Gifford provides a hard-boiled investigation of hundreds of pulpy paperbacks written by Chester Himes, Donald Goines, and Iceberg Slim (aka Robert Beck), among many others. He draws from an impressive array of archival materials to provide a first-of-its-kind literary and cultur…
Autoddidacte adopté par la Sorbonne, Bachelard fait songer à un faune rêveur et barbu invité au banquet des philosophes, De quel bois se chauffent les poètes ? Le charme de cette cosmogonie miniature tient dans l'allure presque dansante d'une écriture-promenade où le feu sert de…
Though today largely dormant, volcanoes continue to erupt across the world, reminding us of their sheer physical power. In Volcano, James Hamilton explores the cultural history generated by the violence and terrifying beauty of volcanoes. He describes the reverberations of early…
A wideranging and groundbreaking investigation of the sibling relationship as shown in European literature, from 500 to 1500.
A footprint materializes mysteriously on a deserted shore ; a giant helmet falls from the sky ; a traveler awakens to find his horse dangling from a church steeple. Eighteenth-century fiction brims with moments such as these, in which the prosaic rubs up against the marvelous. W…
"This book examines how contemporary artists have engaged with histories of nature, geology, and extinction within the context of the changing planet. Susan Ballard describes how artists challenge the categories of animal, mineral and vegetable-turning to a multispecies order of…
Scientists, journalists, novelists, and filmmakers continue to generate narratives of contagion, stories shaped by a tradition of disease discourse that extends to early Greco-Roman literature. Lucretius, Vergil, and Ovid developed important conventions of the western plague nar…
"Examines early modern English literary representations of Jews and Muslims converting to Christianity alongside English translations of Calvin's writings, polemical writings, treaties on the sacraments, catechisms, and sermons. Demonstrates that the development of a theology of…
"Why did soldiers stop fighting, athletes stop competing, and lovers stop having graphic sex in classical Greek art? The scenes depicted on Athenian pottery of the mid-fifth century BC are very different from those of the late sixth century. Did Greek potters have a different wo…
