Theory in Literary Theory & Criticism & Fiction & Literature eBooks

Immediacy

Or, The Style of Too Late Capitalism

by Anna Kornbluh ...

Why speed, flow, and direct expression now dominate cultural styleContemporary cultural style boosts transparency and instantaneity. These are values absorbed from our current economic conditions of "disintermediation": cutting out the middleman. Like Uber, but for art. Immediacy names this style to make sense of what we lose when the contradictions of twenty-first-century capitalism demand that ... Read more

$9.99 USD

Why speed, flow, and direct expression now dominate cultural styleContemporary cultural style boosts transparency and instantaneity. These are values absorbed from our current economic conditions of "disintermediation": cutting out the middleman. Like Uber, but for art. Immediacy names this style to make sense of what we lose when the contradictions of twenty-first-century capitalism demand that
... Read more
Interpreting Musical Gestures, Topics, and Tropes

Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert

by Robert S. Hatten ...

"Robert Hatten's new book is a worthy successor to his Musical Meaning in Beethoven, which established him as a front-rank scholar . . . in questions of musical meaning. . . . [B]oth how he approaches musical works and what he says about them are timely and to the point. Musical scholars in both musicology and theory will find much of value here, and will find their notions of musical meaning ... Read more

$9.99 USD

"Robert Hatten's new book is a worthy successor to his Musical Meaning in Beethoven, which established him as a front-rank scholar . . . in questions of musical meaning. . . . [B]oth how he approaches musical works and what he says about them are timely and to the point. Musical scholars in both musicology and theory will find much of value here, and will find their notions of musical meaning
... Read more
Starboard Wine

More Notes on the Language of Science Fiction

by Samuel R. Delany ...

A revised and expanded edition of a classic work of criticism exploring how science fiction is not about the future but about the potential of the present.In Starboard Wine, Samuel R. Delany explores the implications of his now-famous assertion that science fiction is not about the future. Rather, it uses the future as a means of talking about the present and its potentiality. By recognizing a ... Read more

$2.99 USD or Free with Kobo Plus

A revised and expanded edition of a classic work of criticism exploring how science fiction is not about the future but about the potential of the present.In Starboard Wine, Samuel R. Delany explores the implications of his now-famous assertion that science fiction is not about the future. Rather, it uses the future as a means of talking about the present and its potentiality. By recognizing a
... Read more
Becoming Beside Ourselves

The Alphabet, Ghosts, and Distributed Human Being

by Brian Rotman, Timothy Lenoir ...

Becoming Beside Ourselves continues the investigation that the renowned cultural theorist and mathematician Brian Rotman began in his previous books Signifying Nothing and Ad Infinitum...The Ghost in Turing’s Machine: exploring certain signs and the conceptual innovations and subjectivities that they facilitate or foreclose. In Becoming Beside Ourselves, Rotman turns his attention to alphabetic ... Read more

$22.99 USD

Becoming Beside Ourselves continues the investigation that the renowned cultural theorist and mathematician Brian Rotman began in his previous books Signifying Nothing and Ad Infinitum...The Ghost in Turing’s Machine: exploring certain signs and the conceptual innovations and subjectivities that they facilitate or foreclose. In Becoming Beside Ourselves, Rotman turns his attention to alphabetic
... Read more
Essential Essays, Volume 2

Identity and Diaspora

by Stuart Hall ...

Series series Stuart Hall: Selected Writings
From his arrival in Britain in the 1950s and involvement in the New Left, to founding the field of cultural studies and examining race and identity in the 1990s and early 2000s, Stuart Hall has been central to shaping many of the cultural and political debates of our time. Essential Essays—a landmark two-volume set—brings together Stuart Hall's most influential and foundational works. Spanning the ... Read more

$21.99 USD

From his arrival in Britain in the 1950s and involvement in the New Left, to founding the field of cultural studies and examining race and identity in the 1990s and early 2000s, Stuart Hall has been central to shaping many of the cultural and political debates of our time. Essential Essays—a landmark two-volume set—brings together Stuart Hall's most influential and foundational works. Spanning the
... Read more
About Writing

7 Essays, 4 Letters, 5 Interviews

by Samuel R. Delany ...

From the four-time Nebula Award–winning novelist and literary critic, essential reading for the creative writer.Award-winning novelist Samuel R. Delany has written a book for creative writers to place alongside E. M. Forster's Aspects of the Novel and Lajos Egri's Art of Dramatic Writing. Taking up specifics (When do flashbacks work, and when should you avoid them? How do you make characters both ... Read more

$12.99 USD or Free with Kobo Plus

From the four-time Nebula Award–winning novelist and literary critic, essential reading for the creative writer.Award-winning novelist Samuel R. Delany has written a book for creative writers to place alongside E. M. Forster's Aspects of the Novel and Lajos Egri's Art of Dramatic Writing. Taking up specifics (When do flashbacks work, and when should you avoid them? How do you make characters both
... Read more
Tree

by Matthew Battles ...

Series series Object Lessons
Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.Tree explores the forms, uses, and alliances of this living object's entanglement with humanity, from antiquity to the present. Trees tower over us and yet fade into background. Their lifespan outstrips ours, and yet their wisdom remains inscrutable, treasured up in the heartwood. They serve ... Read more

$12.99 USD

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.Tree explores the forms, uses, and alliances of this living object's entanglement with humanity, from antiquity to the present. Trees tower over us and yet fade into background. Their lifespan outstrips ours, and yet their wisdom remains inscrutable, treasured up in the heartwood. They serve
... Read more
Contemporary Drift

Genre, Historicism, and the Problem of the Present

by Theodore Martin ...

Series series Literature Now
What does it mean to call something “contemporary”? More than simply denoting what’s new, it speaks to how we come to know the present we’re living in and how we develop a shared story about it. The story of trying to understand the present is an integral, yet often unnoticed, part of the literature and film of our moment. In Contemporary Drift, Theodore Martin argues that the contemporary is not ... Read more

$26.99 USD

What does it mean to call something “contemporary”? More than simply denoting what’s new, it speaks to how we come to know the present we’re living in and how we develop a shared story about it. The story of trying to understand the present is an integral, yet often unnoticed, part of the literature and film of our moment. In Contemporary Drift, Theodore Martin argues that the contemporary is not
... Read more
Turning Away

The Poetics of an Ancient Gesture

by Benjamin A. Saltzman ...

Series series Thinking Literature
A sweeping account of how we are at our most human when we turn away from the pains of the world.Why do we look away from the suffering of others? Why do we cover our faces in shame? Why do we lower our heads in grief? Few gestures are as universal as the averted gaze. Fewer still are as ambivalent and inscrutable. In this incisive study, Benjamin A. Saltzman reveals how the kaleidoscopic ... Read more

$21.59 USD

A sweeping account of how we are at our most human when we turn away from the pains of the world.Why do we look away from the suffering of others? Why do we cover our faces in shame? Why do we lower our heads in grief? Few gestures are as universal as the averted gaze. Fewer still are as ambivalent and inscrutable. In this incisive study, Benjamin A. Saltzman reveals how the kaleidoscopic
... Read more
The Protestant Ethnic and the Spirit of Capitalism

by Rey Chow ...

In late-capitalist Western society, cross-ethnic cultural transactions are an inevitable daily routine. Yet, according to acclaimed cultural critic Rey Chow, the notion of ethnicity as it is currently used is theoretically ambivalent, confusing, indeed self-contradictory, straddling as it does an uneasy boundary between a universalist rhetoric of inclusion on the one hand, and actual, lived ... Read more

$28.99 USD

In late-capitalist Western society, cross-ethnic cultural transactions are an inevitable daily routine. Yet, according to acclaimed cultural critic Rey Chow, the notion of ethnicity as it is currently used is theoretically ambivalent, confusing, indeed self-contradictory, straddling as it does an uneasy boundary between a universalist rhetoric of inclusion on the one hand, and actual, lived
... Read more
Not Like a Native Speaker

On Languaging as a Postcolonial Experience

by Rey Chow ...

Although the era of European colonialism has long passed, misgivings about the inequality of the encounters between European and non-European languages persist in many parts of the postcolonial world. This unfinished state of affairs, this lingering historical experience of being caught among unequal languages, is the subject of Rey Chow's book. A diverse group of personae, never before assembled ... Read more

$26.99 USD

Although the era of European colonialism has long passed, misgivings about the inequality of the encounters between European and non-European languages persist in many parts of the postcolonial world. This unfinished state of affairs, this lingering historical experience of being caught among unequal languages, is the subject of Rey Chow's book. A diverse group of personae, never before assembled
... Read more
Blackface

by Professor Ayanna Thompson ...

Series series Object Lessons
A New Statesman essential non-fiction book of 2021Featured in Book Riot's 12 best nonfiction books about Black identity and historyA Times Higher Education Book of the Week2022 Finalist for the Prose Awards (Media and Cultural Studies category)Why are there so many examples of public figures, entertainers, and normal, everyday people in blackface? And why aren't there... ... Read more

$12.99 USD

A New Statesman essential non-fiction book of 2021Featured in Book Riot's 12 best nonfiction books about Black identity and historyA Times Higher Education Book of the Week2022 Finalist for the Prose Awards (Media and Cultural Studies category)Why are there so many examples of public figures, entertainers, and normal, everyday people in blackface? And why aren't there...
... Read more
The Gutenberg Parenthesis

The Age of Print and Its Lessons for the Age of the Internet

by Prof Jeff Jarvis ...

A 2024 CHOICE OUTSTANDING ACADEMIC TITLEPROSE AWARDS MEDIA AND CULTURAL STUDIES FINALIST 2024The Gutenberg Parenthesis traces the epoch of print from its fateful beginnings to our digital present – and draws out lessons for the age to come.The age of print is a grand exception in history. For five centuries it fostered what some call print culture – a worldview shaped by the completeness, ... Read more

$18.99 USD

A 2024 CHOICE OUTSTANDING ACADEMIC TITLEPROSE AWARDS MEDIA AND CULTURAL STUDIES FINALIST 2024The Gutenberg Parenthesis traces the epoch of print from its fateful beginnings to our digital present – and draws out lessons for the age to come.The age of print is a grand exception in history. For five centuries it fostered what some call print culture – a worldview shaped by the completeness,
... Read more
Your Name Here

by Helen Dewitt, Ilya Gridneff ...

A major literary event over two decades in the making, Your Name Here marks the seismic return of Helen DeWitt (The Last Samurai), and will introduce readers to the riveting voice of Ilya Gridneff.A book of unparalleled scope and vision, Your Name Here is a spectacular honeycomb of books-within-books. In this death-defying feat of ambition, collaborators Helen DeWitt and Ilya Gridneff weave ... Read more

$8.99 USD or Free with Kobo Plus

A major literary event over two decades in the making, Your Name Here marks the seismic return of Helen DeWitt (The Last Samurai), and will introduce readers to the riveting voice of Ilya Gridneff.A book of unparalleled scope and vision, Your Name Here is a spectacular honeycomb of books-within-books. In this death-defying feat of ambition, collaborators Helen DeWitt and Ilya Gridneff weave
... Read more
Tone

by Sofia Samatar, Kate Zambreno ...

Tone is a collaborative study of literary tone, a notoriously challenging and slippery topic for criticism. Both granular and global, infusing a text with feeling, tone is so difficult to pin down that responses to it often take the vague form of “I know it when I see it.”In Tone, a cooperative authorial voice under the name of the Committee to Investigate Atmosphere begins from the premise that ... Read more

$18.99 USD

Tone is a collaborative study of literary tone, a notoriously challenging and slippery topic for criticism. Both granular and global, infusing a text with feeling, tone is so difficult to pin down that responses to it often take the vague form of “I know it when I see it.”In Tone, a cooperative authorial voice under the name of the Committee to Investigate Atmosphere begins from the premise that
... Read more
Culture in a Liquid Modern World

by Zygmunt Bauman ...

Translated by Lydia Bauman ...

In its original formulation, ‘culture' was intended to be an agent for change, a mission undertaken with the aim of educating ‘the people' by bringing the best of human thought and creativity to them. But in our contemporary liquid-modern world, culture has lost its missionary role and has become a means of seduction: it seeks no longer to enlighten the people but to seduce them. The function of ... Read more

$16.00 USD

In its original formulation, ‘culture' was intended to be an agent for change, a mission undertaken with the aim of educating ‘the people' by bringing the best of human thought and creativity to them. But in our contemporary liquid-modern world, culture has lost its missionary role and has become a means of seduction: it seeks no longer to enlighten the people but to seduce them. The function of
... Read more
Energy Humanities

An Anthology

Edited by Imre Szeman, Dominic Boyer ...

How can humanities scholars help us respond to growing concerns about climate change and fossil fuels?Energy humanities is a field of scholarship that, like medical and digital humanities before it, aims to overcome traditional boundaries between the disciplines and between academic and applied research. Responding to growing public concern about anthropogenic climate change and the ... Read more

$43.99 USD

How can humanities scholars help us respond to growing concerns about climate change and fossil fuels?Energy humanities is a field of scholarship that, like medical and digital humanities before it, aims to overcome traditional boundaries between the disciplines and between academic and applied research. Responding to growing public concern about anthropogenic climate change and the
... Read more
Transmission and the Individual Remix

by Tom McCarthy ...

Sub-titled "How Literature Works" this essay by the renown novelist is a provocative and entertaining work of postmodern theory that re-evaluates literature and literary meaning from Aeschylus to Kraftwerk. A VINTAGE EBOOK ORIGINAL.Tom McCarthy is one of the most vital young voices in contemporary literature, and in this essay he identifies the signals that have been repeating, pulsing, modulating ... Read more

$1.99 USD

Sub-titled "How Literature Works" this essay by the renown novelist is a provocative and entertaining work of postmodern theory that re-evaluates literature and literary meaning from Aeschylus to Kraftwerk. A VINTAGE EBOOK ORIGINAL.Tom McCarthy is one of the most vital young voices in contemporary literature, and in this essay he identifies the signals that have been repeating, pulsing, modulating
... Read more
Ballot

by Ms. Anjali Enjeti, Professor Ian Bogost, Dr. Christopher Schaberg ...

Series series Object Lessons
Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.Ballot examines the psychological, cultural, and political significance of voting in an increasingly anti-voting climate. Armed with her personal experiences as a poll worker, electoral organizer, and activist, Anjali Enjeti unspools a timely narrative about the precarious state of the ballot ... Read more

$12.99 USD

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.Ballot examines the psychological, cultural, and political significance of voting in an increasingly anti-voting climate. Armed with her personal experiences as a poll worker, electoral organizer, and activist, Anjali Enjeti unspools a timely narrative about the precarious state of the ballot
... Read more
The Cambridge Companion to Lacan

Edited by Jean-Michel Rabaté ...

Series series Cambridge Companions to Literature
This collection of specially commissioned essays by academics and practising psychoanalysts, first published in 2003, explores key dimensions of Jacques Lacan's life and works. Lacan is renowned as a theoretician of psychoanalysis whose work is still influential in many countries. He refashioned psychoanalysis in the name of philosophy and linguistics at the time when it underwent a certain ... Read more

$28.99 USD

This collection of specially commissioned essays by academics and practising psychoanalysts, first published in 2003, explores key dimensions of Jacques Lacan's life and works. Lacan is renowned as a theoretician of psychoanalysis whose work is still influential in many countries. He refashioned psychoanalysis in the name of philosophy and linguistics at the time when it underwent a certain
... Read more
Novel Relations

Victorian Fiction and British Psychoanalysis

by Professor Alicia Mireles Christoff ...

The first comprehensive look at how Victorian fiction and British psychoanalysis shaped each otherNovel Relations engages twentieth-century post-Freudian British psychoanalysis in an unprecedented way: as literary theory. Placing the writing of figures like D. W. Winnicott, W. R. Bion, Michael and Enid Balint, Joan Riviere, Paula Heimann, and Betty Joseph in conversation with canonical Victorian ... Read more

$35.99 USD

The first comprehensive look at how Victorian fiction and British psychoanalysis shaped each otherNovel Relations engages twentieth-century post-Freudian British psychoanalysis in an unprecedented way: as literary theory. Placing the writing of figures like D. W. Winnicott, W. R. Bion, Michael and Enid Balint, Joan Riviere, Paula Heimann, and Betty Joseph in conversation with canonical Victorian
... Read more
The Affect Theory Reader 2

Worldings, Tensions, Futures

Edited by Gregory J. Seigworth, Carolyn Pedwell ...

Series series ANIMA: Critical Race Studies Otherwise
Building on the foundational Affect Theory Reader, this new volume gathers together contemporary scholarship that highlights and interrogates the contemporary state of affect inquiry. Unsettling what might be too readily taken-for-granted assumptions in affect theory, The Affect Theory Reader 2 extends and challenges how contemporary theories of affect intersect with a wide range of topics and ... Read more

$24.99 USD

Building on the foundational Affect Theory Reader, this new volume gathers together contemporary scholarship that highlights and interrogates the contemporary state of affect inquiry. Unsettling what might be too readily taken-for-granted assumptions in affect theory, The Affect Theory Reader 2 extends and challenges how contemporary theories of affect intersect with a wide range of topics and
... Read more
The Cambridge Companion to Ulysses

Edited by Sean Latham ...

Series series Cambridge Companions to Literature
Few books in the English language seem to demand a companion more insistently than James Joyce's Ulysses, a work that at once entices and terrifies readers with its interwoven promises of pleasure, scandal, difficulty and mastery. This volume offers fourteen concise and accessible essays by accomplished scholars that explore this masterpiece of world literature. Several essays examine specific ... Read more

$29.59 USD

Few books in the English language seem to demand a companion more insistently than James Joyce's Ulysses, a work that at once entices and terrifies readers with its interwoven promises of pleasure, scandal, difficulty and mastery. This volume offers fourteen concise and accessible essays by accomplished scholars that explore this masterpiece of world literature. Several essays examine specific
... Read more
The Biopolitics of Childhood in the Long American 19th Century

Edited by Lucia Hodgson, Allison Giffen ...

Series series Children's Literature and Culture
This edited collection contends that the figure of the child is foundational to the workings of biopolitical power yet remains undertheorized. The study of nineteenth-century biopolitics offers a theoretical framework that promises to increase our understanding of how modern democracies manage their subjects. Recent scholarship has invigorated interrogations into forms of state governance that ... Read more

$56.99 USD

This edited collection contends that the figure of the child is foundational to the workings of biopolitical power yet remains undertheorized. The study of nineteenth-century biopolitics offers a theoretical framework that promises to increase our understanding of how modern democracies manage their subjects. Recent scholarship has invigorated interrogations into forms of state governance that
... Read more

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