Routledge Focus on Literature
Reading J.G. Ballard's The Atrocity Exhibition
1st Edition
By Adrian Pocobelli
January 29, 2027
J.G. Ballard’s The Atrocity Exhibition ranks among the most significant and challenging works of twentieth-century fiction. Its fragmented narrative structure and dense conceptual layers have often rendered it inaccessible, even to dedicated readers of Ballard's work. In Reading J.G. Ballard’s The ...
Object-Oriented Ontology and the Theory of the Poem
1st Edition
By Wit Pietrzak
January 15, 2027
Over the past two decades, object-oriented ontology (OOO) has shaken up debates not only in philosophy but also in disciplines as diverse as architecture and music theory. Despite its cross-disciplinary appeal, literary studies have only indirectly responded to OOO, even though the main proponents ...
Orwell and the Dictator Novel
1st Edition
By Yutaka Okuhata
January 14, 2027
The twentieth century witnessed an age of dictatorship, extending from Fascist and Nazi regimes to totalitarian communist states and numerous other authoritarian regimes across the world. Even today, the international political landscape remains shaped by the policy orientations of repressive ...
The Cryptogeography of Goethe’s Faust II
1st Edition
By Gabrielle Bersier
January 14, 2027
The Cryptogeography of Goethe’s Faust II examines the neglected geographical dimensions of the second part of Goethe's Faust, composed between 1825 and 1832. It challenges conventional readings by presenting Faust II not as a simple continuation of the Eurocentric, Renaissance-focused first part, ...
Literary Resistance: Jewish Humor as a Defense Mechanism
1st Edition
By Gustavo Sánchez Canales
October 30, 2026
Literary Resistance: Jewish Humor as a Defense Mechanism examines how Jewish humor has functioned as a vital survival strategy and coping mechanism throughout 4,000 years of Jewish history, with particular emphasis on the Holocaust and its literary aftermath. Drawing on foundational theories by ...
Shashi Deshpande and the Global South Gender Entanglements
1st Edition
By Soumyadeep Chakraborty
October 27, 2026
Shashi Deshpande and the Global South Gender Entanglements offers a transformative approach to literary gender studies by moving beyond rigid gender binaries to examine the complex, humanistic dynamics of man‑woman relationality in Shashi Deshpande’s fiction. Grounded in the socio‑cultural ...
Toxic Masculinity on the London Stage, 1600–1610
1st Edition
By Anthony Archdeacon
October 15, 2026
The idea of toxic masculinity might feel like a very modern, even twenty-first century notion, but similar concerns about male behaviour, also often characterised in terms of poisons and poisoning, can be identified in the literature of 400 hundred years ago, not only in Shakespeare’s Othello ...
Pro-Animal Poetics: Poetry of D. H. Lawrence and Ted Hughes
1st Edition
By Krishanu Maiti
September 13, 2026
Pro-Animal Poetics offers a comprehensive study of the animal poems of D. H. Lawrence and Ted Hughes through the lens of Critical Animal Studies. It examines the works of these two renowned pro-animal poets chosen for their repudiation of ‘abstract thought’ and celebration of ‘animalness embodied ...
The Global Distribution of Popular Narrative in the Nineteenth Century: Forms of Circulation and Circulation of Forms
1st Edition
Edited
By Graham Law
August 26, 2026
The principal aim of this collection of articles is to explore the evolving generic patterns and the modes of transnational distribution of popular narrative over the course of the nineteenth century. This volume addresses networks of reception drawn around cities as diverse as Constantinople, ...
Imagination Besieged: Coloniality, Violence, and Feminism in “Mediterranean” Art and Literature
1st Edition
By Federica Bueti
July 19, 2026
Imagination Besieged records the silenced stories of a Mediterranean defined by loss, displacement, dispossession, violence, and its refusal. Drawing links and connections between Calabria, Athens, Ramallah, and Beirut, the book grapples with the legacies of histories of violence, criminality, and ...
Pandemics and Apocalypse in World Literature: The Hope for Planetary Salvation
1st Edition
By William Franke
July 19, 2026
Pandemics and Apocalypse rereads classical narratives of plague from the Bible (Exodus) and classical antiquity, both Greek (Homer, Thucydides, Sophocles) and Roman (Lucretius, Virgil, Ovid), through the Middle Ages (Dante, Boccaccio) and Modernity (Defoe, Manzoni, Artaud, Camus) as a basis for ...
The Life of the Soul in Early Modern Spanish Literature and Culture
1st Edition
By Esther Fernández
July 19, 2026
Understanding the soul’s essence is an elusive pursuit, rendering any attempt to write about it akin to grasping at a mirage. As a sublime subject, the soul has captivated human thought for centuries. How do we approach it? How can we define its boundaries? This exploration offers an experimental ...