This handbook provides students and scholars with a highly readable yet detailed analysis of all surviving Greek tragedies and satyr plays. John Ferguson places each play in its historical, political, and social context—important for both Athenian and modern audiences—and he displays a keen, discriminating critical competence in dealing with the plays as literature.
Ferguson is sensitive to the meter and sound of Greek tragedy, and, with remarkable success, he manages to involve even the Greekless reader in an actual encounter with the Greek as poetry. He examines language and metrics in relation to each tragedian's dramatic purpose, thus elucidating the crucial dimension of technique that other handbooks, mostly the work of philologists, renounce in order to concentrate on structure and plot. The result is perceptive criticism in which the quality of Ferguson's scholarship vouches for what he sees in the plays.
The book is prefaced with a general introduction to ancient Greek theatrical production, and there is a brief biographical sketch of each tragedian. Footnotes are avoided: the object of this handbook is to introduce readers to the plays as dramatic poetry, not to detail who said what about them. There is an extensive bibliography for scholars and a glossary of Greek words to assist the student with the operative moral and stylistic terms of Greek tragedy.
Including an exclusive interview with bestselling American novelist Elizabeth Strout, this groundbreaking study will engage literature scholars and general readers alike.
Written in accessible language, this book is the first to offer a sustained analysis of Elizabeth Strout’s work. A recipient of the Pulitzer Prize and the O. Henry Award, among other accolades, Strout has achieved a vast popular following as well. Amy and Isabelle was made into a television movie; Olive Kitteridge, which sold more than one million copies, was adapted as a miniseries; The Burgess Boys has been optioned for HBO; and My Name Is Lucy Barton was reimagined for the stage in London and on Broadway. Oh William!, the sequel to My Name Is Lucy Barton, appeared in 2021, and Strout’s latest book, Lucy by the Sea, is slated for release in fall 2022.
At the height of her literary powers as a chronicler of American life and particularly the lives of American women, Strout is currently enjoying both commercial and critical success. Her sales and perennial presence on book club lists indicate a tremendous impact on the popular realm and the growing attention to her in academia charts her importance in American letters. This book will satisfy readers looking for a serious, in-depth introduction to Strout’s work, as well as those interested in women’s writing, contemporary fiction, ethics, and literature. It includes a new interview with Strout in which she discusses these issues.
Montwieler traces the evolution of Strout’s voice, themes, and characters, which uniquely address American twenty-first-century feminine perspectives and sensibilities. From classic domestic spats between a mother and daughter to hate crimes aimed at mosques, from sweeping forays into decades past to snapshots of contemporary life, Strout compassionately portrays humanity at its most brutal and its most intimate. Though her canvas is vast, her eye for detail is astute and her ear for nuance is keen. Looking across Strout’s work, Montwieler explores how she portrays the endurance of hope, the complexities of family, the effects of trauma on individuals and communities, the sustaining power of the natural world, and the effects of place on personal and collective character.
Strout’s creations cultivate empathy in her readers, teaching them to be attuned to the suffering of others and to the human need for connection. Across her work and in the new interview included within this book, Strout shows her readers that they are not alone in this impersonal, often violent world. The connection that acknowledges our limitations, our woundedness, our capability to do harm, our remorse, and our recognition of beauty and humor distinguishes Strout’s unique contribution to contemporary American letters.
In a series of intriguing routes through the English countryside, Professor Robert Cooper notes those attractions that the casual tourist might unknowingly pass by, such as the house where Dickens wrote A Tale of Two Cities, or the windswept quay where John Fowles’s French Lieutenant’s woman walked. Maps and information about restaurants and accommodations give the traveler the opportunity of having pints of “half and half” where Jane Austen dined or visiting the pub where Blake’s scuffle led to his trial for treason.
This newly revised and updated edition of Robert Cooper’s acclaimed handbook combines the utility of current travel information with the appeal of literary history, biography, and anecdote in a leisurely and flavorful guide to the broad sweep of southern England outside of London. A rich and reliable guide to the landscape that fostered one of our most cherished cultures, The Literary Guide and Companion to Southern England is an indispensable resource for those who wish to experience literature firsthand.
The Swiss writer Robert Walser (1878-1956) is now recognized as one of the most important European authors of the modernist period, having garnered high praise from such prominent voices as Susan Sontag, W. G. Sebald, and J. M. Coetzee. Robert Walser: A Companion is the first comprehensive guide to Walser’s work in English. The twelve essays in this collection examine Walser’s literary output, historical milieu, and idiosyncratic writing process, addressing aspects of his biography; discussing the various genres in which he wrote (the novel, short prose, drama, lyric poetry, and letters); and analyzing his best-known novels and short stories alongside lesser-known but no less fascinating poems, plays, and prose pieces.
An essential addition to the scholarship about this eccentric, prolific, and influential writer’s work, Robert Walser: A Companion will be of interest both to established scholars and to those coming to Walser for the first time.
Edmund Spenser's art is intricate, intellectual, fanciful, and, finally, magnificent. Spenser is enshrined as one of the great English writers, and Book One of The Faerie Queene is regularly taught in colleges, not only in advanced courses but also in introductory surveys. Many teachers as well as students, however, find the poem baffling and know of no way to approach it except as an allegory whose several levels of meaning must be deciphered. Mark Rose shows that it is possible to read the poem as poetry—savoring the language, tracing Spenser's vision—without prior expertise in religion and philosophy, Renaissance iconography and mythology, or Tudor history. He offers a close reading of Book One, following the poem as it develops canto by canto.
Rather than expound the meaning, he attempts to draw the meaning out of the text while helping the reader respond freshly to the emotion, humor, grace, and humanity of the poem and conveying a sense of its richness and subtlety. Specialists will find many new insights in Spenser's Art, though the book is not addressed primarily to them; teachers who are not experts on Spenser will find it especially rewarding.
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