This book examines literary representations of hyperlocal spaces that subvert the idea of grounded and organic spatial identities. Figures such as the pond, the scientific particle, and Wedgwood creamware often go unnoticed, but they exemplify important shifts in culture and aesthetics in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The Hyperlocal in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Literary Space argues that these objects, as well as locations such as alcoves in remote shires, city...

This volume analyzes the literary role played by history in the works of J. R. R. Tolkien. It argues that the events of The Lord of the Rings are placed against the background of an already- existing history, both in reality and in the fictional worlds of the books.History is unfolded in various ways, both in explicitly archival annals and in stories told by characters on the road or on the fly, and in which different visions of history emerge. In addition, the history wit...

Australia has been seen as a land of both punishment and refuge. Australian literature has explored these controlling alternatives, and vividly rendered the landscape on which they transpire. Twentieth-century writers left Australia to see the world; now Australia's distance no longer provides sanctuary. But today the global perspective has arrived with a vengeance.In Contemporary Australian Literature: A World Not Yet Dead, Nicholas Birns tells the story of how novelists,...

Gabriel Garcia Marquez in Retrospect gathers fifteen essays by noted scholars in the fields of Latin American literature, politics, and theater. The volume offers broad overviews of the Colombian author’s total body of work, along with closer looks at some of his acknowledged masterpieces. The Nobel laureate’s cultural contexts and influences, his variety of themes, and his formidable legacy (Hispanic, U.S., world-wide) all come up for consideration. New readings of One Hundred Years of So...

Mapping Minor/Small and World Literatures: Periphery and Center makes a declarative intervention in debates about world literature, redefining the boundaries between the center and periphery to rejuvenate long-established assumptions about significance and insignificance. In this book, African American literature (emerging from the often overlooked pink periphery, a cramped space of minor literature), works from the Faroe Islands, Basque literature, First Nation Canadian literatur...

The Cambridge Companion to the Australian Novel provides a clear, lively, and accessible account of the novel in Australia. The chapters of this book survey significant issues and developments in the Australian novel, offer historical and conceptual frameworks, and demonstrate what reading an Australian novel looks like in practice. The book begins with novels by literary visitors to Australia and concludes with those by refugees. In between, the reader encounters the Australian novel in i...

Elizabeth Harrower: Critical Essays is the first sustained study of this acclaimed Australian author. It brings together two celebrated novelists and ten noted critics of Australian literature to consider the legacy and continuing importance of this major literary figure.The essays examine all of Harrower's published fiction, from her first short story to the long-delayed publication of In Certain Circles in 2014. Together they provide an wide ranging introduction...

Anthony Trollope's novels and stories entertain while vividly bringing the Victorian era to life. His deep empathy for the underdog led him to subvert conventions, exploring the lives of women, as well as men, and choosing as heroes and heroines outsiders who would be viewed with suspicion by his readers. Trollope's profound insight to human nature made him the first novelist in English to develop three dimensional characters and to create the novel sequence. This literary companion introd...

Karen Tei Yamashita’s novels, essays, and performance scripts have garnered considerable praise from scholars and reviewers, and are taught not only in the United States but in at least half a dozen countries in Asia, South America, and Europe. Her work has been written about in numerous disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. Karen Tei Yamashita: Fictions of Magic and Memory is the first anthology given over to Yamashita’s writing. It contains newly commissioned essays...

RichardFlanagan: Critical Essays is the first book to be published about thelife and work of this major world author. Written by twelve leading criticsfrom Australia, Europe and North America, these richly varied essays offer newways of understanding Flanagan's contribution to Tasmanian, Australian andworld literature.Flanagan's fictional worlds offer empathetic,often poignant, renderings of those whose voices have been lost beneathofficial accounts of history, stories fro...

This book offers a profound and necessary re-evaluation of pacifism, positioning it not merely as a negative stance against war, but as a comprehensive philosophical orientation toward living and ethical engagement. Moving beyond conventional political and historical limitations, the collection interrogates the radical intellectual and practical potential of non-violence in the twenty-first century.The contributions explore historical reappraisals—from reintroducing the Quaker paci...

The Contemporary Spanish-American Novel provides an accessible introduction to an important World literature. While many of the authors covered-Aira, Bolaño, Castellanos Moya, Vásquez-are gaining an increasing readership in English and are frequently taught, there is sparse criticism in English beyond book reviews. This book provides the guidance necessary for a more sophisticated and contextualized understanding of these authors and their works. Underestimated or unfamiliar Spani...