Of Sex and Faerie: Further Essays on Genre Fiction
Taking up where the author's book Of Modern Dragons (2007) left off, these essays continue Lennard's investigation of the praxis of serial reading and the best genre fiction of recent decades, including work by Bill James, Walter Mosley, Lois Mcmaster Bujold, and Ursula K. Le Guin. There are groundbreaking studies of contemporary paranormal romance, and of Hornblower's transition to space, while the final essay deals with the phenomenon and explosive growth of fanfiction, and with the increasingly empowered status of the reader in a digital world. There is an extensive bibliography of genre and critical work.
Walter Mosley, Devil in a Blue Dress
The notes in this audiobook provide an overview of Mosley's career and the series, give historical and literary backgrounds to the novel (including Chandler, Himes, Pinkerton Men and Private Eyes, Hollywood's Gumshoes, and the 'GI Bill'), and consider the film adaptation of Devil. Chapter by chapter Annotations detail allusions, slang, musical references, flora and fauna, and fashion, while disentangling Mosley's real and fictive Los Angeles.
Reading Jane Austen: Emma
This audiobook seeks to uncover something of Emma's extraordinary multivalence through a close reading of the text, setting it in the context of Jane Austen's life, times and literary heritage and looking at the way it has been read and re-read by critics in the two centuries since it was published.
Philip Larkin: Selected Poems
The book offers a detailed commentary on the poetry of Philip Larkin, exploring the political and cultural contexts which have shaped his contemporary reputation.
Oliver Cromwell
This audiobook examines the factors that influenced Cromwell's evolution from fenland farmer to civil war general and national leader.
An Introduction to Rhetorical Terms
This study guide gives students a handy reference to the background knowledge of rhetorical terms demanded of them by critical and theoretical texts in the humanities.
An Introduction to Modern Feminist Theory
An explication of the major contributions to feminist theory in the late Twentieth Century. The audiobook covers Initial Articulations of the ‘Woman’ Problem (Virginia Woolf; Simone de Beauvoir), Radical Feminism (Kate Millett; Shulamith Firestone; Radicalesbians; Mary Daly), Black Feminism (Audre Lorde; Alice Walker; Patricia Hill Collins), French Feminism (Luce Irigaray; Hélène Cixous; Monique Wittig; Julia Kristeva), Materialist Feminism (Gayle Rubin; Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak), Queer Theory (Adrienne Rich; Judith Butler; Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick; Wayne Koestenbaum).
Existentialism
After an Introduction examining the historical moment of Existentialism, as a product of wartime discipline and consciousness, this audiobook sets out the thinking of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers on the broad questions of What is Man?
William Shakespeare: Henry IV
Students with little or no prior experience of studying Shakespeare in depth will find very useful the summaries of the conclusions of recent research into theatrical conditions, conventions and concepts in the time of Shakespeare. After an overview of Shakespeare’s life and career, the audiobook summarises Elizabethan attitudes to History and Politics, concepts of the cosmos, theological issues such as Free Will and the Fall of Man, and the tensions that ultimately destroyed consensus on these matters.
T. S. Eliot, ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ and The Waste Land
‘Prufrock’ is as fresh today as when it was first written, and, for better or worse, The Waste Land remains the celebrated poem of its age, … a text that may be venerated, despised, rejected or enjoyed, but not ignored.
A Reader’s Guide to Tamora Pierce The Protector of the Small
Tamora Pierce is a prolific and very unusual modern master of fantasy for young adults and the first such author to appear regularly on the New York Times bestseller lists.
Classical American Pragmatism
This book discusses the pragmatic positions of Charles Sanders Pierce, William James and John Dewey, explaining their agreements and disagreements.
Elizabeth Gaskell: 'Mary Barton'
The Book considers what it meant to be a Unitarian in the hungry forties, what Gaskell understood of Chartism and' political economy'; and attitudes to women's rights.