Bøger udgivet af Peter Lang Ltd

What is femininity?Why does the idea of femininity not seem to «fit» with muscular women?Why are muscular women the object of such controversy and skepticism?Why do some women build muscle despite these strong cultural reactions?Muscular women have long been the focus of public scrutiny, cultural contempt and fascination. Sculpting the Woman interrogates the protected status of femininity as it has been rendered irrelevant to the history, theory and politics of the muscular woman. This highly original and provocative work draws on important social thinkers including Michel Foucault and Judith Butler as well as recent theoretical developments on gender, identity and the body in poststructuralism, psychoanalysis, various feminisms and social and moral philosophy. This book offers a personal insight into one of the most threatening of cultural identities: the «muscular female». Through its analysis of femininity¿s complex relationship with muscularity, it explores the larger question: «What is a woman?»

John Sparrow, Warden of All Souls, was a notable character in post-war Oxford. He was educated in the old-time classical humanist tradition, and this remained his field even as the world about him changed. A man with a brilliant mind, he is often remembered negatively ¿ as a bogeyman to progressives because of his outspoken conservatism ¿ and as a disappointment to those who expected a more solid academic achievement. It was felt that his talents were too widely scattered.Presenting hitherto unpublished letters and papers which vividly evoke the contemporary Oxford scene, Peter Raina traces this scattering of talent. Sparrow may have been a generalist, but he dabbled in depth in many disciplines. He was an expert on Latin, on law, on inscriptions, on rare books and on poetry. Above all he was a tireless supporter and friend of other academics and poets in a special generation. The book gives context to his circles of influence and to his uncompromising intelligence and distinct charm.

How do you bring history alive? This book explores the use of dramatic modes ¿ such as melodrama, metatheatre, and immersion ¿ to bring immediacy and a sense of living presence to works of literature rooted in history. Focusing on Australian and Canadian literature from the late 1980s to the present, the book features original research on novels by award-winning writers such as David Musgrave, Richard Flanagan, Daphne Marlatt, Peter Carey, Tomson Highway, Thomas Keneally, and Guy Vanderhaeghe. The analysis addresses how these writers use strategies from drama and theatre to engage with colonial and postcolonial histories in their novels and create resonant connections with readers. Some of the novels encourage readers to imagine themselves in historical roles through intimate dramatizations inside characters¿ minds and bodies. Others use exaggerated theatrical frames to place readers at a critical distance from representations of history using Brechtian techniques of alienation. This book explores the use of dramatic modes to enliven and reimagine settler-invader history and bring colonial and postcolonial histories closer to the present.

This book argues that ideology is a prism through which the work of Vladimir Nabokov needs to be considered. It is thus the first attempt to foreground questions of ideology and politics within a field that has historically been resistant to such readings.The perception of Nabokov as an apolitical writer is one which the author encouraged throughout the latter part of his career in his non-fictional writings and in the small number of well-rehearsed interviews that he gave. When questions of ideology and politics have arisen in scholarship, they have only been featured in passing or have merely re-confirmed the author¿s self-designation as an «old-fashioned liberal». When we consider that Nabokov lived through some of the most traumatic historical ruptures of the past century then this lack of reference to ideology in the critical literature appears quite revealing.Through the analysis of works which have previously received little attention as well as new perspectives on better known works, this book demonstrates how ideology and politics were ever-present and had an indelible effect on Nabokov's literary aesthetics.