Michael Patrick Gillespie

A. Nicholas Fargnoli

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

The Essential Reference to the Life and Work

James Joyce A to Z

A favorite of library and community reading groups, William Kennedy is best known for his novels Ironweed and his most recent, The Flaming Corsage. This eminently readable book provides a helpful introduction to students and others interested in his work. With engaging candor, Michael Patrick Gillespie provides a keen analysis of Kennedy's best-known works, a firm base for interpretation, and a better understanding of the cultural world that shapes the characters and informs the plots of Kennedy's novels. Rather than prescribing what one should see when reading Kennedy's works, the book moves to the next stage of exploring diverse responses to Kennedy's canon, broadening the reader's awareness of the range of alternative strategies and perspective. Gillespie begins with an introduction that outlines the imaginative context for Kennedy's work. Subsequent chapters, in three parts, provide extended treatments of his early work, key elements in the first three Albany novels, and finally the maturity of his overall fiction, including his new play, Grand View.

Reading William Kennedy

Reading the Book of Himself traces various social repertoires that inform the works of James Joyce and outlines the textual strategies employed by both author and reader in generating an interpretation. Michael Gillespie examines selected works that formed a part of Joyce's intellectual background and specific writers who exemplify artistic or aesthetic standards that he wished to incorporate into his work. Gillespie singles out major writers - including Flaubert, Balzac, Conrad and Dickens - whose technical proficiencies had a pronounced impact on Joyce's stylistic development, and he considers the influence on Joyce of lesser-known authors like Grant Allen and Charles Paul de Kock, who worked in styles well known to popular readers. He also notes Joyce's well documented concern for his personal and cultural past and its impact on his writing. Having identified intra- and extratextual elements, Gillespie discusses reader responses and interpretations created by those factors.

Narrative Strategies in the Works of James Joyce

Reading the Book of Himself

Wrote Oscar Wilde of his novel it contains much of me in it. Basil Hallward is what I think I am: Lord Henry what the world thinks me: Dorian what I would like to be - in other ages perhaps.

"what the World Thinks Me"

The Picture of Dorian Gray

(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.

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.

Branding Oscar Wilde

Written in an easy-to-read, accessible style by teachers with years of classroom experience, Masterwork Studies are guides to the literary works most frequently studied in high school. Presenting ideas that spark imaginations, these books help students to gain background knowledge on great literature useful for papers and exams. The goal of each study is to encourage creative thinking by presenting engaging information about each work and its author. This approach allows students to arrive at sound analyses of their own, based on in-depth studies of popular literature.Each volume: -- Illuminates themes and concepts of a classic text-- Uses clear, conversational language-- Is an accessible, manageable length from 140 to 170 pages-- Includes a chronology of the author's life and era-- Provides an overview of the historical context-- Offers a summary of its critical reception-- Lists primary and secondary sources and index Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

Vice-President of the James Joyce Society and Professor of Theology and English A Nicholas Fargnoli

Examines the life and writings of James Joyce, including a biographical sketch, detailed synopses of his works, social and historical influences, and more.

A Literary Reference to His Life and Work

Critical Companion to James Joyce

James Joyce

W. B. Yeats was Romantic and Modernist, mystical dreamer and leader of the Irish Literary Revival, Nobel prizewinner, dramatist and, above all, poet. He began writing with the intention of putting his 'very self' into his poems. T. S. Eliot, one of many who proclaimed the Irishman's greatness, described him as 'one of those few whose history is the history of their own time, who are part of the consciousness of an age which cannot be understood without them'. For anyone interested in the literature of the late nineteenth century and the twentieth century, Yeats's work is essential. This volume gathers the full range of his published poetry, from the hauntingly beautiful early lyrics (by which he is still fondly remembered) to the magnificent later poems which put beyond question his status as major poet of modern times. Paradoxical, proud and passionate, Yeats speaks today as eloquently as ever.

Michael Patrick Gillespie

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