Books in the European Studies in North American Literature and Culture series

Analyzes two groups of "musical novels" -- novels that take music as a model for their construction -- including jazz novels by Toni Morrison and Michael Ondaatje, and novels based on Bach's Goldberg Variations.

Encompassing view of humor in recent Native North American literature, with particular focus on Native self-image and identity.

The first anthology of critical interpretations of major Canadian short stories.

The development of literature in Canada with an eye to its multicultural, multiethnic, multilingual nature.

A pioneering collection of articles on fictionalized biographies of the Romantics in contemporary fiction and drama.

A collection of new essays on the multi-talented Canadian writerMargaret Atwood.

Study of three North American women novelists combining the standpoints of gender studies and narratology.

Conceptualizes the genre of American assassination fiction as a dramatization of the tension between individualism and mass society in US culture.

Provides the first history of the North American farm novel, a genre which includes John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, Sheila Watson's The Double Hook, and Louis Hemon's Maria Chapdelaine.

A collection of essays that perceive Updike's America through the eyes of Western and Eastern European readers and scholars, contributing to Updike scholarship while demonstrating his resonance across the Atlantic.From the publication in 1958 of his first book, The Carpentered Hen and Other Tame Creatures, the American writer John Updike attracted an international readership. His books have been translated into twenty-three languages. He had a strong following in the United Kingdom, where his books were routinely reviewed in all the leading national newspapers. In Germany, France, Italy, and other countries too, his books were discussed in major publications.Although Updike died in 2009, interest in his writing remains strong among European scholars. They are active in the John Updike Society and on the John Updike Review (which began publishing in 2011). During the past fourdecades, several Europeans have influenced the study of Updike worldwide. No recent volume, however, collects diverse European views on his oeuvre. The current book fills that void, presenting essays that perceive Updike's renditions of America through the eyes of scholar-readers from both Western and Eastern Europe. Contributors: Kasia Boddy, Teresa Botelho, Biljana Dojcinovic, Brian Duffy, Karin Ikas, Ulla Kriebernegg, Sylvie Mathe, Judie Newman, Sue Norton, Andrew Tate, Aristi Trendel, Eva-Sabine Zehelein. Laurence W. Mazzeno is President Emeritus of Alvernia University. Sue Norton is a Lecturer in English at the Dublin Institute of Technology.

Compares the cultural productions of Canada and the US - literature, but also film, opera, and even theme parks - providing a reassessment of Canadian Studies within a comparative framework.Since the elections of Donald Trump and Justin Trudeau, unprecedented international attention is being drawn to the differences between the United States and Canada. This timely volume takes a close comparative look at the national imaginaries of the two countries. In its analyses of the two countries' cultural productions - literature, but also film, opera, and even theme parks - it follows the approach of Comparative North American Studies, which has been significantly advanced by Reingard M. Nischik's work over recent decades. Featuring such illustrious contributors as Linda Hutcheon, Sherrill Grace, and Aritha van Herk, the volume considers the works of writers such as MargaretAtwood, whose concern with both countries' identities is well known, but also offers surprising new insights, for example by comparing writing by Edgar Allan Poe with Canadian Yann Martel's novel Life of Pi and Nobel Prize-winning author Alice Munro's work with that of the American graphic novelist Alison Bechdel. Contributors: Margaret Atwood, Shuli Barzilai, Julia Breitbach, Jutta Ernst, Florian Freitag, Marlene Goldman, Sherrill Grace, Michael and Linda Hutcheon, Bettina Mack, Silvia Mergenthal, Claire Omhovere, Katja Sarkowsky, Aritha van Herk. Eva Gruber is Assistant Professor of American Literature at the University of Konstanz. Caroline Rosenthal is Professor of American Literature at the University of Jena.