Libraries in literature

"This multi-authored volume is the first book-length critical examination of the ways in which libraries have been depicted in imaginative writing from the late Middle Ages until the present. After showing how depictions of libraries by Rabelais and Cervantes came to permeate Anglophone culture during and after the Renaissance, the book shows in detail how representations of the library in fiction, poetry, and drama changed throughout the ages. After several large-scale survey chapters which begin by examining Medieval and Renaissance texts, individual chapters focus on selected works, authors, and topics, from Swift's 'Battel of the Books' and the Romantic-era libraries of Austen, Scott and their contemporaries through the entrapping bookrooms of George Eliot's Middlemarch, Margaret Oliphant's 'The Library Window' , and M.R. James's stories to the more modern crime fictions and fantasies where 'the body in the library' becomes as familiar trope. Though this book's central focus is on British and American writing, chapters also examine in detail representations of the library in the work of Borges, Eco, Murakami, and more recent writers in France and Russia. Markedly international in its scope, Libraries in Literature also contains chapters that pay particular attention to issues of gender, the politics of national identity, and the depiction of librarians."--

Intro -- Halftitle page -- Title page -- Copyright page -- Acknowledgements -- Contents -- About the Contributors -- Introduction -- 1. Rabelais, Cervantes, and Libraries in Fiction -- 2. Dramatic Libraries -- 3. Battle-Sites of Books -- 4. What Are Books for? Darcy's Library, Crabbe's The Library, and Shillito's The Country Book-Club -- 5. Libraries and the Formation of Character in Nineteenth-Century Novels -- 6. Margaret Oliphant's 'The Library Window' -- 7. M. R. James's Libraries -- The Demon in the Library -- 'The Tractate Middoth' -- 8. The Body in the Library: Christie and Sayers -- 9. On the Shelf? Women, Librarians, and Agency in Twentieth-Century Fiction -- 10. The Act of Borrowing -- or, Some Libraries in American Literature -- 11. 'Modified Bliss': Libraries in Modern Poetry -- 12. Borges's Libraries -- 13. Library and Scriptorium in Eco's The Name of the Rose -- 14. Murakami's Strange Library -- 15. Fantastic Books and Where to Find Them: Libraries in Fairy Tale and Fantasy -- Coda: Libraries and Political Identities -- Works Cited -- Index.