The Cambridge Companion To The Literature Of The American West

This Companion provides a comprehensive introduction to one of the most vibrant and expansive traditions in world literature. The American West occupies a unique place in the global imagination, and the literature it produced transcends the category of 'region' in theme and form. Written by prominent international scholars, the essays cover a diverse group of key texts and authors, including major figures in the Native American, Hispanic, Asian American, and African American movements. Treatments range from environmental and ecopoetic to transnational and transcultural, reflecting the richness of the field. This volume places the literature in deep historical context and features a chronology and a bibliography for further reading. It will be an essential guide for students of literature of the American West and of American literature generally.

This book introduces readers to early American literary studies through original readings of key literary texts.

Travel writing has always been intimately linked with the construction of American identity. Occupying the space between fact and fiction, it exposes cultural fault lines and reveals the changing desires and anxieties of both the traveller and the reading public. These specially-commissioned essays trace the journeys taken by writers from the pre-revolutionary period right up to the present. They examine a wide range of responses to the problems posed by landscapes found both at home and abroad, from the Mississippi and the Southwest to Europe and the Holy Land. Throughout, the contributors focus on the role played by travel writing in the definition and formulation of national identity, and consider the experiences of minority writers as well as canonical authors. This Companion forms an invaluable guide for students approaching this new, important and exciting subject for the first time.

Cormac McCarthy both embodies and redefines the notion of the artist as outsider. His fiction draws on recognizable American themes and employs dense philosophical and theological subtexts, challenging readers by depicting the familiar as inscrutably foreign. The essays in this Companion offer a sophisticated yet concise introduction to McCarthy's difficult and provocative work. The contributors, an international team of McCarthy scholars, analyze some of the most well-known and commonly taught novels - Outer Dark, Blood Meridian, All the Pretty Horses and The Road - while providing detailed treatments of McCarthy's work in cinema, including the many adaptations of his novels to film. Designed for scholars, teachers and general readers, and complete with a chronology and bibliography for further reading, this Companion is an essential reference for anyone interested in gaining a deeper understanding of one of America's most celebrated living novelists.

London has provided the setting and inspiration for a host of literary works in English, from canonical masterpieces to the popular and ephemeral. Drawing upon a variety of methods and materials, the essays in this volume explore the London of Langland and the Peasants' Rebellion, of Shakespeare and the Elizabethan stage, of Pepys and the Restoration coffee house, of Dickens and Victorian wealth and poverty, of Conrad and the Empire, of Woolf and the wartime Blitz, of Naipaul and postcolonial immigration, and of contemporary globalism. Contributions from historians, art historians, theorists and media specialists as well as leading literary scholars exemplify current approaches to genre, gender studies, book history, performance studies and urban studies. In showing how the tradition of English literature is shaped by representations of London, this volume also illuminates the relationship between the literary imagination and the society of one of the world's greatest cities.

Publisher Description (unedited publisher data) Eleven specially-commissioned essays by major Fitzgerald scholars present a clearly written and comprehensive assessment of F. Scott Fitzgerald as a writer and as a public and private figure. No aspect of his career is overlooked, from his first novel published in 1920, through his more than 170 short stories, to his last unfinished Hollywood novel. Contributions present the reader with a full and accessible picture of the background of American social and cultural change in the early decades of the twentieth century. The introduction traces Fitzgerald's career as a literary and public figure, and examines the extent to which public recognition has affected his reputation among scholars, critics, and general readers over the past sixty years. This is the only volume that offers undergraduates, graduates and general readers a full account of Fitzgerald's work as well as suggestions for further exploration of his work. Library of Congress subject headings for this publication: Fitzgerald, F, Scott (Francis Scott), 1896-1940 Criticism and interpretation Handbooks, manuals, etc.

Traces the development of allegory in the European and American tradition from antiquity to the modern era.

This book considers the great cultural and geopolitical changes in western Eurasia in the fifth century CE. It focuses on the Roman Empire, but it also examines the changes taking place in northern Europe, in Iran under the Sasanian Empire, and on the great Eurasian steppe. Attila is presented as a contributor to and a symbol of these transformations.

The story of the American West is that of a journey. It is the story of a movement, of a geographical and human transition, of the delineation of a route that would soon become a rooted myth. The story of the American West has similarly journeyed across boundaries, in a two-way movement, sometimes feeding the idea of that myth, sometimes challenging it. This collection of essays relates to the notion of the traveling essence of the myth of the American West from different geographical and disciplinary standpoints. The volume originates in Europe, in Spain, where the myth traveled, was received, assimilated, and re-presented. It intends to travel back to the West, in a two-way cross-cultural journey, which will hopefully contribute to the delineation of the New—always self-renewing—American West. It includes the work of authors of both sides of the Atlantic ocean who propose a cross-cultural, transdisciplinary dialogue upon the idea, the geography and the representation of the American West.

A Companion to the Literature and Culture of the American West presents a series of essays that explore the historic and contemporary cultural expressions rooted in America's western states. Offers a comprehensive approach to the wide range of cultural expressions originating in the west Focuses on the intersections, complexities, and challenges found within and between the different historical and cultural groups that define the west's various distinctive regions Addresses traditionally familiar icons and ideas about the west (such as cowboys, wide-open spaces, and violence) and their intersections with urbanization and other regional complexities Features essays written by many of the leading scholars in western American cultural studies