Literature – Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Muses and Measures

Empirical Research Methods for the Humanities

By: Frank Hakemulder, Sonia Zyngier, Willie van Peer

From £24.99

This is a textbook that has been needed for decades. It should be required reading for every student (and professor) in literary studies and, for that matter, in any humanistic discipline. Humanistic methods of inquiry certainly have their place, but all too often humanistic scholars present entire theories and have no idea how to test them or even realize that they should be tested in a scientific manner. Such scholars can only try to convince readers that they are right. It is absurd to use rhetoric when there are perfectly…

This book is required reading for humanistic disciplines. Too often, scholars present theories without knowing how to test them empirically. In an engaging way, the authors teach statistics, leading students through projects to analyze their own gathered data.

Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain

A Reader’s Guide

By: Rodney Symington

From £34.99

Thomas Mann’s novel The Magic Mountain presents a panorama of European society in the first two decades of the 20th century and depicts the philosophical and metaphysical dilemmas facing people in the modern age. In the years leading up to the First World War, the fundamental elements of human nature were thrown into sharp relief by the political tensions that resulted in the ultimate metaphor for the innate destructiveness of humankind: the War itself. If such a war is the true expression of human tendencies, what hope is there for…

Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain explores the philosophical dilemmas of the modern age. This comprehensive commentary explains all references and allusions in the seminal novel, enabling readers to understand and extract the maximum pleasure from it.

The Homeric Epics and the Chinese Book of Songs

Foundational Texts Compared

Edited By: Fritz-Heiner Mutschler

From £35.99

The Homeric epics and the Book of Songs are not just the fountainheads of the Western and Chinese literary traditions; for centuries they played a central role in education and communal life, and thus exercised a lasting influence on both civilizations. This volume presents the first systematic comparison of the two corpora. Part One analyzes their genesis and their reception, while Part Two discusses their characteristics as poetic creations. The book brings together Chinese and Western sinologists and classicists, and so promotes significant interdisciplinary and intercultural dialogue. Though the contributors…

Ages of Heroes, Eras of Men

Superheroes and the American Experience

Edited By: Julian C. Chambliss, Thomas Donaldson, William Svitavsky

From £34.99

Ages of Heroes, Eras of Men explores the changing depiction of superheroes from the comic books of the 1930s to the cinematic present. In this anthology, scholars from a variety of disciplines – including history, cultural studies, Latin American studies, film studies, and English – examine the superhero’s cultural history in North America with attention to particular stories and to the historical contexts in which those narratives appeared. Enduring comic book characters from DC and Marvel Comics, including Superman, Iron Man, Batman, Wonder Woman and the Avengers, are examined, along…

This collection explores the superhero’s evolution from 1930s comics to modern cinema. It examines how iconic heroes like Superman, Batman, and the Avengers reflect the historical contexts of their eras, from the Great Depression to the Cold War and beyond.

(Post)Colonial Passages

Incursions and Excursions across the Literatures and Cultures in English

Edited By: Federica Zullo, Francesco Cattani, Rita Monticelli, Silvia Albertazzi

From £35.99

While entailing a subversive re-vision of colonial histories, geographies, and subjectivities, the (post)colonial condition has unleashed a chain of movements, relocations, and re-writings that interrogate the globalized and neoliberal society. Ethnic, “racial”, religious, gendered, and sexual identities have been called into question, and requested to (re)define, name, and re-name themselves, to find new ways to tell their stories/histories. The very term “postcolonial” has triggered well-known controversial debates: its adoption is significant of a cultural politics involving the colonial past, controversial crisis in the present, and an open perspective…

The essays gathered here discuss postcolonialism as a transdisciplinary field of passages that negotiate among diverse, yet interrelated, cultural fields.

Narrating our Healing

Perspectives on Working through Trauma

By: Chris N van der Merwe

From £14.99

In the 1990’s, South Africa surprised the world with a peaceful, negotiated transition from armed conflict to an inclusive democracy. This was followed by the ground-breaking Truth and Reconciliation Commission, established to confront and work through a troubled past. The search for truth and reconciliation in South Africa, however, is far from completed; the country is in many ways still burdened by unresolved individual and collective traumas. In this book, two academics from the University of Cape Town, one a psychologist and the other a literary scholar, explore the importance…

This book explores narrative as a way of working through trauma. It offers illuminating perspectives on “narrating our healing”: the re-creating of life narratives shattered by trauma and the search for meaning when all meaning seems to have been lost.

Global Literary Criticism

China and the West

By: Hongxin Jiang

From £35.99

This timely book offers uplifting examples of major figures in Chinese and Western civilization from ancient to modern times who learned from and influenced each other. Rather than emphasizing cultural differences, this inspiring text highlights successful dialogue, commonalities, and mutual influences in this regard. Readers familiar with the Western canon will discover surprising influences of China on well-known Anglosphere writers and critics. Drawing on an expansive range of periods in the East and West from classical to contemporary times, it is a tour-de-force of theoretical range and practical impact. Starting…

Discover the surprising dialogue between East and West. This uplifting book reveals a history of mutual influence, from the common ground of Confucius and Socrates to China’s unexpected impact on Western thinkers like Nietzsche and T.S. Eliot.

Rural Writing

Geographical Imaginary and Expression of a New Regionality

Edited By: Mauricette Fournier

From £35.99

If, as a corollary of urbanization, many artists seized, as early as the nineteenth century and most of the twentieth century, the city as object and scene of their reflection on a world under construction, it was not the same for rural areas. Generally speaking, until recently, the countryside's representations have been shaped by the writings of a ruling class. However, in recent decades, alongside the “country novels” or “terroir novels” that follow in line with the rustic current initiated in the nineteenth century, more demanding literary productions have emerged.…

This anthology revisits rural areas and their representations in contemporary writing, in both popular and high culture, in order to draw a global landscape of current rural areas and new regionalities.

The Failure of Augustus

Essays on the Interpretation of a Paradox

By: E.A. Judge

From £35.99

Augustus did not mean to become the “Founder of the Roman Empire”. We only say this to make sense of what happened later. At the time, there were indeed suspicions. However, Augustus plugged on with his propaganda, with a proud and clear aim in mind. In the end, though, his own persistence defeated him. In all history, we must first find out what was true at the time. This book focuses always on the particular words of Augustus, and how his mind could be read from them. It is not…

Though he had a proud and clear aim, in the end, Augustus was defeated by his own persistence. Using contemporaneous sources and Augustus’ own words, Judge’s study explores this downfall. It also argues for the primacy of original sources in historical interpretation.

The Language of Color in China

By: Gail Taylor, Jun Zhou

From £45.99

This is the first book to explore color history in Asia. Color is a natural phenomenon and a fundamental element of the universe, and offers a medium to communicate with others globally. It is a language of signals, such as traffic lights, signs or symbols, and an essential part of society. Color attracts people’s attention and transmits important information. As such, color language denotes all of the activities of human history, and has been associated with changes in society, economic development, and dynasties replacing the old with the new. The…

This is the first book to explore color history in Asia. Color is a language of signals, associated with changes in society, economic development, and dynasties. A valuable resource for practitioners of art and design, it offers a new perspective on Chinese aesthetics.

Heinrich Böll and Ireland

By: Gisela Holfter

From £16.99

Nobel Prize winning author Heinrich Böll’s Irisches Tagebuch (Irish Journal) which was first published in 1957, has been read by millions of German readers and has had an unsurpassed impact on the German image of Ireland. But there is much more to Heinrich Böll’s relationship with Ireland than the Irisches Tagebuch. In this new book, Böll scholar Gisela Holfter carefully charts Heinrich Böll’s personal and literary connections with Ireland and Irish literature from his reading Irish fairytales in early childhood, to establishing a second home on Achill Island and his…

Nobel Prize winner Heinrich Böll’s relationship with Ireland went far beyond his famous *Irish Journal*. This book charts his deep personal and literary connections, from his second home on Achill Island to his translations of Irish authors and the controversies he caused.

Byron and Orientalism

Edited By: Peter Cochran

From £18.99

Of all the English Romantic poets Byron is often thought of as the one who was most familiar with the East. His travels, it is claimed, give him a huge advantage with which contemporaries like Southey, Moore, Shelley, and Coleridge, who had comparable orientalist ambitions, could not compete. Byron and Orientalism sets out to examine this thesis. Based on a conference held in 2005 at Nottingham Trent University, it looks at Byron’s knowledge of the East, and of its religions in particular, in greater detail than ever before. Essays are…

Byron is often thought of as the Romantic poet most familiar with the East. This book examines this thesis, looking at Byron’s knowledge of the East and its religions, his Turkish Tales, his influence on Pushkin, and his own disorientated existence.

The Medusa Gaze in Contemporary Women’s Fiction

Petrifying, Maternal and Redemptive

By: Gillian M. E. Alban

From £39.99

The Medusa Gaze offers striking insights into the desires and frustrations of women through the narratives of the impressive contemporary novelists Angela Carter, Toni Morrison, Sylvia Plath, Margaret Atwood, A.S. Byatt, Iris Murdoch, Jeanette Winterson, Jean Rhys and Michèle Roberts. It illuminates women’s power and vulnerability as they construct their own egos in opposition to their hostile alter egos or others facing them in their mirrors, and fixes a panoptic gaze on the women stalking its pages, as they learn how to deflect the menacing gaze of others by returning…

Alban offers striking insights into the desires and frustrations of women through the narratives of impressive contemporary novelists. Crafting her analysis on the gaze as presented by Lacan and Sartre, she demonstrates how the subject creates her own ego against hostile others.

The Invention of Northern Aesthetics in 18th-Century English Literature

By: Yvonne Bezrucka

From £29.99

Free, romantic, and individualistic, Britain’s self-image in the eighteenth century constructs itself in opposition to the dominant power of a southern European aesthetics. Offering a fresh understanding of how the British intelligentsia created a ‘Northern’ aesthetics to challenge the European yoke, this book explores the roots of British Romanticism and a newly created past. Literature, the arts, architecture, and gardening all contributed to the creation of this national, ‘enlightened’, Northern cultural environment, with its emphasis on a home-grown legal tradition, on a heroic Celtic past, and on the imagined democracy…

To challenge Europe’s dominant aesthetics, 18th-century Britain forged a new ‘Northern’ identity. This book explores the roots of British Romanticism in a celebrated past of Celtic heroes, King Arthur, and the fantasy world of myth.

“The Turn of the Hand”

A Memoir from the Irish Margins

By: Mary Moriarty

From £24.99

Recent decades have seen an enormous resurgence in the arts of memoir and life writing. Nowhere is this more true than in the case of Ireland and other postcolonial countries, where memoir has functioned to regenerate and re-present meaningful incidents and events in the pasts of particular individuals or cultural groups. This memoir, written by an “insider,” recalls the lives of various members of the Irish Traveller community during an era of enormous social and cultural change. The Irish Traveller community are a group whose history has often been forgotten,…

This memoir, written by an “insider,” recalls the lives of the Irish Traveller community during an era of enormous social and cultural change. It tells the stories of a people whose history has often been forgotten or relegated to the cultural margins.

Horace’s Odes and Carmen Saeculare

By: Simon Preece

From £40.99

At a time of extraordinary political upheaval, Horace wrote poetry and proudly boasted that his Odes were bringing to Rome the metres and subject matter of the Greek lyric poets who had flourished some six centuries earlier. His achievement ensured that the Odes remained unique in Latin literature, and they have continued to be read and loved for two thousand years. Horace’s metrical diversity is fundamental to his artistry, so these translations recreate the original thirteen metres in English. They are written in elegant verse which is always alert to…

Horace’s Odes brought Greek lyric metres to Rome and have been loved for 2000 years. These elegant verse translations recreate the original metres, capturing the poetry’s unique structure and sound. Includes a full introduction, extensive notes, and facing-page Latin text.

Peter Pan and the Mind of J. M. Barrie

An Exploration of Cognition and Consciousness

By: Rosalind Ridley

From £34.99

What is Peter Pan all about? Many of us realise that there is a bit more to the stories than a simple fantasy about flying away to a wonderful place in which to play, and that there is something psychologically rather dark about the events in the stories. But J. M. Barrie’s work has not previously been considered from the perspective of either the science of his time, or the insights of modern cognitive psychology. This book explores the texts of Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens (1906) and Peter and…

Ridley considers the work of Barrie from the perspective of the science of his time and the insights of modern cognitive psychology, arguing that Barrie describes the limited mental abilities of infants and animals in order to illuminate the structure of human adult cognition.

One Hundred Years of Solitude, Struggle, and Violence along the US/Mexico Border

An Oral History

By: John Thomas

From £46.99

This book features oral histories, mainly of members of the ranching families who have lived in the Mexican State of Sonora and the corresponding territory in the US that stretches from Tijuana on the California border to Agua Prieta on the Arizona border. The elders in those families recall the tales that their grandparents told, providing a century of perspectives on the revolution in economics, culture, and drug trade that the area has witnessed. The book uses the voices of those who have lived through the vicissitudes of…

Thomas brings together the oral histories of those who have lived in the Mexican State of Sonora and the corresponding territory in the US, using these voices to paint the revolution in economics, culture, and drug trade that the area has witnessed in gripping, personal terms.

Laughter and War

Humorous-Satirical Magazines in Britain, France, Germany and Russia 1914–1918

By: Lesley Milne

From £34.99

War is no laughing matter. During a war, however, laughter can play a vital role in sustaining morale, both in the armies at the Front and in their homelands. Among wars, the 1914–18 conflict has left a haunting legacy, and remains a central topic in modern European history. This book offers a comparative study of the impact of the war in four countries, and breaks new ground by exploring this through the medium of what their respective populations laughed at. By searching the pages of four humorous-satirical magazines,…

This book explores the impact of World War One in four countries, and breaks new ground by exploring this through the medium of what their respective populations laughed at, investigating four humorous-satirical magazines of the period.

Reading Henry James in the Twenty-First Century

Heritage and Transmission

By: Adrian Harding, Annick Duperray, Dennis Tredy

Edited By: Adrian Harding, Annick Duperray, Dennis Tredy

From £35.99

To commemorate the recent centennial of Henry James’s death and to help readers understand the depth and scope of the author’s influence both today and during the previous century, thirty leading Jamesian scholars from twelve different countries and five continents were asked to explore ways in which the notions of ‘heritage’ and ‘transmission’ currently come into play when reading James. The resulting chapters of this volume are divided into three main sections, each focusing on different ways in which James’s legacy is being re-evaluated today—from his influence on key authors,…

Leading scholars re-evaluate Henry James’s legacy. This collection explores his influence on culture, the artists who shaped his work, and radical new readings for the 21st century. A guide to tracing his ‘figure in the carpet’ and understanding his continued impact today.