Name: For the Lord of the Animals-Poems from The Telugu
Brand: Translated, with an Introduction and Notes, by Hank Heifetz and Velcheru Narayana Rao
Price: 39.95 USD
Availability: InStock

Translated, with an Introduction and Notes, by Hank Heifetz and Velcheru Narayana Rao

For the Lord of the Animals-Poems from The Telugu

$39.95

For the Lord of the Animals: Poems from the Telugu offers an insightful translation of The Kalahastisvara Satakamu by the 16th-century poet Dhurjati, a prominent figure in the devotional poetry tradition of Andhra Pradesh. Set in the sacred temple town of Kalahasti, dedicated to the god Shiva, the work showcases Dhurjati's emotional devotion to Srikajahastisvara, the Lord of Kalahasti. Drawing from rich Shaivite legends, including the stories of a spider, snake, and elephant each offering their unique devotion to Shiva, the poems reveal deep philosophical reflections, personal meditations on life, sensuality, death, and divine intervention. The poet’s raw emotions, social commentary, and critique of authority, particularly kings and gurus, make the Satakamu a significant piece of Telugu literature that transcends mere religious worship and becomes a reflection of human struggle and self-examination.

The translation captures the essence of these devotional poems, often written in ornate, classical meters, by focusing on the meaning and emotional flow rather than rigid adherence to formal metrical patterns. By balancing Sanskrit and Telugu elements, the poems convey an interplay of elevated spiritual language and colloquial expressions, giving them a layered depth. Through these carefully crafted verses, Dhurjati’s poems not only offer praise to the god of Kalahasti but also engage in profound reflections on existence, societal structures, and the relationship between man and divinity. With this work, the reader is introduced to a unique blend of personal lyricism and devotional fervor, inviting both spiritual insight and a deeper understanding of the human condition.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1987.

Lauren Silberman

Transforming Desire

$39.95

The Faerie Queene anticipates postmodernist concerns with destabilizing language, and Lauren Silberman's stimulating study of Books III and IV of the poem proceeds from the assumption that Spenser has something important to say to us in the late twentieth century.

In these books, Spenser exposes fictions of total control for what they are—fictions. The text affirms the value of risk and improvisation over the temptation to seek guarantees. The books examine the role of desire in moving us to function in an uncertain world and tempting us to foreclose that uncertainty by strategies that seek to frame knowledge through total mastery of it.

Elaine Tuttle Hansen

Chaucer and the Fictions of Gender

$49.95

In Chaucer and the Fictions of Gender, the poet’s exploration of masculinity and femininity takes center stage, offering a complex interplay between societal constructs of gender and personal identity. Focusing on the Legend of Good Women, the analysis delves into the feminization of male characters, unraveling how their relationships with women reveal vulnerabilities and insecurities. From Antony’s loss of public honor to Pyramus’s emotional fragility, Chaucer presents men as navigating perilous intersections of love, identity, and societal expectations. Their struggles are contrasted with the archetypes of virtuous women, yet these figures also challenge normative gender roles, blending power with traditional notions of sacrifice. Through these layered narratives, Chaucer critiques the rigidity of patriarchal ideals, illustrating the tensions between personal desires and societal demands.

This work positions Chaucer as an artist deeply engaged with the “woman question,” while acknowledging the limitations of interpreting his poetry solely through a proto-feminist lens. By examining the poet’s characters—both male and female—the analysis highlights how Chaucer negotiates the instability of gender roles, revealing an intricate tapestry of social critique and literary innovation. The book invites readers to consider how Chaucer’s works resonate with modern conversations about gender fluidity and the cultural pressures shaping identity. This nuanced exploration redefines the Legend of Good Women as a central piece in Chaucer’s oeuvre, one that pushes the boundaries of medieval literary traditions.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1992.

Richard Harter Fogle

The Idea of Coleridge's Criticism

$95.00

The Idea of Coleridge's Criticism explores the profound, often polarizing legacy of Samuel Taylor Coleridge as a literary critic, whose influence continues to resonate in modern thought. This study examines the richness and complexity of Coleridge's critical theories, particularly his groundbreaking ideas on imagination, organic unity, and the interplay between form and content in poetry. It navigates the spectrum of scholarly opinions, from skepticism over his philosophical debts to the Germans to admiration for his psychological insights and practical criticism. By analyzing his contributions within the broader context of Romanticism and Western criticism, this book emphasizes Coleridge's role as a thinker who unified poetic theory, philosophy, and literary practice in ways that shaped generations of critical discourse.

With a focus on the inherent unity of Coleridge's critical vision, the book contends that his theories extend beyond the fragmentary and eclectic criticisms often attributed to him. It delves into his synthesis of Romantic idealism and systematic analysis, showcasing his ability to reconcile opposites—subject and object, imagination and reason—within an organic framework. Highlighting his enduring relevance, the book underscores how Coleridge's belief in the logic and value of imaginative language provided a compelling defense against the encroachment of scientific positivism in literature. Ultimately, this study positions Coleridge not only as a Romantic theorist or pioneer of depth psychology but as a towering figure whose critical insights retain permanent significance for literary interpretation and appreciation.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1962.

Harry G. Carlson

Strindberg and the Poetry of Myth

$95.00

Strindberg and the Poetry of Myth by Harry G. Carlson offers a bold reappraisal of August Strindberg, situating him not only as Sweden’s national author and Ibsen’s chief rival on the world stage but also as a dramatist whose enduring power derives from his mythic imagination. While Strindberg’s contemporaries and later critics often accused him of excessive subjectivity, Carlson argues that the seemingly autobiographical intensity of his plays, novels, and poems gains resonance through the structural use of myth. From his early naturalist dramas such as The Father, Miss Julie, and Creditors to the visionary symbolic works To Damascus, A Dream Play, and The Ghost Sonata, Strindberg fused raw detail drawn from life with archetypal images drawn from classical, biblical, and Norse traditions. His characters are not only figures of personal confession but mythic protagonists whose struggles dramatize the universal conflict between aspiration, betrayal, and human limitation.

Carlson traces Strindberg’s lifelong engagement with myth, beginning with his early fascination with heroic figures like Jason and Heracles and culminating in the polyphonic mythmaking of his late dream plays, where a single character may resonate simultaneously with Christ, the Wandering Jew, Lucifer, and Everyman. By reading Strindberg’s work through this mythic grammar, Carlson demonstrates how the playwright transformed private turmoil into dramas of archetypal significance, achieving a poetic texture that is at once intensely personal and broadly universal. Both a critical study and an interpretive synthesis, Strindberg and the Poetry of Myth illuminates the symbolic dimensions of a body of work that continues to fascinate, unsettle, and inspire audiences and readers across the modern world.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1982.

Hans-Peter Stahl

Propertius: Love and War

$49.95

Propertius: ‘Love’ and ‘War’: Individual and State Under Augustus presents a nuanced exploration of the poetry of Propertius, addressing the apparent contradictions within his work and their implications for understanding the interplay between personal identity and political allegiance in Augustan Rome. Rather than accepting a simplistic trajectory from youthful love elegies to mature, state-centered poetry, this study challenges traditional views by considering the poet's recurring conflicts as indicators of a lasting internal struggle. It questions whether Propertius' work should be seen as a straightforward reflection of personal development or as a literary construction that resists such linear interpretations.

This volume not only reevaluates Propertius' literary contributions but also critiques long-standing methodological approaches to his poetry, particularly the reliance on historicist interpretations that have sought to extract autobiographical truth from his elegies. By emphasizing the structural and thematic coherence of individual poems, the study highlights the poet’s ability to merge personal and political tensions within carefully crafted literary forms. With its deep engagement with textual criticism, linguistic analysis, and poetic structure, Propertius: ‘Love’ and ‘War’ offers fresh insight into the complexities of Roman elegy, making it essential reading for scholars of Latin poetry, Augustan literature, and the broader relationship between art and ideology in ancient Rome.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1985.

George Kane

Chaucer and Langland

$95.00

Delve into the rich interplay of history, language, and literary artistry with this compelling collection of essays by George Kane. Focusing on two of the Middle Ages' greatest poets, Geoffrey Chaucer and William Langland, Kane offers a nuanced exploration of their works, examining their historical contexts and textual intricacies. Each essay reflects decades of scholarly dedication, bringing forward the contrasts and connections between Chaucer's sophisticated humor and Langland's earnest spiritual vision. With a focus on intellectual rigor and historical accuracy, this collection sheds light on the enduring significance of these poets in the canon of English literature.

Kane's insightful prose is steeped in the tradition of careful criticism, making Chaucer and Langland both a tribute to the authors and an inspiring guide for readers and scholars alike. Rejecting fleeting critical trends, Kane upholds the timeless values of intellectual honesty and fine sensibility, ensuring that his analyses resonate beyond the classroom. This work is essential for those passionate about medieval studies, offering an elite perspective on the texts that shaped English literary heritage.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1989.

Laurence A. Schneider

A Madman of Chu

$39.95

A Madman of Ch’u: The Chinese Myth of Loyalty and Dissent offers a compelling exploration of the enduring legacy of Ch’ü Yuan, an ancient poet and statesman whose life symbolizes loyalty, dissent, and the complex interplay between personal conviction and public duty. Through a detailed analysis of classical texts, folk traditions, and modern reinterpretations, the book traces the evolution of Ch’ü Yuan’s mythology from the Warring States period to the 20th century. His seminal poem, Li Sao, serves as the foundation of China's lyrical tradition and embodies his passionate ideals and moral struggles. Ch’ü Yuan’s tragic story—marked by political exile, unyielding integrity, and ultimate self-sacrifice—provides a lens to examine broader cultural themes such as the tension between individuality and collective responsibility, and the role of art as a vehicle for political dissent.

The study also investigates how the Ch’ü Yuan lore has been reimagined to address evolving societal needs, from Confucian ideals of loyalty to revolutionary ideologies in modern China. By examining themes of time, space, and madness, the book highlights his transformation from a southern cultural hero into a modern symbol of radical reform and intellectual independence. This work offers valuable insights into how mythology shapes national identity and cultural continuity, making it an essential resource for scholars of Chinese literature, history, and political thought.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1980.

Harry G. Carlson

Strindberg and the Poetry of Myth

$39.95

Strindberg and the Poetry of Myth by Harry G. Carlson offers a bold reappraisal of August Strindberg, situating him not only as Sweden’s national author and Ibsen’s chief rival on the world stage but also as a dramatist whose enduring power derives from his mythic imagination. While Strindberg’s contemporaries and later critics often accused him of excessive subjectivity, Carlson argues that the seemingly autobiographical intensity of his plays, novels, and poems gains resonance through the structural use of myth. From his early naturalist dramas such as The Father, Miss Julie, and Creditors to the visionary symbolic works To Damascus, A Dream Play, and The Ghost Sonata, Strindberg fused raw detail drawn from life with archetypal images drawn from classical, biblical, and Norse traditions. His characters are not only figures of personal confession but mythic protagonists whose struggles dramatize the universal conflict between aspiration, betrayal, and human limitation.

Carlson traces Strindberg’s lifelong engagement with myth, beginning with his early fascination with heroic figures like Jason and Heracles and culminating in the polyphonic mythmaking of his late dream plays, where a single character may resonate simultaneously with Christ, the Wandering Jew, Lucifer, and Everyman. By reading Strindberg’s work through this mythic grammar, Carlson demonstrates how the playwright transformed private turmoil into dramas of archetypal significance, achieving a poetic texture that is at once intensely personal and broadly universal. Both a critical study and an interpretive synthesis, Strindberg and the Poetry of Myth illuminates the symbolic dimensions of a body of work that continues to fascinate, unsettle, and inspire audiences and readers across the modern world.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1982.

Hans Meyerhoff

Time in Literature

$39.95

Time in Literature by Hans Meyerhoff explores how literature illuminates aspects of temporality that scientific analysis often excludes. Sparked by reflections during Hans Reichenbach’s seminars on the concept of time in physics and information theory, Meyerhoff recognized the distance between scientific constructions of time and the ways human beings actually experience it. Literature, he argues, has long been preoccupied with rendering the richness, ambiguity, and depth of lived temporality—qualities irrelevant to physics but central to selfhood, memory, and imagination. The study positions itself as a comparative inquiry: not a systematic treatise on physical time, nor an exercise in literary criticism, but rather a philosophical investigation of how time functions in literature, in human consciousness, and in relation to nature. Meyerhoff openly acknowledges the hybrid nature of his project, straddling science, literature, psychology, and philosophy, but insists such border-crossing is necessary to capture the full complexity of the problem.

Meyerhoff situates his work within a sparse field. While earlier studies, such as Jean Pouillon’s Temps et Roman and Georges Poulet’s Études sur le temps humain, examined literary or experiential time, they lacked the systematic philosophical scope he pursues. His book aims instead to develop a general interpretation of literature’s treatment of time as it intersects with the self and the natural world, drawing on examples from Proust, Wolfe, Fitzgerald, and Freud. Meyerhoff distinguishes his project from narrowly aesthetic analyses by emphasizing the broader philosophical implications of temporal representation: how narratives shape human consciousness, how myth and mysticism intersect with conceptions of time, and why modernity has foregrounded temporality as a central problem. He presents his study as exploratory and provisional, yet also as an original attempt to correlate the scientific, experiential, and literary dimensions of time in a unified framework, thereby expanding both philosophical discourse and literary understanding.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1955.

C. L. Barber

The Whole Journey

$95.00

The Whole Journey: Shakespeare’s Power of Development by C. L. Barber and Richard P. Wheeler offers a sweeping reinterpretation of Shakespeare’s career as a continuous process of artistic and human growth. Conceived as Barber’s capstone study and completed posthumously by Wheeler from extensive drafts and notes, the book situates Shakespeare’s comedies, histories, tragedies, and romances within an arc of development shaped by temperament, historical pressures, and recurring crises of meaning. At its center lies a provocative claim: Shakespeare’s oeuvre has a discernible “human shape.” His plays are not just literary artifacts but responses to psychic needs, dramatizing both the risks of identification with “other identities” and the forms of mastery that drama makes possible. By placing tragedy at the pivot of this trajectory—where post-Reformation audiences confronted sacred longings in a secular theater—the book redefines the stakes of Shakespeare’s achievement, showing how his art disciplines magical expectation while offering communal rituals of recognition.

This landmark study makes a dual contribution: it recovers Shakespeare’s works as developmental rather than static, and it models a critical method attuned to history, form, and psyche. Close readings across the canon, from Richard III and Titus Andronicus through Hamlet, Othello, Lear, and Macbeth, to the late romances, reveal how Shakespeare continually reworked the tensions between “nothingness” and omnipotence, surrender and control, comedy and tragedy. The Sonnets serve as a diagnostic of Shakespeare’s temperament, illuminating the vulnerabilities and powers that his drama then transforms. Drawing on Reformation history and psychoanalytic awareness as resources for “paying attention” rather than totalizing theories, Barber and Wheeler create a framework for understanding Shakespeare’s genius as both historically situated and profoundly human. The Whole Journey will engage scholars, students, and general readers seeking to see Shakespeare’s art not as isolated masterpieces but as a lifelong endeavor to make and mend meaning in a changing world.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1986.

Amelia E. Van Vleck

Memory and Re-Creation in Troubadour Lyric

$39.95

Memory and Re-Creation in Troubadour Lyric delves into the intricate and dynamic world of medieval troubadour poetry, examining its artistic evolution and cultural context. This groundbreaking work challenges traditional romanticized interpretations of troubadour songs, which often viewed them as personal outpourings of emotion or autobiographical reflections. Instead, the book situates troubadour lyric within a framework of formalism and performance, emphasizing its reliance on conventions, originality, and interaction with audiences. By analyzing the dynamic process of "mouvance"—the fluidity of medieval texts during oral and written transmission—this study highlights how troubadours balanced the creation of distinctive poetic voices with the inevitability of adaptation and transformation over time.

The book explores how troubadours actively engaged in literary innovation while addressing the inherent challenges of oral tradition and textual mobility. Through in-depth analyses of poets like Jaufre Rudel, Raimbaut d'Aurenga, and Arnaut Daniel, it reveals the complex interplay between individuality and tradition, as well as the deliberate use of metaphor, rhyme, and structure to shape audience reception. With its rich examination of twelfth-century poetics, performance practices, and manuscript evidence, Memory and Re-Creation in Troubadour Lyric offers a nuanced understanding of how these medieval poets navigated the tension between ephemeral oral performances and the enduring legacy of written text. This work is an invaluable resource for those seeking to uncover the layered artistry of troubadour poetry and its enduring cultural significance.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1991.

Translated, with an Introduction and Notes, by Hank Heifetz and Velcheru Narayana Rao

For the Lord of the Animals-Poems from The Telugu

$95.00

For the Lord of the Animals: Poems from the Telugu offers an insightful translation of The Kalahastisvara Satakamu by the 16th-century poet Dhurjati, a prominent figure in the devotional poetry tradition of Andhra Pradesh. Set in the sacred temple town of Kalahasti, dedicated to the god Shiva, the work showcases Dhurjati's emotional devotion to Srikajahastisvara, the Lord of Kalahasti. Drawing from rich Shaivite legends, including the stories of a spider, snake, and elephant each offering their unique devotion to Shiva, the poems reveal deep philosophical reflections, personal meditations on life, sensuality, death, and divine intervention. The poet’s raw emotions, social commentary, and critique of authority, particularly kings and gurus, make the Satakamu a significant piece of Telugu literature that transcends mere religious worship and becomes a reflection of human struggle and self-examination.

The translation captures the essence of these devotional poems, often written in ornate, classical meters, by focusing on the meaning and emotional flow rather than rigid adherence to formal metrical patterns. By balancing Sanskrit and Telugu elements, the poems convey an interplay of elevated spiritual language and colloquial expressions, giving them a layered depth. Through these carefully crafted verses, Dhurjati’s poems not only offer praise to the god of Kalahasti but also engage in profound reflections on existence, societal structures, and the relationship between man and divinity. With this work, the reader is introduced to a unique blend of personal lyricism and devotional fervor, inviting both spiritual insight and a deeper understanding of the human condition.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1987.

Willard Spiegelman

Wordsworth's Heroes

$39.95

Wordsworth’s Heroes reframes the poet of “egotistical sublime” fame as a maker of ordinary heroism—someone who finds grandeur not at Thermopylae but in cottages, churchyards, and the habits of speech that shape moral character. Willard Spiegelman assembles a gallery of Wordsworth’s “representative men and women”—readers, children, and old men—while staging a decisive rethink of the poet’s alleged self-absorption. Anchored by a fresh account of “Character of the Happy Warrior,” the book shows how Wordsworth abstracts heroism from biography (Nelson) into a type available to “every man in arms”—and, crucially, to noncombatants in the “mild concerns of ordinary life.” Through close readings that braid rhetoric, prosody, and ethics, Spiegelman connects the Happy Warrior to the leech-gatherer of “Resolution and Independence,” to the sculptural presences of “Yew-Trees,” and to Wordsworth’s lifelong negotiation between action and contemplation (agere et pati). The result is a Wordsworth placed not at the margins as eccentric prophet but at the center of the “commonal” (to borrow Wallace Stevens), where the heroic becomes a shared vocation learned by imitation, memory, and speech.

Organized with the classroom and the scholar equally in mind, Wordsworth’s Heroes pairs thematic chapters on readers, children, and elders with sustained interpretations of The Prelude, The White Doe of Rylstone, and The Excursion. Spiegelman tracks how the “divisionary” imagination of the late poems turns characters into instructive exempla, while earlier lyrics test how far happiness, suffering, and endurance can be made heroic without losing their ordinariness. Along the way, the study situates Wordsworth among ancient and modern theorists of greatness—from Theophrastus and Cicero to Emerson, Carlyle, and Stevens—showing how his poetry both absorbs and resists heroic paradigms. This is scholarly criticism with the cadence of literary advocacy: lucid, historically alert, and attentive to how diction, syntax, and stanza shape ethical vision. For readers of Romanticism, narrative, and moral philosophy, Spiegelman offers a compelling case that Wordsworth’s truest heroes are “ourselves”—not exceptions to, but exponents of, the human commonwealth.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1985.

Translated with an Introduction by J. H. Matthews

The Custom House of Desire

$95.00

The Custom-House of Desire: A Half-Century of Surrealist Stories is an intriguing anthology that explores the breadth and depth of surrealist storytelling over a fifty-year period. Through the lens of both imagination and desire, the collection reveals how surrealist writers challenge conventional narrative forms and literary genres to uncover the marvelous—a perspective on reality that transcends ordinary perception. This anthology presents stories written in French by authors from diverse national and cultural backgrounds, such as Fernando Arrabal, Joyce Mansour, and André Pieyre de Mandiargues, showcasing the movement’s global influence and thematic diversity. The selected works range from fully structured tales to experimental narratives, reflecting surrealism’s disdain for traditional literary conventions and its relentless pursuit of the ineffable.

The book invites readers to engage with surrealist writing on their own terms, offering a flexible arrangement of stories that encourage exploration based on curiosity, themes, or the appeal of individual authors. Themes such as humor, terror, eroticism, and the surrealist marvelous weave through the collection, each serving as an entry point into the movement’s radical reimagining of storytelling. Through these narratives, readers encounter the surrealist’s rejection of literary orthodoxy and aesthetic formalism in favor of a poetic vision driven by imagination and boundless desire. Whether exploring the disorienting humor of Marianne van Hirtum or the evocative eroticism of Markale, the anthology underscores surrealism’s enduring ambition: to redefine human experience and transform our understanding of reality.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1975.

William G. Riggs

The Christian Poet in Paradise Lost

$95.00

The Christian Poet in Paradise Lost offers an illuminating exploration of Milton's personal and poetic presence in his epic masterpiece. The book examines how Milton’s interactions with his characters—Adam, Eve, Satan, the angels, and the Son—serve as a reflection of his spiritual journey and his understanding of what it means to be a Christian poet. By emphasizing Milton’s self-awareness and deliberate incorporation of his own life and struggles into the poem, the study reveals the deeply autobiographical nature of Paradise Lost. This perspective sheds light on the poet's engagement with Puritan ideals, his struggles with spiritual pride, and his dependence on divine inspiration to compose a work of monumental significance. The narrative examines how Milton reconciles his personal ambitions with his faith, creating a dynamic interplay between his poetic voice and the epic’s broader theological themes.

Through a detailed analysis of Milton's lyrical prologues and their connection to the epic narrative, the book uncovers the tension between Milton's confidence in his divine calling and the humility demanded by his faith. It situates Paradise Lost within the broader context of Baroque art and Puritan autobiography, emphasizing Milton's innovative approach to blending personal experience with universal truths. This work not only provides insights into Milton's conception of the Christian poet but also explores how his reflections on inspiration, morality, and human agency resonate with modern readers. By offering a fresh perspective on Milton's profound self-awareness, the book invites readers to engage deeply with the epic's intricate design and timeless relevance.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1972.

Edited with an Introduction by W. K. Wimsatt

Literary Criticism

$65.00

Literary Criticism: Idea and Act: The English Institute, 1939–1972: Selected Essays delves into the rich intellectual legacy of the English Institute, tracing its evolution from its inception in 1939 through its significant influence on American literary criticism over three decades. This anthology captures the diversity of critical approaches, scholarly debates, and cultural dialogues that shaped the study of literature in the 20th century. From discussions on editing and philological studies to groundbreaking interpretations of poetry, drama, and prose, the essays reflect a dynamic interplay between traditional scholarship and emergent critical theories. Key figures like Cleanth Brooks, Northrop Frye, and Geoffrey Hartman explore themes ranging from structuralism and archetypes to the aesthetics of modernity, demonstrating the Institute's role as a crucible for literary innovation.

The volume also serves as a historical record, detailing the transition from early gatherings focused on practical criticism to a broader engagement with interdisciplinary and theoretical perspectives. The essays selected highlight pivotal moments in literary scholarship, such as the rise of New Criticism, the reimagining of Romantic and modernist texts, and the enduring relevance of classical poetics. Through its thoughtful curation, the book offers both a panoramic view of literary criticism's development and a testament to the enduring impact of the English Institute in fostering critical thought and intellectual exchange.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1974.

Leo Bersani

Baudelaire and Freud

$39.95

This title delves into the interplay between Charles Baudelaire's poetic vision and Freudian psychoanalytic theory, offering a nuanced exploration of fragmented identity and the dynamic tension between traditional ideals and modern psychological complexity. Baudelaire's work is framed as a pivotal cultural drama, encapsulating the struggle between spiritual aspirations and self-degradation—a dualism rooted in his concept of "two postulations" of human nature, toward God and Satan. This framework aligns with a broader structure of oppositions—high and low, spirit and matter, reality and appearance—that has traditionally defined idealistic visions in literature.

However, the book challenges reductive readings of Baudelaire's dualism, arguing instead for a recognition of his deeper engagement with psychic mobility and the destabilization of identity. Baudelaire's poetry, like Freud's theories, emerges at a cultural crossroads where traditional views of the self are simultaneously upheld and dismantled. This study emphasizes Baudelaire's resistance to the indeterminacy of self, contrasting it with more radical contemporary experiments in fragmented subjectivity. Using Freudian theory, particularly the notions of fantasy and psychic deconstruction, the book highlights Baudelaire's complex interplay between rigid dichotomies and the liberating yet disruptive forces of self-scattering desire, offering a profound examination of the tensions that define both his work and the evolution of modern thought.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1977.

Beverly Allen

Andrea Zanzotto

$49.95

Andrea Zanzotto’s poetry is celebrated for its intellectual rigor and inventive style, establishing him as a distinctive voice in Italian and international literature. The Language of Beauty’s Apprentice introduces readers to Zanzotto’s works, particularly highlighting how his early poems lay the groundwork for his later, more complex pieces. Zanzotto’s early collections reveal a poetic journey rooted in self-exploration and the boundaries of language, a journey that later explodes with La Beltà in 1968. These early works serve not only as an entryway to Zanzotto’s literary evolution but also as a metaphorical tale on the possibilities of language and selfhood. Here, Zanzotto presents language as both a material and paradoxical force, a medium for self-expression that inherently limits yet also amplifies subjective experience. This duality, what might be termed “linguistic materialism,” becomes a central theme, marking Zanzotto’s critique of individual identity and communication as interwoven with communal and linguistic frameworks.

With La Beltà, Zanzotto propels this linguistic exploration forward, fusing political and social critiques with a richly layered poetic form. Drawing from Italian literary tradition and figures such as Leopardi, Zanzotto uses language to explore the intersections of personal and collective identities, symbolized through metaphors like snow, which represent both fleeting stasis and the potential for renewal. His 1969 poem “Gli sguardi i fatti e senhal,” inspired by the Apollo 2 moon landing, continues this trajectory, contrasting humanity's technological conquests with an ecological awareness embodied by the goddess Diana. Through these works, Zanzotto examines the tensions between beauty, language, and existential vulnerability in an era fraught with political turmoil and rapid technological advancement. His poetry ultimately stands as a profound meditation on the collective and individual implications of language, perception, and identity in the modern world.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1988.

Edited by Donald Wesling

Internal Resistances

$95.00

Internal Resistances: The Poetry of Edward Dorn offers a comprehensive analysis of Edward Dorn's work, examining his distinctive poetic voice and his critique of American society. This volume presents Dorn as a poet who, through his nomadic and marginal lifestyle, engages with and challenges the socio-political and cultural narratives of his time. Central to Dorn’s work is his ability to weave historical and social contexts into his poetry, using humor, irony, and moral inquiry to dissect issues like capitalism, racism, and the myths of the American West. The title metaphor, "Internal Resistances," encapsulates Dorn's dual identity as both a critic of societal norms and an artist deeply entrenched in those very contradictions.

The book spans Dorn’s career, covering major works such as Slinger, his magnum opus, alongside his shorter poems and essays. Contributors explore Dorn’s use of wit, song, and satire, illustrating his capacity to balance didacticism with poetic subtlety. Essays delve into his engagement with Native American themes, his satirical portrayal of capitalist figures, and his critique of institutional language and power. By framing Dorn as a modern Swiftian figure, the book highlights his refusal to conform to literary and cultural expectations, asserting his place as a significant, though often overlooked, voice in American poetry. This collection ultimately situates Dorn as a moral and innovative poet whose work challenges the boundaries of "postmodern" poetry, extending its reach into political and ethical discourse.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1985.

Richard L. Regosin

The Matter of My Book

$39.95

The Matter of My Book: Montaigne's Essais as the Book of the Self delves into the intricate relationship between Montaigne’s writing and his identity, exploring how the Essais serve as both a reflection of and a space for the construction of the self. This study positions Montaigne's work at the crossroads of life and literature, highlighting his unique preoccupation with the act of writing and its role in self-representation. Despite Montaigne's professed disdain for being labeled a "maker of books," his Essais reveal a profound engagement with language, self-portraiture, and the written word. The book becomes not merely a vehicle for thought but a consubstantial entity where the existential man and the literary persona merge.

The analysis acknowledges the paradoxical nature of Montaigne's Essais—a work that simultaneously invites readers to investigate the author's life while emphasizing the transformative, imaginative qualities of literature. By addressing themes like friendship, self-knowledge, and self-portraiture, the study reveals how the Essais elevate writing to a central act of being. The text itself serves as a dynamic interplay between commentary and creation, offering insights into Montaigne’s philosophy and stylistic innovations. Through a focused lens on Montaigne's metaphors, patterns, and reflections on his craft, this work underscores the Essais as a space where Montaigne articulates and reimagines his sense of self, making it an enduring cornerstone in the study of personal and literary identity.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1977.

Ben Edwin Perry

The Ancient Romances

$49.95

This title delves into the origins and development of ancient romance literature, expanding upon a series of lectures given by Ben Edwin Perry at the University of California in 1951. This scholarly work examines the romance genre's historical foundations and explores two main branches: the ideal romance of love and adventure and the "comic" romance, a form characterized by satire, mockery, and picaresque elements. In Part I, Perry addresses the "ideal romance," a popular form among the masses, centered on idealized narratives of love and adventure. He traces its evolution, emphasizing the genre's widespread appeal and the continuity in its demand throughout the ancient world. By addressing key literary-historical questions, Perry brings to light the genre's foundational aspects, situating it within broader cultural and social contexts.

Part II shifts focus to "comic romances," distinct for their humorous, satirical tone and their appeal to a more elite, educated audience. Perry explores works by writers like Petronius, Lucian, and Apuleius, analyzing how their unique perspectives and sophisticated storytelling approaches diverge from the more traditional ideal romances. Unlike ideal romances, comic romances are marked by individual authors’ intentions and personal motives, leading to distinctive interpretations and varied narrative styles. By distinguishing between these genres and examining their respective conventions, Perry offers insights into the interplay between narrative forms and cultural expectations, contributing a significant perspective on the evolution of ancient romance literature and its lasting influence on modern narrative structures.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1967.

William R. Siebenschuh

Form and Purpose in Boswell's Biographical Works

$39.95

Form and Purpose in Boswell's Biographical Works provides a detailed comparative analysis of James Boswell’s three major biographical works: The Life of Johnson, The Tour to the Hebrides, and the Account of Corsica. Through this examination, the book challenges the traditional view that Boswell’s biographical method developed in a simple, linear progression from one work to the next. It argues that each of these works represents a distinct artistic achievement, with Boswell consciously shaping and organizing his factual materials in ways that go beyond mere documentation. The book demonstrates that Boswell’s talent as a biographer was not limited to presenting facts, but involved a sophisticated process of interpretation and organization, especially evident in The Life of Johnson, where his portrayal of Johnson’s character is built around a cohesive narrative structure.

The study also highlights how Boswell’s approach to biography evolved depending on the subject and context of each work. In The Account of Corsica, Boswell uses a propagandistic approach to portray Paoli, employing different dramatic techniques than those he used in later works. In contrast, The Tour to the Hebrides presents a more static image of Johnson, focusing on his public persona in unusual and often humorous contexts, but without delving into his complex character as Boswell did in The Life of Johnson. By comparing these works, the book offers a fresh perspective on Boswell’s artistic abilities, demonstrating that he was a far more deliberate and interpretive biographer than previously acknowledged, capable of creating unified and compelling portraits of his subjects.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1972.

C.L. Barber and Richard P. Wheeler

The Whole Journey

$49.95

The Whole Journey: Shakespeare’s Power of Development by C. L. Barber and Richard P. Wheeler offers a sweeping reinterpretation of Shakespeare’s career as a continuous process of artistic and human growth. Conceived as Barber’s capstone study and completed posthumously by Wheeler from extensive drafts and notes, the book situates Shakespeare’s comedies, histories, tragedies, and romances within an arc of development shaped by temperament, historical pressures, and recurring crises of meaning. At its center lies a provocative claim: Shakespeare’s oeuvre has a discernible “human shape.” His plays are not just literary artifacts but responses to psychic needs, dramatizing both the risks of identification with “other identities” and the forms of mastery that drama makes possible. By placing tragedy at the pivot of this trajectory—where post-Reformation audiences confronted sacred longings in a secular theater—the book redefines the stakes of Shakespeare’s achievement, showing how his art disciplines magical expectation while offering communal rituals of recognition.

This landmark study makes a dual contribution: it recovers Shakespeare’s works as developmental rather than static, and it models a critical method attuned to history, form, and psyche. Close readings across the canon, from Richard III and Titus Andronicus through Hamlet, Othello, Lear, and Macbeth, to the late romances, reveal how Shakespeare continually reworked the tensions between “nothingness” and omnipotence, surrender and control, comedy and tragedy. The Sonnets serve as a diagnostic of Shakespeare’s temperament, illuminating the vulnerabilities and powers that his drama then transforms. Drawing on Reformation history and psychoanalytic awareness as resources for “paying attention” rather than totalizing theories, Barber and Wheeler create a framework for understanding Shakespeare’s genius as both historically situated and profoundly human. The Whole Journey will engage scholars, students, and general readers seeking to see Shakespeare’s art not as isolated masterpieces but as a lifelong endeavor to make and mend meaning in a changing world.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1986.

Edited with an Introduction by W. K. Wimsatt

Literary Criticism

$105.00

Literary Criticism: Idea and Act: The English Institute, 1939–1972: Selected Essays delves into the rich intellectual legacy of the English Institute, tracing its evolution from its inception in 1939 through its significant influence on American literary criticism over three decades. This anthology captures the diversity of critical approaches, scholarly debates, and cultural dialogues that shaped the study of literature in the 20th century. From discussions on editing and philological studies to groundbreaking interpretations of poetry, drama, and prose, the essays reflect a dynamic interplay between traditional scholarship and emergent critical theories. Key figures like Cleanth Brooks, Northrop Frye, and Geoffrey Hartman explore themes ranging from structuralism and archetypes to the aesthetics of modernity, demonstrating the Institute's role as a crucible for literary innovation.

The volume also serves as a historical record, detailing the transition from early gatherings focused on practical criticism to a broader engagement with interdisciplinary and theoretical perspectives. The essays selected highlight pivotal moments in literary scholarship, such as the rise of New Criticism, the reimagining of Romantic and modernist texts, and the enduring relevance of classical poetics. Through its thoughtful curation, the book offers both a panoramic view of literary criticism's development and a testament to the enduring impact of the English Institute in fostering critical thought and intellectual exchange.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1974.

R. W. Lid

Ford Madox Ford

$95.00

Ford Madox Ford: The Essence of His Art offers an insightful examination of the literary life and achievements of Ford Madox Ford, one of the most intriguing and complex figures in early 20th-century English literature. Known for his innovative narrative techniques, Ford is best remembered for his masterpieces, The Good Soldier and Parade's End. This study highlights Ford's distinctive style, focusing particularly on his use of the time-shift technique, which rearranges events in the narrator’s memory, and his ability to evoke psychological tension and social commentary through fragmented narrative structures. Ford's writing navigates the transition from Victorian to modern sensibilities, exploring themes of passion, duty, and the social upheavals of his time. By delving into his works, the study offers a deeper understanding of Ford's pivotal role in the development of the modern novel, blending the emotional complexity of his characters with a keen critique of society.

The book also provides a rich biographical context, detailing Ford's early life within the artistic circles of the Pre-Raphaelites and his literary struggles. It examines his relationships with literary giants like Joseph Conrad and Henry James, whose influence can be traced in Ford's own works. The author’s introspective approach to writing, his search for identity, and his exploration of personal and societal conflicts through fiction are key themes in this study. The narrative of Ford’s life is punctuated by moments of literary innovation and personal turmoil, capturing the essence of his journey as an artist, editor, and mentor. Through a combination of personal reminiscences and literary analysis, this book presents Ford as both a product of his time and a visionary who pushed the boundaries of narrative form to reflect the complexities of the human condition.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1964.

Ronald Levao

Renaissance Minds and Their Fictions

$95.00

Renaissance Minds and Their Fictions: Cusanus, Sidney, Shakespeare, by Ronald Levao, explores how three pivotal figures of the Renaissance—Nicholas of Cusa, Sir Philip Sidney, and William Shakespeare—grappled with the power and limits of human invention. Levao situates their works in a cultural moment when traditional frameworks of meaning were under strain from religious upheaval, scientific speculation, and expanding horizons of time and space. What emerges is a portrait of the Renaissance imagination as both audacious and unsettled, alive to the creative energies of fiction-making yet haunted by doubts about its legitimacy and consequences.

Moving from Cusanus’s speculative theology, with its bold emphasis on conjecture, to Sidney’s poetics of fiction in the Apology for Poetry, Astrophil and Stella, and the Arcadias, and finally to Shakespeare’s history plays and Hamlet, Levao traces a progression in the ways Renaissance writers confronted the instability of their world. Each case study highlights how invention could illuminate, console, and delight, but also mislead, deceive, and unsettle. Through detailed readings that interweave philosophy, criticism, and drama, Levao shows how Renaissance texts not only reflected their culture’s fissures but also enacted them, creating works that reinforce tradition even as they subvert it. Rich in literary and intellectual history, Renaissance Minds and Their Fictions demonstrates how three distinct voices converge in their exploration of human feigning—whether as fiction, conjecture, or theatrical artifice—and reveals the tensions that animate some of the era’s most brilliant achievements.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1985.

Warner Berthoff

A Literature Without Qualities

$39.95

A Literature Without Qualities: American Writing Since 1945 delves into the evolution of American literature from the post-World War II period to the mid-1970s, examining its transformation as both a product and reflection of a volatile and imaginative epoch. The book situates this era within the broader context of public consciousness, arguing that the period’s literary works are characterized by a provisional nature—tentative in their conclusions yet deeply entwined with the sociopolitical and cultural shifts of the time. The author refrains from defining definitive masterworks or crafting an exhaustive list of acclaimed titles, instead focusing on how this era reshaped the very enterprise of literary creation and critique. This period, marked by a shift in critical self-awareness and creative ambition, reveals American literature grappling with questions of identity, innovation, and its role within an unsettled cultural order.

By blending historical critique, personal reflection, and diagnostic projection, the book examines how the collective consciousness of post-war America influenced its literary production. It explores the interplay between individual creativity and broader cultural forces, emphasizing the importance of shared experiences and societal relationships in shaping literary innovation. From the idealistic aspirations of Emerson and Whitman to the more skeptical, politically charged voices of Mailer and Berryman, the book traces a lineage of American writers who viewed literature as a vehicle for societal introspection and transformation. Ultimately, it frames the vitality of literature as inseparable from the vitality of its cultural and social context, offering a nuanced understanding of how American writing navigated the complex realities of its time while laying the groundwork for future creative endeavors.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1979.

Charles Mauron, Translated by Archibald Henderson, Jr., and Will L. McLendon

Introduction to the Psychoanalysis of Mallarme

$95.00

Perspectives in Criticism: Introduction to the Psychoanalysis of Mallarmé offers a groundbreaking examination of Stéphane Mallarmé’s life and work through the lens of psychocriticism. This book, translated for the first time into English, brings a pioneering methodology to the study of literature, marrying the precision of psychoanalytic theory with the subtle art of literary interpretation. Mallarmé’s evocative and often enigmatic poetry serves as the canvas upon which the author explores the depths of the poet's unconscious, uncovering the networks of metaphor and personal myth that underpin his creative imagination. From the early loss of his mother and sister to the enduring influence of these traumas on his symbolic language, the book sheds light on Mallarmé’s artistic process while tracing the evolution of psychocriticism as a discipline.

Rich with textual analysis and biographical context, this study situates Mallarmé’s work within a broader psychoanalytic framework, offering insights into his "complexes" and the latent meanings of his poetry. Whether discussing the symbolic veil of Hérodiade, the interplay of life and death in Las de l’amer repos, or the intricate associations of maternal and sibling imagery, the author reveals how Mallarmé’s art was shaped by profound psychological forces. Ideal for literary scholars, psychologists, and enthusiasts of Mallarmé’s oeuvre, Perspectives in Criticism opens a fascinating window into the intersections of poetry, psyche, and cultural analysis, presenting a compelling argument for the continued relevance of psychoanalytic approaches to literary studies.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1963.

Introduction to the Psychoanalysis of Mallarme

Edited, with an Introduction, by Ralph Freedman

Virginia Woolf

$39.95

The renaissance of Virginia Woolf reflects a reassessment not only of Woolf as a writer but also of our social and political life as a whole. It points up differences between English and American readers, between older and younger critics, between men and women. Particularly striking in the revaluation is a tendency to approach Woolf as a soliloquist, a person, rather than as a detached and formal artist. In this collection, Ralph Freedman has brought together some of Woolf's most interesting commentators, whose varied concerns, traditional and modern, demonstrate the vitality and scope of Woolf criticism. Virginia Woolf: Revaluation and Continuity contains essays by Ralph Freedman, Harvena Richter, James Hafley, Avrom Fleishman, F. P. W. McDowell, Jane Marcus, Lucio Ruotolo, Maria DiBattista, Jean O. Love, Madeline Moore, James Naremore, and B. H. Fussell.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1980.

Paula Doe

A Warbler's Song in the Dusk

$39.95

A Warbler’s Song in the Dusk: The Life and Work of Ōtomo Yakamochi (718–785) by Paula Doe presents the first full-length English-language biography of one of Japan’s greatest early poets, weaving together history, translation, and literary analysis. As the last great compiler of the Man’yōshū, Japan’s earliest and most revered anthology, Yakamochi left behind hundreds of short poems that not only shaped the trajectory of Japanese literature but also preserve the rhythms of his inner life and the cultural milieu of the Nara court. Doe situates these works within the world of eighth-century aristocratic society, where poetry circulated among a small circle of friends, courtiers, and rivals, rich with allusions and conventions largely lost to modern readers. By combining Yakamochi’s extant poems—here translated directly from the authoritative Nihon koten bungaku taikei edition—with his career in politics, travel, and personal correspondence, the book opens a rare window into the relationship between life and art in early Japan.

Doe’s translations capture both the concision and layered suggestiveness of the tanka form while making them accessible to readers unfamiliar with classical Japanese. Preserving traditional epithets, ambiguities of meaning, and shifts in rhythm, she brings across the subtle ways Yakamochi and his circle expressed longing, rivalry, devotion, and reflection through verse. At the same time, her narrative restores the contexts—historical, social, and literary—that made these brief, 31-syllable poems central to court culture. A Warbler’s Song in the Dusk is thus more than a biography: it is an exploration of how poetry operated as a medium of communication, identity, and memory in Japan’s formative centuries. Essential for scholars of Japanese literature and history, this elegant and deeply researched book also offers general readers an entry point into the beauty and complexity of the Man’yōshū and the enduring resonance of one of its most important poets.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1982.

Robert N. Watson

The Rest Is Silence

$95.00

The Rest Is Silence: Death as Annihilation in the English Renaissance by Robert N. Watson explores how anxieties about death as utter annihilation—rather than passage to an afterlife—shaped English Renaissance culture, especially during the Jacobean era. Watson argues that the Reformation’s dismantling of rituals like purgatory, combined with scientific discovery, rising individualism, and schism within Christianity, eroded consolations about immortality and intensified fears of oblivion. This cultural unease surfaces in literature, where plays and poems simultaneously perform the social task of denial and expose its fragility. Shakespeare’s tragedies, revenge plays, and comedies probe competing promises of survival—through honor, progeny, or art—only to reveal their insufficiency. Likewise, the metaphysical lyrics of Donne and Herbert wrestle with mortality in forms that both test and shore up Christian doctrine.

Watson situates literary representations of death within a broader crisis of belief, where the rhetoric of sermons, funeral practices, and polemics betrays recurring worries about silence, darkness, and the dissolution of self. He challenges critical traditions that assume a uniformly Christian worldview, recovering evidence that annihilationist fears pervaded Renaissance thought even if rarely voiced directly. By combining psychoanalytic insight with cultural history, Watson portrays drama and lyric as stages on which English writers rehearsed strategies of denial, displacement, and consolation in the face of mortality. Ultimately, the book contends that the Jacobean confrontation with death illuminates not only the period’s religious and artistic ferment but also enduring human struggles with meaning, selfhood, and the void.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1994.

Wolfgang Lederer

The Kiss of the Snow Queen

$95.00

The Kiss of the Snow Queen: Hans Christian Andersen and Man’s Redemption by Woman explores the profound layers of meaning behind Andersen’s beloved tale, The Snow Queen. Framed as a children’s story, the narrative is revealed to be rich in allegory and adult themes, crafted with dual audiences in mind. Andersen himself hinted that his tales, while seemingly for children, carried deeper lessons intended for adults—truths that often transcended the author’s conscious understanding. This study unpacks the autobiographical elements woven into the story and the broader poetic truths Andersen sought to convey about love, redemption, and human relationships.

The book dives into the duality of Andersen’s storytelling, juxtaposing the magical elements that enchant children with the philosophical and spiritual insights aimed at engaging adult readers. It examines Andersen’s claim that every character and scenario reflects his own life, inviting readers to uncover how the tale mirrors universal struggles and aspirations. With its exploration of The Snow Queen as both a personal and archetypal narrative, this work positions Andersen as a master poet whose fairy tales bridge the gap between childlike wonder and profound wisdom, offering truths that resonate across generations.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1986.

Leopold Damrosch, Jr.

The Imaginative World of Alexander Pope

$49.95

The Imaginative World of Alexander Pope examines the complex and multilayered world created by one of the most significant poets of the 18th century. The book focuses on how Alexander Pope, while rooted in the ideals of the Augustan age, bridges the transition to modern poetic sensibilities. Central to this exploration is Pope's effort to reconcile the traditional symbolic orders of the Renaissance with the emerging uncertainties of modernity. By "stooping to truth," as Pope himself phrased it, he sought to reflect the external world with a sharp moral lens while grappling with the limitations of subjective perception and societal fragmentation. His works, including Essay on Man and the biting satires of his later career, reveal his struggle to balance the idealized order he aspired to uphold with the chaotic and evolving realities of his time.

This thematic study presents Pope as both an inheritor of classical traditions and an innovator navigating the birth of the modern age. Drawing extensively from Pope's contemporaries, letters, and cultural context, the book highlights the poet's nuanced position as both a critic and participant in the socio-political currents of 18th-century England. It also challenges traditional and reductive interpretations of his work, proposing that Pope's fragmented sense of order and his deeply personal connections to his era provide the foundation for his enduring relevance. In doing so, it offers a fresh perspective on Pope as a pivotal figure whose imaginative world continues to resonate, embodying the tensions and contradictions of his age with remarkable vitality.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1987.

Jing Wang

High Culture Fever

$49.95

High Culture Fever: Politics, Aesthetics, and Ideology in Deng’s China captures the vibrant and turbulent intellectual landscape of 1980s China, a decade where utopian visions and emergent crises coexisted in complex tension. This period witnessed the Chinese Communist Party’s ambitious pursuit of modernization through economic and political reform, creating a collaborative yet fraught relationship between the state and the cultural elite. Intellectuals, propelled by "methodology fever" and inspired by ideals of enlightenment, navigated the delicate balance of supporting and contesting the Party's modernization agenda. Key moments, such as the debates over "socialist alienation," the rise of "Culture Fever," and the controversies surrounding works like Heshang (Yellow River Elegy), reveal a landscape of ideological negotiation and cultural transformation. However, the euphoria of progress unraveled with the political and economic disillusionment of the late 1980s, culminating in the seismic events of the Tian’anmen Square crackdown, which shattered the utopian aspirations of the cultural elite.

This book examines the decade’s intricate interplay of modernity, cultural subjectivity, and intellectual ambition, as Chinese thinkers engaged in epoch-defining debates over Marxist humanism, modernism, and postmodernism. Through seven essays, it explores moments of ideological rupture, tracing how these disruptions reshaped cultural politics and the literary field in Deng's China. The author contextualizes these shifts within broader tensions between an elitist intellectual vision and the Party’s state-driven utopia, highlighting the inevitable collision of these projects in 1989. By juxtaposing the aspirations of the 1980s with the self-critical introspection of the 1990s, High Culture Fever provides a critical lens for understanding the enduring legacy of this transformative era in Chinese intellectual and cultural history.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1996.

Helmut Bonheim

Joyce's Benefictions

$95.00

Helmut Bonheim’s Joyce’s Benefictions offers a lucid, tightly argued tour of Joyce’s major works, reading rebellion and anti-authoritarian play as the motor of both style and theme. Moving from Dubliners and A Portrait to Ulysses and Finnegans Wake, Bonheim shows how Joyce’s “outlaw” procedures—parody, portmanteau, montage—are inseparable from his persistent fascination with the very institutions he resists. Chapters on Leopold Bloom’s humane but compromised paternity, the alphabetic and musical “os” motif in Ulysses, and the serial role-reversals that unsettle any fixed hierarchy frame Joyce’s art as a long experiment in fusing technique with a heterodox ethics. Part of the influential Perspectives in Criticism series, the book situates Joyce’s innovations within broader debates about authority, language, and the cyclical logics of history.

Equally attentive to close reading and big claims, Bonheim reconceives Finnegans Wake as a theater of competing sovereignties—fathers, kings, priests—perpetually toppled and reinstalled, with Earwicker’s fall and return emblematic of the work’s comic-epic design. A culminating chapter casts Joyce’s art as an “epic of anarchy,” balancing formal audacity with a surprisingly stable prose lucidity that keeps even the Wake’s densest passages tethered to intelligible rhythms and social comedy. For scholars and advanced students of modernism, Joyce’s Benefictions remains a compelling synthesis: a study that models how to read across oeuvre, medium, and myth to disclose the ethical pressure under Joyce’s verbal pyrotechnics.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1964.

Hermann Frankel

Ovid

$39.95

Ovid: A Poet Between Two Worlds is Hermann Fränkel’s masterful reappraisal of Rome’s most mercurial poet, presented as part of the Sather Classical Lectures. Long dismissed as a frivolous craftsman, Ovid here emerges as a writer whose artistry and contradictions mark the twilight of antiquity and the dawn of a new cultural world. Moving through the Amores, Heroides, Metamorphoses, and the exile poems, Fränkel demonstrates how Ovid combined rhetorical brilliance with startling innovations—probing identity, love, myth, and history in ways that resonate beyond the confines of Augustan Rome. By attending both to close readings and broader literary traditions, this book restores Ovid’s poetry to its full complexity, balancing entertainment with depth, charm with insight.

Fränkel situates Ovid’s career “between two worlds”—the last convulsions of the Roman Republic and the formative stirrings of a Christian sensibility. His analysis highlights the poet’s distinctive treatment of myth as a mirror of human experience, his frank explorations of erotic and emotional life, and his persistent negotiation between art and reality. Written with a clarity that invites students of literature and seasoned classicists alike, Ovid: A Poet Between Two Worlds not only rescues Ovid from centuries of critical complacency but also illuminates the enduring fascination of a poet whose playful verse concealed, and revealed, profound cultural transformations.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1945.

Shelia Delany

The Naked Text

$95.00

A sequel to her seminal book on Chaucer’s House of Fame, Sheila Delany’s elegant and innovative study of Chaucer’s Legend of Good Women explores what it meant to be a reader and a writer, and to be English and a courtier, in the late fourteenth century. The richness of late medieval art, philosophy, and history are powerfully brought to bear on one of Chaucer’s most controversial works. So too are the insights of modern critical theory—semiotics, historicism, and gender studies especially—making this a unique achievement in medieval and Chaucerian studies. Delany’s strikingly original readings of Chaucer’s Orientalism, his sexual wordplay, his theological attitudes, and his treatment of sex and gender have given us a Chaucer for our time.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1994.

Hans Meyerhoff

Time in Literature

$95.00

Time in Literature by Hans Meyerhoff explores how literature illuminates aspects of temporality that scientific analysis often excludes. Sparked by reflections during Hans Reichenbach’s seminars on the concept of time in physics and information theory, Meyerhoff recognized the distance between scientific constructions of time and the ways human beings actually experience it. Literature, he argues, has long been preoccupied with rendering the richness, ambiguity, and depth of lived temporality—qualities irrelevant to physics but central to selfhood, memory, and imagination. The study positions itself as a comparative inquiry: not a systematic treatise on physical time, nor an exercise in literary criticism, but rather a philosophical investigation of how time functions in literature, in human consciousness, and in relation to nature. Meyerhoff openly acknowledges the hybrid nature of his project, straddling science, literature, psychology, and philosophy, but insists such border-crossing is necessary to capture the full complexity of the problem.

Meyerhoff situates his work within a sparse field. While earlier studies, such as Jean Pouillon’s Temps et Roman and Georges Poulet’s Études sur le temps humain, examined literary or experiential time, they lacked the systematic philosophical scope he pursues. His book aims instead to develop a general interpretation of literature’s treatment of time as it intersects with the self and the natural world, drawing on examples from Proust, Wolfe, Fitzgerald, and Freud. Meyerhoff distinguishes his project from narrowly aesthetic analyses by emphasizing the broader philosophical implications of temporal representation: how narratives shape human consciousness, how myth and mysticism intersect with conceptions of time, and why modernity has foregrounded temporality as a central problem. He presents his study as exploratory and provisional, yet also as an original attempt to correlate the scientific, experiential, and literary dimensions of time in a unified framework, thereby expanding both philosophical discourse and literary understanding.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1955.

Bertrand H. Bronson

Johnson Agonistes and Other Essays

$95.00

Johnson Agonistes and Other Essays brings together Bertrand H. Bronson’s most influential meditations on Samuel Johnson and his circle, offering a master class in literary criticism and intellectual history. Opening with the title essay, Bronson presents Johnson as a man of turbulent imagination and fierce conservatism, a poet-philosopher whose combativeness was as central to his thought as his piety. Subsequent essays probe Boswell’s complex self-fashioning as Johnson’s biographer, re-evaluate Johnson’s ill-fated tragedy Irene, and situate him within a “double tradition” of radical iconoclast and authoritarian moralist. Across these essays, Bronson illuminates the paradoxes that made Johnson at once an enemy of metaphysical abstraction and a defender of hierarchy, a critic of poverty who nonetheless distrusted reform.

Written with stylistic verve and intellectual sympathy, this collection showcases Bronson’s ability to weave close textual analysis with sweeping judgments about character, society, and ideas. For students of eighteenth-century literature, Johnson’s prose and poetry, or the art of biography, Johnson Agonistes remains a touchstone, modeling how to read a figure whose contradictions were integral to his genius. At once literary portrait, critical reappraisal, and meditation on authority and imagination, the book continues to shape how readers encounter both Johnson and the interpretive traditions surrounding him.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1965.

Marston Anderson

The Limits of Realism

$39.95

Chinese intellectuals of the early twentieth century were attracted to realism primarily as a tool for social regeneration. Realism encouraged writers to adopt the stance of the independent cultural critic and drew into the compass of serious literature the disenfranchised "others" of Chinese society. As historical pressures forced new ideological commitments in the late twenties and thirties, however, writers grew suspicious both of the "individualism" implicit in the realist model and of the often superficial nature of the sympathies that their fiction evoked in the middle class. Anderson argues that realism must be defined negatively as a "discourse of limitations" and is of minimal utility in the Chinese search for political and cultural empowerment. He shows how hesitations about the realist model affect the fiction of four representative authors, Lu Xun, Ye Shaojun, Mao Dun, and Zhang Tianyi. He also considers the demise of critical realism in the face of a new collectivist understanding of Chinese reality.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1990.

Jeffrey Mehlman

Revolution and Repetition

$39.95

In Revolution and Repetition, Jeffrey Mehlman surveys the question of the relation between Karl Marx's writings and the institution of literature. He presents not an application of Marxian categories to literary texts, but a delineation of how the phenomenon of revolution in France is refracted through two divergent series of writings. The first comprises three works by Marx: The Class Struggles in France 1848-1850, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, and The Civil War in France. The second consists of two exemplary nineteenth-century novels on revolution: Victor Hugo's Quatrevingt-treize and Honoré de Balzac's Les Chouans.

Mehlman also explores the limits and opportunities of reading itself. Within a series of precise textual analyses, the reader will encounter Jean Laplanche's lectures on "anxiety" in Freud, Jacques Derrida's Glas, Georg Lukács’s study of Balzac’s “realism," and Michel Foucault's genealogy of prisons, Surveiller et punir. This volume is a working introduction to what may be termed French "post-structuralism."

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1977.

Eric Rothstein

Systems of Order and Inquiry in Later Eighteenth-Century Fiction

$39.95

Systems of Order and Inquiry in Later Eighteenth-Century Fiction by Eric Rothstein reconceives the “rules” of the novel not as prescriptive poetics but as interacting systems—of narrative order and epistemological inquiry—shared by five famously unlike works: Rasselas, Tristram Shandy, Humphry Clinker, Amelia, and Caleb Williams. Rejecting eighteenth-century critics’ elusive search for universal principles, Rothstein demonstrates how techniques such as analogy, modification, surrogacy, and incremental repetition generate coherence while sustaining variety, aligning formal pattern with the novels’ central concern: how one knows in a world governed by probability rather than certitude. The result is a historically grounded account in which Fielding, Johnson, Smollett, Sterne, and Godwin articulate cognate strategies for managing perspective, character, and causation—without collapsing their singular achievements into a single “ought.”

Rothstein’s method pairs close modeling of each novel’s internal logic with a crisp intellectual genealogy—from Locke and Hartley to Butler and Hume—showing how Enlightenment debates over “esprit de système,” empiricism, and analogy inform narrative design. By tracing how readerly inference and character judgment are orchestrated through patterned variation, the book offers critics a powerful vocabulary for explaining why these fictions feel both rigorously shaped and provocatively open. Scholars of eighteenth-century literature, narrative theory, and the history of ideas will find here a compelling framework that clarifies the kinship among diverse forms—sentimental, epistolary, picaresque, Gothic—while sharpening our sense of what the period’s novels can (and cannot) make knowable.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1975.

James D. Garrison

Dryden and the Tradition of Panegyric

$39.95

Dryden and the Tradition of Panegyric explores the intriguing relationship between two distinct literary forms: the epic and panegyric. The study begins with a question inspired by a remark made by John Dryden in his Account of Annus Mirabilis, where he suggests that the same images serve equally for the epic poesy, and for the historic and panegyric. This curious observation led the author to investigate the tradition of panegyric in the seventeenth century, which had been largely overlooked. By examining works that claimed to belong to this genre, the study uncovers a literary tradition that warrants serious consideration, particularly for those interested in Dryden's poetry. The book recovers this tradition in chapters 2 and 3, and explores its influence on Dryden’s work in chapters 4 and 5.

The study draws on numerous lesser-known works, and the author includes generous excerpts for analysis. All quotes from Dryden’s poetry are taken from The Poems of John Dryden (1958) by James Kinsley. Classical authors are referenced through The Loeb Classical Library, and neo-Latin authors are cited from specialized editions of the works of figures such as Desiderius Erasmus, Thomas More, and Walter Haddon. The book also offers translations of Latin panegyrics and critical commentary on them, with most translations prepared by Salle Ann Schlueter. This work sheds new light on Dryden's connection to the tradition of panegyric and offers readers a deeper understanding of its role in his poetry and its broader significance in literary history.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1975.

Edited by Kevin Sharpe and Steven N. Zwicker

Politics of Discourse

$39.95

The outstanding essays in this volume explore the interdependency of literature and history in seventeenth-century England. The relation of text to society is examined both as theory and as practice. The theoretical essays explore writing, reading, and the emergence of the aesthetic as historical phenomena of the seventeenth century. Other contributions examine cultural and political practices that fashioned the century: patronage, representations of authority, the socialization of party politics, and fables of power.

What is often separated as a distinct sphere of “literature” is returned to the contexts of other cultural and discursive practices. Using the shaping force of history on the imagination and the status of literature as historical evidence, the authors also claim the power of imaginative texts to mold as well as reflect history. Politics of Discourse not only increases our understanding of seventeenth-century England but also advances the study of subjects of interest to cultural critics of all historical periods: genre and canon, the interplay of institution and imagination, and the symbols of power.

Contributors:

Barbara K. Lewalski
Michael McKeon
Earl Miner
David Norbrook
Annabel Patterson
J. G. A. Pocock
Pocock
Mary Ann Radzinowicz
Kevin Sharpe
Blair Worden
Steven N. Zwicker

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1987.

J.B. Hainsworth

The Idea of Epic

$39.95

The Idea of Epic by J. B. Hainsworth is a sweeping exploration of one of literature’s most enduring and contested forms. Moving from Homer and Virgil to Lucan, Milton, and beyond, Hainsworth examines how the epic has been defined, reshaped, and reimagined across centuries. He demonstrates that epic is never merely long narrative verse but always a conscious engagement with cultural memory, heroism, and form. With clarity and breadth, he shows how ancient epics both shaped and were shaped by their societies, and how later poets—whether in antiquity or the Renaissance—revived and reconfigured the genre for new purposes.

This study situates the epic at the center of literary history, highlighting its ability to reflect collective ideals and probe the costs of heroism and empire. Hainsworth traces its transformations from oral heroic poetry through Hellenistic and Roman adaptations, into medieval and modern reworkings, emphasizing the epic’s simultaneous continuity and reinvention. By balancing close readings with wide cultural context, The Idea of Epic offers scholars and students alike a guide to how the genre has evolved, why it has mattered so profoundly, and what it continues to mean for literature’s most ambitious attempts to tell the story of humanity.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1991.

William G. Riggs

The Christian Poet in Paradise Lost

$39.95

The Christian Poet in Paradise Lost offers an illuminating exploration of Milton's personal and poetic presence in his epic masterpiece. The book examines how Milton’s interactions with his characters—Adam, Eve, Satan, the angels, and the Son—serve as a reflection of his spiritual journey and his understanding of what it means to be a Christian poet. By emphasizing Milton’s self-awareness and deliberate incorporation of his own life and struggles into the poem, the study reveals the deeply autobiographical nature of Paradise Lost. This perspective sheds light on the poet's engagement with Puritan ideals, his struggles with spiritual pride, and his dependence on divine inspiration to compose a work of monumental significance. The narrative examines how Milton reconciles his personal ambitions with his faith, creating a dynamic interplay between his poetic voice and the epic’s broader theological themes.

Through a detailed analysis of Milton's lyrical prologues and their connection to the epic narrative, the book uncovers the tension between Milton's confidence in his divine calling and the humility demanded by his faith. It situates Paradise Lost within the broader context of Baroque art and Puritan autobiography, emphasizing Milton's innovative approach to blending personal experience with universal truths. This work not only provides insights into Milton's conception of the Christian poet but also explores how his reflections on inspiration, morality, and human agency resonate with modern readers. By offering a fresh perspective on Milton's profound self-awareness, the book invites readers to engage deeply with the epic's intricate design and timeless relevance.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1972.

Richard L. Regosin

Montaigne's Unruly Brood

$39.95

Perhaps as old as writing itself, the metaphor of the book as child has depicted textuality as an only son conceived to represent its father uniformly and to assure the integrity of his name. Richard L. Regosin demonstrates how Montaigne's Essais both departs from and challenges this conventional figure of textuality. He argues that Montaigne's writing is best described as a corpus of siblings with multiple faces and competing voices, a hybrid textuality inclined both to truth and dissimulation, to faithfulness and betrayal, to form and deformation. And he analyzes how this unruly, mixed brood also discloses a sexuality and gender dynamic in the Essais that is more conflicted than the traditional metaphor of literary paternity allows.

Regosin challenges traditional critics by showing how the "logic" of a faithful filial text is disrupted and how the writing self displaces the author's desire for mastery and totalization. He approaches the Essais from diverse critical and theoretical perspectives that provide new ground for understanding both Montaigne's complex textuality and the obtrusive reading that it simultaneously invites and resists. His analysis is informed by poststructuralist criticism, by reception theory, and by gender and feminist studies, yet at the same time he treats the Essais as a child of sixteenth-century Humanism and late Renaissance France. Regosin also examines Montaigne's self-proclaimed taste for Ovid and the role played by the seminal texts of self-representation and aesthetic conception (Narcissus and Pygmalion) and the myth of sexual metamorphosis (Iphis).

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1966.

Julia Bader

Crystal Land

$95.00

Crystal Land: Artifice in Nabokov's English Novels is an in-depth exploration of Vladimir Nabokov's use of artistry and the theme of art across his English-language novels. The book investigates how Nabokov crafts intricate worlds where fiction mirrors the creative process itself. From playful word games and literary allusions to themes of obsession, identity, and mortality, Nabokov's works challenge readers to embrace the artificiality of art as a profound avenue for understanding consciousness and the human condition. This study emphasizes how his narratives blur the boundaries between reality and illusion, underscoring the transformative power of imagination.

Through detailed analyses of works like Lolita, Pale Fire, and Ada, the book uncovers the recurring motifs and complex structures that define Nabokov's literary style. Each novel is presented as a unique network of symbols, reflective of the artist's craft and consciousness. By examining the intersections of humor, self-reflection, and narrative manipulation, Crystal Land offers readers a deeper appreciation of Nabokov’s artful storytelling and its capacity to reshape perceptions of reality and creativity.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1972.

Serk-Bae Suh

Treacherous Translation

$34.95

This book examines the role of translation—the rendering of texts and ideas from one language to another, as both act and trope—in shaping attitudes toward nationalism and colonialism in Korean and Japanese intellectual discourse between the time of Japan’s annexation of Korea in 1910 and the passing of the colonial generation in the mid-1960s. Drawing on Korean and Japanese texts ranging from critical essays to short stories produced in the colonial and postcolonial periods, it analyzes the ways in which Japanese colonial and Korean nationalist discourse pivoted on such concepts as language, literature, and culture.

Corinna Wagner

Pathological Bodies

$39.95

This book explores the important connections between medicine and political culture that often have been overlooked. In response to the French revolution and British radicalism, political propagandists adopted a scientific vocabulary and medical images for their own purposes. New ideas about anatomy and pathology, sexuality and reproduction, cleanliness and contamination, and diet and drink migrated into politics in often startling ways, and to significant effect. These ideas were used to identify individuals as normal or pathological, and as “naturally” suitable or unsuitable for public life. This migration has had profound consequences for how we measure the bodies, practices and abilities of public figures and ourselves.

William R. Siebenschuh

Form and Purpose in Boswell's Biographical Works

$95.00

Form and Purpose in Boswell's Biographical Works provides a detailed comparative analysis of James Boswell’s three major biographical works: The Life of Johnson, The Tour to the Hebrides, and the Account of Corsica. Through this examination, the book challenges the traditional view that Boswell’s biographical method developed in a simple, linear progression from one work to the next. It argues that each of these works represents a distinct artistic achievement, with Boswell consciously shaping and organizing his factual materials in ways that go beyond mere documentation. The book demonstrates that Boswell’s talent as a biographer was not limited to presenting facts, but involved a sophisticated process of interpretation and organization, especially evident in The Life of Johnson, where his portrayal of Johnson’s character is built around a cohesive narrative structure.

The study also highlights how Boswell’s approach to biography evolved depending on the subject and context of each work. In The Account of Corsica, Boswell uses a propagandistic approach to portray Paoli, employing different dramatic techniques than those he used in later works. In contrast, The Tour to the Hebrides presents a more static image of Johnson, focusing on his public persona in unusual and often humorous contexts, but without delving into his complex character as Boswell did in The Life of Johnson. By comparing these works, the book offers a fresh perspective on Boswell’s artistic abilities, demonstrating that he was a far more deliberate and interpretive biographer than previously acknowledged, capable of creating unified and compelling portraits of his subjects.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1972.

Eric Rothstein

Systems of Order and Inquiry in Later Eighteenth-Century Fiction

$95.00

Systems of Order and Inquiry in Later Eighteenth-Century Fiction by Eric Rothstein reconceives the “rules” of the novel not as prescriptive poetics but as interacting systems—of narrative order and epistemological inquiry—shared by five famously unlike works: Rasselas, Tristram Shandy, Humphry Clinker, Amelia, and Caleb Williams. Rejecting eighteenth-century critics’ elusive search for universal principles, Rothstein demonstrates how techniques such as analogy, modification, surrogacy, and incremental repetition generate coherence while sustaining variety, aligning formal pattern with the novels’ central concern: how one knows in a world governed by probability rather than certitude. The result is a historically grounded account in which Fielding, Johnson, Smollett, Sterne, and Godwin articulate cognate strategies for managing perspective, character, and causation—without collapsing their singular achievements into a single “ought.”

Rothstein’s method pairs close modeling of each novel’s internal logic with a crisp intellectual genealogy—from Locke and Hartley to Butler and Hume—showing how Enlightenment debates over “esprit de système,” empiricism, and analogy inform narrative design. By tracing how readerly inference and character judgment are orchestrated through patterned variation, the book offers critics a powerful vocabulary for explaining why these fictions feel both rigorously shaped and provocatively open. Scholars of eighteenth-century literature, narrative theory, and the history of ideas will find here a compelling framework that clarifies the kinship among diverse forms—sentimental, epistolary, picaresque, Gothic—while sharpening our sense of what the period’s novels can (and cannot) make knowable.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1975.

Andrew Wright

Henry Fielding

$39.95

Henry Fielding: Mask and Feast by Andrew Wright offers a probing reevaluation of one of the eighteenth century’s most inventive literary figures. Tracing Fielding’s career as novelist, playwright, and satirist, Wright emphasizes the centrality of performance, festivity, and spectacle in shaping both Fielding’s artistic method and moral outlook. Through close readings of Joseph Andrews, Tom Jones, and Amelia, the book demonstrates how Fielding transformed fiction from moral cautionary tale into comic epic, creating works that balance philosophical inquiry with theatrical flourish. By highlighting the motifs of mask and feast, Wright shows how Fielding’s narratives orchestrate artifice and entertainment to illuminate the complexity of human motives and social life.

This study situates Fielding at the intersection of neoclassical criticism, Augustan wit, and the emerging English novel, arguing that his artistry is best understood not as moral sermonizing but as a celebratory transformation of experience into art. Henry Fielding: Mask and Feast redefines Fielding’s comic structures, from parody to epic comedy, while also attending to the darker tonal shifts of Amelia. Wright’s analysis makes clear that Fielding’s achievement lies in his ability to elevate comedy to the level of serious art, reconciling moral concern with literary play. Scholars of eighteenth-century literature, theater, and narrative theory will find here an indispensable exploration of how Fielding’s fictions continue to shape our understanding of the novel as both entertainment and cultural critique.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1965.

Phillip Damon

Modes of Analogy in Ancient and Medieval Verse

$39.95

Modes of Analogy in Ancient and Medieval Verse delves into the evolution of poetic conventions, focusing on how established tropes in ancient and medieval literature were reimagined to meet shifting intellectual and rhetorical demands. Drawing on R. P. Blackmur's idea of "translation" in literary history, the book examines the transformation of three key devices: the Homeric long simile, the personified landscapes of Roman pastoral, and the nature parallelism in medieval love lyrics. By exploring classic examples of these tropes and contrasting them with later iterations, the author illuminates how changes in cultural and conceptual frameworks reshaped the analogical functions of natural imagery in poetry.

Rather than providing a broad historical survey, the book adopts a focused approach, analyzing a select number of pivotal texts to uncover the nuanced stylistic shifts within these conventions. Inspired by Erich Auerbach’s method in Mimesis, the author treats these texts as "test cases" to trace the dynamic interplay between tradition and innovation in poetic expression. Through its critical exploration of these transformations, Modes of Analogy in Ancient and Medieval Verse offers a compelling study of how poets navigated the tension between inherited forms and evolving imaginative needs, enriching our understanding of literary continuity and change.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1961.

Frank Lentricchia

The Gaiety of Language

$95.00

This study explores the radical poetics of William Butler Yeats and Wallace Stevens, focusing on their contributions to modern literary theory and the unique role of imagination in their works. By tracing their poetic theories within the broader context of post-Romantic criticism, the essay critiques both the romantic idealism of the 19th century and the contextual theories of modern criticism. Yeats and Stevens challenge the notion of poetry as a direct avenue to transcendental truth, redefining the role of the imagination as an artistic force that operates within its own linguistic medium, unburdened by metaphysical or empirical agendas. Their poetics, often interpreted through contrasting lenses such as romantic organicism or the "visionary" archetypes championed by scholars like Northrop Frye, instead offer a framework where poems are self-contained entities. These works articulate the tension between the impoverished modern imagination and its capacity to find freedom and meaning within the act of creation itself.

Through close readings of Yeats's and Stevens's prose and poetry, this essay argues that their works embody a "poetics of will," wherein the imagination, though constrained by the limitations of a disenchanted modern world, still achieves a vital cultural role. Unlike their predecessors, who viewed poetry as a conduit to metaphysical revelation, Yeats and Stevens position the poem as an autonomous artifact that captures fleeting moments of freedom and beauty. For the poet, the creative act becomes an assertion of control over the chaos of inner and outer realities, while for the reader, the well-wrought poem offers a brief but profound engagement with the artist’s vision. In this way, Yeats and Stevens redefine the purpose of poetry, suggesting its essential contribution to human happiness and cultural resilience in an age marked by existential and aesthetic challenges.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1968.

Richard L. Regosin

The Matter of My Book

$95.00

The Matter of My Book: Montaigne's Essais as the Book of the Self delves into the intricate relationship between Montaigne’s writing and his identity, exploring how the Essais serve as both a reflection of and a space for the construction of the self. This study positions Montaigne's work at the crossroads of life and literature, highlighting his unique preoccupation with the act of writing and its role in self-representation. Despite Montaigne's professed disdain for being labeled a "maker of books," his Essais reveal a profound engagement with language, self-portraiture, and the written word. The book becomes not merely a vehicle for thought but a consubstantial entity where the existential man and the literary persona merge.

The analysis acknowledges the paradoxical nature of Montaigne's Essais—a work that simultaneously invites readers to investigate the author's life while emphasizing the transformative, imaginative qualities of literature. By addressing themes like friendship, self-knowledge, and self-portraiture, the study reveals how the Essais elevate writing to a central act of being. The text itself serves as a dynamic interplay between commentary and creation, offering insights into Montaigne’s philosophy and stylistic innovations. Through a focused lens on Montaigne's metaphors, patterns, and reflections on his craft, this work underscores the Essais as a space where Montaigne articulates and reimagines his sense of self, making it an enduring cornerstone in the study of personal and literary identity.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1977.

Robert N. Watson

The Rest Is Silence

$49.95

The Rest Is Silence: Death as Annihilation in the English Renaissance by Robert N. Watson explores how anxieties about death as utter annihilation—rather than passage to an afterlife—shaped English Renaissance culture, especially during the Jacobean era. Watson argues that the Reformation’s dismantling of rituals like purgatory, combined with scientific discovery, rising individualism, and schism within Christianity, eroded consolations about immortality and intensified fears of oblivion. This cultural unease surfaces in literature, where plays and poems simultaneously perform the social task of denial and expose its fragility. Shakespeare’s tragedies, revenge plays, and comedies probe competing promises of survival—through honor, progeny, or art—only to reveal their insufficiency. Likewise, the metaphysical lyrics of Donne and Herbert wrestle with mortality in forms that both test and shore up Christian doctrine.

Watson situates literary representations of death within a broader crisis of belief, where the rhetoric of sermons, funeral practices, and polemics betrays recurring worries about silence, darkness, and the dissolution of self. He challenges critical traditions that assume a uniformly Christian worldview, recovering evidence that annihilationist fears pervaded Renaissance thought even if rarely voiced directly. By combining psychoanalytic insight with cultural history, Watson portrays drama and lyric as stages on which English writers rehearsed strategies of denial, displacement, and consolation in the face of mortality. Ultimately, the book contends that the Jacobean confrontation with death illuminates not only the period’s religious and artistic ferment but also enduring human struggles with meaning, selfhood, and the void.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1994.

Gary B. Miles

Virgil's Georgics

$95.00

Virgil’s Georgics: A New Interpretation by Gary B. Miles challenges conventional readings of Virgil’s agricultural poem by shifting attention away from rustic idealization toward the poem’s political and philosophical concerns. Rather than treating the Georgics as a unified pastoral vision, Miles argues that Virgil deliberately explores multiple, often conflicting myths of rural life shaped by Hellenistic influence, civil war, and shifting Roman values. For some, the countryside symbolized the austere virtues of Rome’s founding elite; for others, it offered either luxurious retreat or a return to simplicity in contrast to the chaos of urban politics. In this light, Virgil’s choice of farming as subject was not eccentric but an apt medium for reflection on the nature of civilization and the challenges facing Augustus.

Miles interprets each book of the Georgics as elaborating a distinct perspective on rustic life, with recurrent motifs providing continuity and underscoring the realities to which all visions of civilization must respond. The poem’s culmination in the myth of Aristaeus, he contends, develops Virgil’s deepest statement about the human condition—one not reducible to any single description of farm life. Avoiding heavy engagement with scholarly debates, Miles presents his argument in a straightforward and accessible style, translating all Latin and Greek and minimizing footnotes, while situating his work within modern criticism in an introductory essay and bibliographic note. Balancing close reading with broad cultural context, Virgil’s Georgics: A New Interpretation offers both specialists and general readers a fresh perspective on one of Rome’s most intellectually complex poems.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1980.

Wolfgang Lederer

The Kiss of the Snow Queen

$39.95

The Kiss of the Snow Queen: Hans Christian Andersen and Man’s Redemption by Woman explores the profound layers of meaning behind Andersen’s beloved tale, The Snow Queen. Framed as a children’s story, the narrative is revealed to be rich in allegory and adult themes, crafted with dual audiences in mind. Andersen himself hinted that his tales, while seemingly for children, carried deeper lessons intended for adults—truths that often transcended the author’s conscious understanding. This study unpacks the autobiographical elements woven into the story and the broader poetic truths Andersen sought to convey about love, redemption, and human relationships.

The book dives into the duality of Andersen’s storytelling, juxtaposing the magical elements that enchant children with the philosophical and spiritual insights aimed at engaging adult readers. It examines Andersen’s claim that every character and scenario reflects his own life, inviting readers to uncover how the tale mirrors universal struggles and aspirations. With its exploration of The Snow Queen as both a personal and archetypal narrative, this work positions Andersen as a master poet whose fairy tales bridge the gap between childlike wonder and profound wisdom, offering truths that resonate across generations.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1986.

Hans-Peter Stahl

Propertius: Love and War

$95.00

Propertius: ‘Love’ and ‘War’: Individual and State Under Augustus presents a nuanced exploration of the poetry of Propertius, addressing the apparent contradictions within his work and their implications for understanding the interplay between personal identity and political allegiance in Augustan Rome. Rather than accepting a simplistic trajectory from youthful love elegies to mature, state-centered poetry, this study challenges traditional views by considering the poet's recurring conflicts as indicators of a lasting internal struggle. It questions whether Propertius' work should be seen as a straightforward reflection of personal development or as a literary construction that resists such linear interpretations.

This volume not only reevaluates Propertius' literary contributions but also critiques long-standing methodological approaches to his poetry, particularly the reliance on historicist interpretations that have sought to extract autobiographical truth from his elegies. By emphasizing the structural and thematic coherence of individual poems, the study highlights the poet’s ability to merge personal and political tensions within carefully crafted literary forms. With its deep engagement with textual criticism, linguistic analysis, and poetic structure, Propertius: ‘Love’ and ‘War’ offers fresh insight into the complexities of Roman elegy, making it essential reading for scholars of Latin poetry, Augustan literature, and the broader relationship between art and ideology in ancient Rome.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1985.

Edited by Donald Wesling

Internal Resistances

$39.95

Internal Resistances: The Poetry of Edward Dorn offers a comprehensive analysis of Edward Dorn's work, examining his distinctive poetic voice and his critique of American society. This volume presents Dorn as a poet who, through his nomadic and marginal lifestyle, engages with and challenges the socio-political and cultural narratives of his time. Central to Dorn’s work is his ability to weave historical and social contexts into his poetry, using humor, irony, and moral inquiry to dissect issues like capitalism, racism, and the myths of the American West. The title metaphor, "Internal Resistances," encapsulates Dorn's dual identity as both a critic of societal norms and an artist deeply entrenched in those very contradictions.

The book spans Dorn’s career, covering major works such as Slinger, his magnum opus, alongside his shorter poems and essays. Contributors explore Dorn’s use of wit, song, and satire, illustrating his capacity to balance didacticism with poetic subtlety. Essays delve into his engagement with Native American themes, his satirical portrayal of capitalist figures, and his critique of institutional language and power. By framing Dorn as a modern Swiftian figure, the book highlights his refusal to conform to literary and cultural expectations, asserting his place as a significant, though often overlooked, voice in American poetry. This collection ultimately situates Dorn as a moral and innovative poet whose work challenges the boundaries of "postmodern" poetry, extending its reach into political and ethical discourse.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1985.

Jeffrey Knapp

An Empire Nowhere

$49.95

What caused England's literary renaissance? One answer has been such unprecedented developments as the European discovery of America. Yet England in the sixteenth century was far from an expanding nation. Not only did the Tudors lose England's sole remaining possessions on the Continent and, thanks to the Reformation, grow spiritually divided from the Continent as well, but every one of their attempts to colonize the New World actually failed.

Jeffrey Knapp accounts for this strange combination of literary expansion and national isolation by showing how the English made a virtue of their increasing insularity. Ranging across a wide array of literary and extraliterary sources, Knapp argues that English poets rejected the worldly acquisitiveness of an empire like Spain's and took pride in England's material limitations as a sign of its spiritual strength. In the imaginary worlds of such fictions as Utopia, The Faerie Queene, and The Tempest, they sought a grander empire, founded on the "otherworldly" virtues of both England and poetry itself.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1992.

Selected and Edited with an Introduction by J. P. Sullivan and Peter Whigham

Epigrams of Martial Englished by Divers Hands

$105.00

Epigrams of Martial Englished by Divers Hands offers a comprehensive exploration of one of the most influential Roman poets, providing a selection of his sharp, satirical, and often provocative works. Martial, known for his witty and biting commentary on the social, political, and sexual norms of ancient Rome, is celebrated for his ability to encapsulate the essence of Roman life in short, concise epigrams. The book includes both original Latin texts and various English translations that showcase Martial's literary genius, offering readers a glimpse into the complexities of Roman society through humor, satire, and occasional obscenity. These epigrams reveal Martial's views on everything from the decadent lifestyles of the elite to the struggles of slaves, making his work a fascinating snapshot of the ancient world.

This edition of Epigrams of Martial Englished by Divers Hands also highlights the lasting influence of his work on English literature, particularly in the 16th and 17th centuries, when poets like Ben Jonson and Robert Herrick drew inspiration from his sharp wit and concise form. Featuring a rich collection of translations from various time periods, the book provides a unique insight into Martial's impact on poetic tradition, demonstrating how his themes of social criticism, flattery, and humor continue to resonate across generations. The thoughtful selection of epigrams and their accompanying translations offer both scholars and casual readers a deeper appreciation of Martial's wit and his significant place in the canon of classical literature.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1987.

Edited by Bonnie S. McDougall

Popular Chinese Literature and Performing Arts in the People's Republic of China, 1949-1979

$39.95

The essays in this volume constitute an exceptionally broad and inclusive account of Chinese literature and performing arts since 1949. Extending beyond fiction to poetry and drama, and covering song, opera, and film as well, these essays reveal a more lively and varied cultural life than that disclosed by studies confined to fiction and literary politics.

Rather than stopping at the assumption that art reflects Party or government policy, the essays uncover the traditional roots of popular literature and performing art by employing literary and artistic methods of analysis. While often lacking in appeal to Western audiences, these popular arts nonetheless have their own artistic validity and convey complex meanings to broadly based Chinese audiences.

The materials and analyses presented here have social as well as cultural relevance. Variety and change rather than monolithic uniformity have characterized post-1949 cultural bureaucracies, writers, performers, and audiences.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1984.

Popular Chinese Literature and Performing Arts in the People's Republic of China, 1949-1979

William Buck

Mahabharata

$19.95

Few works in world literature have inspired so vast an audience in nations with radically different languages and cultures as the Mahabharata. Written some 2,000 years ago and probably the longest Indian epic ever composed, it is a story of dynastic struggle that culminates in a fatal clash between two branches of a single ruling family. It is a moral and philosophical tale as well as a historical one. In his introduction, Sanskritist B. A. van Nooten notes that apart from William Buck’s rendition no other English version has been able to capture the blend of religion and martial spirit that pervades the original epic.

Andrew Wright

Henry Fielding

$95.00

Henry Fielding: Mask and Feast by Andrew Wright offers a probing reevaluation of one of the eighteenth century’s most inventive literary figures. Tracing Fielding’s career as novelist, playwright, and satirist, Wright emphasizes the centrality of performance, festivity, and spectacle in shaping both Fielding’s artistic method and moral outlook. Through close readings of Joseph Andrews, Tom Jones, and Amelia, the book demonstrates how Fielding transformed fiction from moral cautionary tale into comic epic, creating works that balance philosophical inquiry with theatrical flourish. By highlighting the motifs of mask and feast, Wright shows how Fielding’s narratives orchestrate artifice and entertainment to illuminate the complexity of human motives and social life.

This study situates Fielding at the intersection of neoclassical criticism, Augustan wit, and the emerging English novel, arguing that his artistry is best understood not as moral sermonizing but as a celebratory transformation of experience into art. Henry Fielding: Mask and Feast redefines Fielding’s comic structures, from parody to epic comedy, while also attending to the darker tonal shifts of Amelia. Wright’s analysis makes clear that Fielding’s achievement lies in his ability to elevate comedy to the level of serious art, reconciling moral concern with literary play. Scholars of eighteenth-century literature, theater, and narrative theory will find here an indispensable exploration of how Fielding’s fictions continue to shape our understanding of the novel as both entertainment and cultural critique.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1965.

Jeffrey Knapp

An Empire Nowhere

$95.00

What caused England's literary renaissance? One answer has been such unprecedented developments as the European discovery of America. Yet England in the sixteenth century was far from an expanding nation. Not only did the Tudors lose England's sole remaining possessions on the Continent and, thanks to the Reformation, grow spiritually divided from the Continent as well, but every one of their attempts to colonize the New World actually failed.

Jeffrey Knapp accounts for this strange combination of literary expansion and national isolation by showing how the English made a virtue of their increasing insularity. Ranging across a wide array of literary and extraliterary sources, Knapp argues that English poets rejected the worldly acquisitiveness of an empire like Spain's and took pride in England's material limitations as a sign of its spiritual strength. In the imaginary worlds of such fictions as Utopia, The Faerie Queene, and The Tempest, they sought a grander empire, founded on the "otherworldly" virtues of both England and poetry itself.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1992.

Roger Sale

Modern Heroism

$95.00

In these three studies, hinging on an unusual theme, Roger Sale examines three very different writers: an impassioned novelist, a wry and witty literary critic, and a donnish teller of apparently old-fashioned romances that have achieved a cult following today.

Many people assume that heroism is dead because the heroic styles of past ages no longer exist. Roger Sale contends that this assumption is accompanied by other beliefs that are part of what he calls the Myth of Lost Unity (a variation on the myth of the Golden Age): a sense that the world was once "whole" but in recent centuries has gradually disintegrated; a feeling that the human condition is now lost or alienated or drifting; and a conviction that the proper response to life is resignation, cynicism, or despair.

Sale reminds us that Lawrence, Empson, and Tolkien all came to believe in the major features of the Myth of Lost Unity. Each, however, replied to what seemed his—and our fate—and defied the implications of the myth, achieving a community as a badge of that defiance. Sale’s exploration of their separate merits reveals how their heroism made them alike. The strength of Modern Heroism lies in the formidable critical powers Sale exercises in his three variations on its theme.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1973.

James J. Clauss

The Best of the Argonauts

$39.95

This revelatory exploration of Book One of the Argonautica rescues Jason from his status as the ineffectual hero of Apollonius' epic poem. James J. Clauss argues that by posing the question, "Who is the best of the Argonauts?" Apollonius redefines the epic hero and creates, in Jason, a man more realistic and less awesome than his Homeric predecessors, one who is vulnerable, dependent on the help of others, even morally questionable, yet ultimately successful.

In bringing Apollonius' "curious and demanding poem" to life, Clauss illuminates two features of the poet's narrative style: his ubiquitous allusions to the poetry of others, especially Homer, and the carefully balanced structural organization of his episodes. The poet's subtextual interplay is explored, as is his propensity for underscoring the manipulation of the poetry of others through ring composition.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1993.

Jing Wang

High Culture Fever

$95.00

High Culture Fever: Politics, Aesthetics, and Ideology in Deng’s China captures the vibrant and turbulent intellectual landscape of 1980s China, a decade where utopian visions and emergent crises coexisted in complex tension. This period witnessed the Chinese Communist Party’s ambitious pursuit of modernization through economic and political reform, creating a collaborative yet fraught relationship between the state and the cultural elite. Intellectuals, propelled by "methodology fever" and inspired by ideals of enlightenment, navigated the delicate balance of supporting and contesting the Party's modernization agenda. Key moments, such as the debates over "socialist alienation," the rise of "Culture Fever," and the controversies surrounding works like Heshang (Yellow River Elegy), reveal a landscape of ideological negotiation and cultural transformation. However, the euphoria of progress unraveled with the political and economic disillusionment of the late 1980s, culminating in the seismic events of the Tian’anmen Square crackdown, which shattered the utopian aspirations of the cultural elite.

This book examines the decade’s intricate interplay of modernity, cultural subjectivity, and intellectual ambition, as Chinese thinkers engaged in epoch-defining debates over Marxist humanism, modernism, and postmodernism. Through seven essays, it explores moments of ideological rupture, tracing how these disruptions reshaped cultural politics and the literary field in Deng's China. The author contextualizes these shifts within broader tensions between an elitist intellectual vision and the Party’s state-driven utopia, highlighting the inevitable collision of these projects in 1989. By juxtaposing the aspirations of the 1980s with the self-critical introspection of the 1990s, High Culture Fever provides a critical lens for understanding the enduring legacy of this transformative era in Chinese intellectual and cultural history.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1996.

G. W. Bowersock

Fiction as History

$39.95

Using pagan fiction produced in Greek and Latin during the early Christian era, G. W. Bowersock investigates the complex relationship between "historical" and "fictional" truths. This relationship preoccupied writers of the second century, a time when apparent fictions about both past and present were proliferating at an astonishing rate and history was being invented all over again. With force and eloquence, Bowersock illuminates social attitudes of this period and persuasively argues that its fiction was influenced by the emerging Christian Gospel narratives.

Enthralling in its breadth and enhanced by two erudite appendices, this is a book that will be warmly welcomed by historians and interpreters of literature.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1994.

Joel Fineman

Shakespeare's Perjured Eye

$95.00

Fineman argues that in the sonnets Shakespeare developed an unprecedented poetic persona, one that subsequently became the governing model of all literary subjectivity.
This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1986.

Translated with an Introduction by J. H. Matthews

The Custom House of Desire

$49.95

The Custom-House of Desire: A Half-Century of Surrealist Stories is an intriguing anthology that explores the breadth and depth of surrealist storytelling over a fifty-year period. Through the lens of both imagination and desire, the collection reveals how surrealist writers challenge conventional narrative forms and literary genres to uncover the marvelous—a perspective on reality that transcends ordinary perception. This anthology presents stories written in French by authors from diverse national and cultural backgrounds, such as Fernando Arrabal, Joyce Mansour, and André Pieyre de Mandiargues, showcasing the movement’s global influence and thematic diversity. The selected works range from fully structured tales to experimental narratives, reflecting surrealism’s disdain for traditional literary conventions and its relentless pursuit of the ineffable.

The book invites readers to engage with surrealist writing on their own terms, offering a flexible arrangement of stories that encourage exploration based on curiosity, themes, or the appeal of individual authors. Themes such as humor, terror, eroticism, and the surrealist marvelous weave through the collection, each serving as an entry point into the movement’s radical reimagining of storytelling. Through these narratives, readers encounter the surrealist’s rejection of literary orthodoxy and aesthetic formalism in favor of a poetic vision driven by imagination and boundless desire. Whether exploring the disorienting humor of Marianne van Hirtum or the evocative eroticism of Markale, the anthology underscores surrealism’s enduring ambition: to redefine human experience and transform our understanding of reality.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1975.

Frank Lentricchia

The Gaiety of Language

$39.95

This study explores the radical poetics of William Butler Yeats and Wallace Stevens, focusing on their contributions to modern literary theory and the unique role of imagination in their works. By tracing their poetic theories within the broader context of post-Romantic criticism, the essay critiques both the romantic idealism of the 19th century and the contextual theories of modern criticism. Yeats and Stevens challenge the notion of poetry as a direct avenue to transcendental truth, redefining the role of the imagination as an artistic force that operates within its own linguistic medium, unburdened by metaphysical or empirical agendas. Their poetics, often interpreted through contrasting lenses such as romantic organicism or the "visionary" archetypes championed by scholars like Northrop Frye, instead offer a framework where poems are self-contained entities. These works articulate the tension between the impoverished modern imagination and its capacity to find freedom and meaning within the act of creation itself.

Through close readings of Yeats's and Stevens's prose and poetry, this essay argues that their works embody a "poetics of will," wherein the imagination, though constrained by the limitations of a disenchanted modern world, still achieves a vital cultural role. Unlike their predecessors, who viewed poetry as a conduit to metaphysical revelation, Yeats and Stevens position the poem as an autonomous artifact that captures fleeting moments of freedom and beauty. For the poet, the creative act becomes an assertion of control over the chaos of inner and outer realities, while for the reader, the well-wrought poem offers a brief but profound engagement with the artist’s vision. In this way, Yeats and Stevens redefine the purpose of poetry, suggesting its essential contribution to human happiness and cultural resilience in an age marked by existential and aesthetic challenges.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1968.

Gregory Nagy

Homer the Preclassic

$34.95

Homer the Preclassic considers the development of the Homeric poems-in particular the Iliad and Odyssey-during the time when they were still part of the oral tradition. Gregory Nagy traces the evolution of rival “Homers” and the different versions of Homeric poetry in this pretextual period, reconstructed over a time frame extending back from the sixth century BCE to the Bronze Age. Accurate in their linguistic detail and surprising in their implications, Nagy's insights conjure the Greeks' nostalgia for the imagined “epic space” of Troy and for the resonances and distortions this mythic past provided to the various Greek constituencies for whom the Homeric poems were so central and definitive.

Roger Sale

Modern Heroism

$39.95

In these three studies, hinging on an unusual theme, Roger Sale examines three very different writers: an impassioned novelist, a wry and witty literary critic, and a donnish teller of apparently old-fashioned romances that have achieved a cult following today.

Many people assume that heroism is dead because the heroic styles of past ages no longer exist. Roger Sale contends that this assumption is accompanied by other beliefs that are part of what he calls the Myth of Lost Unity (a variation on the myth of the Golden Age): a sense that the world was once "whole" but in recent centuries has gradually disintegrated; a feeling that the human condition is now lost or alienated or drifting; and a conviction that the proper response to life is resignation, cynicism, or despair.

Sale reminds us that Lawrence, Empson, and Tolkien all came to believe in the major features of the Myth of Lost Unity. Each, however, replied to what seemed his—and our fate—and defied the implications of the myth, achieving a community as a badge of that defiance. Sale’s exploration of their separate merits reveals how their heroism made them alike. The strength of Modern Heroism lies in the formidable critical powers Sale exercises in his three variations on its theme.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1973.

Richard Bridgman

Traveling in Mark Twain

$39.95

Suffering from wanderlust like many of his countrymen, Mark Twain had the good fortune to be paid to offer his observations in a series of travel letters and books. Curious and indefatigable, he used his incomparable skills to produce the vivid descriptions and humorous commentaries that made his books immensely popular. At the same time, travel writing afforded him the opportunity to engage in more personal explorations.

The looseness of the travel narrative enabled Twain to put down virtually whatever came to mind, with little concern about connections. At a time when established values were faltering, this tolerance suited him. His travel books are strings of incidents, anecdotes, descriptions, and the occasional odd detail, all arranged along a geographical line. At any given moment, Twain's anarchistic independence was free to assert itself.

The travel books are more than entertaining compilations. They represent serious, if offhand, explorations of Mark Twain's outer and inner worlds and help define him as part of the whole van of modernists moving into the twentieth century.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1987.

Robert Tracy

Trollope's Later Novels

$95.00

Trollope’s Later Novels by Robert Tracy challenges long-standing assumptions about Anthony Trollope’s place in Victorian literature, presenting him not as a genial but second-rate craftsman, but as a novelist of considerable technical sophistication and moral seriousness. Tracy argues that Trollope’s later works, especially those of the 1870s, reveal a writer who had reached full artistic maturity. Far from being clumsy or rambling, these novels demonstrate a unity of form and function in which literary style and structure embody a coherent moral theory about society, values, and human conduct.

Organized in two parts, the study first situates Trollope’s narrative techniques and social vision within the broader debates about form and order, then provides detailed readings of individual works, from Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite and The Way We Live Now to the late experimental fictions The Fixed Period and Mr. Scarborough’s Family. Tracy shows how Trollope’s multiple-plot structures, rhetorical choices, and social doctrines interweave to create fiction of remarkable subtlety, even when the author himself dismissed his art as mere craft. By reframing Trollope’s achievement, Trollope’s Later Novels invites readers and scholars alike to reconsider one of the most prolific Victorian writers as a central figure in the development of the English novel, whose best work exemplifies the unity of art and social vision that Wilde once described as the shared “canons” of both literature and society.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1978.

William Fitzgerald

Agonistic Poetry

$39.95

Pindar's poetry, although revered, remains one of the least read among great classical works, even within classical scholarship. His epinikion, or victory ode, is an unfamiliar genre, largely represented only by Pindar himself. Engaging with his work requires facing the challenges of his complex language, thought process, and narrative style. Despite such obstacles, Pindar has long been acknowledged as an essential poet, a symbol of inspiration and originality whose work has provided a model for poets seeking a break from conventional "classical" forms. Yet, Pindar's reputation as both a bold innovator and a flatterer of elite athletes has created a dual image of his character and work.

In this study, the focus shifts from Pindar as a historical figure to the lasting significance of his poetic mode, which extends to modern works. Pindar's work is frequently invoked in discussions of lyric poetry to illustrate that lyricism can be more than subjective or inward; his poetry demonstrates a communal voice, albeit one that arises not from a predefined community but through the act of poetic resistance. By modeling community as an agon, or contest, the study explores how poetry can reflect communal forces rather than fixed groups. This approach contrasts with perspectives that interpret lyric poetry through individualistic or self-contained struggles, as seen in the theories of Harold Bloom and certain deconstructive readings, positioning the poetic voice instead as a dynamic, communal force.

The analysis here extends beyond Pindar’s ancient Greek context to examine the Pindaric mode’s influence on the English ode and in the poetry of figures such as Hölderlin, as well as others like Claudel in French literature. While considering historical influences, this work does not aim to trace direct literary lineages; instead, it highlights shared problematics and poetic strategies. Through close readings, this study reframes the Pindaric tradition, not as a set of stylistic clichés but as a source of complex, communal expression within the broader field of lyric and odic poetry.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1987.

James D. Garrison

Dryden and the Tradition of Panegyric

$95.00

Dryden and the Tradition of Panegyric explores the intriguing relationship between two distinct literary forms: the epic and panegyric. The study begins with a question inspired by a remark made by John Dryden in his Account of Annus Mirabilis, where he suggests that the same images serve equally for the epic poesy, and for the historic and panegyric. This curious observation led the author to investigate the tradition of panegyric in the seventeenth century, which had been largely overlooked. By examining works that claimed to belong to this genre, the study uncovers a literary tradition that warrants serious consideration, particularly for those interested in Dryden's poetry. The book recovers this tradition in chapters 2 and 3, and explores its influence on Dryden’s work in chapters 4 and 5.

The study draws on numerous lesser-known works, and the author includes generous excerpts for analysis. All quotes from Dryden’s poetry are taken from The Poems of John Dryden (1958) by James Kinsley. Classical authors are referenced through The Loeb Classical Library, and neo-Latin authors are cited from specialized editions of the works of figures such as Desiderius Erasmus, Thomas More, and Walter Haddon. The book also offers translations of Latin panegyrics and critical commentary on them, with most translations prepared by Salle Ann Schlueter. This work sheds new light on Dryden's connection to the tradition of panegyric and offers readers a deeper understanding of its role in his poetry and its broader significance in literary history.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1975.

Shelia Delany

The Naked Text

$39.95

A sequel to her seminal book on Chaucer’s House of Fame, Sheila Delany’s elegant and innovative study of Chaucer’s Legend of Good Women explores what it meant to be a reader and a writer, and to be English and a courtier, in the late fourteenth century. The richness of late medieval art, philosophy, and history are powerfully brought to bear on one of Chaucer’s most controversial works. So too are the insights of modern critical theory—semiotics, historicism, and gender studies especially—making this a unique achievement in medieval and Chaucerian studies. Delany’s strikingly original readings of Chaucer’s Orientalism, his sexual wordplay, his theological attitudes, and his treatment of sex and gender have given us a Chaucer for our time.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1994.

John Hollander

The Figure of Echo

$39.95

In this essay on "what the imagination has made of the phenomenon of echo,” John Hollander examines aspects of the figure of echo in light of their significance for poetry. Looking at echo in its literal, acoustic sense, echo in myth, and echo as literary allusion, Hollander concludes with a study of the rhetorical status of the figure of echo and an examination of the ancient and newly interesting trope of metalepsis, or transumption, which it appears to embody.

Centered on ways in which Milton's poetry echoes, and is echoed by, other texts, The Figure of Echo also explores Spenser and other Renaissance writers; romantic poets such as Keats, Shelley, and Wordsworth; and modern poets including Hardy, Eliot, Stevens, Frost, Williams, and Hart Crane.

This book has implications for literary theory and holds great practical interest for students and teachers of American and English literature of all periods.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1981.

Helmut Müller-Sievers

The Cylinder

$55.00

The Cylinder investigates the surprising proliferation of cylindrical objects in the nineteenth century, such as steam engines, phonographs, panoramas, rotary printing presses, silos, safety locks, and many more. Examining this phenomenon through the lens of kinematics, the science of forcing motion, Helmut Müller-Sievers provides a new view of the history of mechanics and of the culture of the industrial revolution, including its literature, that focuses on the metaphysics and aesthetics of motion. Müller-Sievers explores how nineteenth-century prose falls in with the specific rhythm of cylindrical machinery, re-imagines the curvature of cylindrical spaces, and conjoins narrative progress and reflection in a single stylistic motion. Illuminating the intersection of engineering, culture, and literature, he argues for a concept of culture that includes an epoch’s relation to the motion of its machines.

Lee Patterson, editor

Literary Practice and Social Change in Britain, 1380-1530

$39.95

As a traditional site of historical criticism, medieval studies is particularly well placed to benefit from the recent reemergence of historicism in literary studies. But this new "critical historicism" differes from the traditional criticism in both method an interests, differences that are well illustrated by this collection. A concern with politics, a reliance on the materials of economic and social history, a conception of writing as a form of social practices, a focus upon the forces of change in medieval culture, and unwillingness to observe the usual distinction between literary and historical texts, and a historicization of their own activity--these characteristics make these essays a significant contribution to medieval studies. Moreover, both in conception and execution the essays reject the barrier that the humanist account of history has erected between a Middle Ages stigmatized as distant and other and a Renaissance consecrated as the beginning of the modern world. Thus they invite the attention of nonmedievalists, especially Renaissance specialists, who wish to test their assumptions about medieval literature against some of the best recent work in the field.

The authors consider a wide range of materials. Three of the essays explore Chaucer's career as a bureaucrat, a diplomat, and a poet. Other topics include Langland's self-constitution in Piers Plowman, the medieval production and modern reception of the mystery plays, Hoccleve's innovative strategies for offering political advice to his king, and the ideological and psychological interests that governed the idea of the city in sixteenth-century Scotland.

All scholars and studies of the Middle Ages, comparative literature, and literature and language programs generally will appreciate this ground-breaking collection.

Contributors:

Anne Middleton

Paul Strohm

Lee Patterson

David Wallace

Larry Scanlon

Theresa Coletti

Louise Fradenburg

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1990.

Literary Practice and Social Change in Britain, 1380-1530

Stephanie H. Jed

Wings for Our Courage

$36.95

On January 6, 1537, Lorenzino de’ Medici murdered Alessandro de’ Medici, the duke of Florence. This episode is significant in literature and drama, in Florentine history, and in the history of republican thought, because Lorenzino, a classical scholar, fashioned himself after Brutus as a republican tyrant-slayer. Wings for Our Courage offers an epistemological critique of this republican politics, its invisible oppressions, and its power by reorganizing the meaning of Lorenzino’s assassination around issues of gender, the body, and political subjectivity. Stephanie H. Jed brings into brilliant conversation figures including the Venetian nun and political theorist Archangela Tarabotti, the French feminist writer Hortense Allart, and others in a study that closely examines the material bases—manuscripts, letters, books, archives, and bodies—of writing as generators of social relations that organize and conserve knowledge in particular political arrangements. In her highly original study Jed reorganizes republicanism in history, providing a new theoretical framework for understanding the work of the scholar and the social structures of archives, libraries, and erudition in which she is inscribed.

Cristiana Sogno

Late Antique Letter Collections

$150.00

Bringing together an international team of historians, classicists, and scholars of religion, this volume provides the first comprehensive overview of the extant Greek and Latin letter collections of late antiquity (ca. 300–600 c.e.). Each chapter addresses a major collection of Greek or Latin literary letters, introducing the social and textual histories of each collection and examining its assembly, publication, and transmission. Contributions also reveal how collections operated as discrete literary genres, with their own conventions and self-presentational agendas. This book will fundamentally change how people both read these texts and use letters to reconstruct the social history of the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries.

Ben Edwin Perry

The Ancient Romances

$95.00

This title delves into the origins and development of ancient romance literature, expanding upon a series of lectures given by Ben Edwin Perry at the University of California in 1951. This scholarly work examines the romance genre's historical foundations and explores two main branches: the ideal romance of love and adventure and the "comic" romance, a form characterized by satire, mockery, and picaresque elements. In Part I, Perry addresses the "ideal romance," a popular form among the masses, centered on idealized narratives of love and adventure. He traces its evolution, emphasizing the genre's widespread appeal and the continuity in its demand throughout the ancient world. By addressing key literary-historical questions, Perry brings to light the genre's foundational aspects, situating it within broader cultural and social contexts.

Part II shifts focus to "comic romances," distinct for their humorous, satirical tone and their appeal to a more elite, educated audience. Perry explores works by writers like Petronius, Lucian, and Apuleius, analyzing how their unique perspectives and sophisticated storytelling approaches diverge from the more traditional ideal romances. Unlike ideal romances, comic romances are marked by individual authors’ intentions and personal motives, leading to distinctive interpretations and varied narrative styles. By distinguishing between these genres and examining their respective conventions, Perry offers insights into the interplay between narrative forms and cultural expectations, contributing a significant perspective on the evolution of ancient romance literature and its lasting influence on modern narrative structures.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1967.

W. Martin Bloomer

The School of Rome

$85.00

This fascinating cultural and intellectual history focuses on education as practiced by the imperial age Romans, looking at what they considered the value of education and its effect on children. W. Martin Bloomer details the processes, exercises, claims, and contexts of liberal education from the late first century b.c.e. to the third century c.e., the epoch of rhetorical education. He examines the adaptation of Greek institutions, methods, and texts by the Romans and traces the Romans’ own history of education. Bloomer argues that whereas Rome’s enduring educational legacy includes the seven liberal arts and a canon of school texts, its practice of competitive displays of reading, writing, and reciting were intended to instill in the young social as well as intellectual ideas.

William Fitzgerald

Agonistic Poetry

$95.00

Pindar's poetry, although revered, remains one of the least read among great classical works, even within classical scholarship. His epinikion, or victory ode, is an unfamiliar genre, largely represented only by Pindar himself. Engaging with his work requires facing the challenges of his complex language, thought process, and narrative style. Despite such obstacles, Pindar has long been acknowledged as an essential poet, a symbol of inspiration and originality whose work has provided a model for poets seeking a break from conventional "classical" forms. Yet, Pindar's reputation as both a bold innovator and a flatterer of elite athletes has created a dual image of his character and work.

In this study, the focus shifts from Pindar as a historical figure to the lasting significance of his poetic mode, which extends to modern works. Pindar's work is frequently invoked in discussions of lyric poetry to illustrate that lyricism can be more than subjective or inward; his poetry demonstrates a communal voice, albeit one that arises not from a predefined community but through the act of poetic resistance. By modeling community as an agon, or contest, the study explores how poetry can reflect communal forces rather than fixed groups. This approach contrasts with perspectives that interpret lyric poetry through individualistic or self-contained struggles, as seen in the theories of Harold Bloom and certain deconstructive readings, positioning the poetic voice instead as a dynamic, communal force.

The analysis here extends beyond Pindar’s ancient Greek context to examine the Pindaric mode’s influence on the English ode and in the poetry of figures such as Hölderlin, as well as others like Claudel in French literature. While considering historical influences, this work does not aim to trace direct literary lineages; instead, it highlights shared problematics and poetic strategies. Through close readings, this study reframes the Pindaric tradition, not as a set of stylistic clichés but as a source of complex, communal expression within the broader field of lyric and odic poetry.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1987.

Robert Tracy

Trollope's Later Novels

$49.95

Trollope’s Later Novels by Robert Tracy challenges long-standing assumptions about Anthony Trollope’s place in Victorian literature, presenting him not as a genial but second-rate craftsman, but as a novelist of considerable technical sophistication and moral seriousness. Tracy argues that Trollope’s later works, especially those of the 1870s, reveal a writer who had reached full artistic maturity. Far from being clumsy or rambling, these novels demonstrate a unity of form and function in which literary style and structure embody a coherent moral theory about society, values, and human conduct.

Organized in two parts, the study first situates Trollope’s narrative techniques and social vision within the broader debates about form and order, then provides detailed readings of individual works, from Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite and The Way We Live Now to the late experimental fictions The Fixed Period and Mr. Scarborough’s Family. Tracy shows how Trollope’s multiple-plot structures, rhetorical choices, and social doctrines interweave to create fiction of remarkable subtlety, even when the author himself dismissed his art as mere craft. By reframing Trollope’s achievement, Trollope’s Later Novels invites readers and scholars alike to reconsider one of the most prolific Victorian writers as a central figure in the development of the English novel, whose best work exemplifies the unity of art and social vision that Wilde once described as the shared “canons” of both literature and society.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1978.

Ruth Barraclough

Factory Girl Literature

$36.95

As millions of women and girls left country towns to generate Korea’s manufacturing boom, the factory girl emerged as an archetypal figure in twentieth-century popular culture. This book explores the factory girl in Korean literature from the 1920s to the 1990s, showing the complex ways in which she has embodied the sexual and class violence of industrial life.

Adam Barrows

The Cosmic Time of Empire

$42.95

Combining original historical research with literary analysis, Adam Barrows takes a provocative look at the creation of world standard time in 1884 and rethinks the significance of this remarkable moment in modernism for both the processes of imperialism and for modern literature. As representatives from twenty-four nations argued over adopting the Prime Meridian, and thereby measuring time in relation to Greenwich, England, writers began experimenting with new ways of representing human temporality. Barrows finds this experimentation in works as varied as Victorian adventure novels, high modernist texts, and South Asian novels—including the work of James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, H. Rider Haggard, Bram Stoker, Rudyard Kipling, and Joseph Conrad. Demonstrating the investment of modernist writing in the problems of geopolitics and in the public discourse of time, Barrows argues that it is possible, and productive, to rethink the politics of modernism through the politics of time.

Richard L. Regosin

Montaigne's Unruly Brood

$95.00

Perhaps as old as writing itself, the metaphor of the book as child has depicted textuality as an only son conceived to represent its father uniformly and to assure the integrity of his name. Richard L. Regosin demonstrates how Montaigne's Essais both departs from and challenges this conventional figure of textuality. He argues that Montaigne's writing is best described as a corpus of siblings with multiple faces and competing voices, a hybrid textuality inclined both to truth and dissimulation, to faithfulness and betrayal, to form and deformation. And he analyzes how this unruly, mixed brood also discloses a sexuality and gender dynamic in the Essais that is more conflicted than the traditional metaphor of literary paternity allows.

Regosin challenges traditional critics by showing how the "logic" of a faithful filial text is disrupted and how the writing self displaces the author's desire for mastery and totalization. He approaches the Essais from diverse critical and theoretical perspectives that provide new ground for understanding both Montaigne's complex textuality and the obtrusive reading that it simultaneously invites and resists. His analysis is informed by poststructuralist criticism, by reception theory, and by gender and feminist studies, yet at the same time he treats the Essais as a child of sixteenth-century Humanism and late Renaissance France. Regosin also examines Montaigne's self-proclaimed taste for Ovid and the role played by the seminal texts of self-representation and aesthetic conception (Narcissus and Pygmalion) and the myth of sexual metamorphosis (Iphis).

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1966.

Jonathan Crewe

Trials of Authorship

$39.95

The English Renaissance has been the focus of intense interpretive activity. It has been a scene of trial for the critical methodologies of deconstruction, feminism, new historicism, psychoanalytic poststructuralism, and cultural studies. Trials of Authorship extends and challenges this theoretically informed criticism. Jonathan Crewe argues that the commitment to innovation, transgression, and radical change has increasingly obscured some powerfully resistant elements both in Renaissance culture and in these critical discourses themselves. He calls for a recognition of defensive, perverse, and self-limiting trends in Renaissance writing, and also of the conservative investment by critics in the Renaissance as a cultural epoch.

Crewe focuses on the relatively stable poetic and cultural forms operative in the Renaissance. He argues that these established forms, which shape poetic composition, social interaction, and individual identity, are subject to only limited reconstruction by English authors in the sixteenth century. They facilitate and limit literary and social expression and result in more sharply conflicted literary production than current critics have been willing to acknowledge. Moreover, Crewe argues that while this literary production is dominantly masculinist, it nevertheless reveals the stresses of negotiating complex structures of class and gender, history and culture. The literary results are accordingly varied and do not lend themselves to uniform interpretation.

Trials of Authorship presents a consecutive reading of English Renaissance authors from Wyatt to Shakespeare and redraws the existing picture of the English Renaissance in the sixteenth century. It does so by concentrating on authors whose canonical status is somewhat precarious, namely the poets Wyatt, Surrey, and Gascoigne, and the “non-literary” authors of two Tudor prose biographies. The book makes a case for the continuing significance of all the texts in question, while its emphasis on them also constitutes an intentional shift away from the Elizabethan period towards that of Henry VIII.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1990.

Shaden M. Tageldin

Disarming Words

$44.95

In a book that radically challenges conventional understandings of the dynamics of cultural imperialism, Shaden M. Tageldin unravels the complex relationship between translation and seduction in the colonial context. She examines the afterlives of two occupations of Egypt—by the French in 1798 and by the British in 1882—in a rich comparative analysis of acts, fictions, and theories that translated the European into the Egyptian, the Arab, or the Muslim. Tageldin finds that the encounter with European Orientalism often invited colonized Egyptians to imagine themselves “equal” to or even “masters” of their colonizers, and thus, paradoxically, to translate themselves toward—virtually into—the European. Moving beyond the domination/resistance binary that continues to govern understandings of colonial history, Tageldin redefines cultural imperialism as a politics of translational seduction, a politics that lures the colonized to seek power through empire rather than against it, thereby repressing its inherent inequalities. She considers, among others, the interplays of Napoleon and Hasan al-'Attar; Rifa'a al-Tahtawi, Silvestre de Sacy, and Joseph Agoub; Cromer, 'Ali Mubarak, Muhammad al-Siba'i, and Thomas Carlyle; Ibrahim 'Abd al-Qadir al-Mazini, Muhammad Husayn Haykal, and Ahmad Hasan al-Zayyat; and Salama Musa, G. Elliot Smith, Naguib Mahfouz, and Lawrence Durrell. In conversation with new work on translation, comparative literature, imperialism, and nationalism, Tageldin engages postcolonial and poststructuralist theorists from Frantz Fanon, Edward Said, and Gayatri Spivak to Jean Baudrillard, Walter Benjamin, Emile Benveniste, and Jacques Derrida.

Laurence A. Schneider

A Madman of Chu

$95.00

A Madman of Ch’u: The Chinese Myth of Loyalty and Dissent offers a compelling exploration of the enduring legacy of Ch’ü Yuan, an ancient poet and statesman whose life symbolizes loyalty, dissent, and the complex interplay between personal conviction and public duty. Through a detailed analysis of classical texts, folk traditions, and modern reinterpretations, the book traces the evolution of Ch’ü Yuan’s mythology from the Warring States period to the 20th century. His seminal poem, Li Sao, serves as the foundation of China's lyrical tradition and embodies his passionate ideals and moral struggles. Ch’ü Yuan’s tragic story—marked by political exile, unyielding integrity, and ultimate self-sacrifice—provides a lens to examine broader cultural themes such as the tension between individuality and collective responsibility, and the role of art as a vehicle for political dissent.

The study also investigates how the Ch’ü Yuan lore has been reimagined to address evolving societal needs, from Confucian ideals of loyalty to revolutionary ideologies in modern China. By examining themes of time, space, and madness, the book highlights his transformation from a southern cultural hero into a modern symbol of radical reform and intellectual independence. This work offers valuable insights into how mythology shapes national identity and cultural continuity, making it an essential resource for scholars of Chinese literature, history, and political thought.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1980.

James J. Clauss

The Best of the Argonauts

$95.00

This revelatory exploration of Book One of the Argonautica rescues Jason from his status as the ineffectual hero of Apollonius' epic poem. James J. Clauss argues that by posing the question, "Who is the best of the Argonauts?" Apollonius redefines the epic hero and creates, in Jason, a man more realistic and less awesome than his Homeric predecessors, one who is vulnerable, dependent on the help of others, even morally questionable, yet ultimately successful.

In bringing Apollonius' "curious and demanding poem" to life, Clauss illuminates two features of the poet's narrative style: his ubiquitous allusions to the poetry of others, especially Homer, and the carefully balanced structural organization of his episodes. The poet's subtextual interplay is explored, as is his propensity for underscoring the manipulation of the poetry of others through ring composition.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1993.

Robert M. Durling and Ronald L. Martinez

Time and the Crystal

$49.95

The Rime petrose, Dante's powerful lyrics about a woman as beautiful and as hard as a precious stone, are generally acknowledged to be an important moment in his stylistic development. In this full-length investigation of the poetics of the petrose and of their relation to TheDivine Comedy, Robert M. Durling and Ronald L. Martinez uncover new material, especially from medieval science (astrology and mineralogy), philosophy, and theology. The authors argue that the Rime petrose represent a major turning point in Dante's conception of a "microcosmic poetics" that became the fundamental mode of the Commedia. They demonstrate how Dante here attempts his first full account of his relation to the universe as a whole.

This work offers many insights into the intrinsic significance of these remarkable poems and their place in Dante's development. Especially far-reaching are the implications for the interpretation of TheDivine Comedy.Time and the Crystal will interest not only students of Dante but also intellectual historians, historians of science, students of poetics and poetic theory, and all those interested in medieval literature.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand

Jack P. Rawlins

Thackeray's Novels

$39.95

Jack P. Rawlins's study explores one of the great problems of mid-Victorian literature: the explanation and justification of William Makepeace Thackeray’s narrative style and structure. Rawlins finds that Thackeray in his novels of English society uses an exaggeratedly conventional plot structure as a means to comment on the condition of the novel in England. The frustration and fury that have traditionally been the response of the feeling reader to the excesses of Thackeray’s narrator are the result of a basic aesthetic conflict of which Thackeray wants to make us inescapably aware—a conflict between the dramatic action, which demands a commitment from us, and a narrator who feels that the commitment has been thoughtlessly made and who seeks to turn our attention to the didactic uses of the novel, to the lie of the realistic, and to other aesthetic and moral issues.

Treating The Newcomers, Vanity Fair, The Virginians, and Philip in detail and the other works in the canon more briefly, Rawlins locates Thackeray directly astride the most serious aesthetic problem of his age: the status of fiction and its proper employment.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1974.