Deconstructing Disney

This book is a sharply focused deconstruction of the political culture — and the cultural politics — of the Disney canon in the years since the emergence of the so-called New World Order. Eleanor Byrne and Martin McQuillan offer a critical encounter with Disney which alternates between readings of individual texts and wider thematic concerns such as race, gender and sexuality, the broader context of American contemporary culture, and the global ambitions and insularity of the last great superpower. The movies discussed include The Little Mermaid, The Lion King, Pocohontas, Snow White, Bedknobs and Broomsticks, Dumbo, Peter Pan, The Jungle Book, Hercules and Mulan.

Literature and the Irish Famine 1845-1919 (Oxford Historical Monographs)

The impact of the Irish famine of 1845-1852 was unparalleled in both political and psychological terms. The effects of famine-related mortality and emigration were devastating, in the field of literature no less than in other areas. In this incisive new study, Melissa Fegan explores the famine's legacy to literature, tracing it in the work of contemporary writers and their successors, down to 1919. Dr Fegan examines both fiction and non-fiction, including journalism, travel-narratives and the Irish novels of Anthony Trollope. "A valuable and sophisticated negotiation between the disciplines of history and literature."--Times Literary Supplement

Boy Detectives: Essays on the Hardy Boys and Others

Much has been written about the girl sleuth in fiction, a feminist figure embodying all the potential wit and drive of girlhood. Her male counterpart, however, has received much less critical attention despite his popularity in the wider culture. This collection of eleven essays examines the boy detective and his genre from a number of critical perspectives, addressing the issues of these young characters, heirs to the patriarchy yet still concerned with first crushes and soda shop romances. Series explored include the Hardy Boys, Tow Swift, the Three Investigators, Christopher Cool and Tim Murphy, as well as works by Astrid Lindgren, Mark Haddon, and Joe Meno.

Zora Neale Hurston and a History of Southern Life (Critical Perspectives on the Past)

A historian hoping to reconstruct the social world of all-black towns or the segregated black sections of other towns in the South finds only scant traces of their existence. In this book Tiffany Ruby Patterson uses the ethnographic and literary work of Zora Neale Hurston to augment the few official documents, newspaper accounts, and family records that pertain to these places hidden from history. Hurston's ethnographies, plays, and fiction focused on the day-to-day life in all-black social spaces as well as 'the Negro farthest down' in labor camps.Patterson shows how Hurston's work coincides with the fragmented historical record.

Sherlock Holmes

A new edition of the pocket guide to one of English literature's best loved and finest creations, Sherlock Holmes. Holmes was the brainchild of Portsmouth GP Arthur Conan Doyle. A writer of historical romance, Doyle became unhappy that the detective's enormous success eclipsed his other work, and killed him off. But, faced with an enormous backlash from the public, he had no choice but to bring him back from the grave to face more puzzling mysteries. Holmes is an iconic fictional creature, and has been immortalised in countless film, TV and radio productions.