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> Why must critics unmask and demystify literary works? Why do they believe that language is always withholding some truth, that the critic’s task is to reveal the unsaid or repressed? In this book, Rita Felski examines critique, the dominant form of interpretation in literary studies, and situates it as but one method among many, a method with strong allure—but also definite limits. > Felski argues that critique is a sensibility best captured by Paul Ricoeur’s phrase “the hermeneutics of suspicion.” She shows how this suspicion toward texts forecloses many potential readings while providing no guarantee of rigorous or radical thought. Instead, she suggests, literary scholars should try what she calls “postcritical reading”: rather than looking behind a text for hidden causes and motives, literary scholars should place themselves in front of it and reflect on what it suggests and makes possible. > By bringing critique down to earth and exploring new modes of interpretation, The Limits of Critique offers a fresh approach to the relationship between artistic works and the social world.

It's a bit difficult to determine exactly why people are downloading a particular book, but Pride and Prejudice and A Tale of Two Cities also regularly dominate Project Gutenberg's most popular ebooks.

Strunk & White isn't a grammar book. There's only a little grammar in it, and much of that is wrong.

I recommend Harbrace. It's a solid grammar book with lots of examples. It's well-organized so you can find the information you seek easily.

Garner's Modern English Usage is also excellent.

>Is there actually any feminist/post-structuralist/post-colonialist who goes as far to claim that...writers cannot convincingly or should not write others? That is, that men cannot appreciate the female situation or that a european elite cannot grasp the situation of the subaltern enough to write about one, or any other combination.

Absolutely, but in my experience, people get far more defensive about this than the actual claim warrants. It's not usually so baldly stated as "never write about others." Often, it comes closer to the old saw, "write what you know," with the addendum "but don't simply ignore injustice or the disenfranchised."

Obviously, there's a lot to unpack here beyond those platitudes. One voice you might look to for help is Claudia Rankine's. She was a guest on the podcast Between the Covers where she talks a bit about white writers who fear writing about race (about halfway through the podcast -- the first half is about her book Citizen). She advises white writers not to imagine that writing about race necessarily means writing about and from the perspective of black people, that exploring whiteness too is a way of getting at race and racial inequality. She gives a few examples of poets doing this kind of work. It's been a long time since I listened, but I remember Martha Collins was one of them, and her work is a nice example of engaged writing that takes up the kind of emancipatory critical models that you mention without abandoning discussion of cultural others entirely.

You could try to find copies of Norton Anthologies, the type that are assigned in college courses. I have found more than couple at used bookstores.

Vol. I

I don’t generally advocate the use of amazon, but they have a rental option.

This isn't quite pre-Islamic, as Islam had migrated to West Africa with the trans-Saharan gold/salt trade to the Ghana Empire and then taken root. But! Sundiata or Sunjata, the "Epic of Mali", is almost certainly sub-Saharan Africa's most famous epic/oral tradition in the Euro-American world. It presents as a through-plot the story of Sundiata Keita, the founder of the Mali Empire, although in the nature of oral literature individual performances would add and subtract various elements to pass down related histories, king-lists, traditions.

There are two major English editions, and if you are interested in Sundiata as oral lit, I would recommend getting both.

D.T. Niane's prose edition (translated into English) is the best known. Niane spent multiple nights listening to repeated, differing performances of Sundiata by Mande griots (poet-musicians), and ultimately consolidates them into a prose narrative. (Amazon link; no affiliate)

Penguin Classics also has an English-language edition that actually contains two versions of the epic--one as told by Banna Kanute and one by Bamba Suso. These are both transcribed and translated as sung/verse.

The three versions make for a really interesting exercise in comparative study, as well as thinking through the flexibility of an "oral tradition" and how impressive the griots really are to condense and expand versions to suit the immediate situation of a specific performance.

534 plays survive from the original ~3,000 plays written from 1567 to 1642. 744 titles of lost plays are known.

Source: Lost Plays in Shakespeare's England (2014) by David McInnis and Matthew Steggle.

"Heart of Haiku" is a brilliant overview of the history of the Haiku, profiling Matsuo Bashō , the most famous Edo-era Japanese poet and central figure in the history of haiku. It's a brilliant book, very interesting even to people with a passing interest in the form (and short, too!)

Edit: looks like it's free on Kindle, too. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Heart-Haiku-Kindle-Single-ebook/dp/B0057IYMF4

To just get them to read in general, honestly? Anything. Anything they're interested in. Fiction, non-fiction, picture books, almanacs, stuff you think they're too wayy too young to understand (if you're right, they won't understand it, and no harm done), magazines, the funnies in the newspaper. Anything.

The best thing for kids is just to be exposed to tons of books, and to see people they look up to reading. So take them to the library, help them pick out a stack of books half as tall as they are (and pick out a few for yourself while you're at it). It doesn't matter if they don't like all of the books that they pick out, and they shouldn't feel like they have to finish everything they start; the point is to make it a leisure activity rather than a chore.

As for obscure folktales, Angela Carter has a great collection of global fairy tales, but it's a bit of a brick, so not exactly inviting. Or you could go old school and check out archive.org's collection of Andrew Lang's Fairy Books, named after colours. He gathered folk and fairy tales from European sources (the Grimms, Perrault, and so on) and repackaged them for English-speaking children.

If folk and fairy tales work with the specific children you have in mind (if you have specific children in mind) then great, but there's nothing intrinsically superior about them. If the goal is to inspire them to love reading, for heaven's sake help them to find what they love and then leave them alone to read it. :)

Not a primary source but Peter Gay's MODERNISM is a great overview and a fun read: https://www.amazon.com/Modernism-Lure-Heresy-Peter-Gay/dp/0393333965

Toril Moi has a book on Ibsen.

And Stanley Cavell has a chapter on A Doll's House in Cities of Words, which is a pretty accessible book based on a big lecture course Cavell regularly offered at Harvard on moral philosophy, pairing canonical philosophical texts with plays and movies (which provide alternating chapters).

Definitely need theory for post-grad work. This is a good intro course, from Yale Open Courses. It's videos of lectures, as well as downloadable supplements. The course is also available in book form on Amazon. If this stuff doesn't drive you mad, you'll enjoy grad work.

I discovered Fadiman and Major's book when I was 20 y/r and did this very thing. It was the best decision I ever made. A few notes:

1.) The Durant's "Story of Civ" is excellent, but is so antiquated that it's approaching literature more than history at this point. It's also so long that only segments of it are brilliant, and quite a lot is tedious for the non-historian. I suggest only browsing through it as meets your fancy.

For a good, condense, and reasonably up to date history the world, the best I'm aware of is by the late J.M. Roberts, found on Amazon for $25.

2.) I started chronologically, and had mixed results. If you take that route, take periodic breaks with newer material to keep things interesting.

3.) Don't worry about them being "too complicated to comprehend." These books will always offer you treasures no matter the age. Read and reread them as you see fit over your life time.

4.) The 4th ed of Fadiman's book is the best, but the third edition has a superior introduction. See if you can find a cheap paperpack of it somewhere.

Let me know if you have any other questions.

Edit: If you want to add the bible to your collection, this is the best edition out there. (A new ed is coming out April 1st!)

BTW, you may want to look at Jane Alison's Meander, Spiral, Explode, which is all about formal structures for novels alternative to the three-act narrative arc.

https://www.amazon.com/Meander-Spiral-Explode-Pattern-Narrative/dp/1948226138/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=jane+alison+meander+spiral+explode&qid=1600049657&sprefix=jane+ali&sr=8-3

Ray Bradbury finished high school and did the rest of his education in the local library. Education is not a prerequisite to art (Though writing classes and workshops are fun and useful. Check local areas for writing groups, writer's events, etc!)

What do you think is worthwhile fiction? Do you have examples? Narrowing down what you want to write is a great way to get started, but the best way to get good is to write everyday. Reach a page limit or word count every day. 500 words per day is a common starting goal.

There are tons of resources on the internet. Check /r/writing for writing podcasts and youtube channels. There's something for every genre!

Adding to /u/MegasBasilius, other books that will improve your writing are

*The Sense of Style, by Steven Pinker

*Zen and the Art of Writing, by Ray Bradbury

*To Show and To Tell, by Philip Lopate (for creative nonfiction, but has stuff that can cross genre)

*Aspects of the Novel, by E.M. Forrester (this is where the idea of flat vs. round characters comes from)

Analyzing your favorite books is another great way of learning how to write. Figure out how they work, and practice using those elements in your stories.

Hope this helps!

I was looking for a passage to excerpt from this essay, but it's all pretty useful as something which can change the terms of your question, so I'll just leave the link here: Étienne Balibar and Pierre Macherey, "On literature as an ideological form"

Come on now, /u/qdatk , Eco clearly worked it out in The Name of the Rose. ; )

Seriously though, yeah, what q said. Though the clarification reminds me of Vonnegut's MA thesis.

I should probably point out that, as much as I'm fond of him personally, Joseph Campbell is persona non grata in academic studies. He flattens things too much and insists on universality when it's not really there. You have to think of him as a Jungian psychoanalyst critic to get anywhere with him, really.

It sounds like you would be interested in various Marxist theories of literature. The gist of the argument against the "fiction is merely bourgeois" line of thought is to question the relationship between literature and ideology. Take a look at this chapter by Macherey and Balibar, Lukacs' "Narrate or describe", and Jameson's Marxism and Form and The Political Unconscious.

> En moi aussi bien des choses ont été détruites que je croyais devoir durer toujours et de nouvelles se sont édifiées donnant naissance à des peines et à des joies nouvelles que je n'aurais pu prévoir alors, de même que les anciennes me sont devenues difficiles à comprendre.

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2650/2650-h/2650-h.htm

This turns out to be relatively easy to find using ebooks (I have the Kindle book of the Davis translation) because a few sentences earlier there is the mention of an engraving by Benozzo Gozzoli.

If you read on paper it is probably easiest to get a paper copy of the French as that will make it easiest to keep track of how much of the book has elapsed. The online Gutenberg version of the French is a bit unwieldy and it's not that easy to see which chapter you're in, but lucky placement of an unusual term made this sentence easy to locate. I haven't heard of parallel text editions of Proust because he's not commonly taught at the level where those would be used by students.

Thank you! It seems that something like this is exactly what I'm looking for. would that be the one you were thinking of? or is there another book you'd suggest?

I just learned about the Makana mysteries by Parker Bilal. They're set in the Arab Spring. Haven't read any yet, but they look interesting.

I keep notes on talks I go to in Evernote (due to the efficient sync between iPad and MacBook versions), but beyond that I tend to use Word for notes on things I’m reading, with a link to the file in a note attached to a Zotero-entry and not infrequently a link in TheBrain as well.

This is the authoritative edition: https://www.amazon.fr/oeuvres-compl%C3%A8tes-1868-1873-illuminations-correspondants/dp/2070116018/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=rimbaud+pleiade&qid=1629082662&sr=8-1

Seconding everything in this post. There is one additional book I'd recommend. Artful Sentences: Syntax as Style. It's a fantastic book on stylistics with lots of great examples. It isn't Lit. Crit., but it is a really great non-academia primer on stylistics that you can apply to any author of your choice.

I have had some of this frustration too. The politics of the English department are my politics, too--I'm pretty left-wing. But sometimes, it does feel like we repeat the same pieties.

This anthology helped me feel less alone in that: https://www.amazon.com/Theorys-Empire-Anthology-Daphne-Patai/dp/0231134177

This is a great anthology that takes you from New Criticism proper to its less obvious inheritors in slightly more recent times.

This doesn’t exactly answer your question, but Franco Moretti does something similar in Distant Reading, which might be helpful!

https://www.amazon.com/Distant-Reading-Franco-Moretti/dp/1781680841/ref=nodl_

The book you're looking for is called, Married to Tolstoy. https://www.amazon.com/Married-Tolstoy-Cynthia-Asquith/dp/B0007DKUN2 I haven't had a chance to read it, but from what I've gathered it's where most of the slander comes from. All I can say is that people are a major product of their time. Anna Karenina is a powerful book because those feelings are ones Tolstoy knows well, and this should tell you about his relationship with his wife. Plus, later in life they were constantly bickering over his newfound religion and all that came with it. There is actually an Oscar Nomainated movie on this exact topic called The Last Station. It's based on fiction, but I still thought it was pretty good. Keep in mind, in his final days Tolstoy basically ran off to get away from his bickering wife.

Again, not the OP, but I've used parts of his On Writing as teaching materials (especially useful in an "enrichment" course on writing autobiography, since the book is half-autobio and half-"how to".)

It's a fun read, but also (shocker!) really more useful than nearly every other how-to-write guide I've seen.

This isn't necessarily major, not yet anyway, but Neil Gaiman's "The Man Who Forgot Ray Bradbury" is a wonderful short story done in tribute to, of course, Ray Bradbury, but especially the way Bradbury's characters tangled themselves up in nostalgia, memory, sense of self.

It's not too long and was written as a gift to Bradbury himself, if that matters.

Gaiman reads it here and there's a text version of it here, at io9.

It relies on a little knowledge of Bradbury's (perhaps more "major") works that touch on memory - the living books of Fahrenheit 451, the murderous reaction to the banning of Poe in The Martian Chronicles, the half-remembered pasts in Dandelion Wine and Something Wicked This Way Comes (which had that horrific time machine)... and so on.

I'm pretty sure the island you're thinking of is Ocracoke Island, NC in the Outer Banks. Unfortunately, I think the dialect is dying out. :/

I think the one you want is called The Ocracoke Brouge. There's also a book called Hoi Toide on the Outer Banks which is quite good. Can't find the whole documentary though, sorry.

Edit: Now that I think about it, XavierDantes is probably right about Tangier Island. Still, Ocracoke is something worth looking at if dialects interest you. If Tidewater is the accent you're looking for, maybe this is your missing documentary, called American Tongues: http://www.metacafe.com/watch/8711115/american_tongues/

Sorry about that. I should have guessed it wasn't right.

Actually I found this Brooks essay anthologized in Critical Theory Since Plato, too, which I have a PDF copy of, so I cut it out and uploaded it. It also includes "The Heresy of Paraphrase." This is kind of a large file (~20mb) but I didn't know how to fix that. Here's the link.

No one here mentioned James Joyce - he wasn't exactly blind, but his degeneration of sight was an influence on Finnegan's Wake.

There's a bit on that in this description of one of his sketches, and a bit more on his diagnosis (iritis) here, at BMJ.

I read an excerpt from James English's The Global Future of English Studies in a graduate seminar a few years ago. If I recall class discussion accurately, I think part of the book shows how the study of canonical British and American literature is rising in places like China as English studies in the US (at least at the college level) is becoming more and more open to postcolonial and ethnic American literatures. In short, there's some eroding of the English canon in the US whereas the same canon is being exported to China.

Looks like there are a couple copies available from secondhand bookstores online. The more expensive one seems to be a first edition (and over a hundred years old!). A small publisher like Wordsworth probably just grabs things which are out of copyright and reprints them occasionally, so it's not that unusual to find things they used to print but not any more. You can see a whole bunch of publishers like this (which are probably print on demand) mushrooming on Amazon.

i started with infinite jest. would generally not recommend that as your first DFW unless you have ample free time and nothing else to think about for a few months.

you can also start with a few essays or short stories. open culture has a fantastic list.

i recommend "the depressed person" (incredible short story), "9/11: the view from the midwest" (what it sounds like), and "e unibus pluram" (a longish essay about TV and american irony that went over my head in a few portions and i will reread at some point).

http://www.openculture.com/2012/02/23_free_essays_stories_by_david_foster_wallace_available_on_the_web.html

The only one I can find is in Croatian tales of fantasy / translated by Graham McMaster. There is a French translation, if that helps: Camao et autres nouvelles, containing Camao -- Étranges hôtes -- Nuit solitaire -- Le balcon -- Un fleur au carrefour -- La lumière étiente -- Une âme -- Le Moineau -- J'ai tué! -- La belle Héléne

All of this is on various inter-library catalogues. I'd also try the librarians at any academic libraries you might have access to.

The Great Courses – King Arthur: History and Legend by Professor Dorsey Armstrong

Professor Armstrong is wonderful to listen to, and her classes are excellent. This was one of my favorites.

And if you don't have an Audible account, this could be your free first audiobook!

This relevant article appeared on a Google search.

I think it's generally a matter of propriety rather than a literary device, though.

I wouldn't go for an unabridged, line-by-line translation, given your criteria. I'd suggest either Menon's prose version (which others have already mentioned) or Carole Satyamurti's blank verse version, both of which I personally find quite enjoyable and accessible.

Edit: the latter is probably the more "epic" feeling.

I did a class on narrative theory and I found The Nature of Narrative to be a fascinating textbook. It shows three (four? it was a while back) scholars taking distinct approaches on the same text. It gives the variety that you’re looking for.

The scholars are also writing towards a student audience, meaning they would not take what a theorist would signify for granted.

https://www.amazon.com/Nature-Narrative-Revised-Expanded/dp/0195151763

Edit: coherence

Caveat that I know more about theater/performance studies than manga/anime. Nevertheless, I really enjoyed Ayako Kano's Acting Like a Woman in Modern Japan. The theory was solid and you might find the historical background helpful. There's also good work out there on Takarazuka and gender-bending performance traditions. Here's one example.

That said, if I were you, I wouldn't limit myself to looking for Japanese theorists exclusively, especially if you don't read Japanese. Why not broaden your literature review to work on feminism and "fandom" in general, then apply it to the particular case of anime/manga?

Sad....

Yan Lianke maybe? He is known for being "experimental". I've only read his The Passage of Time, which tries to narrate a story through the reverse chronological order (it starts with the death of the hero and goes backwards, etc). The merit of this book definitely goes beyond this narrative style. Yan is said to have founded a Chinese version of the Latin American magical realism. This book has some elements of Camusian Absurdism.

It seems that this particular book is also not translated into English? But because of Yan's popularity abroad, I am sure you can find other books by him that does have an English translation -- a simple amazon search gives The Years, Months, Days and The Day the Sun Died. Both of them are said to be good literary works.

Two books you might look at:

https://www.amazon.com/Adjunct-Geoff-Cebula/dp/1521387419/ref=sr\_1\_3?crid=2YEQTAJHRB2G2&keywords=adjunct&qid=1664398465&qu=eyJxc2MiOiIyLjI2IiwicXNhIjoiMi4yMyIsInFzcCI6IjIuMTYifQ%3D%3D&sprefix=adjunct%2Caps%2C448&sr=8-3

This is a little dated, but it's still a great overview of Medieval Latin lyric:

https://www.amazon.com/Mediaeval-Latin-lyrics-Helen-Waddell/dp/0393044939

For Roman lyric, the main authors are Catullus and especially Horace, though Williams likely has Propertius, Ovid, and Tibullus in mind here, too.

It's definitely a reasonable thing to think about.

There is a FANTASTIC book called "Dawn to the West" by Donald Keene (he has also done other excellent books covering other periods of Japanese literary history - Dawn to the West is focused on post-1850, so Soseki, Tanizaki, and Mishima all have a significant presence in it.) It is focused on literary history rather than literary analysis, so I don't think it will necessarily go into as much depth on literary analysis questions as you're looking for, but it'll give you all the background information you need - and from there you're probably better off looking for papers on specific works and specific authors.

Thanks to /u/thereticent for the summons from the netherworld.

This reminds me of a legend that once circulated in Europe. Here is an excerpt from my Introduction to Folklore, which I used when teaching the subject at university:

>Other entities that recall traditions associated with the soul include the familiars or spirit servants of witches. Familiars can appear in any number of forms including cats, rabbits, and pigs. There is some ambiguity as to whether these creatures are demons associated with the witch or that they are the witch herself or a familiar created by the witch.

>There are legends that describe witches making what is called a carrying doll. This was a bundle of stolen items mixed with blood from the witch’s left hand. The object then became a familiar with the capacity to turn into a variety of animate shapes. It was generally believed that the owner of such a fetish was doomed to eternal damnation. The only escape was to sell it for less than it was purchased, and with each sale, it grew in strength. Thus, the carrying doll with the greatest power was purchased with a grain of sand.

I hope that helps, but my suggestion is to avoid making one of these - and certainly don't purchase one for a grain of sand!

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Failure-Conservatism-Modern-British-Poetry/dp/1848614985

I found this really useful about ten years ago as a a survey of the UK poetry scene from the 1950s until the 1990s. Some of his arguments don’t necessarily makes sense but it’s a good indicator of taste, differences in style etc with plenty of criticism of the ‘mainstream’ of British poetry.

Here's the book you want:

https://www.amazon.com/Sacred-Narrative-Readings-Theory-Myth/dp/0520051920/ref=sr\_1\_13?crid=1V0ZUO9DOCXUP&keywords=alan+dundes&qid=1654527485&sprefix=alan+dunde%2Caps%2C203&sr=8-13

It has a bunch of extracts representing a variety of approaches to the study of myth. It's a little dated now, but it will give you a good sense of the theories that dominated through most of the 18th-20th centuries.

OP also wants to read The Elements of Academic Style by Eric Hayot. It was written specifically for humanities (esp. English) grad students writing theses.

I think you guys have a really good discussion going here and you're definitely correct in that racist ideologies like the concept of "whiteness" have always been used to justify colonization and slavery that the colonizers just wanted to do anyway, such is the chicken and egg relationship to the affects of racism and discussing the motivations of so-called, evil men.

But this point is important because modern scholars do follow your line of reasoning here. And furthermore, modern understandings of whiteness consider it an expanding concept that is tied directly to colonialism because of some of the exact contradictions you guys have brought up here. Like you said, the Japanese and Chinese also did racist imperialism, so what gives??

Well the complexity comes from the power dynamics and the actual ways we use and talk about the concept of whiteness, especially in the US and UK. Because whiteness and white culture has become an almost "default" in the West, these cultural issues are forever replicated as anything that "isn't white" exhists in opposition to the historically expanding group that "is white". For example, the inclusion of Itallians and Irish as white in the West has only happened since the 80s.

I know Kendi as a writer is kinda loaded due to the CRT media stuff, but as a black American, his book Stamped from the Begining does an excellent job at taking on the lofty task to tracing back major racist concepts and tracking them back to major historical figures that represented changing racial dynamics for their time,. Starting with the British's conquest of the Indies, I believe.

https://www.amazon.com/Stamped-Beginning-Definitive-History-America-ebook/dp/B017QL8WV4

This is what you're looking for for the Iliad. It's a bit dated now, but not in any kind of significant way, really: https://www.amazon.com/Mortal-Hero-Introduction-Homers-Iliad/dp/0520056264/ref=sr\_1\_1?crid=3NFO3SLOEDQZ7&keywords=seth+schein+mortal+hero&qid=1646163291&s=books&sprefix=seth+schein+mortal+hero%2Cstripbooks%2C92&sr=1-1

I know basically nothing about it, but I know this book exists -- the description of which on Amazon says: "As most of the texts discussed are not available in English translation, the argument is illustrated by lucid plot summaries and extensive quotation (accompanied by literal English renderings)."

https://www.amazon.com/Medieval-Greek-Romance-Roderick-Beaton-ebook/dp/B0089LOH6A/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?crid=2OEWTW4FALOXR&keywords=beaton+medieval+greek+romance&qid=1644352964&sprefix=beaton+medieval+greek+romance%2Caps%2C90&sr=8-3

All of these theses suggestions are really good. However, there is one thing I think is important to remember. You are not your degree. Your self worth is not equivalent to your degree. A degree does not inherently mean a person is intelligent.

Also, Project Gutenberg is great for accessing works that are within the public domain (typically anything before the 1920s).

Someone I know just self published a book called The Waiting Room which seems to fit what you’re looking for pretty well. You can check it out here

For some reason, another book written in the middle of WWII by an embattled scholar in a foreign country comes to mind whenever Russell's survey of Western Philosophy is mentioned: Mimesis by Eric Auerbach:

https://www.amazon.com/Mimesis-Representation-Literature-Expanded-Princeton-ebook/dp/B00F8MIIKE

Neither would have been written had the author not been under significant financial and emotional turmoil--undoubtedly greater in the case of Auerbach--as the scope of the undertaking would have been overwhelming in "normal" times. Russell himself was aware of the many shortcomings of his work and if anyone takes his commentary as the last word on the matter, then they've got bigger problems:

>I regarded the early part of my History of Western Philosophy as a history of culture, but in the later parts, where science becomes important, it is more difficult to fit into this framework. I did my best, but I am not at all sure that I succeeded. I was sometimes accused by reviewers of writing not a true history but a biased account of the events that I arbitrarily chose to write of. But to my mind, a man without bias cannot write interesting history—if, indeed, such a man exists.

Edgar Allan Poe wrote "Sonnet--to Science."

George Eliot has a lot to say about microscopes in Middlemarch: "Now, why on earth should Mrs. Cadwallader have been at all busy about Miss Brooke's marriage; and why, when one match that she liked to think she had a hand in was frustrated, should she have straightway contrived the preliminaries of another? Was there any ingenious plot, any hide-and-seek course of action, which might be detected by a careful telescopic watch? Not at all: a telescope might have swept the parishes of Tipton and Freshitt, the whole area visited by Mrs. Cadwallader in her phaeton, without witnessing any interview that could excite suspicion, or any scene from which she did not return with the same unperturbed keenness of eye and the same high natural color. In fact, if that convenient vehicle had existed in the days of the Seven Sages, one of them would doubtless have remarked, that you can know little of women by following them about in their pony-phaetons. Even with a microscope directed on a water-drop we find ourselves making interpretations which turn out to be rather coarse; for whereas under a weak lens you may seem to see a creature exhibiting an active voracity into which other smaller creatures actively play as if they were so many animated tax-pennies, a stronger lens reveals to you certain tiniest hairlets which make vortices for these victims while the swallower waits passively at his receipt of custom. In this way, metaphorically speaking, a strong lens applied to Mrs. Cadwallader's match-making will show a play of minute causes producing what may be called thought and speech vortices to bring her the sort of food she needed."

So the idea of a vampire has existed in multiple cultures as myths and folklore for a while, but the first "modern literary" version of a vampire comes from a 19th century short story called The Vampyre. The vampire in this story is a suave "British" nobleman who spends a good chunck of the beginning of the story eating peasants in Greece, then later the wealthy but non-noble main character's sister. Bram Stoker retains this idea by making the British Bourgeois character meet a bunch of terrified, superstitious peasants before meeting the area's noble, Dracula. So vampires in literature have a strong tradition of being represented by rich people who prey on the lower classes, to the point where Karl Marx even uses the imagery to discuss the Proletariat getting their surplus value sucked out of them through economics (noting that Bram Stokers is a bit different metaphor, as the main characters are a team of international Bourgeoisie who band together and overthrough an ancient bloodsucking noble, possibly mirroring the 18th century bourgeoisie overthrowing kings).

Long version short, while vampires are a composite of a lot of different images, including tuberculosis, evil foreigners, evil sexuality, and so on, the pure blood trope most likely comes from their associations with royal bloodlines, the rich getting richer, and aristocracy

There's some technical language and personification here, but it's really just a description of a sheaf of corn. If you do a Google image search for "sheaf of corn," you'll see that the oats droop down, like in this image. I expect that you'd have to investigate the context in which this image appears in the story to figure out its significance.

Yes. https://www.amazon.com/Petrarchs-Lyric-Poems-Sparse-Lyrics/dp/0674663489/ref=sr_1_8?keywords=petrarch&qid=1639250110&sr=8-8

That's pretty much straight up canon if you're in English and not Italian.

If that isn't what you want, then yeah, doof, you have to translate it yourself. Welcome to academia.

More general writing advice that's tailored towards grad students in lit. studies: Eric Hayot's Elements of Academic Style (DM me if you're in need of a copy ;))

I'm a bit of a neophyte, but a lot of folks found Eco's How to Write a Thesis helpful. I found it helpful for smaller reading and writing projects.

Have you read orwells own views on 1984?

http://www.openculture.com/2014/01/george-orwell-explains-in-a-revealing-1944-letter-why-hed-write-1984.html

Also this letter Huxley wrote on it

http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/03/1984-v-brave-new-world.html

I've read a shit ton of writing books (back when I had the want-tos), and I even did part of my MA thesis on a study of the genre. The most useful one I ever read was How to Write Fast (While Writing Well). Sounds hokey, but it made a difference in my writing.

The best school for writing is a medium-sized town newspaper. I wrote 400,000 to 500,000 words a year for almost six years. I learned more about writing than anything I learned at university (though I recommend university for other reasons).

P.S. There's also a Fitzgerald on Writing, which I found a better read.

As it turns out, somebody uploaded the whole book it's from here. The chapter starts on page 125, but the other stuff might interest you too.

WordNet?

>WordNet is a large lexical database of English. Nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs are grouped into sets of cognitive synonyms (synsets), each expressing a distinct concept.

Hey there- it is clear that you love to produce quality work and are willing to put in the work needed. And after reading your concerns, we think Weava (https://www.weavatools.com/) would be perfect for you. This tool is a free Chrome extension that will help you highlight and annotate across different websites and digital documents. You can highlight using different colours- each can colour indicate a certain topic or subtopic. This will be saved in folders and subfolders according to your chosen topics. It will help save precious time and bring clarity to your research process. You can always go to the folders and check out what you have saved- there will not be a fear of missing out on your notes. Check it out and let us know if it helped!

Well first you’ll have to read it. The approach that worked for me was to listen an audiobook chapter, then listen to James A.W. Heffernan’s Great Courses breakdown of each chapter. Take note of what piques you’re interest, and then do a basic search on JSTOR to see if and how people have approached this theme or topic before you.

https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/joyce-s-ulysses.html

And here's a good poetry list to get you started in that genre: https://www.diigo.com/list/jhs-clarklibrary/American+Realism%3A+Poets+%26+Poetry/1o6mg42u9

Try searching this question and variations of it in this subreddit, /r/books and /r/suggestmeabook - it gets asked regularly so you should find some good suggestions.

The Norton Anthology of World Literature might interest you

It’s an impossible task, but John Sutherland is a witty British critic and here is his (I’m guessing somewhat English language centered) go at it:

https://www.amazon.com/Little-History-Literature-Histories/dp/0300186851/ref=nodl_

I have interests in reading different view points. I have also come across "Literature and the Economics of Liberty* along with *Liberty and Literature" (https://www.amazon.com/Literature-Liberty-Libertarian-Literary-Criticism/dp/0739186337). I have yet to read either one so unfortunately I can't share any other thoughts. I am interested in seeing what people think of it after having read either and I thought I would point you to this second title.

I haven't read this particular text, but I like this series in general as a way into understanding something in a cursory way.

https://www.amazon.com/Derrida-Short-Introduction-Simon-Glendinning/dp/019280345X

Elizabeth Gaskell also wrote some excellent, chilling stories: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tales-Mystery-Macabre-Supernatural/dp/1840220953/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=elizabeth+gaskell+ghost&qid=1613465266&sr=8-1

You're welcome of course. Thought of the Heart is a small and beautiful book that ends with poetry. For a deep dive, I'd recommend Re-visioning PsychologyRe-visioning Psychology, where Hillman delineates and makes distinct the terms soul and spirit in western history. He makes use of extensive literary quotation. A brilliant, eye-opening work.

I highly recommend Fulk's Introduction to Middle English. It can be a bit technical at times, but it is a very thorough (and totally self contained) introduction to the language. It covers grammar, pronunciation, dialectal differences, and has a variety of practice texts for reading. As you mention, many Middle English texts can be read with just a knowledge of modern english, but getting a feel for the unique grammatical structures of Middle English that aren't found in the modern language will make reading a thousand times easier. And learning the original pronunciation and memorizing a few verses in it will make you sound cool at parties, which is another plus!

Genre-focused, but Sherryl Vint has a killer book you should check out: https://www.amazon.com/Animal-Alterity-Science-Fiction-Question/dp/1846318157

Well that sucks, I just wanted an edition that had decent footnotes. I've heard that this edition is good if you're OK with Garnett, and as far as I can tell it's not as error-ridden as the Maude revision.

https://www.amazon.com/Realism-Style-Civilization-Linda-Nochlin/dp/0140132228/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=linda+nochlin+realism&qid=1604776650&sprefix=linda+nochlin+&sr=8-1

https://www.amazon.com/Romanticism-Realism-Mythology-Nineteenth-Century-Art/dp/0571133320/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=zerner+rosen+realism&qid=1604776711&sr=8-1#mediaMatrix_secondary_view_div_1604776723891

The Sounds of Poetry: A Brief Guide, Robert Pinksy

https://www.amazon.com/Sounds-Poetry-Brief-Guide/dp/0374526176

A great all-purpose introduction to how poetry works, why poetry is written the way it is, and what the point of it all is. Written by the former Poet Laureate of the United States who is also well-respected for his translations of Dante.

Tim Groenland's recent book on editing Carver and Wallace might be of interest: https://www.amazon.com/Art-Editing-Raymond-Carver-Wallace/dp/1501338277

(If at all possible, don't buy it from Amazon. And if you can't afford it, please reach out; I'll get you what I can.)

That's unfortunate to hear! I have struggled with anxiety and depression as a result of my ADHD too. It's such a weight to carry, isn't it? :/

What I'd recommend to you, then, is learning about metacognition. Metacognition is thinking about thinking. It involves the awareness, planning, evaluation, and monitoring of one's own thinking processing and performance. Metacognitive strategies help you keep track of your own mental chaos. I only found about it a few months ago and it's been life-changing for me.

Learning more about resources that externalize the information you're holding in your brain can also be a good idea. Things like concept mapping, argument construction checklists, the second brain, and the zettelkasten method. I struggle a lot with the same things you mentioned, and externalization strategies (thinking on paper, before writing) are the things that help me the most. It can be time-consuming, but it helps to manage the frustration that comes with too many thoughts too fast to process.

I also use an app called Live Transcribe from Google to just speak freely what comes to my mind and the app transcribes it very well. This braindump helps to purge the thoughts and helps to make space in my head to organize things afterward. Then I use checklists and outlines to keep track of what I'm writing.

I hope you'll find solutions that work for you! It's a long, frustrating journey, but it does get better when you find what works for how your brain ticks. Good luck!

This is sort of what you’re looking for

A KWIC Concordance to Samuel Beckett's Trilogy: Molloy, Malone Dies and the Unnamable (Garland Reference Library of the Humanities) (2 Volumes) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0824083946/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_tai_15zGFbN79S8TE

I use the Penguin Dictionary of Symbols. Usually carry it around to all my classes and review when writing lectures/lessons the odd time. Students get a kick out of it.

Penguin Dictionary of Symbols

Used this anthology in 2 college courses: https://www.amazon.com/Art-Short-Story-Dana-Gioia/dp/0321363639

Honestly, as an anthology it kind of sucked. It's pretty standard stuff you can find everywhere, and it doesn't offer much unique outside of the brief selections of writers writing on craft.

A number of the authors have also fallen out of favor. Isaac Bashevis Singer, for instance, isn't talked about anywhere near the way he was 20-30 years ago. Time is often unkind to conservative writers.

His short stories are still great. They're just dominated by male characters. It's like Borges. You'll read 20 stories and there will be 4 female characters (if that) across all of them. It winds up seeming a little self-indulgent when compared to someone who writes about people other than themselves.

Mayakovsky wrote a book about his trip to America in the early 20s, and it’s amazing to read a contemporary artistic account of a modernist writer from modernising Russia seeing how technologically advanced and fast America was.

He marvels at the modernity embedded in the mise-en-scene of the cities as much as the standout infrastructure. He also approaches it from a revolutionary communist viewpoint - there’s quite a mix of emotions in there! It’s well worth reading for a different, contemporary view on what it was like to be alive and an artist in the time of modernism.

Anything by Marshall McLuhan. He assumes you’ve already got a working knowledge, so you may have some homework to get caught up.

Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man https://www.amazon.com/dp/0262631598/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_ujpoCbC2FCRCF

I don't know, but if your library has this book, I bet it will tell you. This is the reference I see people cite all the time: https://www.amazon.com/Handlist-Rhetorical-Terms-Richard-Lanham/dp/0520273680

When I took a grammar class we used a textbook called Analyzing English Grammar which I found to be very useful.

Analyzing English Grammar (7th Edition) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0205252524/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_BbNSBb67ECRWT

English 3200. It’s not cheap but it’s an insanely thorough workbook. Plus you can probably get a used copy. Highly recommended. English 3200 with Writing Applications: A Programmed Course in Grammar and Usage (College Series) https://www.amazon.com/dp/015500865X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_74QSBbFH4SY0W

I think about the same way David Foster Wallace thought about Vollmann: pure envy about this man's work ethic. Apart from that: I would really like to meet the guy and talk books and paintings. I haven't read much, but I feel that Vollmann rightly deserves a place besides writers such as Franzen, Didion, Carol Oates and Foster Wallace.

As for your second question: there is little to no scientific publications on Vollmann as of yet (although I feel a rising popularity among a very small group of people; in American academia at least). The only two books that come to mind are William T. Vollmann: A Critical Companion and William T. Vollmann: A Critical Study and Seven Interviews.

To add to other people's lists, Paul de Man's Rhetoric of Romanticism from the mid-1980s has a couple of essays on Yeats, both from the early 1960s. De Man was also (and remains) a controversial figure, but his style of reading was immensely influential for a time and it's probably worth looking at him even if you're going to go in a different direction.

I kind of hate the design of this book, so please don't be put off by the cover, but Not for Mothers Only is a great anthology of poems about motherhood by contemporary writers.

Great. Thank you! Can you recommend any reading on the subject? Or maybe a Chandler biography if a decent one exists? I remember a piece in Stephen King's On Writing that discussed how Chandler couldn't really get a seat at the literary table, so to speak, because of his origins in the pulp fiction world. Off-topic, I know.

Lastly, I'm definitely misunderstanding what exactly makes a trope if that's the case. Can you help me out with that? Thanks.

I suspect one resource that could help you work through this is Cal Newport's So Good They Can't Ignore You. I mean, TBH, the blurb at that link encapsulates his point pretty well: don't worry if you aren't sure what your 'passion' is because that's not the most common way people find happiness in work. But there's plenty more in it about what things eventually make participating in society pretty OK in spite of not starting from a position of passion about it.

Stanley Lombardo's translation is a pretty interesting version. From the Library Journal editorial review: "Lombardo concedes from the start that 'Homer's musicality cannot be heard in any kind of English,' and so he does not compose his Iliad in hexameters or, for that matter, in any standard, regular meter. Instead, based on his experience as an oral performer of Homer's poetry, he writes the lines 'based on the cadences of natural speech.'"

Here's that link: https://www.amazon.com/Iliad-Hackett-Classics-Homer/dp/0872203522/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1507685567&sr=8-1&keywords=lombardo+illiad

Penguin Classics put out prose translations years ago, it may be that republished.

You could try a Google search for Aeneid prose translation, and then look through the hits to see if any match.

In fact, using Occam's razor, why not just ask your teacher what version he used. I'm sure they'd be very happy to help a student read further, and would get some satisfaction from helping - win-win!

I highly suggest M. A. S. Abdel Haleem's The Qur'an (Oxford World's Classics .

The letters of Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop to each other. The first few pages were very, very subtle, with very subtle hints of romance, deep friendship, and somehow their infidelity. Their personal lives. But if you were for their perception on writing, they constantly critique each other and others in their circle like Auden, Howe, Plath, Allen Tate, etc. Though the core of their conversations are intrinsically personal, some insight on writing can still be reaped.

Some pages can be read here: http://www.solearabiantree.net/namingofparts/pdf/articles/travisanowordsinair.pdf

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