Literary Studies Book List ·

5 Plays 5

Lovecraft's Follies, The Ushers, Mother O, Shadows of Memory, The Last Romantics

In 1970 Adrian Hall’s production of Lovecraft’s Follies by the Trinity Repertory Company was praised in The New York Times as a “hilarious extravaganza—with music—that is also an earnest attempt to come to grips with the guilts and terrors of the Age of Technology.…

Absent Man

The Narrative Craft of Charles W. Chesnutt

As the first African-American fiction writer to achieve a national reputation, Ohio native Charles W. Chesnutt (1858—1932) in many ways established the terms of the black literary tradition now exemplified by such writers as Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, and Charles Johnson.…

An African American in South Africa

The Travel Notes of Ralph J. Bunche 28 September 1937–1 January 1938

Ralph Bunche, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1950, traveled to South Africa for three months in 1937. His notes, which have been skillfully compiled and annotated by historian Robert R. Edgar, provide unique insights on a segregated society.…

After the Grapes of Wrath

Essays on John Steinbeck in Honor of Tetsumaro Hayashi

Traditionally, the critical reputation of Nobel Prize-winning American novelist John Steinbeck (1902-1968) has rested on his achievements of the 1930s, especially In Dubious Battle (1936), Of Mice and Men (1937, The Long Valley (1938), and, of course, The Grapes of Wrath (1939), one of the most powerful – and arguable on of the greatest – American novels of this century.…

Alberta Alone

Cora Sandel, born Sara Fabricus in 1880, did not publish her first novel until 1926. Alberta and Jacob, first novel of the trilogy, is the story of an adolescent girl’s rebellion against the self–conscious gentility of her family in the far north of Norway during the last years of the nineteenth century.…

Alberta and Freedom

Cora Sandel, born Sara Fabricus in 1880, did not publish her first novel until 1926. Alberta and Jacob, first novel of the trilogy, is the story of an adolescent girl’s rebellion against the self–conscious gentility of her family in the far north of Norway during the last years of the nineteenth century.…

Alexander the Great

A Novel Tr. from the Greek by Theodora Vasils

Nikos Kazantzakis is no stranger to the heroes of Greek antiquity. In this historical novel based on the life of Alexander the Great, Kazantzakis has drawn on both the rich tradition of Greek legend and the documented manuscripts from the archives of history to recreate an Alexander in all his many-faceted images—Alexander the god; Alexander the descendant of Heracles performing the twelve labors; Alexander the mystic, the daring visionary destined to carry out a divine mission; Alexander the flesh-and-blood mortal who, on occasion, is not above the common soldier’s brawling and drinking.…

All the Fun’s in How You Say a Thing

An Explanation of Meter and Versification

Perfect for the general reader of poetry, students and teachers of literature, and aspiring poets, All the Fun's in How You Say a Thing is a lively and comprehensive study of versification by one of our best contemporary practitioners of traditional poetic forms.…

Ambiguous Dancers of Fame

Collected Poems: 1945-1986

This second volume of James Schevill's collected poems is a companion to his remarkable ongoing sequence of poems, The American Fantasies, published by Swallow in 1983. This collection extends the scope of the poet's concern with American power and influences to Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean.…

American and British Poetry

A Guide to the Criticism, 1925-1978

Critical essays provide sources for stimulating new thoughts and perspectives on poetry. Finding such essays on specific poems can be a frustrating experience for the scholar or the student. American and British Poetry: A Guide to the Criticism, 1925–1978 guides the researcher quickly to relevant sources of critical writing.…

American and British Poetry

A Guide to the Criticism, 1979-1990

This reference volume is a supplement to Alexander’s earlier work covering the years 1928–1978. Its purpose is to provide access to articles, parts of articles, and parts of books of criticism on British and American poets.…

American Fantasies

Collected Poems, 1945-1981

In this collection, Schevill brings together a series of poems that he has been working on since his first book was published in 1947. Diverse characters, both real and imaginary, reveal fantasies of American life and history.…

An American Vein

Critical Readings in Appalachian Literature

The blossoming of Appalachian studies began some thirty years ago. Thousands of young people from the hills have since been made aware of their region's rich literary tradition through high school and college courses.…

America’s Sketchbook

The Cultural Life of a Nineteenth-Century Literary Genre

America’s Sketchbook recaptures the drama of nineteenth-century American cultural life, placing at its center a genre—the literary sketch—more available than the novel, less governable by the critical establishment, and shot through with the tensions and types of local and national culture-making.…

Amy Levy

Her Life and Letters

After a century of critical neglect, poet and writer Amy Levy is gaining recognition as a literary figure of stature.This definitive biography accompanied by her letters, along with the recent publication of her selected writings, provides a critical appreciation of Levy's importance in her own time and in ours.…

Amy Levy

Critical Essays

Amy Levy has risen to prominence in recent years as one of the most innovative and perplexing writers of her generation. Embraced by feminist scholars for her radical experimentation with queer poetic voice and her witty journalistic pieces on female independence, she remains controversial for her representations of London Jewry that draw unmistakably on contemporary antisemitic discourse.…

And Still Birds Sing

New and Collected Poems

Written over a career that spans five decades, And Still Birds Sing is the masterwork of a major voice in American poetry.Bringing together his previously collected poems as well as the three books published since then, a sampling of his renowned translations of haiku, and a generous number of previously unpublished new poems, this latest collection by poet and translator Lucien Stryk is evidence of the popular and critical acclaim for an important contributor to twentieth-century letters.…

Angelic Airs, Subversive Songs

Music as Social Discourse in the Victorian Novel

Music was at once one of the most idealized and one of the most contested art forms of the Victorian period. Yet this vitally important nineteenth-century cultural form has been studied by literary critics mainly as a system of thematic motifs.…

Anglophone Poetry in Colonial India, 1780–1913

A Critical Anthology

Anglophone Poetry in Colonial India, 1780–1913: A Critical Anthology makes accessible for the first time the entire range of poems written in English on the subcontinent from their beginnings in 1780 to the watershed moment in 1913 when Rabindranath Tagore won the Nobel Prize in Literature.…

Annotated Bibliography of Jane Austen Studies, 1984-94

This, Professor Roth’s third annotated bibliography of studies on Jane Austen, covers the years 1984–1994. Like the critically acclaimed earlier volumes, it charts the steady growth and enrichment of literary criticism of Austen in the second half of the twentieth century.…