The post-Enlightenment movement known as Romanticism is a messy period; so messy, in fact, that many scholars eschew any attempt to define it. In reaction to the overreliance placed on reason by Enlightenment thinkers, Romantics emphasized individual freedom, emotional intensity, introspection, sincerity, and heightened imagination. They sought ......
The Dynamic History of the Heroines of Gotham City
Explores the history of Batgirlfrom her groundbreaking comics debut to her disappointing live-action appearances and beyond. For over sixty years, every woman who took on the mantle of Batgirl has been a powerful, independent heroine, belying the sidekick status the name implies. Betty Kane, the original Bat-Girl, was a hero for young girls at a ......
Following the Holocaust, American literature experienced a resurgence of Jewish themes, characters, and contributions. This book focuses on the genres of science fiction and fantasy of the post-Holocaust period and argues that while the era was colored by grief, it also offered a renaissance of Jewish creative expression. The author provides an ......
Chasing Aristotle's "probable impossibilities", Science Fantasy: Critical Explorations in Fiction and Film scrutinizes science fantasy, a hybrid genre that draws from both science fiction and fantasy. It delves into how science fantasy serves as a medium to shape the present and build a better future through memories and explores uncharted ......
In this book, David Walton explores European comic-book biker publications as a subgenre of popular culture. Using a multidisciplinary approach, he reveals an intricate amalgam of ingenuity, irony, and highly ambiguous humor. The creative resourcefulness of the comic-book biker authors is seen to dramatize and celebrate the material existence of ......
Half of Joseph Conrads body of work is set in late 19th-century Southeast Asia and his favourite destinations were Singapore and the remote ports of the Dutch East Indies. Burnet connects the fictional and real worlds in this fascinating introduction to Conrads life in the Malay archipelago.
Science fiction has hosted some of the greatest minds and most innovative thinkers in human history. From Orson Wells to Octavia Butler, Star Trek to Star Wars, in books, on television, and at the movies, science fiction has shaped our future, pushed the limits of human imagination, and guided us within ourselves to examine the universal truths of ......
Religious Horror and the Ecogothic explores the intersections of Anglophone Christianity and the Ecogothic, the category of Gothic literature that explores the ecocritical in Gothic literature, film, and media. Acknowledging the impact of key Christian ideologies and aesthetics upon interpretations of human relationships with the environment, ......
Identifying an important subgenre of horror literature, this book argues that Catholic horror fiction works distinctively to inspire the philosophical, theological, and spiritual imaginations of readers from all backgrounds and faith traditions. Hurley analyzes four novels that are foundational to the genre of Catholic horror: J.K. Huysmans's ......
The Functions of Unnatural Death in Stephen King: Murder, Sickness, and Plots examines over thirty of King's works and looks at the character deaths within them, placing them first within the chronology of the plot and then assigning them a function. Death is horrific and perhaps the only universal horror because it comes to us all. Stephen King, ......
D.H. Lawrence's Final Fictions: A Lacanian Perspective explores how literature thinks; more specifically, how the reading of fiction influences behavior. Lawrence writes passionately about our alienation from ourselves, from other people, and from the cosmos. He believes that we need to heed the voices of our unconscious, and he shows us how to ......
In her feminist polemic, 'A Room of One's Own', Virginia Woolf famously wrote of the (comparatively recent) literary tradition of female writers: 'we think back through our mothers if we are women.' Woolf's major literary mothers were those women novelists writing during the Victorian period and earlier. Virginia Woolf and the Lives, Works, and ......
In The Transmedia Construction of the Black Panther: Long Live the King, Bryan J. Carr explores and analyzes the evolution of the Black Panther character since his inception in the 1960s across comics, film, television, video games, and music. The Black Panther, Carr argues, is the sum of the creative works of countless individuals across various ......
Dystopia, from the Greek dus and topos "bad place," is a revelatory genre and concept that has experienced a meteoric rise in popularity at the start of the twenty-first century. This book addresses approaches to the study of dystopia from the academic fields of theology and religious studies. Following a co-written chapter where Scott ......
Individualism, the State, and Failure in Crime Fiction
This book examines how Latin American detective stories portray individualism and the state through the figures of the private eye and the police. Fabricio Tocco argues that these portrayals constitute a far more radical critique than the one developed by the Anglo-American canon, culminating in a transnational "poetics of failure" rooted in ......
A collection of essays examining literary discussions of the role of science, focusing on the interactions between processes of knowledge formation and the socioeconomic and political spheres.
Historical Dictionary of Horror Literature contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has more than 400 cross-referenced entries covering authors, subgenres, tropes, awards, organizations, and important terms related to horror.,
If a literary movement arises but no one notices, is it still a movement? In Speculative Poetry and the Modern Alliterative Revival: A Critical Anthology, editor Dennis Wilson Wise argues that the answer is "yes." Over the last ten decades, poets working in fantasy, science fiction, and horror have collectively brought forth a revival in ......
Material Ecocriticism and Sylvan Agency in Speculative Fiction: The Forests of the World links the examination of fictional forests and arboreal characters of speculative fiction with the literary approach of material ecocriticism and a conceptualization of a sylvan agency. Aiming to establish and situate the investigation of sylvan agency firmly ......
Transnational Zombie Cinema, 2010 to 2020: Readings in a Mutating Tradition examines selected films produced outside the United States in the second decade of the millennial zombie renaissance, following the global effects of the Great Recession. These readings analyze how the films adapt the zombie myth to localized anxieties pertaining to ......
The Early Pioneering History of The East Coast of Tasmania
The major standard history of the first wave of settlers who arrived in Tasmania’s East Coast between 1821 and 1831 and who developed the wide area. First published in 1990 but long unavailable.
A collection of essays analyzing ecohorror motifs in literature, manga, film, and television, illuminating ambiguities that arise from human encounters with nonhuman nature and examining the scale and effect of ecohorror in, and of, the Anthropocene.
Critical Essays on Film, Literature, Anime, Video Games
Contemporary Japanese horror is deeply rooted in the folklore of its culture, with fairy tales-like ghost stories embedded deeply into the social, cultural, and religious fabric. Ever since the emergence of the J-horror phenomenon in the late 1990s with the opening and critical success of films such as Hideo Nakata's The Ring (Ringu, 1998) or ......
Using Attachment Theory as a frame of reference to critically analyse grief in the works of James Joyce, Attachment and Loss in the Works of James Joyce allows for new and innovative readings to emerge, opening another avenue in the debate regarding cognition and literature.
Decrypting Ghosts and Trauma in New York City's Terrorism Novels
Published to coincide with the twentieth anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks, 9/11 Gothic: Decrypting Ghosts and Trauma in New York City's Terrorism Novels returns to the ruins and anguish of 9/11 to pose a question not yet addressed by scholarship. Two time World Fantasy Award-winning writer Danel Olson asks how, why, and where New York ......
Building on aesthetic, sociological, and literary theories, the author focuses on a selection of novelists from the early 1800s to the early 1900s and their contribution to the sociological imagination. Throughout the text, the book considers these "stories that are telling" in light of social issues today.
J.R.R. Tolkien and his works have impacted many areas of thought and culture, including theology. In Theology and Tolkien: Practical Theology, an international group of scholars discuss numerous themes related to living out theology in our world today.
Hybridity, Appropriation, and Intertextuality in Gothic Storytelling
Through an examination of texts from diverse periods and media, Gothic Mash-Ups explores the role that appropriation and intertextuality play in Gothic storytelling. Building on recent scholarship on Gothic remix and adaptation, the contributors demonstrate that the Gothic is ...
The best book to discuss the creative work of Aboriginal author, playwright and poet (1917-2000). First published in 1994, including essays by Ooodgeroo.
The Making of a Generation Defining Anthology in the Latin American Lite
The first book-length analysis of the controversial Pan-Hispanic short story anthology "McOndo" (1996) draws on World Literature scholarship to take a step toward reclaiming the anthologys artistic intentions and considering its generation-defining legacy in Latin American literary history.
In this work, renowned scholar George Slusser analyzes science fiction's history by focusing on important thinkers, overlooked by other critics, who made key contributions to the development of science fiction as a global literature.
Theology, Fantasy, and the Imagination analyzes theological, religious, and philosophical themes in classical Christian fantasy, contemporary "post-Christian" fantasy, and fantasy at play in table top games such as Dungeons and Dragons and Magic: the Gathering.
The History of a Pop-Culture Phenomenon from Ant-Man to Zorro
Superheroes! is the ultimate reference book about the men and women in tights who fight for what's right and the comic book phenomenon that conquered the world.
Fantasy is a genre in motion, gradually expanding its reach and historical sources to embrace a global identity Historical Dictionary of Fantasy Literature, Second Edition is a snapshot of the genre in this moment, identifying new themes and sources that are emerging to inspire, enhance and invigorate the published works of fantasy writers.
A fascinating study of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy, which builds upon the work of previous scholars and ventures deeper, drawing on insights from anthroposophy to illuminate the stories in new ways.
