In the twentieth century, literature was under threat. Not only was there the challenge of new forms of oral and visual culture. Even literary education and literary criticism could sometimes actually distance novels, poems and plays from their potential audience. This is the trend which Roger D. Sell now seeks to reverse. Arguing that literature can still be a significant and democratic channel of human interactivity, he sees the most helpful role of teachers and critics as one of mediation.
Since its first publication in English in 1985, Mieke Bal's Narratology has become a classic introduction to the major elements of a comprehensive theory of narrative texts. In this second edition, Professor Bal broadens the spectrum of her theoretical model, updating the chapters on literary narrative and adding new examples from outside the field of literary studies. Some specific additions include discussions on dialogue in narrative, translation as transformation (including translation between different media), intertextuality, interdiscursivity, and the place of the subject in narratology.
Edgar Allan Poe is unique for being at once so firmly entrenched within the American literary tradition and yet so questionable in the eyes of the very critics whose attentions strengthened his position. Harold Bloom wonders if Poe's longevity suggests that literary merit and canonical status aren't inseparable.
Of all contemporary American writers, Philip Roth is perhaps the most ambitious, yet he is one of the most underrepresented in terms of critical attention given his place in American letters. Unlike many aging novelists, whose production and creative mastery wane over time, Roth has demonstrated a unique ability not only to sustain his literary output, but also to surpass the scope and talent inherent in his previous writings. He has been awarded many literary honors, and in the 1990s alone he won every major American book award.
The winner of many prestigious awards for her scholarship, historian Margaret MacMillan is also the New York Times best-selling author of Paris 1919. In Dangerous Games, she illustrates how history should never be presented as a series of facts, but instead as a framing device for understanding the past. As professional 21st-century historians cede the literary field to the popular amateur, history and its meanings become muddled - especially in the punditocracy championed by modern media.
