Medieval English: Literature and Language, 4th Edition

This new and innovative approach to English Medieval Studies takes what is often judged as two separate fields, Old and Middle English, and unites them under their common linguistic and literary contintuities. An introductory grammar shows the continuous development of Old English to Middle and Early Modern English, with examples taken from a wide variety of carefully annotated texts. This collection will introduce beginning students to the diverse and fascinating world of Medieval English.

A History of American Literature

Updated throughout and with much new material, A History of American Literature, Second Edition, is the most up-to-date and comprehensive survey available of the myriad forms of American Literature from pre-Columbian times to the present.

Say What I Am Called - The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book & the Anglo-Latin Riddle Tradition

Perhaps the most enigmatic cultural artifacts that survive from the Anglo-Saxon period are the Old English riddle poems that were preserved in the tenth century Exeter Book manuscript. Clever, challenging, and notoriously obscure, the riddles have fascinated readers for centuries and provided crucial insight into the period. In Say What I Am Called , Dieter Bitterli takes a fresh look at the riddles by examining them in the context of earlier Anglo-Latin riddles.

Welcome to Lizard Motel - Children, Stories, and the Mystery of Making Things Up, A Memoir

Welcome to Lizard Motel is a completely original memoir about the place of stories in children's lives. It began when Barbara Feinberg noticed that her twelve-year-old son, Alex, who otherwise loved to read, hated reading many of the novels assigned to him in school. These stories of abandonment, kidnapping, abuse, and more-called "problem novels"-were standard fare in his middle school classroom. Alex and his friends hated to read these books. As one of them said, "They give me a headache in my stomach." So Feinberg set out to discover just what these kids were talking about.

The contributors to this collection of essays address children's literature as an art form, rather than an educational instrument, as has been the traditional approach. Scholars from 10 different countries present a variety of approaches to the history of children's literature, including views on sociological, semiotic, and intertextual models of its evolution. Other issues explored include influence and interaction between stories and their countries of origin. This strong presentation of international perspectives on children's literature will be a valuable resource for scholars of children's and comparative literature.