Within its wide boundaries, culture creates written and visual reflection areas for itself. As the reflection area expands through time, space and nature, it becomes richer, and, in doing so, it needs to be appreciated. The cultural reflection of historical accumulation leaves us in front of an immense mirror. In general terms, this book presents the reader with the intertwined relationships between culture and literature, culture and language, and culture and history or art history. More specifically, it investigates the joy of a birth, a funeral ritual, the merriness of a melody, and the taste of a meal as they are reflected within the texts that Asia has accumulated throughout its history. Its central concern is the investigation of issues related to culture and how it is reflected in literature, language, or history in a particular place.

Doing English in Asia: Global Literature and Culture examines the effect of globalization on the curriculum of Asian universities. As knowledge of the English language has increasingly been understood as necessary to excel in international business, a number of Asian universities have replaced the traditional study of English literature and culture with applied English or English for specified purposes. This edited collection tackles the question of how to teach English language and culture through literature in case studies from practitioners all across Asia. Contributors thus balance the need for students to understand the interface between English cultures and their own with the pressure to prepare them for employment in this changing environment.

An important interdisciplinary study, that establishes a general theory that accounts for the varieties of body language encountered in literary narrative, based on a general history of the phenomenon in the English language.

This book explores scholarly challenges within the fields of Anglophone language, literature, and culture. The section focusing on language details issues falling within two areas: namely, language contact and the language-culture relationship, and stylistic and syntactic perspectives on the English language. The literature part investigates twentieth-century American, English, and Australian literature, dealing with both poetry and prose and discussing topics of identity, gender, metafiction, postmodern conditions, and other relevant theoretical issues in contemporary literature. The culture part treats theoretical approaches in cultural studies that are vital in today’s cultural context, especially in Central European universities, the Irish language and culture, and contemporary cultural phenomena inspired by the growing ubiquity of technological intrusions into various fields of cultural production.

Research into the emotions is beginning to gain momentum in Anglo-Saxon studies. In order to integrate early medieval Britain into the wider scholarly research into the history of emotions (a major theme in other fields and a key field in interdisciplinary studies), this volume brings together established scholars, who have already made significant contributions to the study of Anglo-Saxon mental and emotional life, with younger scholars. The volume presents a tight focus - on emotion (rather than psychological life more generally), on Anglo-Saxon England and on language and literature - with contrasting approaches that will open up debate. The volume considers a range of methodologies and theoretical perspectives, examines the interplay of emotion and textuality, explores how emotion is conveyed through gesture, interrogates emotions in religious devotional literature, and considers the place of emotion in heroic culture. Each chapter asks questions about what is culturally distinctive about emotion in Anglo-Saxon England and what interpretative moves have to be made to read emotion in Old English texts, as well as considering how ideas about and representations of emotion might relate to lived experience. Taken together the essays in this collection indicate the current state of the field and preview important work to come. By exploring methodologies and materials for the study of Anglo-Saxon emotions, particularly focusing on Old English language and literature, it will both stimulate further study within the discipline and make a distinctive contribution to the wider interdisciplinary conversation about emotions.

This volume deals with contemporary issues in the field of English studies in order to exchange ideas and experiences across the fields of English language and literary studies, with particular emphasis on cross-disciplinary and interdisciplinary issues raised in the fields of culture, linguistics, translation studies and applied linguistics. By juxtaposing traditionalism and contemporaneity as starting points for presentation of research results, the collection critically evaluates the advantages and disadvantages of both and proposes new theoretical and critical paradigms. The specificity of the book lies in its focusing on the practical criticism and the study of particular linguistic, literary, and cultural phenomena. Insightful, thought-provoking and original chapters raise awareness of the existence of a variety of fresh scholarly research practices in the field of the English language and in literary studies on the whole.