The Life of Daniel Defoe examines the entire range of Defoe’s writing in the context of what is known about his life and opinions. A critical study of the writing of Daniel Defoe. Features extended and detailed commentaries on Defoe’s political and religious journalism, as well as on his narrative fictions. Places emphasis on Defoe’s distinctive style and rhetoric.
Added by: algy | Karma: 431.17 | Non-Fiction, Literature Studies | 28 November 2010
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Richard III (Shakespeare Explained)
Act by act, scene by scene, each Shakespeare Explained guide creates a total immersion experience in the plot development, characters, and language of the specific play.
The essays in this latest volume have a particularly strong focus on English material; they include explorations of Malory's presentation of Sir Dinadan, the connections between ballads and popular romance, and, moving beyond the medieval period, Thomas Love Peacock's The Misfortunes of Elphin. They are complemented by articles on French sources (L'Atre perilleux, the Queste del Saint Graal, and the Perlesvaus), and with an overview of the idea of cowardice and Arthurian narrative
Chrétien Continued: A Study of the Conte du Graal and its Verse Continuations
Matilda Tomaryn Bruckner provides the first book-length examination of all four verse continuations that follow Chrétien's unfinished Grail story, a powerful site of rewriting from the late twelfth through the fifteenth centuries. By focusing on the dialogue between Chrétien and the verse continuators, this study demonstrates how the patterns and puzzles inscribed in the first author's romance continue to guide his successors, whose additions and reinventions throw new light back on the problems medieval readers and writers found in the mother text:
A Discourse for the Holy Grail in Old French Romance
The Holy Grail made its first literary appearance in the work of the twelfth-century French poet, Chrétien de Troyes, and continues to fascinate authors and audiences alike. This study, supported by a theoretical framework based on the psychoanalytic works of Jacques Lacan and the cultural theory of Slavoj Zizek, aims to strip the legend of much of the mythological and folkloric association that it has acquired over the centuries, arguing that the Grail should be read as a symptom of disruption and obscurity rather than fulfilment and revelation.
