Palgrave Macmillan imprint: 14111 books

An interdisciplinary study of the supernatural and the occult in fin-de-siècle France (1870-1914), the present volume examines the explosion of interest in devil-worship, magic and mysticism both from an historical perspective and through analysis of key literary works of the period.

Living Poetry demonstrates that poems are vital expressions of how we live, feel and think. Lucidly written and jargon free, it introduces a range of poems from the Elizabethan age to the present day, presenting practical models of close reading and a stimulating rationale for the power of poetry to move and excite us.

The appearance in 1609 of Shakespeare's Sonnets is cloaked in mystery and controversy, while the poems themselves are masterpieces of silence and deception. The intervening four centuries have done little to diminish either their mystique or their appeal, and recent years have witnessed an upsurge...

This Guide offers a comprehensive survey of the key criticism on Shakespeare's tragedies, from the seventeenth century through to the present day. Introducing essential concepts, themes and debates, and summarising major critical texts, Nicolas Tredell examines how the category of Shakespeare's tragedies has been constructed, contested and changed.

Traversing the themes of language, terror and representation, this is the first study to engage Coleridge through the sublime, showing him to have a compelling position in an ongoing conversation about finitude. Drawing on close readings of both his poetry and prose, it depicts Coleridge as a thinker of 'the limit' with contemporary force.

Focusing on works by Shakespeare and Spenser, this study shows the connection between visuality and ethical action in early modern English literature. The book places early modern debates about the value of visual experience into dialogue with subsequent philosophical and ethical efforts.

Drawing on the later writings of Martin Heidegger, the book traces the correspondence between the philosopher's concept of technology and Shakespeare's poetics of human and natural productivity in the Sonnets.

The Spanish-American War focused not only on foreign policy, but also on the nation's very essence and purpose. At the heart of this debate was a consensus on American nationalism. This book explains why the belief in exceptionalism still serves as the basis of American nationalism and foreign policy even in spite of more recent military failures.

Women Writers and the Hero of Romance studies the nature of the hero and his meaning for the female seeker, or quester, in romance fiction from Wuthering Heights to Fifty Shades of Grey. The book includes chapters on Wuthering Heights, Middlemarch, The Scarlet Pimpernel, The Sheik, and the novels of Ayn Rand and Dorothy Dunnett.

The collection brings together experts in the field of twentieth-century writing to provide a volume that is both comprehensive and innovative in its discussion of a set of newly canonical texts. The book includes new applications of philosophical and critical thinking to established texts.

This book offers new perspectives on the concept of habit in the nineteenth-century novel, delineating the complex, changing significance of the term and exploring the ways in which its meanings play out in a range of narratives, from Dickens to James.

The Agreements of the People were a series of written constitutions proposed variously by Levellers, soldiers and citizens for the settlement of the nation at the height of the English Revolution. The essays in this book explore the various Agreements in the context of the constitutional crisis that engulfed England in the late 1640s and 1650s.

For more than 50 years America's unrelenting hostility toward the Cuban Revolution has resulted in the development of a siege mentality among island leadership and its citizens. In a vibrant new look at Cuban-American relations, Keith Bolender analyzes the effects this has had on economic, cultural, and political life.

Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Translation of Female Kingship provides the first feminist analysis of the part of The History of the Kings of Britain that most readers overlook: the reigns before and after Arthur's.