Browse Books in Series:
Comparative Cultural Studies


Faust Adaptations from Marlowe to Aboudoma and Markland
Faust Adaptations, edited and introduced by Lorna Fitzsimmons, takes a comparative cultural studies approach to the ubiquitous legend of Faust and his infernal dealings. Including readings of English, German, Dutch, and Egyptian adaptations ranging from the early modern period to the contemporary moment, this collection emphasizes the interdisciplinary and transcultural tenets of comparative cultural studies. Authors variously analyze the Faustian theme in contexts such as subjectivity, genre, politics, and identity. Chapters focus on the work of Christopher Marlowe, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Adelbert von Chamisso, Lord Byron, Heinrich Heine, Thomas Mann, D. J. Enright, Konrad Boehmer, Mahmoud Aboudoma, Bridge Markland, Andreas Gössling, and Uschi Flacke. Contributors include Frederick Burwick, Christa Knellwolf King, Ehrhard Bahr, Konrad Boehmer, and David G. John. Faust Adaptations demonstrates the enduring meaningfulness of the Faust concept across borders, genres, languages, nations, cultures, and eras. This collection presents innovative approaches to understanding the mediated, translated, and adapted figure of Faust through both culturally specific inquiry and timeless questions.


From Burke and Wordsworth to the Modern Sublime in Chinese Literature
This volume presents a historical-textual study about transformations of the aesthetics of the sublime—the literary and aesthetic quality of greatness under duress—from early English Romanticism to the New Poetry Movement in twentieth-century China. Zheng sets up the former and the latter as distinct but historically analogous moments and argues that both the European Romantic reinvention of the sublime and its later Chinese transformation represent cultural movements built on the excessive and capacious nature of the sublime to counter their shared sense of historical crisis.


Gombrowicz, Polish Modernism, and the Subversion of Form
as well as providing a commentary on his novels, plays, and short stories, this book sets Gombrowicz's writing in the context of contemporary cultural theory. The author performs a detailed examination of Gombrowicz's major literary and theatrical work, showing how his conception of form is highly resonant with contemporary, postmodern theories of identity.


Gustav Shpet's Contribution to Philosophy and Cutlural Theory
This book offers original research by leading scholars from the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, and Russia, which covers the central areas of Shpet's work on phenomenology, philosophy of language, cultural theory, and aesthetics and takes forward the current state of knowledge and debates on his contribution to these fields of enquiry.


History and Poetics of Intertexuality
In his book, Juvan argues that while intertextuality is constitutive of all textuality it may be grounded in certain literary works, genres, or styles (e.g., parody or allusion as forms of citationality). He surveys the field in order to ground the poetics of intertextuality in the history of its idea from Kristeva to New Historicism and citationality from Genette's late structuralism to text theory.


Imre Kertész and Holocaust Literature
Imre Kertész and Holocaust Literature, the first English language volume on the work of the 2002 Nobel Laureate in Literature contains papers by scholars in Canada, Croatia, France, Germany, Hungary, New Zealand, and the USA, as well as historical papers about the background of the Holocaust in Hungary


A Jesuit Garden in Beijing and Early Modern Chinese Culture
In this volume, Hui Zou analyzes historical, architectural, visual, literary, and philosophical perspectives on the Western-styled garden that formed part of the great Yuanming Yuan complex in Beijing, constructed during the Qing dynasty.


The Jewish American Novel
Philippe Codde provides a comparative cultural analysis of the unprecedented success of the Jewish novel in the postwar United States by situating the process and event in the context of three closely-related American cultural movements: the popularity in the US of French philosophical and literary existentialism, the increasing visibility of the Holocaust in US-American life, and the advent of radical theology.


Kundera and Modernity
While a large amount of scholarship about Milan Kundera's work exists, in Liisa Steinby's opinion his work has not been studied within the context of (European) modernity as a sociohistorical and a cultural concept. Of course, he is considered to be a modernist writer (some call him even a postmodernist), but what the broader concept of modernity intellectually, historically, socially, and culturally means for him and how this is expressed in his texts has not been thoroughly examined. Steinby's book fills this vacuum by analyzing Kundera's novels from the viewpoint of his understanding of the existential problems in the culture of modernity. In addition, his relation to those modernist novelists from the first half of the twentieth century who are most important for him is scrutinized in detail. Steinby’s Kundera and Modernity is intended for students of modernism in literary and (comparative) cultural studies, as well as those interested in European and Central European studies. Key Points: • Offers new insights into the work of the popular modern writer Milan Kundera. • Expands the reader’s understanding of the meaning of the concept of “modernity.” • Widens the literature available in English about Central European culture. Quote: “This work is superb. By examining the works and traditions that Kundera claims to have influenced him, Steinby demonstrates how Kundera’s misreading of previous novelists as well as his own desire to be taken out of the Czech or Central European context has informed his own work. This book is the result of many years of painstaking research.” Craig Cravens, Indiana University


Nation and Region in Modern American and European Fiction
In his book Nation and Region in Modern American and European Fiction, Thomas O. Beebee analyzes fictional texts as a "discursive territoriality" that shape readers' notions of (and ambivalence about) national and regional belonging. Several canonical works of literary fiction have provided their readers with verbal maps that in their depictions of boundary spaces construct indirect images of national territory and geography.