Literature

This title is part of the the Oxford Twenty-First Century Approaches to Literature series, edited by Paul Strohm. This book examines cultural history and cultural change in the period between the fourteenth and the seventeenth centuries, a period spanning the medieval and Renaissance. It takes a dynamically diachronic approach to cultural history and brings the perspective of a longue durée to literary history. It redraws historical categories and offers a fresh perspective on historical temporality by challenging the stereotypes that might encourage any iconographic division between medieval and Renaissance modes of thinking. It also discusses the concept of nation in relation to three issues that have particular relevance to cross-period “cultural reformations”: modernity, language, and England and Englishness. The book is organized into nine sections: Histories, Spatialities, Doctrines, Legalities, Outside the Law, Literature, Communities, Labor, and Selfhood. Each contributor focuses on a theme that links pre- and post-Reformation cultures, from anachronism and place to travel, vernacular theology, conscience, theater, monasticism, childbirth, passion, style, despair, autobiography, and reading. The essays highlight the creative and destructive anxieties as well as the legacy of the Reformation.

The original essays in Oxford Twenty-First Century Approaches to Literature mean to provoke rather than reassure, to challenge rather than codify. Instead of summarizing existing knowledge scholars working in the field aim at opening fresh discussion; instead of emphasizing settled consensus they direct their readers to areas of enlivened and unresolved debate. Following the models established by previous volumes in the series, Early Modern Theatricality launches a new generation of scholarship on early modern drama by focusing on the rich formal capacities of theatrical performance. The collection gathers some of the most innovative critics in the field to examine the techniques, objects, bodies, and conventions that characterized early modern theatricality, from the Tudor period to the Restoration. Taking their cues from a series of guiding keywords, the contributors identify the fundamental features of theatricality in the period, using them to launch conceptually adventurous arguments that provoke our rediscovery of early modern drama in all its complexity and inventiveness.

What does reading mean in the twenty-first century? As other disciplines challenge literary criticism’s authority to answer this question, English professors themselves are defining new alternatives to close reading and to interpretation more generally. Further Reading brings together thirty commissioned essays drawing on approaches as different as formalism, historicism, neuroscience, disability, and computation. Contributors take up the following questions: What do we mean when we talk about “reading” today? How are reading techniques evolving in the digital era? What is the future of reading? This book foregrounds reading as a topic worthy of investigation in its own right rather than as a sub-section of histories of the book, sociologies of literacy, or theories of literature. As our knowledge of reading changes in step with the media and the scholarly tools used to apprehend it, a more precise understanding of this topic is crucial to the discipline’s future. This collection therefore seeks to introduce new ways of conceptualizing the term’s forms, boundaries, and uses. Its contributors bring varied vocabularies to bear on the contested nature and continued importance of reading, within the academy and beyond.

This co-edited collection of essays examines the increasing centrality of futures and futures-thinking in all disciplines. It provides theoretical perspectives on constructions of futurity, across the arts, humanities, and social sciences, opening up multidisciplinary conversations between them. Bringing together emerging perspectives on the future from diverse disciplinary perspectives including critical theory, design, anthropology, sociology, politics, and history, the book examines the ways in which the future can be an object of empirical study, a subject for theorization, and an orientation for practice in the real world. The book examines historical and contemporary forms of futures knowledge, the methodologies and technologies of futures expertise, and the role played by different institutions in legitimizing, deploying, and controlling anticipatory practices. Contributors challenge and debate the varied ways in which futures are conjured and constructed, as objects of art and imagination as well as of science and geopolitics. Chapters explore issues as diverse as the utopian imagination, history and philosophy, literary and political manifestos, artefacts and design fictions, and forms of technological and financial forecasting, big data, climate-modelling, and scenarios. The book positions the future as a question of power, of representations and counter-representations, and forms of struggle over future imaginaries. Forms of futures-making depend on complex processes of envisioning and embodiment. Each chapter investigates the critical vocabularies, genres, and representational methods—narrative, quantitative, visual, and material—of futures-making as deeply contested fields in cultural and social life.

This volume opens up, in new and innovative ways, a range of dimensions, some familiar and some more obscure, of late Victorian and modern literature and culture, primarily in British contexts. Our volume’s title, Late Victorian into Modern, emphasises the in-between: the gradual changeover from one period to the next. This approach enables us to examine shared developments and to point out continuities rather than ruptures. The volume explores and exploits an understanding of the late 19th to the early 20th centuries as a cultural moment in which new knowledges were forming with particular speed and intensity. Our contributors include both established and emerging scholars of the literature and culture of the period. The organising principle of this book is to retain a key focus on literary texts, broadly understood to include familiar categories of genre as well as extra-textual elements such as press and publishing history, performance events and visual culture, while remaining keenly attentive to the inter-relations between text and context in the period. Individual chapters explore such topics as Celticism, the New Woman, popular fictions, literatures of empire, aestheticism, periodical culture, political formations, avant-garde poetics, and theatricality.

This title is part of the the Oxford Twenty-First Century Approaches to Literature series, edited by Paul Strohm. This book evaluates different approaches to Middle English literature, with special emphasis on the new, promising, and previously unexplored. It focuses on works of “major authors” such as Geoffrey Chaucer and William Langland, but also on many little-known and neglected texts. It looks at general conditions of textual production and reception, and explores how medieval processes of textual transmission have affected the reception and interpretation of medieval literature. It also discusses the relationship, both symbiotic and challenging, between medieval manuscripts and the modern canon, covering such subjects as multilinguality, the role of audience, translation, transmission, and periodization itself in considering the literature of previous eras. The book is organized into four sections: Conditions and Contexts, Vantage Points, Textual Kinds and Categories, and Writing and the World. Each essay focuses on a theme ranging through such matters as authority, form, imaginative theory, liturgy, drama, incarnational (auto)biography, vernacular theology, heresy, gossip, authorship, and humanism. Contributors tackle topics such as form, genre, the movement from script to print, the orality and aurality of medieval culture, and relationships between beauty, aesthetics, and literary genre.

This collection of forty original essays reflects on the history of adaptation studies, surveys the current state of the field, and maps out possible futures that mobilize its unparalleled ability to bring together theorists and practitioners in different modes of discourse. Grounding contemporary adaptation studies in a series of formative debates about what adaptation is, whether its orientation should be scientific or aesthetic, and whether it is most usefully approached inductively, through close analyses of specific adaptations, or deductively, through general theories of adaptation, the volume, not so much a museum as a laboratory or a provocation, aims to foster, rather than resolve, these debates. Its seven parts focus on the historical and theoretical foundations of adaptation study, the problems raised by adapting canonical classics and the aesthetic commons, the ways different genres and presentational modes illuminate and transform the nature of adaptation, the relations between adaptation and intertextuality, the interdisciplinary status of adaptation, and the issues involved in professing adaptation, now and in the future. Embracing an expansive view of adaptation and adaptation studies, it emphasizes the area’s status as a crossroads or network that fosters interactive exchange across many disciplines and advocates continued debate on its leading questions as the best defense against the possibilities of dilution, miscommunication, and chaos that this expansive view threatens to introduce to a burgeoning field uniquely responsive to the contemporary textual landscape.

This volume explores the history of American drama from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. It describes origins of early republican drama and its evolution during the pre-war and post-war periods. It traces the emergence of different types of American drama including protest plays, reform drama, political drama, experimental drama, urban plays, feminist drama and realist plays. This volume also analyzes the works of some of the most notable American playwrights including Eugene O’Neill, Tennessee Williams, and Arthur Miller and those written by women dramatists.

This handbook surveys the materials, approaches, and contexts of American folklore and folklife studies to guide folklorists and students/scholars of American culture, history, and society through more than 350 years of work in the subject. To cover the contextual and behavioral aspects as well as textual materials of American folklore and folklife studies, the handbook contains forty-three chapters under four major headings of (1) background, theory, and practice; (2) genres, processes, and practitioners; (3) settings, contexts, and institutions; and (4) groups, networks, and communities. In addition to long-standing areas of cultural study such as folktales and speech, the handbook includes areas that have emerged in the twenty-first century such as the Internet, poetry slams, sexual orientations and practices, neurodiverse identities (e.g., Aspies), disability groups (e.g., deaf), and bodylore. The result is a reference work that serves as both a survey of folklore and folklife studies as they have been practiced and a guide to their future. Shaping these studies has been the cultural diversity and changing national boundaries of the United States, relative youth of the nation and its legacy of mass immigration, mobility of residents and their relation to an indigenous and racialized population, and a varied landscape and settlement pattern. The handbook is a reference, therefore, to American studies as well as the global study of tradition, folk arts, and cultural practice.

The Oxford Handbook of American Literary Naturalism takes stock of the best research in this field through twenty-eight articles drawing upon scholarship in literary and cultural studies. The articles offer an in-depth reassessment of writers from Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, Theodore Dreiser, and Jack London to Kate Chopin, Edith Wharton, Ernest Hemingway, Richard Wright, John Steinbeck, Joyce Carol Oates, and Cormac McCarthy. One set of articles focus on the genre itself, exploring the historical contexts that gave birth to it, the problem of definition, its interconnections with other genres, the scientific and philosophical ideas that motivate naturalist authors, and the continuing presence of naturalism in twenty-first century fiction. Other articles examine the tensions within the genre—the role of women and African-American writers, depictions of sexuality, the problem of race, and the critique of commodity culture and class. A final set of articles looks beyond the works to consider the role of the marketplace in the development of naturalism, the popular and critical response to the works, and the influence of naturalism in the other arts. The articles go beyond discussing the familiar figures of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century naturalism to show the continuing presence of naturalism in more recent writing. In addition, to Dreiser, Crane, and Howells, the volume also considers the work of Dashiell Hammett, and Don DeLillo.

The Oxford Handbook of American Literary Realism offers thirty-five original chapters with fresh interpretations of the artistic and political challenges of representing life accurately. Organized by topic and theme, the chapters draw on recent scholarship in literary and cultural studies to offer an authoritative and in-depth reassessment of major and minor figures and the contexts that shaped their work. One set of chapters explores realism’s genesis and its connection to previous and subsequent movements. Others examine the inclusiveness of representation, the circulation of texts, and the aesthetic representation of science, time, space, and the subjects of medicine, the New Woman, and the middle class. Still others trace the connection to other arts—poetry, drama, illustration, photography, painting, and film—and to pedagogical issues in the teaching of realism.

The Oxford Handbook of Andrew Marvell offers a comprehensive introduction to Andrew Marvell (1621‒78), the poet and politician who lived and worked close to the epicentre of the revolutionary upheavals of the seventeenth century. Featuring forty-three original essays by Marvell scholars and historians of the period, it addresses new directions in Marvell studies, including recent archival discoveries and current critical issues. Furthermore, it supplies the historical and contextual information that will help readers to understand and appreciate this complex and inscrutable figure. The volume’s four parts enable a wide range of critical approaches to Marvell’s work to be discussed in depth: ‘Marvell and his Times’ features essays which build upon recent interpretations of Marvell’s work in historically focused criticism; ‘Readings’ concentrates on Marvell’s engagement with particular genres and traditions in poetry, as well as specific prose works; ‘Marvell and his Contemporaries’ discusses Marvell’s relationships with his literary opponents and other important writers of his time; and a final section, ‘Marvell’s Afterlife’, includes essays on the posthumous circulation, publication, and reception of his works.

The Oxford Handbook of Arab Novelistic Traditions traces the emergence of the Arabic novel in the second half of the nineteenth century and its development to the present, both in Arabic-speaking countries and in Arab immigrant destinations around the world. Several chapters consider the ways in which the Arabic novel arose from a syncretic merger between Arabic and European forms and techniques, rather than being a simple importation of the latter and rejection of the former, as earlier scholars claimed. Topics range from theories of the Arabic novel to the link between the novel and history, the influence of the maqāma and other classical and popular Arabic narrative genres on the modern novel, translations and adaptations from the European novel, and women's contributions to the rise of the Arabic novel. Other chapters examine the development of the Arabic novel as it has taken root in every Arab country, and the emergence of the multilingual Arab novel as written both in the Arab world and by Arab immigrants and their descendants across the world. What emerges from this comprehensive survey, in its broad historical and geographical dimensions, is a highly complex image of Arab novelistic traditions as a global literary phenomenon.

This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note that the online publication date for this handbook is the date that the first article in the title was published online. For more information, please read the site FAQs.

Thirty-seven chapters, written by literary critics from across the world, describe the latest thinking about twentieth-century war poetry. The book maps both the uniqueness of each war and the continuities between poets of different wars, while the interconnections between the literatures of war and peacetime, and between combatant and civilian poets, are fully considered. The focus is on Britain and Ireland, but links are drawn with the poetry of the United States and continental Europe. The book feeds a growing interest in war poetry and offers, in toto, a definitive survey of the terrain. It is intended for a broad audience, made up of specialists and also graduates and undergraduates, and for both scholars of particular poets and for those interested in wider debates about modern poetry.

In the most comprehensive and up-to-date overview of the poetry published in Britain between the Restoration and the end of the eighteenth century, forty-four authorities from six countries survey the poetry of the age in all its richness and diversity—serious and satirical, public and private, by men and women, nobles and peasants, whether published in deluxe editions or sung on the streets. The contributors discuss poems in social contexts, poetic identities, poetic subjects, poetic form, poetic genres, poetic devices, and criticism. Even experts in eighteenth-century poetry will see familiar poems from new angles, and all readers will encounter poems they've never read before. The book is not a chronologically organized literary history, nor an encyclopedia, nor a collection of thematically related essays; rather it is an attempt to provide a systematic overview of these poetic works, and to restore it to a position of centrality in modern criticism.

The Oxford Handbook of British Romanticism offers a comprehensive guide to the literature and thought of the Romantic period, and an overview of recent research. Written by a team of international experts, the Handbook analyses all aspects of the Romantic movement, pinpointing its different historical phases and analysing the intellectual and political currents which shaped them. It gives particular attention to devolutionary trends, exploring the English, Scottish, Welsh, and Irish strands in ‘British’ Romanticism and assessing the impact of the constitutional changes that brought into being the ‘United Kingdom’ at a time of political turbulence and international conflict. It also gives extensive coverage to the publishing and reception history of Romantic writing, highlighting the role of readers, reviewers, publishers, and institutions in shaping Romantic literary culture and transmitting its ideas and values. Divided into ten sections, the Handbook covers key themes and concepts in Romantic studies as well as less chartered topics such as freedom of speech, literature and drugs, Romantic oratory, and literary uses of dialect. All the major male and female Romantic authors are included, along with numerous less well-known names, the emphasis throughout being on the diversity of Romantic writing and the complexities and internal divisions of the culture that sustained it. The structure of the volume, and the titling of sections and chapters, strike a balance between familiarity and novelty so as to provide both an accessible guide to current thinking and a conceptual reorganization of this fast-moving field.

The Oxford Handbook of Canadian Cinema offers an overview of the current state of thinking around Canadian cinema. The volume was conceived to register the variety of voices expressing themselves within Canadian cinema with special attention paid to Indigenous, Quebecois, and diasporic identities. As well, the volume acknowledges that Canadian cinema increasingly finds its place within a broad conception of “screen cultures,” which extend into the divergent realms of small-scale artistic experimentation and large-scale public spectacle. Insofar as these realms have played a vital role in establishing Canada’s presence within international screen culture, they are given special emphasis here. Rather than a straight historical account of cinema in Canada, this Oxford Handbook looks at the technological complexes, geographical spaces, and identity formations in which that cinema has emerged and developed.

The Oxford Handbook of Canadian Literature provides a broad-ranging introduction to some of the key critical fields, genres, and periods in Canadian literary studies. The chapters in this volume, written by prominent theorists in the field, reflect the plurality of critical perspectives, regional and historical specializations, and theoretical positions that constitute the field of Canadian literary criticism across a range of genres and historical periods. The volume provides a dynamic introduction to current areas of critical interest, including (1) attention to the links between the literary and the public sphere, encompassing such topics as neoliberalism, trauma and memory, citizenship, material culture, literary prizes, disability studies, literature and history, digital cultures, globalization studies, and environmentalism or ecocriticism; (2) interest in Indigenous literatures and settler-Indigenous relations; (3) attention to multiple diasporic and postcolonial contexts within Canada; (4) interest in the institutionalization of Canadian literature as a discipline; (5) a turn toward book history and literary history, with a renewed interest in early Canadian literature; (6) a growing interest in articulating the affective character of the “literary”—including an interest in affect theory, mourning, melancholy, haunting, memory, and autobiography. The book represents a diverse array of interests—from the revival of early Canadian writing, to the continued interest in Indigenous, regional, and diasporic traditions, to more recent discussions of globalization, market forces, and neoliberalism. It includes a distinct section dedicated to Indigenous literatures and traditions, as well as a section that reflects on the discipline of Canadian literature as a whole.

Although best known the world over for his masterpiece novel, Don Quixote de la Mancha, published in two parts in 1605 and 1615, the antics of the would-be knight-errant and his simple squire only represent a fraction of the trials and tribulations, both in the literary world and in society at large, of this complex man. Poet, playwright, soldier, slave, satirist, novelist, political commentator, and literary outsider, Cervantes achieved a minor miracle by becoming one of the rarest of things in the early modern world of letters: an international best-seller during his lifetime, with his great novel being translated into multiple languages before his death in 1616. The principal objective of the Oxford Handbook of Cervantes is to create a resource in English that provides a fully comprehensive overview of the life, works, and influences of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547–1616). This volume contains seven sections, exploring in depth Cervantes’s life and how the trials, tribulations, and hardships endured influenced his writing. Cervantistas from numerous countries, including the United Kingdom, Spain, Ireland, the United States, Canada, and France offer their expertise with the most up-to-date research and interpretations to complete this wide-ranging, but detailed, compendium of a writer not known for much other than his famous novel outside of the Spanish-speaking world. This handbook explores his famous novel Don Quixote, his other prose works, his theatrical output, his poetry, his sources, influences, and contemporaries, and finally reception of his works over the last four hundred years.