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Cambridge Companions are a series of authoritative guides, written by leading experts, offering lively, accessible introductions to major writers, artists, philosophers, topics, and periods.
Cambridge Companions are a series of authoritative guides, written by leading experts, offering lively, accessible introductions to major writers, artists, philosophers, topics, and periods.
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This Companion, first published in 2000, addresses the work of women playwrights in Britain throughout the twentieth century. The chapters explore the historical and theatrical contexts in which women have written for the theatre and examine the work of individual playwrights. A chronological section on playwriting from the 1920s to the 1970s is followed by chapters which raise issues of nationality and identity. Later sections question accepted notions of the canon and include chapters on non-mainstream writing, including black and lesbian performance. Each section is introduced by the editors, who provide a narrative overview of a century of women's drama and a thorough chronology of playwriting, set in political context. The collection includes essays on the individual writers Caryl Churchill, Sarah Daniels, Pam Gems and Timberlake Wertenbaker as well as extensive documentation of contemporary playwriting in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, including figures such as Liz Lochhead and Anne Devlin.
Virginia Woolf is now hailed as one of the greatest, most innovative writers of our age. This landmark collection of essays by leading scholars in the field addresses the full range of her intellectual perspectives - literary, artistic, philosophical and political. The Cambridge Companion to Virginia Woolf provides original, new readings of all nine novels and fresh insight into Woolf's letters, diaries and essays allowing easy reference to individual themes and texts. The progress of Woolf's thinking is revealed from Bloomsbury aestheticism through her hatred of censorship, corruption and hierarchy to her concern with all aspects of modernism. The volume reflects the changing face of Woolf scholarship especially in the light of new feminist approaches, and explores the immense range of social and political issues behind her ongoing search for new narrative forms.
This volume offers a unique and valuable insight into the novel in French over the past two centuries. In a series of essays, acknowledged experts discuss a variety of topics including nineteenth-century realism, women and fiction, popular fiction, experiment and innovation, war and the Holocaust, the Francophone novel, and postmodern fiction. They offer a challenging reassessment of major figures, while deliberately reading traditional views of literary history against the grain. Theoretical discussion is combined with close reading of texts and exploration of context, comparison with other genres and other literatures, and reference to novels from earlier periods. This companionable introduction includes a chronology and guide to further reading. From it emerges a strong sense of the vitality and energy of the modern French novel, and of the debates surrounding it.
This book provides the first complete guide for students to the present state of biblical studies. The twenty-one specially commissioned chapters are written by established scholars from North America and Britain, and represent both traditional and contemporary points of view. The chapters in Part One cover all the methods and approaches currently practised in the academic study of the Bible, while those in Part Two examine the major categories of books in the Bible from the perspective of recent scholarship - e.g. historical books of the Old Testament, Gospels, prophetic literature. Major issues raised are: the relation of modern 'critical' study of the Bible to 'pre-critical' and 'post-critical' approaches; the place of history in the study of the Bible; feminist, liberationist and new historicist concerns; the relation of Christian and Jewish scholarship; and recent interest in the Bible as literature.
This Companion offers a comprehensive introduction to the work and thought of the highly influential twentieth-century critic and theorist Walter Benjamin. The volume provides examinations of the different aspects of Benjamin's work that have had a significant effect on contemporary critical and historical thought. Topics discussed by experts in the field include Benjamin's relation to the avant-garde movements of his time, the form of the work of art, his theories on language and mimesis, modernity, his relation to Brecht and the Frankfurt School, his significance and relevance to modern cultural studies, his formative interpretation of Romanticism, and his autobiographical writings. The volume is aimed at readers who may be coming to Benjamin for the first time or who have some knowledge of Benjamin but would like to know more about the issues and concepts central to his work. Additional material includes a guide to further reading and a chronology.
This Companion contains fifteen chapters by leading international scholars, who together reflect diverse but complementary approaches to the study of Ezra Pound's poetry and prose. They consider the poetics, foreign influences, economics, politics and publication history of Pound's entire corpus, and reveal his importance in developing some of the key movements in twentieth-century poetry. The book also situates Pound's work in the context of Modernism, illustrating his influence on contemporaries like T. S. Eliot and James Joyce. Taken together, the chapters offer a sustained examination of one of the most versatile, influential and certainly controversial poets of the modern period.
From the fourteenth to the seventeenth century, humanism played a key role in European culture. Beginning as a movement based on the recovery, interpretation and imitation of ancient Greek and Roman texts and the archaeological study of the physical remains of antiquity, humanism turned into a dynamic cultural programme, influencing almost every facet of Renaissance intellectual life. The fourteen essays in this 1996 volume deal with all aspects of the movement, from language learning to the development of science, from the effect of humanism on biblical study to its influence on art, from its Italian origins to its manifestations in the literature of More, Sidney and Shakespeare. A detailed biographical index, and a guide to further reading, are provided. Overall, The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Humanism provides a comprehensive introduction to a major movement in the culture of early modern Europe.
Best known for his great novels, War and Peace and Anna Karenina, Tolstoy remains one the most important nineteenth-century writers; throughout his career which spanned nearly three quarters of a century, he wrote fiction, journalistic essays and educational textbooks. The specially commissioned essays in The Cambridge Companion to Tolstoy do justice to the sheer volume of Tolstoy's writing. Key dimensions of his writing and life are explored in essays focusing on his relationship to popular writing, the issue of gender and sexuality in his fiction and his aesthetics. The introduction provides a brief, unified account of the man, for whom his art was only one activity among many. The volume is well supported by supplementary material including a detailed guide to further reading and a chronology of Tolstoy's life, the most comprehensive compiled in English to date. Altogether the volume provides an invaluable resource for students and scholars alike.
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) is something of a maverick figure in the history of philosophy. He produced a unique theory of the world and human existence based upon his notion of will. This collection analyses the related but distinct components of will from the point of view of epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of mind, aesthetics, ethics, and the philosophy of psychoanalysis. This volume explores Schopenhauer's philosophy of death, his relationship to the philosophy of Kant, his use of ideas drawn from both Buddhism and Hinduism, and the important influence he exerted on Nietzsche, Freud, and Wittgenstein.
From the ninth to the fifteenth centuries Jewish thinkers living in Islamic and Christian lands philosophized about Judaism. Influenced first by Islamic theological speculation and the great philosophers of classical antiquity, and then in the late medieval period by Christian Scholasticism, Jewish philosophers and scientists reflected on the nature of language about God, the scope and limits of human understanding, the eternity or createdness of the world, prophecy and divine providence, the possibility of human freedom, and the relationship between divine and human law. Though many viewed philosophy as a dangerous threat, others incorporated it into their understanding of what it is to be a Jew. This Companion presents all the major Jewish thinkers of the period, the philosophical and non-philosophical contexts of their thought, and the interactions between Jewish and non-Jewish philosophers. It is a comprehensive introduction to a vital period of Jewish intellectual history.
This Companion offers students crucial guidance on virtually every aspect of the work of this complex and controversial writer, bringing together the contrasting views of major critics and active practitioners. The opening essays place Brecht's creative work in its historical and biographical context and are followed by chapters on single texts, from The Threepenny Opera to The Caucasian Chalk Circle, on some early plays, on the Lehrstücke and on the neglected contribution of Elisabeth Hauptmann to the Brecht canon. The third group of essays analyse Brecht's directing, his theatrical theories, his poetry, his interest in music, his significant collaboration with stage designers and his work with actors, concluding with an assessment of Brecht's continuing influence on theatre practice. A detailed calendar of Brecht's life and work and a selective bibliography of English criticism complete this provocative overview of a writer who constantly aimed to provoke.
The Cambridge Companion to Charles Dickens contains fourteen specially-commissioned chapters by leading international scholars, who together provide diverse but complementary approaches to the full span of Dickens's work, with particular focus on his major fiction. The essays cover the whole range of Dickens's writing, from Sketches by Boz through The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Separate chapters address important thematic topics: childhood, the city, and domestic ideology. Others consider formal features of the novels, including their serial publication and Dickens's distinctive use of language. Three final chapters examine Dickens in relation to work in other media: illustration, theatre, and film. Each essay provides guidance to further reading. The volume as a whole offers a valuable introduction to Dickens for students and general readers, as well as fresh insights, informed by recent critical theory, that will be of interest to scholars and teachers of the novels.
The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Republic examines all aspects of Roman history and civilization from 509–49 BC. The key development of the republican period was Rome's rise from a small city to a wealthy metropolis and international capital of an extensive Mediterranean empire. These centuries produced the classic republican political system and the growth of a world empire. They also witnessed the disintegration of this system under the pressure of internal dissension and boundless ambition of its leading politicians. In this Companion volume, distinguished European and American scholars present a variety of lively approaches to understanding the political, military, and social aspects of Roman history, as well as its literary and visual culture. Designed to be accessible to the general reader and to students, The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Republic will invite further exploration to a vital, formative period of Roman history and its later influence.
The Cambridge Companion to American Modernism provides a comprehensive and authoritative overview of American literary modernism from 1890 to 1939. These original essays by twelve distinguished scholars of international reputation offer critical overviews of the major genres, literary culture, and social contexts that define the current state of Modern American literature and cultural studies. Among the diverse topics covered are nationalism, race, gender and the impact of music and visual arts on literary modernism, as well as overviews of the achievements of American modernism in fiction, poetry and drama. The book concludes with a chapter on modern American criticism. An essential reference guide to the field, the Companion offers readers a chronology of key events and publication dates covering the first half of the twentieth century in the United States, and a bibliography of further reading organized by chapter topics.
It is hard to overestimate the importance of the work of Augustine of Hippo, both in his own period and in the subsequent history of Western philosophy. Until the thirteenth century, when he may have had a competitor in Thomas Aquinas, he was the most important philosopher of the medieval period. Many of his views, including his theory of the just war, his account of time and eternity, his understanding of the will, his attempted resolution of the problem of evil, and his approach to the relation of faith and reason, have continued to be influential up to the present time. In this 2001 volume of specially-commissioned essays, sixteen scholars provide a wide-ranging and stimulating contribution to our understanding of Augustine, covering all the major areas of his philosophy and theology.
First published in 2001, this is an accessible, wide-ranging and informed introduction to Shakespeare's comedies and romances. Rather than taking each play in isolation, the chapters trace recurring issues, suggesting both the continuity and the variety of Shakespeare's practice and the creative use he made of the conventions he inherited. The first section puts Shakespeare in the context of classical and Renaissance comedy and comic theory, the work of his Elizabethan predecessors and the traditions of popular festivity. The second section traces a number of themes through Shakespeare's early and middle comedies, dark comedies and late romances, establishing the key features of his comedy as a whole and illuminating particular plays by close analysis. Individual chapters draw on contemporary politics, rhetoric, and the history of Shakespeare production. Written by experts in the relevant fields, the chapters frequently challenge long-standing critical assumptions.
In The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen leading scholars from around the world present Austen's works in two broad contexts: that of her contemporary world, and that of present-day critical discourse. Beside discussions of Austen's novels there are essays on religion, politics, class-consciousness, publishing practices, and domestic economy, which describe the world in which Austen lived and wrote. More traditional issues for literary analysis are then addressed: style in the novels, Austen's letters as literary productions, and the stylistic significance of her juvenile works. The volume concludes with assessments of the history of Austen criticism and the development of Austen as a literary cult-figure; it provides a chronology, and highlights the most interesting studies of Austen in a vast field of contemporary critical diversity.
In The Cambridge Companion to Keats, leading scholars discuss Keats's work in several fascinating contexts: literary history and key predecessors; Keats's life in London's intellectual, aesthetic and literary culture; the relation of his poetry to the visual arts; the critical traditions and theoretical contexts within which Keats's life and achievements have been assessed. These specially commissioned essays examine Keats's specific poetic endeavours, his striking way with language, and his lively letters as well as his engagement with contemporary cultures and literary traditions, his place in criticism, from his day to ours, including the challenge he poses to gender criticism. The contributions are sophisticated but accessible, challenging but lucid, and are complemented by an introduction to Keats's life, a chronology, a descriptive list of contemporary people and periodicals, a source-reference for famous phrases and ideas articulated in Keats's letters, a glossary of literary terms and a guide to further reading.
W. V. Quine (1908–2000) was quite simply the most distinguished analytic philosopher of the later half of the twentieth century. His celebrated attack on the analytic/synthetic tradition heralded a major shift away from the views of language descended from logical positivism. His most important book, Word and Object, introduced the concept of indeterminacy of radical translation, a bleak view of the nature of the language with which we ascribe thoughts and beliefs to ourselves and others. Quine is also famous for the view that epistemology should be naturalized, that is conducted in a scientific spirit with the object of investigating the relationship between the inputs of experience and the outputs of belief. The eleven essays in this volume cover all the central topics of Quine's philosophy: the underdetermination of physical theory, analycity, naturalism, propositional attitudes, behaviorism, reference and ontology, positivism, holism and logic.
This volume brings together a series of essays by acknowledged experts on Flaubert. It offers a coherent overview of the writer's work and critical legacy, and provides insights into the very latest scholarly thinking. While a central place is given to Flaubert's most widely read texts, attention is also paid to key areas of the corpus that have tended to be overlooked. Close textual analyses are accompanied by discussion of broader theoretical issues, and by a consideration of Flaubert's place in the wider traditions that he both inherited and influenced. These essays provide not only a robust critical framework for readers of Flaubert, but also a fuller understanding of why he continues to exert such a powerful influence on literature and literary studies today. A concluding essay by the prize-winning author Mario Vargas Llosa examines Flaubert's legacy from the point of view of the modern novelist.