You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Molly Abel Travis unites reader theory with an analysis of historical conditions and various cultural contexts in this discussion of the reading and reception of twentieth-century literature in the United States. Travis moves beyond such provisional conclusions as "the text produces the reader" or "the reader produces the text" and considers the ways twentieth-century readers and texts attempt to constitute and appropriate each other at particular cultural moments and according to specific psychosocial exigencies. She uses the overarching concept of the reader in and out of the text both to differentiate the reader implied by the text from the actual reader and to discuss such in-and-out mov...
None
Understanding Charles Johnson offers a critical introduction to the fiction of one of the most highly acclaimed contemporary writers and the first African American male since Ralph Ellison to win the National Book Award, which Johnson received in 1990 for Middle Passage. In addition to providing a biographical sketch, Gary Storhoff analyzes Johnson's four novels and two volumes of short stories. Describing his body of work as unique in American fiction, Storhoff explains how philosophical and religious orientations differentiate Johnson's writings and challenge his readers. Storhoff explores the merging of Johnson's philosophical and spiritual interests with his concern for African American ...
Unlike 19th century slave narratives, many recent novel-like texts about slavery deploy ironic narrative strategies, innovative structural features, and playful cruelty. This study analyzes the postmodern aesthetics common to seven tales of slavery from the United States, Martinique, and Guadeloupe, Cuba, abd Colombia from authors including Alejo Carpentier, Miguel Barnet, Toni Morrison, and Charles Johnson.
CD contains PDF of the text of the entire book.
She considers the "false binaries" (straight/gay, patriot/traitor, healthy/infected) that promise protection from an invasive threat and the utopian impulse to purge, homogenize, and relocate problematic individuals outside the city walls."--BOOK JACKET.
Nation of Bookworms takes an in-depth look at the reading culture of the Czech Republic--the country with the highest number of libraries per capita worldwide. Drawing on studies and oral interviews of Czech readers conducted by the National Library of the Czech Republic and the Institute of Czech Literature between 2007 and 2018, the book presents intriguing new research on Czech readership and society. Jiří Trávníček deftly sifts through hard data and first-person reportage, illuminating the myriad components that make up reading culture, such as print-reading, screen-reading, libraries, book sales, the social lives of readers, time spent reading, and reading preferences. Trávníček also takes a global look at literary love, exploring the parallels between the reading cultures of other countries and the Czechs’ unique fervor for the written word. Nation of Bookworms is essential reading for bibliophiles on every continent.
The encounter between Buddhism and American literature has been a powerful one for both parties. While Buddhism fueled the Beat movement's resounding critique of the United States as a spiritually dead society, Beat writers and others have shaped how Buddhism has been presented to and perceived by a North American audience. Contributors to this volume explore how Asian influences have been adapted to American desires in literary works and Buddhist poetics, or how Buddhist practices emerge in literary works. Starting with early aesthetic theories of Ernest Fenollosa, made famous but also distorted by Ezra Pound, the book moves on to the countercultural voices associated with the Beat movement and its friends and heirs such as Ginsberg, Kerouac, Snyder, Giorno, Waldman, and Whalen. The volume also considers the work of contemporary American writers of color influenced by Buddhism, such as Maxine Hong Kingston, Charles Johnson, and Lan Cao. An interview with Kingston is included.
"Barlowe examines the causes and consequences of the continuing disregard for women's scholarship. To that end, she chronicles The Scarlet Letter's critical reception, analyzes the history of Hester Prynne as a cultural icon in literature and film, rereads the canonized criticism of the novel, and offers a new reading of Hawthorne's work by rescuing marginalized interpretations from the alternative canon of women critics."--BOOK JACKET.