Linda Wagner-Martin

Hanes Professor of English and Comparative Literature Linda Wagner-Martin, Prof

Given in memory of Ethel A. Tsutsui, Ph. D. and Minoru Tsutsui, Ph. D.

A Biography

Sylvia Plath

Four Decades of Criticism

William Faulkner

Sylvia Plath a Biography

This Reader's Guide is an ideal starting point for students wanting a clear introduction to Plath's life. It studies her relationship with Ted Hughes and his influence on her poetry and its reception and gives close guidance on reading her poetry focusing particularly on the most commonly studied groups of poems. It includes a survey of Plath's critical reception and a guide to further reading.

Sylvia Plath's Poetry

A reading of the oeuvre of Toni Morrison—fiction, non-fiction, and other—drawing extensively from her many interviews as well as her primary texts, Toni Morrison: A Literary Life, second edition provides an overview of Morrison’s intellectual growth as an artist. Linda Wagner-Martin aligns Morrison's novels with the works of Virginia Woolf and William Faulkner, assessing her works as among the most innovative, and most significant, worldwide, of the past fifty plus years. The revised edition includes new discussion of God Help the Child, The Origin of Others, and The Source of Self-Regard. These additions present and intensify scholarship on Morrison’s major literary contributions, but also trace her significant role as a public intellectual, bringing to light the consistency of Morrison’s aesthetic and political visions.

A Literary Life

Toni Morrison

A revised and updated edition of a comprehensive biographical and critical reading of the works of American poet and memoirist Maya Angelou (1928-2014). Linda Wagner-Martin covers all six of Angelou's autobiographies, as well as her essay and poetry collections, whilst also exploring Angelou's life as an African American in the United States, her career as stage and film performer, her thoughtful participation in the Civil Rights actions of the 1960s, and her travels abroad in Egypt, Africa, and Europe. In her discussion of Angelou's methods of writing her stunning autobiography, which began with the 1970 publication of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Wagner-Martin writes about the influences of the Harlem Writers Group (led by James Baldwin, Paule Marshall, and John O. Killens) as well as Angelou's significant friendships with Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., and other leaders from both international and African American United States cultures. Crucial concepts throughout include the role of oral traditions, of song and dance, of the spiritualism of art based on religious belief, of Angelou's voiced rhythms and her polished use of dialogue to convey more abstract meaning. Wagner-Martin shows that, viewing herself as a global citizen, Angelou never lost her spirit of adventure and discovery as well as her ability to overcome. Named an Outstanding Academic Title of the Year by Choice in 2015, this new edition includes two new chapters on Angelou's connections to Africa and on her final years.

Adventurous Spirit

Maya Angelou

Essays in Fiction and Poetry

American Modern

Reexamines Hemingway as America's modernist writer, and explores historical and biographical details of the writer's life, as well as the unexpected dimensions of his accomplishments and influence.

Linda Wagner-Martin

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