As an interdisciplinary area of research, translation studies attracts students and scholars with a wide range of backgrounds, who then need to face the challenge of accounting for a complex object of enquiry that does not adapt itself well to traditional methods in other fields of investigation. This book addresses the needs of such scholars – whether they are students doing research at postgraduate level or more experienced researchers who want to familiarize themselves with methods ...

Demonstrates that the search for oral origins in African literature is a quest for African authenticity. In a critique and revision of the conceptual category of orality as it has been understood and used by scholars, this title stresses the transformation of narrative genres as an index of sociopolitical relations and authorial vision.

"This is an extremely well written and carefully argued book that is quite persuasive. It should be essential reading for every scholar in African literature....

The third edition of the definitive collection of Chaucer's Complete Works, reissued with a new foreword by Christopher Cannon. Since F. N.

Robinson's second edition of the The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer was published in 1957, there has been a dramatic increase in Chaucer scholarship. This has not only enriched our understanding of Chaucer's art, but has also enabled scholars, working for the first time with all the source-material, to recreate Chaucer's authentic texts. For the third edition,...

"I have hopes that Karatani's book--one of those infrequent moments in which a rare philosophical intelligence rises to the occasion of full national and historical statement--will also have a fundamental impact on literary criticism in the West. . . . For "Origins" has some lessons for us about critical pluralism, in addition to its principal message, which turns on that old and new topic of modernity itself."--Fredric Jameson, from the Preface

The Cambridge History of Japanese Literature provides, for the first time, a history of Japanese literature with comprehensive coverage of the premodern and modern eras in a single volume. The book is arranged topically in a series of short, accessible chapters for easy access and reference, giving insight into both canonical texts and many lesser known, popular genres, from centuries-old folk literature to the detective fiction of modern times. The various period introductions provide an ove...

The Cambridge Introduction to Postmodernism surveys the full spectrum of postmodern culture - high and low, avant-garde and popular, famous and obscure - across a range of fields, from architecture and visual art to fiction, poetry, and drama. It deftly maps postmodernism's successive historical phases, from its emergence in the 1960s to its waning in the first decades of the twenty-first century. Weaving together multiple strands of postmodernism - people and places from Andy Warhol, Jeffers...

In keeping with the first edition, this is a thorough yet concise introduction to Chaucer's language in the original, which does not assume prior knowledge of linguistics or Middle English. This updated, expanded edition features a glossary on Chaucer's words, along with sample quotes, and a section on how to use the Middle English Dictionary.

All too often, attention is paid only to those children's novels that were written in English, with non-English-language works being passed over and neglected. Beyond Babar: The European Tradition in Children's Literature examines eleven of the most celebrated European children's novels in substantial, critical essays written by well-known international scholars. This approach provides a comprehensive discussion of the selected works from a variety of theoretical perspectives.

Each essay offe...

The popularity of such books as Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes, Mary Karr's The Liars' Club, and Kathryn Harrison's controversial The Kiss, has led columnists to call ours "the age of memoir." And while some critics have derided the explosion of memoir as exhibitionistic and self-aggrandizing, literary theorists are now beginning to look seriously at this profusion of autobiographical literature. Informed by literary, scientific, and experiential concerns, How Our Lives Become Stories enhance...

This book demonstrates how authors performing the role of a public intellectual discuss ideas and opinions regarding society while using literary strategies and devices in and beyond the text. Their assumed persona thereby reads the world as a book - interpreting it and offering alternative scenarios for understanding it.