Affect and American Literature in the Age of Neoliberalism

The author examines the relationship between American literature and politics in the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries. Smith contends that the representation of emotions in contemporary fiction emphasizes the personal lives of characters at a time when there is an unprecedented, and often damaging, focus on the individual in American life.

This book demonstrates the presence of literature within speech act theory and the utility of speech act theory in reading literary works. Though the founding text of speech act theory, J. L. Austin's How to Do Things with Words, repeatedly expels literature from the domain of felicitous speech acts, literature is an indispensable presence within Austin's book. It contains many literary references but also uses as essential tools literary devices of its own: imaginary stories that serve as examples and imaginary dialogues that forestall potential objections."

In spite of their differing rhetorics and cognitive strategies, sociology and literature are often concerned with the same objects: social relationships, action, motivation, social constraints and relationships, for example. As such, sociologists have always been fascinated with fictional literature. This book reinvigorates the debate surrounding the utility of fiction as a sociological resource, examining the distinction between the two forms of writing and exploring the views of early sociologists on the suitability of subjecting literary sources to sociological analysis.

The Archeology of Knowledge

`Michel Foucault is a very brilliant writer ... he has a remark-able angle of vision, a highly disciplined and coherent one, that informs his work to such a high degree as to make the work
sui generis original.' Edward W. Said
`The Archaeology of Know/edge ... provides an unusually sharp outline of [Foucault's]
theoretical stance as well as a focused critique of the history of ideas.' Jean Claude Guedon
'A necessary guide to Foucault's often difficult ideas ... and to his overall historical ambition, which is to define the "soil" out of which contemporary events in a given period grow.'
The Times Literary Supplement

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A Student Guide - Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales

Placing the Canterbury Tales in the context of the crisis in English society in the fourteenth century, this guide examines the social diversity of Chaucer's pilgrims, the stylistic range of their tales and psychological richness of their interaction. It emphasizes the language of the poem, as well as the role of Chaucer in literary tradition, and devotes an entire chapter to the General Prologue widely studied in undergraduate courses. Finally, the volume includes a chronology of the period and an invaluable guide to further reading.