First Published in 2004. In this original study, Omry Ronen critically examines the term Silver Age, which over the years has gained such wide currency among historians and connoisseurs of twentieth-century Russian culture. His latest research deals with metahistorical and metaliterary value of influential poetic locutions, such as the image of Russia as the sphinx, or the concept of the Silver Age in Russian cultural history.

First Published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Superevil: Villains in Silver Age Superhero Comics sheds light on the often-disregarded supervillains in the American superhero comic of the 1960s. From Loki to Killmonger – they all possess famous cinematic counterparts, yet it is their comic origin that this study examines. Not only did The Silver Age produce countless superheroes and supervillains who have conquered the screens in the last two decades, but it also created complex villains. Silver Age supervillains were, as the analyses in Superevil show, the main and only means to include political and societal criticism in a cultural product, which suffered from censorship and belittlement. Instead of focusing on the superheroes once more, Anke Marie Bock pioneers in putting the supervillain as such in the center of the attention. In addition to addressing the tendency to neglect villains in superhero-comic studies, revealing many important functions the supervillains fulfill, among them criticizing Cold War politics, racism, gender roles and the often unquestioned binary of good and evil on the examples of i.a. The Fantastic Four, Spider-Man and Black Panther comics.

Mikhail Osipovich Gershenzon, philosopher, journalist, and scholar, was one of the most original and eccentric Pushkinists of Russia's Silver Age. His eclectic critical judgment was highly esteemed by his generation's best poets and critics, and many of his idiosyncratic interpretations of Pushkin have become canonical. Brian Horowitz's detailed study illuminates both Pushkin's position as a cultural icon of the Silver Age and Gershenzon's role in establishing and challenging that reputation. As Gershenzon's work mirrors both significant and hidden aspects of the Pushkin scholarship of his day, his articulation of Pushkin as the symbolic key to Russian culture reflects the Silver Age nostalgia for and identification with the Golden Age in which Pushkin wrote. This first book-length study of this important figure provides a vivid sense of the inner workings of Russian literary life in the early part of this century.

The Raft of Odysseus looks at the fascinating intersection of traditional myth with an enthnographically-viewed Homeric world. Carol Dougherty argues that the resourcefulness of Odysseus as an adventurer on perilous seas served as an example to Homer's society which also had to adjust in inventive ways to turbulent conditions. The fantastic adventures of Odysseus act as a prism for the experiences of Homer's own listeners--traders, seafarers, storytellers, soldiers--and give us a glimpse into their own world of hopes and fears, 500 years after the Iliadic events were supposed to have happened.

Listen to the podcast about this book. The Joker both fascinates and repels us. From his origin in Detective Comics in 1940, he has committed obscene crimes, some of the worst the Batman universe has ever known, and, conversely, fans have made him the topic of erotic and pornographic “fan fiction.” Speculation about the Joker abounds, where some fans have even claimed that the Joker is “queer coded.” This work explores various popular claims about the Joker, and delves into the history of comic books, and of other popular media from a semiotic viewpoint to understand “The Clown Prince of Crime” in the contexts in which he existed to understand his evolution in the past. From his roots as a “typical hoodlum,” The Joker even starred in his own eponymous comic book series and he was recently featured in a non-canonical movie. This work examines what it is about the Joker which fascinates us.