Detaining Time is the first book to investigate the representation of time in literature in terms of the project to reconceptualize time, so that its movement no longer threatens security. Focusing on the nature, consequences, and resolution of resistance to temporal passage, Eric P. Levy offers detailed and probing close readings, enriched by thorough yet engaging explication and application of prominent philosophical theories of time. Philosophy is here employed not as a rigid m...

"Christmas and Other Stories" by G. K. Chesterton is a delightful collection that delves into the spirit of the holiday season through a series of thought-provoking and heartwarming tales. With Chesterton's signature wit and keen insight, each story explores themes of faith, joy, and human nature. From festive gatherings to reflective moments, the narratives capture the essence of Christmas and its impact on individuals and communities. This compilation offers a blend of humor, warmth, and...

A wide-ranging and appreciative literary history of the castaway tale from Defoe to the presentEver since Robinson Crusoe washed ashore, the castaway story has survived and prospered, inspiring a multitude of writers of adventure fiction to imitate and adapt its mythic elements. In his brilliant critical study of this popular genre, Christopher Palmer traces the castaway tales' history and changes through periods of settlement, violence, and reconciliation, and acr...

The Gospel According to David Foster Wallace is the first book to explore key religious themes - from boredom to addiction, and distraction – in the work of one of America's most celebrated contemporary novelists.In a series of short, topic-focussed chapters, the bookjoins a selection of key scenes from Wallace's novels Infinite Jest and The Pale King with clear explanations of how they contribute to his overall account of what it means to be a human bein...

This book explores ‘nothingness’, the negative way found in Buddhist and Christian traditions, with a focused and comparative approach. It examines the works of Nagarjuna (c. 150 CE), a Buddhist monk, philosopher and one of the greatest thinkers of classical India, and those of John of the Cross (1542-1591), a Carmelite monk, outstanding Spanish poet, and one of the greatest mystical theologians. The conception of nothingness in both the thinkers points to a paradox of linguistic ...

Roberto Bolaño as World Literature provides an introduction to the Chilean novelist that highlights his connections with classic and contemporary masters of world literature and his investigation of topics of international interest, such as the rise of rightwing and neofascist movements during the last decades of the 20th century. But this anthology also shows how Roberto Bolaño's participation in world literature is informed in his experiences, identity, and, more generally, cult...

Mock-heroic is the exemplary genre of the English Augustan era: it is one of the few genres that the Augustans invented themselves, and it stands in a symbolic relation to a culture still reverential of the grandeurs of the classical past and uneasy about its ability to emulate them. Mock-Heroic from Butler to Cowper shows the protean nature of mock-epic at this time. It recounts the rise of mock-heroic, discusses the properties of the form, and explores its relation both to classical epic...

Although it has been almost seventy years since Time declared C.S. Lewis one of the world's most influential spokespersons for Christianity and fifty years since Lewis's death, his influence remains just as great if not greater today.While much has been written on Lewis and his work, virtually nothing has been written from a philosophical perspective on his views of happiness, pleasure, pain, and the soul and body. As a result, no one so far has recognized that his views o...

Feces, urine, flatus, phlegm, vomitus - unlike ourselves, our most educated forebears did not disdain these functions, and, further, they employed scatological references in all manner of works. This collection of essays was provoked by what its editors considered to be a curious lacuna: the relative academic neglect of the copious and ubiquitous scatological rhetoric of Early Modern Europe, here broadly defined as the representation of the process and product of elimination of the body's ...

In her thought-provoking study of Britain's relationship with Latin America and the Caribbean during the Romantic and Victorian periods, Joselyn M. Almeida makes a compelling case for extending the critical boundaries of current transatlantic and circumatlantic scholarship. She proposes the pan-Atlantic as a critical model that encompasses Britain's relationship to the non-Anglophone Americas given their shared history of conquest and the slave trade, and underscores the importance of writ...

With this original study, Melissa Mowry makes a strong contribution to a provocative interdisciplinary conversation about an important and influential sub genre: seventeenth-century political pornography. This book further advances our understanding of pornography's importance in seventeenth-century England by extending its investigation beyond the realm of cultural rhetoric into the realm of cultural practice. In addition to the satires which previous scholars have discussed in this conte...

This lively and intellectually vigorous conspectus of studies approaches the subject of exile from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. The contributions to this volume give due attention to the twentieth century migratory phenomena, theorised by Edward Said, Julia Kristeva and Salman Rushdie. They also show that the discourse and experience of exile is not the stuff of modernity alone. The volume illustrates that the waning of the Middle Ages, Reformation and Restoration politics, and ...