First published in 1977, this book was the first to map extensively the ideological typography of the Anglo-American tradition of literary theory. It interrogates, comprehensively and in detail, the assumptions and categorical development within critical ideas from I. A. Richards and T. S. Eliot, through John Crowe Ransom and the New Criticism, to Northrop Frye and Marshall NcLuhan. This analysis reveals the Anglo-American tradition of literary-cultural theory is most properly intelligible within the overall field of social consciousness as an ideology of progressive cultural rationalization. Against a background of ideological development since nineteenth-century Romanticism, John Fekete illuminates the boundaries of literary ideology in relation to the shapes and changes of modern culture and society.

First published in 1977, this book was the first to map extensively the ideological typography of the Anglo-American tradition of literary theory. It interrogates, comprehensively and in detail, the assumptions and categorical development within critical ideas from I. A. Richards and T. S. Eliot, through John Crowe Ransom and the New Criticism, to Northrop Frye and Marshall NcLuhan. This analysis reveals the Anglo-American tradition of literary-cultural theory is most properly intelligible within the overall field of social consciousness as an ideology of progressive cultural rationalization. Against a background of ideological development since nineteenth-century Romanticism, John Fekete illuminates the boundaries of literary ideology in relation to the shapes and changes of modern culture and society.

The 'Irish Big House' novelist, Molly Keane, was born in 1904, and in 2005 the Department of English at University College Cork will host an international conference. This book gathers these essays together to explore the writings of this important literary voice within twentieth-century Irish writing. Scholars of Irish literature from the US, Spain and Ireland presents perspectives on many aspects of her creative output, looking at a fascinating literary career which lasted from 1926 until 1993. This book draws together contemporary critical perspectives on this unique voice in Irish writing, the subversive voice of the Big House novelist charting the end of her class and the immanent collapse of a literary genre.

A critique of modern sociological theory, this brilliant new work rather than announcing the twilight of man accepts the event both as an intellectual conclu­sion and an empirical fact, and proceeds systematically to examine the alterna­tives beyond the Weber-Durkheim-Par­sons episteme. Addressing himselfto the issues of pluralism in sociological theory, Lemert rigorously examines representative writings of important theorists in America and Europe, including the writings of Homans (Lexical Explana­tion), Blalock (Theory Construction­ism), Parsons (Analytic Realism), Blumer (Symbolic Interactionism), Schutz, Berger, Luckmann (Phenomen­ology), Cicourel (Ethnomethology), and Habermas (Critical Theory). Lemert challenges the celebrated pluralism hy­pothesis in his argument that recent sociological theory is not so pluralistic after all and has not made particular use of available styles of thinking. Sociology and the Twilight of Man is an important contribution to the modern sociological enterprise for several rea­sons. First, it raises basic questions about the progress made beyond earlier theoretical writings. Second, it ques­tions the explanatory force of current theories. Third, it questions whether contemporary theory can continue to develop in a meaningful way without a profound reexamination of its assump­tions and premises. And fourth, it dem­onstrates the value of discursive analysis to theoretical studies. Lemert's critique could lead to fundamental revisions of sociologists' perception of their disci­pline.

Of Shakespeare's sonnets we know and appreciate many details. By contrast, we know very little of their subjects and motives. This book aims to delineate the customs and beliefs that shaped the sonnets, Shakespeare's life, and his world, and considers them in that context.

This work considers the way two Anglo-Irish poets, W.B. Yeats and Seamus Heaney, have used archaeology in their work, and how it surfaced in their lives. As well as providing insights on Yeats and Heaney, their poetry and its analysis provides a filter for an original reading of the history of archaeology as it emerged from the mid-nineteenth century. Christine Finn draws on an array of data, tracing the path of the poets through museums, their childhood landscapes, and archaeological sites in Ireland, Italy and Scandinavia.