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Romance Writing explores the changing nature of both the romance genre and the discourse of romantic love from the seventeenth century to the present day. Indeed, it is one of the first studies to approach romantic love as both genre and discourse in more than sixty years. Faced with the challenge of writing a cultural history for what is commonly understood to be one of lifes most universal, a-historical and cross-cultural phenomena, Lynne Pearce has invoked the concept of the gift to calculate loves added value at different cultural/historical moments. Building upon those philosophical traditions which have argued for the powerfully transformative nature of romantic love, Pearce shows how ...
·What is involved in examining a research-based higher degree? ·What are the roles of the internal and external examiners? ·What are the hidden agendas of higher degree examining? ·What are the essential ingredients of a ‘good’ viva? This handbook offers a revealing insight into the written – and unwritten – rules and regulations of higher degree examination in the United Kingdom today. Addressed directly to the examiners, it contains a step-by-step account of the different stages of the examination process in order to provide an insiders’ guide into what to expect before, during and after the oral examination. How to Examine a Thesis covers important issues such as: ·The powe...
This book explores the formative role of mobilities in the production of our close relationships, proposing that the tracks—both literal and figurative— we lay down in the process play a crucial role in generating and sustaining intimacy. Working with diaries, journals and literary texts from the mid- to late-twentieth century, the book pursues this thesis through three phases of the lifecourse: courtship (broadly defined), the middle years of long-term relationships and bereavement. Building upon the author’s recent research on automobility, the text’s case studies reveal the crucial role played by many different types of transport—including walking—in defining our most enduring relationships. Conceptually, the book draws upon the writings of the philosopher, Henri Bergson, the anthropologist, Tim Ingold and the geographer, David Seamon, engaging with topical debates in cultural and emotional geography (especially work on landscape, memory and mourning), mobilities studies and critical love studies.
After decades of feminism and deconstruction, romance remains firmly in place as a central preoccupation in the lives of most women. Divorce rates skyrocket, the traditional family is challenged from all sides, and yet romance seems indestructible. In terms of its cultural representation, the popularity of romance also appears unchallenged. Popular fiction, Hollywood cinema, television soap-operas, and the media in general all display a seemingly bottomless appetite for romantic subjects. The trappings of classic romance—white weddings, love songs, Valentine's Day--are as commercially viable as ever. In this anthology of original essays, romance is revisited from a wide spectrum of perspectives, not just in fiction and film but in a whole range of cultural phenomena. Essays range over such issues as Valentine's Day, interracial relationships, medieval erotic visions and modern romance fiction, the relationship between the lesbian poet H.D. and Bryher, the pervasive whiteness of romantic desire, lesbian erotica in the age of AIDS, and the public romance of Charles and Diana.
Postcolonial Manchester offers a radical new perspective on Britain’s devolved literary cultures by focusing on Manchester’s vibrant, multicultural literary scene. Referencing Avtar Brah’s concept of ‘diaspora space’, the authors argue that Manchester is, and always has been, a quintessentially migrant city to which workers of all nationalities and cultures have been drawn since its origins in the cotton trade and the expansion of the British Empire. This colonial legacy – and the inequalities upon which it turns – is a recurrent motif in the texts and poetry performances of the contemporary Mancunian writers featured here, many of them members of the city’s long-established African, African-Caribbean, Asian, Chinese, Irish and Jewish diasporic communities. By turning the spotlight on Manchester’s rich, yet under-represented, literary tradition in this way, Postcolonial Manchester also argues for the devolution of the canon of English Literature and, in particular, recognition for contemporary black and Asian literary culture outside of London.
This volume offers a comprehensive account of modern literary criticism, presenting the field as part of an ongoing historical and intellectual tradition. Featuring thirty-nine specially commissioned chapters from an international team of esteemed contributors, it fills a large gap in the market by combining the accessibility of single-authored selections with a wide range of critical perspectives. The volume is divided into four parts. Part One covers the key philosophical and aesthetic origins of literary theory, while Part Two discusses the foundational movements and thinkers in the first half of the twentieth century. Part Three offers introductory overviews of the most important movements and thinkers in modern literary theory, and Part Four looks at emergent trends and future directions.
This is the first book dedicated to literary and cultural scholars’ engagement with mobilities scholarship. As such, the volume both advances new theoretical approaches to the study of culture and furthers the recent “humanities turn” in mobilities studies. The book’s scholarship is deeply informed by cultural geography’s vision of a mobilised reconceptualisation of space and place, but also by the contribution of literary scholars in articulating questions of travel, technologies of transport, (post)colonialism and migration through a close engagement with textual materials. A comprehensive introduction maps pre-histories and emerging directions of this exciting interdisciplinary endeavor while taking up the theoretical and methodological challenges of the burgeoning subfield. Contributions range across geographical and disciplinary boundaries to address questions of embodied subjectivities, mobility and the nation, geopolitics of migration, and mobilities futures.
"Feminism and the Politics of Reading" is the first major work to theorize the processes and practices of reading within a gendered context. Looking at what it is to be a self-conscious "feminist reader," and at what happens when that feminism is "off-duty," Lynne Pearce engages with a wide range of literary and visual texts to explore the complex personal and political implications of what we do every time we read.
Feminism and the Politics of Reading is the first major work to theorize the processes and practices of reading within a gendered context. Looking at what it is to be a self-conscious "feminist reader", and at what happens when that feminism is "off-duty", Lynne Pearce explores the complex personal and political implications of what we do every time we read. Engaging with a wide range of literary and visual texts, and including a cross-national case-study of five groups of feminist readers, this book breaks important new ground both in terms of its theoretical conclusions and its critical approach. It moves from questioning the power of feminist readers of male-authored texts, and examining how women are defined by contemporary feminist writers, towards a new understanding of the fully interdependent, but highly volatile, relationship between reader and text. What emerges is a new theory of reading which resists ideal scenarios in favour of the chaos and the confusion, the pleasure and the
Engages literary texts in order to theorise the distinctive cognitive and affective experiences of drivingWhat sorts of things do we think about when we're driving - or being driven - in a car? Drivetime seeks to answer this question by drawing upon a rich archive of British and American texts from 'the motoring century' (1900-2000), paying particular attention to the way in which the practice of driving shapes and structures our thinking. While recent sociological and psychological research has helped explain how drivers are able to think about 'other things' while performing such a complex task, little attention has, as yet, been paid to the form these cognitive and affective journeys take...