This is a guide to the main developments in the history of British and Irish literature, charting some of the main features of literary language development and highlighting key language topics.

The Mass Ornament today remains a refreshing tribute to popular culture, and its impressively interdisciplinary writings continue to shed light not only on Kracauer's later work but also on the ideas of the Frankfurt School, the genealogy of film theory and cultural studies, Weimar cultural politics, and, not least, the exigencies of intellectual exile.

Its mysterious symbols and rituals had been used in secret for centuries before Freemasonry revealed itself in 1717. But where had this powerful organization come from and why had Freemasonry been attacked by the Roman Catholic Church? Robinson answers those questions and more.

In this “suspenseful...captivating” (Publishers Weekly) novel in GhostWalker series, #1 New York Times bestselling author Christine Feehan tracks the desperate steps of a wanted woman—betrayed, avenging, and dangerously irresistible… Gator Fontenot of the Special Forces paranormal squad can’t refuse an urgent request to save the elusive Iris “Flame” Johnson, a victim of the same horrific experiments that warped Gator. Now unleashed, she’s a red-haired weapon of unimaginable destructive powers, a walking time bomb bent on revenge in the sultry bayous of New Orleans, and hunted by a shadowy assassin. It’s Gator’s job to reel Flame in. But can two people haunted by violent betrayals trust the passion that soon ignites between them? Or is one of them just playing another seductive and deadly night game?

Katya Mandoki advances in this book the thesis that it is not only possible but crucial to open up the field of aesthetics (traditionally confined to the study of art and beauty) toward the richness and complexity of everyday life. She argues that in every process of communication, whether face to face or through the media, fashion, and political propaganda, there is always an excess beyond the informative and functional value of a message. This excess is the aesthetic. Following Huizinga's view of play as an ingredient of any social environment, Mandoki explores how various cultural practices are in fact forms of playing since, for the author, aesthetics and play are Siamese twins. One of the unique contributions of this book is the elaboration and application of a semiotic model for the simultaneous analysis of social interactions in the four registers, namely visual, auditory, verbal and body language, to detect the aesthetic strategies deployed in specific situations. She argues that since the presentation of the self is targeted towards participants' sensibilities, aesthetics plays a key role in these modes of exchange. Consequently, the author updates important debates in this field to clear the way for a socio-aesthetic inquiry through contexts such as the family, school, medical, artistic or religious traditions from which social identities emerge.

Called "a feminist classic" by Judith Shulevitz in the New York Times Book Review, this pathbreaking book of literary criticism is now reissued with a new introduction by Lisa Appignanesi that speaks to how The Madwoman in the Attic set the groundwork for subsequent generations of scholars writing about women writers, and why the book still feels fresh some four decades later. "Gilbert and Gubar have written a pivotal book, one of those after which we will never think the same again."--Carolyn G. Heilbrun, Washington Post Book World