Books in Critical Insights series

This title contains in-depth critical discussions of Bram Stoker's novel. Since its publication in 1897 Bram Stoker's ""Dracula"" has never been out of print, and - while many monsters have come before Dracula, and many since - Stoker's vampire has taken on an iconic status. On the surface, the novel is a classic tale of horror and suspense, a battle between good and evil, light and dark, the supernatural and the natural. However, a closer examination the novel opens up an intricate portrait of Victorian anxieties, leading contemporary scholars to often view the novel as the site of a battle between the old world and the new. Edited by literary scholar Jack Lynch of Rutgers University, Newark, this volume in the Critical Insights series considers the Gothic classic from a variety of critical viewpoints. As Lynch points out in his introduction, ""Dracula"" received scant critical attention prior to the 1960s and 1970s-though much attention has been paid to the novel over the past few decades. Overview essays by Bridget M. Marshall and Camille-Yvette Welsch examine the literary history of the vampire and the critical reception of Stoker's most famous work respectively. Writers Matthew J. Bolton, Allan Johnson, and David Glover all consider Stoker's novel in the context of the waning days of the Victorian era as the creep of modernity threatened the period's established beliefs and values. Similarly Beth E. McDonald looks at the novel as its characters turn to sacred rituals as a way of avoiding change. Together, critic Carrol L. Fry and psychologist Carla Edwards examine the novel from a psychological perspective, exploring the connections the novel makes with some of our most deepest fears. Samuel Lyndon Gladden writes about the use of the word earnest in the novel as a link between Stoker and his one-time friend Oscar Wilde. Critic Jimmie E. Cain, Jr., analyzes the novel from a political perspective in the wake of the Crimean War while distinguished feminist critic Nancy Armstrong offers a survey of feminist readings before turning her attention to the notions of Utopia and individual fulfillment. The volume concludes with a sweeping essay that combines Marxist, feminist, and post-colonialist readings into a consideration on race, capitalism, and aesthetics. Each essay is 5,000 words in length, and all essays conclude with a list of ""Works Cited,"" along with endnotes.

Essay selections include a comparison of All Quiet on the Western Front to Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms, a comprehensive survey of the novel's popular and critical reception, an examination of the novel's often overlooked subtleties of tone, characterization, and plot, and Remarque's startling direct style and his relevance to twenty-first-century readers. Previously published essays offer a close reading of the novel and its themes of comradeship, and the devastating effects of war on those who live through them as well as an account of the production and reception of the 1930 film adaptation.

This Critical Insights volume is intended to make Dante's Inferno more accessible to inquiring students who will wonder like so many of us at his genius. The contributors to this new volume are in the main Dante scholars of great importance, especially in Anglophone circles, whether in new work by current magisterial authorities or reprints of seminal scholarship over decades. Essays include a close reading of Dante, a chapter comparing and contrasting Dante's Inferno to his other writing, a history of the critical response to his work, and a chapter on the cultural and historical context of Dante's Inferno.

Original essays in this volume begin with a treatment of the historical background of Shakespeare's play, beginning with its first performances and possible audience reactions. Another offer a close reading of several key passages in King Lear, with an eye to the differences between the first published version and the revisions found in the Folio version of 1623. Two other new essays discuss the ways in which audiences and critics have responded to Shakespeare's tragedy and contrasts Lear with Marlowe's Tamburlaine. The reprinted essays provide readers with a sampling of those diverse but important ways of experiencing and understanding King Lear.

This volume of criticism brings together a variety of new, classic, and contemporary essays on this major American novel. New essays offer a comprehensive introduction to the novel's key themes, social context, and critical history as well as a complete survey of Steinbeck criticism. One essay describes an actual Okie migration in comparison to Steinbeck's fictional depiction, while other essays discuss the novel's Christian symbolism, assess the politics of the novel and analyze Steinbeck's feminine archetypes.