The Complete Critical Guide to Alexander Pope by
So many questions surround the key figures in the English literary canon, but most books focus on one aspect of an author's life or work, or limit themselves to a single critical approach. Alexander Pope is a comprehensive, user-friendly guide which: * offers information on Pope's life, contexts and works * outline the major critical issues surrounding his works, from the time they were written to the present *explains the full range of different critical views and interpretations * offers guides to further reading in each area discussed.
Alexander Pope by
The first comprehensive biography of the greatest English poet of the classical age.
Jonathan Swift by
Jonathan Swift is best remembered today as the author of Gulliver's Travels. Yet Swift also wrote many other influential works, was a major political and religious figure in his time, and became a national hero, beloved for his fierce protest against English exploitation of his native Ireland. This book tells the story of Swift's life anew.
A Modest Proposal and Other Satirical Works by
Treasury of 5 shorter works by the author of Gulliver's Travels offers ample evidence of the great satirist's inspired lampoonery. Title piece plus The Battle of the Books, A Meditation Upon a Broom-Stick, A Discourse Concerning the Mechanical Operation of the Spirit and The Abolishing of Christianity in England.
My Soul Has Grown Deep by
This powerful compilation of African-American literature through the centuries focuses on classic works by notable authors from Frederick Douglass to W. E. B. DuBois. The poetry of 18th-century writers Phillis Wheatly and The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave join a chorus of eloquent voices chronicling the black experience in America. My Soul Has Grown Deep includes such landmark works as A Red Record by Ida B. Wells, a Harlem Renaissance writer; Lyrics of a Lowly Life by the prolific playwright, poet, and novelist Paul Lawrence Dunbar; Up from Slavery by Booker T. Washington; and The Autobiography of Jack Johnson: In the Ring and Out by the heavyweight boxing champion. Each writer is introduced in an informative biographical essay by editor John Edgar Wideman. New York Times bestselling author John Edgar Wideman is the first author to receive two PEN/Faulkner awards. He has written 13 books, including Brothers and Keepers and Philadelphia Fire .
Ben Jonson by
Ben Jonson was the greatest of Shakespeare's contemporaries. In the century following his death he was seen by many as the finest of all English writers, living or dead. His fame rested not only on the numerous plays he had written for the theatre, but on his achievements over three decadesas principal masque-writer to the early Stuart court, where he had worked in creative, and often stormy, collaboration with Inigo Jones. One of the most accomplished poets of the age.
The Cambridge Companion to John Donne by
Sixteen new essays, written by an international array of leading scholars and critics, cover Donne's poetry (erotic, satirical, devotional) and his prose (including his Sermons and occasional letters). Providing studies of his text as well as setting them in the historical and cultural context of early modern England, this Companion's up-to-date scholarship introduces students to current issues of debate, and gives them a means to better understand and appreciate John Donne's literary achievements.
Ben Jonson Revised
Jacobean dramatist ("Volpone, The Alchemist"), lyric poet and literary critic who is generally regarded as the second most important English dramatist after Shakespeare.
Paper Bodies by
Margaret Cavendish was one of the most subversive and entertaining writers of the seventeenth century. She invented new genres, challenged gender roles, and critiqued the new science as well as the mores of society. “Paper Bodies” was the wonderful phrase she used to described her manuscripts, which she hoped would continue to make “a great Blazing Light” after her death. There are connections here to Cavendish’s most famous work, The Description of a New World, Called the Blazing World(1666), a unique tale of a woman travelling through the north pole to a strange new world. In addition to The Blazing World, this volume includes Cavendish’s brief autobiography, A True Relation of My Birth, Breeding and Life(1667), her playThe Convent of Pleasure, and selections from her Sociable Letters, her poetry, and her critical writings. A variety of background documents by other seventeenth-century writers helps to set her work in context for the modern reader.
Oroonoko by
The editor supplies explanatory annotations and textual notes."Historical Backgrounds" is an especially rich collection of seventeenth-and eighteenth-century documents about colonizers and slaves in the new world. Topically arranged-"Montaigne on America," "The Settling of Surinam," "Observers of Slavery, 1654-1712," "After Oroonoko: Noble Africans in Europe," and "Opinions on Slavery"-these selections create a revealing context for Behn's unusual story. Illustrations and maps are also included."Criticism" begins with an overview of responses to Behn and Oroonoko, from learned and popular writers of her time to Sir Walter Scott and Virginia Woolf, among others. Current critical interpretations are by William C. Spengemann, Jane Spencer, Robert L. Chibka, Laura Brown, Charlotte Sussman, and Mary Beth Rose.A Chronology of Behn's life and a Selected Bibliography are included.
Liberating Judgment by
Examining the social and political upheavals that characterized the collapse of public judgment in early modern Europe, Liberating Judgment offers a unique account of the achievement of liberal democracy and self-government. The book argues that the work of John Locke instills a civic judgment that avoids the excesses of corrosive skepticism and dogmatic fanaticism, which lead to either political acquiescence or irresolvable conflict. Locke changes the way political power is assessed by replacing deteriorating vocabularies of legitimacy with a new language of justification informed by a conception of probability. For Locke, the coherence and viability of liberal self-government rests not on unassailable principles or institutions, but on the capacity of citizens to embrace probable judgment. The book explores the breakdown of the medieval understanding of knowledge and opinion, and considers how Montaigne's skepticism and Descartes' rationalism--interconnected responses to the crisis--involved a pragmatic submission to absolute rule. Locke endorses this response early on, but moves away from it when he encounters a notion of reasonableness based on probable judgment. In his mature writings, Locke instructs his readers to govern their faculties and intellectual yearnings in accordance with this new standard as well as a vocabulary of justification that might cultivate a self-government of free and equal individuals. The success of Locke's arguments depends upon citizens' willingness to take up the labor of judgment in situations where absolute certainty cannot be achieved.
Locke by
John Locke (1632-1704) was one of the towering philosophers of the Enlightenment and arguably the greatest English philosopher. Many assumptions we now take for granted, about liberty, knowledge and government, come from Locke and his most influential works, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding and Two Treatises of Government. In this superb introduction to Locke's thought, E.J. Lowe covers all the major aspects of his philosophy. Whilst sensitive to the seventeenth-century background to Locke's thought, he concentrates on introducing and assessing Locke in a contemporary philosophical setting, explaining why he is so important today. Beginning with a helpful overview of Locke's life and times, he explains how Locke challenged the idea that the human mind and knowledge of the external world rested on innate principles, laying the philosophical foundations of empiricism later taken up by Berkeley and Hume. Subsequent chapters introduce and critically assess topics fundamental to understanding Locke: his theories of substance and identity, language and meaning, philosophy of action and free will, and political freedom and toleration. In doing so, he explains some of the more complex yet pivotal aspects of Locke's thought, such as his theory that language rests on ideas and how Locke's theory of personal identity paved the way for modern empirical psychology. A final chapter assesses Locke's legacy, and the book includes a helpful chronology of Locke's life and glossary of unfamiliar terms.
The Great Art of Government by
That government should be rooted in the consent of the governed may be the most accepted aspect of John Locke's liberal theory. Yet to this day Lockeans have reached no consensus over what constitutes consent or whether Locke even intended consent to be a standard of legitimacy. Peter Josephson now takes a close look at Locke's writings on both consent and the art of governance to show how each informs the other. Moving beyond previous scholarship, he gives us a Locke as much concerned with the effective functioning of government as with the roots of its moral legitimacy. According to Josephson, if we wish to understand "the great art of government," as one of the founders of modern liberalism presents it, we must examine the principle and practice of consent in Locke's political scheme. In examining the foundation of Locke's political theory, Josephson explores ways in which Locke's government by consent can coexist with the preservation of the law of nature or reason. As Josephson shows, Locke argues that reasonable customs can bridge the divide between the will of the people and the rule of reason. Josephson's work makes important new contributions to understanding Lockean thought. In particular, he shows how Locke joins normative theory with a practical concern for the art of effective government. He also argues that Lockean liberalism is not neutral with regard to conceptions of virtue, character, or the good life: indeed, the liberal regime requires virtues of toleration, civility, and industriousness in order to succeed and must teach its subjects those virtues in order to preserve that regime. While others have variously branded Locke's philosophy as majoritarian, aristocratic, or monarchist, Josephson cuts through these disputes to present a previously unrevealed Locke. His meticulous study pays keen attention to the details of Locke's works, while reconciling many of the disparate and often confusing features of Lockean thought. In sum, it offers serious readers a richer, deeper, and more nuanced understanding of this formative thinker and the liberalism he inspired.
The Cambridge Companion to Samuel Johnson by
This Companion provides a unique introduction and guide to the works and life of one of the key figures in English literary history. The source of endless familiar aphorisms, the compiler of the first great dictionary in English, the greatest of essayists, and one of the most distinctive characters and conversationalists in our literary culture, Johnson is here surveyed in his entirety. Chapters on the major works, his life, conversation, letters and critical reception appear alongside fresh thematic essays, a chronology and a guide to further reading.
Samuel Johnson and the Life of Reading by
If readers of the twentieth century feel overwhelmed by the proliferation of writing and information, they can find in Samuel Johnson a sympathetic companion. Johnson's career coincided with the rapid expansion of publishing in England-not only in English, but in Latin and Greek; not only in books, but in reviews, journals, broadsides, pamphlets, and books about books. In 1753 Johnson imagined a time when "writers will, perhaps, be multiplied, till no readers will be found." Three years later, he wrote that England had become "a nation of authors" in which "every man must be content to read his book to himself." In Samuel Johnson and the Life of Reading, Robert DeMaria considers the surprising influence of one of the greatest readers in English literature. Johnson's relationship to books not only reveals much about his life and times, DeMaria contends, but also provides a dramatic counterpoint to modern reading habits. As a superior practitioner of the craft, Johnson provides a compelling model for how to read-indeed, he provides different models for different kinds of reading. DeMaria shows how Johnson recognized early that not all reading was alike-some requiring intense concentration, some suited for cursory glances, some requiring silence, some best appreciated amid the chatter of a coffeehouse. Considering the remarkable range of Johnson's reading, DeMaria discovers in one extraordinary career a synoptic view of the subject of reading.
The Life of Samuel Johnson by
In this major revision of The Life of Samuel Johnson, Robert DeMaria makes a compelling claim for the attention of a new generation of Johnson's readers and admirers.
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu by
With interest growing in the tradition of women's writing, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762) has been transformed from a colourful eccentric to an important writer. This life is the first to take her writing achievement seriously, as well as re-telling a life-story which every newly uncovered detail renders more extraordinary.
Blake by
"Born in 1757, the son of a London hosier, William Blake - poet, painter, and engraver - possessed one of the most original and fertile creative geniuses of his age. Yet his strange aloofness and claims of supernatural visions caused many in his own time and since to doubt his sanity, and much of his astonishing poetry and visual art remains unfamiliar. Now, Peter Ackroyd gives us a biography of the enigmatic eighteenth-century master, clarifying at last the true nature of Blake's extraordinary life and art." "Ackroyd's narrative traces Blake's progression from his childhood in a Dissenting household, through his apprenticeship as an engraver and his studies at the newly formed Royal Academy Schools, to his full maturity, during which he produced his great masterpieces - Songs of Innocence and of Experience, Jerusalem, and Milton, to name only a few - works that were as neglected during his lifetime as they are celebrated today." "Re-creating time and place as only he can, Ackroyd locates Blake in the complex context of his external world - a cross section of eighteenth-century London inflamed by various forms of radicalism, mysticism, and sexual magic, squarely opposed to the age's prevailing faith in rationalism. But he also shows us the cockney visionary as the creator of his own lavish interior world, a universe filled with angels and spirits. It is in Blake's utterly unique art that these two worlds meet, as Ackroyd reveals in his dazzling interpretations of Blake's poetry and the many paintings and engravings beautifully reproduced in this volume."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Critical Essays on William Blake by
The full range of literary traditions comes to life in the Twayne Critical Essays Series. Volume editors have carefully selected critical essays that represent the full spectrum of controversies, trends and methodologies relating to each author's work. Essays include writings from the author's native country and abroad, with interpretations from the time they were writing, through the present day. Each volume includes: -- An introduction providing the reader with a lucid overview of criticism from its beginnings -- illuminating controversies, evaluating approaches and sorting out the schools of thought -- The most influential reviews and the best reprinted scholarly essays -- A section devoted exclusively to reviews and reactions by the subject's contemporaries -- Original essays, new translations and revisions commissioned especially for the series -- Previously unpublished materials such as interviews, lost letters and manuscript fragments -- A bibliography of the subject's writings and interviews -- A name and subject index
A Blake Dictionary by
William Blake, poet, artist, and mystic, created a vast multidimensional universe through his verse and art. Spun from a fabric of symbolism and populated by a host of complex characters, Blake’s comprehensive world has provided endless inspiration to subsequent generations. For the reader of Blake, background knowledge of his symbolism is a necessity. In this volume, first published in 1965, S. Foster Damon, father of modern Blake studies and a professor at Brown University until his death, has assembled all references to particular symbols or aspects of Blake’s work and life, so that readers can see the entire spectrum of Blake’s thought on a variety of topics.
