31 A Critical, Old-Spelling Edition of the Birth of Merlin (Q1662)
Joanna Udall 1991. Buy online here.

Credited on its first title page to William Shakespeare and William Rowley, The Birth of Merlin continues to provoke speculation about its place in the Shakespeare `Apocrypha'.

The play is an imaginative re-working of the story of Merlin the Magician and his part in the struggle against the Saxon invasion of Britain. It contains not only scenes of love, war, and court politics, but a devil, a clown, and an unusual number of spectacular stage effects.

This edition seeks to provide contexts for the play's diverse elements (chronicle history, romance, spectacle, and comedy), and considers its relationships with a wide variety of texts from Geoffrey of Monmouth and the English prose Brut to Shakespeare's Henry VIII.

32 A Semiotic Analysis of the Short Stories of Leonid Andreev (1900-1909)
Stephen Hutchings 1990. Buy online here.

This book applies the techniques of semiotic analysis to a selection of short stories by Leonid Andreev in an attempt to offer one answer to the problems of categorizing Andreev's unique art and placing it within a literary-evolutionary perspective.

Drawing on a range of literary theory from early Russian Formalism onwards, the study proceeds from one level to another according to a principle of `degree of abstraction', so that each level constitutes firstly an independent account of Andreev's texts in itself, and secondly one stage in an overall analysis.

33 The Problem of Christ in the Work of Friedrich Hölderlin *
Mark Ogden 1991. Buy online here.

This study sets out to challenge the usual approach to the question of Hölderlin's response to Christ, which focuses on no more than two or three late hymns, by tracing, through each major stage of Hölderlin's work, a series of latent Christological debates.

These debates, in which philosophy, theology, and poetry converge, represent Hölderlin's engagement with the urgent intellectual issues of his day.

34 Dialogue and Narrative Design in the Works of Adalbert Stifter *
Brigid Haines 1991. Buy online here.

This study focuses on the crucial interplay between dialogue and narrative in Adalbert Stifter's works and relates this to their overall structure.

Stifter, a conservative and often didactic writer, is nevertheless shown to present a complex view of reality which incorporates subjective and sometimes subversive voices.

35 History, Fiction, Verisimilitude: Studies in the Poetics of Gottfried's 'Tristan' *
Mark Chinca 1993. Buy online here.

This study of Gottfried von Strassburg discusses the narrative technique of his romance Tristan (c. 1210) against the double background of Latin rhetoric and poetics on the one hand, and the developing written vernacular tradition on the other. It argues that Gottfried's poetics represents the attempt to mediate between opposing tendencies in vernacular narrative, the one historiographic and archival, the other fictional and experimental.

Verisimilitude, the 'res ficta quae tamen fieri potest', occupies an intermediate position between the res factae of history and the res fictae of poetry; it is on this middle ground that Gottfried situates his narrative.

36 The Art Criticism of Francis Ponge
Shirley A. Jordan 1994. Buy online here.

This study of Francis Ponge's essays on contemporary artists (L'Atelier contemporain) attempts to broaden the popular view of the author as a 'poet of objects'. It explores Ponge's perception of art criticism as an inherently problematic genre and exposes the inhibitions surrounding the production of the essays.

The study demonstrates how Ponge's essays on artists parallel developments in his other works. They are seen as instrumental in his movement towards open texts and a stress on the creative process itself, as well as opportunities to reaffirm his philosophical and aesthetic stance.

37 Violette Leduc: Mothers, Lovers, and Language
Alex Hughes 1994. Buy online here.

This study, which reads Leduc's narratives from a feminist and psychoanalytic perspective, has a double focus:-

• Part One scrutinizes the intricacies of her treatment of feminine bonding, seeking to bring new insights - inspired inter alia by theorists such as Melanie Klein, Freud, and Luce Irigaray - to bear on her representations of mother/daughter and lesbian relations.

• Part Two examines Leduc's use of language in Thérèse et Isabelle, probing the extent to which this novella contains examples of feminist and/or 'feminine' discourse.

By exploring Leduc' s lyrical evocation of feminine homosexuality from both a gender-related and a more traditional, formalist standpoint, the writer exposes the limitations of a purely feminist approach to her work.

38 Horace's 'Epistles', Wieland and the Reader: a Three-Way Relationship *
Jane V. Curran 1995. Buy online here.

Wieland's translations of Horace's Epistles, neglected until recently, demonstrate his skill in overcoming the bipolar relationship implied in the very idea of translation.

Thanks to a strong, cosmopolitan fellow-feeling with the ancient poet, Wieland made judicious editorial choices in the areas of diction, prosody, layout, typography and scholarly apparatus. This most flexible of translators avoided collapsing the distinctions between his own world and Horace's, and achieved true communication with Horace, while simultaneously drawing the contemporary German reader into the dialogue.

Translation techniques employed by Wieland's contemporaries are also discussed here, as well as Horace's reception during the period, and the tensions between originality and imitation, and between ancient hexameter and modern metres.

39 Spirit of the Totem: Religion and myth in Soviet Fiction 1964-1988
Irena Maryniak 1995. Buy online here.

The book presents an original, interdisciplinary analysis of religious and mythological perspectives in fiction published in the Soviet Union between the mid-1960s and the mid-1980s. In doing so, it points to ways in which anthropological theory can be used as a framework for literary criticism. It also shows how, in the two decades before perestroika, religion and mythology served as alternative models for the intellectual and political reorientation of Soviet society.

Selected works are explored with reference to a formative debate in anthropological studies on the nature and development of religion, based on Edward B. Tylor's theory of 'animism' and Emile Durkheim's theory of 'totemism'. It is shown how the animist/totemist dichotomy highlighted by the controversy is reflected in Russian religious thought before 1917 and, particularly, in the literature of the Soviet era.

Within the framework of this debate, a selection of novels is discussed in the light of a range of mythological and religious systems. Attention is drawn to the connection between Valentin Rasputin's religious vision and traditional Siberian beliefs, particularly those of the Buryat. The Georgian novel Data Tutashkia, by Chabua Amiredzhibi, is analysed with reference to Zoroastrian thought. Daniil Granin 's Kartina ( 'The Picture') serves as an example of a work where, in accordance with Tylor's theory, notions of art and beauty take on an animist quality. It is argued that early fiction by Chingiz Aitmatov reveals a tension between animist perceptions and the totemic understanding of religion, and mirrors aspects of pre-Islamic, Central Asian religious tradition. The writing of Vladimir Tendriakov offers an example of a vision divided between an awareness of Christian dilemmas and loyalty to Marxist-Leninist sociological models.

The study also shows how Durkheim's theory of religion as an expression of a group's awareness of its identity can be related to ideas put forward by Russian nationalist writers: Iurii Bondarev, Sergei Alekseev and Vasilii Belov. It suggests that examples of fiction by Petr Proskurin, and later works by Chingiz Aitmatov and Vladimir Tendriakov, indicate revived interest in the God-building theory of Maksim Gor'kii and Anatolii Lunacharskii.

In conclusion, the book argues that subtextual religious and mythological narratives in Soviet fiction published in the years between the fall of Khrushchev and the Millenium of Christianity in Rus', provided a model for new literary discourse under perestroika and for subsequent political transformations.

40 The Poetics of Mockery: Wyndham Lewis's 'Apes of God' and the Popularization of Modernism
Mark Perrino 1995. Buy online here.

This study reconsiders Wyndham Lewis's adversarial role in the modernist movement through a close reading of his prodigious satire of 1920s cultural politics. It presents a new interpretation of The Apes of God as a Menippean satire, with attention to its style, characterization, allegory, and historiography, and to Lewis's polemics of the period.

Previous studies have emphasised Lewis's 'external method' of visual narration and the personal attacks on the London art world. This one also treats the rhetorical and parodic elements in his mechanistic caricatures of literary impressionism and its proponents, besides the theory of participation and the 'player' behind his schizoid image of the modern subject. The study reinterprets the apprenticeship plot as a carnivalesque discrowning based on the primitive themes of the shaman and the scapegoat. It explores the ways in which the discursive 'broadcasts' - on the social exploitation of a subjectivist aesthetic, publicity as imposture, cultural levelling - are dramatized in the sado-masochistic bond between impresario and naif and in the contradiction of carnival institutionalized. Lewis is shown using his rivals' 'mythic method' to implicate the avant-garde itself in nascent mass culture.

The study includes an analysis of the scandal surrounding Lewis's private edition of The Apes and the defence of 'non-moral' satire presented in his subsequent pamphlet Satire and Fiction. Drawing upon unpublished manuscripts and correspondence, it demonstrates how Lewis's own devious publicity campaign re-enacted the crux of the novel and epitomized his conflicts with his contemporaries.

41 Günter Grass's use of Baroque Literature *
Alexander Weber 1995. Buy online here.

This is the first study to discuss the affinity between Grass's complete works and baroque literature. Grass's employment of baroque literature is of particular interest because it takes up a tradition from which German literature has long broken away.

Alexander Weber's argument moves from an outline of general thematic parallels in the early works to an analysis of the conscious use of baroque literature in Der Butt and Das Treffen in Telgte. He offers both a close reading of Grass and general reflections on how a past literary tradition can be adopted by a modern writer.

The study focuses on the themes of vanity, carpe diem, and Senecan Stoicism in the early works; it discusses parallels between the rhetorical structure of the courtly-historical novel and Der Butt and traces the artist's melancholy and baroque allegories in Der Butt and Das Treffen in Telgte.

42 The Dialectics of Faith in the Poetry of José Bergamín
Helen Wing 1995. Buy online here.

This study assesses Bergamín's poetry in the light of two premises: first, that the notion of faith is the prime mover in Bergamín's thought and poetry, and, second, that language, being material, militates against the transcendent potential of faith. From the tension between the known (the material) and the unknown (the transcendent) comes the dialectic of faith and doubt which Bergamín enacts in his poetry. Inspired by the work of Cixous and Kristeva, this analysis attempts to site Bergamín's imagination as an exilic one, as one which is estranged from God. For Bergamín, language has created objectification from the material world, and thus he suggests that we perceive ourselves as separate from others and separate from God. His poetry is concerned with the radical instability of modern experience, and Bergamín seeks to use it as a form of reconciliation. He strives for a faith in the feminine, espousing doubt, fluidity and fusion as against certainty and the dictates of reason. For him, this faith, or reconciliation, is the opposite of exile.

43 The Correspondence of Edward Gordon Craig and Count Harry Kessler, 1903-1937 *
L. M. Newman (ed.) 1995. Buy online here.

This long-awaited edition brings together for the first time 366 letters, cards and telegrams exchanged between Craig and his patron the cosmopolitan Count Kessler.

An important primary source, illuminated by Dr Newman's commentary, it focuses on three areas of particular importance:-

1. Craig's artistic ideas and the spread of his influence through exhibitions and books; proposals are developed for work with Otto Brahm, Eleonora Duse, Max Reinhardt, Henry van de Velde, Eduard Verkade, Leopold Jessner, Dyaghilev, Beerbohm Tree, C. B. Cochran, and others.

2. Kessler's Cranach Press Hamlet with wood-engraved illustrations by Craig; this is a landmark in the history of twentieth-century book design and printing whose genesis is now fully revealed in these letters and amplified with reproductions of eighteen trial page proofs.

3. The relationship between an artist and his patron.

Exceptionally detailed indexes are an additional feature of this book.

44 Being and Meaning in Thomas Mann's Joseph Novels *
Charlotte Nolte 1996. Buy online here.

The premise of this book is that the theme of being and meaning in Thomas Mann's novel tetralogy Joseph und seine Brüder unites the novel's stylistic and thematic structure. The author demonstrates persuasively how these leading ideas are worked out in detail, pervading plot-structure, symbolism, characterization and narration. Through a subtle series of analyses - of the concepts of time and identity underlying the novel, its image-patterns, the changing psychology of its characters, above all Joseph's process of individuation and the narrator's changing behaviour - patterns of overlap and discrepancy between being and meaning are brought out in such a way as to unite many parts of the novel into an overall coherent structure of meaning. The analysis makes use of Jungian theory to explain the mythical dimension and the emergence of consciousness from it. Jungian concepts are applied deftly and offer real insights into the early psychology of myth and its late psychologizing by mythologists, as presented in the novels. There is much fresh thinking here to stimulate a fuller understanding and enjoyment of Mann's representing of the biblical Joseph story.

45 Reception and Renewal in Modern Spanish Theatre: 1939-1963
John London 1997. Buy online here.

The book constitutes the first attempt to provide an overview of the reception of foreign drama in Spain during the Franco dictatorship. John London analyses performance, stage design, translation, censorship, and critical reviews in relation to the works of many authors, including Noel Coward, Arthur Miller, Eugène Ionesco, and Samuel Beckett. He compares the original reception of these dramatists with the treatment they were given in Spain. However, his study is also a reassessment of the Spanish drama of the period. Dr London argues that only by tracing the reception of non-Spanish drama can we understand the praise lavished on playwrights such as Antonio Buero Vallejo and Alfonso Sastre, alongside the simultaneous rejection of Spanish avant-garde styles. A concluding reinterpretation of the early plays of Fernando Arrabal indicates the richness of an alternative route largely ignored in histories of Spanish theatre.

46 Welttheater: Hofmannsthal, Richard von Kralik, and the Revival of Catholic Drama in Austria, 1890-1934 *
Judith Beniston 1998. Buy online here.

Hugo von Hofmannsthal had a lifelong fascination with the theatrum mundi topos. Judith Beniston analyses his changing responses to it against an unfamiliar backdrop - the revival of Catholic drama which, from the 1890s onwards, accompanied the rise of Austria's Christian Social party. The solipsism of `Jung Wien' and the conservative modernism of the Salzburg Festival are juxtaposed with the career of Richard von Kralik (1852-1934), the key figure in Austria's Catholic literary culture from 1890 to 1934. This study offers close readings of Das kleine Welttheater and Das Salzburger große Welttheater, and explores the ramifications of the fascination with the notion of Welttheater which Hofmannsthal and Kralik shared. In juxtaposing elite and popular culture, Beniston sheds new light on a neglected aspect of Austrian cultural history, on the selectivity of Hofmannsthal's approach towards Austria's Baroque tradition, and on the difficulties he faced in his attempt to assimilate his own work into it.

47 The Appearance of Character: Physiognomy and Facial Expression in Eighteenth-Century France
Melissa Percival 1999. Buy online here.

Physiognomy - the notion that there is a relationship between character and physical appearance - is often dismissed as a marginal pseudoscience; however, The Appearance of Character argues that it is central to many disciplines and thought processes, and that it constantly adapts itself to current patterns of thought and modes of discourse. This interdisciplinary study determines the characteristics of physiognomical thought in France during the previously neglected period leading up to the reception of Johann Caspar Lavater's physiognomy in the early 1780s. It establishes a corpus of  physiognomical texts, juxtaposing `mainstream' figures such as Buffon and Diderot with a host of minor writers. It then considers the representation of the passions in art, examining the legacy of Charles LeBrun, and revealing an aesthetics of facial representation where the passions are conceived in terms of multiplicity, speed, and nuance. The contribution of the Comte de Caylus to the development of the `tête d'expression' is analysed, as well as the innovations of Greuze in the field of expression. Physiognomy in portraiture is also addressed through the work of La Tour. Facial expression in painting is found to have strong parallels with contemporary acting theory and stage practice. Finally, The Appearance of Character addresses the notion of character, outlining various predominant theories, and analysing the complex relationship between character and passions. In this respect, the study has ramifications for theories of the self and individualism in the Enlightenment and beyond.

48 Mapping a Tradition: Francophone Women's Writing from Guadeloupe
Sam Haigh 2000. Buy online here.

In recent years, critical interest in francophone literature has become increasingly pronounced. In the case of the French Caribbean, the work of several writers (Aimé Césaire, Frantz Fanon, Edouard Glissant and Patrick Chamoiseau, for example) has gained international recognition, and has formed a vital part of more general debates on history, culture, language and identity in the post colonial world. The majority of such writers, however, have been male and, perhaps recalling the preference that France has always shown for the island, have come in large part from Martinique. Mapping a Tradition: Francophone Women's Writing from Guadeloupe aims to explore a different side of francophone Caribbean writing through the examination of selected novels by Jacqueline Manicom, Michèle Lacrosil, Maryse Condé, Simone Schwarz-Bart and Dany Bébel-Gisler. Placing the work of these writers in the context of that of their better-known, male counterparts, this study argues that it has provided an important mode of intervention in, and disruption of, a literary tradition which has failed to address questions of sexual difference and has often excluded issues relating to French Caribbean women. At the same time, this study suggests that Guadeloupean women's writing of the last thirty years may he seen to constitute a 'tradition' in itself, replete with its own influences and inheritances. At once within, and outside the 'dominant' tradition, women's writing from Guadeloupe - and Martinique - has come to occupy a position at the forefront of contemporary efforts to expand and redefine a still-burgeoning corpus of literary and theoretical work.

"This scholarly work is a valuable resource for students, at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels as well as for the broader academic community, for it offers various points of entry for the reader, including those interested in Caribbean literatures, francophone literatures, postcolonial theory and criticism, feminist theories, popular culture, and the politics of identity, among other related fields."

Suzanne Crosta, International Journal of Francophone Studies, 8 (2005), 105-08 (p.108).

49 Divided Loyalties: East German Writers and the Politics of German Division 1945-1953 *
Peter Davies 2000. Buy online here.

This study aims to shed light on the relationship of writers with power in East Germany by setting their work in the context of Soviet and SED German policy after 1945. Peter Davies provides an analysis of the politics of German division as it affected visions of German national identity within the East German artistic community, and shows how this can give us a profound insight into contentious questions of artistic `dissidence' and `conformity'. The second part of the study develops these ideas through a series of case studies of important individuals such as Johannes R. Becher, Peter Huchel, Bertolt Brecht and Hanns Eisler, analysing the complexities of their relationship with the power structures and ideology of the East German state in the institutional context of the Deutsche Akademie der Künste. The study concludes with an account of the consequences of the June 1953 uprising for these artists' view of their role in the GDR.

50 Another Country: Sexuality and National Identity in Catalan Gay Fiction
Josep-Anton Fernàndez 2000. Buy online here.

This book studies the emergence, in the late 1960s and 1970s, of a sophisticated body of gay fiction in Catalan, and examines the relation between the representation of homosexuality and the discourses on national identity that legitimate modern Catalan literature. Gay fiction, argues the author, reveals a tension between the nation and the body in Catalan literature: Catalonia is a nation different from Spain, a cultural and political minority within Europe; but the existence of sexual minorities within its boundaries reveals its inner complexity, which resists homogenization. Catalonia is another country in more ways than one. Drawing on a variety of critical discourses (gay theory, psychoanalysis, and authors such as Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari, and Bourdieu), Another Country explores the intertwinings of identity, cultural politics, and desire in the work of Terenci Moix, Lluís Fernàndez, Biel Mesquida, and Lluís Maria Todó. The book analyses how gay writers renegotiate identity discourses in Catalan literature in order to introduce homosexuality into them, often with destabilising effects. The role of gay authors in the process of canon construction (a crucial aspect of contemporary cultural nationalism in Catalonia) is also considered, focusing on postmodernism and the divide between high and mass culture. Finally, Another Country addresses the interplay of homosexual desire within the frame of a distinction between perversion and transgression, and proposes an alliance between queer and nationalist discourses.

51 Mining for Jewels: Evgenii Zamiatin and the Literary Stylization of Rus'
Philip Cavendish 2000. Buy online here.

Evgenii Zamiatin's reputation rests on the pivotal role he played in the development of Russian modernism. Hitherto, however, critical engagement with the experimental nature of his fiction has been largely confined to his middle period: the satirical stories set in Great Britain, the dystopian novel My, and related works. As a writer who came to prominence at the time of the October Revolution, Zamiatin is best known as an early and vocal critic of the new culture of conformism, and as the author in the 1920s of various artistic manifestoes in which he engaged with the problem of literature's future in relation to the Revolution, and sought to articulate his own brand of synthetic modernism.

This study presents a different and complementary view of Zamiatin as a writer whose fiction, whilst certainly modernist, conformed to what Eikhenbaum termed 'literary Populism'. Zamiatin's intimate knowledge of the Russian provinces and the world of folk-religious culture are key elements in the skaz-style conceit which underpins his early fiction.This study stresses Zamiatin's enormous debt to such writers as Leskov and Remizov, and locates his work within a rich tradition of ethnographic belles-lettres and oral-based fiction. The texts analysed exploit materials from the folk-religious imagination in an attempt to refresh and 'democratize' the literary language through the use of the peasant vernacular. Zamiatin sought immediacy and dynamism in his provincial prose, and his works in this mould are best appreciated through the prism of twentieth-century neoprimitivism and expressionism. Their lubok-style simplicity, however, conceals a complex attitude towards the folk-religious world at their core. The poetic and celebratory is balanced by the sceptical and ironic, and the resulting tension characterizes these texts as essentially modernistic.

52 Shaping and Reshaping the Caribbean: The Work of Aimé Césaire and René Depestre
Martin Munro 2000. Buy online here.

The current drive in Caribbean literary studies stresses similarities and points of convergence between the various islands of the archipelago and their authors, the fundamental aim of which is to move closer to an all-encompassing theory of Caribbeanness. Martin Munro challenges this movement, and through a study of the work of Aimé Césaire and René Depestre, proposes an alternative vision of the present and future of Caribbean literature. The main areas of inquiry are: how these two Caribbean writers construct their sense of themselves; how they relate to the Caribbean and to the wider world; and how they have been influenced by the historical and cultural particularities of their respective islands.

Aimé Césaire's sense of self and of the Caribbean is essentially shaped around the circuit triangulaire, the model of Africa/Europe/Caribbean interdependencies, ultimately inherited from the time of the slave trade. Munro shows how Césaire views the Caribbean as a deeply traumatic, insubstantial space; how he looks to Africa for his lost sense of self; and how Europe is seen at once as the malevolent colonial power and also the home of poetry and learning.

René Depestre's Caribbean 'shape' is quite different: Africa is relatively absent in Depestre's work; Europe is not presented as a threat; and Depestre, unlike Césaire, sees in the Caribbean an energy and a creativity brought about by the historical fusion of disparate cultures. An important factor in 'shaping' Depestre's model of Caribbeanness is his long exile from Haiti, and Depestre's experience of exile is analysed in detail.

The combination of broad contextualization, diverse theoretical approaches, and close analysis of these important writers' work, produces a strong argument against attempts to view and read writing from the Caribbean as one literature. Difference and diversity, it is argued, predominate as Caribbean writing embraces the new century, and the whole notion of Caribbeanness undergoes further processes of highly creative splintering and reshaping.

53 Luce Irigaray and the Question of the Divine
Alison Martin 2000. Buy online here.

This study examines Luce Irigaray's oeuvre through the question of the divine, focusing upon her contention that women need a female divine if they are about to become subjects. It attempts to demonstrate that the issue of the divine should not be considered as one aspect of her thought but that it is central to her philosophy of sexual difference. Hence Irigaray's critique of patriarchy is presented as a critique of the dominance of a religion of masculinity that favours a single universal. Her proposal for two sexed universal divines is explored, along with her specific suggestions for female divine ideals. Particular emphasis is given to her engagements with Marx, Nietzsche, and Hegelianism, and to the mode of her adoption of Christianity. The study applauds the radical profundity of Irigaray's philosophy of sexual difference, while remaining critical of the universalism in her notion of the divine for the doubt it casts upon the realization of a sexed culture.

54 Art, Gender and Sexuality: New Readings of Cernuda's Later Poetry
Philip Martin-Clark 2000. Buy online here.

This study opens up new avenues of inquiry into the work of Luis Cernuda. It analyses the representation of aesthetics, gender, and sexuality in his last four books of poetry by drawing on work in aesthetics, feminism, gay/lesbian studies, and psychoanalysis. The central concern is to examine the terms in which Cernuda represents particular identities, including the poet's identity, masculinity, femininity, and male homosexuality. The study explores Cernuda's creation of a collective mythology of freedom to change contemporary Spanish culture and examines his many-sided portrayal of gender, including the potential of women's identity to disrupt masculinity. It also discusses male homosexuality through the lenses of perversion and self-shattering.

55 Tucholsky and France *
Stephanie Burrows 2001. Buy online here.

In his final 'Q-Tagebuch' report to Hedwig Müller dated 19 December 1935 Tucholsky declared: 'Daß ich mein Leben zerhauen habe, weiß ich. Daß ich nicht allein daran schuld bin, weiß ich aber auch. Mein Gott, wäre ich in Frankreich geboren...!' Combining biographical investigation with an analysis of Tucholsky's published journalism, this study sets out to assess the significance of the contact with France and French culture in Tucholsky's life and work. It shows the extent to which he was influenced by the French cultural and intellectual tradition, and by his first-hand experience of France. It provides new insights into Tucholsky's life in France, notably his involvement with French freemasonry and the importance of his contacts in French literary, pacifist, and political circles. This study also considers the role Tucholsky played, or attempted to play, in improving Franco-German relations, and reveals the extent of his efforts to promote rapprochment, not only in Germany, but also in France, through behind-the-scenes contact with politicians and diplomats, through lectures, and through his published journalism.

56 The Medieval Cult of Saint Dominic of Silos
Anthony Lappin 2002. Buy online here.

Lucas, the garrulous bishop of Tuy, included the thaumaturgy of Saint Dominic of Silos as one of the glories of Spain in his mid-thirteenth-century account of the Peninsula's history. This study examines the rise to prominence of one of the most important of saints' cults in Medieval Spain and its development throughout the Middle Ages. It interrogates neglected texts such as the late eleventh-century Vita Dominici Exiliensis and the late thirteenth-century Miráculos romançados (as well as artistic representations and works written outside Silos), and places the more widely known Vida de Santo Domingo by Gonzalo de Berceo (‡c. 1260) in a new light by firmly fixing its presentation of the saint within the development of the cult.

Dominic's veneration became centred upon his role in freeing captives, and a study of this phenomenon provides a focus on the frontier and its settlers through their devotion to the saint, as well as illuminating their view of their Muslim adversaries.

This is not the only centre of interest in the book, and a variety of approaches are employed to draw as round a picture as possible of the functioning of this saint's cult, from analysis of the manuscript traditions of the various works discussed to a consideration of the anthropology of Silos as a pilgrimage centre. All quotations are given in both Latin or Romance with an English translation.

57 Luigi Tansillo and Lyric Poetry in Sixteenth-Century Naples
Erika Milburn 2003. Buy online here.

Luigi Tansillo is one of the most interesting and representative of the Petrarchist poets active in Naples during the mid-sixteenth century. This study reconsiders his substantial lyric corpus from a variety of perspectives, opening with a survey of the textual tradition and previous critical work on his verse. Four of Tansillo's lyric collections are examined in depth, and read from narrative and thematic points of view. Particular emphasis is placed on the evolution of the collections, by exploring the ways in which very different types of narrative implying different underlying poetics can be constructed using often identical poems.

Parallel to this is a consideration of Tansillo's place within the broader literary historical context, and his use of verse as a political and ideological tool in the service of the Spanish viceroy of Naples. These detailed studies of individual poetic sequences are complemented by an analysis of Tansillo's poetic language within the context of Neapolitan reactions to the questione della lingua, and of his contribution to creating a fixed iconology for the representation of jealousy in the Renaissance and Baroque lyric.

58 Troubling Maternity: Mothering, Agency, and Ethics in Women's Writing in German of the 1970s and 1980s. *
Emily Jeremiah 2003. Buy online here.

The question of maternity is crucial for feminists, to whom it represents both challenge and inspiration, as it is for many thinkers engaged with the issues of agency, corporeality, and ethics. This examination puts forward the idea of a 'maternal performativity', drawing on the work of Judith Butler and numerous other feminist theorists, to offer new ways of looking at 1970s and 1980s literary texts by ten German-speaking women writers, including Barbara Frischmuth, Elfriede Jelinek, Irmtraud Morgner, and Karin Struck. It argues that as yet, maternal agency has not adequately been theorized - a project which is urgent, given the traditional view in Western culture of the mother as passive - and suggests that Butler's notion of performativity can assist in this task. It proposes a performative conception of both mothering and literature, and links both of these to the question of ethics, which is understood as involving embodiment and relationality.

To different extents, all of the texts examined depict mothers as marginal, abject, or insane, thus demonstrating the operations of exclusion, and the need for a maternal agency to be developed and enacted. The idea of maternal performativity is refined in five chapters, which focus, respectively, on community, corporeality, the mother-child relationship, the family, and discursive production. The conclusion explores the ethics of literary practice and knowledge production, and argues that in the light of the developing fields of new reproductive technologies and genetics, it is imperative that we seek new understandings of embodiment, community, and care, a task to which this study aspires to contribute.

59 Bodies and Texts: Configurations of Identity in the Works of Albalucía Ángel, Griselda Gambaro, and Laura Esquivel
Claire Taylor 2004. Buy online here.

This book considers the novels of three Latin American writers, the Argentinian Griselda Gambaro, the Colombian Albalucía Ángel, and the Mexican Laura Esquivel, and examines their work in relation to the formation of feminine identity. Concentrating on two novels of each writer in turn, this book considers how their writings may be seen to engage with the production of identity in the era of transference from a modern to a postmodern aesthetic.

Two broad focuses are used in the reading of these novels: the reworking of the intertext, and the crafting of the body. With relation to Gambaro, the two novels under consideration are her works Nada que ver con otra historia and Dios no nos quiere contentos which are examined in the light of their reworkings of the Frankenstein trope and representations of circus performances, and their investigation into the marking of the body by the discourse of power. With regard to Ángel, her novels Dos veces Alicia and Las andariegas are used to trace the development from the space of literary play of the first novel to the space of politicized feminist play of the later, where intertextual reworking and bodily transformations come to form part of a feminist praxis. In the final chapter, Esquivel's Como agua para chocolate and La ley del amor are examined with regard to the proliferation of bodies and codes which constitute a movement towards the status of postmodern pastiche, providing an ambiguous space for the feminine subject.

"[Taylor's] innovative way of reading offers significant possibilities for the interpretation of other postmodern texts, and particularly those by women. Her study represents an important contribution to the study of Spanish-American feminism, and has broad and intriguing future application."

Susan Carvalho, Bulletin of Spanish Studies, 83:2 (2006), 301-02 (p.302).

60 Fact and Fiction: Representations of the Asturian Revolution
Sarah Sanchez 2004. Buy online here.

This study examines a varied corpus of documentary and literary texts produced during the miners' revolution of October 1934 in Asturias. It demonstrates how a set of writers, whether authors by profession, politicians, intellectuals, or workers, responded to the most important episode of working-class revolutionary action in Asturias before the Civil War. The object is to consider the diverse factual and fictional textual representations of the critical events of October 1934 within the context of debates in Spain regarding politically committed literature and the avant-garde, and in particular to confirm the validity of the term 'non-fictional novel', prevalent in accounts of North American new journalism in the 1960s.

61 Configuring Community: Theories of Community Identities in Contemporary Spain
Parvati Nair 2004. Buy online here.

The concept of community has become central to constructions of Spanish identities since the transition to democracy. Contemporary Spain is witnessing a political, social, and economic resurgence of community, which both cuts across and is prioritized over nation. Yet few studies of contemporary Spanish culture deal with this concept. This book aims to fill a gap in Spanish cultural studies by providing an in-depth analysis of the intersections of theories, narratives, and concepts of community identities across a broad range of media. Literature, film, music, and photography are analysed here in order to explore the diverse means by which community is imagined and constructed.

62 The Ethics of the Poet: Marina Tsvetaeva's Art in the Light of Conscience
Ute Stock 2005. Buy online here.

This study rehabilitates Tsvetaeva as a serious, innovative ethical thinker who developed an ethics for the poet that could dispense with universal value guarantees. For Tsvetaeva, ethical judgements had to be individual rather than universal, open to revision rather than permanent. Examining her ideational background, the study sheds new light on the pre-exile years, when Tsvetaeva suffered from a profound uncertainty about the moral nature and duty of the poet. It identifies the experience of exile as a catalyst for the development of her ethical thought that culminated in 'Iskusstvo pri svete sovesti'. Considering Tsvetaeva's application of her ethics in her life, this study reveals her emphasis on the personal to be the direct result of her ethical belief in individual judgements. Her conscious effort persistently to counteract dominant political ideologies similarly stems from her ethical suspicion of any kind of claim on universal truth. Finally the study assesses the significance of Tsvetaeva's suicide, revealing it to be the inevitable, terrifying consequence of her ethical self-definition, her commitment to individual freedom, and the pursuit of higher truths.

"This book is an important contribution to Tsvetaeva studies, and its examination of an overlooked aspect of the poet’s work should provoke many readers to return to the texts it discusses, open to new insight and wary of categorical judgements."

Katharine Hodgson, MLR, 102 (2007), 610.

"This is an important and serious study of Tsvetaeva's ethical poetics as it evolved in exile. [...] The study provides an important addition to the existing critical literature on the poet and her thought."

Greta Slobin, The Russian Review, 67 (2008), 327-8.

Read the introduction here.

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63 Benedikte Naubert (1756-1819) and her Relations to English Culture *
Hilary Brown 2005. Buy online here.

The eighteenth century saw the first significant phase of cultural interchange between Britain and Germany. This study examines the part played in this process by women writers, who were entering the literary world in large numbers for the first time. It asks whether women - as readers, translators and authors - were particularly receptive to the work of other women, and whether a cross-cultural female literary tradition emerged during the period. The study offers a detailed case-study of the German writer Benedikte Naubert, now known for her collection of fairytales but also a prolific novelist. It looks first at Naubert's engagement with English literature, that is to say at her numerous translations of English novels, and at the ways in which Anglophilia influenced the production of her own fiction. It establishes how Naubert's interest in England and English literature was related to her position as a woman writer. It then examines the reception of her novels and stories in Britain, questioning how far the response to her texts was related to issues of gender. Naubert's work is compared throughout to that of other women writers, and the study thus sheds new light on the extent to which cross-cultural interchange influenced the development of women's writing in both countries.

"a detailed bibliography [rounds] out this meticulous, scholarly work. Brown’s thorough and perceptive investigation of Naubert’s fiction and English literature makes previous work on the author obsolete. It takes Naubert’s oeuvre out of the niche of gender studies and places it squarely in the mainstream of German literary history and in the rich tradition of Anglo-German literary and cultural cross-currents."

Barbara Becker-Cantarino, MLR, 102 (2007), 565.

Read the introduction here.

64 The Role of Intertext in Elfriede Jelinek's Die Klavierspielerin, Günter Grass's Ein weites Feld, and Herta Müller's Niederungen and Reisende auf einem Bein *
Morwenna Symons 2005. Buy online here.

In the structuring of literary texts that refer extensively to previous texts, one issue is paramount: the space accorded to the reader. In entering into the intertextual debate, the reader is called upon both to corroborate the authority of the text and the power of literary continuity that the intertext embodies, and to assert his or her independence from this same authority in the very act of responding individually to its multiple significations.
This study of four literary texts, all very distinct in form and method, analyses the dynamic relationship between reader, text and intertext and suggests that it is in the effectiveness of this manoeuvring, by and of the reader, that the intertextual narrative can be shown to find its force. In Jelinek's Die Klavierspielerin the pornographic, psychoanalytic and musical intertexts form a discursive nexus of effects, central to the construction of a highly ironic narrative voice that unsettles and energizes the reader into critical response. The intertextual game of Ein weites Feld creates a text that is structurally and thematically 'out of control': by this means Grass brings the reader into confrontation with the celebratory discourses of German reunification. Herta Müller's depiction of the village idyll in Niederungen embraces and disrupts the Heimat genre.
The quotational mode, and our discomfort in responding to it, allows for the critical articulation of questions of authority and control with which the stories are concerned, while Müller's use of a Calvino intertext in Reisende auf einem Bein is fundamental in the development of a central character whose elusive quality reflects (on) thematic issues addressed by the text.

Read the introduction here.

65 The Influence of Pre-Raphaelitism on Fin-de-Siècle Italy: Art, Beauty, and Culture. Giuliana Pieri 2007. Buy online here.

This volume is the first comprehensive study of the influence of English Pre-Raphaelitism on Italian art and culture in the late nineteenth century. Analysis of the cultural relations between Italy and Britain has focused traditionally on the special place that Italy had in the British imagination, but the cultural and artistic exchanges between the two countries have been much misunderstood. This book aims to correct this imbalance by placing Pre-Rapahelitism in its European context. It explores the nature of its influence on Italy, how it was transmitted, and how it was manifested, by focusing on the role of Italian Anglophiles, the English communities in Florence and Rome, the writings of Gabriele D'Annunzio, and a number of Italian artists active in Tuscany and Rome. The works of Cellini, Ricci, Gioja, De Carolis, and Sartorio in particular fully demonstrate the impact of Pre-Raphaelitism on the young Italian school of painting which found in the English movement an ideal link with its glorious past on which it could build a new artistic identity. These artists show that English Pre-Raphaelitism was one of the most powerful single influences on fin-de-siècle Italian culture.

Read the introduction here.

66 The Reception of English Puritan Literature in Germany *
Peter Damrau 2006. Buy online here.

This is the first study to demonstrate the impact of Puritan literature on the development of German language and literature in the seventeenth century and beyond. It crosses the boundaries of theology, literature, and the English and German traditions to show that eighteenth-century secular thinking on introspection, psychology and subjectivity has its roots in vocabulary used in Germany as early as 1665 through the translation of figures such as Daniel Dyke and Richard Baxter. The book concludes with insights on John Bunyan, whose works inspired writers of the 'Geniegeneration' such as Lenz, Wieland, Moritz and Jung Stilling.

"Damrau’s study is a well researched and exceptionally well documented inquiry into the relationship between Puritanism and Pietism that reaches beyond the theological into the linguistic and literary disciplines. The extensive bibliography offers dictionaries, primary and secondary literature of relevant works in both the English and German literatures and a refreshingly new approach."

Helene M. Riley, Germanic Notes and Reviews, 38:1 (2007), 56-9.

"... this book makes a valuable contribution to current understanding of the presence of British thinking and texts in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Germany and is to be commended for its detailed analysis, its cross-disciplinary approach and its clear argument."

Nils Langer, MLR, 103 (2008), 267-8.

Read the introduction here.

67 Facing Modernity: Fragmentation, Culture and Identity in Joseph Roth's Writing in the 1920s *
Jon Hughes 2006. Buy online here.

This is the first monograph on the work of Joseph Roth (1894-1939) to be published in English by a British-based academic, and should prove useful both to those with a specialized interest in Roth, whose novels and journalism continue to gain admirers around the world, and to those interested more broadly in an extraordinarily rich period in twentiethcentury European culture. It serves both as an introduction to the early part of a body of work whose variety and volume were for many years overshadowed by the reputation of the historical novel Radetzkymarsch (1932), and as a re-assessment of Roth's writing, both of fiction and of journalism, within the modern tradition. A perceived 'fragmentation' of social, political, cultural and other traditions was a particular concern for Roth, as for many contemporaries, and the thematic chapters present a detailed contextual survey of Roth's intense and often ambivalent engagement with aspects of modern life, including travel, gender, technology, the city, and cinema. Besides assessing the continuities and discontinuities in Roth's attitudes, these chapters examine how his responses to the contemporary world impact upon both the form and content of his writing. The author argues that Roth's writing of the 1920s should be considered modernist not just in its often prescient sensitivity to cultural and political developments, but in its employment of a formal aesthetics and narrative self-consciousness which eventually made possible the illusory 'wholeness' of the later fiction.

"Hughes’s readings of Roth’s texts are fresh and compelling. One may disagree with certain details, but undeniably this new study considerably expands the scope of the discussions about Roth and his intellectual environment in the light of current critical debates and theories. Hughes presents his arguments clearly and succinctly. The scholarly documentation is impeccable, and the book, equipped with a comprehensive bibliography and an extensive index, is as user-friendly in its organization as it is sophisticated in its scholarly narrative."

Dagmar C. G. Lorenz, MLR, 102 (2007), 1189-90.

"... a substantial, original, and methodologically sound piece of work ... This is a well-written and thought-provoking study and will be of interest to students and academics alike."

Helen Chambers, Modern Austrian Literature, 40 (2007), 101-3.

Read the introduction here.

Following her conversion to Catholicism in 1926, Gertrud von le Fort (1876-1971) developed literary forms in her fiction and verse that sought to allow readers imaginative access to her sacramental vision of reality. Le Fort's contribution to German literature has often been identified narrowly with the Christian inner emigration during the Third Reich. This study's concentration on the period 1924-46 extends the critical perspective towards a more nuanced assessment of her work that pays appropriate attention to the literary, theological, and socio-cultural context of German Catholicism in the Weimar Republic and Third Reich. Scholars have considered, but by no means discussed exhaustively, whether a German literary renouveau catholique emerged in the first half of the twentieth century akin to that witnessed slightly earlier in France. This study demonstrates that le Fort's work does indeed belong to a flourishing period of Catholic culture in Germany, but one fraught with the complexities of the national culture out of which it emerged. The three main thematic and chronologically arranged parts of the study address, respectively, the importance of religious conversion in le Fort's work; her problematic sense of German and Catholic identity in the years immediately before the establishing of the Third Reich; and, lastly, her literary inner emigration and response to National Socialism. Throughout the study, the term 'sacramental realism' is used to aid a new evaluation of the interdependence of theology and aesthetics that underlies le Fort's literary work. This study presents a revised approach to a significant, but often misconstrued, area of Catholic literature during the Weimar Republic and Third Reich.

Read the introduction here.

69 Beyond Écriture féminine: Repetition and Transformation in the Prose Writing of Jeanne Hyvrard
Cathy Helen Wardle 2007. Buy online here.

Beyond 'Écriture Féminine' is the first book to be published exploring the work of the contemporary French author Jeanne Hyvrard (1945- ) from her early novels of the 1970s to more recent texts of the 1990s and beyond. Moving critical accounts of Hyvrard beyond a focus upon écriture féminine, it identifies the patterns through which her writing repeats and transforms creation mythology, her own oeuvre, and her own life, examining how intertextual repetitions bind her work together into a complex and ever-expanding web of allusions and resonances which engages the reader in a process of constant re-interpretation, challenging notions of linearity and reflecting the 'chaotic' reality of life in the Hyvrardian world.

"This study offers a lucid and compelling interpretation of Hyvrard that moves criticism of her work in a productive new direction. It will be of undoubted interest to researchers working on Hyvrard’s writing and equally to those working in contemporary French (women’s) writing and philosophy."

Kathryn Robson, MLR, 103 (2008), 554.

Read the introduction here.

70 Art and Its Uses in Thomas Mann's Felix Krull
Ernest Schonfield. Spring 2008

The turn of the twentieth century was a time of identity crisis for the upper and middle classes, one in which increased social mobility caused the blurring of traditional boundaries and created a need for reference works such as the British Who's Who (1897). At the same time, the rise of a new leisure industry and an increase in international travel led to a boom period for confidence men, who frequently operated in hotels and holiday resorts. Thomas Mann's Felix Krull, written between 1910-13 and continued (though never completed) in 1951-54, uses contemporary accounts of these figures as a starting-point from which to explore the aesthetics of society. The early Krull marks an important stage in Mann's development in a number of respects. In writing it, Mann acquired a more flexible conception of identity and a new understanding of the relation between artist and public.
Krull also signals a deeper engagement with Goethe and a shift in Mann's work towards a more open treatment of sexuality. The novel presents art as being central to the development of the individual and to social interaction. While Krull is nominally a confidence man, he is more of a performance artist, a purveyor of beauty who relies upon the complicity of his audience. The later Krull takes up where Mann left off and continues the justification of art as an essential human activity. This study draws upon unpublished material in order to provide a comprehensive reading of Felix Krull. It examines the novel within the context of Mann's work as a whole, and, in doing so, it seeks to demonstrate the remarkable continuity of Mann's creative achievement.

71 Paradox, Aphorism and Desire in Novalis and Derrida
Clare Kennedy. Spring 2008

Building on recent investigations into affinities between early German Romanticism and French post-structuralism, this study brings together the work of Jacques Derrida with the writings of one of early Romanticism’s most important theorists, Friedrich von Hardenberg (1772-1801), better known as Novalis. In contrast to recent criticism, which traces the historical path from Romanticism to modern theory in broad strokes, this book undertakes comparative readings of Novalis’s and Derrida’s texts on literature and philosophy. The book focuses on the significance both writers accord to paradox and argues that readings which are attuned to paradox can better appreciate the proximity of Romanticism and post-structuralism. As well as their affirmation of paradox, the texts of Novalis and Derrida testify to a profound respect for the Other, and the close readings of selected texts reveal remarkable similarities in their thinking on literature, philosophy and representation, and on the intricate interrelation between language, identity and desire.

72 Single Combat and Warfare in German Literature of the High Middle Ages: Stricker's Karl der Grosse and Daniel von dem Blühenden Tal
Rachel E. Kellett. Spring 2008

Combat is one of the central themes of Middle High German narrative literature, and of significant interest to medievalists in general. Nevertheless, few studies to date have attempted a detailed analysis of the depiction of combat in literary texts.

Rachel Kellett uses an inclusive approach to the details of combat descriptions in order to analyse minutely the scenes of single combat and battle presented in two major narrative works by Der Stricker, the epic Karl der Große and the Arthurian romance Daniel von dem Blühenden Tal, written between 1220 and 1250. The author compares these works with a wide range of other texts, both French and German, and investigates the relationship between Stricker’s depiction of combat and that found in the works of Hartmann von Aue and Wolfram von Eschenbach among others. She also draws on historical research into medieval warfare, tournament and the tradition of the judicial combat, which adds valuable depth to her analysis of literary texts.

Overall, this study provides new insights into the depiction of combat in Middle High German literature as a whole, while at the same time highlighting hitherto unnoticed aspects of the writings of Der Stricker as an individual author, and bringing a new perspective on the ambiguous role played by combat in the equally ambiguous Daniel von dem Blühenden Tal.