Literature: history and criticism

Imagine looking over the shoulder of your favourite author and witnessing the moment they begin writing the opening chapter of their best-loved novel. What you might see is that the author has to write, cut and rewrite their words, often many times, in...

A picture book is a book with pictures, but it's so much more than that! This A to Z guide helps you level up your picture book reading experiences, empowering yourself and the young readers in your world to dive deeper into what makes a great picture...

A fascinating and authoritative collection of essays examining the varied adaptations of and responses to Chaucer's work.The Geoffrey Chaucer of this book is not the Father of English Literature that you think you know. In this wide-ranging collection of...

Numerous books have attempted to chronicle the life of Dante Alighieri, yet essential questions remain unanswered. How did this self-taught Florentine become the celebrated author of the Divine Comedy? Was his exile from Florence so extraordinary? How...

H.D. (Hilda Doolittle, 1886-1961) was one of the first writers of free verse in English, best known for her sparse Imagist poems. For over forty years she wrote poetry that resurrected forgotten ancient goddesses, and autobiographical prose that explored...

A selection of the greatest sentences by the master, Ernest Hemingway. Sentences that can take a reader's breath away and are not easily forgotten. Each sentence has been selected and examined by authors such as Elizabeth Strout, Sherman Alexie, Paula...

If a person could travel eternally through space and time, how would this power affect him? Doctor Who Psychology explores this question through an analysis of the longest-running sci-fi TV series of all time. This fascinating in-depth academic study,...

The Walking Dead depicts a postapocalyptic world filled with relentless violence and death. How would such trauma affect the psyche? Nineteen fascinating essays explore the deep psychological forces that drive the show's action, from the costs of...

When an essay is due and dreaded exams loom, here's the lit-crit help students need to succeed! SparkNotes Literature Guides make studying smarter, better, and faster. They provide chapter-by-chapter analysis, explanations of key themes, motifs, and...

When an essay is due and dreaded exams loom, here's the lit-crit help students need to succeed! SparkNotes Literature Guides make studying smarter, better, and faster. They provide chapter-by-chapter analysis, explanations of key themes, motifs, and...

Many definitions of postmodernism focus on its nature as the aftermath of the modern industrial age when technology developed dynamically. In The Postmodern Condition Jean-Francois Lyotard extends that analysis to postmodernism by looking at the status...

Kierkegaard claimed that the gods created man because they were bored, and Baudelaire predicted that the "delicate monster" of boredom would one day swallow up the whole world in an immense yawn. Between these two statements lies the undefined expanse of...

A unique look at how classical notions of ascent and flight preoccupied early modern British writers and artistsBetween the late sixteenth century and early nineteenth century, the British imagination - poetic, political, intellectual, spiritual and...

George Kennedy's three volumes on classical rhetoric have long been regarded as authoritative treatments of the subject. This new volume, an extensive revision and abridgment of The Art of Persuasion in Greece, The Art of Rhetoric in the Roman World, and...

An engaging reassessment of the celebrated essayist and his relevance to contemporary readersMore than two centuries after his birth, Ralph Waldo Emerson remains one of the presiding spirits in American culture. Yet his reputation as the starry-eyed...