Historical Dictionary of Latin American Literature and Theater
The Historical Dictionary of Latin American Literature and Theater provides users with an accessible single-volume reference tool covering Portuguese-speaking Brazil and the 16 Spanish-speaking countries of continental Latin America (Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela). Entries for authors, ranging from the early colonial period to the present, give succinct biographical data and an account of the author's literary production, with particular attention to their most prominent works and where they belong in literary history.
Bookish Histories presents a new 'bookish' approach to the literary history of eighteenth and nineteenth-century Britain. Concentrating on overlooked dimensions of literary practice and production during the period when printed matter became incorporated into everyday life, the essays in the volume bring together book history, cultural history, and literary studies to expand our understanding of books in modernity.
‘Contemporary Literature’ is among the most popular areas of literary study but it can be a difficult one to define. This book equips readers with the necessary tools to take an analytical and systematic approach to contemporary texts. The author provides answers to some of the critical questions in the field: What makes a literary text contemporary? Is it possible to have a canon of contemporary literature? How does a reader’s location affect their understanding? How do print, electronic, and audio-visual media impact upon contemporary literature? Which key concepts and themes are most prevalent?
How do we read stories? How do they engage our minds and create meaning? Are they a mental construct, a linguistic one or a cultural one? What is the difference between real stories and fictional ones? This book addresses such questions by describing the conceptual and linguistic underpinnings of narrative interpretation. Barbara Dancygier discusses literary texts as linguistic artifacts, describing the processes which drive the emergence of literary meaning. If a text means something to someone, she argues, there have to be linguistic phenomena that make it possible.
Since the 1980s, Roger D. Sell’s literary criticism has striven to take account of the (often conflicting) approaches available without compromising the human importance of the literary work: either in terms of its creation or its reception. Sell’s theory of literature draws strength from the interface between literary studies and linguistics and is grounded on the argument that literary making is a primary communicational act between human beings. Other critics have found Sell’s work inspirational.
