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Cambridge Companions are lively, accessible introductions to major writers, artists, philosophers, topics and periods. All are collections of specially commissioned essays, shaped and introduced to appeal to student readers. Together the chapters add up to a systematic critical account of, for example Plato, Luther, Jane Austen, Tom Stoppard or Stravinsky, the French Novel or Jewish American Literature, and each book is supported by reference features such as a chronology and guide to further reading.Companions have colonised several fields within Humanities. The first two titles - Companions to Shakespeare and to Chaucer - were published in 1986. They were commissioned to meet a demand from students who wanted reasonably priced critical books that offered a variety of viewpoints rather than a single, idiosyncratic voice. From those beginnings we now have over 130 titles in Literature, over 60 in Philosophy and plenty more on musical, classical, religious and artistic topics. We have moved beyond single figures to offer Companions to literary and artistic genres and periods, musical instruments, and modern European cultures.Companions are designed not only to offer a comprehensive overview of their chosen topic, but to display and provoke lively and controversial debate.

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444 results in Cambridge Companions to Literature

Page 1 of 23

The Cambridge Companion to James Joyce
  • 3rd edition
  • Edited by John Nash
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    August 2025
    Print publication:
    31 August 2025
  • The Cambridge Companion to James Joyce is an indispensable scholarly guide to one of the world's most important and influential writers. Fifteen chapters, each written by a leading Joyce scholar, address each of Joyce's major works, key contexts and important themes. This is both an accessible introduction for students and a lively resource for teachers and researchers. This is a much revised and expanded third edition, featuring eleven entirely new essays and four revised essays. The editorial matter (chronology and guide to further reading) has been written from scratch. The third edition creates more space for Joyce's fascination with gender, sex and bodies, and provides renewed attention to his engagement with Irish history. Scholarship on ecocriticism, serialization, editing and publishing is also represented for the first time. Joyce's most influential work, Ulysses, has two dedicated chapters covering different aspects and perspectives, as well as an chapter on its serialization.

The Cambridge Companion to Mary Prince
  • Edited by Nicole N. Aljoe
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    May 2025
    Print publication:
    31 May 2025
  • The History of Mary Prince was the first account of the life of a Black woman to be published in the United Kingdom. Part of the avalanche of print culture that accompanied the transatlantic abolitionist movement, it has in recent years become an increasingly central text within pedagogy and research on Black history and literature, thanks to its vivid testimonies of Prince's thoughts and feelings about her gendered experience of Caribbean slavery. Embracing and celebrating a growing international scholarly and general interest in African diasporic voices, texts, histories, and literary traditions, this Companion weds contributions from Romanticists and Caribbean Americanists to showcase the diversity of disciplinary encounters that Prince's narrative invites, as well as its rich and troubled contexts. The first published collection on a single slave narrative or author, the volume is not only an authoritative, highly focused resource for students but also a model for future research.

The Cambridge Companion to Marcus Aurelius' Meditations
  • Edited by John Sellars
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    March 2025
    Print publication:
    31 March 2025
  • The Meditations of the second-century Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius is consistently one of the best-selling philosophy books among the general public. Over the years it has also attracted famous admirers, from the Prussian king Frederick the Great to US President Bill Clinton. It continues to attract large numbers of new readers, drawn to its reflections on life and death. Despite this, it is not the sort of text read much by professional philosophers or even, until recently, taken especially seriously by specialists in ancient philosophy. It is a highly personal, easily accessible, yet deceptively simple work. This volume, written by leading experts and aimed at non-specialists, examines the central philosophical ideas in the work and assesses the extent to which Marcus is committed to the philosophy of Stoicism. It also considers how we ought to read this unique work and explores its influence from its first printed publication to today.

The Cambridge Companion to Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Politics
  • Edited by John D. Kerkering
  • Published online:
    06 March 2025
    Print publication:
    13 March 2025
  • The Cambridge Companion to Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Politics addresses the political contexts in which nineteenth-century American literature was conceived, consumed, and criticized. Individual chapters examine how US literature from this period engaged with broad political concepts and urgent political issues, such as liberalism, conservatism, radicalism, nationalism, communitarianism, sovereignty, religious liberty, partisanship and factionalism, slavery, segregation, immigration, territorial disputes, voting rights, gendered spheres, and urban/rural tensions.  Chapters on literary genres and forms show how poetry, drama, fiction, oratory, and nonfiction participated in political debate. The volume's introduction situates these chapters in relation to two larger disciplines, the history of political thought and literary history. This Companion provides a valuable resource for students and instructors interested in Nineteenth-Century American literature and politics.

The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek Epic
  • Edited by Emma Greensmith
  • Published online:
    04 December 2024
    Print publication:
    28 November 2024
  • Ancient Greek literature begins with the epic verses of Homer. Epic then continued as a fundamental literary form throughout antiquity and the influence of the poems produced extends beyond antiquity and down to the present. This Companion presents a fresh and boundary-breaking account of the ancient Greek epic tradition. It includes wide-ranging close readings of epics from Homer to Nonnus, traces their dialogues with other modes such as ancient Mesopotamian poetry, Greek lyric and didactic writing, and explores their afterlives in Byzantium, early Christianity, modern fiction and cinema, and the identity politics of Greece and Turkey. Plot summaries are provided for those unfamiliar with individual poems. Drawing on cutting-edge new research in a number of fields, such as racecraft, geopolitics and the theory of emotions, the volume demonstrates the sustained and often surprising power of this renowned ancient genre, and sheds new light on its continued impact and relevance today.

The Cambridge Companion to Literature in a Digital Age
  • Edited by Adam Hammond
  • Published online:
    29 November 2024
    Print publication:
    14 November 2024
  • Literature has experienced two great medium shifts, each with profound implications for its forms, genres, and cultures: that from orality to writing, and that from writing to printing. Today we are experiencing a third shift, from printed to digital forms. As with the previous shifts, this transformation is reconfiguring literature and literary culture. The Cambridge Companion to Literature in the Digital Age is organized around the question of what is at stake for literary studies in this latest transition. Rather than dividing its chapters by methodology or approach, this volume proceeds by exploring the major categories of literary investigation that are coming under pressure in the digital age: concepts such as the canon, periodization, authorship, and narrative. With chapters written by leading experts in all facets of literary studies, this book shows why all those who read, study, and teach literature today ought to attend to the digital.

The Cambridge Companion to Romanticism and Race
  • Edited by Manu Samriti Chander
  • Published online:
    21 November 2024
    Print publication:
    28 November 2024
  • Amidst the popularization of race science and rapid colonial expansion that characterized the Romantic era, newly urgent discussions about the morality and legality of slavery emerged that would pave the way for formal abolition. The thirteen essays collected here make clear that these developments thoroughly informed Romantic-era literature: the very terms that have long defined Romanticism – revolution and radicalism, poetry and “powerful feeling,” the solitary self and the social world – were shaped by a changing global order in which race figured centrally. Combining academic rigor with accessibility, this diverse group of scholars presents specialists and non-specialists alike with a rich picture of this key moment in the literary and cultural history of race. Engaging with the distinctly Romantic meanings of race, chapters invite readers to consider how eighteenth- and nineteenth-century ideas about difference continue to shape the modern world.

The Cambridge Companion to John Clare
  • Edited by Sarah Houghton-Walker
  • Published online:
    14 November 2024
    Print publication:
    21 November 2024
  • The fascinations of John Clare's life are manifold. A labouring-class poet and naturalist, he was lionised in the early 1820s but spent his final decades incarcerated in asylums. In this Companion leading scholars illuminate Clare's rich life and writing, situating each within a range of critical contexts. Essays rooted in discourses as diverse as ecocriticism, aesthetics, religion, health, and time are accompanied by explorations of the construction of the idea (including the self-identity) of Clare through writing and images. The collection also traces influences upon Clare, and considers the ways in which he has influenced subsequent poets in turn. The volume includes a chronology and an invaluable guide to further reading, and provides students with a firm grounding in Clare's writings and his critical reception: this is an indispensable guide to the poet and his work.

The Cambridge Companion to Manga and Anime
  • Edited by Jaqueline Berndt
  • Published online:
    07 November 2024
    Print publication:
    31 October 2024
  • In recent years, manga and anime have attracted increasing scholarly interest beyond the realm of Japanese studies. This Companion takes a unique approach, committed to exploring both the similarities and differences between these two distinct but interrelated media forms. Firmly based in Japanese sources, this volume offers a lively and accessible introduction, exploring the local contexts of manga and anime production, distribution, and reception in Japan, as well as the global influence and impact of these versatile media. Chapters explore common characteristics such as visuals, voice, serial narrative and characters, whilst also highlighting distinct challenges and histories. The volume provides both a basis for further research in this burgeoning field and a source of inspiration for those new to the topic.

The Cambridge Companion to Lucian
  • Edited by Simon Goldhill
  • Published online:
    07 November 2024
    Print publication:
    21 November 2024
  • Lucian is one of the most prolific and wide-ranging writers from antiquity and one of the most influential and controversial. His work is deeply embedded in the cultural and religious politics of the Greek world in the Roman Empire, but also played an important role in later periods, particularly during the Renaissance, and was considered a crucial example of the inherited wisdom of classical antiquity. Lucian's prose is limpid and elegant as well as sharply funny and full of great stories, dramatic dialogues, and brilliant satire. This Companion, written by world-leading scholars, introduces the major themes of his corpus and provides more detailed studies of individual works. Readers will be able to appreciate his major contributions to the history of satire, comic dialogues, religion, art, and erotics as well as being given a snapshot of the most important episodes in his work's reception in the West.

The Cambridge Companion to Race and American Literature
  • Edited by John Ernest
  • Published online:
    02 November 2024
    Print publication:
    27 June 2024
  • Race is central to American history. It is impossible to understand the United States without understanding how race has been defined and deployed at every stage of the nation's history. Offering a comprehensive and accessible introduction to the history of race, The Cambridge Companion to Race and American Literature shows how this history has been represented in literature, and how those representations have influenced American culture. Written by leading scholars in in African American, Latinx, Asian American, Native American, and white American studies, the essays in this volume address the centrality of race in American literature by foregrounding the conflicts across different traditions and different modes of interpretation. This volume explores the unsteady foundations of American literary history, examines the hardening of racial fault lines throughout the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, and then considers various aspects of the multiple literary and complexly interrelated traditions that emerged from this fractured cultural landscape.

The Cambridge Companion to Jack Kerouac
  • Edited by Steven Belletto
  • Published online:
    31 October 2024
    Print publication:
    27 June 2024
  • Jack Kerouac is among the most important and influential writers to emerge from mid-twentieth century America. Founder of the Beat Generation literary movement, Kerouac's most famous novel, On the Road, was known as the bible of this generation, and inspired untold people to question the rigid social and cultural expectations of 1950s America. And yet despite its undeniable influence, On the Road is only a small piece of Kerouac's literary achievement, and there are now well over forty Kerouac books published. The centerpiece to this work is Kerouac's multi-volume Duluoz Legend, named for his fictional alter-ego, Jack Duluoz, and comprising numerous books written over decades that together tell the story of Duluoz's life and times. This volume offers fresh perspectives on his multifaceted body of work, ranging from detailed analyses of his most significant books to wide-angle perspectives that place Kerouac in key literary, theoretical, and cultural contexts.

The Cambridge Companion to Australian Poetry
  • Edited by Ann Vickery
  • Published online:
    06 June 2024
    Print publication:
    13 June 2024
  • An invaluable resource for staff and students in literary studies and Australian studies, this volume is the first major critical survey on Australian poetry. It investigates poetry's central role in engaging with issues of colonialism, nationalism, war and crisis, diaspora, gender and sexuality, and the environment. Individual chapters examine Aboriginal writing and the archive, poetry and activism, print culture, and practices of internationally renowned poets such as Lionel Fogarty, Gwen Harwood, John Kinsella, Les Murray, and Judith Wright. The Companion considers Australian leadership in the diversification of poetry in terms of performance, the verse novel, and digital poetries. It also considers Antipodean engagements with Romanticism and Modernism.

The Cambridge Companion to the Poem
  • Edited by Sean Pryor
  • Published online:
    30 May 2024
    Print publication:
    06 June 2024
  • What is a poem? What ideas about the poem as such shape how readers and audiences encounter individual poems? To explore these questions, the first section of this Companion addresses key conceptual issues, from singularity and genre to the poem's historical exchanges with the song and the novel. The second section turns to issues of form, focusing on voice, rhythm, image, sound, diction, and style. The third section considers the poem's social and cultural lives. It examines the poem in the archive and in the digital sphere, as well as in relation to decolonization and global capitalism. The chapters in this volume range across both canonical and non-canonical poems, poems from the past and the present, and poems by a diverse set of poets. This book will be a key resource for students and scholars studying the poem.

The Cambridge Companion to American Utopian Literature and Culture since 1945
  • Edited by Sherryl Vint
  • Published online:
    09 May 2024
    Print publication:
    16 May 2024
  • Providing a comprehensive overview of American thought in the period following World War II, after which the US became a global military and economic leader, this book explores the origins of American utopianism and provides a trenchant critique from the point of view of those left out of the hegemonic ideal. Centring the voices of those oppressed by or omitted from the consumerist American Dream, this book celebrates alternative ways of thinking about how to create a better world through daily practices of generosity, justice, and care. The chapters collected here emphasize utopianism as a practice of social transformation, not as a literary genre depicting a putatively perfect society, and urgently make the case for why we need utopian thought today. With chapters on climate change, economic justice, technology, and more, alongside chapters exploring utopian traditions outside Western frameworks, this book opens a new discussion in utopian thought and theory.

The Cambridge Companion to the Black Body in American Literature
  • Edited by Cherene Sherrard-Johnson
  • Published online:
    09 May 2024
    Print publication:
    16 May 2024
  • Whether invisible or hyper-visible, adored or reviled, from the inception of American literature the Black body has been rendered in myriad forms. This volume tracks and uncovers the Black body as a persistent presence and absence in American literature. It provides an invaluable guide for teachers and students interested in literary and artistic representations of Blackness and embodiment. The book is divided into three sections that highlight Black embodiment through conceptual flashpoints that emphasize various aspects of human body in its visual and textual manifestations. This Companion engages past and continuing debates about the nature of embodiment by showcasing how writers from multiple eras and communities defined and challenged the limits of what constitutes a body in relation to human and nonhuman environment.

The Cambridge Companion to William Morris
  • Edited by Marcus Waithe
  • Published online:
    03 May 2024
    Print publication:
    23 May 2024
  • In his short life, William Morris (1834-96) combined the roles of poet, author, painter, designer, translator, lecturer, political activist, journalist, weaver, bookmaker, and businessman. This volume draws together influential voices from different disciplines who have participated in the recent critical, political, and curatorial revival of his work, with essays exploring the contemporary resonance of his exceptional legacy. As a critic of capitalism, his thinking has thrived in these years of financial crisis; as a theorist of work and craftsmanship, his legacy interacts with a more recent ethics of making that questions the values of 'off-shored' production; and as a protector of landscape and buildings Morris's concern with what is precious strikes a chord in our age of environmental crisis. At the same time, a careful and scholarly approach observes the particularity of Morris's context, in a way that confounds the 'false friends' of hasty historical reception and reveals unexpected connections.

The Cambridge Companion to the American Graphic Novel
  • Edited by Jan Baetens, Hugo Frey, Fabrice Leroy
  • Published online:
    10 January 2024
    Print publication:
    28 September 2023
  • The Cambridge Companion to the American Graphic Novel explores the important role of the graphic novel in reflecting American society and in the shaping of the American imagination. Using key examples, this volume reviews the historical development of various subgenres within the graphic novel tradition and examines how graphic novelists have created multiple and different accounts of the American experience, including that of African American, Asian American, Jewish, Latinx, and LGBTQ+ communities. Reading the American graphic novel opens a debate on how major works have changed the idea of America from that once found in the quintessential action or superhero comics to show new, different, intimate accounts of historical change as well as social and individual, personal experience. It guides readers through the theoretical text-image scholarship to explain the meaning of the complex borderlines between graphic novels, comics, newspaper strips, caricature, literature, and art.

The Cambridge Companion to Contemporary African American Literature
  • Edited by Yogita Goyal
  • Published online:
    14 December 2023
    Print publication:
    21 December 2023
  • African American literature has changed in startling ways since the end of the Black Arts Era. The last five decades have generated new paradigms of racial formation and novel patterns of cultural production, circulation, and reception. This volume takes up the challenge of mapping the varied and changing field of contemporary African American writing. Balancing the demands of historical and political context with attention to aesthetic innovation, it considers the history, practice, and future directions of the field. Examining various historical forces shaping the creation of innovative genres, the turn to the afterlife of slavery, the pull toward protest, and the impact of new and expanded geographies and methods, this Companion provides an invaluable point of reference for readers seeking rigorous and cutting-edge analyses of contemporary African American literature.

The Cambridge Companion to Byron
  • Second Edition
  • 2nd edition
  • Edited by Drummond Bone
  • Published online:
    02 November 2023
    Print publication:
    16 November 2023
  • Deeply informed and appealingly written, this revised and updated second edition gives fresh life to the enthralling sexual, poetic and political contradictions that make Byron the first literary celebrity. Encompassing his entire oeuvre, the volume both provides an authoritative guide for students, and points to emerging new areas of research, highlighting Byron's ongoing relevance in an increasingly complex world both within academia and beyond. Published to coincide with the 200th anniversary of his death, new chapters cover investigations of Byron's manuscripts, his relationships with nonhuman animals, his levity and addiction, and his Dramas and their reception.

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