This week we’re celebrating the publication of Critical Creative Writing: Essential Readings on the Writer’s Craft, a comprehensive introduction to the key debates in creative writing today, from the ethics of appropriation to the politics of literary evaluation. Today’s post is an excerpt from Conchitina Cruz’s essay “The Filipino Author as Producer.” My profile in… Read More »
As the barbecues and grills heat up all over the country for Fourth of July, discover the origin(s) of the all-American meal with this excerpt from Carol J. Adams’ Burger from our Object Lessons series. The history of the hamburger features a man, the Inventor, “American” of course. There he was toiling on his own, when… Read More »
An excerpt from the Object Lessons book Silence by John Biguenet In our first visit to Florence, while still students, my wife and I found a little restaurant near our bat-infested pensione as sunset turned the Arno bronze. Having been raised by her grandmother from Viareggio, the nearby beach resort, Marsha ordered our meal in… Read More »
'With a few chapters left to write of Murphy in January 1936, Samuel Beckett ventured within what he called ‘the abhorred gates’ of Trinity College, Dublin library for the first time since resigning from a teaching post at his old University 4 years earlier. He returned repeatedly to the library over the following 3 months… Read More »
In Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden the children sit in their newly restored garden, bursting to express their sense of celebration. Ben the gardener suggests they sing the Doxology hymn, even though ‘He had no opinion of the Doxology and he did not make the suggestion with any particular reverence’. The children imitate a… Read More »
As mentioned previously, we're really excited to be publishing The Late Walter Benjamin this week! On Monday John Schad (the author) gave us an insight into his experience of writing about Walter Benjamin, and today I'm delighted to bring you the first couple of chapters of the book to read, for free, exclusively on our… Read More »
If you have studied Mikhail Bakhtin, then no doubt you will have felt as bewildered as the man himself looks here. Help is at hand in the form of our new book Key Terms in Literary Theory. All week we have been quoting definitions from the book and today we look at the term 'Dialogic'.… Read More »
A new day, a new definition from our Key Terms in Literary Theory. Yesterday we had 'Phallogocentric' so I felt it only right to balance things up a bit and give Hélène Cixous centre stage. L’ecriture feminine L’ecriture feminine is a term coined by Hélène Cixous, in The Laugh of the Medusa (1976), meaning literally… Read More »
Phallogocentric. Fun to say. Perhaps not so fun to get your head around. All week we'll be blogging up definitions from our new book Key Terms in Literary Theory – designed to make difficult terms, concepts and theorists accessible and understandable. This is one of my favourite literary words, what's yours? Phallogocentric Phallogocentric refers to a combination of… Read More »
Chances are, if you’re reading this blog post, you already know something about literary theory; perhaps you are a student, or someone who has wondered what “literary theory” is all about and is looking for some explanations. There are lots of useful guides explaining various types of literary theory but this new book by Mary… Read More »