"After the Civil War, the South was divided into five military districts occupied by Union forces. Out of these regions, a remarkable group of writers emerged. Experiencing the long-lasting ramifications of Reconstruction firsthand, many of these writers sought to translate the era's promise into practice. In fiction, newspaper journalism, and other forms of literature, authors including George Washington Cable, Albion Tourgée, Constance Fenimore...

"Written by mortician and forensic expert Carla Valentine, The Science of Murder explores the real-life cases that inspired Agatha Christie and shows how the great mystery writer may have kept up to date with the latest developments in forensic science, from ballistics to blood-splatter analysis. Valentine examines the use of fingerprints, firearms, handwriting, impressions, and toxicology in Christie's novels, before finally revealing the role the...

Stanley Cavell, one of America's most distinguished philosophers, has written an invaluable companion volume to Walden, a seminal book in our cultural heritage. This expanded edition includes two essays on Emerson.

The first extensive treatment of Sherwood Anderson's work from a postmodern perspective. Sherwood Anderson, remembered chiefly as a writer of short stories about life in the Midwest at the turn of the century, was acknowledged as an innovator of the short story form and a major influence on such writers as Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner. Valuable critical studies have examined his works from biographical, New Critical, or psychoanalytical approaches,...

"Master Harold," or Hally, learns that his alcoholic father is to be released from the hospital and struggles with his emotions during a confrontation with the two black men who help in the family's restaurant in 1950s South Africa.

The hopes, fears, and regrets of the residents of a small Ohio town in the 1890s are the stuff of these short stories. Each chapter tells the story of a different citizen of Winesburg. A thread running through the stories is George Willard, a young reporter for the town newspaper, whose wanderings take him all over the town and its surrounding area, and eventually take him away from Winesburg, in order to pursue his dreams and to avoid the life of...

Offers critical commentaries, character analyses, essays, and review questions on the Arthur Miller play.

"Leaving Other People Alone reads contemporary North American Jewish fiction about Israel/Palestine through an anti-Zionist, diasporic lens. Aaron Kreuter argues that since Jewish diasporic fiction played a major role in establishing the centroperipheral relationship between Israel and the diaspora, it therefore also has the potential to challenge, trouble, and ultimately rework this relationship. Kreuter suggests that any fictional work that concerns...

As the foremost white West Indian writer of this century and author of the widely acclaimed novel Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys (1890-1979) has attracted much critical attention, most often from the perspective of gender analysis. Veronica Gregg extends our critical appreciation of Rhys by analyzing the complex relationship between Rhys's identity and the structures of her fiction, and she reveals the ways in which this relationship is connected to...

The Aeneid is the great national epic of ancient Rome, and one of the most important works of literature ever written. And with Professor Vandiver's twelve instructive lectures, you'll enter fully into the gripping tale that Virgil tells. Join Aeneas on his long journey west from ruined Troy to the founding of a new nation in Italy, and see how he weaves a rich network of compelling human themes. Your encounter with the Aeneid focuses on careful,

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