This Companion provides an authoritative introduction to the historical, social and stylistic complexities of modern Irish culture. Readers will be introduced to Irish culture in its widest sense and helped to find their way through the cultural and......

The emergence of EU Private Law as an independent legal discipline is one of the most significant developments in European legal scholarship in recent times. In this Companion, leading scholars provide a critical introduction to the subject\"s key......

In the Victorian period, the British novel reached a wide readership and played a major role in the shaping of national and individual identity. As we come to understand the ways the novel contributed to public opinion on religion, gender, sexuality......

David Hare is one of the most important playwrights to have emerged in the UK in the last forty years. This volume examines his stage plays, television plays and cinematic films, and is the first book of its kind to offer such comprehensive and up-to-date critical treatment....

The Cambridge Companion to Chaucer is an extensively revised version of the first edition, which has become a classic in the field. This new volume responds to the success of the first edition and to recent debates in Chaucer Studies....

Medieval French literature encompasses 450 years of literary output in Old and Middle French, mostly produced in Northern France and England. These texts, including courtly lyrics, prose and verse romances, dits amoureux and plays, proved hugely influential for other European literary traditions in the medieval period and beyond....

Popular commercial fiction emerged in the nineteenth century, with serialized novels and sensational penny dreadfuls. Today it remains a multi-million dollar industry giving pleasure to many, but it is also a field of growing interest for scholars and students of literature....

Fantasy is a creation of the Enlightenment, and the recognition that excitement and wonder can be found in imagining impossible things. From the ghost stories of the Gothic to the zombies and vampires of twenty-first-century popular literature, from Mrs Radcliffe to Ms Rowling, the fantastic has been popular with readers....

A lively and comprehensive account of the whole tradition of European fiction for students and teachers of comparative literature, this volume covers twenty-five of the most significant and influential novelists in Europe from Cervantes to Kundera....

This Companion provides a unique introduction and guide to the works and life of one of the key figures in English literary history....

This book introduces in a lively and succinct way the major writers, literary movements, styles and genres that, at the beginning of a new century, are seen as constituting the field of Australian literature....

Scholars, amateur historians and actors have shaped theatre history in different ways at different times and in different places. This Companion offers students and general readers a series of accessible and engaging essays on the key aspects of studying and writing theatre history....

Shakespeare\'s history plays have been performed more in recent years than ever before, in Britain, North America, and in Europe. This 2002 volume provides an accessible, wide-ranging and informed introduction to Shakespeare\'s history and Roman plays....

The extraordinary works of the three sisters Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte have entranced and challenged scholars, students, and general readers for the past 150 years....

The most celebrated American novelist of the past half-century, an indispensable figure of postmodernism worldwide, Thomas Pynchon notoriously challenges his readers. This Companion provides tools for meeting that challenge....