Books in the Comparative Cultural Studies series

Argues that while intertextuality is constitutive of all textuality it may be foregrounded in certain literary works, genres, or styles. This book surveys the field in order to ground the poetics of intertextuality in the history of its idea from Kristeva to New Historicism and citationality from Genette's late structuralism to text theory.

While a large amount of scholarship about Milan Kundera's work exists, in Liisa Steinby's opinion, his work has not been studied within the context of (European) modernity as a sociohistorical and a cultural concept. Steinby's book fills this vacuum by analysing Kundera's novels from the viewpoint of his understanding of the existential problems in the culture of modernity.

Analyses historical, architectural, visual, literary, and philosophical perspectives on the Western-styled garden that formed part of the great Yuanming Yuan complex in Beijing. Through detailed examination of historical literature and representations, it explores the ways in which the Jesuits accommodated their design within the Chinese cultural context.

Examines how Afghanistan has been imagined in texts that were published after the 9/11 attacks and the subsequent US-led invasion. Through an analysis of fiction, graphic novels, memoirs, drama, and film, the book demonstrates that writing and screening ""Afghanistan"" has become a conduit for understanding our shared post-9/11 condition.

Fills an important gap in Roth scholarship, placing Roth's major works of fiction in the context of a generational interest in religious redemption among the Jewish intellectuals of Central Europe. Piloiu argues that Roth's literary output is the result of an attempt to recast moral, political, and historical realities of an empirically observable world in a new, religiously transfigured reality.