Bloomsbury Literary Studies

Knowing One's Place in Contemporary Irish and Polish Poetry

I am pleased to tell you about a new publication in comparative literature, which explores themes of belonging—or, more precisely, of not belonging—in contemporary poetry. Knowing One’s Place in Contemporary Irish and Polish Poetry offers both an extended comparative study of the affinities shared by Irish and Polish poetry as well as close readings of Seamus Heaney, Derek Mahon, Adam Zagajewski and Julia Hartwig.  Ireland and Poland, with their tangled histories of colonization, place a large premium upon knowing one’s place.  But what happens when a poet makes a career out of refusing to know her place in the way her culture expects? Magdalena Kay (University of Victoria, Canada) explores the consequences of this refusal, allowing the above-mentioned poets to respond through their own poems, leading to surprising conclusions about the connection of knowledge and belonging, roots and identity.

An early review:

"Through a careful and extensive examination of both Polish and Irish poetries and their prominent contemporary voices, Magdalena Kay’s book offers excellent insight into the sense of identity and belonging as filtered through poetic meditation.  Her highly nuanced reading, founded on the consequences of history for an individual consciousness and its creative expression, is driven by the imperative of respect for poetic singularity; indeed, seldom does one encounter this kind of synchrony between a critic and a poet.  Her eloquently written and coherently structured book adds a new and original perspective to the emerging field of Irish–Polish comparison." -- Bozena Shallcross, Associate Professor of Polish Literature, University of Chicago, USA

Knowing One’s Place in Contemporary Irish and Polish Poetry is available now in North America and will publish elsewhere in April.

Improvisation as Art by Edgar Landgraf

Improvisation as Art, the first book in our new series “New Directions in German Studies”, has been insightfully and well-reviewed in the latest issue of the German Quarterly. An extract:

“Both students and scholars of 18th and early 19th-century German literature, as well as anyone interested in modern notions of art and improvisation will benefit highly from this erudite and clearly written study, which expands on Luhmann’s descriptive and avowedly value-free, sociological theory of art and makes it accessible to a wider audience. By including in the discussion also an opponent of systems theory, Jacques Derrida, who insisted on the ‘incalculability of the incalculable’ and on openness for the advent of ‘the other’ (19–29), Landgraf contributes to current debates on ideas of freedom and the role of art and/as improvisation in society, inviting our participation.” -- German Quarterly (Winter 2012, reviewed by May Mergenthaler, The Ohio State University)

Other recently published titles in this series: 

The German Picaro and Modernity by Bernhard Malkmus

Citation and Precedent by Thomas O. Beebee

Post-Yugoslav Literature and Film

"…a major contribution to our understanding of southeastern Europe and, more broadly, to the debates over the politics of aesthetics today." So says Russell A. Berman (Walter A. Haas Professor in the Humanities at Stanford University) about Gordana Crnković’s new book Post-Yugoslav Literature and Film.

The 1990s violence in the Former Yugoslavia, the worst in Europe since World War II, triggered the conversion of multi-ethnic, multi-religious, and cosmopolitan areas of idiosyncratic and independent socialism into regions of xenophobic nationalism, wars, and, afterwards, Western-style democracy and capitalism.  As Crnković shows, post-Yugoslav literature and film, unified by their artistic response to these cataclysmic changes, have much to offer the wider world. Indeed, her monograph argues for select post-Yugoslav literary and cinematic works as groundbreaking exploratory achievements of global relevance.

"With the publication of Post-Yugoslav Literature and Film, Gordana Crnković has confirmed her standing as one of the leading specialists in post-Yugoslav culture.  Anyone interested in the literature and film of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, or Serbia will find much of interest in this volume.  This is a work of mature scholarship, rich in insights, and deserves a place in every university library." -- Sabrina Ramet, Professor of Political Science, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway

"Gordana Crnković’s Post-Yugoslav Literature and Film is a groundbreaking book which single-handedly creates a new research agenda. Her analyses of Macedonian, Serbian, Croatian and Slovene literature and films will be much admired by readers and influence the way we think about post-Yugoslav cultural space in decades to come." -- Zoran Milutinovic, Senior Lecturer in South Slav Literature and Culture, School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies, University College London, UK

"This superb book provides a complex and engaging introduction to the culture of post-Yugoslavia, offering a philosophical reflection on the literature and film of the contemporary Balkans and the scars left behind by socialism, war and genocide. Through nuanced readings of key works, Crnković also makes a strong case for the emancipatory character of works of art, their enduring ability to articulate a civilizational rebuke to the human capacity for violence. The volume is a major contribution to our understanding of southeastern Europe and, more broadly, to the debates over the politics of aesthetics today." -- Russell A. Berman, Walter A. Haas Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Comparative Literature and German Studies, Stanford University, USA

Post-Yugoslav Literature and Film is available now in North America and will publish in the rest of the world in April.

Benjamin, Barthes and the Singularity of Photography

Earlier this month we published an exciting new comparative study of Walter Benjamin and Roland Barthes. Kathrin Yacavone (Department of French and Francophone Studies, the University of Nottingham, UK) looks at the importance of photography to these two thinkers and argues that, despite the different historical, philosophical and cultural contexts of their work, Benjamin and Barthes engage with similar issues and problems that photography uniquely poses, including the relationship between the photograph and its beholder as a confrontation between self and other, and the dynamic relation between time, subjectivity, memory and loss. Each writer emphasizes the singular event of the photograph’s apprehension and its ethical and existential aspects rooted in the power and poignancy of photographic images. Mapping the complex relationship between photographic history and theory, cultural criticism and autobiography, this book will be of considerable interest not only to historians and theorists of photography but also to scholars working in literary and cultural studies.

Some early endorsements:

“Meticulously tracing the network of connections between Benjamin’s and Barthes’s visions of the encounter between photograph and viewer, this book performs an invaluable critical service. Kathrin Yacavone’s discussion will be required reading for anyone seriously interested in photographic phenomenology or who has ever felt the singular impact of a photographic image.” -- Michael Sheringham, FBA, Marshal Foch Professor of French Literature, All Souls College, University of Oxford, UK

"The book offers a detailed comparison of two of the most influential photography critics/theorists in the 20th century. While Benjamin and Barthes are often mentioned alongside each other, their respective theories have not systematically and extensively compared. Given the towering status of both writers both within (critical) theory more generally and within photography studies more specifically, this study will mark a welcome addition to two important and further expanding fields of scholarship." -- Carolin Duttlinger, University Lecturer in German & Fellow of Wadham College, University of Oxford, UK

"This first book-length comparative study of Benjamin’s and Barthes’s work on photography addresses head-on the ethical phenomena involved in producing and reading photography." -- Elizabeth Stewart, Associate Professor of English, Yeshiva University, New York, USA

Benjamin, Barthes and the Singularity of Photography is available now in North American and will publish in the UK and rest of the world in April.

Open Letters Monthly on Robert Musil and the NonModern

Open Letters Monthly has published a wonderful and thoughtful review of Mark M. Freed's Robert Musil and the NonModern, praising the book as "the most exciting reading to date of Musil’s experimental method, his essayism, and his uncompromising openness to the hope of a lived utopia." As reviewer David Winters describes Freed's project:

"Modern life sets itself up through a series of exclusions and oppositions; it severs the self from the world, art from science, reason from feeling, and so on. Everything grows increasingly specialized, so that the more modern we get, the more we’re caught up in an escalating state of alienation. Freed’s remarkable study, Robert Musil and the NonModern, maps a terrain that’s at odds with all this, using Musil to call into question some of our basic assumptions about what it means to be modern. In this account, Musil isn’t so much a modernist (let alone a postmodernist) as someone who writes from both within and without, always ‘on the margins’ of any such absolute categories. His is a literature of the ‘nonmodern’; one which refuses to recognize modern conceptual boundaries. In short, The Man Without Qualities sets out to shake up all of the modern world’s ‘purified distinctions.’"

Read the full review here:

http://www.openlettersmonthly.com/there-will-be-no-more-great-ideas/

Samuel Beckett

Shakespeare isn't the only one celebrating this month, it is also Samuel Beckett's birthday. We publish lots of books on Beckett - below are some extracts that you can read for free. Get to grips with Samuel Beckett with our book Beckett: A Guide for the Perplexed - tackling all the daunting questions that emerge from his writing. You can read the Introduction for free by clicking on the 'preview' button below. Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot is from our Modern Theatre Guides - if you click below you can read the Introduction to the play plus the Background & Context. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jenny, Marketing Executive

 

European Romanticism wins 2010 International Romanticism prize

Congratulations to Stephen Prickett. The International Conference on Romanticism has just awarded European Romanticism the Jean-Pierre Barricelli Prize for the best book in Romanticism Studies in 2010.

The first anthology to place British Romanticism within a comprehensive and multi-lingual European context, European Romanticism offers a new intellectual map of Romanticism. Everything is reprinted in the original language with translations of all non-English material in parallel on the opposite page. The inclusion of essays on the North American and Japanese reception allows Romanticism to be seen as a global phenomenon.

To find out more, have a look at this free preview of the anthology.

The award will be made in October at the Conference’s annual meeting, this year to be held in Montreal.

Robert Harvey at Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung

Earlier this month Robert Harvey was invited to the Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung in Berlin to speak about his recently published Witnessness. More details here. To read a preview of this book please click on the widget to the left.

 

 

 
 

Stephen Burn praises The Novel: An Alternative History in The New York Times Book Review

In an essay for the series “Why Criticism Matters,” Stephen Burn heralded Steven Moore’s The Novel: An Alternative History as a potential starting point for literary criticism in the age of digital media.  Burn argues that the Amazon.com review has ended the time of the critic as a 'cultural arbiter,' passing down informed opinions to a population of lay readers.  In a day when the common reader has his own voice, the critic should work more to illuminate and elucidate a work than to offer a judgment.  An essential part of this task is situating a novel within literary history, as part of an ongoing dialogue with its predecessors.  Burn offered The Novel: An Alternative History as a paradigm for this approach:

'Steven Moore’s recent encyclopedic study…dramatically amplifies our understanding of what the novel can and cannot do, and highlights living currents that sprang into existence 40 centuries ago and continue to flow into the contemporary novel.' -- The New York Times Book Review

We are thrilled to hear that one of our most recent publications has made such a timely intervention in the critical scene!  Check out the full article here.

European Local-Color Literature

Always searching for new areas to explore and advance, Josephine Donovan has written and edited influential works in areas as varied as Feminist Theory, Animal Rights, and what she calls local-color American literature. It is the development of her work in this last area that is the impetus for her soon to be published European Local-Color Literature: an exploration of the rise of local literature in Europe in the nineteenth century, and its ties to similar developments in North America. Professor Donovan argues that we should view 19th century local-color literature in Ireland, Scotland, Germany and France as a movement and that, collectively, these writings constitute a form of resistance to the "institutions and ideologies of modernity."

Donovan's book has already received high praise from her fellow scholars:

"...breaks important new ground in the writing of modern literary history." - Sylvia Mayer, Chair of American Studies, University of Bayreuth

"...this stunningly original book argues that the European local literature embodies Foucault's concept of marginal 'subjugated knowledges.' ... Filling in the gaps, this study constitutes a radical reinterpretation of the development of Western literature." - Deborah D. Rogers, Professor of English, University of Maine

"...brings into focus and situates literary works of which we should all be more aware." - Mary N. Layoun, Professor of Comparative Literature, University of Wisconsin-Madison

"Reinvesting the local, Donovan's book provocatively suggests that the challenges of nineteenth-century Europe are today's challenges." - Cecile Roudeau, Associate Professor, Universite Paris 3 - Sorbonne Nouvelle

"Yet again, Donovan has expanded and enriched our understanding of local-color writing and its significance." - Ann Romines, Professor of English, The George Washington University