• Baudelaire, Degeneration Theory, and Literary Criticism in Fin de siècle Spain

      Hambrook, Glyn (Modern Humanities Research Association, 2006)
      This article seeks, through an analysis of the response of `psychologist critics' inspired by degeneration theory to the work of Charles Baudelaire in fin de siècle Spain, to determine the originality of the application of this theory to literary history and criticism of the Fin de siècle; to argue that this period of literary history cannot be studied meaningfully other than by reference to an international context; and to challenge the assumption that cultures considered at that time and subsequently to be peripheral were indeed cultural backwaters unreceptive to the literary developments of the day. (Ingenta)
    • Cuckoo's eggs in the bureaucratic nest: Brigitte Reimann's Siberia diaries

      Steinke, Gabriela (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2003)
      Cross-Cultural Travel presents the proceedings of a major international conference on literature and travel held in November 2002 at the National University of Ireland, under the auspices of the Royal Irish Academy. The contributors, including such leading scholars as Joep Leerssen and Luigi Monga, illustrate the remarkable scope and vitality of work currently undertaken in the field. Cross-Cultural Travel is a multidisciplinary crossroads where literature, cultural studies and history engage with a variety of other disciplines. Topics range from the sixteenth to the twenty-first century and from constructions in fiction and poetry to the testimonies of explorers, diplomats, servants of Empire, journalists, artists, tourists, or established writers. Among the authors featured are Rousseau, Heine, Hugo, Sand, Svevo, Cela, Ingeborg Bachmann, Barthes, Tabucchi, Chatwin, Allende, and Sebald. Taken together, these fifty essays illuminate the processes of identity formation, whether the great lines of national identity or the personal edges of awareness. They explore over time differing relationships to the physical world, experiences of cultural difference, and the interplay between the subject's mobility and its textualization.
    • Fiction from the Furnace: A Hundred Years of Black Country Writing

      McDonald, Paul (Sheffield Hallam University Press, 2002)
    • Popular Romanticism? Publishing, Readership and the Making of Literary History

      Colbert, Benjamin (Palgrave Macmillan, 2002)
      This book: These essays explore the remarkable expansion of publishing from 1750 to 1850 which reflected the growth of literacy and the diversification of the reading public. Experimentation with new genres, methods of advertising, marketing and dissemination, forms of critical reception and modes of access to writing are also examined in detail. This collection represents a new wave of critical writing extending cultural materialism beyond its accustomed concern with historicizing the words on the page into the economics of literature and the investigation of neglected areas of print culture. (Palgrave Macmillan)
    • Student Guide to Philip Roth

      McDonald, Paul (Greenwich Exchange Publishing, 2003)
      Philip Roth's career has spanned more than 40 years, in which he has produced more than 20 books and wom almost major literary award. The Jewish-American writer's work is a search for form that takes him from social realism, through comedy and fantasy, to pseudo-confessional and a postmodern aesthetic. Paul McDonald explores each of Roth's works in turn, from his first book "Goodbye Columbus" to "The Dying Animal". He shows that although Roth writes about the human condition in often provocative and unusual ways, his treatment is witty and always based on values.Paul McDonald lectures in English and has a special interest in modern American literature.
    • The Reception of Francophone Literature in Helios and La España Moderna 1903–1904

      Hambrook, Glyn (Liverpool University Press, 2007)
      In this essay I consider Giménez Caballero’s use of totemism in his collection of avant-garde essays, Hércules jugando a los dados, to be indicative of a desire for radical social transformation. Specifically, I argue that the author’s elaboration of the concept as a renewed ‘primitive’ phenomenon based in technology not only points to early forms of cybernetics in the modern subject’s ‘battle’ with the elements, but also is a key part of a larger social project. I contend that Giménez Caballero sees the reemergence of totemism as a way to reconcile the lower classes and the elite within a fascistic, vertical power structure, in which the hybrid mythical figure of Hercules has already led the way. As an important hinge work between avant-garde aesthetics and political engagement, I conclude that Hércules jugando a los dados offers important insights into the genesis of early fascist ideology in Spain. (Liverpool University Press)