(series copy) These encyclopedic companions are browsable, invaluable individual guides to authors and their works. Useful for students, but written with the general reader in mind, they are clear, concise, accessible, and supply the basic cultural, historical, biographical and critical information so crucial to an appreciation and enjoyment of the primary works. Each is arranged in an A-Z fashion and presents and explains the terms, people, places, and concepts encountered in the literary worlds of James Joyce, Mark Twain, and Virginia Woolf. As a keen explorer of the mundane material of everyday life, James Joyce ranks high in the canon of modernist writers. He is arguably the most influential writer of the twentieth-century, and may be the most read, studied, and taught of all modern writers. The James Joyce A-Z is the ideal companion to Joyce's life and work. Over 800 concise entries relating to all aspects of Joyce are gathered here in one easy-to-use volume of impressive scope.

James Joyce A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Writings (Literary A-Z's)

Gillespie, Michael Patrick

Fargnoli, A. Nicholas

Reference

Oxford University Press

Branding Oscar Wilde (Routledge Studies in Nineteenth Century Literature)

Branding Oscar Wilde traces the development and perception of Wilde's public persona and examines the impact of interpretations of his writing. Through calculated behavior, provocative language, and arresting dress, Wilde self-consciously created a brand initially recognized by family and friends, then by the British public, and ultimately by large audiences over the world. That brand changed over the course of his public career--both in the way Wilde projected it and in the way it was perceived. Comprehending the fundamental elements of the Wilde brand and following its evolution are integral to a full understanding of his art. The study focuses on how branding established important assumptions about Wilde and his work in his own mind and in those of his readers, and it examines how each stage of brand development affected the immediate responses to Wilde's writings and, as it continued to evolve, progressively shaped our understanding of the Wilde canon.

Literature & Fiction

History & Criticism

Routledge

A guide to the life and works of James Joyce including complete plot summaries and character analyses, a full family tree, extensive bibliography, the locations of significant landmarks in his writing and details of Joycean societies and newsletters.

James Joyce A-Z

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.

Introductory study of The Picture of Dorian Gray

The Picture of Dorian Gray: "What the World Thinks Me" (Twayne's Masterwork Studies)

Twayne Pub

“An invigorating (and convincing) challenge to the cornerstone assumptions of virtually all contemporary literary criticism . . . this study lays the groundwork for a dynamic new approach to reading literature. Sure to be controversial, its fundamental right-headedness should help to open debate on the nature of literary criticism across numerous disciplines.”—William W. Demastes, Louisiana State University Michael Patrick Gillespie employs concepts of post-Einsteinian physics as the metaphoric and dialectic foundation for an alternative method of interpreting literature. His central argument revolves around the notion that the most useful literary criticism is that which comes closest to the process of reading. He argues that since our reading is not circumscribed by Cartesian cause-and-effect principles, our literary criticism should not be bound by linear thinking. Using examples that range from the Book of Job to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Gillespie demonstrates how nonlinear perception vastly enhances one’s ability to understand diverse forms of literature. Invoking theories from Einstein’s views on relativity, quantum mechanics, and chaos theories, Gillespie applies his approach to different types of literary works, including a children’s fantasy: the Bible, The Importance of Being Earnest, and Finnegans Wake. In each case, he compares a nonlinear model of criticism with the interpretation of established critical schools, focusing especially on elucidating both the weaknesses in those schools and the multiple legitimate textual meanings in these works. Providing clear, useful theoretical grounding in the basics of the new sciences, Gillespie draws from the fundamental thinking behind these new conceptions of material existence to articulate a paradigm of literary criticism that should be of value to all literary scholars. Michael Patrick Gillespie is Louise Edna Goeden Professor of English at Marquette University and author of several works, including Oscar Wilde and the Poetics of Ambiguity (UPF, 1996) and Joyce through the Ages (UPF, 1999).

The Aesthetics of Chaos: Nonlinear Thinking and Contemporary Literary Criticism

University Press of Florida

“An invigorating (and convincing) challenge to the cornerstone assumptions of virtually all contemporary literary criticism . . . this study lays the groundwork for a dynamic new approach to reading literature. Sure to be controversial, its fundamental right-headedness should help to open debate on the nature of literary criticism across numerous disciplines.”—William W. Demastes, Louisiana State University Michael Patrick Gillespie employs concepts of post-Einsteinian physics as the metaphoric and dialectic foundation for an alternative method of interpreting literature. His central argument revolves around the notion that the most useful literary criticism is that which comes closest to the process of reading.  He argues that since our reading is not circumscribed by Cartesian cause-and-effect principles, our literary criticism should not be bound by linear thinking. Using examples that range from the Book of Job to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Gillespie demonstrates how nonlinear perception vastly enhances one’s ability to understand diverse forms of literature.  Invoking theories from Einstein’s views on relativity, quantum mechanics, and chaos theories, Gillespie applies his approach to different types of literary works, including a children’s fantasy: the Bible, The Importance of Being Earnest, and Finnegans Wake.  In each case, he compares a nonlinear model of criticism with the interpretation of established critical schools, focusing especially on elucidating both the weaknesses in those schools and the multiple legitimate textual meanings in these works. Providing clear, useful theoretical grounding in the basics of the new sciences, Gillespie draws from the fundamental thinking behind these new conceptions of material existence to articulate a paradigm of literary criticism that should be of value to all literary scholars. ?Michael Patrick Gillespie is Louise Edna Goeden Professor of English at Marquette University and author of  several works, including Oscar Wilde and the Poetics of Ambiguity (UPF, 1996) and Joyce through the Ages (UPF, 1999).

“As Gillespie combines national, geographical, and historical contexts with close readings of Joyce’s works, the theme of exile takes on unexpected nuances, from spiritual displacements in Joyce’s neglected play Exiles to the trials of dealing with a ‘foreign’ language in Finnegans Wake.”—Margot Norris, editor of Dubliners “Casts significant new light on Joyce’s writings by bringing out memorable ways in which the literal experience of exile enabled Joyce to recast retrospectively the exilic quality of living in Ireland, not simply as alienation but as a mixture of rancor and affection that colors the lives in all his fiction.”—John Paul Riquelme, editor of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man “The argument is buttressed by numerous readings of crucial passages whose meaning becomes more ambiguous or indeterminate when Joyce’s standing as an exile is taken into consideration. An important work of critical revaluation.”—Patrick A. McCarthy, author of Ulysses: Portals of Discovery James Joyce left Dublin in 1904 in self-imposed exile. Though he never permanently returned to Ireland, he continued to characterize its capital city in his prose throughout the rest of his life. This volume elucidates the ways Joyce wrote about his homeland with conflicting bitterness and affection—a common ambivalence in expatriate authors, whose time in exile tends to reshape their creative approach to the world. Yet this duality has not been explored in Joyce’s work until now. The first book to read Joyce’s writing through the lens of exile studies, James Joyce and the Exilic Imagination challenges the tendency of scholars to stress the writer’s negative view of Ireland. Instead, it showcases the often-overlooked range of emotional attitudes imbuing Joyce’s work and argues that attentiveness to these oscillating perspectives is necessary for a full understanding of Joyce’s canon.

James Joyce and the Exilic Imagination (Florida James Joyce)

Reading the Book of Himself: Narrative Strategies in the Works of James Joyce

Ohio State Univ Pr

Branding Oscar Wilde traces the development and perception of Wilde’s public persona and examines the impact of interpretations of his writing. Through calculated behavior, provocative language, and arresting dress, Wilde self-consciously created a brand initially recognized by family and friends, then by the British public, and ultimately by large audiences over the world. That brand changed over the course of his public career―both in the way Wilde projected it and in the way it was perceived. Comprehending the fundamental elements of the Wilde brand and following its evolution are integral to a full understanding of his art. The study focuses on how branding established important assumptions about Wilde and his work in his own mind and in those of his readers, and it examines how each stage of brand development affected the immediate responses to Wilde’s writings and, as it continued to evolve, progressively shaped our understanding of the Wilde canon.

British & Irish

Features synopses of works, character descriptions, biographies of contemporaries, and explanations of literary terms and place names

James Joyce A to Z: The Essential Reference to the Life and Work

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Books by Gillespie, Michael Patrick

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Gillespie, Michael Patrick. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

James Joyce A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Writings (Literary A-Z's)

Branding Oscar Wilde (Routledge Studies in Nineteenth Century Literature)

James Joyce A-Z

The Picture of Dorian Gray: "What the World Thinks Me" (Twayne's Masterwork Studies)

The Aesthetics of Chaos: Nonlinear Thinking and Contemporary Literary Criticism

The Aesthetics of Chaos: Nonlinear Thinking and Contemporary Literary Criticism

James Joyce and the Exilic Imagination (Florida James Joyce)

Reading the Book of Himself: Narrative Strategies in the Works of James Joyce

Branding Oscar Wilde (Routledge Studies in Nineteenth Century Literature)

James Joyce A to Z: The Essential Reference to the Life and Work