Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Classics in International Modernism and the Avant-Garde examines how the writers and artists who lived from roughly the last quarter of the nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth sought to build a new world from the ashes of one marked by two world wars, global economic depression, the rise of nationalism, and the collapse of empires. By surveying the modernist appropriation of Ancient Greece and Rome, the fourteen chapters in this volume demonstrate how the Classics, as foundational texts of the old order, were nevertheless adapted to suit the stylistic innovation and formal experimentation that characterized modernist and avant-garde literature and art.

Camus, Philosophe: To Return to our Beginnings is the first book on Camus to read Camus in light of, and critical dialogue with, subsequent French and European philosophy. It argues that, while not an academic philosopher, Albert Camus was a philosophe in more profound senses looking back to classical precedents, and the engaged French lumières of the 18th century. Aiming his essays and literary writings at the wider reading public, Camus’ criticism of the forms of ‘political theology’ enshrined in fascist and Stalinist regimes singles him out markedly from more recent theological and messianic turns in French thought. His defense of classical thought, turning around the notions of natural beauty, a limit, and mesure makes him a singularly relevant figure given today’s continuing debates about climate change, as well as the way forward for the post-Marxian Left.

Originally published in 1994, this pioneering study looks empirically at the way allusion works in specific fictions and affects the reading process. Clear, concise definitions and distinctions are illustrated by close readings of Flaubert, Stendhal, Balzac, Zola, Proust, and Robbe-Grillet.

This collection surveys madness in drama. It includes articles on 'The Duchess of Malfi'; virginity and hysteria in 'The Changeling'; the confined spectacle of madness in Beys's 'The Illustrious Madmen'; The male gaze in 'Woyzeck' - representing Marie and madness; and other drama examples.