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  3. Landmarks of World Literature

This series provides concise and lucid introductions to major works of world literature. It is not confined to any single literary tradition or genre and cumulatively forms a substantial library of textbooks on some of the most important and widely read masterpieces.

  • General Editors: J. P. Stern

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24 results in Landmarks of World Literature

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Ezra Pound: The Cantos
  • George Kearns
  • Published online:
    12 October 2018
    Print publication:
    23 November 1989
  • Pound's 800 page Cantos, written over a period of more than fifty years (1917–1969), invites the reader to join the poet on a journey from darkness and despair towards light and positive activity. In this book, George Kearns addresses the reader approaching The Cantos for the first time. He examines the poem's aesthetic and political-ethical-didactic dimensions and shows that despite its complexity and the many objections which can be raised to its poetics and politics, its study can be greatly rewarding.

Flaubert: Madame Bovary
  • Stephen C. Heath
  • Published online:
    12 October 2018
    Print publication:
    09 April 1992
  • Madame Bovary was one of the most influential literary achievements of the nineteenth century and gained immediate notoriety through its questioning of marriage, sex, and the role of women. Stephen Heath shows how this landmark text captures and articulates a fundamental experience of the post-romantic, commercial-industrial, emotional-democratic period. He explains how Madame Bovary represents Flaubert's intense personal engagement with the tragedy of bourgeois culture, while at the same time exemplyfying the author's commitment to the impersonality of Art and the transcendence of style. The novel is set in its literary and historical context and there is a guide to further reading.

Conrad: Nostromo
  • Ian Watt
  • Published online:
    12 October 2018
    Print publication:
    28 April 1988
  • Conrad's great novel is a rich study not only of a typical South American country, but of the politics of any underdeveloped country, and for this reason it is permanently topical. Ian Watt addresses Conrad's concerns when writing the work, and provides an accessible introduction, taking account of background, history and politics, and reception and influence.

Swift: Gulliver's Travels
  • Howard Erskine-Hill
  • Published online:
    12 October 2018
    Print publication:
    30 July 1993
  • This critical introduction to Gulliver's Travels aims at giving a fresh and impartial account of the world-famous satire. It characterises the significant historical and literary background to the work, and explores the text itself in the reading order intended by Swift. It gives proper attention to Swift's narrative and stylistic art, and to the experience of the reader, which have tended to be neglected in the course of prolonged academic arguments over interpretation. It also discusses the relation of the four parts of the Travels to one another. A final chapter sketches the fictional aftermath of the Travels from the eighteenth to the twentieth century.

Balzac: Old Goriot
  • David Bellos
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    26 November 1987
  • This up-to-date account of the novel's composition, structure, and achievement provides readers with the literary and historical knowledge needed to make sense of the text. Professor Bellos explains how Balzac challenged prevailing nineteenth-century expectations of what novels should be like.

Emile Zola: L'Assommoir
  • David Baguley
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    28 August 1992
  • This book offers a variety of approaches to Zola's masterpiece, published amid considerable controversy in 1876–7. L'Assommoir (the tale of a Parisian washerwoman who after a hard life turns to drink and dies in abject poverty) is analysed as a social and political novel, as a representative work of literary naturalism, and in the context of its repercussions in the history of the novel. Professor Baguley investigates its complex and sometimes ambiguous themes, its literary structures and its technical innovativeness. He provides a synthesis of the best research and criticism of the novel together with insights into its interpretation. The biographical and historical context is given, and there is a guide to further reading.

Gottfried von Strassburg: Tristan
  • Mark Chinca
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    10 April 1997
  • This book offers a concise introduction to Gottfried von Strassburg's Tristan. The work is approached both through its context and through a close reading of key passages of the text. The contextual reading compares Gottfried with his predecessors Beroul, Eilhart and Thomas in order to reveal his independent response to the problems and possibilities with which he was confronted by his material. The close textual reading builds up a distinctive interpretation of the work, in which particular attention is paid to Gottfried's reworking of literary tradition, his use of religious analogies, and his awareness of the fictive potential of literary language. A concluding chapter examines Gottfried's medieval reception through the work of his continuators, Ulrich von Turheim and Heinrich von Freiberg, and the Herzmaere of Konrad von Würzburg.

Hardy: Tess of the D'Urbervilles
  • Dale Kramer
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    30 August 1991
  • This book offers a fresh approach to Hardy's novel, highlighting its modern qualities. Dale Kramer re-examines the main characters and investigates Hardy's handling of the plot and the novel's characteristics as a tragedy. He gives special consideration to Tess's search for her identity, and the role of her sexuality in this process. He also discusses the work's rural background, its place in Victorian literature, and its influence and reception.

Mann: Doctor Faustus
  • Michael Beddow
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    29 September 1994
  • In Doctor Faustus, his last major novel, Thomas Mann attempted to interpret and judge Germany's role in European culture and history since the Reformation. Through the figures of the solitary avant-garde composer, Adrian Leverkühn, and his often bemused biographer Serenus Zeitblom, Mann explores Germany's self-understanding and self-assertion. The novel intermingles fiction and history in a narrative that combines complex psychological analysis, virtuoso stylistic parody and vivid evocation of atmosphere and milieu. Michael Beddow analyses the structure of the plot and explores the significance of its chief historical, theological, psychological and musical themes. He considers Mann's understanding and modification of the Faust tradition, his thematic and formal indebtedness to Nietzsche and his interest in Adorno's neo-Marxism. The study concludes with an account of the work's generally hostile reception in defeated Germany.

Constant: Adolphe
  • Dennis Wood
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    26 November 1987
  • Dr Wood traces in detail the frequently paradoxical development of themes and situations introduced in the opening chapters and lays stress on the novel's intricate writing. He places the book in its historical, intellectual and biographical context and examines its reception by writers as various as Stendhal, George Eliot, and Tolstoy.

Boccaccio: Decameron
  • David J. Wallace
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    30 August 1991
  • In Boccaccio's innovative text, ten young people leave Florence to escape the Black Death of 1348, and organize their collective life in the countryside through the pleasure and discipline of story-telling. David Wallace guides the reader through their one hundred novelle, which explore both new and familiar conflicts from private and public spheres of life with unprecedented subtlety, urgency and humour. He emphasises the relationship between Decameron and the precocious vitality of Florentine culture in Boccaccio's time. He also discusses gender issues and the influence of the text particularly on Chaucer and the novel.

Racine: Phèdre
  • Edward D. James, Gillian Jondorf
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    06 October 1994
  • This introductory study presents Racine's Phèdre as the culmination of French classical tragedy. It situates the play in its historical, literary and theatrical context, shows its thematic relationship with other tragedies of Racine, and sketches its influence on later writers in a variety of European languages and its place in the evolution of European sensibility. The structures and the language of the play are closely analysed, and the major characters are studied in action. Full weight is given to the ancient classical background and to the mythological content of the play. A chronological table provides an overview of Racine's life and times, and there is a guide to further reading.

Stendhal: The Red and the Black
  • Stirling Haig
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    22 June 1989
  • Stendhal's great novel The Red and the Black, published in 1830, is seen as one of the most distinguished monuments of literary realism. In this introductory study, Stirling Haig shows how this realism derives from the incorporation of both history and legal reportage into the novel, and how it combines autobiography with mimesis. Professor Haig locates the novel in the context of Stendhal's own experiences as a Commissariat officer in the Napoleonic army, journalist, opera-lover, salon dandy and traveller in Italy and Restoration France, and highlights the constant inter-penetration of personal, documentary, and fictional elements in Stendhal's writings.

Tolstoy: Anna Karenina
  • Anthony Thorlby
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    26 November 1987
  • Professor ThorIby offers a close reading of this classic novel and explores the subtle psychology in Tolstoy's characterisation. He avoids complex terminology and assumes a readership studying the text in English translation.

Eliot: Middlemarch
  • Karen Chase
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    30 August 1991
  • A comprehensive introduction to Middlemarch, offering both general information and an original interpretation. It pays considerable attention to the intellectual and social context surrounding Middlemarch, and situates the work within nineteenth-century traditions of the novel in England and Europe. Karen Chase gives particular emphasis to the Woman Question in Middlemarch.

Alexander Pushkin: Eugene Onegin
  • A. D. P. Briggs
  • Published online:
    05 November 2011
    Print publication:
    26 November 1992
  • This is a lively and readable guide to Alexander Pushkin's novel in verse Eugene Onegin, a landmark of European Romanticism, and arguably the best of all Russian poetry. Professor Briggs addresses the question of how such remarkable poetry can have been composed about a rather banal plot, and considers the form of the work and its poetic techniques in detail. He offers fresh interpretations of the characters and events of the poem, and sets it against its European background. He discusses its influence - notably Tchaikovsky's operatic version - and points to its life-affirming philosophy and spirit of joyfulness. The book includes a chronological chart and a guide to further reading.

Scott: Waverley
  • Richard Humphrey
  • Published online:
    27 January 2010
    Print publication:
    04 November 1993
  • Scott's Waverley (1814), set in and around the Jacobite Rising in the Scotland of 1745–6, was the first historical novel in world literature. Innovative and humane in its plot, rich in social detail, and truly international in popularity, it not only launched a genre, but also became a landmark in literary realism, in historiography and in bookselling. In this study, Richard Humphrey traces and accounts for the text's impact on historical fiction and shows its originality in tackling the manifold issues of rebellion and warfare, separatism and union, prejudice and cultural tolerance. He sets Waverley in its social and literary context, provides detailed analysis of key portions of the text, and offers guidance on further reading.

The Bible
  • Stephen Prickett, Robert Barnes
  • Published online:
    19 January 2010
    Print publication:
    30 August 1991
  • This study focuses on the Bible as a landmark of literature, showing both how it has influenced writers through the ages and how it in turn has been influenced by contemporary literature. It describes what is known about the historical context of the documents, the changes of interpretation they have undergone over the centuries, and the problems and influence of various translations, ranging from Tyndale to the Good News Bible.

Sterne: Tristram Shandy
  • Edited by Wolfgang Iser
  • Translated by David Henry Wilson
  • Published online:
    06 January 2010
    Print publication:
    28 April 1988
  • Without a beginning and without an end, Tristram Shandy moves in many different directions, defying the conventional expectations of its readers. Wolfgang Iser shows how Sterne exploits the philosophy of his day and its cognitive deficiencies, using digression, humour and play to convey experience of subjectivity, and implicitly to expose the traditional concept of the self.

Gabriel García Márquez: One Hundred Years of Solitude
  • Michael Wood
  • Published online:
    23 December 2009
    Print publication:
    31 May 1990
  • One Hundred Years of Solitude is perhaps the most important landmark of the so-called 'Boom' in contemporary Latin American fiction. Published in 1967, the novel was an instant success, running to hundreds of editions, winning four international prizes, and being translated into 27 languages. In 1982, its author received the Nobel Prize for Literature. Michael Wood places the novel in the context of modern Colombia's violent history, and helps the reader to explore the rich and complex vision of the world which Garcia Marquez presents in it. Close reference is made to the text itself (in English translation), and there is a guide to further reading.

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