Literary Analysis

Religion and the Decline of Magic examines popular belief in 16th and 17th century England, a key period during which leaders of the Protestant Reformation tried to disentangle magic from religion itself. Thomas argues that magic was popular because it offered practical solutions to everyday problems. Few social historians had examined the popular religious beliefs of the 1500s at the time Thomas wrote Religion.

Western thinking about the Middle and Far East has been distorted by stereotype and inaccuracy. This argument lies at the center of Palestinian-American literary theorist Edward Said's groundbreaking book, Orientalism. Originally published in 1978, it cemented Said's reputation as the father of postcolonial studies.

Our Common Future is a joint work produced in 1987 by a United Nations commission headed by former Norwegian Prime Minister, Gro Brundtland. Intended to respond to a growing number of environmental concerns faced by the global community, it recognized the need for long-term strategies to manage natural resources. It says we must act collaboratively to protect the environment, while at the same time stimulating economic and social development.

In Citizen and Subject, Ugandan academic and author Mahmood Mamdani challenges dominant views about the crisis of postcolonial Africa. Many studies emphasize that the problems the continent faces are homegrown - the consequence of poor government, widespread corruption, and other local factors. Citizen and Subject challenged these ideas. It argues that the current crisis has come about because of the institutional legacy of colonialism.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction - and the first black woman to win the Nobel Prize in literature - novelist, orator, and outspoken public intellectual Toni Morrison is best known for her novels. In Playing in the Dark, however, she enters the realm of literary criticism. Morrison, an African American, draws attention to the often-overlooked significance of race in literature, demonstrating "the impact of racism on those who perpetuate it". Reading the racial language between the lines of classic American fiction, Morrison shows that literature is never raceless.

Ferdinand de Saussure's Course in General Linguistics was first published in 1916, three years after his death. The book aims to explain Saussure's theory that all languages share an underlying structure, and that this underlying structure is the same, regardless of historical or cultural context. Although the book marked a break with the traditional, history-focused study of linguistics of the time, Saussure still uses examples based on more traditional studies.

What is the good life? Proverbs: Audio Lectures, taught by Christopher Ansberry, answers this question across different collections and through different poetic forms, each of which are designed to (trans)form one's character. This project of character formation assumes that wisdom and virtue...

Philosopher Judith Butler's 1990 work, Gender Trouble, shook the foundations of feminist theory and changed the conversation about gender. While many thinkers already accepted that "gender" was a category constructed by society rather than defined by one's genitalia, Butler went further and argued that gender is performative - it exists only in the acts that express it. Society determines that wearing makeup is "feminine" - but some men wear makeup. Are they "women"?

"An ebullient examination of madness, mortality, suicide... Montero finds that 'deviance' is often just a more truthful account of normal human behavior." —Chris Kraus A dazzling journey into the eccentric, troubled, and luminous minds that shaped literature. In this bold, personal, and deeply...

People have been writing literary works in French for a thousand years, since the eleventh century. What began as a small stream of texts copied by hand has become a vast river of printed poems, dramas, novels, stories, biographies, and autobiographies in an ever-changing kaleidoscope of forms...

The modern world has been marked by a series of immense social revolutions that have transformed the states where they happened. In 1979, American sociologist Theda Skocpol published States and Social Revolutions and examined three of these uprisings: in France at the end of the 18th century, then in Russia and in China in the first half of the 20th century. She pinpointed a number of common factors that affected each of these countries at the time revolution happened.

In her original and controversial 2005 book Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject Saba Mahmood examines the women's mosque movement in Cairo, Egypt as part of a wider turn to religious fervor integral to the broader Islamic revival of the twenty-first century. Mahmood's research suggests that in choosing to embrace the norms of their faith, these pious Muslim women are not limiting, but rather affirming, themselves.

El pavoroso espectro de la desolación y el triunfo de la solidaridad narradas de manera fantástica en esta joya de la literatura. Albert Camus (1913-1960) narra los avatares del doctor Rieux y de toda una ciudad, Orán, contra una peste de dimensiones sobrecogedoras.

Turn intimidating academic jargon into accessible literary criticism that transforms your everyday reading experience. Whether you are commuting to an English literature lecture or preparing for a passionate book club debate, this thought-provoking guide makes complex ideas instantly usable. Say...

This is extreme examination of fiction books. We take excerpts from popular novels (one page in length) from various chapters and we read them, trying to understand the writer's voice, writing structure, and more. Over time we'll have a clearer definition of how we do our analysis. This book will have notes every now and then. Enjoy! Oh, and if you were wondering, the main purpose of this is to learn how to write better fiction.