Biography, Literature and Literary studies Books

Book SynopsisBeckett and Buddhism undertakes a twenty-first-century reassessment of the Buddhist resonances in Samuel Beckett''s writing. These reverberations, as Angela Moorjani demonstrates, originated in his early reading of Schopenhauer. Drawing on letters and archives along with recent studies of Buddhist thought and Schopenhauer''s knowledge of it, the book charts the Buddhist concepts circling through Beckett''s visions of the ''human predicament'' in a blend of tears and laughter. Moorjani offers an in-depth elucidation of texts that are shown to intersect with the negative and paradoxical path of the Buddha, which she sets in dialogue with Western thinking. She brings further perspectives from cognitive philosophy and science to bear on creative emptiness, the illusory ''I'', and Beckett''s probing of the writing process. Readers will benefit from this far-reaching study of one of the most acclaimed writers of the twentieth century who explored uncharted topologies in his fiction, theatre,Trade Review'Readers interested in the transmission of Eastern thought in modernist texts will find this exploration of the congruence of Beckett's texts with Buddhist thought useful and informative … Recommended.' J. S. Baggett, Choice Connect'Moorjani is a scholar doing a scholar's work, and the results are exhilarating' Jean-Michel Rabaté, University of Pennsylvania'… the study [goes] a long way toward illuminating things that have previously and notoriously puzzled readers of Beckett, from the paradoxical style to the seeming pessimism that pervades his works. … Moorjani's study deserves to be known to readers not only in twentieth-century literary studies but also in world literature, comparative literature, and beyond.' Lidan Lin, Modern Language Quarterly'… this impressive monograph not only continues Moorjani's long career of path-breaking contributions to Beckett studies, but it achieves a mastery of material and persuasiveness of exposition that few researchers can ever hope to attain.' Douglas Atkinson, The Beckett CircleTable of ContentsIntroduction: Buddhism, Schopenhauer, Beckett: Influence Affinity, Relay?; 1. Schopenhauer's Buddhism Revisited: Recent Archival Evidence; 2. East-West Dialogue via Schopenhauer; 3. Buddhist and Mystic Threads in the Early Fiction; 4. Beckett's Paradoxical Logic through Buddhist and Western Lenses; 5. The Coincidence of Contraries and Noh Drama; 6. The No-Self Staged and Voices from Elsewhere; 7. Rebirth and the Buddhist Unborn in the Fiction and Drama; 8. Dreaming 'all away' in the Final Texts.

Read more less

Book SynopsisA new take on the origins of the Southern Literary Renaissance, Reviewing the South shows how book reviewing played a vital role in shaping an image of the South in the American national consciousness during the interwar years.Trade Review'Gardner, one of America's leading literary historians, offers strikingly fresh insights into the South and the nation between the World Wars. In shifting our focus from authors to the commercial book industry, Gardner reveals a world of reviewers, readers, and publishers, a culture that has remained largely hidden until now. This book will shape our understanding of American literary history for years to come.' Jonathan Daniel Wells, University of Michigan'Sarah Gardner's lively and, at times, provocative Reviewing the South locates the origins of the Southern Renaissance in the joint efforts of publishers, daily newspapers, and weekly journals (both inside and outside the South), and, of course, book reviewers and critics. Her treatment of the intersection of the Harlem Renaissance with the Southern Renaissance is particularly fresh and revealing, while her categories of analysis – realism, traditionalism, and the genre of the grotesque and gothic – will be of great help to future students of the territory that Gardner has so skilfully mapped here. Reviewing the South is a must-read for literary historians and intellectual historians of the South, and should prove invaluable for anyone interested in Southern and American cultural history.' Richard King, Emeritus Professor, University of Nottingham'Gardner has produced a fascinating analysis of the role of the south in the American imaginary during the interwar years based on a sophisticated and nuanced exploration of the role of reviewers and their reviews of a wide range of southern fiction in the mainstream press during those years.' Michael Winship, University of Texas, Austin'Gardner begins this cultural-historical study of the southern literary renaissance - a rebirth in and new direction for literature from the southern US after WWI - with a review of the roles that book publishers and reviewers played in steering readers to worthwhile books. … A central, intriguing idea underlying Gardner's analysis is that the line between meeting a demand and creating that demand in the first place is sometimes hard to trace. The book looks at how southern renaissance writers including Julia Peterkin, Jean Toomer, Ellen Glasgow, Erskine Caldwell, and William Faulkner rejected sentimentality and nostalgia, offering instead a more realistic view of Jim Crow. Analysis of reviews, readers' replies, and advertisements demonstrates why these writers' works gained attention between the wars, how readers responded to them, and why Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind outsold them all. … Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.' C. A. Bily, ChoiceTable of ContentsIntroduction: from Renaissance to reformation; 1. The world the reviewers made; 2. The cultural economy of reading in the interwar years; 3. The South meets Harlem; 4. Confronting Jim Crow; 5. Away down South in the land of problems; 6. A class of burden bearers; 7. The most audacious book ever written by Southerners; 8. Fiction fights the Civil War; Epilogue.

Read more less

Book SynopsisFifteen leading scholars and practitioners of theatre systematically explore, from a variety of perspectives, contemporary adaptations of Greek tragedy. The volume offers both a survey of recent developments and much-needed theoretical grounding in what is an increasingly dynamic approach to an ancient dramatic genre.Trade Review'… this is a volume that is broad in its aims and encompasses vast swathes of intellectual enquiry, political event, and theatrical activity. It will be especially useful for teachers of Greek tragic reception, and of interest to wider audiences too.' Lucy Jackson, Bryn Mawr Classical ReviewTable of ContentsIntroduction; Prelude: Adapting Greek Tragedy: A Historical Perspective Vayos Liapis; Part I: Adapting Greek Tragedy: Definitions, Conceptual Foundations, Ethics: 1. Definitions: Adaptation and Related Modalities Katja Krebs; 2. Forsaking the Fidelity Discourse: The Application of Adaptation Peter Meineck; 3. Translation and/as Adaptation Lorna Hardwick; 4. Adaptation as a Love Affair: The Ethics of Directing the Greeks Avra Sidiropoulou; Part II: Adaptation on the Page and on the Stage: Re-inscribing the Greek Classics: 5. Interlude: Speaking Up: Theatre Practitioners on Adapting the Classics; 6. The View from the Archive: Performances of Ancient Tragedy at the National Theatre, 1963–1973 Adam Lecznar; 7. Compromise, Contingency, and Gendered Adaptation: The Case of the Malthouse's Antigone Jane Montgomery Griffiths; 8. Technology, Media and Intermediality in Contemporary Adaptations of Greek Tragedy Peter Campbell; 9. Violence in Adaptations of Greek Tragedy Simon Perris; 10. Adaptations of Greek Tragedies in non-Western Performance Cultures Erika Fischer-Lichte; 11. Cultural Identities: Appropriations of Greek Tragedy in Post-colonial Discourse Elke Steinmeyer; 12. Trapped between Fidelity and Adaptation? On the Reception of Ancient Greek Tragedy in Modern Greece Anastasia Bakogianni; 13. Adaptation and the Transtextual Palimpsest: Anne Carson's Antigonick as a Textual/Visual Hybrid Vayos Liapis.

Read more less

Book SynopsisCriticism of the work of David Foster Wallace has tended to be atomistic, focusing on a single aspect of individual works. A Companion to the Work of David Foster Wa ll ace is designed as a professional study of all of Wallace's creative work. This volume includes both thematic essays and focused examinations of each of his major works of fiction.Trade Review"A Companion to David Foster Wallace Studies' academic rigour is a welcome contribution to the study of this most influential of contemporary U.S. writers." - 49th Parallel "A major collection on the work of David Foster Wallace, with essential contributions on his place in American literary history. Boswell and Burn present a stellar line-up of Wallace specialists, some of whom finally tackle issues such as gender and the importance of the Midwest." - Luc Herman, Professor of Literature, University of Antwerp, Belgium "Incisive and wide-ranging, this volume assembles some of the best critics at work today for a fascinating analysis of David Foster Wallace's writing. Alternating between fresh readings of individual texts and provocative meditations on the subjects that so occupied Wallace himself, these essays testify to Wallace's brilliance and profound influence on contemporary literature. Burn and Boswell have assembled a collection essential for anyone - from the beginning student to the serious scholar - who wants to understand more about Wallace's remarkable literary achievement." - Timothy Melley, Professor of English and Director of the Miami University Humanities Center, USA and author of The Covert Sphere: Secrecy, Fiction, and the National Security StateTable of ContentsPreface 1. Almost a Novel: The Broom of the System ; Patrick O'Donnell 2. A Fiction of Response: Girl with Curious Hair in Context; Kasia Boddy 3. David Foster Wallace and the Mathematics of Infinity; Roberto Natalini 4. "Webs of Nerves Pulsing and Firing': Infinite Jest and the Science of Mind; Stephen J. Burn 5. Location's Location: Placing David Foster Wallace; Paul Quinn 6. Mediated Immediacy in Brief Interviews with Hideous Men ; Mary K. Holland 7. '…': Language, Gender, and Modes of Power in the Work of David Foster Wallace; Claire Hayes-Brady 8. 'The Constant Monologue Inside Your Head': Oblivion and the Nightmare of Consciousness; Marshal Boswell 9. 'The Chains of Not Choosing': Free Will and Faith in William James and David Foster Wallace; David H. Evans 10. The Pale King , or, The White Visitation; Brian McHale 11. The Novel After David Foster Wallace; Andrew Hoberek

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe first extensive study of gay and lesbian historical fiction, this book demonstrates how the highly popular sub-genre helps us understand gay and lesbian history. It shows not only why the sub-genre should be taken more seriously by historians but also how it implicitly works to ameliorate divisions between Christianity and homosexuality.Trade Review"Considered the first full-length study of its kind, Norman W. Jones's Gay and Lesbian Historical Fiction defends its subject matter from criticisms of anachronisms, like including gay characters before such terms existed . . . Jones's study is a foundational step in the right direction." - Modern Fiction Studies"An astute reader, prodigiously well-read, Jones discovers inside queer historical novels the powerful ghosts of Christianities pronounced dead - ghosts who guard still the mysteries of articulate desire.He urges us not to exorcise them.He shows instead how to coax such scorching angels with the riddles of re-imagined memories." - Mark D. Jordan, Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Religion at Emory University; Author of The Invention of Sodomy in Christian Theology and The Ethics of Sex "This book succeeds splendidly on several different fronts. Jones has internalized every arcane turn in queer studies of the past fifteen years, yet writes with scrupulous clarity. More than an engaging and incisive analysis of gay and lesbian historical fiction, it is an original and significant contribution to gay and lesbian histories, and even to religious studies, Jones brilliantly uncovering the intimate interconnections between coming-out and conversion narratives. The result is a transdisciplinary and post-theoretical tour de force." - Stephen D. Moore, Author of God s Gym: Divine Male Bodies of the Bible and God s Beauty Parlor: And Other Queer Spaces in and around the BibleTable of ContentsCan We Talk? Spot the Homo: Definitions Revisionist Histories from Mysterious Hauntings Coming-Out Stories as Conversion Narratives Chosen Communities: Familiar Stories from Strange Bedfellows Romancing the Past: The Uses of Identification

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis book exposes the ways in which ostensibly normative sexualities depend upon queerness to shore up their claims of privilege. Through readings of such classic texts as The Canterbury Tales and Eger and Grime , Tison Pugh explains how sexual normativity can often be claimed only after queerness has been rejected.Trade Review"Adventurous, accessible, and fun, Pugh's study certainly qualifies as a must read for any medievalist interested in issues of sexuality and gender." - Speculum "Sexuality and Its Queer Discontents in Middle English Literature is an excellent, groundbreaking book and a major contribution to the ongoing project of recuperating the queer in medieval literature. Pugh's primary concern is with constructions of heterosexual masculinity, and the ways in which such constructions are enabled by the intercession of the queer. This has always been one of the main projects of Queer Theory, and Pugh's book serves as a demonstration of the power of Queer Theory to address pre-modern representations, as well as being an important intervention in the study of medieval literature itself." - Robert Sturges, Professor of English, Arizona State University and author of Chaucer's Pardoner and Gender Theory and Dialogue and Deviance "Pugh s attention to questions of genre and narrative structure in the book is consistently engaging" - Studies in the Age of ChaucerTable of ContentsSexuality and Its Queer Discontents in Middle English Literature Abandoning Desires, Desiring Readers, and the Divinely Queer Triangle of Pearl Queering Harry Bailey: Gendered Carnival, Social Ideologies, and Masculinity under Duress in the Canterbury Tales 'He Nedes Moot unto the Pley Assente': Queer Fidelities and Contractual Hermaphroditism in Chaucer's Clerk's Tale From Boys to Men to Hermaphrodites to Eunuchs: Queer Formations of Romance Masculinity and the Hagiographic Death Drive in Amis and Amiloun Queer Castration, Patriarchal Privilege, and the Comic Phallus in Eger and Crime Compulsory Queerness and the Pleasures of Medievalism

Read more less

a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

Read more less

Book SynopsisGiacomo Casanova (1725-1798) was born the son of a moderately poor acting family at a time when the stage carried enormous social stigma. Yet in his own lifetime he achieved celebrity across Europe, rubbing shoulders with numerous of the eighteenth century's greatest men and women, from Frederick the Great to Catherine the Great, from Voltaire to Albrecht von Haller, from Pope Benedict XIV to Pope Clement XIII. It was a fame that had little to do with his romantic exploits. This was to come later, following upon the posthumous publication of his magnificent History of My Life. An adventurer and a man of learning, his was an extraordinary career whose story was intertwined with the story of eighteenth-century Europe. Casanova's Life and Times, the first book of this two-volume project, concentrates on what it was like to live in the eighteenth century. This second book, Casanova & Enlightenment, now turns to Casanova's intellectual development within the context of the Enlightenment,

Read more less

Book SynopsisIn London in the mid-1980s, over late nights and early mornings, Nigel Newton and David Reynolds came up with a plan: the establishment of a major independent publishing company, fuelled by ground-breaking, ambitious ideas. In 1987, their plans came to fruition with the announcement of Bloomsbury Publishing. For all the ambition embedded in Bloomsbury's DNA from its inception, no one could have envisaged the 35 years that would follow, years that saw Bloomsbury grow into the UK s largest independent publisher.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe surrealist antics of Gary Barwin will run the predictability of your universe through a particle accelerator. Watch as your right eyebrow turns into you as a child. Watch Jeff connect the mower to the Internet to cut other people's lawns. Hear the sploosh as Barwin drops some extra syllables in Basho's frog pond. Funny, smart and as unexpected as the Spanish Inquisition, Raising Eyebrows is divided into four mind-boggling sections - dirty dogs, my life in the salad spinner, ukiah poems: frogments from the frag pond, and bassoon throng blues. Raising Eyebrows will make you do just that.

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis‘Imagined Sound’ is a unique cartography of the artistic, historical and political forces that have informed the post-World War II representation of Australian landscapes. It is the first book to formulate the unique methodology of ‘imagined sound’, a new way to read and listen to literature and music that moves beyond the dominance of the visual, the colonial mode of knowing, controlling and imagining Australian space. Emphasising sound and listening, this approach draws out and re-examines the key narratives that shape and are shaped by Australian landscapes and histories, stories of first contact, frontier violence, the explorer journey, the convict experience, non-Indigenous belonging, Pacific identity and contemporary Indigenous Dreaming. ‘Imagined Sound’ offers a compelling analysis of how these narratives are reharmonised in key works of literature and music. Trade Review‘These essays take us closer to a recognition of the role of sound in the formation of national identity, a far more complex dynamic than simplistic celebrations of, for example, “national” musics. They reveal the contradictions and fissures in the bland generalisations that have generally underpinned representations of Australian identity.’ —Bruce Johnson, Professor, University of Technology Sydney, Australia; University of Turku, Finland; and University of Glasgow, UK"Imagined Sound offers listening as a powerful vehicle through which we can understand the events, people and landscapes we think we know. Listening, Joseph Cummins says, needs to be practised and is always open to improvement. His scholarly approach and diversity of subject choices have resulted in an erudite and persuasive book, one that fosters listening and puts a focus on imagination, something even Albert Einstein considered more important than knowledge. — Loretta Bernard, Loudmouth, May 2021"Table of ContentsPreface; Acknowledgements; Introduction – Imagined Sound; Part One: Listening to the Continent; 1. Reimagining ‘the centre’: Francis Webb’s ‘Eyre All Alone’ and David Lumsdaine’s Aria for Edward John Eyre; 2. Midnight Oil: Sounding Australian Rock around the Bicentenary; 3. Sound and Silence: Listening and Relation in the Novels of Alex Miller; Part Two: Listening to Islands and Archipelagos; 4. An Archipelago of Convicts and Outsiders: The Songs of The Drones and Gareth Liddiard; 5. Echoes between Van Diemen’s Land and Tasmania: The Space of the Island in Richard Flanagan’s Death of a River Guide and Carmel Bird’s Cape Grimm; 6. A Sonic Passage Between Islands: Mutiny Music by Baecastuff; Part Three: Listening to the Continental Archipelago; 7. Noisy Songlines in the Top End; Coda; Notes; Works Cited; Index.

Read more less

Book SynopsisExactly when Matisse and Picasso first met is open to debate. Their earliest encounter may have taken place during the Matisse retrospective at Galerie Druet right before the 1906 Salon des Indépendants. The latter marked the first time all the Fauves exhibited together. The centerpiece was Matisse’s monumental Le bonheur de vivre. Leo Stein bought the painting while the Salon was still running, regarding it as “the most important work of our time.” This opinion undoubtedly annoyed Picasso. Jealousy of the other man’s success goaded him to greater innovations. In his view, the new art would have to match the sense of endless discovery that science and technology were offering. The 1900 “Exposition Universelle” had already shown the latest marvels in engineering. If painting wanted to keep the public’s attention, instead of merely reproducing what the eye saw, it had to generate its own reality on the surface of the canvas, a reality more vivid than, and bearing only the mostcursory resemblance to, anything found in nature. Matisse was also a catalyst in that he was the one who introduced Picasso to African sculptures. Max Jacob recalls: “Matisse took a black, wooden statuette from a table and showed it to Picasso. It was the first piece of Negro wooden art. Picasso held onto it all evening. The next morning, when I arrived at the studio, the floor was strewn with sheets of paper, and on each sheet was drawn the head of a woman; all of them were more or less the same: one eye, an oversized nose attached to the mouth, and a lock of hair on the shoulders. Cubism was thus born” (cited in Janine Warnod, Washboat Days [New York: Grossman Publishers Warnod, 1972, p. 128]).

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe autobiography of well-known character, Goronwy Evans, who has served as a minister for fifty years, and who is one of Lampeter''s unique characters.

Read more less

Book SynopsisRecognised as the Italian capital of noir, Bologna (Emilia-Romagna, Northern Italy) continues to produce striking writers. This book introduces Marilu Oliva, defined by Maurizo de Giovanni and Matteo Strukul as the most incisive voice of noir in Italy.

Read more less

Book SynopsisMarking the centenary of Ireland’s – and possibly the world’s – most famous novel, this joyful introductory guide opens up Ulysses to a whole new readership, offering insight into the literary, historical and cultural elements at play in James Joyce’s masterwork. Both eloquent and erudite, this book is an initiation into the wonders of Joyce’s writing and of the world that inspired it, written by Daniel Mulhall, Ireland’s ambassador to the United States and an advocate for Irish literature around the world. One hundred years on from that novel’s first publication, Ulysses: A Reader’s Odyssey takes us on a journey through one of the twentieth century’s greatest works of fiction. Exploring the eighteen chapters of the novel and using the famous structuring principle of Homer’s Odyssey as our guide, Daniel Mulhall releases Ulysses from its reputation of impenetrability, and shows us the pleasure it can offer us as readers.Trade ReviewI can take heart from Dan Mulhall, Ireland’s ambassador to the US, whose Ulysses: A Reader’s Odyssey is just published. He takes a practical approach: if some bits of the book prove just too baffling, simply bin them and skip on a few pages. -- Jude Webber * Financial Times *Powerfully, [Mulhall] argues that Joyce and Ireland for him are indissociable and that he retains a burning relevance today. -- Anne Fogarty * The Irish Times *....an excellent guide through daunting terrain. -- Pat Carty * Hot Press *...releases the great masterpiece from its reputation of impentrability. An affectionate, accessible tribute. -- JP O'Malley * Sunday Independent *Ambassador Mulhall cleverly decodes all 18 episodes of the novel, providing personal and funny insights that contextualize and illuminate Joyce’s text, making you want to pick up "Ulysses" again. -- Ted Smyth * Irish Central *An informed, enjoyable guide, it homes in on Ulysses’ emotional core […] A convivial companion to help navigate Joyce’s masterpiece. -- Dermot Bolger * Irish Independent *Never has a visit to the attic proven so educational. -- Dermot Keyes * Waterford News and Star *This book is a delightful, chatty introduction to the wonderful world of James Joyce’s Ulysses -- Felix M. Larkin * The Irish Catholic *James Joyce’s magnus opus remains in need of chaperones. This is certainly one of the better ones available — highly readable, personable and well researched. -- Kevin Power * The Times (UK) *‘In this genial, largely first-person narrative, based on Mulhall’s experience of discussing Ulysses .. during his international postings, he argues that Joyce is a significant asset for the “soft power” of the Irish state.’ -- Emer Nolan * The Times Literary Supplement *Mulhall brings a historian’s eye to Joyce’s text, rather than that of a literary critic, and he writes about Ulysses with exuberance and evident enjoyment. -- David Blake Knox * Dublin Review of Books *

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisA modern sensibility suffused with urban sophistication. In everyday scenes he shows us what's most noble in human relationships, alongside the basest fears and anxieties. Irony and sarcasm somehow never seem to obscure the warmth of Karlis's voice and his attention to intimate details. This book represents Karlis at the peak of his poetic power: gripping, vivid and not a little romantic. Karlis himself says: "I try to say something that I would like to present as beautiful or, on the contrary, something that can not and must not be taken as beautiful."Table of ContentsKo tur liegties / Why Deny It; Dharmas lauka / In the Dharma Field; Engelis / Angel; Status quo / Status Quo; Jauna dzive / New Life; Ka bilde / Picture Perfect; Velejumies / Wish; Lietus / Rain; Kailgliemei / Slugs; Erglim / To the Eagle; Ganins / Shepherd; Pasaka par zelta jumpravu / Tale of the Golden Maiden; Vestule / Letter; Ieksejas kartibas noteikumi / Internal Rules of Conduct; Gramata / Book; Prezidente / President; Es ceru uz pulksteni... / I hope for a clock...; Kada izrade / At a Performance; Laika zinas / Weather Forecast; Remonts / Renovation; Filma / Film; Mutes / Mouths; Upes par manas zemes vaigu... / Rivers over the face of my country...; Nakts Pardaugava / Night in Pardaugava; Mes / We; Es / I; Karaviri / Soldiers; Zimes / Signs; Sniegavirs / Snowman; Metals / Metal; Atminas no tautiska laikmeta / Memories from the Age of National Awakening : Magnata atminas / Memories of a Tycoon; Islandiesu majsaimnieces atminas / Memories of an Icelandic Housewife; Retorika atminas / Memories of a Rhetorician; Karala Ibi atminas / Memories of Ubu Roi; Sanco Pansas atminas / Memories of Sancho Panza; Doktora Vatsona atminas / Memories of Dr. Watson Live; Kambariti aiz biologijas... / In the closet behind the biology lab...; Jauna viela / New Material; Pec daiem gadiem aizbraucu... / After a few years had passed...; Pasaka par filologi Sintiju / Tale of Philologist Cynthia; Problemas / Problems; Mamin, man ir plans! / Mommy, I Have a Plan!; Daugavas kreisaja krasta / On the Left Bank of the Daugava; Pavasaris Pardaugava / Spring in Pardaugava; Raideris / Rider; Roka / Hand Savas kartas patiksana / Enjoying My Class; Sals / Salt; Televizors / TV; Udens malki / Drops of Water; Meli / Lies; Uzvara / Victory; Labu apetiti / Bon appetit!; Puteklus slaukot / Dusting; Jus / You; Zentralfriedhof Munster; Pieaugusie / Adults; Labvakar, musu mazo draudzin... / Good evening, little darling...

Read more less

Book SynopsisIn 1986, Susan Campbell made the chance discovery of a hitherto unknown garden diary. She spent the next 35 years researching its background before writing this book. The diary was written between 1838 and 1865 by the father of Charles Darwin, Doctor Robert Darwin and after his death in 1848 it was continued by his sister, Susan. It describes the horticultural and domestic activities at The Mount, a large house with extensive, beautiful gardens and pastures on the banks of the River Severn, in Shrewsbury. It was the home of the Darwin family from 1800 until Susan's death in 1866 and, in 1809, it was Charles's birthplace. Apart from revealing that Doctor Darwin made his garden available for several of Charles's early horticultural experiments (1838-1841) the diary describes all the plants that grew in this garden, whether ornamental and exotic, utilitarian or edible, as well as the keeping of cows and pigs, the exchanges of plants with neighbours and family, and occasional events of local importance.

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis volume is a study of human entanglements with Nature as seen through the mode of haunting. As an interruption of the present by the past, haunting can express contemporary anxieties concerning our involvement in the transformation of natural environments and their ecosystems, and our complicity in their collapse. It can also express a much-needed sense of continuity and relationality. The complexity of the question—who and what gets to be called human with respect to the nonhuman—is reflected in these collected chapters, which, in their analysis of cinematic and literary representations of sentient Nature within the traditional gothic trope of haunting, bring together history, race, postcolonialism, and feminism with ecocriticism and media studies. Given the growing demand for narratives expressing our troubled relationship with Nature, it is imperative to analyze this contested ground.“Chapter 6” is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.Trade Review“Haunted Nature vitally adds to the ever-evolving theoretical landscape of the eco-gothic. … Blazan’s volume in particular offers fascinating exploration of nonhumans in human ideological constellations. … this collection of essays uniquely invents a revolutionary microscope for us to envision both the visible and invisible horrors to create a new approach. … Comprised of unconventional, popular speculative frictions, Haunted engages the reader with the serious, pressing and yet seemingly familiar environmental changes of the creepy-crawly 21st century.” (Rebecca Jordan, Journal of Ecohumanism, Vol. 2 (1), January, 2023)Table of Contents1.Haunting and Nature: An Introduction.-2. Microgothic: Microbial Aesthetics of Haunted Nature.-3. Black Mold, White Extinction: I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House, The Haunting of Hill House, “Gray Matter,” and H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Shunned House”.-4.Vegetomorphism: Exploring the Material Within the Aesthetics of the EcoGothic in Stranger Things and Annihilation.-5. An Ecology of Abject Women: Frontier Gothicism and Ecofeminism in Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle.-6. Alligators in the Living Room: Terror and Horror in the Capitalocene.-7. Haunted Technonature: Anthropocene Coloniality in Ng Yi-Sheng’s Lion City (2018).-8. Haunted Nature, Haunted Humans: Intelligent Trees, Gaia, and the Apocalypse Meme.-9.The Global Poltergeist: COVID-19 Hauntings

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis book provides an overview of some of the most important critics of “Enlightenment rationalism.” The subjects of the volume (including, among others, Pascal, Vico, Schmitt, Weber, Anscombe, Scruton, and Tolkien) do not share a philosophical tradition as much as a skeptical disposition toward the notion, common among modern thinkers, that there is only one standard of rationality or reasonableness, and that that one standard is or ought to be taken from the presuppositions, methods, and logic of the natural sciences. The essays on each thinker are intended not merely to offer a commentary on that thinker, but also to place the person in the context of this larger stream of anti-rationalist thought. Table of Contents1. Introduction2. Conservatism and Social Criticism: Pascal on Faith, Reason, and Politics3. Giambattista Vico and Democratic Pluralism: Lessons for Deliberative Democracy4. A Modest Spinozist: George Eliot and the Limits of Rationalism5. Projections Upon the Void: Irving Babbitt’s Critique of Naturalism6. Carl Schmitt's Exceptional Critique of Rationalism7. Moral Man in a Morally Irrational World: Max Weber and the Limits of Reason8. The Moral Personality of Mikhail Bulgakov9. Nec Spe Nec Metu: Philosophic Catharsis in Karl Löwith’s Meaning in History10. Metaphor, Meaning, and Mind: Knowledge and Imagination in Owen Barfield11. Rings and Rationalism: Tolkien’s Tales Against Domination12. Shedding the Shackles of Rationalism13. Beautiful Minds: Gregory Bateson on Ecology, Insanity, and Wisdom14. Robert Nisbet: Art, History, and the Anti-Rationalism of Sociological Methodology15. Elizabeth Anscombe on Rationalism16. A.C. Graham on Rationalism, Irrationalism, and Anti-Rationalism (“Aware Spontaneity”)17. Intention, Intellect, and Imagination: Stuart Hampshire’s Pluralism18. Rationality and Tradition in Roger Scruton’s Thought19. A Counter-Enlightenment of the Present: A Defense of John Grays' Modus Vivendi Liberalism

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis book reconstructs the lines of nihilism that Walter Benjamin took from Friedrich Nietzsche that define both his theory of art and the avant-garde, and his approach to political action. It retraces the eccentric route of Benjamin's philosophical discourse in the representation of the modern as a place of “permanent catastrophe”, where he attempts to overcome the Nietzschean nihilism through messianic hope. Using conventions from literary criticism this book explores the many sources of Benjamin's thought, demonstrating that behind the materialism which Benjamin incorporates into his Theses on the Concept of History is hidden Nietzsche's nihilism. Mauro Ponzi analyses how Benjamin’s Arcades Project uses figures such as Baudelaire, Marx, Aragon, Proust and Blanqui as allegories to explain many aspects of modernity. The author argues that Benjamin uses Baudelaire as a paradigm to emphasize the dark side of the modern era, offering us a key to the interpretation of communicative and cultural trends of today. Table of ContentsIntroduction.- Chapter 1: Capitalism as Religion.- Chapter 2: Organizing Pessimism.- Chapter 3: Nietzsche: Work’s editions and interpretations.- Chapter 4: The Cry of Marsyas. History as place of permanent catastrophe.- Chapter 5: Hidden Refusal.- Chapter 6: The Dream Space.- Chapter 7: Baudelaire.- Chapter 8: The Order of the Profane.- Select Bibliography.- Index.

Read more less

Book SynopsisDarauf haben Interessierte und Kenner gewartet: Kindlers Literatur Lexikon neu aufgelegt. Von den ersten schriftlichen Zeugnissen der Menschheit bis zur Gegenwart versammelt das epochale Nachschlagewerk rund 13.000 Werke aus allen Literaturen der Welt. Völlig neu bearbeitet und um eine Fülle von Einträgen ergänzt, erschließt das Werklexikon in 17 Bänden und einem Registerband Belletristik, Briefe, Tagebücher und Memoiren, Populär-, Kinder- und Jugendliteratur sowie Sachtexte vielfältiger Disziplinen. Neu: Einleitende Biogramme (biografische Kurzinformationen) skizzieren die zentralen Lebensdaten der Autoren. Eine Vielzahl zusätzlicher Werkgruppenartikel eröffnet kompakte Einblicke in das Gesamtwerk einzelner Schriftsteller. Die komplett überarbeiteten Literaturangaben schaffen mit Hinweisen auf die wichtigsten weiterführenden Werke eine fundierte wissenschaftliche Basis. Rund 600 anonyme Werke und Artikel zu Stoffen der Weltliteratur runden das Lexikon ab. Ein unentbehrlicher und einzigartiger Wissensfundus.

Read more less

Book SynopsisDarauf haben Interessierte und Kenner gewartet: Kindlers Literatur Lexikon neu aufgelegt. Von den ersten schriftlichen Zeugnissen der Menschheit bis zur Gegenwart versammelt das epochale Nachschlagewerk rund 13.000 Werke aus allen Literaturen der Welt. Völlig neu bearbeitet und um eine Fülle von Einträgen ergänzt, erschließt das Werklexikon in 17 Bänden und einem Registerband Belletristik, Briefe, Tagebücher und Memoiren, Populär-, Kinder- und Jugendliteratur sowie Sachtexte vielfältiger Disziplinen. Neu: Einleitende Biogramme (biografische Kurzinformationen) skizzieren die zentralen Lebensdaten der Autoren. Eine Vielzahl zusätzlicher Werkgruppenartikel eröffnet kompakte Einblicke in das Gesamtwerk einzelner Schriftsteller. Die komplett überarbeiteten Literaturangaben schaffen mit Hinweisen auf die wichtigsten weiterführenden Werke eine fundierte wissenschaftliche Basis. Rund 600 anonyme Werke und Artikel zu Stoffen der Weltliteratur runden das Lexikon ab. Ein unentbehrlicher und einzigartiger Wissensfundus.

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis classic novel, first published in 1860, tells the story of Maggie Tulliver. Intelligent and headstrong but trapped by the conventions of family tradition and rural life, Maggie is one of the great heroines of Victorian literature. Along with Maggie's story, the novel also tells a companion tale of the social pressures that restrict the vision of her beloved brother Tom. George Eliot's most autobiographical novel, The Mill on the Floss remains one of her most popular and influential works.This Broadview edition includes a critical introduction and extensive contextualizing notes as well as a broad range of appendices drawn from contemporary documents dealing with issues such as 19th-century views of disability, education, and the Woman Question.Trade Review“This edition of George Eliot’s most passionate novel about a woman’s life is accompanied by a selection of contemporary materials that demonstrate the surprisingly radical context of the author’s views at this point in her career. Oliver Lovesey has selected brief, eminently readable portions from Eliot’s own translations, essays, and reviews that will educate the reader in the ‘real’ George Eliot—a woman of amazing education herself, and of profoundly original thought that transcended the conventions of her time. The edition also includes the full text of the author’s poem, ‘Brother and Sister,’ a parallel narrative of Eliot’s childhood that is crucial to the reader’s understanding of the novel, as well as other very useful selections from historical documents and contemporary reviews of the novel.” — Mary Wilson Carpenter, Queen’s University“This edition is a splendid presentation of George Eliot’s most autobiographical novel. The long and generous introduction dispels some of the myths about the author’s life, traces subtle relations between the novel and the moral complexities Eliot faced in Victorian society, places the novel in the context of her life’s work, and offers valuable analyses of the novel’s style and structure. Footnotes throughout the text helpfully explain dialect words, obsolete expressions and literary allusions. Excerpts from George Eliot’s critical writings, added as appendices, give insight into some of the ideas about fiction, religion, and the place of women in society that entered into the writing of The Mill on the Floss.” — Jacob Korg, Professor Emeritus, University of WashingtonTable of ContentsAcknowledgementsIntroductionGeorge Eliot: A Brief ChronologyA Note on the TextThe Mill on the FlossAppendix A: George Eliot’s Translations, Essays, Reviews, and Poems From George Eliot’s translation of Ludwig Feuerbach’s The Essence of Christianity (1854) [George Eliot], “Margaret Fuller and Mary Wollstonecraft,” Leader (13 October 1855) From [George Eliot], review of Thomas Keightley’s Life, Opinions, and Writings of John Milton, The Westminster Review (October 1855) [George Eliot], “The Antigone and Its Moral,” Leader (29 March 1856) From [George Eliot], “Silly Novels by Lady Novelists,” The Westminster Review (October 1856) From George Eliot, “Notes on ‘The Spanish Gypsy’ and Tragedy in General” (1868) George Eliot, “Brother and Sister,” The Legend of Jubal and Other Poems (1874) Appendix B: Contemporary Reviews of The Mill on the Floss Spectator (7 April 1860) [E.S. Dallas], The Times (19 May 1860) [Dinah Mulock], Macmillan’s Magazine (April 1861) From Henry James, The Atlantic Monthly (October 1866) Appendix C: Historical Documents: Mythic and Religious Contexts; Medicine and Education From Mrs. Anna Jameson, “St. Christopher,” Sacred and Legendary Art, vol. 2 (1848) From Daniel Defoe, “Of the Tools the Devil Works with,” The History of the Devil (1727) From Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ (1737) From Auguste Comte, The Catechism of Positivism (1858) From Samuel Hare, Cases and Observations Illustrative of the Beneficial Results (1857) From [William Ballantyne Hodgson], “‘Classical’ Instruction: Its Use and Abuse,” The Westminster Review(October 1853) Select Bibliography

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis anthology makes available for the first time a selection of narratives by and about prostitutes in the eighteenth century. These memoirs, some written by and some about eighteenth-century prostitutes, offer important insights into female experience and class and gender roles in the period. Portraying the lives of women in both success and hardship, written in voices ranging from repentant to bawdy, the memoirs show the complexity of the lives of the “nightwalkers.” For eighteenth-century readers, as Laura Rosenthal writes in her introduction, these memoirs “offered sensual and sentimental journeys, glimpses into high life and low life, and relentless confrontations with the explosive power of money and the vulnerability of those without it.” Offering a range of narratives from the conservative and reformist to the unabashedly libertine, this book provides a fascinating alternative look into eighteenth-century culture.Trade Review“Nightwalkers is an affordable and useful anthology that would be a fine addition to libraries and classes dedicated to exploring how constructions of women and prostitution were rendered in the long eighteenth century. These narratives quite convincingly prove that the subgenre of the prostitute narrative is an important one to consider.” — Linda E. Merians, Eighteenth-Century Fiction“Prostitutes in eighteenth-century literature are often either abject or evil, and we usually assume that this reflects more general attitudes towards actual prostitutes of the era. Nightwalkers reveals the error of this assumption. This entertaining and eye-opening collection of prostitute narratives powerfully challenges our ideas about both prostitution and female sexuality in eighteenth-century England. These narratives show us prostitutes who could be witty observers, canny businesswomen, and tender mothers. Laura Rosenthal has done a beautiful job of selecting compelling texts, and her introduction skillfully places them in the context of eighteenth-century literature and society.” — Charlotte Sussman, Duke UniversityTable of ContentsACKNOWLEDGEMENTS INTRODUCTION A NOTE ON THE TEXTS Authentick Memoirs of the Life, Intrigues, and Adventures of the Celebrated Sally Salisbury. With True Characters of her most Considerable Gallants CAPTAIN CHARLES WALKER The Juvenile Adventures of Miss Kitty F[ishe]r (1759)ANONYMOUS From The Histories of Some of the Penitents in the Magdalen-House, as Supposed to be Related by Themselves ANONYMOUS An Account of the Death of F.S. Who Died April 1763, Aged Twenty-Six Years. In a LETTER to a FRIEND MARTIN MADAN An Authentic Narrative of the Most Remarkable Adventures, and Curious Intrigues, Exhibited in the Life of Miss Fanny Davies, the Celebrated Modern Amazon ANONYMOUS APPENDIX: BIBLIOGRAPHY OF PROSTITUTE NARRATIVES IN THE LONG EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

Read more less

Book SynopsisJuliet Appleton is an officer’s daughter who is forced to make her own way in the world after her father’s death. Having been trained in typewriting and shorthand, she obtains employment at a law office, only to find that she cannot bear to work with her unpleasant colleagues and employer.Juliet possesses some of the characteristics of the infamous "New Woman": she has attended Girton College, she smokes cigarettes, and she travels the countryside on her bicycle. After various adventures, Juliet finds a new opportunity as a type-writer girl for a publishing company. She falls in love with her employer, and he with her, but complications inevitably ensue.At the end of the nineteenth century, the Canadian-born Grant Allen was a prolific professional author of popular science texts on evolution as well as a fiction writer. The Type-Writer Girl (1897) is one of only two novels he wrote under a female pseudonym, possibly to lend credibility to his first-person female narrator. The Type-Writer Girl invokes tensions typical of the fin de siècle concerning evolution, technology, and the role of women.This Broadview edition provides a reliable text at a very reasonable price. It contains textual notes but no appendices.

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisExtraordinary Bodies is a cornerstone text of disability studies, establishing the field upon its publication in 1997. Framing disability as a minority discourse rather than a medical one, the book added depth to oppressive narratives and revealed novel, liberatory ones.Trade ReviewExtraordinary Bodies addresses a subject of great significance and topicality with originality and sophistication; it is, or should become, a seminal work in the emerging field of disability studies. -- G. Thomas Couser MELUS [Thomson] digs deep and offers profound insights into the interrelationships among the theories, practices, and dominant ideologies of a particular historical period as they have had an impact on the position of disabled people. -- Simi Linton SIGNS: JOURNAL OF WOMEN IN CULTURE & SOCIETY Fascinating and theoretically rich... Extraordinary Bodies will... be viewed as one of [disability studies'] foundational texts. -- Anthony Hutchison Journal of American Studies With this important work, Thomson not only redefines disability studies, but also makes a contribution to feminist, poststructuralist, and race theory and provides fresh rereadings of both canonical and non-canonical literary texts. -- Joyce Huff COLLEGE LITERATURE [A]n adventurous, sensible, passionate book that invites readers to rethink the ground-breaking work of theorists who have shaped academic discourse on marginality and the female body. -- Catherine J. Kudlick Journal of Social HistoryTable of ContentsPreface to the Twentieth Anniversary Edition Preface and Acknowledgments I. Politicizing Bodily Differences 1. Disability, Identity, and Representation: An Introduction 2. Theorizing Disability II. Constructing Disabled Figures: Cultural and Literary Sites 3. The Cultural Work of American Freak Shows, 1835-1940 4. Benevolent Maternalism and the Disabled Women in Stowe, Davis, and Phelps 5. Disabled Women as Powerful Women in Petry, Morrison, and Lorde Conclusion: From Pathology to Identity Notes Bibliography Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisA translation of three works from the second half of the 13th century: Rutebeuf's Renart le Bestourné, the anonymous Le Couronnement de Renart and Jacquemart Gielée's Renart le Nouvel. These savage and highly entertaining satires are in a league of their own, and Renart le Nouvel contains important music which is reproduced in the text. Rarely can a medieval work have resonated with the mood of the present as uncannily as do these three satires. Acerbic, raging and finally apocalyptic, these poems from the second half of the thirteenth century, richly entertaining and wickedly comic though they are, express a vision of the world and its descent into corruption and disaster which mirrors our own state of rampant alarm. The animal tales of the 12th- and 13th-century Roman de Renart - the Romance of Reynard the Fox - were immensely popular. Any satire in those original tales was generally light of touch, but the characters created in them, fox and wolf and ass and lion to name but four, were an open invitation to anyone of a more scathing satirical bent. The poet Rutebeuf, in his short but startling Renart le Bestourné ('Reynard Transformed'), deploys the beasts to make a venomous attack on the mendicant orders and on 'Saint' Louis IX of France. The anonymous Le Couronnement de Renart ('Reynard Crowned') then has the Fox crowned king, establishing a reign of every vice. And most ambitiously of all, Jacquemart Gielée in his Renart le Nouvel ('The New Reynard'), gripped by an increasingly pervasive sense of apocalypse, ends his poem with the Fox, the epitome of deceit and lying, not merely crowned king, but seated in permanent, malign control of the world atop a chocked, unturning Fortune's Wheel. The New Reynard is of special interest not only to students of medieval literature but also to musicologists. Music, in the form of numerous songs, plays an important part in Renart le Nouvel's satirical and apocalyptic message, and the poem is renowned as the most abundant source of late medieval refrains. The notations have survived, and the music is edited in this volume by Matthew P. Thomson.Table of ContentsIntroduction Reynard Transformed Reynard Crowned The New Reynard Love, and love songs Hope ... and the opposite Entertainment Satire general, satire specific Authors, Dates, Manuscripts and Editions Translating the verse The Refrains in Renart le Nouvel Further Reading Reynard Transformed Renart le Bestourné Reynard Crowned Le Couronnement de Renart The New Reynard Renart le Nouvel Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisAn Economist Best Book of 2024'A high-spirited, richly informed, and original portrait, a cross between biography, literary analysis and a study in modern canonisation: Karolina Watroba is an inspired guide and her book a pleasure to read.' Marina WarnerIn 2024, exactly one hundred years after his death at the age of 40, readers all over the world will reach for the works of Franz Kafka. Many of them will want to learn more about the enigmatic man behind the classic books filled with mysterious courts and monstrous insects. Who, exactly, was Franz Kafka?Karolina Watroba, the first Germanist ever elected as a Fellow of Oxford's All Souls College, will tell Kafka's story beyond the boundaries of language, time and space, travelling from the Prague of Kafka's birth through the work of contemporary writers in East Asia, whose award-winning novels are in part homages to the great man himself.Metamorphoses is a non-chronological journey through Kafka's life, drawing together literary schol

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis edition of Daphnis and Chloe , the best known of the Greek romances, provides the first modern commentary in English on this intriguing work. This is the story of two young people growing up as goatherd and shepherdess, and their discovery of love, sex and their true selves.Trade ReviewI warmly recommend this volume to those interested in ancient fiction and Greek literature in the Roman empire...it will be difficult to supersede the wealth of information and ideas offered in this elegantly produced book.'Table of ContentsPreface INTRODUCTION DAPHNIS AND CHLOE Book one Book two Book three Book four COMMENTARY Book one Book two Book three Book four

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less