Bøker i Continuum Literary Studies-serien

Presents the analysis of the representation of London in post-war fiction from Iris Murdoch to Zadie Smith. This book explores the literary re-imagining of the city in post-war fiction and argues that the image, history, and narrative of the city has been transformed alongside the physical rebuilding and repositioning of the capital.

Drawing on the theories of digital media and on the materiality of words and images, this study makes three original claims about the work of William Blake. It explores these three claims through the concept of incarnation.

Examines detective fiction and its complex relationship to the modern and to modernity. This monograph focuses on two key themes: the moral relationship of detection to a particular social world and the attempt to restore and even improve the social world that has been threatened and fractured by a crime, usually that of murder.

Offers an analysis of the philosophical connection between Hopkins and Heidegger. This monograph argues that the work of Hopkins does no less than propose solutions to a number of hitherto unresolved questions regarding Heidegger's later writings, vitalizing the concepts of both writers beyond their local contexts.

Jonathan Franzen is one of the most influential, critically-significant and popular contemporary American novelists. This book offers a study of his work and attempts to articulate where American fiction is headed after postmodernism.

Uses close analysis of key African-American literary texts to investigate the links between the development of blues and jazz and the development of modern African-American literature. This study also examines the highly varied manifestations of a jazz aesthetic as possibly the fundamental common demoninator which links these writers.

Offers an approach to contemporary literature, emphasising the links in the depiction of marginalized groups in contemporary fiction. This study provides readings of a wide range of contemporary British novels that represent characters or communities at the margin of society.

Contributes to the understanding of an important but overlooked aspect of modern poetry, offering a comparative approach to the topic. This collection of research explores the interaction of religious awareness and literary expression in English poetry in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Provides a critical and cultural theory-based study of male jealousy in western culture and its connections with paranoia. This book traces the meanings of jealousy and the representation of jealous men and argues that jealousy is promoted within patriarchy. It also explores the economy of possession and its relationship to the body.

Argues against the idea that the 'postmodern condition' of late twentieth and early twenty-first century culture has undermined the close and creative association between religious practice and literature. This study suggests that the novel has become an increasingly vital, dynamic and problematic space for engaging with the sacred.

A monograph, which surveys the portrayal of finance and money in British fiction. It argues that British fiction demystifies the 'weightless' economy of contemporary money and critiques the popular sense of money as being everywhere but nowhere.

Addresses the ways in which we read literary history according to quite specific images of growth, development, progression, flourishing and succession. This book argues that the literary and historical imagery of releasing the radical spirit of a text from the dead weight of received tradition is the dominant doxa of historicism.

Organised around each decade of the post war period, this book analyses novels written by and for women from 1945 onwards. Each chapter identifies a specific genre in popular fiction for women which marked that period and provides case studies focusing on writers and texts which enjoyed a wide readership.

By examining the relation between time and processes of figuration in James Joyce's later work, this study identifies his attempt to engage with the philosophical problem of describing time's characteristic movement whilst acknowledging the impossibility of reducing this movement to anything that can be observed, represented or even experienced.

Presents a critique of views that the fiction of Joseph Conrad is innocent of any interest in or concern with sexuality and the erotic, and that when he does attempt to depict sexual desire or erotic excitement, it results in bad writing. This book argues for a revision of the view that Conrad lacks understanding of and interest in sexuality.

Focuses on a contemporary form of computer-based literature called 'literary hypertext', a digital, interactive, communicative form of new media writing. This book combines theoretical and hermeneutic investigations with empirical research into the motivational and pedagogic possibilities of this form of literature.

Investigates how the notion of incarnation has been employed in phenomenology and how this has influenced literary criticism. This book examines the interest that Joyce and Proust share in the concept of incarnation.

Undertakes a comparative analysis of the works of Iain Sinclair and Peter Ackroyd, placing the fiction and non-fiction of both writers in relation to the broader cultural, social and political contexts of London from 1979.

Provides a structured process of writing activities using imitation, variation and experimentation. This work contains practical composition techniques such as 'transformational writing', 're-writing' or 'translation'. It also includes appendices with examples of the range of activities that can be used and an indicative list of literary examples.

Presents a comparative study, which encourages a way of thinking about Joyce not as an isolated figure but, as someone who is understood in the company of others. This work places Joyce and his time in dialogue with other figures or different historical periods or languages other than English.

Looks at a range of fiction and film texts, since 1950s, in order to analyse the ways in which masculinity has been represented in popular culture in Britain and the United States. This work covers numerous genres, including spy fiction, science fiction, the Western and police thrillers.

Explains the interface between landscape and style and form in contemporary British fiction. This study examines the importance of space for the way contemporary novelists experiment with aesthetic form, offering an account of how British writers over the years have engaged with landscape depiction as a catalyst for stylistic innovation.

In contemporary academic literary studies, Lacan is often considered impenetrably obscure, due to the unavailability of his late works, insufficient articulation of his methodologies and sometimes stereotypical use of Lacanian concepts in literary theory. This study aims to explain Lacanian thought and apply it to the study of literary texts.

'Negative capability', the term John Keats used only once in a letter to his brothers, is a well-known but surprisingly unexplored concept in literary criticism and aesthetics. This book clarifies the meaning of the term and offers an anatomy of its key components, and provides an account of the history of this idea.

A study that introduces, conceptualises, and examines the American Adam and American Psycho paradigms while focussing on the inter-relations between the two figures. Using the American Adam as a paradigm of masculine identity formation, it examines the American Psycho as Adam's 'real' condition of existence.

One of the greatest texts of both German and world literature, "Faust, Parts I and II", confronts us with questions about rebellion and suffering, faith and its loss, reality and simulation, order and chaos, weakness and power, technology and human improvement. This monograph offers us a fresh interpretation of Goethe's famous play.

Explores the study of literature and literary history in light of global changes, looking at what defines world literature in the 21st century. Surveying ideas of literature from Goethe onwards, the author devises a compelling concept of literary constellations.

Argues that a true understanding of Philip Larkin as man and poet lies beyond his enduring public appeal and the variety of criticism that has been applied to his work. This book sheds light on the hitherto ignored spiritual significance of his work. It draws upon insights gained from the history of art and the study of religion and myth.

Drawing together diverse literary, critical and theoretical texts in which the palimpsest has appeared since its inauguration by Thomas De Quincey in 1845, this work provides a genealogy of this metaphor. It also provides a reference point and critical tool for future employment of the concept of 'palimpsestuousness'.