Books in the Oxford Modern Languages and Literature Monographs series

This book locates the greatest Italian poet of the twentieth century, Eugenio Montale, firmly within European Modernism. It shows that he, like many writers of this period, was fascinated with the problems of language and expression. The book's main focus is the intriguing relationship between the word and what lies beyond the word.

"Linguistic" theories in the 18th century are also theories of literature and art, and it is probably better, therefore, to think of them as "aesthetic" theories. This work considers a wide range of authors from this perspective.

This study explores in detail the interaction between the increasing move towards dialogue in Sarraute's prose works, and the dialogue those works initiate with their readers. It is designed to disentangle the problems of speech, both written and verbal.

Descriptions of imaginary buildings abound in late medieval and early modern texts in France. This book explores the relationship between metaphor and allegory in the corpus of writing that spans the late-15th and early-16th century in France, and concentrates on the output of Jean Lemaire.

Examines the relationship between literature and historiography in the GDR. Through a series of comparative readings, this book traces the development of critical approaches to history in literature by East German women, focusing on treatments of the National Socialist past, fictional biographies of historical women, and more.

Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874-1929) became famous at the age of sixteen for poetry and lyrical drama of almost uncanny facility and beauty. Yet he ceased to write lyric poetry almost completely in the early 1900s. This study suggests that his early interest in the works of the French Symbolists had an inhibiting effect on his own poetry.

In this broad-ranging study, Richards examines the representation of women's illness in German fiction by women 1770-1914. In the context of medical history, she focuses particularly on female self-starvation and wasting diseases, illustrating how the 'wasting heroine' both reinforced and challenged popular notions of female fragility.

This book is a wide-ranging study of the history of ideas. Interdisciplinary by its intent and design, it offers an innovative examination of the intellectual background, affiliations and contexts of two major twentieth century thinkers, and an historical interpretation of their work in aesthetics, cultural theory, literary history and philosophy.

Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei presents striking new readings of the exotic in major German writers such as Kafka, Mann, Brecht, and Hesse, alongside the thought of Nietzsche, Freud, Simmel, and Expressionist aesthetics. She shows how the evocation of exotic spaces serves to reflect on central problems of European modernity and the modern self.

This book is a study of French Caribbean literature in light of postcolonialism. Through readings of Aime Cesaire, Edouard Glissant, Maryse Conde, Baudelaire, Freud, and others, Jeannie Suk illuminates how debates about negritude, antillanite, and creolite contribute to paradoxes at the heart of postcolonial modes.

Tracing the development of Joubert's thought, from his time as secretary to Diderot to his association with Chateaubriand, this study argues that he was a writer of considerable sensitivity on aesthetics.

This title examines hitherto neglected Yiddish books from the late 18th century in order to analyse the linguistic changes manifest in both the transition and shift from Old to nascent Modern Literary Yiddish within the broader context of genre and literary tradition and in the framework of Yiddish dialectology, grammar, and sociolinguistics.

This book considers how and why German authors have used the child's viewpoint to present the Third Reich. Given the popularity of this device, this study asks whether it is an evasive strategy, a means of gaining new insights into the era, or a means of discovering a new language. This raises issues central to the post-war German aesthetic.

Combining scholarly analysis with illuminating case studies - such as an abbess's account of the Reformation, a prioress's diary from the Thirty Years' War, and a biography of a 15th-century visionary - Charlotte Woodford introduces the much neglected female historians of the era, and sets their writings in an historical and literary context.

This book takes the reader through the translation and performance processes of the Royal Shakespeare Company's 2004-05 Spanish Golden Age season to establish a model for translating, rehearsing, and performing Spanish Golden Age drama.

A Tale Blazed Through Heaven charts the development of representations of the mythological tale of Mars, Venus, and Vulcan from its origins in classical antiquity to its reception in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spain. It offers a new perspective on the literary and visual culture of the period, both in Spain and in Europe as a whole.

This volume examines the topic and treatment of conspiracy in fifteenth-century Italian literature. It situates the theme of conspiracy within the literary and historical contexts of the period, examines its representation within four key texts, and reflects on the legacy of these literary-historical works over the following century.