Sex, Time and Place extensively widens the scope of what we might mean by 'queer London studies'. Incorporating multidisciplinary perspectives – including social history, cultural geography, visual culture, literary representation, ethnography and social studies – this collection asks new questions, widens debates and opens new subject terrain.Featuring essays from an international range of established scholars and emergent voices, the collection is a timely contribution t...

This Reader's Guide analyses the critical history of two of Hardy's major tragic novels, from the time of their publication to the present. Simon Avery traces the changing critical fortunes of the texts and explores the diverse range of interpretations produced by different theoretical approaches.

Named after a small neighborhood in London where its members settled as young adults, the Bloomsbury Group produced an impressive body of work that yielded British Post-Impressionist painting, literary modernism, the field of macroeconomics, and a new direction for public taste in art. This Companion offers a comprehensive guide to the intellectual and social contexts surrounding Bloomsbury and its coterie, which includes writer Virginia Woolf, economist Maynard Keynes, and art critic Roge...

Virginia Woolf's writing has generated passion and controversy for the best part of a century. Her novels - challenging, moving, and always deeply intelligent - remain as popular with readers as they are with students and academics. The highly successful Cambridge Companion has been fully revised to take account of new departures in scholarship since it first appeared. The second edition includes new chapters on race, nation and empire, sexuality, aesthetics, visual culture and the public ...

The concept of gender continues to be a central issue in literary and cultural studies, with a significance that crosses disciplinary boundaries and provokes lively debate. In this fully revised and updated second edition, David Glover and Cora Kaplan offer a lucid and illuminating introduction to ’gender’ and its implications, including:an overview of the critical language and concepts surrounding gender from their historical inception to contemporary debatesdiscus...

In the last two decades, lesbian and gay studies have transformed literary studies and developed into a vital and influential area for students and scholars. This Companion introduces readers to the range of debates that inform studies of works by lesbian and gay writers and of literary representations of same-sex desire and queer identities. Each chapter introduces key concepts in the field in an accessible way and uses several important literary texts to illustrate how these concepts can...

This new book integrates material drawn from a variety of sources - feminist theory, cultural and literary analysis, sociology and art history - in an original discussion of women's relationship to modern and post-modern culture.The essays in the book challenge the continuing separation of sociological from textual analysis in cultural (and feminist) theory and enquiry. They address critically the question of women's writing, exploring the idea that women may begin to define their ...

This is the first book of its kind to look across disciplines at this vital aspect of British art, literature and culture. It brings the various intertwined histories of social realism into historical perspective, and argues that this sometimes marginalized genre is still an important reference point for creativity in Britain.

Beauty can be consoling, disturbing, sacred, profane; it can be exhilarating, appealing, inspiring, chilling. It can affect us in an unlimited variety of ways. Yet it is never viewed with indifference. In this Very Short Introduction the renowned philosopher Roger Scruton explores the concept of beauty, asking what makes an object - either in art, in nature, or the human form - beautiful, and examining how we can compare differing judgements of beauty when it is evident all around...

Within the last ten years there has been a renaissance in Irish drama from both sides of the border, including award-winning work which has transfered to London and New York, and has toured Britain as well as Europe and Australia. This book explores the dynamics of the relationship between these representations of Ireland and the fluid nature of cultural identity, especially during a period of economic and political change. Although the book establishes the historical context for contempor...

Art History: The Key Concepts is a systematic, reliable and accessible reference guide to the disciplines of art history and visual culture. Containing entries on over 200 terms integral to the historical and theoretical study of art, design and culture in general, it is an indispensable source of knowledge for all students, scholars and teachers.Covering the development, present status and future direction of art history, entries span a wide variety of terms and concepts ...

Historians are increasingly looking beyond the traditional, and turning to visual, oral, aural, and virtual sources to inform their work. The challenges these sources pose require new skills of interpretation and require historians to consider alternative theoretical and practical approaches.In order to help historians successfully move beyond traditional text, Sarah Barber and Corinna Peniston-Bird bring together chapters from historical specialists in the fields of fine art, phot...