David Damrosch

David Lawrence Pike

The Longman Anthology is designed to open up the horizons of world literature, placing major works within their cultural contexts and fostering connections and conversations between eras as well as regions.

The Longman Anthology of World Literature

The Longman Anthology of World Literature, Compact Edition, presents a fresh and diverse range of the world's great literature in a single volume that links past and present, East and West, and literary and cultural contexts. Featuring major works by literary masters from the ancient world through the twentieth century, this concise anthology combines comprehensive coverage of key works of the Western literary tradition and the best core, enduring works of the literatures of China, Japan, India, the Middle East, Africa, and native Americas. The anthology includes epic and lyric poetry, drama, and prose narrative, with many complete works and a focus on the most influential pieces and authors from each region and time period. The texts are supplemented by contextual materials that help students understand the literary and historical eras from which these texts arose. Engaging introductions, scholarly annotations, maps, pronunciation guides, and illustrations developed by a distinguished editorial team provide a wealth of teachable materials that support and illuminate the selections.

New life underground -- Modern necropolis -- Charon's bark -- Urban apocalypse.

The World Beneath Paris and London, 1800-1945

Subterranean Cities

Pike, David Lawrence Pike

Taking the culturally resonant motif of the descent to the underworld as his guiding thread, David L. Pike traces the interplay between myth and history in medieval and modernist literature. Passage through Hell suggests new approaches to the practice of comparative literature, and a possible escape from the current morass of competing critical schools and ideologies. Pike's readings of Louis Ferdinand Céline and Walter Benjamin reveal the tensions at work in the modern appropriation of structures derived from ancient and medieval descents. His book shows how these structures were redefined in modernism and persist in contemporary critical practice. In order to recover the historical corpus of modernism, he asserts, it is necessary to acknowledge the attraction that medieval forms and motifs held for modernist literature and theory. By pairing the writings of the postwar German dramatist and novelist Peter Weiss with Dante's Commedia, and Christine de Pizan with Virginia Woolf, Pike argues for a new level of complexity in the relation between medieval and modern poetics. Pike's supple and persuasive reading of the Commedia resituates that text within the contradictions of medieval tradition. He contends that the Dantean allegory of conversion, altered to suit the exigencies of modernism, maintains its hold over current literature and theory. The postwar writers Pike treats--Weiss, Seamus Heaney, and Derek Walcott--exemplify alternate strategies for negotiating the legacy of modernism. The passage through hell emerges as a way of disentangling images of the past from their interpretation in the present.

Modernist Descents, Medieval Underworlds

Passage Through Hell

Award-winning author David L. Pike offers a unique focus on the crucial quarter-century in Canadian filmmaking when the industry became a viable force on the international stage. Pike provides a lively, personal, and accessible history of the most influential filmmakers and movements of both Anglo-Canadian and Quebecois cinema, from popular movies to art film and everything in between. Along with in-depth studies of key directors, including David Cronenberg, Patricia Rozema and Denys Arcand, Jean-Claude Lauzon, Robert Lepage, Léa Pool, Atom Egoyan, and Guy Maddin, Canadian Cinema since the 1980s reflects on major themes and genres and explores the regional and cultural diversity of the period. Pike positions Canadian filmmaking at the frontlines of a profound cinematic transformation in the age of global media and presents fresh perspectives on both its local and international contexts. Making a significant advance in the study of the film industry of the period, Canadian Cinema since the 1980s is also an ideal text for students, researchers, and Canadian film enthusiasts.

At the Heart of the World

Canadian Cinema Since the 1980s

The Longman Anthology is designed to open up the horizons of world literature, placing major works within their cultural contexts and fostering connections and conversations between eras as well as regions

David Lawrence Pike

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