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Recent Publications: 2007 - 2011

Arthur Bradley, Originary Technicity: The Theory of Technology from Marx to Derrida Arthur Bradley’s Originary Technicity: The Theory of Technology from Marx to Derrida has just been published by Palgrave Macmillan (May 2011). In his endorsement of the book, J. Hillis Miller, Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature and English at the University of California at Irvine, writes: 'This brilliant book is at the frontier of new thinking about “originary technicity”…Though a putting in question of Derrida's thinking about technics holds center stage, many other recent explorers of these new ideas (Marx, Freud, Lacan, Heidegger, Stiegler, Hayles, Hansen) are also shown with admirable clarity, learning, and insight still to make a residual anthropocentric appeal to the presumably non-machinic thinking subject. Essential reading for technophobes and technophiliacs alike'.
Arthur Bradley and Paul Fletcher, eds, The Messianic Now: Philosophy, Religion, Culture This collection, published by Routledge in 2011, explores the phenomenon of the messianic in contemporary philosophy, religion and culture. From the later Derrida's work on Marx and Benjamin to Agamben and Badiou's recent texts on St Paul, it is becoming possible to detect a marked 'messianic turn' in contemporary continental thought. However, despite the plethora of work in the field there has not been any sustained attempt to think through the larger philosophical, theological and cultural implications of this phenomenon. What, then, characterises our contemporary messianic moment? Where does it come from? And why speak of the messianic now? In The Messianic Now: Philosophy, Religion, Culture, a group of internationally-known figures and rising stars within the fields of continental philosophy, religious studies and cultural studies come together to consider what the messianic might mean at the beginning of the 21st century.
	Graham Mort, Touch Graham Mort's collection of stories, Touch, was published by Seren in March 2010. "From the heat of Africa to the warmth of France or the snowbound dales of northern England, this is an assured and absorbing collection. Including the Bridport prize-winning story 'The Prince', Touch spans twenty years of short-story writing from author and poet Graham Mort. From a young child adrift on an ice-filled lake to an ageing farmer facing life alone, the twenty-one stories display a deep sensitivity to both the natural world and to human relationships. In skilfully crafted prose, vivid with detail, Mort examines the strength and fragility of life and the ties that hold us within it" (Amazon). "That Mort is also a Poetry Book Society recommended poet…shines through instantly in his prose and makes for beautifully deft storytelling, alive with detail" (New Welsh Review, Issue 89, Autumn 2010); also reviewed by Suzy Ceulan Hughes; and Ian Seed.
	Liz Oakley-Brown & Louise J. Wilkinson, eds., The Rituals and Rhetoric of Queenship: Medieval to Early Modern The Rituals and Rhetoric of Queenship (Four Courts Press 2009) explores the ways in which, whether a consort or a ruler in her own right, the late medieval and early modern queen was a pivotal, and often controversial, figure. The Review of English Studies (May 2010) writes, "The essays are of a uniformly high quality and make an important contribution to our current understanding of female magistracy in the pre-modern world... Oakley-Brown and Wikinson have done a masterful job of assembling an array of new scholarly perspectives on the field of early modern queenship."
	Terry Eagleton, On Evil Terry Eagleton's On Evil is published by Yale University Press on 6 April 2010: "In this witty, accessible study, the prominent Marxist thinker Terry Eagleton launches a surprising defence of the reality of evil, drawing on literary, theological and psychoanalytic sources to suggest that evil, no mere medieval artefact, is a real phenomenon with palpable force in our contemporary world. In a book that ranges from St. Augustine to alcoholism, Thomas Aquinas to Thomas Mann, Shakespeare to the Holocaust, Eagleton investigates the frightful plight of those doomed souls who apparently destroy for no reason..."  See Amazon for full description of On Evil.
	Alison Findlay, Women in Shakespeare: A Dictionary Women in Shakespeare: A Dictionary (Continuum, March 2010) is a comprehensive reference guide to Shakespeare and women. It is an A-Z of over 350 entries that explores the role of women within Shakespearean drama, how women were represented on the Shakespearean stage, and the role of women in Shakespeare's personal and professional lives. "The Continuum Shakespeare Dictionary" series provides authoritative guides to major subject-areas covered by the poetry and plays. It offers a comprehensive guide to the topic under discussion, especially its contemporary meanings, and to its occurrence and significance in Shakespeare's works.
	Arthur Bradley and Andrew Tate, The New Atheist Novel: Fiction, Philosophy and Polemic after 9/11 The New Atheist Novel is forthcoming from Continuum (January 2010) as part of their New Directions in Religion and Literature series.  The first study of a major new genre of contemporary fiction, it examines how Richard Dawkins’s so-called ‘New Atheism’ movement has caught the imagination of four eminent modern novelists: Ian McEwan, Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie and Philip Pullman. For McEwan and his contemporaries, the contemporary novel represents a new front in the ideological war against religion, religious fundamentalism and, after 9/11, religious terror: the novel apparently stands for everything – freedom, individuality, rationality and even a secular experience of the transcendental – that religion seeks to overthrow. Click here for more details.  Read the review in the Times Higher Education Supplement: " A timely and important work examining four of our most lionised novelists with an appropriately aporetic eye."
	Arthur Bradley and Paul Fletcher (eds), The Politics to Come: Power, Modernity and the Messianic The Politics to Come (London: Continuum, 2010) brings together an international collection of thinkers to consider the meaning of liberal democratic modernity at a moment when its future has never been less certain. It examines the explosive threats the liberal order confronts today: financial meltdown, religious extremism, environmental catastrophe. Yet, it also seeks to place these - singularly modern - crises within a much longer history. For the contributors to this collection, it is the ancient religious tradition called 'the messianic' that provides the critical lens through which modernity may be interrogated. In its ongoing struggles with the messianic, liberal modernity confronts the promise and threat of a radically new 'Politics to Come'.
	Arthur Bradley and Paul Fletcher (eds), Journal of Cultural Research Arthur Bradley and Paul Fletcher have co-edited a special double issue of the Journal of Cultural Research (Taylor & Francis) entitled The Messianic Now: Politics, Religion and Culture (Volume 13 Issue 3 & 4, 2009). This special issue is the first major examination of the so-called 'messianic' turn in contemporary thought and contains essays on Benjamin, Levinas, Blanchot, Derrida, Badiou and Agamben amongst others. Contributors include: Howard Caygill, Bettina Bergo, Eric Jacobson and Gerard Loughlin.
	Lee Horsley and Charles Rzepka (eds), Blackwell Companion to Crime Fiction A Companion to Crime Fiction (Wiley-Blackwell, February 2010) presents the definitive guide to this popular genre. It contains a collection of forty-seven newly commissioned essays from a team of leading scholars across the globe. Following the development of the genre from its origins in the eighteenth century through to its phenomenal present day popularity, the Companion features  full-length critical essays on topics ranging from the Newgate novel to police procedurals, hard-boiled and noir, crime on film and graphic novels; and essays on the most significant authors and film-makers, from Arthur Conan Doyle and Dashiell Hammett to Alfred Hitchcock and Martin Scorsese, exploring the ways in which they have shaped and influenced the field.
	Lisa Sampson and Sara Maitland, in A Wilder Vein A Wilder Vein (ed. Linda Cracknell, Two Ravens Press, October 2009) is an anthology of new literary non-fiction that focuses on the relationship between people and the wild places of the British Isles: "writing which animates a connection between humanity and the natural world where it is not obviously dominated by the human presence". The contributors include one of our new Creative Writing PhD students, Lisa Sampson, and her PhD supervisor, Sara Maitland, who is one of our distance tutors in Creative Writing. Sara appeared on BBC Radio 4’s ‘travel magazine’ programme: the 'Excess Baggage' programme, Saturday, 24 October, featured A Wilder Vein, and Sara was interviewed by John McCarthy.
	John Murray, The Legend of Liz and Joe John Murray's most recent novel, The Legend of Liz and Joe (2009), was published by Flambard Press on 1st July 2009.  It was reviewed very favourably in the Independent, Guardian and Independent on Sunday:  the reviewer in the Independent writes: "While it is always a pleasure to read a new John Murray novel, it is not so easy to review one. The usual dutiful compression of plot ("Joanna is a middle-aged novelist whose marriage has run out of steam") and description of style ("The flatness of her prose is a deliberate attempt to...") goes out of the window. A Murray novel is more like a comic opera, full of splendid arias, farcical encounters between characters who can be fairly described as "larger than life", and the very serious business of human love."
	Lee Horsley, The Noir Thriller Palgrave's Crime Files series is publishing a revised and extended paperback version of The Noir Thirller on 24th July 2009.  "Within her constantly original overall argument, Lee Horsley gives or implies a fresh, carefully nuanced reading of each of the hundreds of books and many films she touches on. This study of the twentieth-century thriller in all of its darker manifestations is from now on indispensable" (Martin Priestman).  "An event to delight the heart and invigorate the mind of every fan of crime fiction and every scholar of modernism's sensational 'dark side'..." (Charles Rzepka).  "Unmatched in its scope, its concision, and the acuity of its readings, The Noir Thriller is indispensable. Horsley captures the rich variety of noir fiction like no other critic and in doing so gives this transatlantic, transgeneric tradition of writing the status it deserves" (David Schmid) (Amazon)
	Andrew Tate (ed), Literature and Religion This special issue of The Yearbook of English Studies (Volume 39, Numbers 1-2, 1 July 2009) is edited by Andrew Tate and includes several other Lancaster University contributors.  The introductory essay surveys the evolving field of literature and religion in the early twenty-first century, identifies key figures in the subject area and, with examples from Salman Rushdie and others, considers the relationship between social and religious fragmentation and modes of interpretation. Other essays include Arthur Bradley's "The New Atheist Novel: Literature, Religion, and Terror in Amis and McEwan", David Cooper's "'Matter Matters': Topographical and Theological Space in the Poetry of Norman Nicholson", Andrew Tate's "'Sweeter also than honey': John Ruskin and the Psalms" and Jo Carruthers' "Writing, Interpretation, and the Book of Esther: A Detour via Browning and Derrida".
	Paul Farley, Field Recordings "In the decade since publication of his first collection, The Boy from the Chemist is Here to See You, Paul Farley has become widely regarded as one of Britain's leading poets. During that time he has written regularly for BBC radio. Field Recordings (Donut Press, May 2009) gathers together all his broadcast poetry, and includes detailed author notes and an afterword which illuminates not only the origins of Farley's passion for radio but also some of the potentials and pitfalls of writing for the airwaves. Fans of his work will be happy to encounter these new poems, recognizing familiar concerns and recurring themes, while new readers can easily delight in the music and invention Farley raises effortlessly from the everyday." (Amazon)
	Jane Draycott, Over Over, Jane Draycott's third book, was published by Oxford Poets in April 2009:  "Draycott purges her work of the knowingness that often short-circuits poetry. She goes to the trouble of imagining things for herself, and thus for her readers - whom she trusts not to need or want everything, including the correct moral stance, to be explained. She invites readers to immerse themselves, to spend time until the world refreshes itself. However inhospitable the results may at times prove to be, Draycott affirms the pleasures of the imagination as well as its duties..."  Sean O'Brien, "Immerse Yourself", The Guardian, 25 April 2009
	Terry Eagleton, Reason, Faith and Revolution On April 21st 2009 Yale University Press publishes Professor Terry Eagleton's latest book, Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate:  'Terry Eagleton’s witty and polemical Reason, Faith, and Revolution is bound to cause a stir among scientists, theologians, people of faith and people of no faith, as well as general readers eager to understand the God Debate.' Click here for further details, and here to read a review by Stanley Fish in The New York Times, and here for a selection of YouTube clips. "In the opening sentence of the last chapter of his new book, Reason, Faith and Revolution, the British critic Terry Eagleton asks, "Why are the most unlikely people, including myself, suddenly talking about God?" His answer, elaborated in prose that is alternately witty, scabrous and angry, is that the other candidates for guidance — science, reason, liberalism, capitalism — just don’t deliver what is ultimately needed" (Stanley Fish)
	Sara Maitland, A Book of Silence Sara Maitland's memoir (Granta, November 2008) is "interwoven with the history of silence through fairy-tale and myth, Western and Eastern religious traditions, the Enlightenment and psychoanalysis, up to the ambivalence towards silence in contemporary society. Maitland has built a hermitage on an isolated moor in Galloway, and the book culminates powerfully with her experiences of silence in this new home. A Book of Silence is a deeply thoughtful, honest and illuminating memoir about a phenomenon too often neglected in the contemporary world." Click here to read Peter Stanford's interview, “Sara Maitland: A very unlikely modern hermit”, published in The Independent on Sunday 26th October. See also “Beyond peace and quiet,” The Guardian,  Saturday November 8 2008 - an edited extract from A Book of Silence.
	Simon Bainbridge, Romanticism: A Sourcebook Simon Bainbridge's new book (Palgrave Macmillan, August 2008) is a wide-ranging collection of the key contextual documents which inform the Romantic period.  It includes material on fiercely debated areas such as the French Revolution, women, the slave trade, science and religion.  Documents are supported by substantial editorial material, drawing connections to the major Romantic texts.
	Sara Maitland, Far North and Other Dark Tales The title story of Sara Maitland's collection of stories (Maia Press, March 2008) is now a major film, being shown at several prestigious film festivals since premiering in Venice 2007, and due for general release in the UK in September 2008.  This work offers more 'modern traditional tales' from an acknowledged master of the genre, drawing on the author's deep knowledge of classical mythology and traditional stories from every continent."Far North", based on an Inuit myth, is set among desperate women in the frozen north surviving against all odds. All these stories, formally bold and innovative, emotionally edgy and deeply imbued with a sense of location, address Sara Maitland's primary concerns about the links between beauty and terror, modernity and ritual. Intertwining the everyday and the inexplicable to witty and disquieting effect, her wildest flights of fantasy are anchored in deep psychological understanding and vivid description, overlaid with a wickedly ironic humour.
	Michelene Wandor, "The Author Is Not Dead, Merely Somewhere Else": Creative Writing Reconceived (British Studies Series) Michelene Wandor's new book (Palgrave Macmillan, February 2008) is a radical approach to Creative Writing by a prominent academic and critic, surveying the field and suggesting new approaches.It suggests radical new approaches for Creative Writing. It presents the first history of Creative Writing in the UK. The author is a well-known playwright, poet, broadcaster and public intellectual.Wandor has written the first history of Creative Writing in the UK, analyzing its complex relationship with English and literary theory. Erudite and provocative, the book presents a searching critique of Creative Writing pedagogy, arguing for new approaches. It is indispensable for teachers, students and everyone concerned with the future of literature.
	Lindsey Moore, Arab, Muslim, Woman: Voice and Vision in Postcolonial Literature and Film Lindsey Moore's groundbreaking book (Routledge, May 2008) demonstrates ways in which women appropriate textual and visual modes of representation, often in cross-fertilizing ways, in challenges to Orientalist / colonialist, nationalist, Islamist, and 'multicultural' paradigms. She provides an accessible but theoretically-informed analysis by foregrounding tropes of vision, visibility and voice; post-nationalist melancholia and mother/daughter narratives; transformations of 'homes and harems'; and border crossings in time, space, language, and media.
	Jo Baker, The Telling Jo Baker's new novel, published by Portobello Books in June 2008, is described in the Telegraph review as a 'knock-out ghost story': 'What Jo Baker has done, with remarkable dexterity, is to make this ghost story intensely intimate; it is a haunting that is all about the struggle to communicate. Just as much tension is generated by Rachel's brittle relationship with Mark and her love for her baby, as by unaccountable footsteps heard in the room above. Our anxiety, not just for Rachel's wellbeing, but that of her loved ones, increases as the novel goes on...'  Amongst the things reviews say: “Baker’s deft pacing pays spooky dividends.” John O’Connell, Time Out; ‘The great strength of the novel is that you are equally concerned with both sets of characters, and their stories. Baker’s spare, visual prose is a treat to read.’ Daily Mail; The Telling will be a featured title in the January/ February issue of New Books Magazine.  Read Sinclair McKay's review, "A Haunting with Emotion at its Core," in The Telegraph.
	Arthur Bradley, Derrida's Of Grammatology (Indiana Philosophical Guides) “Everything you need to know about "Derrida's Of Grammatology" is in one volume (published April 2008). Jacques Derrida was one of the most famous and influential philosophers of the later twentieth century. First published in 1967, "Of Grammatology" is his best known text, introducing many fundamental concepts relating to linguistics and writing which he would develop in his later work. This book provides a commentary on "Of Grammatology" which can be read alongside - rather instead of - the text itself by students encountering Derrida for the first time.” (Amazon)
	Andrew Tate, Contemporary Fiction and Christianity This new study (Contiunuum, January 2008) argues against the idea that the 'postmodern condition' of late twentieth and early twenty-first century culture has undermined the close and creative association between religious practice and literature. This study suggests that the novel has become an increasingly vital, dynamic and problematic space for engaging with the sacred.
	Graham Mort, Visibility Graham Mort's Visibility was published by Seren in September 2007: "Though not as well known as he deserves outside poetry's tight-knit circle, within it, Graham Mort is acknowledged as one of contemporary verse's most accomplished practitioners. This book, which showcases a selection of poems from five earlier collections alongside a generous tranche of new work, perfectly exhibits the blend of formal scrupulousness, sensory evocation and intellectual rigour that has shaped his reputation."  (Review in The Guardian, 3rd November) Read The Guardian review...
	Tony Sharpe, Auden Tony Sharpe's guide to Auden's work was published in September 2007.  It offers: "an accessible introduction to the contexts and many interpretations of Auden's texts, from publication to the present; an introduction to key critical texts and perspectives on Auden's life and work, situated in a broader critical history; cross-references between sections of the guide, in order to suggest links between texts, contexts and criticism; and, suggestions for further reading. Part of the "Routledge Guides to Literature" series, this volume is essential reading for all those beginning detailed study of W.H. Auden and seeking not only a guide to his works but also a way through the wealth of contextual and critical material that surrounds them."
	Catherine Spooner and Emma McEvoy (eds), The Routledge Companion to Gothic (Routledge Companions) In a wide ranging series of introductory essays written by some of the leading figures in the field, this essential guide explores the world of Gothic in all its myriad forms throughout the mid-eighteenth Century to the internet age. The Routledge Companion to Gothic (September 2007) includes discussion on: the history of Gothic gothic throughout the English-speaking world, i.e. London and USA as well as the postcolonial landscapes of Australia, Canada and the Indian subcontinent; key themes and concepts ranging from hauntings and the uncanny; Gothic femininities and queer gothic in the modern world, from youth to graphic novels and films. With ideas for further reading, this book is one of the most comprehensive and up-to-date guides on the diverse and murky world of the gothic in literature, film and culture.
	Annie Clarkson, Winter Hands Winter Hands by Annie Clarkson has just been published (October 2007) by Shadowtrain Books.  Annie obtained an MA in Creative Writing from Lancaster in 2005. “Winter Hands crosses boundaries between poetry and prose, inner and outer landscapes, intimacy and being alone. In a series of portraits, this collection explores the vulnerabilities and distress of people who seem to be outside the worlds they survive in.” Read more…
	Andrew Tate, Douglas Coupland Andy Tate’s new monograph on Douglas Coupland was published by Manchester University Press in November 2007:  “This book is the first full-length study of Douglas Coupland, one of the twenty-first century’s most innovative and influential novelists. The study explores the prolific first decade and a half of Coupland’s career, from Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture (1991) to JPod (2006), a period in which he published ten novels and four significant volumes of non-fiction..." Read more...
	John Schad, Someone Called Jacques Derrida John Schad's book, published in the Sussex Academic Press 'Critical Inventions' series, came out in November 2007:  "Someone Called Jacques Derrida, someone called him on the phone, someone who was dead - this was August 22nd 1979. A mystery, he thought; but it is a mystery that began more than ten years earlier, in 1968, when Derrida, a philosopher, visits Oxford and there, before the very eyes of the Philosophy Sub-Faculty, he dies, several times. Murder, he thought. And so I shall investigate, and begin with a sign that the philosopher says he left within a book from the thirteenth century, a strange fortune-telling book that he had found in the oldest part of Oxford's Bodleian Library..." Read more...
	Sally Bushell, James A. Butler, Michael C. Jaye, David García (eds), William Wordsworth, The Excursion (Cornell Wordsworth) This Cornell Wordsworth volume (December 2007) presents the first scholarly edition of The Excursion in half a century--and the first true scholarly edition of the original 1814 text. All manuscripts produced under the author's supervision are separately and completely transcribed in this edition. An introduction, a manuscript history, lists of printed verbal and nonverbal variants, extensive editors' notes, and selected photographs also chronicle the poem's full evolution. In short, this edition makes it possible, for the first time, to follow the complete compositional history of Wordsworth's epic.  Read more...
	Tony Pinkney, William Morris in Oxford: The Campaigning Years, 1879-1895 Tony Pinkney's new monograph on William Morris is being published by illuminati books in November/December 2007.  Oxford was always a profoundly significant place to William Morris: 'A kind of terror always falls upon me as I near it; indignation at wanton or rash changes mingles curiously in me with all that I remember I have lost since I was a lad and dwelling there.' Previous studies of Morris and Oxford have concentrated on his student years. This lively and accessible book tells for the first time the full story of Morris's dramatic late return to Oxford as an architectural and political activist, and of his powerful attempt to transform Oxford culture and to create a 'new Oxford movement'.
	Brian Baker, Iain Sinclair (Contemporary British Novelists) Brian Baker's study of Iain Sinclair, just released (December 2007) by Manchester University Press, provides a clearly written, comprehensive critical introduction to one of the most original contemporary British writers. It provides an overview of all of Sinclair's major works and an analysis of his vision of London. It offers a critically-informed discussion of Sinclair's oevre using a variety of analytical approaches. It makes a significant contribution to the growing scholarship surounding Sinclair's work, including his poetry, fiction, non-fiction and film work. It contains detailed analysis of White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings, Lights Out for the Territory, Landor's Tower and London Orbital.