Category: Reviews
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Wilson, D. Harlan, J.G. Ballard
D. Harlan Wilson, J.G. Ballard (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2017) 214 pp. $22.00 Pb. ISBN: 9780252082955 D. Harlan Wilson’s J.G. Ballard is the first dedicated monograph on J.G. Ballard (1930–2009) since the British novelist’s death to encompass the entirety of Ballard’s literary output, from the early short fiction through to his late autobiography Miracles of…
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Hawhee, Debra, Rhetoric in Tooth and Claw: Animals, Language, Sensation
Debra Hawhee, Rhetoric in Tooth and Claw: Animals, Language, Sensation (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2016) 444 pp. 3 halftones. $45.00 Hb. ISBN: 9780226398174 From the start, Debra Hawhee (1970-) is clear about three major elements in her exemplary and pioneering study, Rhetoric in Tooth and Claw: Animals, Language, Sensation: 1) Nonhuman animals pervade premodern, medieval, and early…
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Bowler, Peter J., A History of the Future: Prophets of Progress from H. G. Wells to Isaac Asimov
Peter J. Bowler, A History of the Future: Prophets of Progress from H. G. Wells to Isaac Asimov (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017) 298 p. $20.00 PDF, £59.99 Hb. £19.99 Pb. ISBN: 9781107148734 Peter Bowler starts A History of the Future by making two key arguments in the opening two chapters. Firstly, that it is…
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Haynes, Roslynn D., From Madman to Crime Fighter: The Scientist in Western Culture
Roslynn D. Haynes, From Madman to Crime Fighter: The Scientist in Western Culture (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017) 424 pp. 23 halftones. $34.95 Pb. ISBN: 9781421423043 From Madman to Crime Fighter is actually a version of a book that first appeared in 1994 under the title From Faust to Strangelove: Representations of the Scientist in Western Literature.…
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McDowell, Paula, The Invention of the Oral: Print Commerce and Fugitive Voices in Eighteenth-Century Britain
Paula McDowell, The Invention of the Oral: Print Commerce and Fugitive Voices in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017) 368 pp. 25 halftones. $45.00 Hb. ISBN:9780226456966 The Invention of the Oral: Print Commerce and Fugitive Voices in Eighteenth-Century Britain is a wide-ranging and well-grounded investigation into the impact of print on eighteenth-century understandings of orality. McDowell…
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Quiroga, Rodrigo Quian, The Forgetting Machine: Memory, Perception, and the Jennifer Aniston Neuron
Rodrigo Quian Quiroga, The Forgetting Machine: Memory, Perception, and the Jennifer Aniston Neuron (Dallas, TX: BenBella Books, Inc., 2017) 170 pp. $14.95 Pb. ISBN: 9781944648541 Quiroga begins his exploration of memory by relating a key scene from the film Bladerunner (1982) which posits a world with synthetic humans, known as replicants. They are gifted with…
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Calvert, Bronwen, Being Bionic: The World of TV Cyborgs
Bronwen Calvert, Being Bionic: The World of TV Cyborgs (London: I. B. Tauris 2017 ) £14.99 Pb. ISBN 978-1-78453-648-0 In Being Bionic, Bronwen Calvert, an associate lecturer with the Open University, begins by introducing us to a famous cyborg example, that of the Borg in the long-running TV series Star Trek. They were first introduced…
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Brant, Clare, Balloon Madness: Flights of Imagination in Britain, 1783-1786
Clare Brant, Balloon Madness: Flights of Imagination in Britain, 1783-1786 (Mantlesham: Boydell and Brewer 2017) 366 pp. £25.00 HB. ISBN: 9781783272532 Clare Brant’s Balloon Madness covers the years 1783-1786, when Britain became fascinated with aeronautical balloons. The ‘balloon madness’ spread through all levels of society and, seemingly, almost every sphere of British culture. Brant’s book…
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Lin, Lana, Freud’s Jaw and Other Lost Objects: Fractured Subjectivity in the Face of Cancer
Lana Lin, Freud’s Jaw and Other Lost Objects: Fractured Subjectivity in the Face of Cancer (New York: Fordham University Press, 2017) 224 pp. £22.00 Pb. ISBN: 9780823277728 For years after its surgical removal, the literary theorist Roland Barthes retained a piece of his own rib in a drawer alongside other items of sentimental value (e.g., an…
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Tilley, Heather, Blindness and Writing: From Wordsworth to Gissing
Heather Tilley, Blindness and Writing: From Wordsworth to Gissing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017) 294 p. £80.00 PDF, £75.00 Hb. ISBN: 9781107194212 Blindness and Writing: From Wordsworth to Gissing ushers in a new way of understanding ocularcentric constructs of blindness and new writing technologies for blind people during the nineteenth century. Heather Tilley’s study…
