Founded in 1956, Penn State University Press publishes rigorously reviewed, high-quality works of scholarship and books of regional and contemporary interest, with a focus on the humanities and social sciences. The publishing arm of the Pennsylvania State University and a division of the Penn State University Libraries, the Press promotes the advance of scholarship by disseminating knowledge—new information, interpretations, methods of analysis—widely in books, journals, and digital publications.
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Spanish, Nahua, and Maya Accounts of the Conquest Wars
After invading highland Guatemala in 1524, Spaniards claimed to have smashed the Kaqchikel and K’iche’ Maya kingdoms and to have forged a new colony—with their leader, Pedro de Alvarado, as Guatemala’s conquistador. This volume shows that the real story of the Spanish invasion was very different. Designed to be an ......
Producers, Consumers, and Activists Challenge the Global Food System
“One problem with the food system is that price is the bottom line rather than having the bottom line be land stewardship, an appreciation for the environmental and social value of small-scale family farms, or for organically grown produce.” —Interview with farmer in Skagit County, Washington
In 1878, the author Marius Roux, a noted friend of Emile Zola and Paul Cézanne, published La proie et l’ombre, a little-known roman à clef featuring a thinly disguised Cézanne as the main character, Germain Rambert. The text prominently features several conversations drawn from famous Impressionist discussions on ......
The curiosity with which Europeans approached the New World was reflected in the writings of Italian historians, missionaries, travelers, and explorers, who described with fascination the customs of the peoples they encountered in their travels. In this study Stefania Buccini examines the representation of the Americas in Italian literature ......
In Eugene O'Neill's Creative Struggle, Doris Alexander gives us a new kind of inside biography that begins where the others leave off. It follows O'Neill through the door into his writing room to give a blow-by-blow account of how he fought out in his plays his great life battles—love against hate, doubt against belief, life ......
This book systematically traces Pound's career from his arrival in London in 1908 to his departure from Paris in 1924, emphasizing his activities but also describing his writings and relating them to his life. Avoiding either vitriolic condemnation or pious hagiography, Wilhelm examines Pound’s strengths, especially his influence on other ......
English lyric poetry from Wyatt to Donne falls into three consecutive stylistic phases. Tottel's Miscellany presided over the first, making the lyrics of Wyatt and Surrey available for imitation by mid-century poets like Barnabe Googe, George Turberville, and George Gascoigne. The Shepheardes Calender and Sidney's Defense ......
The Shepheardes Calender is the poem that launched Edmund Spenser's career and changed the direction of English poetry. In this reappraisal, Lynn Staley Johnson demonstrates that Spenser himself made a self-conscious effort to create a new literature, a new esthetic for a new era. Drawing upon a wide range of primary sources, she ......
The multifaceted career of John Thelwall (1764-1834)—poet, novelist, playwright, journalist, politician, scientist—is the lens through which we are offered here a new look at the phenomenon of British Jacobinism, long distorted by the critical view of it as intellectually weak bequeathed to us by Coleridge and Wordsworth, once ......
