Books in the Studies in Major Literary Authors series

Thomas Pynchon's writing of postmodern fiction has been characterized as genre-defying and enigmatic, and as a series of complex and esoteric language games. This study attempts to demonstrate, however, that an oblique yet compelling sense of the "political" Pynchon disappears all too easily under the mantle of post modernity.

Examines Charles Dickens' weekly family magazine "Household Words" in order to develop a picture of how the journal negotiated, asserted and simultaneously deconstructed Englishness as a unified (and sometimes unifying) mode of expression.

Examines the conflict of aesthetics and politics in "The Diary of Virginia Woolf". As a modernist writer concerned with contemporary aesthetic theories, Woolf experimented with limiting the representative nature of writing. At the same time, as a feminist, Woolf wanted to incorporate her political interests in her fiction.

Provides an investigation of the double trope as a central area of Dicken's writings in their relation to Victorian culture, using this examination of the double to shed light on such issues as urban space and imperialism in the Victorian era.

Reevaluates the achievement of James Merrill, by showing how he takes up an old paradigm - innocence - and reinvents it in response to new historical, scientific, and cultural developments including the bomb, contemporary cosmology, and the question of agency. The book covers Merrill's full career, emphasizing on his late poetry.

Explores some of the important literary and philosophical influences on WH Auden's poetry. This study attempts to show that Auden's poetry derives much of its interest from a range of authors' on whom he drew for inspiration. It also suggests that his relationship to these writers was marked by ambivalence.

Traces the uneasy relationship between the content of Keats' poems and social history. This book reveals that the early poems are linked with the mission statement of the radical journal "Annals of the Fine Arts", whilst the poems after "Endymion" reveal a poet more concerned with the nature of poetic representation, its why and wherefore.

Takes a look at Ben Jonson's epigrams, prose, and verse satire in order to focus on Jonson's theatrical appropriations of London space both in and out of the playhouse. This book offers an analysis of the strategies of authorial definition that Jonson pursued throughout his career as a poet and playwright.

Looks beyond the received criticism and stereotypes attached to Philip K Dick and his work and shows that Philip K Dick is a serious and relevant philosophical and cultural thinker whose writing offer us important insights into contemporary digital culture. This title asks two uncharted 'Dickian' questions: What is reality? And, What is human?

Investigates the connections between Poe and the nineteenth-century flaneur - or strolling urban observer - and the centrality of the flaneur to Poe's literary aims and intimate yet ambivalent relationship with his surrounding culture.

Arguing that Raymond Carver merits consideration as a major American writer, this text reveals his pivotal role in American minimalist fiction. It contextualizes Carver's work in terms of the time and place of its construction and represention to reveal it as fiction that transcends the lower middle class North American relity that it documents.

Presents an account of Edith Wharton, viewing the author as a spatial activist and reassessing her place in American literature and culture. This book examines Wharton's theories of space in Newport and Rhode Island during the Gilded Age to illustrate the important role built-environment played in the social, economic and personal conflicts.

Undertakes a comprehensive linguistic and historical study of the plain style tradition in poetry, its relationship with so-called 'difficult' poetry, and its particular realization in the cultural and historical context of 20th-century Britain. The author examines the nature of poetry as a type of discourse.

Examining several Dickens' texts, such as A Christmas Carol, Little Dorrit and Our Mutual Friend, this book highlights Dickens' critical view of capitalism and his complex role within the system of nineteenth-century British financial capitalism.

Traces James's development of the modern novel, following a thread that leads from Romanticism and Literary Naturalism to French Impressionist theories of art, and culminates in a distinctly Jaemsian rendering of aestheticism.

First Published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First Published in 2001. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This study of Henry James's biographies of Nathaniel Hawthorne and William Wetmore Story offers an argument that he deserves greater recognition for his contributions to the development of biography.

This book comprehensively surveys Roth's works, focusing on the thematic unity, which binds them together: the memory of the Holocaust and the altered universe born of that memory.

Explores the nature of Melville's relations to his reader in Moby Dick, arguing that Melville and Ishmael are so dazzled and seduced by the Ahab's charismatic charm that they are unable to see Ahab's character clearly.

Employing concepts from film theory, this study explores the "cinematic" qualities of James Joyce's fiction from Dubliners to Finnegans Wake.

This book traces Stoddard's emergence as a writer in the 1850s, her conflict-ridden relationships with the writers associated with the genteel tradition, and her efforts to negotiate the boundaries of Victorian culture in the USA.