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Cambridge Companions are lively, accessible introductions to major writers, artists, philosophers, topics and periods. All are collections of specially commissioned essays, shaped and introduced to appeal to student readers. Together the chapters add up to a systematic critical account of, for example Plato, Luther, Jane Austen, Tom Stoppard or Stravinsky, the French Novel or Jewish American Literature, and each book is supported by reference features such as a chronology and guide to further reading.Companions have colonised several fields within Humanities. The first two titles - Companions to Shakespeare and to Chaucer - were published in 1986. They were commissioned to meet a demand from students who wanted reasonably priced critical books that offered a variety of viewpoints rather than a single, idiosyncratic voice. From those beginnings we now have over 130 titles in Literature, over 60 in Philosophy and plenty more on musical, classical, religious and artistic topics. We have moved beyond single figures to offer Companions to literary and artistic genres and periods, musical instruments, and modern European cultures.Companions are designed not only to offer a comprehensive overview of their chosen topic, but to display and provoke lively and controversial debate.

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443 results in Cambridge Companions to Literature

Page 8 of 23

The Cambridge Companion to The Waste Land
  • Edited by Gabrielle McIntire
  • Published online:
    05 September 2015
    Print publication:
    31 August 2015
  • T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land is often considered to be the most important poem written in English in the twentieth century. The poem dramatically shattered old patterns of form and style, proposed a new paradigm for poetry and poetic thought, demanded recognition from all literary quarters, and changed the ways in which it was possible to approach, read, or write poetry. The Waste Land helped to define the literary and artistic period known as modernism. This Companion is the first to be dedicated to the work as a whole, offering fifteen new essays by international scholars and covering an extensive range of topics. Written in a style that is at once sophisticated and accessible, these fresh critical perspectives will serve as an invaluable guide for scholars, students, and general readers alike.

The Cambridge Companion to Boccaccio
  • Edited by Guyda Armstrong, Rhiannon Daniels, Stephen J. Milner
  • Published online:
    05 August 2015
    Print publication:
    30 June 2015
  • Incorporating the most recent research by scholars in Italy, the UK, Ireland and North America, this collection of essays foregrounds Boccaccio's significance as a pre-eminent scholar and mediator of the classical and vernacular traditions, whose innovative textual practices confirm him as a figure of equal standing to Petrarch and Dante. Situating Boccaccio and his works in their cultural contexts, the Companion introduces a wide range of his texts, paying close attention to his formal innovations, elaborate voicing strategies, and the tensions deriving from his position as a medieval author who places women at the centre of his work. Four chapters are dedicated to different aspects of his masterpiece, the Decameron, while particular attention is paid to the material forms of his works: from his own textual strategies as the shaper of his own and others' literary legacies, to his subsequent editorial history, and translation into other languages and media.

The Cambridge Companion to the Body in Literature
  • Edited by David Hillman, Ulrika Maude
  • Published online:
    05 June 2015
    Print publication:
    19 May 2015
  • This Companion offers the first systematic analysis of the representation of the body in literature. It historicizes embodiment by charting our evolving understanding of the body from the Middle Ages to the present day, and addresses such questions as sensory perception, technology, language and affect; maternal bodies, disability and the representation of ageing; eating and obesity, pain, death and dying; and racialized and posthuman bodies. This Companion also considers science and its construction of the body through disciplines such as obstetrics, sexology and neurology. Leading scholars in the field devote special attention to poetry, prose, drama and film, and chart a variety of theoretical understandings of the body.

The Cambridge Companion to American Gay and Lesbian Literature
  • Edited by Scott Herring
  • Published online:
    05 June 2015
    Print publication:
    19 May 2015
  • This Companion examines the connections between LGBTQ populations and American literature from the late eighteenth to twenty-first centuries. It surveys primary and secondary writings under the evolving category of gay and lesbian authorship, and incorporates current thinking in US-based LGBTQ studies as well as critical practices within the field of American literary studies. This Companion also addresses the ways in which queerness pervades persons, texts, bodies, and reading, while paying attention to the transnational component of such literatures. In so doing, it details the chief genres, conventional historical backgrounds, and influential interpretive practices that support the analysis of LGBTQ literatures in the United States.

The Cambridge Companion to Women's Writing in Britain, 1660–1789
  • Edited by Catherine Ingrassia
  • Published online:
    05 May 2015
    Print publication:
    20 April 2015
  • Women writers played a central role in the literature and culture of eighteenth-century Britain. Featuring essays on female writers and genres by leading scholars in the field, this Companion introduces readers to the range, significance and complexity of women's writing across multiple genres in Britain between 1660 and 1789. Divided into two parts, the Companion first discusses women's participation in print culture, featuring essays on topics such as women and popular culture, women as professional writers, women as readers and writers, and place and publication. Additionally, part one explores the ways women writers crossed generic boundaries. The second part contains chapters on many of the key genres in which women wrote including poetry, drama, fiction (early and later), history, the ballad, periodicals, and travel writing. The Companion also provides an introduction surveying the state of the field, an integrated chronology, and a guide to further reading.

The Cambridge Companion to James Baldwin
  • Edited by Michele Elam
  • Published online:
    05 May 2015
    Print publication:
    09 April 2015
  • This Companion offers fresh insight into the art and politics of James Baldwin, one of the most important writers and provocative cultural critics of the twentieth century. Black, gay, and gifted, he was hailed as a 'spokesman for the race', although he personally, and controversially, eschewed titles and classifications of all kinds. Individual essays examine his classic novels and nonfiction as well as his work across lesser-examined domains: poetry, music, theatre, sermon, photo-text, children's literature, public media, comedy, and artistic collaboration. In doing so, The Cambridge Companion to James Baldwin captures the power and influence of his work during the civil rights era as well as his relevance in the 'post-race' transnational twenty-first century, when his prescient questioning of the boundaries of race, sex, love, leadership, and country assume new urgency.

The New Cambridge Companion to William Faulkner
  • Edited by John T. Matthews
  • Published online:
    05 May 2015
    Print publication:
    09 April 2015
  • The New Cambridge Companion to William Faulkner offers contemporary readers a sample of innovative approaches to interpreting and appreciating William Faulkner, who continues to inspire passionate readership worldwide. The essays here address a variety of topics in Faulkner's fiction, such as its reflection of the concurrent emergence of cinema, social inequality and rights movements, modern ways of imagining sexual identity and behavior, the South's history as a plantation economy and society, and the persistent effects of traumatic cultural and personal experience. This new Companion provides an introduction to the fresh ways Faulkner is being read in the twenty-first century, and bears witness to his continued importance as an American and world writer.

The Cambridge Companion to Women's Writing in the Romantic Period
  • Edited by Devoney Looser
  • Published online:
    05 March 2015
    Print publication:
    12 March 2015
  • The Romantic period saw the first generations of professional women writers flourish in Great Britain. Literary history is only now giving them the attention they deserve, for the quality of their writings and for their popularity in their own time. This collection of new essays by leading scholars explores the challenges and achievements of this fascinating set of women writers, including Jane Austen, Mary Wollstonecraft, Ann Radcliffe, Hannah More, Maria Edgeworth, and Mary Shelley alongside many lesser-known female authors writing and publishing during this period. Chapters consider major literary genres, including poetry, fiction, drama, travel writing, histories, essays, and political writing, as well as topics such as globalization, colonialism, feminism, economics, families, sexualities, aging, and war. The volume shows how gender intersected with other aspects of identity and with cultural concerns that then shaped the work of authors, critics, and readers.

The New Cambridge Companion to Samuel Beckett
  • Edited by Dirk Van Hulle
  • Published online:
    05 February 2015
    Print publication:
    12 January 2015
  • In the past decade, there has been an unprecedented upsurge of interest in Samuel Beckett's works. The New Cambridge Companion to Samuel Beckett offers an accessible and engrossing introduction to a key set of issues animating the field of Beckett studies today. This Companion considers Beckett's lasting significance by addressing a host of relevant topics. Written by a team of renowned scholars, this volume presents a continuum in Beckett studies ranging from theoretical approaches to performance studies, from manuscript research to the study of bilingualism, intertextuality, late modernism, history, philosophy, ethics, body and mind. The emphasis on burgeoning critical approaches aids the reader's understanding of recent developments in Beckett studies while prompting further exploration, assisted by the guide to further reading.

The Cambridge Companion to American Civil Rights Literature
  • Edited by Julie Armstrong
  • Published online:
    05 February 2015
    Print publication:
    02 March 2015
  • The Cambridge Companion to American Civil Rights Literature brings together leading scholars to examine the significant traditions, genres, and themes of civil rights literature. While civil rights scholarship has typically focused on documentary rather than creative writing, and political rather than cultural history, this Companion addresses the gap and provides university students with a vast introduction to an impressive range of authors, including Richard Wright, Lorraine Hansberry, Gwendolyn Brooks, James Baldwin, Amiri Baraka, and Toni Morrison. Accessible to undergraduates and academics alike, this Companion surveys the critical landscape of a rapidly growing field and lays the foundation for future studies.

The Cambridge Companion to American Science Fiction
  • Edited by Gerry Canavan, Eric Carl Link
  • Published online:
    05 February 2015
    Print publication:
    26 January 2015
  • The Cambridge Companion to American Science Fiction explores the relationship between the ideas and themes of American science fiction and their roots in the American cultural experience. Science fiction in America has long served to reflect the country's hopes, desires, ambitions, and fears. The ideas and conventions associated with science fiction are pervasive throughout American film and television, comics and visual arts, games and gaming, and fandom, as well as across the culture writ large. Through essays that address not only the history of science fiction in America but also the influence and significance of American science fiction throughout media and fan culture, this companion serves as a key resource for scholars, teachers, students, and fans of science fiction.

The Cambridge Companion to Seneca
  • Edited by Shadi Bartsch, Alessandro Schiesaro
  • Published online:
    05 February 2015
    Print publication:
    16 February 2015
  • The Roman statesman, philosopher and playwright Lucius Annaeus Seneca dramatically influenced the progression of Western thought. His works have had an unparalleled impact on the development of ethical theory, shaping a code of behavior for dealing with tyranny in his own age that endures today. This Companion thoroughly examines the complete Senecan corpus, with special emphasis on the aspects of his writings that have challenged interpretation. The authors place Seneca in the context of the ancient world and trace his impressive legacy in literature, art, religion, and politics from Neronian Rome to the early modern period. Through critical discussion of the recent proliferation of Senecan studies, this volume compellingly illustrates how the perception of Seneca and his particular type of Stoicism has evolved over time. It provides a comprehensive overview that will benefit students and scholars in classics, comparative literature, history, philosophy and political theory, as well as general readers.

The Cambridge Companion to Modern American Poetry
  • Edited by Walter Kalaidjian
  • Published online:
    05 December 2014
    Print publication:
    19 January 2015
  • The Cambridge Companion to Modern American Poetry comprises original essays by eighteen distinguished scholars. It offers a critical overview of major and emerging American poets of the twentieth century, in addition to critical accounts of the representative schools, movements, regional settings, archival resources, and critical reception that define modern American poetry. The Companion stretches the narrow term of 'literary modernism' - which encompasses works published from approximately 1890 to 1945 - to include a more capacious and usable account of American poetry's evolution from the twentieth century to the present. The essays collected here seek to account for modern American verse against the contexts of broad political, social, and cultural fields and forces. This volume gathers together major voices that represent the best in contemporary critical approaches and methods.

The Cambridge Companion to Fairy Tales
  • Edited by Maria Tatar
  • Published online:
    05 December 2014
    Print publication:
    11 December 2014
  • Fairy tales have never known geographical, disciplinary or cultural borders. In many ways, they provide a model for thinking about storytelling on a transnational level long before comparative literature began transforming itself into world literature. As the simple expression of complex thought, fairy tales have increasingly become the focus of intense scholarly inquiry. In this Companion, international scholars from a range of academic disciplines explore the historical origins, cultural dissemination and psychological power of fairy stories, and offer model interpretations of tales from a variety of traditions and sources, including Charles Perrault, the Brothers Grimm and the One Thousand and One Nights. Rather than disenchanting the stories, the essays in this volume broaden our understanding of them and deepen our appreciation of the cultural work they do. A chronology and guide to further reading contribute to the usefulness of the volume for students and scholars.

The Cambridge Companion to To The Lighthouse
  • Edited by Allison Pease
  • Published online:
    05 December 2014
    Print publication:
    29 December 2014
  • To The Lighthouse is one of the most important of Virginia Woolf's modernist achievements. Written by leading international scholars of Woolf and modernism, this Companion to To The Lighthouse will be of interest to students and scholars alike. Individual chapters explore the biographical and textual genesis of the novel; its narrative perspectives and use of form; its thematic and formal attention to time and space; and its representations of feminism and gender as well as generational change, race, and class. Complete with a chapter on the novel's critical history, a chronology, and a guide to further reading, this volume synthesizes To The Lighthouse's major ideas and formal innovations while also summarizing and advancing critical debate.

The Cambridge Companion to the History of the Book
  • Edited by Leslie Howsam
  • Published online:
    05 December 2014
    Print publication:
    11 December 2014
  • Throughout human history, the world's knowledge and fruits of the creative imagination have been produced, circulated and received through the medium of the material text. This Companion provides a wide-ranging account of the history of the book and its ways of thinking about works from ancient inscription to contemporary e-books, discussing thematic, chronological and methodological aspects of this interdisciplinary field. The first part considers book cultures from local, national and global perspectives. Part two, organized around the dynamic relationship between the material book and the mutable text, develops a loosely chronological narrative from early writing, through manuscript and early printing, to the institution of a mechanized book trade, and on to the globalization of publishing and the introduction of the electronic book. A third part takes a practical turn, discussing methods, sources and approaches: bibliographical, archival and reading experience methodologies, as well as pedagogical strategies.

The Cambridge Companion to the Modern Gothic
  • Edited by Jerrold E. Hogle
  • Published online:
    05 December 2014
    Print publication:
    04 December 2014
  • This Companion explores the many ways in which the Gothic has dispersed in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and in particular how it has come to offer a focus for the tensions inherent in modernity. Fourteen essays by world-class experts show how the Gothic in numerous forms - including literature, film, television, and cyberspace - helps audiences both to distance themselves from and to deal with some of the key underlying problems of modern life. Topics discussed include the norms and shifting boundaries of sex and gender, the explosion of different forms of media and technology, the mixture of cultures across the western world, the problem of identity for the modern individual, what people continue to see as evil, and the very nature of modernity. Also including a chronology and guide to further reading, this volume offers a comprehensive account of the importance of Gothic to modern life and thought.

The Cambridge Companion to the French Enlightenment
  • Edited by Daniel Brewer
  • Published online:
    05 November 2014
    Print publication:
    27 October 2014
  • The Enlightenment has long been seen as synonymous with the beginnings of modern Western intellectual and political culture. As a set of ideas and a social movement, this historical moment, the 'age of reason' of the seventeenth and eighteenth century, is marked by attempts to place knowledge on new foundations. The Cambridge Companion to the French Enlightenment brings together essays by leading scholars representing disciplines ranging from philosophy, religion and literature, to art, medicine, anthropology and architecture, to analyse the French Enlightenment. Each essay presents a concise view of an important aspect of the French Enlightenment, discussing its defining characteristics, internal dynamics and historical transformations. The Companion discusses the most influential reinterpretations of the Enlightenment that have taken place during the last two decades, reinterpretations that both reflect and have contributed to important re-evaluations of received ideas about the Enlightenment and the early modern period more generally.

The Cambridge Companion to the City in Literature
  • Edited by Kevin R. McNamara
  • Published online:
    05 October 2014
    Print publication:
    06 October 2014
  • From the myths and legends that fashioned the identities of ancient city-states to the diversity of literary performance in contemporary cities around the world, literature and the city are inseparably entwined. The international team of scholars in this volume offers a comprehensive, accessible survey of the literary city, exploring the myriad cities that authors create and the genres in which cities appear. Early chapters consider the literary legacies of historical and symbolic cities from antiquity to the early modern period. Subsequent chapters consider the importance of literature to the rise of the urban public sphere; the affective experience of city life; the interplay of the urban landscape and memory; the form of the literary city and its responsiveness to social, cultural and technological change; dystopian, nocturnal, pastoral and sublime cities; cities shaped by colonialism and postcolonialism; and the cities of economic, sexual, cultural and linguistic outsiders.

The Cambridge Companion to Ulysses
  • Edited by Sean Latham
  • Published online:
    05 October 2014
    Print publication:
    27 October 2014
  • Few books in the English language seem to demand a companion more insistently than James Joyce's Ulysses, a work that at once entices and terrifies readers with its interwoven promises of pleasure, scandal, difficulty and mastery. This volume offers fourteen concise and accessible essays by accomplished scholars that explore this masterpiece of world literature. Several essays examine specific aspects of Ulysses, ranging from its plot and characters to the questions it raises about the strangeness of the world and the density of human cultures. Others address how Joyce created this novel, why it became famous and how it continues to shape both popular and literary culture. Like any good companion, this volume invites the reader to engage in an ongoing conversation about the novel and its lasting ability to entice, rankle, absorb, and enthrall.

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