novel with her ground-breaking fiction, especially Love-Letters between a Nobleman and his Sister and Oroonoko, the first English novel set in America. Behn's work straddles the genres: beside drama and fiction, she also excelled in poetry and she made several important translations from French libertine and scientific works. This 2004 Companion discusses and introduces her writings in all these fields and provides the critical tools with which to judge their aesthetic and historical importance. It also includes a full bibliography, a detailed chronology and a description of the known facts of her life. The Companion will be an essential tool for the study of this increasingly important writer and thinker.
The Cambridge Companion to Arthur Miller
by Christopher BigsbyArthur Miller is regarded as one of the most important playwrights of the twentieth century, and his work continues to be widely performed and studied around the world. This updated Companion includes Miller's work since the publication of the first edition in 1997 - the plays Mr Peters' Connections, Resurrection Blues, and Finishing the Picture, recent film adaptations, and key productions of his plays since his death in 2005. Book jacket.
The Cambridge Companion to August Strindberg
by Michael RobinsonAugust Strindberg is one of the most enduring of nineteenth-century dramatists, and is also an internationally recognised novelist, autobiographer, and painter. This Companion presents contributions by leading international scholars on different aspects of Strindberg's highly colourful life and work. The essays focus primarily on his most celebrated plays; these include the Naturalist Dramas, The Father and Miss Julie; the experimental dramas with which he created a true modernist theatre - To Damascus and A Dream Play; and the Chamber Plays of 1908 which, like so much of his work, exerted a powerful influence on much later twentieth-century drama. His plays are contextualised for what they contribute both to the history of drama and developments in theatre practice, and other essays clarify the enormous importance to these dramas of his other work, most notably the autobiographical novel Inferno, and his lifelong interest in science, the occult, sexual politics, and the visual arts.
The Cambridge Companion to August Wilson
by Christopher BigsbyOne of America's most powerful and original dramatists, August Wilson offered an alternative history of the twentieth century, as seen from the perspective of black Americans. He celebrated the lives of those seemingly pushed to the margins of national life, but who were simultaneously protagonists of their own drama and evidence of a vital and compelling community. Decade by decade, he told the story of a people with a distinctive history who forged their own future, aware of their roots in another time and place, but doing something more than just survive. Wilson deliberately addressed black America, but in doing so discovered an international audience. Alongside chapters addressing Wilson's life and career, and the wider context of his plays, this Companion dedicates individual chapters to each play in his ten-play cycle, which are ordered chronologically, demonstrating Wilson's notion of an unfolding history of the twentieth century.
The Cambridge Companion to Australian Literature
by Elizabeth WebbyThis book introduces in a lively and succinct way the major writers, literary movements, styles and genres that, at the beginning of a new century, are seen as constituting the field of Australian literature. The book consciously takes a perspective that sees literary works not as aesthetic objects created in isolation by unique individuals, but as cultural products influenced and constrained by the social, political and economic circumstances of their times. It will be an indispensable reference for both national and international readers. It covers Indigenous texts, colonial writing and reading, poetry, fiction and theater throughout two centuries, biography and autobiography, and literary criticism in Australia.
The Cambridge Companion to Australian Poetry (Cambridge Companions to Literature)
by Ann VickeryAn invaluable resource for staff and students in literary studies and Australian studies, this volume is the first major critical survey on Australian poetry. It investigates poetry's central role in engaging with issues of colonialism, nationalism, war and crisis, diaspora, gender and sexuality, and the environment. Individual chapters examine Aboriginal writing and the archive, poetry and activism, print culture, and practices of internationally renowned poets such as Lionel Fogarty, Gwen Harwood, John Kinsella, Les Murray, and Judith Wright. The Companion considers Australian leadership in the diversification of poetry in terms of performance, the verse novel, and digital poetries. It also considers Antipodean engagements with Romanticism and Modernism.
The Cambridge Companion to Autobiography
by Maria Dibattista Emily O. WittmanThe Cambridge Companion to Autobiography offers a historical overview of the genre from the foundational works of Augustine, Montaigne, and Rousseau through the great autobiographies of the Romantic, Victorian, and modern eras. Seventeen essays from distinguished scholars and critics explore the diverse forms, audiences, styles, and motives of life writings traditionally classified under the rubric of autobiography. Chapters are arranged in chronological order and are grouped to reflect changing views of the psychological status, representative character, and moral authority of the autobiographical text. The volume closes with a group portrait of late-modernist and contemporary autobiographies that, by blurring the dividing line between fiction and non-fiction, expand our understanding of the genre. Accessibly written and comprehensive in scope, the volume will appeal especially to students and teachers of non-fiction narrative, creative writing, and literature more broadly.
The Cambridge Companion to Baudelaire
by Rosemary LloydCharles Baudelaire's place among the great poets of the Western world is undisputed, and his influence on the development of poetry since his lifetime has been enormous. In this Companion, essays by outstanding scholars illuminate Baudelaire's writing both for the lay reader and for specialists. In addition to a survey of his life and a study of his social context, the volume includes essays on his verse and prose, analyzing the extraordinary power and effectiveness of his language and style, his exploration of intoxicants like wine and opium, and his art and literary criticism. The volume also discusses the difficulties, successes and failures of translating his poetry and his continuing power to move his readers. Featuring a guide to further reading and a chronology, this Companion provides students and scholars of Baudelaire and of nineteenth-century French and European literature with a comprehensive and stimulating overview of this extraordinary poet.
The Cambridge Companion To Beckett
by John PillingThe world fame of Samuel Beckett is due to a combination of high academic esteem and immense popularity. An innovator in prose fiction to rival Joyce, his plays have been the most influential in modern theatre history. As an author in both English and French and a writer for the page and the stage, Beckett has been the focus for specialist treatment in each of his many guises, but there have been few attempts to provide a conspectus view. This book provides thirteen introductory essays on every aspect of Beckett's work, some paying particular attention to his most famous plays (e. g. Waiting for Godot and Endgame) and his prose fictions (e. g. the 'trilogy' and Murphy). Other essays tackle his radio and television drama, his theatre directing and his poetry, followed by more general issues such as Beckett's bilingualism and his relationship to the philosophers. Reference material is provided at the front and back of the book.
The Cambridge Companion to Ben Jonson
by Richard Harp Stanley StewartBen Jonson is, in many ways, the figure of greatest centrality to literary study of the Elizabethan and Jacobean period. He wrote in virtually every literary genre: in drama, comedy, tragedy and masque; in poetry, epigram, epistle and lyric; in prose, literary criticism and English grammar. He became the most visible poet of his age, honored more than even William Shakespeare, and his dramatic works, in particular his major comedies, continue to be performed today. This Companion brings together leading scholars from both sides of the Atlantic to provide an accessible and up-to-date introduction to Jonson's life and works. It represents an invaluable guide to current critical perspectives, providing generous coverage not only of his plays but also his non-dramatic works. The volume is informed by the latest development in Jonson scholarship and will therefore appeal to scholars and teachers as well as newcomers to his work.
The Cambridge Companion to Boxing (Cambridge Companions to Literature)
by Gerald EarlyWhile humans have used their hands to engage in combat since the dawn of man, boxing originated in Ancient Greece as an Olympic event. It is one of the most popular, controversial and misunderstood sports in the world. For its advocates, it is a heroic expression of unfettered individualism. For its critics, it is a depraved and ruthless physical and commercial exploitation of mostly poor young men. This Companion offers engaging and informative essays about the social impact and historical importance of the sport of boxing. It includes a comprehensive chronology of the sport, listing all the important events and personalities. Essays examine topics such as women in boxing, boxing and the rise of television, boxing in Africa, boxing and literature, and boxing and Hollywood films. A unique book for scholars and fans alike, this Companion explores the sport from its inception in Ancient Greece to the death of its most celebrated figure, Muhammad Ali.
The Cambridge Companion to Brecht
by Peter Thomson Glendyr SacksThis Companion offers students crucial guidance on virtually every aspect of the work of this complex and controversial writer, bringing together the contrasting views of major critics and active practitioners. The opening essays place Brecht's creative work in its historical and biographical context and are followed by chapters on single texts, from The Threepenny Opera to The Caucasian Chalk Circle, on some early plays, on the Lehrstücke and on the neglected contribution of Elisabeth Hauptmann to the Brecht canon. The third group of essays analyse Brecht's directing, his theatrical theories, his poetry, his interest in music, his significant collaboration with stage designers and his work with actors, concluding with an assessment of Brecht's continuing influence on theatre practice. A detailed calendar of Brecht's life and work and a selective bibliography of English criticism complete this provocative overview of a writer who constantly aimed to provoke.
The Cambridge Companion to British Black and Asian Literature (1945–2010)
by Deirdre OsborneThis Companion offers a comprehensive account of the influence of contemporary British Black and Asian writing in British culture. While there are a number of anthologies covering Black and Asian literature, there is no volume that comparatively addresses fiction, poetry, plays and performance, and provides critical accounts of the qualities and impact within one book. It charts the distinctive Black and Asian voices within the body of British writing and examines the creative and cultural impact that African, Caribbean and South Asian writers have had on British literature. It analyzes literary works from a broad range of genres, while also covering performance writing and non-fiction. It offers pertinent historical context throughout, and new critical perspectives on such key themes as multiculturalism and evolving cultural identities in contemporary British literature. This Companion explores race, politics, gender, sexuality, identity, amongst other key literary themes in Black and Asian British literature. It will serve as a key resource for scholars, graduates, teachers and students alike.
The Cambridge Companion to British Fiction: 1980–2018 (Cambridge Companions to Literature)
by Peter BoxallFrom 1980 to the present, huge transformations have occurred in every area of British cultural life. The election of Margaret Thatcher in 1979 ushered in a new neoliberal era in politics and economics that dramatically reshaped the British landscape. Alongside this political shift, we have seen transformations to the public sphere caused by the arrival of the internet and of social media, and changes in the global balance of power brought about by 9/11, the emergence of China and India as superpowers, and latterly the British vote to leave the European Union. British fiction of the period is intimately interwoven with these historical shifts. This collection brings together some of the most penetrating critics of the contemporary, to explore the role that the British novel has had in shaping the cultural landscape of our time, at a moment, in the wake of the EU referendum of 2016, when the question of what it means to be British has become newly urgent.
The Cambridge Companion to British Fiction since 1945.: The Cambridge Companion to British Fiction since 1945
by David JamesThis Companion offers a compelling engagement with British fiction from the end of the Second World War to the present day. Since 1945, British literature has served to mirror profound social, geopolitical and environmental change. Written by a host of leading scholars, this volume explores the myriad cultural movements and literary genres that have affected the development of postwar British fiction, showing how writers have given voice to matters of racial, regional and sexual identity. Covering subjects from immigration and ecology to science and globalism, this Companion draws on the latest critical innovations to provide insights into the traditions shaping the literary landscape of modern Britain, thus making it an essential resource for students and specialists alike.
The Cambridge Companion to British Literature of the 1930s (Cambridge Companions to Literature)
by James SmithThe 1930s is frequently seen as a unique moment in British literary history, a decade where writing was shaped by an intense series of political events, aesthetic debates, and emerging literary networks. Yet what is contained under the rubric of 1930s writing has been the subject of competing claims, and therefore this Companion offers the reader an incisive survey covering the decade's literature and its status in critical debates. Across the chapters, sustained attention is given to writers of growing scholarly interest, to pivotal authors of the period, such as Auden, Orwell, and Woolf, to the development of key literary forms and themes, and to the relationship between this literature and the decade's pressing social and political contexts. Through this, the reader will gain new insight into 1930s literary history, and an understanding of many of the critical debates that have marked the study of this unique literary era.
The Cambridge Companion to British Literature of the French Revolution in the 1790s
by Pamela ClemitThe French Revolution ignited the biggest debate on politics and society in Britain since the Civil War 150 years earlier. The public controversy lasted from the initial, positive reaction to French events in 1789 to the outlawing of the radical societies in 1799. This Cambridge Companion highlights the energy, variety and inventiveness of the literature written in response to events in France and the political reaction at home. It contains thirteen specially commissioned essays by an international team of historians and literary scholars, a chronology of events and publications, and an extensive guide to further reading. Six essays concentrate on the principal writers of the Revolution controversy: Burke, Paine, Godwin and Wollstonecraft. Others deal with popular radical culture, counter-revolutionary culture, the distinctive contribution of women writers, novels of opinion, drama, and poetry. This volume will serve as a comprehensive yet accessible reference work for students, advanced researchers and scholars.
The Cambridge Companion to British Poetry, 1945–2010.: The Cambridge Companion to British Poetry, 1945–2010
by Edward LarrissyThe Cambridge Companion to British Poetry, 1945–2010 brings together sixteen essays that explore the full diversity of British poetry since the Second World War, a period of significant achievement in which varied styles and approaches have flourished. As a comprehensive critical, literary-historical and scholarly guide, this Companion offers not only new readings of a wide range of poets but a detailed account of the contexts in which their verse was written and received. Focusing on famous and neglected names alike, from Dylan Thomas to John Agard, leading scholars provide readers with insight into the ongoing importance and profundity of post-war poetry.
The Cambridge Companion to British Romantic Poetry
by James Chandler Maureen N. MclaneMore than any other period of British literature, Romanticism is strongly identified with a single genre. Romantic poetry has been one of the most enduring, best loved, most widely read and most frequently studied genres for two centuries and remains no less so today. This Companion offers a comprehensive overview and interpretation of the poetry of the period in its literary and historical contexts. The essays consider its metrical, formal, and linguistic features; its relation to history; its influence on other genres; its reflections of empire and nationalism, both within and outside the British Isles; and the various implications of oral transmission and the rapid expansion of print culture and mass readership. Attention is given to the work of less well-known or recently rediscovered authors, alongside the achievements of some of the greatest poets in the English language: Wordsworth, Coleridge, Blake, Scott, Burns, Keats, Shelley, Byron and Clare.