The Lives of Texts
Exploring the Metaphor
Published on 22. February 2013
Book
Hardback
310 pages
978-1-4438-4160-3 (ISBN)
Description
The Lives of Texts: Exploring the Metaphor examines various instances of "textual subsistence" implied by the title. Drawing on the parallel between a text and a living organism, the contributors analyze various literary texts ranging from the Middle Ages to postmodernity, as well as film adaptations and the graphic novel. Apart from the works of canonical writers, attention is also drawn to some long-forgotten authors, along with the most recent instances of popular literature and culture. The exploration of the title metaphor allows the contributors to trace life-like phenomena (e.g. textual birth, maturation, dissemination, death and resurrection) in the texts of writers so remote from each other as Layamon, Thomas More, Mary Shelley, Charles Williams, Ursula Le Guin, A. S. Byatt, Peter Ackroyd, Iain Banks, J. K. Rowling, or Neil Gaiman.
Reviews / Votes
"The Lives of Texts is marked by intellectual insight, scholarly rigor, and lively intelligence. It brings fresh insight to known and less well known texts, and to complex literary processes. Anyone interested in understanding the genesis, interactions, and forgetting and remembering of literary works will find much matter for thought and much enlightenment here."- Professor David Malcolm, University of GdanskMore details
Edition
Unabridged edition
Language
English
Place of publication
Newcastle upon Tyne
United Kingdom
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Edition type
Unabridged edition
Product notice
With dust jacket
Dimensions
Height: 212 mm
Width: 148 mm
ISBN-13
978-1-4438-4160-3 (9781443841603)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
07/2014
1st Edition
Cambridge Scholars Publishing
€132.59
Available for download
Persons
Katarzyna Pisarska is Assistant Professor of English Literature at Maria-Curie Sklodowska University in Lublin, Poland. She is the author of Mediating the World in Iain Banks's Novels (forthcoming), as well as articles and book chapters on contemporary British and American fiction and dystopian cinema.Andrzej Slawomir Kowalczyk is Assistant Professor of English Literature at Maria-Curie Sklodowska University in Lublin, Poland. He is the author of The Voice of God, the Voice of Man: Religious Discourse in Late Medieval English Drama (2007). He has also published articles and book chapters on Charles Williams's drama and fiction, as well as on dystopia in contemporary literature and film.