Celebrating Katherine Mansfield

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Hassan Melehy

"Given Jack Kerouac's enduring reputation for heaving words onto paper, it might surprise some readers to see his name coupled with the word "poetics." But as a native speaker of French, he embarked on his famous "spontaneous prose" only after years of seeking techniques to overcome the restrictions he encountered in writing in a single language, English. The result was an elaborate poetics that cannot be fully understood without accounting for his bilingual thinking and practice.Of the more than twenty-five biographies of Kerouac, few have seriously examined his relationship to the French language and the reason for his bilingualism, the Québec Diaspora. Although this background has long been recognized in French-language treatments, it is a new dimension in Anglophone studies of his writing. In a theoretically informed discussion, Hassan Melehy explores how Kerouac's poetics of exile involves meditations on moving between territories and languages. Far from being a naïve pursuit, Kerouac's writing practice not only responded but contributed to some of the major aesthetic and philosophical currents of the twentieth century in which notions such as otherness and nomadism took shape. Kerouac: Language, Poetics, and Territory offers a major reassessment of a writer who, despite a readership that extends over much of the globe, remains poorly appreciated at home"-- "A reassessment of Jack Kerouac's poetic theory and practice from the perspective of their central yet most overlooked component: the fact that he thought and worked in two languages, his native French and his adopted English"--

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J. Madison Davis

An analysis of the work of the mystery and adventure writer with biographical information and interviews with the author and his wife.

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Margaret Hubbard

"'Propertius' four books of love-elegies (c. 32 - 12 BC) were produced during the heyday of Augustan literature. His poetry has been noted by modern critics for its striking forms of expression, sometimes tortured syntax, sudden transitions and abstruse allusiveness. Much of this &difficulty&, Hubbard argues, may stem as much from the many impenetrable corruptions in our surviving, comparatively late manuscripts as from Propertius himself. For ancient critics, in contrast with the modern, read him as polished, elegant and amusing. This book presents a Propertius along these latter lines. The four central chapters of this volume deal broadly with the four books, but at the same time raise general issues, such as the unity of Propertius' oeuvre, or his self-acknowledged indebtedness to Callimachus. Throughout Hubbard analyses in detail both extended and shorter passages which are always given in both the original and in a no-nonsense prose translation. There emerges a reading of the poet which renders him immediately accessible to student and general reader, while providing insights equally challenging for specialists."--Bloomsbury Publishing Propertius' four books of love-elegies (c. 32-12 BC) were produced during the heyday of Augustan literature. His poetry has been noted by modern critics for its striking forms of expression, sometimes tortured syntax, sudden transitions and abstruse allusiveness. Much of this "difficulty", Hubbard argues, may stem as much from the many impenetrable corruptions in our surviving, comparatively late manuscripts as from Propertius himself. For ancient critics, in contrast with the modern, read him as polished, elegant and amusing. This book presents a Propertius along these latter lines. The four central chapters of this volume deal broadly with the four books, but at the same time raise general issues, such as the unity of Propertius' oeuvre, or his self-acknowledged indebtedness to Callimachus. Throughout Hubbard analyses in detail both extended and shorter passages which are always given in both the original and in a no-nonsense prose translation. There emerges a reading of the poet which renders him immediately accessible to student and general reader, while providing insights equally challenging for specialists

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Michael Bradshaw

"Resurrection Songs: The Poetry of Thomas Lovell Beddoes brings together the poet's abiding obsession - the search for immortality - and the most prominent formal feature of his writing - fragmentation. Michael Bradshaw examines how the idea of resurrection acts upon and is acted upon by the structural disarray of Beddoes's texts. The study centres on the phenomenon of broken form on various levels, and charts the progressive involution of the theme. Addressing contexts such as Beddoes's relationships with Romantic and Renaissance forbears and the influence of his medical training, Resurrection Songs is a timely re-assessment which establishes Beddoes's relevance to the contemporary debates of Romanticism."--Jacket.