Brave new causes

Sample

James M. Cahalan

"In this book, James M. Cahalan examines gender issues in the writings and in the lives of a dozen notable Irish authors and their fictional characters."--BOOK JACKET. "Covering literature from the late nineteenth century to the present, be seeks to close the gender gap in Irish literary history by pairing similar works of fiction by both men and women. The author addresses, for instance, how women writers' characterizations of men compare with men's representations of women."--BOOK JACKET.

Sample

John G. Cawelti, Bruce A. Rosenberg

Why has the spy story become such a popular form of entertainment in our time? In this fascinating account of the genre's evolution, John G. Cawelti and Bruce A. Rosenberg explore the social, political, and artistic sources of the spy story's wide appeal. They show how, in a time of bewildering political and corporate organization, the spy story has become increasingly relevant, the secret agent hero expressing the feelings of divided and ambiguous loyalties with which many individuals face the modern world. In addition to a general history of the genre, Cawelti and Rosenberg present in-depth analyses of the work of certain writers who have given the spy story its shape, among them John Buchan, Eric Ambler, Graham Greene, Ian Fleming, and John le Carré. The Spy Story also includes an extensive appendix, featuring a literary and historical bibliography of espionage and clandestinity, a list of the best spy novels and films, a catalog of major spy writers and their heroes, and a selection of novels on espionage themes written by major twentieth-century authors and public figures. Written in a lively style that reflects the authors' enthusiasm for this intriguing form, The Spy Story will be read with pleasure by devotees of the genre as well as students of popular culture.

Sample

Patricia D. Maida, Nicholas B. Spornick

A Study of Agatha Christie's Detective Fiction. This book explores the inter-relationships between Agatha Christie and her works to seek the wholeness in the Christie experience. The authors perceive an integration in personal experience and moral and aesthetic values between the woman and her art.

Sample

Pamela Chester & Sibelan Forrester

Engendering Slavic Literatures breaks new ground in its investigation of gender and feminist issues in Croatian, Polish, Russian, Serbian, and Ukrainian literary texts by both female and male writers. Drawing on psychoanalytic approaches, film theory, and lesbian and gender theory, the authors interrogate the received notions of Western gender studies to see which can be usefully applied to nineteenth- and twentieth-century Slavic literary works. Motherhood and the relationships of mothers and daughters; the myths of selfhood that shape the autobiographies of Nadezhda Mandel'shtam, Marina Tsvetaeva, Lidiia Ginzburg, and Lev Tolstoy; Polish Catholicism and sexuality; portrayals of landscape in verbal and visual art; and women writers' transgressive ventures into male bastions such as the love lyric and prose fiction are among the themes of this important and innovative volume.