American Writers is a book of vast scope, much like America itself. Within these pages one will find the early Puritan visionaries, leaders of the American Renaissance, realists and naturalists, the Lost Generation, the modernists, the Fugitives and agrarians, the Beats, the Black Mountain writers, postmodernists, and more. What brings them all together is the literary merit of their writing. Whether novelists, short story writers, poets, dramatists, essayists, or nonfiction writers, they are all judged by history and/or their contemporaries to be writers whose work has helped to create “American literature.” American Writers includes all the major literary genres to provide biographical profiles of writers from colonial times to the present and from all major literary movements.
Added by: dovesnake | Karma: 1384.51 | Coursebooks, Fiction literature | 6 October 2008
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Product Description: This Companion provides an original and authoritative survey of twentieth-century American drama studies, written by some of the best scholars and critics in the field. * Balances consideration of canonical material with discussion of works by previously marginalized playwrights * Includes studies of leading dramatists, such as Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Eugene O'Neill and Gertrude Stein * Allows readers to make new links between particular plays and playwrights * Examines the movements that framed the century, such as the Harlem Renaissance, lesbian and gay drama, and the solo performances of the 1980s and 1990s * Situates American drama within larger discussions about American ideas and culture
Classics of Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature (Magill's Choice)
Added by: dovesnake | Karma: 1384.51 | Coursebooks, Fiction literature | 6 October 2008
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From Booklist This new set in the Magill's Choice series presents summary and analysis of 180 books and series. Eight of the essays are new; the rest are taken from Salem's four-volume Magill's Guide to Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature (1996)!
Notable British Novelists - 3 Volume Set (Magill's Choice)
Added by: dovesnake | Karma: 1384.51 | Coursebooks, Fiction literature | 6 October 2008
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From Library Journal This three-volume work is a clever and serviceable repackaging of the eight-volume Critical Survey of Long Fiction, second revised edition (LJ 10/1/00). Rollyson, who also supervised the Critical Survey, offers 104 up-to-date essays, primarily by U.S. scholars, maintaining the same thorough analysis and consistent tone as the original. Each essay lists the principal works by the author and describes his or her achievements and biography, analyzing the overall body of work and each novel individually. The updated annotated bibliography at the end of each essay provides excellent sources for further research, and over half the essays include a photo or drawing of the author. The writers, a few of whom were born in Ireland but have close associations to Great Britain, were chosen because their works are often studied in high school and college. A wide range of styles and genres, notably gothic, mystery, and sf, are represented. A nine-page glossary of terms and techniques and a time line, which begins in the early 15th century, ends in 1950, and notes each author's date and place of birth, precedes an index consisting mainly of author and title references. The volumes seem well bound, but the type is smaller and the paper thinner than in the original series. A complete list of contents appears at the beginning of each volume, making the set easy to browse. The compact size and focus on one country of origin will appeal to less sophisticated scholars. Highly recommended for small public and college libraries.
Beautiful Enemies: Friendship and Postwar American Poetry
Added by: dovesnake | Karma: 1384.51 | Coursebooks, Fiction literature | 6 October 2008
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Product Description: Although it has long been commonplace to imagine the archetypal American poet singing a solitary "Song of Myself," much of the most enduring American poetry has actually been preoccupied with the drama of friendship. In this lucid and absorbing study, Andrew Epstein argues that an obsession with both the pleasures and problems of friendship erupts in the "New American Poetry" that emerges after the Second World War. By focusing on some of the most significant postmodernist American poets--the "New York School" poets John Ashbery, Frank O'Hara, and their close contemporary Amiri Baraka--Beautiful Enemies reveals a fundamental paradox at the heart of postwar American poetry and culture: the avant-garde's commitment to individualism and nonconformity runs directly counter to its own valorization of community and collaboration. In fact, Epstein demonstrates that the clash between friendship and nonconformity complicates the legendary alliances forged by postwar poets, becomes a predominant theme in the poetry they created, and leaves contemporary writers with a complicated legacy to negotiate. Rather than simply celebrating friendship and poetic community as nurturing and inspiring, these poets represent friendship as a kind of exhilarating, maddening contradiction, a site of attraction and repulsion, affinity and rivalry. Challenging both the reductive critiques of American individualism and the idealized, heavily biographical celebrations of literary camaraderie one finds in much critical discussion, this book provides a new interpretation of the peculiar dynamics of American avant-garde poetic communities and the role of the individual within them. By situating his extensive and revealing readings of these highly influential poets against the backdrop of Cold War cultural politics and within the context of American pragmatist thought, Epstein uncovers the collision between radical self-reliance and the siren call of the interpersonal at the core of postwar American poetry.
