Literary Theory

Reflex Action in Fiction and Film

Garrett Stewart, University of Iowa, USA The Metanarrative Hall of Mirrors is the first sustained comparative study of how images are created in prose and cinema. In film examples ranging from Citizen Kane through Apocalypse Now to Blade Runner 2049, then on to Christopher Nolan’s 2020 Tenet, Garrett Stewart tracks the shift from celluloid to digital cinema through various narrative approaches to the image, from freeze-frames to computergenerated special effects. By bringing these insights into dialogue with contemporary literature, Stewart discovers a common tendency in contemporary storytelling, in both prose and visual narrative, from the ongoing trend of “mind-game” films to the often puzzling narrative eccentricities of such different writers as Richard Powers and Nicholson Baker.

UK April 2022 • US April 2022 • 208 pages PB 9781501388781 • £21.99 / $27.95 • HB 9781501388798 • £65.00 / $90.00 ePub 9781501388804 • £19.93 / $25.15 ePdf 9781501388811 • £19.93 / $25.15 Bloomsbury Academic

Becoming Utopian

The Culture and Politics of Radical Transformation

Tom Moylan, University of Limerick, Ireland This book explores the utopian process in its individual and collective trajectory from dream to realization. Drawing on theorists such as Fredric Jameson, Donna Haraway and Alain Badiou and science fiction writers such as Kim Stanley Robinson and China Miéville, Becoming Utopian develops its argument for sociopolitical action through studies that range from liberation theology, ecological activism, and radical pedagogy to the radical movements of 1968. Throughout, Moylan speaks to the urgent need to confront and transform the global environmental, economic, political and cultural crises of our time.

UK May 2022 • US May 2022 • 312 pages PB 9781350190085 • £28.99 / $39.95 Previously published in HB 9781350133334 ePub 9781350133358 • £76.50 / $100.32 ePdf 9781350133341 • £76.50 / $100.32 Bloomsbury Academic World English

Disrupted Intersubjectivity

Paralysis and Invasion in Ian McEwan’s Works

Andrei Ionescu, Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University, Saudi Arabia Disrupted Intersubjectivity investigates two classes of phenomena creating failures of understanding in social interaction, referred to as ‘paralysis’ and ‘invasion.’ Both can be understood as disrupted forms of intersubjectivity, the former being characterized by a lack/deficiency of ways of relating to others, and the latter by an unnecessary surplus. By studying the literary accounts of these phenomena in a selection of Ian McEwan’s literary works (“Homemade,” On Chesil Beach, Enduring Love, and Atonement), Andrei Ionescu sheds light on the epistemological potential of literature and the structure of human relationships in general.

UK December 2021 • US December 2021 • 224 pages PB 9781501391149 • £28.99 / $39.95 Previously published in HB 9781501362460 ePub 9781501362453 • £83.60 / $108.00 ePdf 9781501362446 • £83.60 / $108.00 Series: Thinking Media • Bloomsbury Academic

Realism: Aesthetics, Experiments, Politics

Edited by Jens Elze, Georg-August-University Göttingen, Germany This volume brings together for the first time three aspects that are pertinent for a proper understanding of realism: its origins as a radical 19th-century aesthetic practice of making reality into an object of serious art; the challenges to it taken up in 20th-century literature; and the politics of contemporary realism. Innovative chapters deal with classically realist authors (George Eliot, Émile Zola), experimental engagements with realism (J.M. Coetzee, Rachel Cusk) and contemporary global novels (Chimamanda Adichie, David Mitchell). The readings assembled here are a testament to the ongoing controversies surrounding definitions and deployments of the genre.

UK May 2022 • US May 2022 • 288 pages HB 9781501385483 • £90.00 / $120.00 ePub 9781501385490 • £83.60 / $108.00 ePdf 9781501385506 • £83.60 / $108.00 Bloomsbury Academic

ship’s Wake

Authorship's Wake: Writing After the Death of the Author

Philip Sayers, University of Toronto, Canada Through the lens of Roland Barthes’s 1960s essay, “The Death of the Author,” this book investigates the enduring legacy of the critique of the author as an all-controlling figure determining the meaning of literary texts. Authorship’s Wake examines texts by writers who either directly participated in this critique, or whose intellectual formation took place in its aftermath. Using work by Judith Butler, Zadie Smith, and David Foster Wallace, Sayers argues that these writers are participants in an ongoing conversation surrounding authorship.

UK June 2022 • US June 2022 • 224 pages • 1 bw illus PB 9781501372186 • £28.99 / $39.95 Previously published in HB 9781501367670 ePub 9781501367687 • £83.60 / $108.00 ePdf 9781501367694 • £83.60 / $108.00 Bloomsbury Academic

Nonmodern Practices

Latour and Literary Studies

Edited by Elisabeth Arnould-Bloomfield, University of Colorado, USA & Claire Chi-ah Lyu, University of Virginia, USA This collection of essays responds to the urgent call in the humanities to go beyond the act of negative critique which, so far, has been the dominant form of intellectual inquiry in academia. The contributors take their inspiration from Bruno Latour's pragmatic, relational approach and his philosophy of hybrid world where culture is immanent to nature and knowledge is tied to the things it co-creates. In such a world, nature, society, and discourse relate to, rather than negate, each other. These 11 essays, ranging from early modern humanism and modern theorization of literature to contemporary political ecology and animal studies, propose new productive ways of thinking, reading, and writing with, not against, the world. In carrying out concrete practices that are inclusive, rather than exclusive, contributors strive to exemplify a form of scholarship that might be better attuned to the concerns of our post-humanist era.

UK April 2022 • US April 2022 • 272 pages PB 9781501369278 • £28.99 / $39.95 Previously published in HB 9781501354281 ePub 9781501354298 • £83.60 / $108.00 ePdf 9781501354304 • £83.60 / $108.00 Bloomsbury Academic