Behler discusses the current state of thought on modernity and postmodernity, detailing the intellectual problems to be faced and examining the positions of such central figures in the debate as Lyotard, Habermas, Rorty, and Derrida. He finds that beyond the “limits of communication,” further discussion must be carried out through irony.The historical rise of the concept of modernity is examined through discussions of the querelle des anciens et des modernes as a break with classic...

"Provides an extremely valuable introduction to the work of Michel Serres for an English-speaking audience, as well as offering useful critical approaches for those already familiar with its outlines."---Robert Harrison, Stanford University [blurb from review pending permission]The work of Michel Serres---including the books Hermes, The Parasite, The Natural Contract, Genesis, The Troubadour of Knowledge, and Conversations on ...

The Gothic Wanderer Rises Eternal in Popular LiteratureFrom the horrors of sixteenth century Italian castles to twenty-first century plagues,from the French Revolution to the liberation of Libya, Tyler R. Tichelaar takes readerson far more than a journey through literary history. The Gothic Wanderer is anexploration of man’s deepest fears, his efforts to rise above them for the last twocenturies, and how he may be on the brink finally of succeeding.Tichelaar...

Within the last ten years there has been a renaissance in Irish drama from both sides of the border, including award-winning work which has transfered to London and New York, and has toured Britain as well as Europe and Australia. This book explores the dynamics of the relationship between these representations of Ireland and the fluid nature of cultural identity, especially during a period of economic and political change. Although the book establishes the historical context for contempor...

Oscar Wilde, although most commonly known as a playright, was also a critic. The Artist as Critic is a wide selection of Wilde's book reviews as well as famous longer works such as "The Portrait of Mr. W.H.," "The Soul Man under Socialism," and the four essays which make up Intentions.

This book resituates the ghost story as a matter of literary hospitality and as part of a vital prehistory of modernism, seeing it not as a quaint neo-gothic ornament, but as a powerful literary response to the technological and psychological disturbances that marked the end of the Victorian era. Linking little-studied authors like M. R. James and May Sinclair to such canonical figures as Dickens, Henry James, Woolf, and Joyce, Thurston argues that the literary ghost should be seen as no m...

Every great civilisation from the Bronze Age to the present day has produced epic poems. Epic poetry has always had a profound influence on other literary genres, including its own parody in the form of mock-epic. This Companion surveys over four thousand years of epic poetry from the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh to Derek Walcott's postcolonial Omeros. The list of epic poets analysed here includes some of the greatest writers in literary history in Europe and beyond: Homer, Virgil, Dante, ...

Sixteenth-century physicians had their letters on medical topics published in printed collections to record their exchange of ideas and make known their professional expertise.During the Renaissance, collections of letters both satisfied humanist enthusiasm for ancient literary forms and provided the flexibility of a format appropriate to many types of inquiry. The printed collections of medical letters by Giovanni Manardo of Ferrara and other physicians in early s...

For about three thousand years comedy has applied a welcome humanist perspective to the world’s religious beliefs and practices. From the ancient Greek comedies of Aristophanes, the famous poem by Lucretius, and dialogues of Cicero to early modern and Enlightenment essays and philosophical texts, together with the inherent skepticism about life after death in tragicomedies by Plautus, Shakespeare, Molière, and nineteenth-century novels by such as Dickens and Hugo, the literary critic and...

Bringing the skills of a literary historian to the subject, Brian Moloney considers the genesis of Saint Francis of Assisi's Canticle of Brother Sun to show how it works as a carefully composed work of art. The study examines the saint's life and times, the structure of the poem, the features of its style, and the range of its possible meanings.

The Literature of Al-Andalus is an exploration of the culture of Iberia, present-day Spain and Portugal, during the period when it was an Islamic, mostly Arabic-speaking territory, from the eighth to the thirteenth century, and in the centuries following the Christian conquest when Arabic continued to be widely used. The volume embraces many other related spheres of Arabic culture including philosophy, art, architecture and music. It also extends the subject to other literatures - especial...

This book deals with the expression of emotions in Igala – a Nigerian minority language with about two million speakers – from a Cognitive Linguistics perspective. The author investigates the network of the Igala language of emotions using the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) framework as developed by Anna Wierzbicka and her collaborators. The claims of adequacy of NSM in its present form for the analysis of emotion concepts universally will be challenged. This is due to the way emotion...