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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.

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

"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.

From Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales to Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary, this is a comprehensive guide to comedy in the English literary canon. Beginning with a critical exploration of historical and philosophical theories of humour, the book then supplies close-readings of a wide range of major texts, authors and genres from the Medieval period to the present. The Comic Mode in English Literature examines such texts as: Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Pope's The Rape of the Lock, Austen's Emma Dickens, The Pickwick Papers, Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, Amis's Lucky Jim. Covering poetry, prose and drama, this comprehensive guide will be essential reading for students of comic writing, literary history and genre.

The First collection of essays to address issues concerning lesbian and gay studies in the undergraduate classroom, Professions of Desire will challenge teachers and students of literature with new materials, new approaches, and new ideas. Professions of Desire includes examples of lesbian and gay critical analysis and thoughtful discussions about what it means to be lesbian, gay, or queer in the classroom

Gornick on V. S. Naipaul, James Baldwin, George Gissing, Randall Jarrell, H. G. Wells, Loren Eiseley, Allen Ginsberg, Hayden Carruth, Saul Bellow, and Philip Roth and the intimate relationship between emotional damage and great literature. Vivian Gornick, one of our finest critics, tackled the theme of love and marriage in her last collection of essays, The End of the Novel of Love , a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. In this new collection, she turns her attention to another large theme in literature: the struggle for the semblance of inner freedom. Great literature, she believes, is not the record of the achievement, but of the effort. Gornick, who emerged as a major writer during the second-wave feminist movement, came to realize that “ideology alone could not purge one of the pathological self-doubt that seemed every woman's bitter birthright.” Or, as Anton Chekhov put it so memorably: “Others made me a slave, but I must squeeze the slave out of myself, drop by drop.” Perhaps surprisingly, Gornick found particular inspiration for this challenge in the work of male writers—talented, but locked in perpetual rage, self-doubt, or social exile. From these men—who had infinitely more permission to do and be than women had ever known—she learned what it really meant to wrestle with demons. In the essays collected here, she explores the work of V. S. Naipaul, James Baldwin, George Gissing, Randall Jarrell, H. G. Wells, Loren Eiseley, Allen Ginsberg, Hayden Carruth, Saul Bellow, and Philip Roth. Throughout the book, Gornick is at her best: interpreting the intimate interrelationship of emotional damage, social history, and great literature.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are advised that this resource may contain images, transcripts or names of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples now deceased. It may also contain historically and culturally sensitive words, terms, and descriptions.

"Does a neglected masterpiece by Jane Austen enshrine her first love affair? Who was Vita Sackville West's real grandfather? What clues are there to the identity of 'Walter', doyen of Victorian pornographers? When and why did P.G. Wodehouse mutate from hack to genius? Was Oscar Wilde really down and out in Paris? Was Brideshead really Madresfield? These and other excursions into literary or social history have developed out of Mark Girouard's spare time enthusiasms, as diversions from his main occupation as an architectural historian. In nine essays he calls attention to points that have not been noticed before, corrects fallacies that have got into general circulation, suggests, identifies, redates, refutes, or pours a little cold water on unjustified romanticisms. Three further essays sample another enthusiasm, his own family background, and introduce characters such as the dwarf who had to stand on a bench to address the South African Parliament, the colonial governor who fell in love with his niece, and the dowager duchess with whom he spent his childhood on the edge of the park at Chatsworth." --Publisher description.

Product Description Looking for Genet brings together twenty-five of Chester’s notorious essays and reviews, including pieces on Nabokov’s Pale Fire (“a total wreck, and for one reason: it’s not funny, and it’s supposed to be”), Burroughs’s Naked Lunch (“the first half is pleasantly readable without too much skipping, the second is pleasantly skippable without too much yawning”), and Updike’s Pigeon Feathers (“a god who has allowed a writer to lavish such craft upon these worthless tales is capable of anything”). Here too are sketches from his penniless bohemian life in Paris, seven “Letters from Morocco” written for the New York Herald Tribune, and Chester’s final piece―the half-mad, previously unpublished “Letter from the Wandering Jew,” a howl of rage and despair from his hated final home, Jerusalem. Together these pieces are testament to the life and the talent of the Sixties’ most memorable literary iconoclasts. About the Author Alfred Chester was, in the words of Gore Vidal, “a glorious writer, tough as nails.” His works include The Exquisite Corpse (Black Sparrow Books, 2004), Head of a Sad Angel (stories, 1990), and Looking for Genet (essays, 1992). Born in Brooklyn in 1928, he died in Tel Aviv in 1971.Edward Field won an Academy Award for writing narration for the documentary film To Be Alive. His other awards include the Lamont Award from the Academy of American Poets, the Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, the Prix de Rome from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, and the Lambda Literary Award. Field has lived in New York City and has taught at Sarah Lawrence College and Hofstra University.

"Roston offers detailed and essentially new analyses of works by Spenser, Shakespeare, Jonson, and Donne, arguing that the seemingly contradictory presence of traditional and subversive elements in their major works actually creates the source of much of their literary achievement"--Provided by publisher.

Roston demonstrates that what emerges is not a fixed or monolithic pattern for each generation but a dynamic series of responses to shared challenges. The book relates leading English writers and literary modes to contemporary developments in architecture, painting, and sculpture, exploring by a close reading of the texts and the artistic works the insights such comparison offers.Originally published in 1987.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Based on an intensive study of the original German text of Freud's writings, letters and journals, S. S. Prawer's new book is the first to make a full and systematic map of Freud's use of English literature. The great psychoanalyst has long been acclaimed as a polymath, as a practical doctor who was also a theoretician, as a writer of non-fiction which was also a counterpoint to the great novels of the early twentieth century, and as an essayist who, like Montaigne, absorbed all of the cultural world around him. Freud was fascinated by writings from many nations and languages, and his use of English shows the great range of his reading: from Shakespeare to Bernard Shaw, Henry Fielding to George Eliot, Mark Twain to Thornton Wilder; from scientific works by Maxwell and Darwin to the economics of Adam Smith, Malthus and Keynes, and from psychology and anthropology to the origins of religion. Though Freud's genius was unique, his sense of being a citizen of a world far wider than Vienna was not, and it can tell us much about the exchange of ideas across national and linguistic frontiers. Though he was a reader par excellence, he was also a case study in how world literature can be used by men and women who are not professional literary scholars or critics -- and of how much it can come to mean to them, and for their sense of who they are.