history and criticism

Traces this history of American comedy films, surveying performances by Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, W.C. Fields, Cary Grant, Marilyn Monroe, Mel Brooks, Richard Pryor, Steve Martin, Bill Murray, the Coen brothers, Ben Stiller, Judd Apatow, and other actors and related individuals.

Chronicles the history of heavy metal music from its birth with Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin in the late 1960s to its 1980s heyday and subsequent decline.

Provides brief introductions to works from fifty female artists from the Renaissance through the twentieth century, and includes Marina Abramovi?, Cecilia Beaux, Marry Cassatt, Frida Kahlo, Georgia O'Keeffee, Cindy Sherman, and others.

A collection of essays that explore the cultural contents of J.M. Barrie's children's classic "Peter Pan" and the continuing impact it has on children's literature and popular culture.

Presents the text of the 1897 novel about the wealthy Transylvanian nobleman, Count Dracula, who is revealed as a vampire, and includes a selection of background and source materials, as well as seven critical essays.

Presents a study of European drama, covering Greek tragedy through twentieth-century theatre, focusing on the political, religious, national, ethnic, class-related, gendered, and individual representations of identity, including topics such as the German Enlightenment and the work of Corneille, Goethe, Ibsen, Chekhov, and Beckett.

Presents early twenty-first century critical essays on Jonathan Swift's "Gulliver's Travels" and includes a chronology, a bibliography, and an introduction by critic Harold Bloom.

A series of critical essays on the life and works of eighteenth-century English novelist Jane Austen that includes a chronology and introduction by Harold Bloom.

Presents ten essays on George Orwell's "1984," covering such topics as the novel's composition, Newspeak, adulation of the leader, and the prohibition of decency, and includes a chronology and a bibliography.