Palgrave Macmillan Us: 3342 books

Through the consideration of canonical authors such as Blake, Scott, and Wordsworth and of lesser-studied works such as radical press writings and popular drama, this study explores the imaginative appeal of the social structures and literary forms of the Middle Ages, and how they raised awareness of Britain's tradition of freedom.

This book introduces lexomics, the use of computer-aided statistical analysis of vocabulary, to measure influence and integrate research from cognitive psychology and evolutionary biology with traditional, philological approaches to literature. Connecting the theory of tradition with the phenomenon of influence, Drout moves beyond current theories.

Examining Malory's political language, this study offers a revisionary view of Arthur's kingship in the Morte Darthur and the role of the Round Table fellowship. Considering a range of historical and political sources, Lexton suggests that Malory used a specific lexicon to engage with contemporary problems of kingship and rule.

This study emerges from an interdisciplinary conversation about the theory of translation and the role of foreign language in fiction and society. By analyzing Shakespeare's treatment of France, Saenger interrogates the cognitive borders of England - a border that was more dependent on languages and ideas than it was on governments and shorelines.

This book places sex and sexuality firmly at the heart of Beckett. From the earliest prose to the late plays, Paul Stewart uncovers a profound mistrust of procreation which nevertheless allows for a surprising variety of non-reproductive forms of sex which challenge established notions of sexual propriety and identity politics.

This book reassesses the cultural and political dimensions of the Irish Revival's heroic ideal and explores its implications for the construction of Irish modernity. By foregrounding the heroic ideal, it shows how the cultural landscape carved out by these writers is far from homogenous.

Identifying an apprehension about the nature and constitution of urbanism in North American plays, Westgate examines how cities like New York City and Los Angeles became focal points for identity politics and social justice at the end of the twentieth century, and how urban crises inform the dramaturgy of contemporary playwrights.

The Anglo-Scottish Border and the Shaping of Identity, 1350-1600  explores the roles that Scotland and England play in one another's imaginations. This collection of essays brings together eminent scholars and emerging voices from the frequently divergent fields of English and Scottish medieval studies.

This book examines the power held by the French medieval queens during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and their larger roles within the kingdom at a time when women were excluded from succession to the throne. Well before Catherine and Marie de’ Medici, the last medieval French queens played...

Presenting the first English-language collection of essays on Jorge Semprún, this volume explores the life and work of the Spanish Holocaust survivor, author, and political activist. Essays explore his cultural production in all its manifestations, including the role of testimony and fiction in representations of the Holocaust.

Examining a wide range of works, from Gulliver's Travels to The Hunger Games, Representing the Modern Animal in Culture employs key theoretical apparatuses of Animal Studies to literary texts. Contributors address the multifarious modes of animal representation and the range of human-animal interactions that have emerged in the past 300 years.

Explores the representation of emotions as psychological concepts and cultural constructs in Geoffrey Chaucer's narrative poetry. McTaggart argues that Chaucer's main works including The Canterbury Tales are united thematically in their positive view of guilt and in their anxiety about the desire for sacrifice and vengeance that shame can provoke.

Using Hamlet and a number of other popular and influential seventeenth-century tragedies as case-studies, this book shows how aesthetic experience can help organize the biological functions of our brains into adaptive social networks.

The essays within this collection explore the possibilities and potentialities of all three positions, presenting encounters that are, at times contradictory, at other times supportive, as well as complementary. The collection thereby enriches the questions that are being raised within contemporary cinematic studies.