William Shakespeare's Hamlet is probably the best-known and most commented upon work of literature in Western culture. The paradox is that it is at once utterly familiar and strangely elusive-very like our own selves, argues Gabriel Josipovici in thi...

The term "network" is now applied to everything from the Internet to terrorist-cell systems. But the word's ubiquity has also made it a cliche, a concept at once recognizable yet hard to explain".Network Aesthetics", in exploring how popular culture...

"North in the World" presents 121 poems by Rolf Jacobsen (1907-1994), one of Norway's greatest modern poets. Garnering the highest praise of critics, Jacobsen won many of Norway's and Sweden's most prestigious literary awards, including the Swedish A...

After several years abroad, a young man returns to his hometown to seek the man he calls master. This master, a brilliant philosopher, had made the young man into a disciple before sending him out into the world to put his teachings into practice. Re...

Novelist, poet, playwright, and short story writer Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (1839-1908) is widely regarded as Brazil's greatest writer, although his work is still too little read outside his native country. In this first comprehensive English-l...

Great writers of the past whose works we still read and love will be read forever. They will survive the test of time. We remember authors of true genius because their writings are simply the best. Or ...might there be other reasons that account for...

Our thoughts are shaped as much by what things make of us as by what we make of them. Lyric poetry is especially concerned with things and their relationship to thought, sense, and understanding. In "Romantic Things", Mary Jacobus explores the world...

One of the best books ever written on one of humanity's greatest epics, W. R. Johnson's classic study of Vergil's Aeneid challenges centuries of received wisdom. Johnson rejects the political and historical reading of the epic as a record of the glor...

"Sometimes I'm tempted to throw away all I've written so far and start again, write quite a different kind of book, in the first person perhaps. Or write it in the third person but like a novel, with more freedom to go where a critical study could no...

Jane Austen completed only six novels, but enduring passion for the author and her works has driven fans to read these books repeatedly, in book clubs or solo, while also inspiring countless film adaptations, sequels, and even spoofs involving zombie...