This book explores the different ways women have been liberating themselves from the shackles of patriarchy and cultural laws that inhibit their independence and freedom to show that women are also contributing meaningfully to society. Women have worked to attain freedom through speaking out, writing memoirs, fiction, plays, poetry, and essays. The creative experiences of women are captured in this book, thus fulfilling the book's aim to give women voices to air their views and show that they are effectual members of society. The book examines the roles played by patriarchy, religion, and socioeconomic and political systems that keep women to the background. It also examines the issue of education, otherhood, marginalization, cultural imposition, and the diverse positions of women in local and international affairs. The book testifies that women's literature, and the stories of women all over the world, can be appreciated and viewed from different perspectives because of the diverse cultural environment in which women find themselves. This confirms that the issue of marginalization, suppression, and oppression of women are on-going problems in different societies around the world.

The book contains a selection of papers focusing on the idea of crossing boundaries in literary and cultural texts composed in English. The authors come from different methodological schools and analyse texts coming from different periods and cultures, trying to find common ground (the theme of the volume) between the apparently generically and temporarily varied works and phenomena. In this way, a plethora of perspectives is offered, perspectives which represent a high standard both in terms of theoretical reflection and in-depth analysis of selected texts. Consequently, the volume is addressed to a wide scope of both scholars and students working in the field of English and American literary and cultural studies; furthermore, it will be of interest also to students interested in theoretical issues linked with investigations into literature and culture.

The Crossroads of American History and Literature collects two decades' worth of the best-known essays of Philip F. Gura. Beginning with a definitive overview of studies of colonial literature, Gura ranges through such subjects in colonial American history as the intellectual life of the Connecticut River Valley, Cotton Mather's understanding of political leadership, and the religious upheavals of the Great Awakening. In the nineteenth century, he visits such varied topics as the history of print culture in rural communities, the philological interests of the Transcendentalist Elizabeth Peabody, the craft and business of the early Amerian music trades, and Thoreau's interest in exploration literature and in the Native American. Displaying remarkable sophistication in a variety of fields that, taken together, constitute the heart of American Studies, this collection illustrates the complexity of American cultural history.

In this beautifully conceived book, Ayesha Ramachandran reconstructs the imaginative struggles of early modern artists, philosophers, and writers to make sense of something that we take for granted: the world, imagined as a whole. Once a new, exciting, and frightening concept, “the world” was transformed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. But how could one envision something that no one had ever seen in its totality? The Worldmakers moves beyond histories of globalization to explore how “the world” itself—variously understood as an object of inquiry, a comprehensive category, and a system of order—was self-consciously shaped by human agents. Gathering an international cast of characters, from Dutch cartographers and French philosophers to Portuguese and English poets, Ramachandran describes a history of firsts: the first world atlas, the first global epic, the first modern attempt to develop a systematic natural philosophy—all part of an effort by early modern thinkers to capture “the world” on the page.

Over the course of the last twenty years, Native American and Indigenous American literary studies has experienced a dramatic shift from a critical focus on identity and authenticity to the intellectual, cultural, political, historical, and tribal nation contexts from which these Indigenous literatures emerge. The Oxford Handbook of Indigenous American Literature reflects on these changes and provides a complete overview of the current state of the field. The Handbook's forty-three essays, organized into four sections, cover oral traditions, poetry, drama, non-fiction, fiction, and other forms of Indigenous American writing from the seventeenth through the twenty-first century. Part I attends to literary histories across a range of communities, providing, for example, analyses of Inuit, Chicana/o, Anishinaabe, and Métis literary practices. Part II draws on earlier disciplinary and historical contexts to focus on specific genres, as authors discuss Indigenous non-fiction, emergent trans-Indigenous autobiography, Mexicanoh and Spanish poetry, Native drama in the U.S. and Canada, and even a new Indigenous children's literature canon. The third section delves into contemporary modes of critical inquiry to expound on politics of place, comparative Indigenism, trans-Indigenism, Native rhetoric, and the power of Indigenous writing to communities of readers. A final section thoroughly explores the geographical breadth and expanded definition of Indigenous American through detailed accounts of literature from Indian Territory, the Red Atlantic, the far North, Yucatán, Amerika Samoa, and Francophone Quebec. Together, the volume is the most comprehensive and expansive critical handbook of Indigenous American literatures published to date. It is the first to fully take into account the last twenty years of recovery and scholarship, and the first to most significantly address the diverse range of texts, secondary archives, writing traditions, literary histories, geographic and political contexts, and critical discourses in the field.

This first volume of "CrossRoads: A Southern Culture Annual picks up where its predecessor, the acclaimed biannual periodical "CrossRoads: A Journal of Southern Culture, left off when the latter ceased publication in the mid-1990s. Formerly edited by several graduate students affiliated with the University of Mississippi's Center for the Study of Southern Culture (primarily by current editor Ted Olson), "Cross Roads: A Southern Culture Annual will continue its original mission: to provide a forum for diverse perspectives on the South and on Southern culture through combining compelling new fiction and poetry from well-known as well as emerging Southern authors, with eloquent articles, memoirs, oral histories, and photo essays that interpret and celebrate relevant manifestations of the Southern cultural experience. "CrossRoads: A Southern Culture Annual will deepen readers' awareness of and connection to the South.

This is an authoritative presentation and discussion of the most basic thematic elements universally found in folklore and literature. The reference provides a detailed analysis of the most common archetypes or motifs found in the folklore of selected communities around the world. Each entry is written by a noted authority in the field, and includes accompanying reference citations. Entries are keyed to the Motif-Index of Folk Literature by Stith Thompson and grouped according to that Index's scheme. The reference also includes an introductory essay on the concepts of archetypes and motifs and the scholarship associated with them. This is the only book in English on motifs and themes that is completely folklore oriented, deals with motif numbers, and is tied to the Thompson Motif-Index. It includes in-depth examination of such motifs as: Bewitching; Chance and Fate; Choice of Roads; Death or Departure of the Gods; the Double; Ghosts and Other Revenants; the Hero Cycle; Journey to the Otherworld; Magic Invulnerability; Soothsayer; Transformation; Tricksters.

Auto/biographical narratives of the Americas are marked by the underlying themes of movement and belonging. This collection proposes that the impact of the historic or contemporary movement of peoples to, in, and from the Americas—whether chosen or forced—motivates the ways in which identities are constructed in this contested space. Such movement results in a cyclical quest to belong, and to understand belonging, that reverberates through narratives of the Americas. The volume brings together essays written from diverse national, cultural, linguistic, and disciplinary perspectives to trace these transnational motifs in life writing across the Americas. Drawing on international scholars from the seemingly disparate regions of the Americas—North America, the Caribbean, and Latin America—this book extends critical theories of life writing beyond limiting national boundaries. The scholarship included approaches narrative inquiry from the fields of literature, linguistics, history, art history, sociology, anthropology, political science, pedagogy, gender studies, critical race studies, and indigenous studies. As a whole, this volume advances discourse in auto/biography studies, life writing, and identity studies by locating transnational themes in narratives of the Americas and placing them in international and interdisciplinary conversations.

This study contextualizes magical realism within current debates and theories of postcoloniality and examines the fiction of three of its West African pioneers: Syl Cheney-Coker of Sierra Leone, Ben Okri of Nigeria and Kojo Laing of Ghana. Brenda Cooper explores the distinct elements of the genre in a West African context, and in relation to: * a range of global expressions of magical realism, from the work of Gabriel Garcia Marquez to that of Salman Rushdie * wider contemporary trends in African writing, with particular attention to how the realism of authors such as Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka has been connected with nationalist agendas. This is a fascinating and important work for all those working on African literature, magical realism, or postcoloniality.