What happens when bad criticism happens to good people? Annoying the Victorians sets the tradition of critical discourse and literary criticism on its ear, as well as a few other areas. James Kincaid brings his witty, erudite and thoroughly cynical self to the Victorians, and they will never read (or be read) quite the same. In a series of essays covering the "hit parade" of the Victorians--Tennyson, Dickens, Meredith, Hardy and the erotic poetry of The Pearl --Kincaid creates a sharp, insicive parody of the methods of good criticism (and sometimes the practicioners,) all the while raising questions about what "good criticism" is, and how these rules serve to maintain the status quo. Annoying the Victorians mocks those conventions held dear, and examines the sacredness of "the text," the employment of evidence, the construction of sound arguments, and the solemn tone in which the discipline is practiced, showing them all for smoke and mirrors, exposing the Wizard behind the curtain of critical practice. Throughout, James Kincaid amuses, prods, provokes and enlightens the reader with a machete-like directness couched in satire. The essays will surely annoy both Victorians and Victorianists alike, as well as those worshipping at the church of Literary Criticism.

The interaction of Jew and Greek in antiquity intrigues the imagination. Both civilizations boasted great traditions, their roots stretching back to legendary ancestors and divine sanction. In the wake of Alexander the Great's triumphant successes, Greeks and Macedonians came as conquerors and settled as ruling classes in the lands of the eastern Mediterranean. Hellenic culture, the culture of the ascendant classes in many of the cities of the Near East, held widespread attraction and appeal. Jews were certainly not immune. In this thoroughly researched, lucidly written work, Erich Gruen draws on a wide variety of literary and historical texts of the period to explore a central question: How did the Jews accommodate themselves to the larger cultural world of the Mediterranean while at the same time reasserting the character of their own heritage within it? Erich Gruen's work highlights Jewish creativity, ingenuity, and inventiveness, as the Jews engaged actively with the traditions of Hellas, adapting genres and transforming legends to articulate their own legacy in modes congenial to a Hellenistic setting. Drawing on a diverse array of texts composed in Greek by Jews over a broad period of time, Gruen explores works by Jewish historians, epic poets, tragic dramatists, writers of romance and novels, exegetes, philosophers, apocalyptic visionaries, and composers of fanciful fables—not to mention pseudonymous forgers and fabricators. In these works, Jewish writers reinvented their own past, offering us the best insights into Jewish self-perception in that era.

Gruen (history and classics, Berkeley) explores four centuries of Jewish life within the dominant classical civilization, from Alexander the Great's conquest of the Near East to the Roman destruction of the Jewish Temple in 70 C.E. He begins with an investigation of "the conspicuous absence of a philosophy of Diaspora" and attempts very capably to identify the traces of the concept among Jews ... More under Roman rule. He looks at the cultures of the Jews living in Rome, Asia, and Alexandria, finding very vibrant communities in all three places. In exploring Jewish views of the Diaspora, Gruen offers up two chapters on Diaspora humor, one about the way biblical tales were retold and the lessons they could convey and the other about creating fanciful yet didactic stories. Then the author looks at the evidence about the Jewish image of the Greeks and Romans, a subject usually investigated from the opposite viewpoint. This leads into his final chapter on the Jewish view of the homeland during the period, a view not much different from today's. Gruen admits that his work is far from exhaustive, but it is certainly substantial, fascinating, and scholarly

Now available in paperback, this highly acclaimed work, hailed by The New York Times as "graceful, fluid, and extremely accessible," is a study of the ways in which poets from the biblical age to the present have addressed the subject of the nature and existence of God. The book treats such authors as Dante, the medieval Hebrew religious poets, the 17th-century religious poets, and the 18th century Nature poets, and discusses, among other topics, the influence of Calvinism and the poetry of stoicism, agnosticism, and atheism. Throughout the work, Daiches examines the tensions generated when a traditional religious belief which the poet accepts, or feels he should accept, runs counter to the hard facts of his own experience. The author also considers the particular problems which have emerged in this century for the religious poet who cannot accept any specific religious creed, and for readers who are unable to appreciate a poet's set of beliefs. God and the Poets does not set out to provide a comprehensive account of the poetic portrayals of God, but offers the reader a wealth of illuminating reflections on a subject which has obsessed poets over the ages.

Suspending the distinction between headline news and high theory, Avital Ronell examines the diverse figures of finitude in our modernity: war, guerrilla video, trauma TV, AIDS, music, divorce, sadism, electronic tagging, rumor. Her essays address such questions as, How do rumors kill? How has video become the conscience of TV? How have the police come to be everywhere, even where they are not? Is peace possible? “[W]riting to the community of those who have no community—to those who have known the infiniteness of abandonment,” her work explores the possibility, one possibility among many, that “this time we have gone too far”: “One last word. It is possible that we have gone too far. This possibility has to be considered if we, as a species, as a history, are going to get anywhere at all.”

Tracing the growth of ancient biography from the fifth century to the first century B.C., Arnaldo Momigliano asks fruitful questions about the origins and development of Greek biography. By clarifying the social and intellectual implications of the fact that the Greeks kept biography and autobiography distinct from historiography, he contributes to an understanding of a basic dichotomy in the Western tradition of historical writing. The Development of Greek Biography is fully annotated, and includes a bibliography designed to serve as an introduction to the study of biography in general. This classic study is now reissued with the addition of Momigliano's essay "Second Thoughts on Greek Biography" (1971).

Educated in the humanities and trained in psychiatry, Jean Starobinski is a central figure in the Geneva School of criticism. For twenty-five years his work has had considerable influence on postmodern European critics (notably Derrida), scholars of French literature, and intellectual historians. Montaigne in Motion is his subtly conceived and elegantly written study of the Essais of Montaigne, whose deceptively plainspoken meditations have entranced readers and stimulated philosophers since their first publication in 1580 and 1595. -- Publisher's description.

The Arab theatre and cinema are among the most neglected subjects in the studies of Oriental literature and research into the history of theatre. This book, written by the acclaimed scholar Jacob M. Landau and first published in 1958, is a survey of the development of the Arab theatre and cinema as cultural and social phenomena and goes a long way in shedding some light on these neglected subjects.

Ilan Stavans has been a lightning rod for cultural discussion and criticism his entire career. In A Critic's Journey , he takes on his own Jewish and Hispanic upbringing with an autobiographical focus and his typical flair with words, exploring the relationship between the two cultures from his own and also from others' experiences. Stavans has been hailed as a voice for Latino culture thanks to his Hispanic upbringing, but as a Jew and a Caucasian, he's also an outsider to that culture---something that's sharpened his perspective (and some of his critics' swords). In this book of essays, he looks at the creative process from that point of view, exploring everything from the translation of Don Quixote to the Hispanic anti-Semitism and the Holocaust in Latin America. Ilan Stavans is Lewis-Sebring Professor in Latin American and Latino Culture and Five College Fortieth Anniversary Professor at Amherst College. A native of Mexico, he received his doctorate in Latin American Literature from Columbia University. Stavans's books include The Hispanic Condition, On Borrowed Words, Spanglish, Dictionary Days, The Disappearance, Love & Language (with Verónica Albin), Resurrecting Hebrew , and Mr. Spic Goes to Washington , and he has edited books including The Oxford Book of Jewish Stories and the upcoming Norton Anthology of Latino Literature . His story "Morirse está en Hebreo" was made into the award-winning movie My Mexican Shivah . Stavans has received numerous awards, among them a Guggenheim Fellowship, the National Jewish Book Award, an Emmy nomination, the Latino Book Award, Chile's Presidential Medal, the Rubén Darío Distinction, and the Cátedra Roberto Bolaño. His work has been translated into a dozen languages.

Ilan Stavans has been a lightning rod for cultural discussion and criticism his entire career. In A Critic's Journey , he takes on his own Jewish and Hispanic upbringing with an autobiographical focus and his typical flair with words, exploring the relationship between the two cultures from his own and also from others' experiences. Stavans has been hailed as a voice for Latino culture thanks to his Hispanic upbringing, but as a Jew and a Caucasian, he's also an outsider to that culture---something that's sharpened his perspective (and some of his critics' swords). In this book of essays, he looks at the creative process from that point of view, exploring everything from the translation of Don Quixote to the Hispanic anti-Semitism and the Holocaust in Latin America. Ilan Stavans is Lewis-Sebring Professor in Latin American and Latino Culture and Five College Fortieth Anniversary Professor at Amherst College. A native of Mexico, he received his doctorate in Latin American Literature from Columbia University. Stavans's books include The Hispanic Condition, On Borrowed Words, Spanglish, Dictionary Days, The Disappearance, Love & Language (with Verónica Albin), Resurrecting Hebrew , and Mr. Spic Goes to Washington , and he has edited books including The Oxford Book of Jewish Stories and the upcoming Norton Anthology of Latino Literature . His story "Morirse está en Hebreo" was made into the award-winning movie My Mexican Shivah . Stavans has received numerous awards, among them a Guggenheim Fellowship, the National Jewish Book Award, an Emmy nomination, the Latino Book Award, Chile's Presidential Medal, the Rubén Darío Distinction, and the Cátedra Roberto Bolaño. His work has been translated into a dozen languages.

Philippines is Hélène Cixous's reverie or 'true dreaming' which intertwines Freud's uneasy views on telepathy, autobiographical memories conflating Algeria and Paris, childhood and adult life, shared with her brother 'Pete', and literary evocations from Proust and George du Maurier's forgotten novel Peter Ibbetson. Amid telepathic conversations, real or imagined, and life events uncannily answering one another from a distance, Cixous's dense evocative journey ceaselessly 'returns to its starting point' and, like the twin almonds in one shell evoked by the title, reveals intimate, secret bonds between scenes and beings, real and fictional. Its interpretive sharpness delivered with stylistic elegance and candour will make this study typical of Cixous's art, which plies between literature and criticism, appealing not only to scholars and critics interested in psychoanalysis, autobiography and the act of reading, but also to a broader readership captivated by the hallucinatory coincidences between life, dream and fiction, when 'Reality is the dream. The dream is the true reality'.

"Who is the greatest living essayist writing in English? Joseph Epstein would surely be at the top of anybody's list. Epstein is penetrating. He is witty. He has a magic touch with words, that hard to define but immediately recognizable quality called style. Above all, he is impossible to put down. Gallimaufry: A Collection of Essays, Reviews, Bits contains 58 essays on a wide variety of subjects, each a pure pleasure to read"--

Describes the historic background and artistic influences of the period, and examines the work of Sir Thomas More, Spenser, Marlowe, and Shakespeare

A Past Without Shadow examines 50 years of German children's books in which the darkest horrors of the Third Reich have routinely remained hidden. The horrors of the Third Reich are systematically screened and filtered, allowing the darker, bleaker parts of history to escape illumination. Here Zohar Shavit explores 345 German books for children describing the Third Reich and the Holocaust, and finds a shocking distortion of the past: a recurrent narrative which suggests that the Germans themselves had no hand in the suffering inflicted on the Jews. These books, Shavit argues, have created the false historical lesson that the real victims of Hitler's crimes were the German people themselves. First published to great acclaim in Hebrew and now available in English, this book is a wake-up call for anyone concerned about German children's literature and its responsibility to past and future.

"To Write Like a Woman is a rare example of a feminist tackling science fictuion using postmodern theory, which makes for a much more sophisticated and nuanced appraisal than the usual fare." ―Passion"Russ’ essays are witty and insightful. An excellent book for any writer or reader." ―Feminist Bookstore News"In her new book of essays... Russ continues to debunk and demand, edify and entertain.... Appreciative of surface aesthetics, she continually delves deeper than most critics, yet in terms so simple and accessible that her essays read like lively, angry, humorous dialogues conducted face-to-face with the author. Russ is the antithesis of the distant critic in her ivory tower." ―Paul Di Filippo, The Washington Post Book World"... 20 years of the author’s feisty reports from the front lines of literature." ―The San Francisco Review of Books"This is a book of imaginative and provoking essays, but you should read it for the sheer fun of it." ―The Women’s Review of Books"Collects more than two decades of criticism by Joanna Russ, one of the most perceptive, forthright and eloquent feminist commentators around." ―Feminist Bookstore News"... a super book....This is a book that, for once, really will appeal to readers of all kinds." ―Utopian Studies"If you enjoy science fiction, this is definitely a book that you’ll want to talk about. I found myself sneaking a few pages at times when I really didn’t have time to read." ―Jan Catano, AtlantisClassic essays on science fiction and feminism by Nebula and Hugo award-winning Joanna Russ. Here she ranges from a consideration of the aesthetic of science fiction to a reading of the lesbian identity of Willa Cather. To Write Like a Woman includes essays on horror stories and the supernatural, feminist utopias, popular literature for women (the "modern gothic"), and the feminist education of graduate students in English.

Partition--the idea of separating Jews and Arabs along ethnic or national lines--is a legacy at least as old as the Zionist-Palestinian conflict. Challenging the widespread "separatist imagination" behind partition, Gil Hochberg demonstrates the ways in which works of contemporary Jewish and Arab literature reject simple notions of separatism and instead display complex configurations of identity that emphasize the presence of alterity within the self--the Jew within the Arab, and the Arab within the Jew. In Spite of Partition examines Hebrew, Arabic, and French works that are largely unknown to English readers to reveal how, far from being independent, the signifiers "Jew" and "Arab" are inseparable.In a series of original close readings, Hochberg analyzes fascinating examples of such inseparability. In the Palestinian writer Anton Shammas's Hebrew novel Arabesques, the Israeli and Palestinian protagonists are a "schizophrenic pair" who "have not yet decided who is the ventriloquist of whom." And in the Moroccan Jewish writer Albert Swissa's Hebrew novel Aqud, the Moroccan-Israeli main character's identity is uneasily located between the "Moroccan Muslim boy he could have been" and the "Jewish Israeli boy he has become." Other examples draw attention to the intricate linguistic proximity of Hebrew and Arabic, the historical link between the traumatic memories of the Jewish Holocaust and the Palestinian Nakbah, and the libidinal ties that bind Jews and Arabs despite, or even because of, their current animosity.

"Untying the Knot collects eighteen previously unpublished essays on the riddle--a genre of discourse found in virtually every human culture. Hasan-Rokem and Shulman have drawn these essays from a variety of cultural perspectives and disciplines; linguists, anthropologists, folklorists, and religion and literature scholars consider riddling practices in Hebrew, Finnish, Indian languages, Chinese, and classical Greek. The authors seek to understand the peculiar expressive power of the riddle, and the cultural logic of its particular uses; they scrutinize the riddle's logical structure and linguistic strategies, as well as its affinity to neighboring genres such as enigmas, puzzles, oracular prophecy, proverbs, and dreams. In this way, they begin to answer how riddles relate to the conceptual structures of a particular culture, and how they come to represent a culture's cosmology or cognitive map of the world. More importantly, these essays reveal the human need for symbolic ordering--riddles being one such form of cultural ritual." --

The authors offer translations of significant passages from the most important works of Jewish ethical literature. accompanying these selections are essays explaining the relevance of the concepts presented in this literature.

"Everyone has a complaint, but nobody likes a complainer. Rather than making things better a complaint can just make things worse. Often its only relief is the harmless and temporary release of steam. But it can also pose as criticism in one of several seemingly respectable forms. In Complaint, Avital Ronell looks at how complaints and complainers have been treated in literature and philosophy, in feedback loops that pay little attention to injustice and suffering. Beginning with Hamlet, and with open awareness of her own experiences, Ronell proceeds to show how complaining is aggravated, distracted, stifled, and transformed. She looks at exemplary complaints made by Friedrich Nietzsche, Hannah Arendt, and Barbara Johnson. She examines the complaint riven history of deconstruction. Renowned for her courage in taking on painful subjects with candor and wit, Ronell dares to listen to the haunting complaints of the dead"--