The Threads of The Scarlet Letter offers new discoveries regarding the origins of Hawthorne's masterpiece, as well as critical interpretations based on these discoveries. Relying on a blend of close reading, biographical analysis, and archival research, this book demonstrates anew the power of traditional scholarship. The Threads of The Scarlet Letter illuminates Hawthorne's transformation of Poe's celebrated tale The Tell-Tale Heart and Lowell's long-neglected poem A Legend of Brittany and, identifying the hitherto-unknown author of the seminal narrative The Salem Belle, investigates Hawthorne's brilliant borrowing from that novel as well. The present volume argues that Hawthorne repeatedly attenuated his sources, but also allowed sufficient detail to permit their recognition. Furthermore, this volume elaborates Hawthorne's reworking of formal traditions in The Scarlet Letter--traditions that importantly clarify the meaning of the whole. The Scarlet Letter is shown to be a complex rendering of man's fall and redemption, and a triumphant assertion of literary vocation. The Threads of The Scarlet Letter includes a useful bibliographical overview of the history of the study of the origins of Hawthorne's greatest work.

During a period when the idea of fatherhood was in flux and individual fathers sought to regain a cohesive collective identity, debates related to a father’s authority were negotiated and resolved through competing documents. Melissa Shields Jenkins analyzes the evolution of patriarchal authority in nineteenth-century culture, drawing from extra-literary and non-narrative source material as well as from novels. Arguing that Victorian novelists reinvent patriarchy by recourse to conduct books, biography, religious manuals, political speeches, and professional writing in the fields of history and science, Jenkins offers interdisciplinary case studies of Elizabeth Gaskell, George Meredith, William Makepeace Thackeray, George Eliot, Samuel Butler, and Thomas Hardy. Jenkins’s book contributes to our understanding of the part played by fathers in the Victorian cultural imagination, and sheds new light on the structures underlying the Victorian novel.

This volume addresses five different Dimensions of Iconicity. While some contributions examine the phonic dimensions of iconicity that are based on empirical, diachronic and theoretical work, others explore the function of similarity from a cognitive point of view. The section on multimodal dimensions takes into account philosophical, linguistic and literary perspectives in order to analyse, for example, the diagrammatic interplay of written texts and images. Contributions on performative dimensions of iconicity focus on Buddhist mantras, Hollywood films, and the dynamics of rhetorical structures in Shakespeare. Last but not least, the volume also addresses new ways of considering iconicity, including notational iconicity, the interplay of iconicity, ambiguity, interpretability, and the iconicity of literary analysis from a formal semanticist point of view.

These essays-written specifically for this book-provide a rich evaluation of this late 14th and early 15th-century mystical writer's book of revelations and considers the construction of her narrative, its theological complexity, and its literary and intellectual context. This casebook features discussions by both established scholars and newer voices ranging from genre to eschatology and gynecology to diabology, reflecting both current and comparative theory. Providing translations of all Middle English quotations, the volume includes a selective bibliography that provides a guide for further reading.

The Iconicity in Language and Literature series has long been dedicated to the recognition and understanding of the pervasiveness of iconicity in language in its many forms and functions. The present volume, divided into four sections, brings together and unifies different perspectives on iconicity. Chapters in the first section (Iconicity in language) provide linguistic analyses of systems of iconic forms in different languages, across both space (areally) and time (diachronically). The second section (Iconicity in literature) is concerned with stylistic analyses of iconicity in literature, in both poetry and prose and across a range of devices and genres. The third section (Iconicity in visual media) highlights the use and effects of iconicity in pictorial, photographic and cinematic media. The final section (Iconicity in semiotic analysis) offers a theoretical perspective, targeting an operationalisation of iconicity with respect to the relationship between types and subtypes of Peircean signs.

The most important poetry reference for more than four decades—now fully updated for the twenty-first century Through three editions over more than four decades, The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics has built an unrivaled reputation as the most comprehensive and authoritative reference for students, scholars, and poets on all aspects of its subject: history, movements, genres, prosody, rhetorical devices, critical terms, and more. Now this landmark work has been thoroughly revised and updated for the twenty-first century. Compiled by an entirely new team of editors, the fourth edition—the first new edition in almost twenty years—reflects recent changes in literary and cultural studies, providing up-to-date coverage and giving greater attention to the international aspects of poetry, all while preserving the best of the previous volumes. At well over a million words and more than 1,000 entries, the Encyclopedia has unparalleled breadth and depth. Entries range in length from brief paragraphs to major essays of 15,000 words, offering a more thorough treatment—including expert synthesis and indispensable bibliographies—than conventional handbooks or dictionaries. This is a book that no reader or writer of poetry will want to be without. Thoroughly revised and updated by a new editorial team for twenty-first-century students, scholars, and poets More than 250 new entries cover recent terms, movements, and related topics Broader international coverage includes articles on the poetries of more than 110 nations, regions, and languages Expanded coverage of poetries of the non-Western and developing worlds Updated bibliographies and cross-references New, easier-to-use page design Fully indexed for the first time