Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in CriticismShortlisted for the Christian Gauss Award, Phi Beta Kappa SocietyA history of the chapter from its origins in antiquity to todayWhy do books have chapters? With this seemingly simple...

"Prison haunts our civilization," writes Victor Brombert. "Object of fear, it is also a subject of poetic reverie." Focusing on French literature of the Romantic era, the author probes the manifold significance of imprisonment as symbol and metaphor of...

A highly original and accessible history of Latin between the sixteenth and twentieth centuriesFor almost three centuries, Latin dominated the civic and sacred worlds of Europe and, arguably, the entire western world. From the moment in the sixteenth...