This book explores epistolary fiction as a major phenomenon across Europe from the Renaissance to the nineteenth century.

Cognition, Literature, and History models the ways in which cognitive and literary studies may collaborate and thereby mutually advance. It shows how understanding of underlying structures of mind can productively inform literary analysis and historical inquiry, and how formal and historical analysis of distinctive literary works can reciprocally enrich our understanding of those underlying structures. Applying the cognitive neuroscience of categorization, emotion, figurative thinking, narrativity, self-awareness, theory of mind, and wayfinding to the study of literary works and genres from diverse historical periods and cultures, the authors argue that literary experience proceeds from, qualitatively heightens, and selectively informs and even reforms our evolved and embodied capacities for thought and feeling. This volume investigates and locates the complex intersections of cognition, literature, and history in order to advance interdisciplinary discussion and research in poetics, literary history, and cognitive science.

This series presents a comprehensive, global and up-to-date history of English-language prose fiction and written ... by a international team of scholars ... -- dust jacket.

Now available in a single volume paperback, this advanced reference resource for the novel and novel theory offers authoritative accounts of the history, terminology, and genre of the novel, in over 140 articles of 500-7,000 words. Entries explore the history and tradition of the novel in different areas of the world; formal elements of the novel (story, plot, character, narrator); technical aspects of the genre (such as realism, narrative structure and style); subgenres, including the bildungsroman and the graphic novel; theoretical problems, such as definitions of the novel; book history; and the novel's relationship to other arts and disciplines. The Encyclopedia is arranged in A-Z format and features entries from an international cast of over 140 scholars, overseen by an advisory board of 37 leading specialists in the field, making this the most authoritative reference resource available on the novel. This essential reference, now available in an easy-to-use, fully indexed single volume paperback, will be a vital addition to the libraries of literature students and scholars everywhere.

This book is an extensive investigation of letters and letter writing across two centuries, focusing on the sociocultural function and meaning of epistolary writing - letters that were circulated, were intended to circulate, or were perceived to circulate within the culture of epistolarity in early modern England. The study examines how the letter functioned in a variety of social contexts, yet also assesses what the letter meant as idea to early modern letter writers, investigating letters in both manuscript and print contexts. It begins with an overview of the culture of epistolarity, examines the material components of letter exchange, investigates how emotion was persuasively textualized in the letter, considers the transmission of news and intelligence, and examines the publication of letters as propaganda and as collections of moral-didactic, personal, and state letters. Gary Schneider is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English at the University of Texas-Pan American.

Since the publication of his novel Pamela; or Virtue Rewarded in 1740, Samuel Richardson's place in the English literary tradition has been secured. But how can that place best be described? Over the three centuries since embarking on his printing career the 'divine' novelist has been variously understood as moral crusader, advocate for women, pioneer of the realist novel and print innovator. Situating Richardson's work within these social, intellectual and material contexts, this new volume of essays identifies his centrality to the emergence of the novel, the self-help book, and the idea of the professional author, as well as his influence on the development of the modern English language, the capitalist economy, and gendered, medicalized, urban, and national identities. This book enables a fuller understanding and appreciation of Richardson's life, work and legacy, and points the way for future studies of one of English literature's most celebrated novelists.

Carl Czerny was a highly successful composer of popular piano music, and his pedagogical works remain fundamental to the training of pianists. But Czerny's reputation in these areas has obscured the remarkable breadth of his activity, and especially his work as a composer of serious music. This collection aims to address this.

The contributions in this book discuss letter-writing from 1400 to 1800, and the material studied ranges from the late medieval Paston Letters and the correspondence between Sweden and the German Hanse to Early Modern English family letters and correspondence in natural history between England and North America in the eighteenth century. By bringing a set of corpus linguistic, discourse analytic, pragmatic and sociolinguistic approaches to bear on historical letter-writing activity, the articles both extend and complement the traditional letter-writing research in the history of European languages, which approaches the topic from a largely rhetorical perspective. The articles in this book were first published as a Special Issue of the Journal of Historical Pragmatics 5:2 (2004), share a contextualised view of letters: whether approached from the perspective of language contact, social and discursive practices, intertextuality, audience design or linguistic politeness, letters are analysed as part of their specific familial, business or scientific network. Writing letters thus emerges as highly context-sensitive social interaction.

This book shows how early women novelists from Aphra Behn to Mary Davys drew on debates about the self generated by the 'scientific' revolution to establish the novel as a genre. Fascinated by the problematic idea of a unified self underpinning modes of thinking, female novelists innovated narrative structures to interrogate this idea.

An exploration of how email is experienced, understood, and materially structured as a practice spanning our everyday domestic and work lives. Despite its many obituaries, email is not dead. As a global mode of business and personal communication, email outstrips newer technologies of online interaction; it is deeply embedded in our everyday lives. And yet--perhaps because the ubiquity of email has obscured its study--this is the first scholarly book devoted to email as a key historical, social, and commercial site of digital communication in our everyday lives. In Email and the Everyday, Esther Milne examines how email is experienced, understood, and materially structured as a practice spanning the domestic and institutional spaces of daily life.