Tag: English

Unlived Lives in English Literature A Typological Study


Free Download Unlived Lives in English Literature: A Typological Study By Lena Linne
2019 | 287 Pages | ISBN: 3825346625 | PDF | 3 MB
If I had acted differently, then…" – most human beings indulge in counterfactual thought experiments at one point or another. For the fictional characters analysed in this book, they are a central preoccupation. The characters obsessively review their past, looking at a road they did not take, pondering on a life they did not live. Drawing on narratology, theories of counterfactuality and the study of motifs, the book suggests a typology of unlived lives, which is based on more than fifty works from the nineteenth century to the present. In addition, the book offers seven readings. These focus on texts in which the motif of the unlived life features in an especially characteristic or challenging manner: Henry James’s ‘The Diary of a Man of Fifty’ and ‘The Jolly Corner’, Virginia Woolf’s ‘Mrs Dalloway’, Vita Sackville-West’s ‘All Passion Spent’, Samuel Beckett’s ‘Krapp’s Last Tape’ and Alice Munro’s ‘Carried Away’ and ‘Dolly’.

(more…)

The Church as Sacred Space in Middle English Literature and Culture


Free Download The Church as Sacred Space in Middle English Literature and Culture By Laura Varnam
2019 | 280 Pages | ISBN: 1526143569 | PDF | 19 MB
The church as sacred space in Middle English literature and culture puts us at the heart of medieval religious life, standing inside the church with the laity in order to ask what it meant to them and why. Exploring a range of Middle English pastoral literature including sermons, treatises, miracle narratives and a church foundation legend, alongside liturgy, architecture and material culture the book examines the ways in which the sanctity of the church was constructed and maintained for the edification of the laity. Drawing on a wide range of contemporary theoretical approaches, it offers a reading of the church as continually produced and negotiated by the rituals, performances and practices of its lay communities, who were constantly being asked to attend to its material form, visual decorations and significance. The meaning of the church was a dominant question in late-medieval religious culture. This book provides an invaluable context for students and academics working on lay religious experience and canonical Middle English texts.

(more…)

Contemporary Migration Literature in German and English A Comparative Study


Free Download Contemporary Migration Literature in German and English: A Comparative Study By Sandra Vlasta
2015 | 296 Pages | ISBN: 9004305998 | PDF | 3 MB
Up until now, ‘migration literature’ has primarily been defined as ‘texts written by migrant authors’, a definition that has been discussed, criticised, and even rejected by critics and authors alike. Very rarely has ‘migration literature’ been understood as ‘literature on the topic of migration’, which is an approach this book adopts by presenting a comparative analysis of contemporary texts on experiences of migration. By focusing on specific themes and motifs in selected texts, this study suggests that migration literature is a sub-genre that exists in both various bodies of literature as well as various languages. This book analyses English and German texts by authors such as Monica Ali, DimitrĂ© Dinev, Anna Kim, Timothy Mo, Preethi Nair, Caryl Phillips, Hamid Sadr, and Vladimir Vertlib, among others.

(more…)

On the Queerness of Early English Drama Sex in the Subjunctive


Free Download On the Queerness of Early English Drama: Sex in the Subjunctive by Tison Pugh
English | February 26, 2021 | ISBN: 1487508743 | True EPUB | 256 pages | 1.2 MB
Often viewed as theologically conservative, many theatrical works of late medieval and early Tudor England nevertheless exploited the performative nature of drama to flirt with unsanctioned expressions of desire, allowing queer identities and themes to emerge. Early plays faced vexing challenges in depicting sexuality, but modes of queerness, including queer scopophilia, queer dialogue, queer characters, and queer performances, fractured prevailing restraints. Many of these plays were produced within male homosocial environments, and thus homosociality served as a narrative precondition of their storylines.

(more…)

A History of the English-Speaking Peoples One Volume Abridged Edition


Free Download Sir Winston S. Churchill, "A History of the English-Speaking Peoples: One Volume Abridged Edition "
English | ISBN: 1350042943 | 2021 | 632 pages | EPUB | 1173 KB
‘This history will endure; not only because Sir Winston has written it, but also because of its own inherent virtues – its narrative power, its fine judgment of war and politics, of soldiers and statesmen, and even more because it reflects a tradition of what Englishmen in the hey-day of their empire thought and felt about their country’s past.’ The Daily Telegraph

(more…)