Fairy tales and the art of subversion

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Penny Tinkler

This book explores the contribution of magazines to the social construction of female adolescence during a historical period of rapid change, and locates the role of magazines in the lives of girls at this time. In addressing this theme, the book examines the changing social, economic, political and cultural conditions which shaped, and continue to influence, the experience of girlhood. The author discusses key concepts such as adolescence and 'girlhood', and engages with theories concerning the interpretation of gender relations, cultural production, meaning and reading. The chapters use life-course events and transitions such as schooling, work, entrance into sexual relationships, marriage and motherhood as their main themes. In exploring these themes, the author considers the importance attached to age and social class for the form and content of the magazines. The book also unravels the negotiation of key factors which contributed to decisions about what were legitimate concerns for different groups of girls, for example, publisher's objectives and culture; reader interests; and ideologies of femininity. Such concerns remain a feature of media issues today.

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W. Martin Bloomer

Latinity and Literary Society at Rome reaches back to the early Roman empire to examine attitudes toward Latinity, reviewing the contested origins of scholarly Latin in the polemical arena of Roman literature. W. Martin Bloomer shows how that literature's reflections on correct and incorrect speech functioned as part of a wider understanding of social relations and national identity in Rome. Bloomer's investigation begins with questions about the sociology of Latin literature - what interests were served by the creation of high style and how literary stylization constituted a system of social decorum - and goes on to offer readings of selected texts. Through studies of works ranging from Varro's De lingua latina to the verse fables of Augustus's freedman Phaedrus to the Annals of Tacitus, Bloomer examines conflicting claims to style not simply to set true Latin against vulgarism but also to ask who is excluding whom, why, and by what means. These texts exemplify the ways Roman literature employs representations of and reflections on proper and improper language to mirror the interests of specific groups who wished to maintain or establish their place in Roman society. They show how writers sought to influence the fundamental social issue of who had the power to confer legitimacy of speech and how their works used claims of linguistic propriety to reinforce the definition of "Romanness.". Through Bloomer's study Latinity emerges as a contested field of identity and social polemic heretofore unrecognized in classical scholarship. With its fresh interpretations of major and minor texts, Latinity and Literary Society at Rome is a literary history that significantly advances our understanding of the place of language in ancient Rome.

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Hayley Mitchell Haugen

Who is Lemony Snicket? Is he an author, an alter ego, or a character in the popular children's books, A Series of Unfortunate Events Learn all about this mysterious guy in KidHaven's Lemony Snicket. This text sheds light on Snicket's childhood, his success as an author, the zany antics that have followed, and what he is up to today.

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Amy L. Blair

"A person who reads a book for self-improvement rather than aesthetic pleasure is 'reading up.' Reading Up is Amy Blair's engaging study of popular literary critics who promoted reading generally and specific books as vehicles for acquiring cultural competence and economic mobility. Combining methodologies from the history of the book and the history of reading, to mass-cultural studies, reader-response criticism, reception studies, and formalist literary analysis, Blair shows how such critics influenced the choices of striving readers and popularized some elite writers. Framed by an analysis of Hamilton Wright Mabie's role promoting the concept of reading up during his ten-year stint as the cultivator of literary taste for the highly popular Ladies' Home Journal, Reading Up reveals how readers flocked to literary works they would be expected to dislike. Blair shows that while readers could be led to certain books by a trusted adviser, they frequently followed their own path in interpreting them in unexpected ways"--Amazon.com.