Exemplary Departuresconsists of five exquisitely wrought novellas depicting five "exemplary" deaths in various exotic locations around the globe: a gentleman spy disappears with his secrets into the Malaysian jungle; a young woman agonizes atop a ruined castle overlooking the Rhine; a writer succumbs to alcoholism in the streets of Baltimore; a salesman expires as a vagabond in the sewers of New York; and hermaphroditic twins are assassinated in a stagecoach. Drawing from the remnants of real-life anecdotes--from Edgar Allan Poe's final days to the agonizing tale of Idilia Dubb--these stories are imagined descents into death's supreme indifference. A true modern inheritor of the legacy of the French Decadent writers, Wittkop spins these tales with her trademark macabre elegance and chilling humor, maneuvering in an uncertain space between dark Romanticism, Gothic Expressionism and Sadean cruelty. "Death is life's most important moment," Wittkop claimed; Exemplary Departuresoffers five particularly important moments for the English reader's delectation. First published as a set of three novellas in 1995, this translation is of the 2012 edition of five novellas, which include the previously unpublished "Mr. T.'s Last Secret" and "Claude and Hippolyte."

The past few years have witnessed a resurgence in the study of British literary modernism. With recent publications on modernist American poetry and increasingly appreciative attitudes toward modern British novelists like Joseph Conrad and E. M. Forster, many scholars are experiencing a renewed interest in modernism. In The Modernist as Pragmatist, Brian May investigates modernist works that have been, until recently, regarded largely as mere exercises in stale Victorian liberal ideology. Breaking from one current interpretation of Forster as an innovative and perhaps objectionable representative of modernist fictional audacity, May keenly argues that Forster is neither a traditional liberal nor an imperial modernist stylist. He is, rather, a pragmatic liberal critic of both unreconstructed Victorian liberalism and unreckoning modernist aestheticism. May also looks at the debate between two contemporary progressive pragmatists, Richard Rorty and Cornel West, who have turned to the liberalism of the past as an avenue toward the future. First clarifying the terms of the debate, May then tries to resolve it using the writings of E. M. Forster to discuss some of the major political and philosophical statements of Rorty and West. In turn, the works of these two philosophers are used as tools to gain insight into Forster's literary texts and cultural contexts. By bringing British literary history to American neopragmatist philosophy, May allows the reader to understand both more concretely, historically, and imaginatively. Persuasive new readings of A Passage to India, Howards End, and The Longest Journey are used to illustrate how Rorty and West offer a choice between pragmatisms. May's well-argued study offers an exploration of how literature and philososphy can lead to a fruitful dialogue that can complement formalism as well as traditional types of contextualism. It also persuasively connects Forster to the contemporary debates between liberalism and pragmatism, making this an important contribution to all scholars of modernism.

George Orwell has been embraced, adopted, and co-opted by everyone from the far left to the neoconservatives. Each succeeding generation of Anglo-American intellectuals has felt compelled to engage the life, work, and cultural afterlife of Orwell, who is considered by many to have been the foremost political writer of the twentieth century. Every Intellectual's Big Brother explores the ways in which numerous disparate groups, Orwell's intellectual "siblings," have adapted their views of Orwell to fit their own agendas and how in doing so they have changed our perceptions of Orwell himself. By examining the politics of literary reception as a dimension of cultural history, John Rodden gives us a better understanding of Orwell's unique and enduring role in Anglo-American intellectual life. In Part One, Rodden opens the book with a section titled "Their Orwell, Left and Right," which focuses on Orwell's reception by several important literary circles of the latter half of the twentieth century. Beginning with Orwell's own contemporaries, Rodden addresses the ways various intellectual groups of the 1950s responded to Orwell. Rodden then moves on in Part Two to what he calls the "Orwell Confraternity Today," those contemporary intellectuals who have, in various ways, identified themselves with or reacted against Orwell. The author concludes by examining how Orwell's status as an object of admiration and detraction has complicated the way in which he has been perceived by readers since his death.

A collection of essays by various Australian and European authors on a wide range of Australian cultural topics, this is a story of struggle and achievement and occasional failure. Departures deals with innovation and transgression in Australian literature and history and brings out the vitality of Australian culture as it meets new challenges.

For more than three decades, Lucien ' one of the most notorious characters in the history of the novel ' has haunted the imaginations of readers around the world. Remarkably, the astounding protagonist of Gabrielle Wittkop's lyrical 1972 novella, The Necrophiliac, has never appeared in English until now. This new translation introduces readers to a masterpiece of French literature, striking not only for its astonishing subject matter but for the poetic beauty of the late author's subtle, intricate writing. Like the best writings of Edgar Allan Poe or Baudelaire, Wittkop's prose goes far beyond mere gothic horror to explore the melancholy in the loneliest depths of the human condition, forcing readers to confront their own mortality with an unprecedented intimacy.

Becoming Deviant describes a process by which people move from an affinity for certain prohibited behaviors to full-blown deviance. This process includes affiliation with circles and settings that include or sponsor offenses, followed by understanding and identification of the offenses as prohibited behavior by the transgressor. The process can be summarized as affinity, affiliation, and signification. The sequential process Matza describes allows for non-recurrent offending behavior, recidivism, and offending again. His perspective is motivated by the view that criminological theories do not explain a number of the fundamental empirical features and nuances known to be associated with delinquency. This includes the frequent termination of delinquent behavior at the onset of adulthood, the often conformist nature of delinquent behavior, and the large numbers of non-delinquents that are often found in otherwise "high-delinquency areas." In Becoming Deviant Matza reasons that most, though not all, delinquent behavior constitutes relatively uniform phenomena that is developmental in character. Individuals proceed from trivial to more serious infractions. He argues that delinquent behavior represents youths searching for adventure and is accompanied by withdrawal from conventional values and associated behavior. Matza further claims that many delinquents are not fully committed to a delinquent lifestyle, and this explains why delinquent behavior often ends with adulthood. Matza's compelling and integrated theoretical explanation makes this a classic in the increasingly sophisticated criminological literature. Thomas Blomberg's new introduction shows why Becoming Deviant remains of central importance to the field.

In writings about travel, the Balkans appear most often as a place travelled to. Western accounts of the Balkans revel in the different and the exotic, the violent and the primitive − traits that serve (according to many commentators) as a foil to self-congratulatory definitions of the West as modern, progressive and rational. However, the Balkans have also long been travelled from. The region’s writers have given accounts of their travels in the West and elsewhere, saying something in the process about themselves and their place in the world. The analyses presented here, ranging from those of 16th-century Greek humanists to 19th-century Romanian reformers to 20th-century writers, socialists and ‘men-of-the-world’, suggest that travellers from the region have also created their own identities through their encounters with Europe. Consequently, this book challenges assumptions of Western discursive hegemony, while at the same time exploring Balkan ‘Occidentalisms’.