Dealing with literary criticism, the author aims to show how, from antiquity to the twentieth century, literature progressed toward ever more naturalistic and democratic forms of representation. The exploration of how great European writers from Homer to Virginia Woolf depicted reality has taught generations how to read Western literature.

Four Essays.

Addresses developments in literary studies, including 'the growth of a kind of anti-theory', and the idea that literary theory has been institutionalized.

Collection of literary lectures by E.M. Forster, published in 1927. For the purposes of his study, Forster defines the novel as any fictitious prose work over 50,000 words. Forester's wit and lively, informed originality have made this study of the novel a classic.

In this work of feminist literary criticism the authors explore the works of many major 19th-century women writers. They chart a tangible desire expressed for freedom from the restraints of a confining patriarchal society and trace a distinctive female literary tradition.

A new book by America's leading literary critic on the uses of deep reading. Practical, inspirational and learned, How to Read and Why is Bloom's manifesto for the preponderance of written culture.

This text contains two of Walter Benjamin's essays, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction , and Theses on the Philosophy of History , as well as others on the art of translation, Kafka, storytelling, Baudelaire, Brecht's epic theatre, Proust, and book collecting.

This work offers a unified field theory of Western culture, high and low, since the Egyptians invented beauty. From Emily Dickinson and Medusa to Madonna, it makes a persuasive case for all art as a pagan battleground between male and female, form and chaos, civilization and demonic nature.

Wicked stepmothers and beautiful princesses ...magic forests and enchanted towers ...little pigs and big bad wolves ...Fairy tales have been an integral part of childhood for hundreds of years. But what do they really mean? This book presents an exploration of the best-known fairy stories.

Features various articles considering the art of fiction under a range of headings such as 'The Intrusive Author', 'Suspense', and 'Magic Realism'. This book illustrates several styles and techniques by passages from classic or modern fiction. It is suitable for writers, students and those who want to understand how literature works.

In his enjoyable readings of ambiguity, puns and paradox, Empson draws on a variety of authors from Chaucer to Eliot, illuminating the strategies of individual writers and creating a brilliant general theory of poetic practice: wide ranging, witty and still controversial.

Italian literary theorist and novelist Umberto Eco includes nine essays in this title concerning: the general significance of literature; major authors of the Western canon; the poetic qualities of Dante's Paradiso ; the style of the Communist Manifesto ; Joyce's views on language; and more.

Discusses the pleasure of reading, and why a novel succeeds or doesn't. The author delves into the character of the novelist, and reveals how novels have affected her own life. She describes the process of novel-writing, sharing the secrets of her own habits and theories of creativity. She also offers practical advice to aspiring writers.

Explores what Proust had to say about friendship, reading, looking carefully, paying attention taking your time, being alive. This book also contains the author's own commentary on Proust.

The year 2000 marks the 25th anniversary Fussell's volume about the First World War. It explores the British experience on the Western Front from 1914 to 1918, focusing on the various literary means by which it has been remembered, conventionalised and mythologized. It is also about the literary dimensions of the experience itself.

Defines our understanding of colonialism and empire.

Based on a lecture given at Girton College Cambridge.

The inspirational tale of eight women who defied the confines of life in revolutionary Iran through the joy and power of literature.

Contains essays that reveal Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975) - known in the West largely through his studies of Rabelais and Dostoevsky - as a philosopher of language, a cultural historian, and a major theoretician of the novel. This work features four selections from Voprosy literatury i estetiki , published in Moscow in 1975.