The introductions in this anthology are meant to be just that: a basic overview of what students need to know before they begin reading, with topics that students can research further. An open access literature textbook cannot be a history book at the same time, but history is the great companion of literature: The more history students know, the easier it is for them to interpret literature.

Subject focuses on fiction, drama, and poetry and possibly films inspired by these topics mostly of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. What is Britain now? Its metropolises are increasingly multicultural. Its hold over its distant colonies is a thing of the past. Its sway within the global political arena is weak. Its command over Northern Ireland, Wales, and Scotland is broken or threatened. What have novelists made of all this? What are they writing as the old empire fades away and as new social and political formations emerge? These are the questions that will concern us in this course.

Subject focuses on fiction, drama, and poetry and possibly films inspired by these topics mostly of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s.

Subject focuses on fiction, drama, and poetry and possibly films inspired by these topics mostly of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. This semester, Contemporary Literature (21L.488) deals with Irish literature, a subject broad and deep. To achieve a manageable volume of study, the course focuses primarily on poetry and prose, at drama's expense, and on living writers, at the expense of their predecessors. Each class session follows a discussion format, often with students assigned to lead-off or summarize the day's topic.

In this class we will focus on the connections between urban exploration and reading, attending to such shared concerns as pacing, legibility, transgression, attention and distraction, tracing and retracing, and memory. This idea of re-reading cities will be both a theme centering our discussions and a guiding principle of the course design, as we continuously loop back, returning to haunt texts we left behind earlier in the semester.

This resource models a possible research unit for instructors interested in guiding students through contextual literary analysis. As such, this resource outlines strategies for delving into the biographical, historical, and cultural contexts of recommended mentor texts, such as ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and ‘Hills Like White Elephants’ by Ernest Hemingway. Additionally, this resource provides a suggested pacing for the unit as well as an outline and rubric for crafting and evaluating the final essay. By the end of this section, instructors will be equipped to design their own contextual analysis research unit that suits their class interests and needs.

Author: Katherine Yoerg
Editor: Mary Landry, C. Anneke Snyder
Supervisor: Terri Pantuso

The Russian text of "The Death of Ivan Ilich" is presented for study in various formats: accompanied by an English translation; fully glossed, with explanatory and interpretive annotations; and supplemented by introductory remarks and an extensive bibliography.

Historical background information and summary for "Dream of the Rood"

This is an open educational resource for teaching Early British Literature. All texts are in the public domain.

An examination of eighteenth-century English writers in their historical context. Authors vary but all address issues of capitalism and class mobility; romantic love and the re-definition of femininity and masculinity; the beginnings of mass culture; colonialism and international travel.

Provides a new account of the emergence of Irish gothic fiction in mid-eighteenth century. This book provides a robustly theorised and thoroughly historicised account of the ‘beginnings’ of Irish gothic fiction, maps the theoretical terrain covered by other critics, and puts forward a new history of the emergence of the genre in Ireland. The main argument the book makes is that the Irish gothic should be read in the context of the split in Irish Anglican public opinion that opened in the 1750s, and seen as a fictional instrument of liberal Anglican opinion in a changing political landscape. By providing a fully historicized account of the beginnings of the genre in Ireland, the book also addresses the theoretical controversies that have bedevilled discussion of the Irish gothic in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. The book gives ample space to the critical debate, and rigorously defends a reading of the Irish gothic as an Anglican, Patriot tradition. This reading demonstrates the connections between little-known Irish gothic fictions of the mid-eighteenth century (The Adventures of Miss Sophia Berkley and Longsword), and the Irish gothic tradition more generally, and also the gothic as a genre of global significance. Key Features * Examines gothic texts including Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Charles Robert Maturin's Melmoth the Wanderer, (Anon), The Adventures of Miss Sophia Berkley and Thomas Leland's Longsword * Provides a rigorous and robust theory of the Irish Gothic * Reads early Irish gothic fully into the political context of mid-eighteenth century Ireland This title was made Open Access by libraries from around the world through Knowledge Unlatched.

A brief history of conflicting ideas about mankind's relation to the natural environment as exemplified in works of poetry, fiction, and discursive argument from ancient times to the present. What is the overall character of the natural world? Is mankind's relation to it one of stewardship and care, or of hostility and exploitation? Readings include Aristotle, The Book of Genesis, Shakespeare, Descartes, Robinson Crusoe, Swift, Rousseau, Wordsworth, Darwin, Thoreau, Faulkner, and Lovelock's Gaia. This subject offers a broad survey of texts (both literary and philosophical) drawn from the Western tradition and selected to trace the growth of ideas about nature and the natural environment of mankind. The term nature in this context has to do with the varying ways in which the physical world has been conceived as the habitation of mankind, a source of imperatives for the collective organization and conduct of human life. In this sense, nature is less the object of complex scientific investigation than the object of individual experience and direct observation. Using the term "nature" in this sense, we can say that modern reference to "the environment" owes much to three ideas about the relation of mankind to nature. In the first of these, which harks back to ancient medical theories and notions about weather, geographical nature was seen as a neutral agency affecting or transforming agent of mankind's character and institutions. In the second, which derives from religious and classical sources in the Western tradition, the earth was designed as a fit environment for mankind or, at the least, as adequately suited for its abode, and civic or political life was taken to be consonant with the natural world. In the third, which also makes its appearance in the ancient world but becomes important only much later, nature and mankind are regarded as antagonists, and one must conquer the other or be subjugated by it.

English Literature: Victorians and Moderns is an anthology with a difference. In addition to providing annotated teaching editions of many of the most frequently-taught classics of Victorian and Modern poetry, fiction and drama, it also provides a series of guided research casebooks which make available numerous published essays from open access books and journals, as well as several reprinted critical essays from established learned journals such as English Studies in Canada and the Aldous Huxley Annual with the permission of the authors and editors. Designed to supplement the annotated complete texts of three famous short novels: Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, each casebook offers cross-disciplinary guided research topics which will encourage majors in fields other than English to undertake topics in diverse areas, including History, Economics, Anthropology, Political Science, Biology, and Psychology. Selections have also been included to encourage topical, thematic, and generic cross-referencing. Students will also be exposed to a wide-range of approaches, including new-critical, psychoanalytic, historical, and feminist.

Intensive study of an important topic or period in drama. Close analysis of major plays, enriched by critical readings and attention to historical and theatrical contexts. Instruction and practice in oral and written communication. Topic for Fall: Renaissance Drama.

Seminar on the creativity in art, science, and technology. Discussion of how these pursuits are jointly dependent on affective as well as cognitive elements in human nature. Feeling and imagination studied in relation to principles of idealization, consummation, and the aesthetic values that give meaning to science and technology as well as literature and the other arts. Readings in philosophy, psychology, and literature.

This course examines problems in the philosophy of film as well as literature studied in relation to their making of myths. The readings and films that are discussed in this course draw upon classic myths of the western world. Emphasis is placed on meaning and technique as the basis of creative value in both media.

This anthology was compiled with the express intention of re-writing motherhood and women back into historical literature anthologies. Since the study of history and literature have often been combined, both have become richer fields of study in the process, offering greater yields for each in the context of the other. Both, however, have had a long history of marginalizing female voices, particularly female voices of color. Though many modern anthologies have attempted to increase inclusivity, adding a wider diversity of voices with varying levels of success, this brief anthology is a devotion to American works written by women before 1865 with a specific focus on rectifying one of the frequently ignored elements of history and literature: motherhood.

From the site: "Shakespeare's Works - Shakespeare wrote at least 38 plays and over 150 short and long poems, many of which are considered to be the finest ever written in English. His works have been translated into every major living language, and some others besides (the Folger's holdings include translations in Esperanto and Klingon), and nearly 400 years after his death, they continue to be performed around the world."

"The Complete Works of William Shakespeare - The Folger has copies of every play, from the earliest printings to modern editions, and we offer carefully edited print and digital texts. "

Major narrative texts from diverse Western cultures, beginning with Homer and concluding with at least one film. Emphasis on literary and cultural issues: on the artistic significance of the chosen texts and on their identity as anthropological artifacts whose conventions and assumptions are rooted in particular times, places, and technologies. Syllabus varies, but always includes a sampling of popular culture (folk tales, ballads) as well as some landmark narratives such as the Iliad or the Odyssey, Don Quixote, Anna Karenina, Ulysses, and a classic film. This class will investigate the ways in which the formal aspects of Western storytelling in various media have shaped both fantasies and perceptions, making certain understandings of experience possible through the selection, arrangement, and processing of narrative material. Surveying the field chronologically across the major narrative genres and sub-genres from Homeric epic through the novel and across media to include live performance, film, and video games, we will be examining the ways in which new ideologies and psychological insights become available through the development of various narrative techniques and new technologies. Emphasis will be placed on the generic conventions of story-telling as well as on literary and cultural issues, the role of media and modes of transmission, the artistic significance of the chosen texts and their identity as anthropological artifacts whose conventions and assumptions are rooted in particular times, places, and technologies. Authors will include: Homer, Sophocles, Herodotus, Christian evangelists, Marie de France, Cervantes, La Clos, Poe, Lang, Cocteau, Disney-Pixar, and Maxis-Electronic Arts, with theoretical readings in Propp, Bakhtin, Girard, Freud, and Marx.