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Analyses the use of caricature as one of the key strategies in narrative fiction since the war. This monograph also analyses some of the best known postwar novelists including Toni Morrison, Philip Roth, Joyce Carol Oates, Angela Carter and Will Self, reveals how they use caricature to express postmodern conceptions of the self.

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.

Explores the ways in which philosophical discourse in the Romantic period used literature to express philosophical problems and paradoxes which philosophy found itself incapable of expressing on its own terms. This book engages with a variety of Romantic writings, including literature, philosophy and political theory.

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'.

A genuinely ground-breaking study of Beckett's notes on his reading during the interwar years, now available in paperback for the first time.

Considers the shifts in aesthetic representation over the period 1885-1930 that coincide both with the rise of literary Modernism and imperialism's high point. This title argues that modernist literary writing should be read in terms of its response and relationship to events overseas.

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.

The globalization debate has become a dominant question in many disciplines but has only tended to be covered within literary studies in the context of postcolonial literature. This book focuses on reading contemporary novels in relation to globalization.

Highlights the spiritual element in Borges' work. This book offers an insightful and scholarly interpretation of a fundamental facet of his writing. It argues that the quest for God, though largely unheeded by the critical canon, was a major and enduring preoccupation for Borges.

"The Life of Our Lord" is a life of Jesus written by Dickens for his children in the 1840s but not published until 1934. Using "The Life of Our Lord" as a source for our understanding of Dickens' Christian worldview, this book explores Dickens' Christian voice in his fiction, journalism, and letters. It presents an insight into his churchmanship.

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.

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.

Examining some of the most important debates in post-Romantic aesthetics through highly focused textual readings of authors from Walter Pater and Henry James to Samuel Beckett and Alan Hollinghurst, this title investigates the dialectical position of irony in Aestheticism and Modernism.

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.

Defying critical suggestions that the pastoral elegy is obsolete, the author reveals the popularity of the form in the work of major contemporary poets Seamus Heaney, Ted Hughes and Paul Muldoon, Michael Longley, Douglas Dunn and Peter Reading. He outlines the development of the form, and identifies its characteristics and functions.

'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.

Charts the history of weakness in a selection of canonical works in literature and philosophy. Beginning with Plato and Aristotle, this book explores weakness as it interpreted by Lao Tzu, Nietzsche, the Romantics, Dickens and Modernists. It examines what feminist critics Elaine Showalter and Luce Irigaray make of the figure of the weaker vessel.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Investigates a new form of fiction in contemporary literature across the globe. This collection of essays identifies and describes this international phenomenon, investigating the appeal of these novels' styles and themes, the reasons behind their success, and the fierce debates they provoked.

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.

Approaches the fiction of the 1930s through critical debates about genre, language and history, setting these in their original context, and discussing the generic forms most favoured by novelists at the time. This work uses a series of case studies of texts to draw on, develop or explore the complexities of particular prose genres.

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.

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.