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Cambridge Introductions to Literature address the fundamental issues literature students require to pursue a course of study. They provide basic information on the history of a literary topic with accessible and comprehensive coverage of its development. Leading scholars guide students through the major issues involved in each area. Combining relevant information and fresh interpretation, these Introductions are specifically designed for use on courses and in the classroom.

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91 results in Cambridge Introductions to Literature

Page 2 of 5

The Cambridge Introduction to George Orwell
  • John Rodden, John Rossi
  • Published online:
    05 August 2012
    Print publication:
    07 June 2012
  • Arguably the most influential political writer of the twentieth century, George Orwell remains a crucial voice for our times. Known world-wide for his two best-selling masterpieces Nineteen Eighty-Four, a gripping portrait of a dystopian future, and Animal Farm, a brilliant satire on the Russian Revolution, Orwell has been revered as an essayist, journalist and literary-political intellectual, and his works have exerted a powerful international impact on the post-World War Two era. This Introduction examines Orwell's life, work and legacy, addressing his towering achievement and his ongoing appeal. Combining important biographical detail with close analysis of his writings, the book considers the various genres in which Orwell wrote: the realistic novel, the essay, journalism and the anti-utopia. Ideally suited for readers approaching Orwell's work for the first time, the book concludes with an extended reflection on why George Orwell has enjoyed a literary afterlife unprecedented among modern authors in any language.

The Cambridge Introduction to Gabriel García Márquez
  • Gerald Martin
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    26 April 2012
  • The Colombian Nobel Prize winner, Gabriel García Márquez (b. 1927), wrote two of the great novels of the twentieth century, One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera. As novelist, short story writer and journalist, García Márquez has one of literature's most instantly recognizable styles and since the beginning of his career has explored a consistent set of themes, revolving around the relationship between power and love. His novels exemplify the transition between modernist and post-modernist fiction and have made magical realism one of the most significant and influential phenomena in contemporary writing. Aimed at students of Latin American and comparative literature, this book provides essential information about García Márquez's life and career, his published work in literature and journalism, and his political engagement. It connects the fiction effectively to the writer's own experience and explains his enduring importance in world literature.

The Cambridge Introduction to British Romantic Poetry
  • Michael Ferber
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    26 April 2012
  • The best way to learn about Romantic poetry is to plunge in and read a few Romantic poems. This book guides the new reader through this experience, focusing on canonical authors - Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Keats, Blake and Shelley - whilst also including less familiar figures as well. Each chapter explains the history and development of a genre or sets out an important context for the poetry, with a wealth of practical examples. Michael Ferber emphasizes connections between poets as they responded to each other and to great literary, social and historical changes around them. A unique appendix resolves most difficulties new readers of works from this period might face: unfamiliar words, unusual word order, the subjunctive mood and meter. This enjoyable and stimulating book is an ideal introduction to some of the most powerful and pleasing poems in the English language, written in one of the greatest periods in English poetry.

The Cambridge Introduction to the Eighteenth-Century Novel
  • April London
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    05 April 2012
  • In the eighteenth century, the novel became established as a popular literary form all over Europe. Britain proved an especially fertile ground, with Defoe, Fielding, Richardson and Burney as early exponents of the novel form. The Cambridge Introduction to the Eighteenth-Century Novel considers the development of the genre in its formative period in Britain. Rather than present its history as a linear progression, April London gives an original new structure to the field, organizing it through three broad thematic clusters – identity, community and history. Within each of these themes, she explores the central tensions of eighteenth-century fiction: between secrecy and communicativeness, independence and compliance, solitude and family, cosmopolitanism and nation-building. The reader will gain a thorough understanding of both prominent and lesser-known novels and novelists, key social and literary contexts, the tremendous formal variety of the early novel and its growth from a marginal to a culturally central genre.

The Cambridge Introduction to Byron
  • Richard Lansdown
  • Published online:
    05 February 2013
    Print publication:
    29 March 2012
  • Author of the most influential long poem of its era (Childe Harold's Pilgrimage) and the funniest long poem in European literature (Don Juan), Lord Byron was also the literary superstar of Romanticism, whose effect on nineteenth-century writers, artists, musicians and politicians - but also everyday readers - was second to none. His poems seduced and scandalized readers, and his life and legend were correspondingly magnetic, given added force by his early death in the Greek War of Independence. This introduction compresses his extraordinary life to manageable proportions and gives readers a firm set of contexts in the politics, warfare, and Romantic ideology of Byron's era. It offers a guide to the main themes in his wide-ranging oeuvre, from the early poems that made him famous (and infamous) overnight, to his narrative tales, dramas and the comic epic left incomplete at his death.

The Cambridge Introduction to Christopher Marlowe
  • Tom Rutter
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    02 February 2012
  • Providing a comprehensive survey of Christopher Marlowe's literary career, this Introduction presents an approachable account of the life, works and influence of the groundbreaking Elizabethan dramatist and poet. It includes in-depth discussions of all of Marlowe's plays, stressing what was new and revolutionary about them as well as how they made use of existing dramatic models. Marlowe's poems and translations, sometimes marginalised in discussions of his work, are analysed to emphasise their literary importance and political resonances. The book presents a balanced discussion of Marlowe's turbulent life and considers his afterlives: the influence of his work on other writers and examples of how his plays have been performed. In addition to introducing the reader to the historical and religious contexts within which Marlowe wrote, the Introduction stresses the qualities that continue to make his work fascinating: intellectual range, radical irony and an awareness of the dangerously compelling power of theatre.

The Cambridge Introduction to Milton
  • Stephen B. Dobranski
  • Published online:
    05 January 2015
    Print publication:
    26 January 2012
  • John Milton is one of the most important and influential writers in English literary history. The goal of this book is to make Milton's works more accessible and enjoyable by providing a comprehensive overview of the author's life, times and writings. It describes essential details from Milton's biography, explains some of the cultural and historical contexts in which he wrote, offers fresh analyses of his major pamphlets and poems - including Lycidas, Areopagitica and Paradise Lost - and describes in depth traditional and recent responses to his reputation and writings. Separate sections focus on important concepts or key passages from his major works to illustrate how readers can interpret - and get excited about - Milton's writings. This detailed and engaging introduction to Milton will help readers not only better understand the author's life and works but also better appreciate why Milton matters.

The Cambridge Introduction to Modernist Poetry
  • Peter Howarth
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    10 November 2011
  • Modernist poems are some of the twentieth-century's major cultural achievements, but they are also hard work to read. This wide-ranging introduction takes readers through modernism's most famous poems and some of its forgotten highlights to show why modernists thought difficulty and disorientation essential for poetry in the modern world. In-depth chapters on Pound, Eliot, Yeats and the American modernists outline how formal experiments take on the new world of mass media, democracies, total war and changing religious belief. Chapters on the avant-gardes and later modernism examine how their styles shift as they try to re-make the community of readers. Howarth explains in a clear and enjoyable way how to approach the forms, politics and cultural strategies of modernist poetry in English.

The Cambridge Introduction to American Literary Realism
  • Phillip J. Barrish
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    06 October 2011
  • Between the Civil War and the First World War, realism was the most prominent form of American fiction. Realist writers of the period include some of America's greatest, such as Henry James, Edith Wharton and Mark Twain, but also many lesser-known writers whose work still speaks to us today, for instance Charles Chesnutt, Zitkala-Ša and Sarah Orne Jewett. Emphasizing realism's historical context, this introduction traces the genre's relationship with powerful, often violent, social conflicts involving race, gender, class and national origin. It also examines how the realist style was created; the necessarily ambiguous relationship between realism produced on the page and reality outside the book; and the different, often contradictory, forms 'realism' took in literary works by different authors. The most accessible yet sophisticated account of American literary realism currently available, this volume will be of great value to students, teachers and readers of the American novel.

The Cambridge Introduction to Eighteenth-Century Poetry
  • John Sitter
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    06 October 2011
  • For readers daunted by the formal structures and rhetorical sophistication of eighteenth-century English poetry, this introduction by John Sitter brings the techniques and the major poets of the period 1700–1785 triumphantly to life. Sitter begins by offering a guide to poetic forms ranging from heroic couplets to blank verse, then demonstrates how skilfully male and female poets of the period used them as vehicles for imaginative experience, feelings and ideas. He then provides detailed analyses of individual works by poets from Finch, Swift and Pope, to Gray, Cowper and Barbauld. An approachable introduction to English poetry and major poets of the eighteenth century, this book provides a grounding in poetic analysis useful to students and general readers of literature.

The Cambridge Introduction to Marcel Proust
  • Adam Watt
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    07 April 2011
  • Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time, 1913–27) changed the course of modern narrative fiction. This Introduction provides an account of Proust's life, the socio-historical and cultural contexts of his work and an assessment of his early works. At its core is a volume-by-volume study of In Search of Lost Time, which attends to its remarkable superstructure, as well as to individual images and the intricacies of Proust's finely-stitched prose. The book reaches beyond stale commonplaces of madeleines and memory, alerting readers to Proust's verbal virtuosity, his preoccupations with the fleeting and the unforeseeable, with desire, jealousy and the nature of reality. Lively, informative chapters on Proust criticism and the work's afterlives in contemporary culture provide a multitude of paths to follow. The book charges readers with the energy and confidence to move beyond anecdote and hearsay and to read Proust's novel for themselves.

The Cambridge Introduction to Literature and the Environment
  • Timothy Clark
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    06 January 2011
  • The degrading environment of the planet is something that touches everyone. This 2011 book offers an introductory overview of literary and cultural criticism that concerns environmental crisis in some form. Both as a way of reading texts and as a theoretical approach to culture more generally, 'ecocriticism' is a varied and fast-changing set of practices which challenges inherited thinking and practice in the reading of literature and culture. This introduction defines what ecocriticism is, its methods, arguments and concepts, and will enable students to look at texts in a wholly new way. Boxed sections explain key critical terms and contemporary debates in the field with 'hands-on' examples and comparisons. Timothy Clark's thoughtful approach makes this an ideal first encounter with environmental readings of literature.

The Cambridge Introduction to the Novel
  • Marina MacKay
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    25 November 2010
  • Beginning its life as the sensational entertainment of the eighteenth century, the novel has become the major literary genre of modern times. Drawing on hundreds of examples of famous novels from all over the world, Marina MacKay explores the essential aspects of the novel and its history: where novels came from and why we read them; how we think about their styles and techniques, their people, plots, places, and politics. Between the main chapters are longer readings of individual works, from Don Quixote to Midnight's Children. A glossary of key terms and a guide to further reading are included, making this an ideal accompaniment to introductory courses on the novel.

The Cambridge Introduction to Thomas Mann
  • Todd Kontje
  • Published online:
    05 September 2012
    Print publication:
    04 November 2010
  • Nobel Prize-winner Thomas Mann (1875–1955) is not only one of the leading German novelists of the twentieth century, but also one of the few to transcend national and language boundaries to achieve major stature in the English-speaking world. Famous from the time that he published his first novel in 1901, Mann became an iconic figure, seen as the living embodiment of German national culture. Leading scholar Todd Kontje provides a succinct introduction to Mann's life and work, discussing key moments in Mann's personal life and his career as a public intellectual, and giving readers a sense of why he is considered such an important - and controversial - writer. At the heart of the book is an informed appreciation of Mann's great literary achievements, including the novel The Magic Mountain and the haunting short story Death in Venice.

The Cambridge Introduction to the Old Norse-Icelandic Saga
  • Margaret Clunies Ross
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    28 October 2010
  • The medieval Norse-Icelandic saga is one of the most important European vernacular literary genres of the Middle Ages. This Introduction to the saga genre outlines its origins and development, its literary character, its material existence in manuscripts and printed editions, and its changing reception from the Middle Ages to the present time. Its multiple sub-genres - including family sagas, mythical-heroic sagas and sagas of knights - are described and discussed in detail, and the world of medieval Icelanders is powerfully evoked. The first general study of the Old Norse-Icelandic saga to be written in English for some decades, the Introduction is based on up-to-date scholarship and engages with current debates in the field. With suggestions for further reading, detailed information about the Icelandic literary canon, and a map of medieval Iceland, this book is aimed at students of medieval literature and assumes no prior knowledge of Scandinavian languages.

The Cambridge Introduction to Shakespeare's Poetry
  • Michael Schoenfeldt
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    07 October 2010
  • Shakespeare's poems, aside from the enduring appeal of the Sonnets, are much less familiar today than his plays, despite being enormously popular in his lifetime. This Introduction celebrates the achievement of Shakespeare as a poet, providing students with ways of understanding and enjoying his remarkable poems. It honours the aesthetic and intellectual complexity of the poems without making them seem unapproachably complicated, outlining their exquisite pleasures and absorbing enigmas. Schoenfeldt suggests that today's readers are better able to analyze aspects of the poems that were formerly ignored or the source of scandal - the articulation of a fervent same-sex love, for example, or the incipient racism inherent in a hierarchy of light and dark. By engaging closely with Shakespeare's major poems - 'Venus and Adonis', 'Lucrece', 'The Phoenix and the Turtle', the Sonnets and 'A Lover's Complaint' - the Introduction demonstrates how much these extraordinary poems still have to say to us.

The Cambridge Introduction to Chekhov
  • James N. Loehlin
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    07 October 2010
  • Chekhov is widely acknowledged as one of the most influential literary figures of modern times. Russia's preeminent playwright, he played a significant role in revolutionizing the modern theatre. His impact on prose fiction writing is incalculable: he helped define the modern short story. Beginning with an engaging account of Chekhov's life and cultural context in nineteenth-century Russia, this book introduces the reader to this fascinating and complex personality. Unlike much criticism of Chekhov, it includes detailed discussions of both his fiction and his plays. The Introduction traces his concise, impressionistic prose style from early comic sketches to mature works such as 'Ward No. 6' and 'In the Ravine'. Examining Chekhov's development as a dramatist, the book considers his one-act vaudevilles and early works, while providing a detailed, act-by-act analysis of the masterpieces on which his reputation rests: The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard.

The Cambridge Introduction to Charles Dickens
  • Jon Mee
  • Published online:
    05 August 2012
    Print publication:
    02 September 2010
  • Charles Dickens became immensely popular early on in his career as a novelist, and his appeal continues to grow with new editions prompted by recent television and film adaptations, as well as large numbers of students studying the Victorian novel. This lively and accessible introduction to Dickens focuses on the extraordinary diversity of his writing. Jon Mee discusses Dickens's novels, journalism and public performances, the historical contexts and his influence on other writers. In the process, five major themes emerge: Dickens the entertainer; Dickens and language; Dickens and London; Dickens, gender, and domesticity; and the question of adaptation, including Dickens's adaptations of his own work. These interrelated concerns allow readers to start making their own new connections between his famous and less widely read works and to appreciate fully the sheer imaginative richness of his writing, which particularly evokes the dizzying expansion of nineteenth-century London.

The Cambridge Introduction to Margaret Atwood
  • Heidi Slettedahl Macpherson
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    02 September 2010
  • Margaret Atwood offers an immensely influential voice in contemporary literature. Her novels have been translated into over 22 languages and are widely studied, taught and enjoyed. Her style is defined by her comic wit and willingness to experiment. Her work has ranged across several genres, from poetry to literary and cultural criticism, novels, short stories and art. This Introduction summarizes Atwood's canon, from her earliest poetry and her first novel, The Edible Woman, through The Handmaid's Tale to The Year of the Flood. Covering the full range of her work, it guides students through multiple readings of her oeuvre. It features chapters on her life and career, her literary, Canadian and feminist contexts, and how her work has been received and debated over the course of her career. With a guide to further reading and a clear, well organised structure, this book presents an engaging overview for students and readers.

The Cambridge Introduction to Samuel Taylor Coleridge
  • John Worthen
  • Published online:
    05 August 2012
    Print publication:
    02 September 2010
  • Author of 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner', 'Kubla Khan' and 'Christabel', and co-author with Wordsworth of Lyrical Ballads in 1798, Samuel Taylor Coleridge was one of the great writers and thinkers of the Romantic revolution. This innovative introduction discusses his interest in language and his extraordinary private notebooks, as well as his poems, his literary criticism and his biography. John Worthen presents a range of readings of Coleridge's work, along with biographical context and historical background. Discussion of Coleridge's notebooks alongside his poems illuminates this rich material and finds it a way into his creativity. Readers are invited to see Coleridge as an immensely self-aware, witty and charismatic writer who, although damaged by an opium habit, responded to and in his turn influenced the literary, political, religious and scientific thinking of his time.

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