Studying Literature in English provides the ideal point of entry for students of English Literature. This book is an accessible guide for Literature students around the world.

Exploring literary representations of women's laughter from the thirteenth through the sixteenth centuries, this volume offers an intriguing look into a culture of women's laughter, illustrating the many contexts that shaped the way women told jokes, as well as the ways their joking reflected their limited position in a society dominated by men.

Examining the literature of slavery and race before the Civil War, Maurice Lee, in this 2005 book, demonstrates how the slavery crisis became a crisis of philosophy that exposed the breakdown of national consensus and the limits of rational authority. Poe, Stowe, Douglass, Melville, and Emerson were among the antebellum authors who tried - and failed - to find rational solutions to the slavery conflict. Unable to mediate the slavery controversy as the nation moved toward war, their writings form an uneasy transition between the confident rationalism of the American Enlightenment and the more skeptical thought of the pragmatists.

Focusing on literary texts produced from 2000 to 2009, Lorraine Ryan examines the imbrication between the preservation of Republican memory and the transformations of Spanish public space during the period from 1931 to 2005. Accordingly, Ryan analyzes the spatial empowerment and disempowerment of Republican memory and identity in Dulce Chacón s Cielos de barro, Ángeles López s Martina, la rosa número trece, Alberto Méndez s Los girasoles ciegos, Carlos Ruiz Zafón´s La sombra del viento, Emili Teixidor s Pan negro, Bernardo Atxaga s El hijo del acordeonista, and José María Merino s La sima.

For success in college, no skill is more critical than writing; it’s the very core of a student’s academic experience. Tested and trusted, A Writer’s Reference is an essential tool for students who are strengthening habits and skills that will support them throughout college.