Does Thoreau belong to the past or to the future? Instead of canonizing him as a celebrant of “pure” nature apart from the corruption of civilization, the essays in Thoreauvian Modernities reveal edgier facets of his work—how Thoreau is able to unsettle as well as inspire and how he is able to focus on both the timeless and the timely. Contributors from the United States and Europe explore Thoreau’s modernity and give a much-needed reassessment of his work in a global context....

Jocelyn Pierston, a successful sculptor, is helpless in the face of ‘the well-beloved’: the manifestation of perfect womanhood that seems to move like a will-o’-the-wisp from one acquaintance to the next. It shapes his whole life. Where his artistry involves permanence cold stone objects his heart is caught by ephemeral beauty. After years spent in London, a return to his rocky birthplace, the Isle of Slingers, sparks Pierston’s extraordinary involvement with three generations of the Caro ...

Deep in the grounds of Welland House lies an ancient memorial tower, surrounded by a prehistoric wilderness that isolates it from the rest of the land. When one day Viviette Constantine, the wife of the estate’s owner, investigates the tower, she there discovers Swithin St Cleeve, a young astronomer who introduces her to the majesty and wonders of the night sky. Instantly drawn to Swithin, and with her husband abroad, Viviette offers him use of the tower and becomes a kind of apprentice to...

Part novel, part philosophical treatise, part satire, Sartor Resartus is a masterpiece of 19th-century literature, following in the footsteps of Swift’s Tale of a Tub and Sterne’s Tristram Shandy and a key influence on Melville’s Moby-Dick. Bubbling over with ideas, humour and inventiveness, it is on the surface a long-suffering British editor’s sceptical account of a German philosopher’s book, Clothes: Their Origin and Influence, which itself is steeped in German idealism. The author, Dio...

In a time of global environmental crisis, pastoralism may seem beside the point. Yet pastoral ideals are still alive even though they often manifest themselves by ironic indirection. What can the pastoral tradition teach us about our ties to particular places?The contributors to this volume attempt to lay the groundwork for the ongoing concern with pastoral and with its critical revision.This volume brings together new essays that focus on painting, photography, poetry, essay...

The idea for this study came to me in the course of my reading of innova tive US-American! fiction of the last three decades. I observed that much of it is cast in the comic mode - or, more precisely, that there seems to be in contemporary fiction an affinity between 'innovation' and 'the comic' and that this affinity, furthermore, appears to be characteristic of postmo dernism. It is obvious, at the same time, that comic has become an elusive and, more often than not, a disputable categor...