Bücher der Reihe Literature in Context

This collection of essays reveals how Beckett entered into dialogue with important literary traditions and the realities of his time. The essays are designed to complement each other, building an overview that will allow students and scholars to come away with a better sense of Beckett's life, writings and legacy.

The forty-two new essays in this book tell 'the Bronte story' as it has never been told before, drawing on the latest research while offering new perspectives on the writings of the sisters. The works are explored in the context of social, political and cultural developments in early-nineteenth-century Britain.

William Wordsworth in Context offers thirty-five concise and readable chapters on the essential contexts for understanding all aspects of the leading English Romantic poet. It discusses Wordsworth's life, family and friendships, his critical reception, and key aspects of the cultural, historical, political, and scientific contexts in which he wrote.

William Faulkner in Context explores the environment that conditioned Faulkner's creative work. This volume provides a broad and authoritative framework that will help readers to better understand this widely read yet challenging writer. Each essay offers a critical assessment of Faulkner's work as it relates to such topics as genre, reception, and the significance of place.

In short, lively and eminently readable chapters, an unprecedented number of aspects of Samuel Johnson's world is covered. Richly illustrated, with a chronology of Johnson's life and works and an extensive bibliography, this book is a major new work of reference on eighteenth-century culture and the age of Johnson.

Joseph Conrad's international experience gave him a perspective unique among English writers of the twentieth century. This volume examines the biographical, historical, cultural and political contexts that fashioned his works. It will appeal to scholars as well as to those beginning their study of this extraordinary writer.

A fresh, multifaceted assessment of Robert Frost's life and works. Contributors include a number of influential scholars, but also such distinguished poets as Paul Muldoon, Dana Gioia, Mark Scott, and Jay Parini. Essays employ highly readable prose, offering scholars and students of Frost an accessible yet comprehensive reference and guide.

Prodigiously learned, alive to the massive social changes of her time, defiant of many Victorian orthodoxies, George Eliot is at once chronicler and analyst, novelist of nostalgia and monumental thinker. Her literary achievement is brought into focus by essays on its historical, intellectual, political and social contexts.

This collection sets Marlowe's plays and poems in their historical context, exploring his world and his wider cultural influence. Chapters by the most exciting critics writing on approaches to Marlowe's writings discuss both major and lesser-known works. Topics include history and politics, religion, modern film adaptations and Marlowe and Shakespeare.

Joseph Conrad's international experience gave him a perspective unique among English writers of the twentieth century. This volume examines the biographical, historical, cultural and political contexts that fashioned his works. It will appeal to scholars as well as to those beginning their study of this extraordinary writer.

Covering a range of topics - biographical, social, literary, and intellectual - and addressing both the sources of his work and how he influenced later writers, this exploration of the world of John Keats (1795-1821) enriches our understanding of one of Britain's greatest poets and letter writers.

Explores the degree to which Fitzgerald was in tune with the social, historical and cultural contexts of the 1920s and 1930s. Highlighting elements of both high culture and popular culture, this book demonstrates the extent to which Fitzgerald embraced, internalized and came to embody the Jazz Age and Depression Era.

An introduction, in a series of short, accessibly written essays, to the key places, people, themes and intellectual frameworks most important to Yeats' development, as well as the production and reception of his work.

This collection of essays by leading scholars offers a comprehensive overview of contexts important for the study of Emily Dickinson's writings. The book is carefully designed to provide a clear and authoritative examination of those contexts essential to the full understanding of this challenging body of work.

Author of renowned works including The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton was one of America's most popular and prolific writers. Bringing together a team of international scholars, this text provides the first substantive volume focused on the social, literary, cultural and historical contexts that produced the writer and her career.

The forty-two new essays in this book tell 'the Bronte story' as it has never been told before, drawing on the latest research while offering new perspectives on the writings of the sisters. The works are explored in the context of social, political and cultural developments in early-nineteenth-century Britain.

This collection covers the range of Hardy's works and their social and intellectual contexts, providing a comprehensive introduction to Hardy's life and times. Featuring short, lively contributions from forty-four international scholars, the volume is a contextual reference for scholars of Victorian and modernist literature as well as the general reader.

Comprising thirty-two fresh essays and a detailed chronology, this collection presents Ralph Waldo Emerson in the philosophical, aesthetic, theological, scientific, familial, social and political contexts in which he thought and wrote, and surveys the popular and critical reception that made him a complex national and international icon.

Written by specialists in various areas of early nineteenth-century American life, these accessible essays examine Poe's geographical, social and literary contexts, as well as those created by the publishing industry and advances in science and technology, painting an unprecedented portrait of his life and times.

This book of lively essays examines the life and writing of Auden by considering them in a variety of historical, social, cultural and literary contexts. Written by distinguished scholars and poets with a wide readership in mind, these essays offer helpful and informative models for engaging with Auden's poetry.