Socrates (470/469–399 bce), mentor of Plato and founder of moral philosophy, was the son of Sophroniscus (a statuary) and Phaenarete (a midwife). According to a late doxographical tradition, he followed for a time in his father’s footsteps – a claim… Read More ›
Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980) was a model intellectual for the twentieth century. He was a multitalented thinker who not only created several philosophical systems but also wrote major novels and plays, essays on literary theory and art criticism, and some methodologically… Read More ›
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, third Earl Russell (1872–1970 ce), was born into an aristocratic English family with considerable political tradition and influence. Both his parents died before he turned four; he was brought up by his paternal grandmother, who seems… Read More ›
Richard Rorty (1931– 2007) has stressed his adherence to antirepresentationalism, by which he means an account “which does not view knowledge as a matter of getting reality right, but rather as a matter of acquiring habits of action for coping… Read More ›
Michel Foucault (1926–1984) was born in Poiters, France, the second child of Anne Malapert and Paul Foucault. It was expected that he, like his father, would study and practice medicine. The Second World War disrupted education in France, however, and… Read More ›
Jacques Derrida (1930–2004), a leading figure in French post-structuralist philosophy, is renowned for having developed deconstruction. His prolific writings treat both philosophical and literary works, and do so in various ways, of which deconstruction is the most philosophically significant. The… Read More ›
“The test of a first-rate intelligence,” F. Scott Fitzgerald (September 24, 1896 – December 21, 1940) remarked in the late 1930’s, “is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the… Read More ›
Although A Journal of the Plague Year is not Daniel Defoe’s first work of fiction, it offers an interesting perspective from which to examine all of the author’s novels. Purporting to be a journal, one man’s view of a period… Read More ›
The novels and short stories of Alice Adams are excellent studies in time and place. Adams captures the setting and surroundings and, more important, the dialogue, which is never forced. A native of Virginia, Adams is especially adept at drawing… Read More ›
Two dominant forces ruled Shmuel Yosef Agnon’s life: the Torah as the essence of a meaningful life and Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel, as the ancestral homeland for the Jew. On a personal basis, Agnon integrated these passions into… Read More ›
E. M. Forster’s (1 January 1879 – 7 June 1970) most systematic exposition of the novelist’s art, Aspects of the Novel, is no key to his own practice. Written three years after the publication of A Passage to India, the… Read More ›
Fyodor Dostoevski’s (11 November 1821 – 9 February 1881) creative development is roughly divided into two stages. The shorter pieces, preceding his imprisonment, reflect native and foreign literary influences, although certain topics and stylistic innovations that became Dostoevski’s trademarks were already… Read More ›
Most of Charles Bukowski’s writing examines his life as a drunk, drifter, gambler, loner, and unemployed and unemployable creature of habit. As noted in many documentaries, biographies, and accounts of Bukowski’s life, however, he also had a gentle side. As… Read More ›
Characterization is the foundation of C. P. Snow’s (15 October 1905 – 1 July 1980) fiction. While theme and idea, as one might expect from a writer as political and engagé as was Snow, are important to his work, and… Read More ›
Karel Capek was a philosophical writer par excellence regardless of the genre that he employed in a given work, but the form of long fiction in particular afforded him the amplitude to express complicated philosophical ideas. Thus, his greatest achievement… Read More ›
The search for self and for autonomy is the underlying theme of most of Angela Carter’s ) ( 7 May 1940 – 16 February 1992), fiction. Her protagonists, usually described as bored or in some other way detached from their… Read More ›
Buchi Emecheta’s (21 July 1944 – 25 January 2017) novels deal principally with the life experiences of Nigerian women, who are subordinated in an indigenous society deeply influenced by the Western values introduced by British colonists. Other Nigerian women, those… Read More ›
The reader interested in understanding any of the works of Nikos Kazantzakis would do well to begin by reading Salvatores Dei: Asketike (1927; The Saviors of God: Spiritual Exercises, 1960). In this short philosophical expostulation, Kazantzakis expresses succinctly his strange… Read More ›
Anita Brookner (16 July 1928 – 10 March 2016) established her reputation as a novelist with four books published in rapid succession from 1981 to 1984. Written in austerely elegant prose, each of these four novels follows essentially the same… Read More ›
The fictional world of Mario Vargas Llosa is one of complex novels, of murals of characters, of actions whose significance the reader must determine, of vast edifices that aspire to become total realities. Vargas Llosa’s vision of reality is consistently… Read More ›
Like other novelists in Africa during the years just before and after independence, Wole Soyinka faced the question of ethnic and cultural identity. The now notorious negritude movement, begun in the 1930’s, had attempted to promote a pan-African identity by… Read More ›
Leo Tolstoy’s literary works may be viewed as repeated assaults on Romantic conventions. His view, expressed numerous times throughout his diary, was that such conventions blind both writer and reader to reality. Thus, his goal was to construct a new… Read More ›
A knowledge of Iris Murdoch’s (15 July 1919 – 8 February 1999) philosophical and critical essays is invaluable for the reader wishing to understand her fiction. Her moral philosophy, which entails a rejection of existentialism, behaviorism, and linguistic empiricism, informs… Read More ›
Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s (born 5 January 1938) fiction, like that of many contemporary African novelists, is highly political: It portrays the traumatic transition from colonized culture to an independent African society. His novels illustrate with unmatched clarity the problems created by… Read More ›
Although contemporary South Africa is seldom mentioned or referred to explicitly in most of J. M. Coetzee’s (born 9 February 1940) novels, the land and the concerns of that country permeate his works. One may see this indirect approach as… Read More ›
Until 1991, when the last of South Africa’s apartheid laws was repealed, to be personally liberated and to be South African was to be doomed to a continuing struggle between the desire for further freedom and development for oneself and… Read More ›
In The Courage to Be (1952), Paul Tillich asserts that “the decisive event which underlies the search for meaning and the despair of it in the twentieth century is the loss of God in the nineteenth century.” Most critics of… Read More ›
Analysis D. H. Lawrence occupies an ambiguous position with respect to James Joyce, Marcel Proust, T. S. Eliot, and the other major figures of the modernist movement. While on one hand he shared their feelings of gloom about the degeneration… Read More ›
If it is true that writers and artists should spend their entire lives and careers investigating, examining, and trying to understand the same themes, then Haruki Murakami (born January 12, 1949) is a prime example of how to do this… Read More ›
Although Günter Grass’s (1927 – 2015) novel The Tin Drum forms the first part of the Danzig Trilogy and shares some characters, events, and themes with Cat and Mouse and Dog Years, the novel was conceived independently and can be discussed… Read More ›
Two persistent themes animate all of Albert Camus’s writing and underlie his artistic vision: One is the enigma of the universe, which is breathtakingly beautiful yet indifferent to life; the other is the enigma of man, whose craving for happiness… Read More ›
A common link among Kazuo Ishiguro’s (born 8 November 1954) novels is the prominence of the first-person narrator, through whose meandering thoughts the story unfolds. Readers soon discover, however, that these central voices are rather unreliable in their accounts of… Read More ›
Anita Desai’s (born 24 June 1937) novels reveal certain recurring patterns in plots, settings, and characterizations. The plots of her novels fuse two opposing propensities—one toward the gothic mystery and the other toward the philosophical novel. The gothic orientation, which Desai… Read More ›
Many Western readers, ignorant of Islam and Hinduism, the 1947 partition of the Indian subcontinent and the creation of Pakistan, the India-Pakistan war of 1965, and the Pakistani civil war of 1974, may tend to read Salman Rushdie’s (born 19… Read More ›
Gabriel García Márquez (1927 – 2014) denies that the fictional world he describes in his novels is a world of fantasy. In an article about fantasy and artistic creation in Latin America, he concludes: “Reality is a better writer than… Read More ›
None of Milan Kundera’s novels fits into the traditional concept of the novel. Each is an experimental foray into the unknown, although well prepared and supported by the literary legacy of Jaroslav Hašek, Karel Capek, and Vancura. This is particularly… Read More ›
The “Dickens World,” as Humphrey House calls it, is one of sharp moral contrast, a world in which the selfseeking— imprisoned in their egotism—rub shoulders with the altruistic, freed from the demands of self by concern for others; a world… Read More ›
It was a matter of some pleasure to Samuel Beckett that his work resists explication. His most important novels and plays are artfully constructed contemplations on their own form rather than commentaries on the familiar world of causal relationships and… Read More ›
Analysis Simone de Beauvoir’s novels are grounded in her training as a philosopher and in her sociological and feminist concerns. She Came to Stay, The Blood of Others, All Men Are Mortal, and The Mandarins all revolve around the questions… Read More ›
Many critics maintain that the impulse that prompted Miguel de Cervantes (1547 – 1616) to begin his great novel was a satiric one: He desired to satirize chivalric romances. As the elderly Alonso Quixano the Good (if that is his… Read More ›
Jane Austen’s (16 December 1775 – 18 July 1817) novels—her “bits of ivory,” as she modestly and perhaps half-playfully termed them—are unrivaled for their success in combining two sorts of excellence that all too seldom coexist. Meticulously conscious of her artistry… Read More ›
The individualism and richness of Charlotte Brontë’s (21 April 1816 – 31 March 1855) work arise from the multiple ways in which Brontë’s writing is personal: observation and introspection, rational analysis and spontaneous emotion, accurate mimesis and private symbolism. Tension… Read More ›
Bessie Head’s (6 July 1937 – 17 April 1986) writing occupies a transitional place in African literature between the domestic, village-centered writing of the 1950’s and 1960’s and the more overtly political and urban writing—much of it written by exiles in… Read More ›
The name Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) conjures up images of a world without a center, of people alienated both from society and from themselves. Kafka lived at the threshold of the modern technological world, and… Read More ›
Wuthering Heights is constructed around a series of dialectic motifs that interconnect and unify the elements of setting, character, and plot. An examination of these motifs will give the reader the clearest insight into the central meaning of the novel…. Read More ›
Chinua Achebe (1930 – 2013) is probably both the most widely known and the most representative African novelist. He may very well have written the first African novel of real literary merit—such at least is the opinion of Charles Larson—and he deals… Read More ›
A distinctive literature about childhood has existed since the Victorian era, but not so about adolescence as a stage of life with its own integrity, concerns, and distinct problems. Teachers, librarians, and parents argue that the classics of world literature… Read More ›
The term “fantasy” refers to all works of fiction that attempt neither the realism of the realistic novel nor the “conditional realism” of science fiction. Among modern critics, the primacy of the realistic novel is taken for granted. Realistic novels… Read More ›
The emergence of the “modern” novel in the eighteenth century, with its emphasis on narrative realism and its intimate involvement with the affairs of everyday life, is correlated with a gradual separation between mundane and imaginative fiction, a crucial breaking… Read More ›
From the ancient belief in humors to the twentieth and twenty-first centuries’ psychoanalytic and pharmacological methodologies, diverse theories about the mind have affected the literary production of novelists. Categorization according to these theories is difficult, because authors tend to mix… Read More ›
The Spanish words picaresque and picaro achieved currency in Spain shortly after 1600. Today they are terms in literary criticism, sometimes misused because of the vague meaning attached to them. The revival of the genre in the twentieth century was… Read More ›
One way to understand the modern novel is to show its development in the work of writers such as Joseph Conrad, Marcel Proust, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Franz Kafka, and William Faulkner. This list is by no means exclusive, but… Read More ›
Iconoclastic and irreverent, the postmodern novel is by definition a radical experiment that emerges when a writer feels the customary tropes of fiction have been exhausted. For the postmodernist, the well-worn genre of the novel is insufficient and no longer… Read More ›
After a few minutes of reading stories that are not selfreflexive, readers sometimes forget what they are doing and feel transported into the world of the book. Considering this experience naïve, authors of self-reflexive fictions thwart it by such devices… Read More ›
Homosexuality, traditionally regarded as a disease or perversion by church, state, and society, was rigorously denounced and condemned by those same institutions. In the case of the arts and literature, works featuring homoeroticism or gays and lesbians as characters were… Read More ›
The epistolary novel, a prominent form among modern fictions, is defined as a novel presented wholly, or nearly so, in familiar letter form. Its history reaches back to classical literature, taking special inspiration from the separate traditions of the Roman… Read More ›
By the end of the nineteenth century, writers interested in exploring supernatural themes had abandoned the mode of gothic fiction pioneered by eighteenth century English novelist Horace Walpole. Walpole and his imitators had exploited such props as medieval ruins and… Read More ›
The detective story is a special branch of crime fiction that focuses attention on the examination of evidence that will lead to the solution of the mystery. The Oxford English Dictionary records the first printed use of the noun “detective”… Read More ›
Espionage—spying on enemies to obtain strategic information—is an age-old practice, but its treatment in fiction did not begin in earnest until the late nineteenth century. With this new theme, writers could begin to explore questions of courage, loyalty, and patriotism… Read More ›
The gothic novel is a living tradition, a form that enjoys great popular appeal while provoking harsh critical judgments. It began with Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (1765), then traveled through Ann Radcliffe, Matthew Gregory Lewis, Charles Robert Maturin,… Read More ›
The term “African,” when applied in this essay to the novel and other literary genres, does not include the Arab states of the north or the peoples of European descent who may have settled in Africa. It refers to the… Read More ›
A discussion of postcolonial literature must first acknowledge the scope and complexity of the term “postcolonial.” Temporally, the term designates any national literature written after the nation gained independence from a colonizing power. According to this definition, all literature written… Read More ›
Feminist long fiction features female characters whose quest for self-agency leads to conflict with a traditionally masculinist and patriarchal society. These novels have been harshly criticized and dismissed—and even ridiculed—for their nontraditional female characters. Feminist ideology in the Western world… Read More ›
Literature is forever transforming. A new literary age is new precisely because its important writers do things differently from their predecessors. Thus, it could be said that almost all significant literature is in some sense innovative or experimental at its… Read More ›
Critical Theory is, by and large, concerned with the critique of MODERNITY, MODERNIZATION, and the modern state. The first generation of critical theorists – Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, Walter Benjamin, Erich Fromm – came together in the early… Read More ›
Since the late 1980s, theories of Gender and Sexuality have redefined how we think about culture and society. They have raised new questions about the construction of the gendered and sexualized subject and put forward radical new ideas about PERFORMANCE… Read More ›
Ethnic and indigenous studies is grounded in the genealogy of dispossession, colonialism, and oppression. On these grounds, Chicano/a studies is particularly close in its concerns to what animates native and indigenous writers, for in both the concern for nationalism, cultural… Read More ›
Deconstruction emerged out of a tradition of French philosophical thought strongly influenced by the phenomenological projects of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. The main concern of phenomenology is consciousness and essence. For Husserl, consciousness entailed an intention towards the essence… Read More ›
Ethnic Studies, the theoretical study of race and cultural pluralism, began in the US with the work of African American writers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. African American studies has revealed the theoretical richness of African American… Read More ›
In the feverish political climate of the 1930s and 1940s outlined in the introductory section, American critics with left-wing sympathies tubarned James’s disavowal of any direct purpose for the novel against him. They approved of writers such as Theodore Dreiser… Read More ›
The novel has struggled to be taken seriously as an art form. The very title of James’s essay begins his campaign on its behalf: ‘art’ and ‘fiction’, often seen at odds with each other, are placed side by side here…. Read More ›
Some of Mailer’s earliest writing, including “The Greatest Thing in the World,” a prizewinner in a 1941 Story magazine contest, reveals that even at a very early age he could write accomplished, imitative apprentice fiction in the modes of Ernest… Read More ›
Larry McMurtry’s (1936 -) best fiction has used the Southwest as its location and the characters typical of that area for its subjects. In the early years of his career, he dealt with life in the dying towns and decaying… Read More ›
Hugh MacLennan (1907-1990) began as a historian, and, in a sense, he remained one throughout his long writing career. His doctoral dissertation, Oxyrhynchus, discussing the history of an area in Egypt during the seven hundred years that it was subject… Read More ›
Thomas McGuane’s (born December 11, 1939) fictional universe is a “man’s world.” His protagonists appear to do whatever they do for sport and to escape ordinary reality. They seek a world where they can, without restraint, be whomever they choose… Read More ›
Ross Macdonald’s (1915–1983) twenty-four novels fall fairly neatly into three groups: Those in which Lew Archer does not appear form a distinct group, and the Archer series itself, which may be separated into two periods. His first four books, The… Read More ›
Carson McCullers’s (February 19, 1917 – September 29, 1967) fiction has a childlike directness, a disconcerting exposure of unconscious impulses in conjunction with realistic detail. She is like the candid child who announces that the emperor in his new clothes… Read More ›
Mary McCarthy’s (June 21, 1912 – October 25, 1989) novels often feature herself, with an assumed name, as protagonist; she also exploited her husbands and other people close to her for fictional purposes. Her characters generally have a superior education… Read More ›
Jack London’s (January 12, 1876 – November 22, 1916) fame as a writer came about largely through his ability to realistically interpret humanity’s struggle in a hostile environment. Early in his career, London realized that he had no talent for… Read More ›
Early reviews praised or condemned Sinclair Lewis (February 7, 1885 – January 10, 1951) for a blend of realism and optimism; indeed, a curious mixture of almost naturalistic realism and a kind of romance characterized Lewis’s fiction throughout his career…. Read More ›
Elmore Leonard’s (October 11, 1925 – August 20, 2013) early short stories and novels were conventional in terms of plot and characterization; however, writing Westerns was good training. Knowing nothing about the West, he learned to depend on research that… Read More ›
When Ursula K. Le Guin (October 21, 1929 – January 22, 2018) has Genly Ai state in The Left Hand of Darkness that “truth is a matter of the imagination,” she is indirectly summarizing the essential focus of her fiction:… Read More ›
The themes and techniques of Jerzy Kosinski’s (1933-1991) fiction are adumbrated in the sociological studies he published within five years of his arrival in the United States. As a highly regarded Polish sociology student in the mid-1950’s, Kosinski was granted… Read More ›
The major emphasis of Margaret Laurence’s (1926- 1987) fiction changed considerably between her early and later works. In a 1969 article in Canadian Literature, “Ten Years’ Sentences,” she notes that after she had grown out of her obsession with the… Read More ›
Barbara Kingsolver’s (born. April 8, 1955) long fiction is best characterized as contemporary versions of the Bildungsroman with a feminist twist. The main character ventures forth to develop herself and find her place in her community. Many books by women… Read More ›
Stephen King (born. September 21, 1947) may be known as a horror writer, but he calls himself a “brand name,” describing his style as “the literary equivalent of a Big Mac and a large fries from McDonald’s.” His fast-food version… Read More ›
Jamaica Kincaid (born, May 25, 1949) is known for her impressionistic prose, which is rich with detail presented in a poetic style, her continual treatment of mother-daughter issues, and her relentless pursuit of honesty. More so than many fiction writers, she is… Read More ›
To understand some of the ideas behind the counterculture revolution is to understand Ken Kesey’s (1935 – 2001) fictional heroes and some of his themes. Originating with the 1950’s Beat generation, the 1960’s counterculture youth were disillusioned with the vast… Read More ›
William Kennedy’s (born, January 16, 1928) fiction is preoccupied with spirit of place, language, and style, and a mystic fusing of characters and dialogue. The place is Albany, New York, the capital city—nest of corrupt politics; heritor of Dutch, English,… Read More ›
Henry James’s (1843 – 1916) distinctive contributions to the art of the novel were developed over a long career of some fifty years. Leon Edel, possibly the most renowned and respected James scholar, has indicated that James’s mature writing can… Read More ›
John Irving’s (born March 2, 1942) fiction is distinguished by a highly personal fusion of seemingly incongruous elements. Irving’s settings, actions, and characters are often bizarre and violent. The world he presents is frequently chaotic and unpredictable, full of sudden… Read More ›
Psychological trauma, its representation in language, and the role of memory in shaping individual and cultural identities are the central concerns that define the field of trauma studies. Psychoanalytic theories on trauma paired with additional theoretical frameworks such as poststructural,… Read More ›
Halberstam’s Female Masculinity (1998) works as a starting point for the discussion of masculinity studies since this text considers the fundamentals of what constitutes masculinity and how the paradigm of female masculinity fits in. Halberstam begins with the assertion of… Read More ›
Like feminist, critical race, and queer approaches to literature and culture, disability studies relates to a specific group: in this case, disabled people, who make up approximately 15 percent of the world population and are among the most poor and… Read More ›
The play of fear and laughter has been inscribed in Gothic texts since their inception, an ambivalence that disturbs critical categories that evaluate their seriousness or triviality. The uncertainty perpetuates Gothic anxieties at the level of narrative and generic form,… Read More ›
The high-culture tradition is essentially a conservative one. It encompasses a defence of a narrowly defined high or elite ‘culture’, in the classic sense of Arnold’s ‘the best that has been thought and said’ (Arnold, Culture and Anarchy, 1869). This… Read More ›
The play between mythological and modern significance, between mystical and scientific visions of horror and unity, sexuality and sacred violence, is focused in the figure of the vampire. In Mary Braddon’s ‘Good Lady Ducayne’ (1896) the vampire theme signals the… Read More ›
The critical race theory (CRT) movement is a collection of activists and scholars engaged in studying and transforming the relationship among race, racism, and power. The movement considers many of the same issues that conventional civil rights and ethnic studies… Read More ›
Popular culture has become segmented into a myriad of forms, genres, audiences, tones, styles and purposes, so much so that it cannot meaningfully be talked about as a monolith. While some so-called ‘popular culture’ is produced en masse (and has… Read More ›
The term queer has often puzzled outsiders.Why call yourself that? This too has its story. For a long time queerwas, of course, a derogatory term for male homosexuals. That began to change when it began to be widely used in… Read More ›