Theory in Literary Theory & Criticism & Fiction & Literature eBooks

The Hard Facts of the Grimms' Fairy Tales

Expanded Edition

by Maria Tatar ...

Series series Princeton Classics
Murder, mutilation, cannibalism, infanticide, and incest: the darker side of classic fairy tales is the subject of this groundbreaking and intriguing study of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm’s Nursery and Household Tales. This expanded edition includes a new preface and an appendix featuring translations of six tales with commentary by Maria Tatar. Throughout the book, Tatar draws on the disciplinary ... Read more

$16.99 USD

Murder, mutilation, cannibalism, infanticide, and incest: the darker side of classic fairy tales is the subject of this groundbreaking and intriguing study of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm’s Nursery and Household Tales. This expanded edition includes a new preface and an appendix featuring translations of six tales with commentary by Maria Tatar. Throughout the book, Tatar draws on the disciplinary
... Read more
The Theory and Craft of Digital Preservation

by Trevor Owens ...

A guide to managing data in the digital age.Winner of the ALCTS Outstanding Publication Award by the Association for Library Collections & Technical Services, Winner of the Waldo Gifford Leland Award by the Society of American ArchivistsMany people believe that what is on the Internet will be around forever. At the same time, warnings of an impending "digital dark age"—where records of the recent ... Read more

$31.99 USD

A guide to managing data in the digital age.Winner of the ALCTS Outstanding Publication Award by the Association for Library Collections & Technical Services, Winner of the Waldo Gifford Leland Award by the Society of American ArchivistsMany people believe that what is on the Internet will be around forever. At the same time, warnings of an impending "digital dark age"—where records of the recent
... Read more
The Arabian Nights

A Companion

by Robert Irwin ...

This literary companion guides the reader into the labyrinth of storytelling within The Arabian Nights.The Arabian Nights has become a synonym for the fabulous and the exotic. Every child is familiar with the stories of Aladdin, Sinbad the Sailor and Ali Baba. Yet very few people, even specialists in oriental literature, have a clear idea of when the book was written or what exactly it is.Far from ... Read more

$14.99 USD

This literary companion guides the reader into the labyrinth of storytelling within The Arabian Nights.The Arabian Nights has become a synonym for the fabulous and the exotic. Every child is familiar with the stories of Aladdin, Sinbad the Sailor and Ali Baba. Yet very few people, even specialists in oriental literature, have a clear idea of when the book was written or what exactly it is.Far from
... Read more
Poetics

by Aristotle ...

One of the most powerful, perceptive and influential works of criticism in Western literary historyIn his near-contemporary account of classical Greek tragedy, Aristotle examines the dramatic elements of plot, character, language and spectacle that combine to produce pity and fear in the audience, and asks why we derive pleasure from this apparently painful process. Taking examples from the plays ... Read more

$10.99 USD

One of the most powerful, perceptive and influential works of criticism in Western literary historyIn his near-contemporary account of classical Greek tragedy, Aristotle examines the dramatic elements of plot, character, language and spectacle that combine to produce pity and fear in the audience, and asks why we derive pleasure from this apparently painful process. Taking examples from the plays
... Read more
Structuralist Poetics

Structuralism, Linguistics and the Study of Literature

by Jonathan Culler ...

Series series Routledge Classics
A work of technical skill as well as outstanding literary merit, Structuralist Poetics was awarded the 1975 James Russell Lowell Prize of the Modern Language Association. It was during the writing of this book that Culler developed his now famous and remarkably complex theory of poetics and narrative, and while never a populariser he nonetheless makes it crystal clear within these pages. ... Read more

$27.99 USD

A work of technical skill as well as outstanding literary merit, Structuralist Poetics was awarded the 1975 James Russell Lowell Prize of the Modern Language Association. It was during the writing of this book that Culler developed his now famous and remarkably complex theory of poetics and narrative, and while never a populariser he nonetheless makes it crystal clear within these pages.
... Read more
Silence: A Literary History

by Kate McLoughlin ...

A majestic literary history, revealing the power and possibilities of silence found in literary works. Silence: A Literary History traces silences over twelve centuries of English literature, from the solitary states of exile on icy seas described in Anglo-Saxon poems to searches for silence in our own Age of Pings. This pioneering work of 'big' literary history encompasses exalted states of ... Read more

$26.99 USD

A majestic literary history, revealing the power and possibilities of silence found in literary works. Silence: A Literary History traces silences over twelve centuries of English literature, from the solitary states of exile on icy seas described in Anglo-Saxon poems to searches for silence in our own Age of Pings. This pioneering work of 'big' literary history encompasses exalted states of
... Read more
All Desire is a Desire for Being

by René Girard ...

A new selection of foundational works from the influential philosopher who developed the theory of mimetic desireWhy do humans have such a remarkable capacity for conflict? From ancient foundational myths to the modern era, the visionary thinker Rene Girard identified the constant, competing desires at the heart of our existence - desires that we copy from others, igniting a contagious violence. ... Read more

$14.99 USD

A new selection of foundational works from the influential philosopher who developed the theory of mimetic desireWhy do humans have such a remarkable capacity for conflict? From ancient foundational myths to the modern era, the visionary thinker Rene Girard identified the constant, competing desires at the heart of our existence - desires that we copy from others, igniting a contagious violence.
... Read more
The Interpretation of Cultures

by Clifford Geertz ...

A classic work of anthropology that offers a groundbreaking exploration of what culture isNamed one of the 100 most important books published since World War II by the Times Literary Supplement“As an anthropologist, philosopher, political scientist, literary critic, and all-around, all-star intellectual, Clifford Geertz helped a vast public make sense of the human condition.” —Robert Darnton, New ... Read more

$15.99 USD

A classic work of anthropology that offers a groundbreaking exploration of what culture isNamed one of the 100 most important books published since World War II by the Times Literary Supplement“As an anthropologist, philosopher, political scientist, literary critic, and all-around, all-star intellectual, Clifford Geertz helped a vast public make sense of the human condition.” —Robert Darnton, New
... Read more
Tree

by Matthew Battles ...

Series series Object Lessons
Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.Tree explores the forms, uses, and alliances of this living object's entanglement with humanity, from antiquity to the present. Trees tower over us and yet fade into background. Their lifespan outstrips ours, and yet their wisdom remains inscrutable, treasured up in the heartwood. They serve ... Read more

$12.99 USD

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.Tree explores the forms, uses, and alliances of this living object's entanglement with humanity, from antiquity to the present. Trees tower over us and yet fade into background. Their lifespan outstrips ours, and yet their wisdom remains inscrutable, treasured up in the heartwood. They serve
... Read more
Contemporary Drift

Genre, Historicism, and the Problem of the Present

by Theodore Martin ...

Series series Literature Now
What does it mean to call something “contemporary”? More than simply denoting what’s new, it speaks to how we come to know the present we’re living in and how we develop a shared story about it. The story of trying to understand the present is an integral, yet often unnoticed, part of the literature and film of our moment. In Contemporary Drift, Theodore Martin argues that the contemporary is not ... Read more

$26.99 USD

What does it mean to call something “contemporary”? More than simply denoting what’s new, it speaks to how we come to know the present we’re living in and how we develop a shared story about it. The story of trying to understand the present is an integral, yet often unnoticed, part of the literature and film of our moment. In Contemporary Drift, Theodore Martin argues that the contemporary is not
... Read more
Walter Benjamin

A Very Short Introduction

by Eli Zaretsky ...

Series series Very Short Introductions
Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) is now generally recognized as one of the most influential thinkers of the last century. This Very Short Introduction explores his extraordinary life and thought. His complex system of criticism is difficult for many readers, but it is coherent in its combination of a Judaic theological perspective with cultural Marxism. Benjamin's distinctive approach considered ... Read more

$7.99 USD

Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) is now generally recognized as one of the most influential thinkers of the last century. This Very Short Introduction explores his extraordinary life and thought. His complex system of criticism is difficult for many readers, but it is coherent in its combination of a Judaic theological perspective with cultural Marxism. Benjamin's distinctive approach considered
... Read more
Not Like a Native Speaker

On Languaging as a Postcolonial Experience

by Rey Chow ...

Although the era of European colonialism has long passed, misgivings about the inequality of the encounters between European and non-European languages persist in many parts of the postcolonial world. This unfinished state of affairs, this lingering historical experience of being caught among unequal languages, is the subject of Rey Chow's book. A diverse group of personae, never before assembled ... Read more

$26.99 USD

Although the era of European colonialism has long passed, misgivings about the inequality of the encounters between European and non-European languages persist in many parts of the postcolonial world. This unfinished state of affairs, this lingering historical experience of being caught among unequal languages, is the subject of Rey Chow's book. A diverse group of personae, never before assembled
... Read more
Refusing Heaven

Poems

by Jack Gilbert ...

More than a decade after Jack Gilbert’s The Great Fires, this highly anticipated new collection shows the continued development of a poet who has remained fierce in his avoidance of the beaten path. In Refusing Heaven, Gilbert writes compellingly about the commingled passion, loneliness, and sometimes surprising happiness of a life spent in luminous understanding of his own blessings and ... Read more

$10.99 USD

More than a decade after Jack Gilbert’s The Great Fires, this highly anticipated new collection shows the continued development of a poet who has remained fierce in his avoidance of the beaten path. In Refusing Heaven, Gilbert writes compellingly about the commingled passion, loneliness, and sometimes surprising happiness of a life spent in luminous understanding of his own blessings and
... Read more
The Occult Mind

Magic in Theory and Practice

by Christopher I. Lehrich ...

"Given the historical orientation of philosophy, is it unreasonable to suggest a wider cast of the net into the deep waters of magic? By encountering magical thought as theory, we come to a new understanding of a thought that looks back at us from a funhouse mirror."—The Occult MindDivination, like many critical modes, involves reading signs, and magic, more generally, can be seen as a kind of ... Read more

$25.99 USD

"Given the historical orientation of philosophy, is it unreasonable to suggest a wider cast of the net into the deep waters of magic? By encountering magical thought as theory, we come to a new understanding of a thought that looks back at us from a funhouse mirror."—The Occult MindDivination, like many critical modes, involves reading signs, and magic, more generally, can be seen as a kind of
... Read more
Gender Trouble

Feminism and the Subversion of Identity

by Judith Butler ...

Series series Routledge Classics
One of the most talked-about scholarly works of the past fifty years, Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble is as celebrated as it is controversial.Arguing that traditional feminism is wrong to look to a natural, 'essential' notion of the female, or indeed of sex or gender, Butler starts by questioning the category 'woman' and continues in this vein with examinations of 'the masculine' and 'the feminine' ... Read more

$31.99 USD

One of the most talked-about scholarly works of the past fifty years, Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble is as celebrated as it is controversial.Arguing that traditional feminism is wrong to look to a natural, 'essential' notion of the female, or indeed of sex or gender, Butler starts by questioning the category 'woman' and continues in this vein with examinations of 'the masculine' and 'the feminine'
... Read more
Tone

by Sofia Samatar, Kate Zambreno ...

Tone is a collaborative study of literary tone, a notoriously challenging and slippery topic for criticism. Both granular and global, infusing a text with feeling, tone is so difficult to pin down that responses to it often take the vague form of “I know it when I see it.”In Tone, a cooperative authorial voice under the name of the Committee to Investigate Atmosphere begins from the premise that ... Read more

$18.99 USD

Tone is a collaborative study of literary tone, a notoriously challenging and slippery topic for criticism. Both granular and global, infusing a text with feeling, tone is so difficult to pin down that responses to it often take the vague form of “I know it when I see it.”In Tone, a cooperative authorial voice under the name of the Committee to Investigate Atmosphere begins from the premise that
... Read more
Culture in a Liquid Modern World

by Zygmunt Bauman ...

Translated by Lydia Bauman ...

In its original formulation, ‘culture' was intended to be an agent for change, a mission undertaken with the aim of educating ‘the people' by bringing the best of human thought and creativity to them. But in our contemporary liquid-modern world, culture has lost its missionary role and has become a means of seduction: it seeks no longer to enlighten the people but to seduce them. The function of ... Read more

$16.00 USD

In its original formulation, ‘culture' was intended to be an agent for change, a mission undertaken with the aim of educating ‘the people' by bringing the best of human thought and creativity to them. But in our contemporary liquid-modern world, culture has lost its missionary role and has become a means of seduction: it seeks no longer to enlighten the people but to seduce them. The function of
... Read more
Energy Humanities

An Anthology

Edited by Imre Szeman, Dominic Boyer ...

How can humanities scholars help us respond to growing concerns about climate change and fossil fuels?Energy humanities is a field of scholarship that, like medical and digital humanities before it, aims to overcome traditional boundaries between the disciplines and between academic and applied research. Responding to growing public concern about anthropogenic climate change and the ... Read more

$43.99 USD

How can humanities scholars help us respond to growing concerns about climate change and fossil fuels?Energy humanities is a field of scholarship that, like medical and digital humanities before it, aims to overcome traditional boundaries between the disciplines and between academic and applied research. Responding to growing public concern about anthropogenic climate change and the
... Read more
Transmission and the Individual Remix

by Tom McCarthy ...

Sub-titled "How Literature Works" this essay by the renown novelist is a provocative and entertaining work of postmodern theory that re-evaluates literature and literary meaning from Aeschylus to Kraftwerk. A VINTAGE EBOOK ORIGINAL.Tom McCarthy is one of the most vital young voices in contemporary literature, and in this essay he identifies the signals that have been repeating, pulsing, modulating ... Read more

$1.99 USD

Sub-titled "How Literature Works" this essay by the renown novelist is a provocative and entertaining work of postmodern theory that re-evaluates literature and literary meaning from Aeschylus to Kraftwerk. A VINTAGE EBOOK ORIGINAL.Tom McCarthy is one of the most vital young voices in contemporary literature, and in this essay he identifies the signals that have been repeating, pulsing, modulating
... Read more
The Cambridge Companion to Lacan

Edited by Jean-Michel Rabaté ...

Series series Cambridge Companions to Literature
This collection of specially commissioned essays by academics and practising psychoanalysts, first published in 2003, explores key dimensions of Jacques Lacan's life and works. Lacan is renowned as a theoretician of psychoanalysis whose work is still influential in many countries. He refashioned psychoanalysis in the name of philosophy and linguistics at the time when it underwent a certain ... Read more

$28.99 USD

This collection of specially commissioned essays by academics and practising psychoanalysts, first published in 2003, explores key dimensions of Jacques Lacan's life and works. Lacan is renowned as a theoretician of psychoanalysis whose work is still influential in many countries. He refashioned psychoanalysis in the name of philosophy and linguistics at the time when it underwent a certain
... Read more
Novel Relations

Victorian Fiction and British Psychoanalysis

by Professor Alicia Mireles Christoff ...

The first comprehensive look at how Victorian fiction and British psychoanalysis shaped each otherNovel Relations engages twentieth-century post-Freudian British psychoanalysis in an unprecedented way: as literary theory. Placing the writing of figures like D. W. Winnicott, W. R. Bion, Michael and Enid Balint, Joan Riviere, Paula Heimann, and Betty Joseph in conversation with canonical Victorian ... Read more

$35.99 USD

The first comprehensive look at how Victorian fiction and British psychoanalysis shaped each otherNovel Relations engages twentieth-century post-Freudian British psychoanalysis in an unprecedented way: as literary theory. Placing the writing of figures like D. W. Winnicott, W. R. Bion, Michael and Enid Balint, Joan Riviere, Paula Heimann, and Betty Joseph in conversation with canonical Victorian
... Read more
The Frenchmen

Or, My Life in Theory

by Emily Eakin ...

**“A marvelous book. It’s gossipy and personal and completely fascinating...cafe gossip with the footnotes left in.”— New York Times“A superbly engrossing adventure of ideas...this will surely be my philosophy book of the year.” —Sarah Bakewell, New York Times bestselling author of Humanly PossibleFrom leading critic and essayist Emily Eakin, a stylish personal history of French theory and its ... Read more

$14.99 USD

**“A marvelous book. It’s gossipy and personal and completely fascinating...cafe gossip with the footnotes left in.”— New York Times“A superbly engrossing adventure of ideas...this will surely be my philosophy book of the year.” —Sarah Bakewell, New York Times bestselling author of Humanly PossibleFrom leading critic and essayist Emily Eakin, a stylish personal history of French theory and its
... Read more
The Affect Theory Reader 2

Worldings, Tensions, Futures

Edited by Gregory J. Seigworth, Carolyn Pedwell ...

Series series ANIMA: Critical Race Studies Otherwise
Building on the foundational Affect Theory Reader, this new volume gathers together contemporary scholarship that highlights and interrogates the contemporary state of affect inquiry. Unsettling what might be too readily taken-for-granted assumptions in affect theory, The Affect Theory Reader 2 extends and challenges how contemporary theories of affect intersect with a wide range of topics and ... Read more

$24.99 USD

Building on the foundational Affect Theory Reader, this new volume gathers together contemporary scholarship that highlights and interrogates the contemporary state of affect inquiry. Unsettling what might be too readily taken-for-granted assumptions in affect theory, The Affect Theory Reader 2 extends and challenges how contemporary theories of affect intersect with a wide range of topics and
... Read more
The Biopolitics of Childhood in the Long American 19th Century

Edited by Lucia Hodgson, Allison Giffen ...

Series series Children's Literature and Culture
This edited collection contends that the figure of the child is foundational to the workings of biopolitical power yet remains undertheorized. The study of nineteenth-century biopolitics offers a theoretical framework that promises to increase our understanding of how modern democracies manage their subjects. Recent scholarship has invigorated interrogations into forms of state governance that ... Read more

$56.99 USD

This edited collection contends that the figure of the child is foundational to the workings of biopolitical power yet remains undertheorized. The study of nineteenth-century biopolitics offers a theoretical framework that promises to increase our understanding of how modern democracies manage their subjects. Recent scholarship has invigorated interrogations into forms of state governance that
... Read more

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