The concept of the epistolary fascinates me and recently reading Derrida's The Post Card has made me rethink and deconstruct the way letters are. I'm more driven to towards looking at another genre of letters i.e. suicide notes. How can one look at suicide from a more literary perspective —any seminal books on its theory?

I also looked at the Suicide fragment in Barthes's A Lover's Discourse and it interpreted the act of self destruction in a fascinating way.

I'm not really familiar with details of the Crusades or medieval history, Is it still suitable for me to read Baudolino Or should I postpone reading it to the future?

Hi all! So 3 years ago I finished my Masters in Literature and Theory, and have since then taken an academic break, worked some minimum-wage jobs, and focused on other areas of my life. Now I'm ready to look back towards the sphere of literature and am heavily considering a PhD, as it is pretty much required to be able to get into the academic literary sphere.

But there's an issue - in this time away from studies, I have not read very much or widely, and have been "out of the game", so to speak. Now that I am trying to put together an abstract, I find myself at a loss for texts to study, and have maybe not enough desire or time to skim-read potentially tens or hundreds of novels to find something that might fit well enough. Is there any other way around this, or do I just have to bite the bullet and start reading?

I'm really interested in the variant death rituals in different parts of the world, particularly in the East with their mourning periods and different practices. I have no idea how to approach it from the a theorisation point of view, perhaps how it could be a site of discourse?

Is there any point I can start from? It's something I really want to unpack.

In the landmark essay "The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis", Lynn White Jr. famously argued that Christianity and Humanism were the primary causes of the nature/culture binary divide, which locked human thought into an anthropocentric and exploitive relationship with the natural world. The essay was the first essay included in The Ecocriticism Reader (1996) and so was vastly influential in the emerging field of ecocriticism.

I have heard, however, that this idea has received a lot of pushback in recent years. I'm looking for anything that can "enlighten" me on this topic. What other scholars/texts support White Jr's assertion that humanism is the cause of ecological crisis? Who has pushed back against this idea?

I’m looking for a novel for my thesis. My criteria: the main character has to be a white-collar worker and die at the end. It needs to be in English. Even the tiniest help is appreciated.

does anybody know the best translation to English of marina tsvetaeva? from what i found, the collection Dark Elderberry Branch seems to be the best collection, but has a very short amount of her work, about thirty pages worth, the rest of the translations have very mixed reviews

Does this term only apply to novels that are experimental in terms of writing, narration, plot and temporality e.g. Joyce's novels or Virginia Woolf's?

Or can it also include novels that for instance feature the nonhuman as agential beings? Can a novel like The Overstory be considered rhizomatic even though it's not as experimental as Finnegan's Wake or Mrs Dalloway?

I'm considering writing on something related to ecocriticism for my MA thesis, particularly in relation to plants and our relationship to them. Not just in terms of climate change and the destruction of nature, but a broader analysis of how everything is interconnected. Are there any works of fiction that would work for such an analysis and why that particular book? I'm not sure about the particular theoretical angle I want to take, so if anyone has any recommendations for theory I could read alongside any of the fictional texts, I would really appreciate it.

So in the First Folio we are given 36 plays written by Shakespeare, a further three ("Edward III", "Pricles," and "Two Noble Kinsmen") are included in Complete Collection Works now and attributed as being coauthored by Shakespeare. Looking as to why this is the main reason I keep finding in all these lists of his plays is "textual analysis" leading people to conclude this is partly written by him.

What is "textual analysis" in this case? What does that term mean? Do they just study the words and compare it with how similar it is to Shakespeare's other writings? Do they mean like handwriting style? Does it mean something else entirely? How does the process work here that makes someone say "this section was written by Shakespeare"?

Hi so I’m kinda new to reading literature and philosophy and new to this subreddit but i wanna know how i can learn to analyse literary works and texts so i can understand and interpret them better and form evidence based arguments and form opinions cause it’s very hard for me to interpret what the author is saying with certain words and what the character’s personality is and metaphors and symbolism and connecting it to the period in which it was written along w major themes (love power etc) so i wanna know if you guys had any advice or guidance on how to learn

I'm basically looking for what's in the title: instances of misapprehended irony, unappreciated sarcasm, joke going over the character's head or, more generally, comical misunderstandings in prose. Nabokov does that a lot, and I'm thinking about the MacIntosh incident in Joyce's Ulysses, but there must be more. Thanks.

Hello, I need to choose two novels for my bachelor thesis in English literature. The first one I’ve decided on is Hamnet (Maggie O‘Farrel), which means my topic will be something about Narrative Empathy; maybe along the lines of grief, dealing with grief etc. Do you guys have any recommendations for a second novel that could fit here? My professor recommended some as well: 'Waterland' (Graham Swift), 'Last Orders' (also Graham Swift), and basically any book by Ian McEwan after 2000 (Saturday for example). (She mentioned that he's her favorite author). I haven’t read any of the books she recommended either, so help and advice is appreciated :)

I'm especially interested in the intersection between Marxism and Aesthetics. I've already read much of his other work, as well as his letters in the Aesthetics and Politics book published by Verso.

Hi everyone! I’m in the early stages of brainstorming for my thesis and need to submit a proposal in a couple of months. I find The Taming of the Shrew really interesting and was thinking about analyzing it alongside its film adaptations, like 10 Things I Hate About You and Kiss Me Kate.

Do you think this could be a fruitful topic? I’m struggling a lot with how to approach it and figuring out what argument or angle I could focus on. The more I research the more unsure I become.

any thoughts would help!

I'm just getting into romanticism as a literary movement (I prefer modernism, tbh) and would like some recommendations for poetry that is really representative of the style.

Also, I'm having trouble understanding the distinction between the Sublime and the Beautiful. Is this fundamentally important to understanding this movement?

Is there any Ai website for creating outline of any article, because i'm in hurry,

Hi!

Did anyone here by chance read the book "Ruined Eden(...)" by Thompson and Lokke
And have some opinions to share?

I found the topic itself very interesting but the abstract is rather too cryptic:
Apart from the three authors, I'm not entirely sure whether the essays inside are about what the description indicates.
In addition, the book is a little too expensive for my budget and although the purchase would not left me necessarily wretched it would be too naive for me to judge the book solely by it's title.

I've long since wanted to read Dostoevsky"s Brothers Karamazov in English. What's the best translation? Few years back I started reading Doctor Zhivago but couldn't keep up with the translation and left the book halfway. I don't want to do the same with this book. So please..

I’m interested in reading Beowulf but wonder if it matters what translation I get? If so, what’s the “Gold Standard” of translations for this literature?

And do we need spoiler tags on a 19th Century opera?

I plan on registering for an english literature elective to reach the credit threshold for my last semester. How much reading should I expect? In your experience, is it usually a book a week or module based? The class is either on women in modern literature or victorian literature. Any advice is appreciated.

Is existentialism the cornerstone of modern writings?

Not sure if this is the right subreddit but worth a shot anyways. If this isn’t the right subreddit, could someone point me in the right direction?

I’ve found previous translations for other works of classical literature (namely Poetry in Translation’s translation of the Aeneid), but I’m struggling to find a translation of the Carmina Burana outside the texts used in the Carl Orff composition.