The most substantial collection of critical essays on Morrison to appear since her death in mid-2019, this book contains previously unpublished essays which both acknowledge the universal significance of her writing even as they map new directions. Essayists include pre-eminent Morrison scholars, as well as scholars who work in cultural criticism, African American letters, American modernism, and women's writing. The book includes work on Morrison as a public intellectual; work which places Morrison's writing within today's currents of contemporary fiction; work which draws together Morrison's “trilogy” of Beloved, Jazz, and Paradise alongside Dos Passos' USA trilogy; work which links Morrison to such Black Atlantic artists as Lubaina Himid and others as well as work which offers a reading of “influence” that goes both directions between Morrison and Faulkner. Another cluster of essays treats seldom-discussed works by Morrison, including an essay on Morrison as writer of children's books and as speaker for children's education. In addition, a “Teaching Morrison” section is designed to help teachers and critics who teach Morrison in undergraduate classes. The Bloomsbury Handbook to Toni Morrison is wide-ranging, provocative, and satisfying; a fitting tribute to one of the greatest American novelists.

The most substantial collection of critical essays on Morrison to appear since her death in mid-2019, this book contains previously unpublished essays which both acknowledge the universal significance of her writing even as they map new directions. Essayists include pre-eminent Morrison scholars, as well as scholars who work in cultural criticism, African American letters, American modernism, and women's writing. The book includes work on Morrison as a public intellectual; work which places Morrison's writing within today's currents of contemporary fiction; work which draws together Morrison's “trilogy” of Beloved, Jazz, and Paradise alongside Dos Passos' USA trilogy; work which links Morrison to such Black Atlantic artists as Lubaina Himid and others as well as work which offers a reading of “influence” that goes both directions between Morrison and Faulkner. Another cluster of essays treats seldom-discussed works by Morrison, including an essay on Morrison as writer of children's books and as speaker for children's education. In addition, a “Teaching Morrison” section is designed to help teachers and critics who teach Morrison in undergraduate classes. The Bloomsbury Handbook to Toni Morrison is wide-ranging, provocative, and satisfying; a fitting tribute to one of the greatest American novelists.

Covering her essays, short stories and dramatic works as well as her novels, this is a comprehensive study of Morrison's place in contemporary American culture.

Both literary author and celebrity, Bret Easton Ellis represents a type of contemporary writer who draws from both high and the low culture, using popular culture references, styles and subject matters in a literary fiction that goes beyond mere entertainment. His fiction, arousing the interest of the academia, mass media and general public, has fuelled heated controversy over his work. This controversy has often prevented serious analysis of his fiction, and this book is the first monograph to fill in this gap by offering a comprehensive textual and contextual analysis of his most important works up to the latest novel Imperial Bedrooms. Offering a study of the reception of each novel, the influence of popular, mass and consumer culture in them, and the analysis of their literary style, it takes into account the controversies surrounding the novels and the changes produced in the shifty terrain of the literary marketplace. It offers anyone studying contemporary American fiction a thorough and unique analysis of Ellis's work and his own place in the literary and cultural panorama.

Widely acknowledged as an important, if highly controversial, figure in contemporary literature, French novelist and poet Michel Houellebecq has elicited diverse critical responses. In this book Carole Sweeney examines his novels as a response to the advance of neoliberalism into all areas of affective human life. This historicizing study argues that le monde houellebecquien is an 'atomised society' of banal quotidian alienation populated by quietly resentful men who are the botched subjects of late-capitalism. Addressing Houellebecq's handling of the 'failure' of the radical thought of '68, Sweeney looks at the ways in which his fiction treats feminism, the decline of religion and the family, as well as the obsolescence of French 'theory' and the Sartrean notion of 'engaged' literature. Reading the world with the disappointed idealism of a contemporary moralist, Houellebecq's novels, Sweeney argues, fluctuate between despair for the world as it is and a limp utopian hope for a post-humanity.

"Edwidge Danticat's prolific body of work has established her as one of the most important voices in 21st century literary culture. Across such novels as Farming the Bones and Krik? Krak!, essays, journalism and writing for children, the Haitian American writer has tackled such important contemporary themes as racism, anti-immigrant politics, sexual violence and imperialism. With chapters written by leading and emerging international scholars this is the most up-to-date and in-depth reference guide to 21st century scholarship on Edwidge Danticat's work. The Bloomsbury Handbook to Edwidge Danticat covers such topics as: The full range of Danticat's writing: from her novels and short stories to essays, life writing and writing for children and young adults; Major interdisciplinary scholarly perspectives: literary studies, politics, feminist and gender studies, race, and ecocriticism; Danticat's literary sources: from Zora Neale Hurston and Audre Lorde to Paule Marshall; Key contexts: Caribbean histories and cultures, experiences of imperialism, migration and diaspora. The book also includes a comprehensive bibliography of Danticat's work and key works of secondary criticism, as well as a new reflective piece by Danticat herself"--

Cutting-edge scholarly guide to Toni Morrison's most recent work with emphasis on Morrison's examination of African-American progress and leadership at key moments in American history.

Bringing together two parallel and occasionally intersecting disciplines - the environmental and medical humanities - this field-defining handbook reveals our ecological predicament to be a simultaneous threat to human health. The book: · Represents the first collection to bring the environmental humanities and medical humanities into conversation in a systematic way · Features contributions from a wide range of interdisciplinary perspectives including literary studies, environmental ethics and philosophy, cultural history and sociology · Adopts a truly global approach, examining contexts including, but not limited to, North America, the UK, Africa, Latin America, South Asia, Turkey and East Asia · Touches on issues and approaches such as narrative medicine, ecoprecarity, toxicity, mental health, and contaminated environments. Showcasing and surveying a rich spectrum of issues and methodologies, this book looks not only at where research currently is at the intersection of these two important fields, but also at where it is going.

While critics collect around the question of what comes "after postmodernism," this book asks something different about recent American fiction: what if we are seeing not the end of postmodernism but its belated success? Succeeding Postmodernism examines how novels by DeLillo, Wallace, Danielewski, Foer and others conceptualize threats to individuals and communities posed by a poststructural culture of mediation and simulation, and possible ways of resisting the disaffected solipsism bred by that culture. Ultimately it finds that twenty-first century American fiction sets aside the postmodern problem of how language does or does not mean in order to raise the reassuringly retro question of what it can and does mean: it finds that novels today offer language as solution to the problem of language. Thus it suggests a new way of reading "antihumanist" late postmodern fiction, and a framework for understanding postmodern and twenty-first century fiction as participating in a long and newly enlivened tradition of humanism and realism in literature.

Edwidge Danticat's prolific body of work has established her as one of the most important voices in 21st-century literary culture. Across such novels as Breath, Eyes, Memory, Farming the Bones and short story collections such as Krik? Krak! and most recently Everything Inside, essays, and writing for children, the Haitian-American writer has throughout her oeuvre tackled important contemporary themes including racism, imperialism, anti-immigrant politics, and sexual violence. With chapters written by leading and emerging international scholars, this is the most up-to-date and in-depth reference guide to 21st-century scholarship on Edwidge Danticat's work. The Bloomsbury Handbook to Edwidge Danticat covers such topics as: · The full range of Danticat's writing from her novels and short stories to essays, life writing and writing for children and young adults. · Major interdisciplinary scholarly perspectives including from establishing fields fields of literary studies, Caribbean Studies Political Science, Latin American Studies, feminist and gender studies, African Diaspora Studies, , and emerging fields such as Environmental Studies. · Danticat's literary sources and influences from Haitian authors such as Marie Chauvet, Jacques Roumain and Jacques-Stéphen Alexis to African American authors like Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison, and Caribbean American writers Audre Lorde to Paule Marshall. · Known and unknown Historical moments in experiences of slavery and imperialism, the consequence of internal and external migration, and the formation of diasporic communities The book also includes a comprehensive bibliography of Danticat's work and key works of secondary criticism, and an interview with the author, as well as and essays by Danticat herself.