“... man in the Hathaway shirt’). Up swelled one of those colossal bubbles of pompous self-regard, enclosing account execs and art directors and copywriters, that leave their sticky residue on history. It’s a commonplace that portrayal of the past can be used to criticise the present. What of those cases in which criticism of the past is used to ...”

“... to whom it all ‘seems’) shape the narrative of the poem. The tension between the self who desires and the self who notices, often fudged in translation, has been an essential element in the influence of Sappho’s poem on later writers of lyric. For Carson, what matters is Sappho’s poetry, not her gender ...”

“... to porn in a page, from raddled lust to a sense of its abject absurdity (Mickey Sabbath’s self-mocking epitaphs in Sabbath’s Theatre, or most of Rabbit’s antics). Oates’s fictional worlds are too harsh for belly laughs or even wry smiles. In her latest novel, The Tattooed Girl, Oates appears to respond to the comparisons made between her work ...”

“... age superstitions: astrology, palmistry, the reading of auras and energies, and the twin goals of self-development and self-enhancement. Mantel wryly deflates the pretensions and the language of spiritualism: one of Al’s bitterest regrets is that Morris is so vulgar and cruel, while ‘other mediums have spirit guides ...”

“... empire. They reject the popular idea that Americans go to war only as a last resort, motivated by self-defence or the desire to preserve and spread freedom rather than national aggrandisement. ‘Good wars’, like the Revolution and World War Two, which seem to fit this model, are memorialised in Washington, Hollywood films and national bestsellers. Anderson ...”

“... are harsh lyrics about promise and failure, and even the title of ‘I Had a Future’ admits self-doubt. Among these poems, however, are also the triumphantly assertive lyric manifestos of ‘Kerr’s Ass’, ‘Innocence’, ‘The Hospital’, and ‘Epic’, which begins: I have lived in important places, times When great events were decided: who ...”

“... and mutter about the ambiguity of his moral lessons. Lamartine winced at his cynical promotion of self-interest, and for Rousseau the method employed by the fox to relieve the crow of its cheese was as much an advertisement for flattery as a warning against flatterers. But though they mistook his observations of human behaviour for universal precepts, La ...”

“... black bourgeoisie the Garland men are noted for their reserve, outward propriety and aristocratic self-regard. Talcott has spent his life living up to the Garland ideal and is expected to redeem the Garland family name. He followed his father into the law and teaches at their shared alma mater, Elm Harbor (a lightly fictionalised Yale Law School). Unlike his ...”

“... changed so profoundly by illness or accident that each called into question the solidity of the self. We were not one, continuous, indivisible whole, but instead, hundreds of separate subsystems, with changes in any one sufficient to disperse the provisional confederation into unrecognisable new countries. Who could take issue with that? No one, at that ...”

“... to negotiate the transfer of power from the British colonial master, only to discover that these self-styled nationalists appeared more intent on sleeping with the master’s daughter than liberating their people: ‘I recall one publicly humiliating instance: a national figure, a truly revered name in a highly sensitive political position. He got so carried ...”

“... cape fell on him. They breathed a sigh of relief. They were rid of the burden.’ Should this self-accusation be read as a comprehensive explanation of the family dynamic and its damage? It lies in the narrative alongside quite different suggestions: there are hints, for instance, of an ugly sexual history between the man and his daughters. A gagging ...”

“... is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness – an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark ...”

“... to abstract from my reading a book that would keep me company.’ What began as an exercise in self-edification grew into a 9000-page, 33-volume compendium of everything that exists in the universe, as it appeared from al-Nuwayri’s perspective in 14th-century Cairo: Nihayat al-Arab fi Funun al-Adab, or The Ultimate Ambition in the Arts of ...”

“... woman whose protagonist is a nonconforming young man. The two examine childhood, parenthood and self-determination, at a time when true autonomy is rare. The British novel reads like a socialist manifesto: simple workers try to lead honest lives and evil landowners manipulate them; its nuance comes in depictions of the natural environment and its attention ...”

“... of class and inequality to bear on subject matter buried deep in the foundations of America’s self-image, and which might be perceived as conservative. The characters in Olive, Again who uncritically celebrate their Americanness are satirised: the bleak English teacher Mrs Ringrose dressing up as a Pilgrim at Thanksgiving, or the foolish Fergus MacPherson ...”