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"This book looks at the transnational circulation of both people and plants as a feature of Victorian speculative fiction"--

English fiction --- Plants in literature. --- Nature in literature. --- History and criticism. --- Nature in poetry --- Plants in literature --- Nature in literature

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Female genital excision, or the ritual of cutting the external genitals of girls and women, is undoubtedly one of the most heavily and widely debated cultural traditions of our time. By looking at how writers of African descent have presented the practice in their literary work, Elisabeth Bekers shows how the debate on female genital excision evolved over the last four decades of the twentieth century, in response to changing attitudes about ethnicity, nationalism, colonialism, feminism, and human rights. Rising Anthills (the title refers to a Dogon myth) analyzes works in English, French, and Arabic by African and African American writers, both women and men, from different parts of the African continent and the diaspora. Attending closely to the nuances of language and the complexities of the issue, Bekers explores lesser-known writers side by side with such recognizable names as Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Flora Nwapa, Nawal El Saadawi, Ahmadou Kourouma, Calixthe Beyala, Alice Walker, and Gloria Naylor. Following their literary discussions of female genital excision, she discerns a gradual evolution--from the 1960s, when writers mindful of its communal significance carefully "wrote around" the physical operation, through the 1970s and 1980s, when they began to speak out against the practice and their societies' gender politics, to the late 1990s, when they situated their denunciations of female genital excision in a much broader, international context of women's oppression and the struggle for women's rights.

Female circumcision in literature. --- Women in literature. --- Woman (Christian theology) in literature --- Women in drama --- Women in poetry --- Female circumcision in literature --- Female genital mutilation in literature.

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Drawing upon the English literary tradition for new perspectives and paradigms, this collection presents a broad range of theoretical and historical approaches to ecocriticism. The first section of the volume offers different theoretical frameworks for ecocritical work, encompassing a range of socio-political, post-modern and multi-disciplinary approaches. In the second section, contributors explore the ways in which ecocriticism allows us to re-think literary history

Wilderness areas in literature --- Outdoor life in literature --- Landscapes in literature --- Ecology in literature --- Ecocriticism --- Environmentalism --- Forests in literature --- English literature --- Nature in literature --- Conservation of natural resources in literature --- Environmental protection in literature --- Philosophy of nature in literature --- Forests and forestry in literature --- Environmental movement --- Social movements --- Anti-environmentalism --- Sustainable living --- Ecological literary criticism --- Environmental literary criticism --- Criticism --- History and criticism --- Greenwashing

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Pierre Loti and the Theatricality of Desire offers an original analysis of patterns of unconscious desire observable in the life and work of the French orientalist writer Pierre Loti. It aims to reconcile attitudes and conduct that have been regarded as contradictory and not amenable to analysis by locating the unconscious urges that motivate them. It looks at the ambiguous feelings Loti expresses towards his mother, the conflicting desires inherent in his bisexuality, and his deeply ambiguous sense of a cultural identity as expressed through his cross-cultural transvestism. The political implications of this reappraisal are also considered, offering a potential reassessment of the apparently exploitative nature of much of Loti's writing. This new reading in terms of the unconscious not only serves as a way of understanding inconsistencies, but also suggests how such new interpretations can offer an alternative way of viewing the hierarchies of power his work portrays on both a sexual and political level. This volume is consequently of interest to those interested in gender studies and sexual politics, and offers a way of appreciating writing that might otherwise appear dated and embarrassingly sexist and colonialist in content to twenty-first century readers.

Desire in literature --- Women in literature --- Sex in literature --- Exoticism in literature --- Loti, Pierre, --- Criticism and interpretation --- Loti, Pierre --- Desire in literature. --- Exoticism in literature. --- Sex in literature. --- Women in literature. --- Woman (Christian theology) in literature --- Women in drama --- Women in poetry --- Viaud, Julien --- Criticism and interpretation. --- Loti, Pierre, - 1850-1923 - Criticism and interpretation --- Loti, Pierre, - 1850-1923

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This book challenges the focus on pictoriality as central constituent of visual culture from the perspective of literary studies, which in the wake of an ‘intermedial turn’ so far focused on the ways texts relate to pictures and visual media either in praesentia (e.g. word and image studies) or in absentia (e.g. ekphrasis). Instead, it emphasizes literature’s participation in visual culture at large and focuses on three areas of investigation: (1) the depiction of, for instance, visual perceptions in the literary mode of description, which is paramount to formatting the mental aspect of visual culture; (2) the readerly practice of visualising situations and events of the fictional world, which mediates between those mentefacts and techniques of writing; (3) textual visibilities which are grounded in materiality. The volume explores these three areas from a systematically integrated perspective and the essays include in-depth treatments of seminal examples taken from Western literatures (primarily English and German, but also French and American literature) from early modern times to the present. This book’s aim is to work out literature’s active role in shaping visual culture, thus demonstrating its relevance for “image studies”.

Culture in literature --- E-books --- Culture in literature. --- Art and literature --- Literature