This critical study of Asian American literature discusses work by internationally successful writers such as Maxine Hong Kingston, Chang-rae Lee, Bharati Mukherjee, Amy Tan and others in their historical, cultural and critical contexts. The focus of this book is on contemporary writing, from the 1970s onwards, although it also traces over a hundred years of Asian American literary production in prose, poetry, drama and criticism. The main body of the book comprises five periodized chapters that highlight important events in a nation-state that has historically rendered Asian Americans invisible. Of particular importance to the writers selected for case studies are questions of racial identity, cultural history and literary value with respect to dominant American ideologies.Key features\ The first readily available introductory guide to Asian American literature\ Discusses a representative range of Asian American literature, providing asense of the diversity of the field and of its key themes and modes of writing\ Provides close readings of key texts in the form of case studies in their cultural, historical and critical contexts\ Encourages reflection on questions of literary value, canonicity and the scopeand purpose of literary studies

An important critical study of Canadian literature, placing internationally successful anglophone Canadian authors in the context of their national literary history.While the focus of the book is on twentieth-century and contemporary writing, it also charts the historical development of Canadian literature and discusses important eighteenth- and nineteenth-century authors. The chapters focus on four central topics in Canadian Ethnicity, Race, Colonisation; Wildernesses, Cities, Regions; Desire; and Histories and Stories. Each chapter combines case studies of five key texts with a broad discussion of concepts and approaches, including postcolonial and postmodern reading strategies and theories of space, place and desire. Authors chosen for close analysis include Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, Alice Munro, Leonard Cohen, Thomas King and Carol Shields.Key Features\ The first critical guide to Canadian literature in English\ Authors selected on the basis of their popularity on undergraduate courses\ Combines historical and thematic approaches to Canadian writing\ Links close reading of key texts with theoretical approaches to Canadian literature\* Discusses in detail Obasan by Joy Kogawa, Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery, The Republic of Love by Carol Shields, 'Wilderness Tips' and The Journals of Susanna Moodie by Margaret Atwood, Wild Geese by Martha Ostenso, Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels, The Diviners by Margaret Laurence and In the Skin of a Lion by Michael Ondaatje

This book explores the development of contemporary theatre in the United States in its historical, political and theoretical dimensions. It focuses on representative plays and performance texts that experiment with form and content, discussing influential playwrights and performance artists such as Tennessee Williams, Adrienne Kennedy, Sam Shepard, Tony Kushner, Charles Ludlum, Anna Deavere Smith, Karen Finley and Will Power, alongside avant-garde theatre groups.Saddik traces the development of contemporary drama since 1945, and discusses the cross-cultural impact of postwar British and European innovations on American theatre from the 1950s to the present day in order to examine the performance of American identity. She argues that contemporary American theatre is primarily a postmodern drama of inclusion and diversity that destabilizes the notion of fixed identity and questions the nature of reality.Key features\ Examines the influence of international figures such as Aristotle, Brecht, Artaud and Boal who are central to theatre as a discipline\ Explores realistic and anti-realistic styles of American drama and their political and social implications, along with key critical terms and movements\ Places the complexity of contemporary American drama within its political, sexual and ethnic contexts\ Includes rare images from La MaMa Archive/Ellen Stewart Private Collection\* Discusses in detail Stairs to the Roof and Camino Real by Tennessee Williams, Death of a Salesman and The Crucible by Arthur Miller, Dutchman and The Slave by Amira Baraka, Funnyhouse of a Negro by Adrienne Kennedy, The Tooth of Crime and True West by Sam Shepherd and American Buffalo by David Mamet as well as a range of other texts and performers.

This is an accessible, lucid and incisive study that will prove indispensable to students and scholars of contemporary American fiction. Featuring a wide range of authors - from canonical figures such as Philip Roth, Don DeLillo and Annie Proulx, to increasingly influential writers such as Jeffrey Eugenides, Gish Jen and Richard Powers - the book combines detailed readings of key texts with informative discussions of their historical, social and cultural contexts. There are chapters focusing on formal characteristics (the use of irony and paradox in novels by Don DeLillo, Paul Auster and Bret Easton Ellis, and the generic properties of the texts and films of Cold Mountain, 'Brokeback Mountain' and No Country for Old Men) and on thematic concerns (the representation of gender and sexuality in novels by Jane Smiley, Carol Shields and Jeffrey Eugenides and of ethnicity, race and hybridity in fiction by Gish Jen, Philip Roth and Richard Powers). Running through all these chapters is an interrogation of all three elements making up the phrase 'contemporary American fiction'.Key Features\ Identifies some of the main trends in contemporary American fiction and situates them in historical and cultural contexts\ Discusses a representative range of recent fiction, providing a sense of the rich diversity of the field and of its key themes and modes of writing\ Introduces students to a variety of critical approaches to, and debates concerning, contemporary American fiction\ Encourages reflection on the nature of national, gender, ethnic and generic identities

A new critical guide to British and American crime writing from the eighteenth century to the beginning of the twenty-first century. From the mean streets to the country house and from Edgar Allan Poe to Ian Rankin, this book identifies key trends in theorizing crime fiction and thinking about studies of genre. It is divided into three parts: the first part traces the history of the British crime novel from The Newgate Calender and Victorian crime writing to contemporary British crime fiction; the second part deals historically with American crime writing from Edgar Allan Poe through hardboiled crime to contemporary writers such as James Elroy and Patricia Cornwall; while the third part turns to crime fiction, from Georges Simenon to Henning Mankell, published outside of the Anglo-American tradition. The chapters combine a broad discussion of writers, concepts and issues as well as exploring the ways in which such diverse texts as The Leavenworth Case, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, The Tiger in the Smoke, A Rage in Harlem and Postmortem can be read in the light of current critical approaches. This critical guide also offers a section on approaches to studying crime fiction and a student resources section. Key Features\Clearly identifies the main trends in British and American crime fiction and locates them in their historical and cultural contexts\Provides an informed account of key texts and issues, discussing the work of range of well-known and lesser-known crime writers.\Discusses the diverse contexts in which crime fiction is read and studied\Introduces students to a variety of critical and theoretical approaches to writing about crime fiction\*Encourages reflection on questions of literary value and the study of genre fiction

Medieval Literature, 1300-1500 offers close readings of Middle English texts placed within the culture with which they interact. Famous works, like The Canterbury Tales, are discussed alongside lesser-known poems, prose, and plays, in five thematically-organized chapters, accompanied by a helpful critical apparatus. Reflecting the proliferation of user-friendly editions, this book extends the range of Middle English writing for which there is accessible up-to-date critical support, enabling the student, the general reader, the course designer, and the aspirant specialist, to read widely and with enjoyment in the medieval period.

An incisive study of modern American literature, casting new light on its origins and themesExploring canonical American writers such as Ezra Pound, Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner alongside less familiar writers like Djuna Barnes and Susan Glaspell, the guide takes readers though a diverse literary landscape. It considers how the rise of the American metropolis contributed to the growth of American modernism; and also examines the ways in which regional writers responded to an accelerated American modernity. Taking in African American modernism, cultural and geographical exile, as well as developments in modern American drama, the guide introduces readers to current critical trends in modernist studies.Key Features-Presents American literary modernism as emerging from a broad intellectual and philosophical landscape-Extends the timeframe, definition and intellectual parameters of American modernism-Provides close critical and contextual analysis of more than thirty American writers and key texts including Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, Djuna Barnes' Nightwood, and T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land

This concise introduction to the literature of an exciting and influential period opens with an overview of the historical and cultural context in which English Renaissance literature was produced, and a discussion of its contemporary and subsequent critical reception. The following chapters survey the major Renaissance genres of drama, poetry and prose. Each chapter provides illustrative case studies of canonical and non-canonical key texts by authors such as William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, Edmund Spenser, John Milton, Sir Philip Sidney, John Donne, Aemilia Lanyer, Sir Francis Bacon, Thomas Nashe, and Lady Mary Wroth. A guide to further reading accompanies each chapter, complemented by a section of student resources at the end of the book. The final chapter summarises significant developments in English Renaissance literary culture, and discusses the future direction of Renaissance literary scholarship.Key Features\Detailed readings of Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Milton's 'Lycidas', Sidney's Astrophil and Stella, Shakespeare's Sonnets, Venus and Adonis and Hamlet, Marlowe's Tamburlaine, Jonson's The Alchemist, Lanyer's 'The Description of Cookham', Bacon's Essays, Donne's sermons, Nashe's The Unfortunate Traveller and Wroth's The Countess of Montgomery's Urania\A broad overview of Renaissance literature and the context in which it was produced\An accessible introduction to Renaissance literary criticism, including past and present debates about the Renaissance 'canon'\A variety of study aids, including end-of-chapter summaries of key points, a glossary of literary and historical terms, a chronology, advice on essay writing, sample essay questions and plans, and a guide to further reading and electronic research resources.

This thorough introduction to English literature of the eighteenth century maps the emergence of the novel onto rich and exciting changes in poetry, drama and popular print. The book opens with an introduction to the principal texts followed by an explanation of key terms in their political, economic and social contexts. Each of the main chapters on poetry, prose fiction, theatre and 'culture of print' tells a story of literary evolution, interrogating extracts from key canonical texts whilst allowing space for a discussion of lesser-known contextual texts and intellectual currents. The book ends with a conclusion that highlights current critical debates in the field, and deals with the tricky bridge between writing of the eighteenth century and Romanticism.

This guide combines detailed literary history with discussion of contemporary debates about Scottishness. The book considers the rise of Scottish Studies, the development of a national literature, and issues of cultural nationalism. Beginning in the medieval period during a time of nation building, the book goes on to focus on the 'Scots revival' of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries before moving on to discuss the literary renaissance of the twentieth century. Debates concerning Celticism and Gaelic take place alongside discussion of key Scottish writers such as William Dunbar, Robert Burns, Walter Scott, Thomas Carlyle, Margaret Oliphant, Hugh MacDiarmid, Alasdair Gray, Janice Galloway and Liz Lochhead. The book also considers émigré writers to Scotland; Scottish literature in relation to England, the United States and Ireland; and postcolonialism and other theories that shed fresh light on the current status and future of Scottish literature.Key Features\Identifies the main trends in the emergence and development of Scottish literature, situating them in historical and cultural context\Discusses long-running debates about Scottish language and national identity through detailed readings of authors and texts\Introduces students to a variety of comparative and theoretical approaches which further develop an understanding of Scottish literature\Encourages reflection on questions of Scottish nationalism, cultural politics, canonicity and the rise of Scottish Studies

This book helps the reader make sense of the most commonly studied writer in the world. It starts with a brief explanation of how Shakespeare's writings have come down to us as a series of scripts for actors in the early modern theatre industry of London. The main chapters of the book approach the texts through a series of 'what's changed since Shakespeare's time?', 'to what uses has Shakespeare been put?', and 'what value is there in Shakespeare?' These questions go to the heart of why we study Shakespeare at all, which question the book encourages the readers to answer for themselves in relation to their own critical writing.Key Features\ A chronology of Shakespeare's career as an actor/dramatist that locates him within the theatre industry of his time\ New readings of twelve plays that form a core of the Shakespeare A Midsummer Night's Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, Richard 2, Henry 5, Hamlet, Othello, All's Well that Ends Well, The Winter's Tale, Macbeth, Measure for Measure, The Tempest, and Timon of Athens \ Critical analyses organized by genre (comedies, histories, tragedies, and romance) and by four key critical authorship, performance, identities, and materialism\ An extensive resources section, including a glossary of the important critical terms that are often used in debates about Shakespeare

This guide examines the production and reception of poetry by a range of women writers - predominantly although not exclusively writing in English - from Sappho through Anne Bradstreet and Emily Bronte to Sylvia Plath, Eavan Boland and Susan Howe. Women's Poetry offers a thoroughgoing thematic study of key texts, poets and issues, analysing commonalities and differences across diverse writers, periods, and forms. The book is alert, throughout, to the diversity of women's poetry. Close readings of selected texts are combined with a discussion of key theories and critical practices, and students are encouraged to think about women's poetry in the light of debates about race, class, ethnicity, sexuality, and regional and national identity. The book opens with a chronology followed by a comprehensive Introduction which outlines various approaches to reading women's poetry. Seven chapters follow, and a Conclusion and section of useful resources close the book.Key Features\ Wide-ranging and flexible in scope, giving detailed consideration to widely-taught poets, texts, periods and issues\ Introduces themes, questions and perspectives applicable to the work of other less familiar writers\ Encourages informed discussion of the difficulties of defining a discrete genre of 'women's poetry'\ Offers valuable introductory and supplementary guidance for students\* Discusses in detail poems by Margaret Cavendish, Anne Bradstreet, Sara Coleridge, Christina Rossetti, Emily Dickinson, Edith Sitwell, Amy Lowell, Sylvia Plath, Ruth Fainlight, Grace Nicholls, Eavan Boland, Kathleen Jamie, Jackie Kay and Carol Ann Duffy.