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American Modern(ist) Epic: Novels to Refound a Nation

Adam Nemmers

American Modern(ist) Epic argues that during the 1920s and ‘30s a cadre of minority novelists revitalized the classic epic form in an effort to recast the United States according to modern, diverse, ... More

American Modern(ist) Epic argues that during the 1920s and ‘30s a cadre of minority novelists revitalized the classic epic form in an effort to recast the United States according to modern, diverse, and pluralistic grounds. Rather than adhere to the reification of static culture (as did ancient verse epic), in their prose epics Gertrude Stein and John Dos Passos utilized recursion, bricolage, and polyphony to represent the multifarious immediacy and movement of the modern world. Meanwhile, H. T. Tsiang and Richard Wright created absurd and insipid anti-heroes for their epics, contesting the hegemony of Anglo and capitalist dominance in the United States. In all, I posit, these modern(ist) epic novels undermined and revised the foundational ideology of the United States, contesting notions of individualism, progress, and racial hegemony while modernizing the epic form in an effort to refound the nation. The marriage of this classical form to modernist principles produced transcendent literature and offered a strenuous challenge to the interwar status quo, yet ultimately proved a failure: longstanding American ideology was simply too fixed and widespread to be entirely dislodged.Less

Art and the Nation State: The Reception of Modern Art in Ireland

Róisín Kennedy

Art and the Nation State is a wide-ranging study of the reception and critical debate on modernist art in Ireland from the foundation of the Irish Free State in 1922 to the end of the modernist era ... More

Art and the Nation State is a wide-ranging study of the reception and critical debate on modernist art in Ireland from the foundation of the Irish Free State in 1922 to the end of the modernist era in the 1970s. Drawing on media coverage, reviews, writings and the private papers of key Irish and international artists, critics and commentators, the study explores the significant contribution of Irish modern art to post-independence cultural debate and diverging notions of Irish national identity. Through an analysis of significant controversies and debates on modern art, the book examines how the reputations of major Irish artists was moulded by the prevailing demands of national identity, modernization and the dynamics of the international art world. Disputes about the relevance of the work of leading international modernists such as the Irish-American sculptor, Andrew O’Connor; the French expressionist painter, Georges Rouault; the British sculptor Henry Moore and the Irish born, but ostensibly, British artist, Francis Bacon to Irish cultural life is also analysed, as is the equally problematic positioning of Northern Irish artists.Less

Aspects of Death and the Afterlife in Greek Literature

George Alexander Gazis and Anthony Hooper (eds)

The concept of the afterlife has always been prominent in both Greek literature and modern scholarship alike. The fate of man after his/her allotted time has come to an end has a central position in ... More

The concept of the afterlife has always been prominent in both Greek literature and modern scholarship alike. The fate of man after his/her allotted time has come to an end has a central position in poetry, philosophy and religion, often leading to questions and answers as to how one can best live one’s life, and how can one deal with the burden of mortality that is inherent in every human being. The Greeks devoted a considerable amount of their literary production in an attempt to answer these questions through a variety of different media, whereas similar concerns appear to have been at the core of the ancient world in general. This volume represents the first to examine the influences, intersections, and developments of understandings of death and the afterlife between poetic, religious, and philosophical traditions in ancient Greece in one resource. Greek thinking on death and the afterlife was neither uniform, simple, nor static, and by offering an examination of these matters in a properly interdisciplinary context this collection of papers aims to demonstrate the full richness, complexity, and flexibility of these ideas in the ancient Greek world, and illuminate how freely writers from various genres drew inspiration from each other’s thinking concerning eschatological matters.Less

Autofiction: A Female Francophone Aesthetic of Exile

Antonia Wimbush

Autofiction: A Female Francophone Aesthetic of Exile explores the multiple aspects of exile, displacement, mobility, and identity as expressed in contemporary autofictional work written in French by ... More

Autofiction: A Female Francophone Aesthetic of Exile explores the multiple aspects of exile, displacement, mobility, and identity as expressed in contemporary autofictional work written in French by women writers from across the francophone world. Drawing on postcolonial theory, gender theory, and autobiographical theory, the book analyses narratives of exile by six authors who are shaped by their multiple locales of attachment: Kim Lefèvre (Vietnam/France), Gisèle Pineau (Guadeloupe/mainland France), Nina Bouraoui (Algeria/France), Michèle Rakotoson (Madagascar/France), Véronique Tadjo (Côte d’Ivoire/France), and Abla Farhoud (Lebanon/Quebec). In this way, the book argues that the French colonial past continues to mould female articulations of mobility and identity in the postcolonial present. Responding to gaps in the critical discourse of exile, namely gender, this book brings genre in both its forms — gender and literary genre — to bear on narratives of exile, arguing that the reconceptualization of categories of mobility occurs specifically in women’s autofictional writing. The six authors complicate discussions of exile as they are highly mobile, hybrid subjects. This rootless existence, however, often renders them alienated and ‘out of place’. While ensuring not to trivialize the very real difficulties faced by those whose exile is not a matter of choice, the book argues that the six authors experience their hybridity as both a literal and a metaphorical exile, a source of both creativity and trauma. The autofictional mode of writing becomes a means for the authors to resolve the multiple personal conflicts which arise from their migration.Less

Axis/Axes to Grind: Political Slants in American World War II Novels, 1945-1975

Milton A. Cohen

Axis / Axes to Grind studies various types of political themes in American World War II novels of three decades. “Political,” which is essentially about power and control, includes interpreting the ... More

Axis / Axes to Grind studies various types of political themes in American World War II novels of three decades. “Political,” which is essentially about power and control, includes interpreting the meaning of the war and predicting the political climate of post-war America (The Naked and the Dead, The Young Lions); exploring the dynamics of individual and group rebellions against military authority (From Here to Eternity, The Caine Mutiny, Catch-22); and tracing conflicts between various minorities and the dominant socio-political ethos of military authority (White, Christian, heterosexual).These conflicts can occur among enlisted men (The Young Lions, From Here to Eternity) but more often between military policies, such as racial segregation, and minorities (And Then We Heard the Thunder, Guard of Honor, The Gallery). The locales of these conflicts are also various: on board a ship during a typhoon, at an Army Air Force training base, even in a war industry (If He Hollers, Let Him Go). War novels written well after the war tend to see the war through the lens of the authors’ own times. Thus, Slaughterhouse-Five is as much about anti-war protest during the Vietnam war as it is about the firebombing of Dresden. And in Gravity’s Rainbow, the industrial cartels that enable the V-2 rocket attacks against London prefigure the military-industrial complex of Pynchon’s time. Where necessary, the book provides historical context (e.g., the real typhoon that inspired The Caine Mutiny, Martha Gellhorn’s experience at Dachau, etc.) to further clarify the novels’ political themes.Less

The Beats, Black Mountain, and New Modes in American Poetry

Matt Theado (ed.)

This book collects fifteen academic essays that address the aesthetic, cultural, historical, and personal connections among Beat Generation poets and Black Mountain poets.

Before the War, and After the Union: An Autobiography by Sam Aleckson (Samuel Williams)

Samuel "Aleckson" Williams

Susanna Ashton (ed.)

Sam Aleckson was the pen name for Samuel Williams, a man born into slavery in Charleston, South Carolina, who wrote a memoir about his life and the world around him during and after his bondage. It ... More

Sam Aleckson was the pen name for Samuel Williams, a man born into slavery in Charleston, South Carolina, who wrote a memoir about his life and the world around him during and after his bondage. It is published here for the first time under his own name and with biographical and interpretive context. Published privately by his family, Before the War and After the Union traces Williams’s life from his earliest memories of being enslaved and forced to serve Confederate soliders in army camps, through the post–Civil War years as his family struggled to reconnect and build a new life during Reconstruction. It the ends with tales about his life as the head of a Southern Black family newly relocated to Vermont at the turn-of-the-century. When he wrote his memoir nearly sixty years after emancipation, Williams was an elderly man, far from the site of his childhood in South Carolina, but his memories and analysis were keen and veer from occasional fraught nostalgia to sharply bitter analysis, creating a fascinating American story of suffering and transcendence.Less

Cape Fear

Rob Daniel

Can a film made in one genre be better understood by viewing it as another? This book investigates this question in relation to Martin Scorsese’s 1991 remake of Cape Fear. Scorsese approached the ... More

Can a film made in one genre be better understood by viewing it as another? This book investigates this question in relation to Martin Scorsese’s 1991 remake of Cape Fear. Scorsese approached the film as a thriller, but Cape Fear is thematically and formally more coherent when viewed as a horror film. Across an introduction and five chapters, this book explores why this is the case. How Scorsese’s Catholicism and passion for horror has informed artistic decisions throughout his career, and the ways in which it reached an apex when he directed Cape Fear. The ways in which conventions of Gothic literature and fairy tales influenced this richly metatextual film, plus the impact of historical trends in horror cinema. How Robert De Niro’s research into antagonist Max Cady created a character who is closer to cinematic bogeymen rather than the more earthbound villains expected in thrillers. Film theory models around genre are utilised, along with interviews with key personnel on the film. Including a primary source interview with screenwriter Wesley Strick, who relates his experiences. Scorsese’s hyper-stylised directorial technique in Cape Fear is analysed for the ways in which it works to creates sensations typically associated with horror cinema, and the film’s legacy is also reviewed. Sexual politics and the controversy that surrounded Cape Fear’s depiction of sexual threat is also analysed, within the context of Scorsese’s depiction of women and accusations of misogyny that have been levelled against him during his career.Less

Colonial Legacies and Contemporary Identities in Chile: Revisiting Catalina de los Ríos y Lisperguer

Céire Broderick

This book explores traditional and contemporary concerns surrounding gender and ethnicity in Chile through a textual analysis of historical novels depicting seventeenth-century figure, Catalina de ... More

This book explores traditional and contemporary concerns surrounding gender and ethnicity in Chile through a textual analysis of historical novels depicting seventeenth-century figure, Catalina de los Ríos y Lisperguer. Drawing on theories from the Global North and South, it incorporates postcolonial perspectives and decolonial feminist approaches to expose patriarchal, Eurocentric hierarchies constructed during the colonial era, which remain in Chilean society today. Through close readings, the book demonstrates that it is in the inconsistent and fluid depictions of characters that identities are deconstructed and reconstructed in ways that defy and transform social norms. This is the first extended English-language study of this infamous historical figure, who is more widely known as la Quintrala. It is also the first to compare the literary portrayals by Mercedes Valdivieso and Gustavo Frías. Looking beyond the infamy which usually shapes interpretations of la Quintrala, the author presents these novels as an embodiment of the anxieties surrounding hybridity in Chile, where European heritage has traditionally overshadowed indigenous concerns, and patriarchal norms dominate the construction of gender. Written during a period of social and political upheaval in Chile, it makes a timely contribution to existing works in social and political science, popular culture and the ongoing discussions of this iconic figure.Less

The Conjuring

Kevin J. Wetmore

James Wan’s 2013 film The Conjuring appears on many critics’ best horror films of the decade lists and was rated R by the MPAA solely “for terror.” Allegedly based on the true story of the Perron ... More

James Wan’s 2013 film The Conjuring appears on many critics’ best horror films of the decade lists and was rated R by the MPAA solely “for terror.” Allegedly based on the true story of the Perron family’s experiences in a haunted farmhouse in rural Rhode Island, the film comes from the files of pioneer paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren, and tells the story of how the Perron family came under supernatural assault from Bathsheba Sherman, a demonic eighteenth century witch, and how the Warrens investigated and eventually exorcised her. The book examines how Wan created the paragon of virtuosic, effective, terrifying haunted house movies, and then goes on to consider how the film plays with the idea of “a true story,” the role of religion in the film, how children’s games and toys are made the source of adult terror, how The Conjuring is a female-centered but not feminist film, and how the film spawned the “Conjuring Universe,” a growing series of half a dozen sequels, prequels, and related films. The Conjuring is an effective, good, old-fashioned horror film. It is genuinely scary and anxiety-inducing, greater than the sum of its parts and it is greater than its marketing campaign of “based on a true story” would seem to suggest. The book analyses the film on multiple levels and contextualizes it as a twenty-first century horror classic.Less

Conscious History: Polish Jewish Historians before the Holocaust

Natalia Aleksiun

This book highlights the historical scholarship that is one of the lasting legacies of interwar Polish Jewry and analyses its political and social context. As Jewish citizens struggled to assert ... More

This book highlights the historical scholarship that is one of the lasting legacies of interwar Polish Jewry and analyses its political and social context. As Jewish citizens struggled to assert their place in a newly independent Poland, a dedicated group of Jewish scholars fascinated by history devoted themselves to creating a sense of Polish Jewish belonging while also fighting for their rights as an ethnic minority. The political climate made it hard for these men and women to pursue an academic career; instead they had to continue their efforts to create and disseminate Polish Jewish history by teaching outside the university and publishing in scholarly and popular journals. By introducing the Jewish public to a pantheon of historical heroes to celebrate and anniversaries to commemorate, they sought to forge a community aware of its past, its cultural heritage, and its achievements — though no less important were their efforts to counter the increased hostility towards Jews in the public discourse of the day. In highlighting the role of public intellectuals and the social role of scholars and historical scholarship, this book adds a new dimension to the understanding of the Polish Jewish world in the interwar period.Less

Cromwell and Ireland: New Perspectives

Martyn Bennett, Raymond Gillespie, and Scott Spurlock (eds)

In this collection of essays, a range of established and early-career scholars explore a variety of different perspectives on Oliver Cromwell’s involvement with Ireland, in particular his military ... More

In this collection of essays, a range of established and early-career scholars explore a variety of different perspectives on Oliver Cromwell’s involvement with Ireland, in particular his military campaign of 1649-1650. In England and Wales Cromwell is regarded as a figure of national importance; in Ireland his reputation remains highly controversial. The essays gathered together here provide a fresh take on his Irish campaign, reassessing the backdrop and context of the prevailing siege warfare strategy and offering new insights into other major players such as Henry Ireton and the Marquis of Ormond. Other topics include, but are not limited to, the Cromwellian land settlement, deportation of prisoners and popular memory of Cromwell in Ireland. Overall, a picture emerges of a more moderate Cromwell than the version that has been passed down in Irish history, tradition and folklore.Less

Cross-Cultural Ezra Pound

Walter Baumann, John Gery, and David McKnight (eds)

This volume gathers fourteen essays by authors from eight different countries who offer new interpretations on Ezra Pound’s poetics, as well as new perspectives on his critical reception globally. It ... More

This volume gathers fourteen essays by authors from eight different countries who offer new interpretations on Ezra Pound’s poetics, as well as new perspectives on his critical reception globally. It covers Pound’s work from his beginnings as a young poet in Philadelphia in the early1900s through his most productive years as a poet, critic, and translator, to the first critical treatments of his work in the 1940s and 50s, as well as translations of his poetry into other languages during the last half century. Although in our era such terms as “cross-cultural thinking,” “globalism,” “transnationalism,” and “internationalism” remain fluid and often stir controversy, especially in relation to modernism, the place of Pound as a prominent modernist figure worldwide remains unquestioned. Without attempting to be comprehensive, these essays provide a clear picture of the reach of Pound’s engagement, including the international scope of his literature, his translations, his editorial work on behalf of others, and the diverse historical, social, ideological, interdisciplinary, and theoretical contexts in which he can be read and interpreted. Divided into four categories, Cross-Cultural Ezra Pound considers his early influences, his collaborative, transnational, and interdisciplinary methods, questions of modernist translation (concerning both Pound’s translations and translations of his poetry), and cross-cultural readings of his literary stature.Less

Daughters of Darkness

Kat Ellinger

‘Daughters of Darkness’ (1971) is a vampire film like no other. Heralded as psychological high-Gothic cinema, loved for its art-house and erotic flavors, Harry Kümel's 1971 cult classic is unwrapped ... More

‘Daughters of Darkness’ (1971) is a vampire film like no other. Heralded as psychological high-Gothic cinema, loved for its art-house and erotic flavors, Harry Kümel's 1971 cult classic is unwrapped in intricate detail in this book to unravel the many mysteries surrounding just what makes it so appealing. The book, as part of the Devil's Advocates series, examines the film in the context of its peers and contemporaries, in order to argue its place as an important evolutionary link in the chain of female vampire cinema. The text also explores the film's association with fairy tales, the Gothic genre, and fantastic tradition, as well as delving into aspects of the legend of Countess Bathory, traditional vampire lore, and much more. The book contains new and exclusive interviews with director Harry Kümel and actress and star Danielle Ouimet.Less

Don Paterson

Ben Wilkinson

The Scottish author Don Paterson is one of Britain’s leading contemporary poets. A popular writer as well as a formidably intelligent one, he has won both a dedicated readership and most of Britain’s ... More

The Scottish author Don Paterson is one of Britain’s leading contemporary poets. A popular writer as well as a formidably intelligent one, he has won both a dedicated readership and most of Britain’s major poetry prizes, including the T. S. Eliot Prize on two occasions, the Forward Prize in every category, and the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry. In this first comprehensive study of Paterson’s poetry, Ben Wilkinson presents him as a modern-day metaphysical, whose work is characterised by guileful use of form, musicality, colloquial diction and playful wit, negotiating the postmodern demands of the age in pursuit of poetry as a moral and philosophical project. Alongside the poet’s insistence on poetry as a mode of knowledge, the study argues that Paterson’s originality as a poet is evidenced by his rejection of an idiosyncratic poetic voice, seeking instead to refine a stylistic adaptability. Drawing on a wide range of commentators, Wilkinson traces Paterson’s development from collection to collection, providing detailed close readings of the poems framed by theoretical and literary contexts. An essential guide for students, specialists, and the general reader of contemporary poetry, it presents Paterson as a major lyric poet.Less

Editing the Harlem Renaissance

Joshua M. Murray and Ross K. Tangedal (eds)

As a whole, no pervasive quality unites what we now deem Harlem Renaissance literature outside of the era in which it developed. The inconsistency and varied nature of the works therefore place an ... More

As a whole, no pervasive quality unites what we now deem Harlem Renaissance literature outside of the era in which it developed. The inconsistency and varied nature of the works therefore place an even greater emphasis on the editorial processes that produced this canon. While the popular period has received much scholarly attention, the significance of editors and editing in the Harlem Renaissance—aside from the formative efforts of W.E.B. Du Bois and Alain Locke—remains understudied. As a remedy, Editing the Harlem Renaissance foregrounds an in-depth approach to relevant editing and editorial issues, offering a variety of voices to become the first centralized authority on the subject. Rather than limiting the examination to a narrow understanding of editorial practices, this collection takes a broad and inclusive approach, exploring not only those figures of the Harlem Renaissance who edited in professional capacities but also those authors who employed editorial practices during the writing process, as well as those texts that have been discovered and/or edited by others in the decades following the Harlem Renaissance. To achieve this end, the collection comprises chapters in several areas, including professional editing, authorial editing, textual self-fashioning, textual editing, documentary editing, and bibliography.Less

Egalitarian Strangeness: On Class Disturbance and Levelling in Modern and Contemporary French Narrative

Edward J. Hughes

The formulation ‘egalitarian strangeness’ is a direct borrowing from Courts voyages au pays du peuple [Short Voyages to the Land of the People] (1990), a set of essays by the contemporary French ... More

The formulation ‘egalitarian strangeness’ is a direct borrowing from Courts voyages au pays du peuple [Short Voyages to the Land of the People] (1990), a set of essays by the contemporary French thinker Jacques Rancière. Perhaps best known for his theory of radical equality as set out in Le Maître ignorant [The Ignorant Schoolmaster] (1987), Rancière reflects on ways in which a hierarchical social order based on inequality can come to be unsettled. In the democracy of literature, for example, words and sentences, he argues, serve to capture any life and make that available to any reader. The present book explores embedded forms of social and cultural ‘apportionment’ in a range of modern and contemporary French texts (including prose fiction, socially engaged commentary, and autobiography), while also identifying scenes of class disturbance and egalitarian encounter. Part One considers the ‘refrain of class’ audible in works by Claude Simon, Charles Péguy, Thierry Beinstingel, Marie Ndiaye, and Gabriel Gauny. It also examines how these authors’ practices of language connect with that refrain. In Part Two, Hughes analyses forms of domination and dressage with reference to Simone Weil’s mid-1930s factory journal, Paul Nizan’s novel of class alienation Antoine Bloyé from the same decade, and Pierre Michon’s Vies minuscules [Small Lives] (1984) with its focus on obscure rural lives. The reflection on how these narratives draw into contiguity antagonistic identities is extended in Part Three, where individual chapters on Proust and the contemporary authors François Bon and Didier Eribon show enduring forms of cultural distribution being both consolidated and contested.Less

The Evil Dead

Lloyd Haynes

THE EVIL DEAD is one of the most inventive and energetic of all horror movies. Sam Raimi’s debut feature transcends its small budget and limited resources to deliver a phantasmagoric roller-coaster ... More

THE EVIL DEAD is one of the most inventive and energetic of all horror movies. Sam Raimi’s debut feature transcends its small budget and limited resources to deliver a phantasmagoric roller-coaster ride, a wildly absurd and surreal assault on the senses. The first two chapters detail the unique circumstances of the film’s origin - it began life as a short film which was used to encourage financial backing from a variety of investors – and it’s production history which was fraught with problems. Chapter Three examines the concept of the Bad Place (the cabin in the woods) and how the film structurally creates a ‘bad dream’ effect. Chapter Four considers how the film’s ‘macho’ male hero Ash shares similarities with the Final Girl of other horror movies of this period, while Chapter Five explores the critical approaches to the film and its reputation in Britain as a ‘video nasty’. Chapter Six examines how THE EVIL DEAD has influenced other works both within and outside of the horror genre since its release in 1982.Less

Excavating Exodus: Biblical Typology and Racial Solidarity in African American Literature

J. Laurence Cohen

Excavating Exodus analyzes adaptations of Exodus in novels, newspapers, and speeches from the antebellum period to the Civil Rights era. Although Exodus has perennially served to mobilize resistance ... More

Excavating Exodus analyzes adaptations of Exodus in novels, newspapers, and speeches from the antebellum period to the Civil Rights era. Although Exodus has perennially served to mobilize resistance to oppression, Black writers have radically reinterpreted its meaning over the past two centuries. Changing interpretations of Moses’ story reflect evolving conceptions of racial identity, religious authority, gender norms, political activism, and literary form. Black writers transformed Moses from a paragon of race loyalty into an avatar of authoritarianism. Excavating Exodus identifies a rhetorical tradition initiated by David Walker and carried on by Martin Delany and Frances Harper that treats Moses' loyalty to his fellow Hebrews as his defining characteristic. By the twentieth century, however, a more skeptical group of writers, including Zora Neale Hurston, Ralph Ellison, and William Melvin Kelley, associated Moses with overbearing charismatic authority. This book traces the transition from Walker, who treated Moses as the epitome of self-sacrifice, to Kelley, who considered Moses a flawed model of leadership and a threat to individual self-reliance. By asking how Moses became a touchstone for notions of racial belonging, Excavating Exodus illuminates how Black intellectuals reinvented the Mosaic model of charismatic male leadership.Less

Forms of Late Modernist Lyric

Edward Allen (ed.)

What do we mean when call something a lyric poem? How many kinds of lyric are there? Are there fewer now than there were in 1920 or 1820 or 1620? The purpose of Forms of Late Modernist Lyric is to ... More

What do we mean when call something a lyric poem? How many kinds of lyric are there? Are there fewer now than there were in 1920 or 1820 or 1620? The purpose of Forms of Late Modernist Lyric is to show that our oldest styles of poetic articulation have figured all too briefly in modern genealogies of lyric, and that they have proved especially seductive, curiously enough, to avant-garde practitioners in the Anglophone tradition. The poets in question have thickened the texture of lyric practice at a time when the growing tendency in critical circles has been to dissolve points of difference within the genre itself. The broader aim of this volume is to demonstrate that experimental poets since 1945 have not always been rebarbative and anti-traditional, but rather that their recourse to familiar forms and shapes of thought should prompt us to reconsider late modernism as a crucial dimension of the evolving history of lyric.Less