A reference book for scholarship on Edmund Spenser offering a detailed, literary guide to his life, works and influence. Over 700 entries by 422 contributors, an index and extensive bibliography.

The classic by Latin America's finest writer of the twentieth century—a true literary sensation—with an introduction by cyber-author William Gibson. The groundbreaking trans-genre work of Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) has been insinuating itself into the structure, stance, and very breath of world literature for well over half a century. Multi-layered, self-referential, elusive, and allusive writing is now frequently labeled Borgesian. Umberto Eco's international bestseller, The Name of the Rose, is, on one level, an elaborate improvisation on Borges' fiction "The Library," which American readers first encountered in the original 1962 New Directions publication of Labyrinths. This new edition of Labyrinths, the classic representative selection of Borges' writing edited by Donald A. Yates and James E. Irby (in translations by themselves and others), includes the text of the original edition (as augmented in 1964) as well as Irby's biographical and critical essay, a poignant tribute by André Maurois, and a chronology of the author's life. Borges enthusiast William Gibson has contributed a new introduction bringing Borges' influence and importance into the twenty-first century.

The format of this book is arbitrary and exact, the way paint is in a landscape by Alex Colville. It follows the program of the symposium that took place at the University of Ottawa, from April 25 to 27, 1986. As Bakhtin leaps from the sidelines to centre stage, as Derrida clambers out of orchestra pit into the prompter's box, and Lancan swings from the flies, as Foucault, Lévi-Strauss, Saussure, Barthes, and a throng of others rhubarb their way through the text, one recognizes just how connected all the disparate elements of this critical extravaganza really are.

Drawing on developments in critical theory and postmodernist fiction, this study makes an important contribution to the appreciation of playforms in language, texts, and cultural practices. Tracing trajectories in theories of play and game, and with particular attention to the writings of Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Bakhtin, and Derrida, the author argues that the concept of play provides perspectives on language and communication processes useful both for analysis of literary texts and also for understanding the interactive nature of constructions of knowledge Exploring manifestations of game and play throughout the history of Western culture, from Plato to Pynchon, this study traces developments in 20th-century cultural and literary theory of ideas about play in the writings of Johan Huizinga, Roger Caillois, Jacques Ehrmann, Bernard Suits, James Hans, Mihai Spariosu and Robert Rawdon Wilson. The author emphasizes post-structuralist developments with specific attention to deconstruction and reception theory and argues that deconstruction makes the most significant recent contribution to play theory in its application to language and to literature The work also explores the modes and effects of playforms in particular examples of postmodernist fiction. With attention to major works from Thomas Pynchon (Gravity's Rainbow), John Barth (LETTERS , Robert Kroetsch (What the Crow Said ), Angela Carter (Nights at the Circus ) and Peter Carey (Illywhacker ), Edwards acknowledges and deconstructs such basic oppositions as play and seriousness, fiction and truth, difference and identity to explore the literature's cultural/political significance. Seeking to affirm the fiction's continuing social relevance, the readings presented in this book place play irresistibly at the heartland of language, meaning and culture.

In this provocative work, Virginia Milhouse demonstrates how autoethnography combines creative and analytical practices to help bring to consciousness some complex social and political agendas hidden in narratorial writings. It demonstrates how an arts-based qualitative research method (narrative inquiry) can be fused with a scientific-based quantitative method (DMIS-IDI) and compliment, support and or correct each other. It also demonstrates how "writing as a method of inquiry" can be a viable way for researchers to learn about themselves and their research, as well as features standards for evaluating creatively and analytically constructed text. Further, the author's examination of the aesthetics of "inner-readiness" and "in-betweeness" will be very helpful to people doing this kind of self-reflexive fieldwork. The reader will also appreciate this author's recognition of the importance of combining qualitative and quantitative methodologies--something not many writers can do with great success. Also, this book will be a real contribution to sojourners and others traveling or living abroad. The work is very smart; and, is, beautifully and clearly written. The 'labyrinth' quote at the beginning of her work is very fitting and certainly promises to illustrate those words.

In this provocative re-examination of the work of Robert Kroetsch, who has been hailed as the father of Canadian post-modernism, Dianne Tiefensee argues that Kroetsch's "deconstruction" fails to address, or even comprehend, the radical nature of Derrida's theory.