Written by Charles Dickens for serial publication in 1859, "A Tale of Two Cities" is a historical novel that takes place in London and Paris in the years leading up to the French Revolution. Its first sentence, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times," is one of the most recognizable opening lines in all of literature. This new Bloom's Guide will provide the best of study times for those assigned this famous and widely taught novel. Readers will find this an accessible, quick-reference introduction to the work
The Sun Also Rises (Bloom's Guides)Published in 1926, Ernest Hemingway's "The Sun Also Rises" quickly established the author as one of the great writers of his time. Based on Hemingway's experiences, "The Sun Also Rises" is the story of a group of American and English expatriates living in Paris who take an excursion to Pamplona, Spain. The novel has forever associated Hemingway with bullfights and the running of the bulls. This powerful work of modern fiction, filled with memorable characters and universal themes, is summarized in this volume and enhanced by thought-provoking critical extracts
Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried (Bloom's Guides)"They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing--these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight. They carried shameful memories. They carried the common secret of cowardice.... Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to."
This introductory study provides a thorough grounding in both the history of Gothic literature and the way in which Gothic texts have been (and can be) critically read.
The book opens with a chronology and an introduction to the principal texts and key critical terms, followed by four chapters: The Gothic Heyday 1760-1820; Gothic 1820-1865; Gothic Proximities 1865-1900; and the Twentieth Century. Each chapter concludes with a close reading of a specific text - Frankenstein, Jane Eyre, Dracula and The Silence of the Lambs - to illustrate the ways in which contextual discussion informs critical analysis.
Gothic offers a lucid and accessible introduction to the Gothic genre, tracing the darkly terrific shapes and developments of a transgressive literary practice which has thrived for over two centuries. Fred Botting explores a number of key texts, their origins and writers, and discusses them in the context of their cultural and historical location, their critical reception and their influence.
