San Antonio College Library

Addresses the theme of cultural encounters in literature through a diverse set of texts and through multiple methodologies. The overall focus of the essays is "postcolonialism" in that the literary works are read critically with a mind toward the history and aftermath of US colonialism.

"This is an encyclopedic presentation and discussion of the most basic thematic elements universally found in folklore and literature, namely archetypes and motifs. The work provides an in-depth analysis of approximately 175 of the most common archetypes and motifs found in the folklore of selected communities around the world. Each entry is written by a noted authority in the field and includes reference citations. Entries are keyed to the six-volume...

This book will show the richness and diversity of death as a subject in a variety of literary genres. Second, it will demonstrate the timelessness of the subject of death in literature, as evidence by selections ranging from 2300 B.C. to A.D. 1979. Third, it will reflect a variety of cultural traditions through selections from India, China, Japan, Greece, Nigeria, Lebanon, Russia, Germany, England, France, Spain, Ireland, and the United States. Fourth,...

"Kate McLoughlin's Authoring War is an ambitious and pioneering study of war writing across all literary genres from earliest times to the present day. Examining a range of cultures, she brings wide reading and close rhetorical analysis to illuminate how writers have met the challenge of representing violence, chaos and loss. War gives rise to problems of epistemology, scale, space, time, language and logic. She emphasises the importance of form to...

Fascination with the arcane is a driving force in this comprehensive survey of conspiracy fiction. Theodore Ziolkowski traces the evolution of cults, orders, lodges, secret societies, and conspiracies through various literary manifestations--drama, romance, epic, novel, opera--down to the thrillers of the twenty-first century.

Some literary scholars view myth criticism as passe; an approach to literature that enjoyed a heyday in the 1950s and 1960s before being replaced by approaches that are considered to be more theoretically sophisticated and satisfying, such as feminism, new historicism, and deconstruction. Moddelmog argues that there are many good reasons not to cast out myth criticism from the community of critical approaches. Most obvious among them is that myth...

Mirabile Dictu covers in six separate chapters the works of Virgil, Dante, Boccaccio, Ariosto, Tasso, and Spenser. Its broad aim is to provide a select cross section of works in the Middle Ages and Renaissance in order to examine and compare for the first time the marvelous in the light of epic genre, in the light of literary and critical theory (both past and present), and in the light of historically and culturally determined representational practices....