Literary studies: general Books

Book SynopsisThe British women booksellers who built and ran successful businesses before, during, and after the Second World War have largely been forgotten. This Element seeks to reclaim some of these histories from where they lie hidden or obscured in archives, accounts of the book trade of the time, and other sources. Though they were often called ''formidable'', this research reveals astonishing impact at local, national, and international levels. Divided into four main sections, the Element first gives a literature review of materials about booksellers, before giving a short context to bookselling, the book trade, and book buyers and readers of the early twentieth century. A third section examines the position of women in society at that time, including how they were viewed as part of the book trade; the final section provides histories of nine women booksellers. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

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Book Synopsis“Karr is a national treasure—that rare genius who’s also a brilliant teacher. This joyful celebration of memoir packs transcendent insights with trademark hilarity. Anyone yearning to write will be inspired, and anyone passionate to live an examined life will fall in love with language and literature all over again. ” — George SaundersCredited with sparking the current memoir explosion, Mary Karr’s The Liars’ Club spent more than a year at the top of the New York Times list. She followed with two other smash bestsellers: Cherry and Lit, which were critical hits as well.For thirty years Karr has also taught the form, winning teaching prizes at Syracuse. (The writing program there produced such acclaimed authors as Cheryl Strayed, Keith Gessen, and Koren Zailckas.) In The Art of Memoir, she synthesizes her expertise as professor and therapy patieTrade Review"Karr is a national treasure-that rare genius who's also a brilliant teacher. This joyful celebration of memoir packs transcendent insights with trademark hilarity. Anyone yearning to write will be inspired, and anyone passionate to live an examined life will fall in love with language and literature all over again. " -- George Saunders "Could have been called 'The Art of Living.'" -- San Francisco Chronicle "Mary Karr has written another astonishingly perceptive, wildly entertaining, and profoundly honest book-funny, fascinating, necessary. The Art of Memoir will be the definitive book on reading and writing memoir for years to come." -- Cheryl Strayed "Should be required reading for anyone attempting to write a memoir, but anyone who loves literature will enjoy it too." -- Wall Street Journal "Terrific and deliciously readable guide." -- Entertainment Weekly, "Must List" "Full of Karr's usual wit, compassion and, perhaps most reassuringly, self-doubt. Her fans should be delighted-and they can't go wrong reading the books she discusses, including her own." -- Washington Post "From a contemporary luminary of the form, Mary Karr's The Art of Memoir examines our enduring drive to make memory speak and to 'wring some truth from this godawful mess of a single life.'" -- Vogue "The Art of Memoir is passionate and irreverent-and reminds us why we love a good memoir." -- Elle "Mary Karr strikes a vein in The Art of Memoir." -- Vanity Fair "Karr is such fun to read-who else would combine the name Nabokov and the phrase "out the wazoo" on her very first page?" -- New Yorker "Engaging." -- Chicago Tribune "A veritable blueprint for the genre... Lovers of the form and aspiring scribblers alike will relish this comprehensive appreciation of and guide to 'writing the real self.'" -- O: The Oprah Magazine "With a trio of notable memoirs ("The Liars' Club," "Cherry," and "Lit"), Mary Karr is exquisitely qualified to write this book, a kind of compendium of advice, warning, and deep insight into what makes a personal history stick in a reader's mind." -- Boston Globe "Karr really is an artist. The Art of Memoir attests to how hard she works at getting her words just right and how deeply she understands the way great writing works." -- Slate "Whip-smart." -- Philadelphia Inquirer "As useful for those of us who want to be better friends and lovers as it is for those of us who want to pen our life story." -- More "A master class on memoir, from a memoirist who pulls no punches." -- Minneapolis Star Tribune "Lots of practical advice, a great reading list, examples you can bite into." -- Houston Chronicle "Karr's own voice is consistent and authentic, as vivid, down-home, smart, profane and self-deprecating as it is in her own memoirs." -- St. Louis Post-Dispatch "A celebration of the creative life." -- Austin American-Statesman "Enlightening...Fresh and heartfelt...Instructs and inspires through example and a love for the art of memoir." -- Library Journal, starred review "Karr write[s] exquisitely...and without pretense, often with raw authenticity...a must-read." -- Publishers Weekly, starred review "Snappy and witty, humorous just when it needs to be, yet plainspoken in the best way." -- Shelf Awareness "Karr's sassy Texas wit and her down-to-earth observations about both the memoir form and how to approach it combine to make for lively and inspiring reading. A generous and singularly insightful examination of memoir." -- Kirkus

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Book SynopsisA guide to the art of personal writing, by the author of Fierce Attachments and The End of the Novel of LoveAll narrative writing must pull from the raw material of life a tale that will shape experience, transform event, deliver a bit of wisdom. In a story or a novel the I who tells this tale can be, and often is, an unreliable narrator but in nonfiction the reader must always be persuaded that the narrator is speaking truth.How does one pull from one''s own boring, agitated self the truth-speaker who will tell the story a personal narrative needs to tell? That is the question The Situation and the Story asks--and answers. Taking us on a reading tour of some of the best memoirs and essays of the past hundred years, Gornick traces the changing idea of self that has dominated the century, and demonstrates the enduring truth-speaker to be found in the work of writers as diverse as Edmund Gosse, Joan Didion, Oscar Wilde, James Baldwin, or Marguerite Duras.This book, which grew out of fifteen years teaching in MFA programs, is itself a model of the lucid inteligence that has made Gornick one of our most admired writers of ninfiction. In it, she teaches us to write by teaching us how to read: how to recognize truth when we hear it in the writing of others and in our own.

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Book SynopsisThrough the discussions of literary works from Homer to Rushdie, this title represents a merger of literature and international relations, inspired by the conviction that 'a grand strategist... needs to be immersed in classic texts from Sun Tzu to Thucydides to George Kennan, to gain real-world experience.Trade Review"A remarkable book. . . . Hill is the exemplification of the Clausewitzian coup d’oeil—the ability to see how everything connects to everything else."—John Gaddis, Yale University"Charles Hill's Grand Strategies is a gem that combines long and valuable practical experience with the wisdom that comes from a broad and deep knowledge of history, literature and philosophy to produce a wisdom badly needed by statesmen and diplomats."—Donald Kagan, Yale University“A triumph of intellectual unification. Ranging globally through history and literature, Hill brilliantly demonstrates how certain key issues have driven grand strategy and statecraft from ancient to post-modern times.”—Arthur Waldron, author of The Great Wall of China: From History to Myth"In an age of short attention spans and disaggregated facts, Charles Hill does much to revive two venerable traditions—the classical ideal of statesmanship, and the close engagement with great texts.”—Henry A. Kissinger“Charles Hill's clear-headed and erudite exploration of the world's literary heritage on the subject of statecraft and the state system opens wide vistas for understanding the past and future of international affairs. This is a convincing and much-needed statement of the essential importance of the humanities in preparing the leaders of the future.”—Norman M. Naimark, Stanford University

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Book SynopsisA collaboration between Belgian artist François Schuiten and French writer Benoît Peeters, The Obscure Cities is one of the few comics series to achieve massive popularity while remaining highly experimental in form and content. Set in a parallel world, full of architecturally distinctive city-states, The Obscure Cities also represents one of the most impressive pieces of world-building in any form of literature. Rebuilding Story Worlds offers the first full-length study of this seminal series, exploring both the artistic traditions from which it emerges and the innovative ways it plays with genre, gender, and urban space. Comics scholar Jan Baetens examines how Schuiten’s work as an architectural designer informs the series’ concerns with the preservation of historic buildings. He also includes an original interview with Peeters, which reveals how poststructuralist critical theory influenced their construction of a rhizomatic fictional world, one which has made space for fan contributions through the Alta Plana website. Synthesizing cutting-edge approaches from both literary and visual studies, Rebuilding Story Worlds will give readers a new appreciation for both the aesthetic ingenuity of The Obscure Cities and its nuanced conception of politics. Trade Review"In this compelling study of world making and storytelling in The Obscure Cities by François Schuiten and Benoît Peeters, Jan Baetens offers a subtle and intelligent reading of how structures of authorship, character, image, and world draw readers into a truly fictional universe in which interpretation and rereading are key. With this book, Baetens has certainly brought The Obscure Cities into its rightful place in the history of American and European comics."— Nancy Pedri, Memorial University of Newfoundland "Baetens ‘monograph is devoted to the overall concept of a series that was not originally conceived as such. The heterogeneity of the individual, complementary and contradicting volumes that stand for themselves and can be read in the context of the other volumes."— Comic.de "With clarity, insight, and depth, Jan Baetens’ Rebuilding Story Worlds gives the reader all the essential keys to navigate François Schuiten and Benoît Peeters’ sprawling graphic novel series The Obscure Cities—Belgium’s most sophisticated, contemporary bande dessinée opus."— Jean-Paul Gabilliet, author of Of Comics and Men: A Cultural History of Comic Books in AmericaTable of ContentsContents List of Illustrations 1 A New Series, A New Type of Author 2 A World of Its Own 3 More than a Possible World 4 Between Chapter and Series 5 A New Fantastic 6 In and Out the Medium 7 Doing Politics in Comics 8 Close-reading The Leaning Girl 9 A Conversation with Benoît Peeters 10 Image Gallery Acknowledgments Primary Sources Secondary Sources Index

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Book SynopsisProlific even by eighteenth-century standards, Eliza Haywood was the author of more than eighty titles, including short fiction, novels, periodicals, plays, poetry, and a political pamphlet for which she was briefly jailed. From her early successes (most notably Love in Excess) to later novels such as Betsy Thoughtless (her best known work) she remained widely read, yet sneered at as a 'stupid, infamous, scribbling woman' by the likes of Swift and Pope.Betsy Thoughtless is the story of the slow metamorphosis of the heroine from thoughtless coquette to thoughtful wife. Ironically, the most decisive moment in this development may be when Betsy decides to leave her emotionally abusive and financially punishing husband; it is only after experiencing independence that she returns to her marriage and to what becomes her husbands deathbed. Betsy Thoughtless may be the first real novel of female development in English. In this edition the text is accompanied by appendices, including writings from the period that shed light on Haywood's life and work, and on her relationship with contemporaries such as Henry Fielding.Trade ReviewBoth scholarly and readable, Christine Blouch's edition of Eliza Haywood's The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless is a welcome addition to the expanding library of neglected and undervalued women novelists of the early eighteenth century that will contribute to the current re-assessment of Haywood's work." - John Richetti, University of Pennsylvania"Eliza Haywood transforms the familiar tale of the reformed coquette. A comic investigation of city morals and manners develops into a dark critique of women's vulnerability in bourgeois marriage. Christine Blouch's informative edition clarifies the contexts of Haywood's textual, political and personal relations." - Ros Ballaster, Mansfield College, Oxford University"Simply the best edition to date of Haywood's fiction. The text and apparatus are equally impressive." - Alexander Pettit, University of North TexasTable of ContentsAcknowledgementsIntroductionA Note on the TextWorks of Eliza HaywoodThe History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless Appendix A: Haywood’s First BiographerAppendix B: Review of Betsy ThoughtlessMonthly Review (1751)Haywood’s response (from The History of Jenny and Jemmy Jessamy)Appendix C: Betsy Thoughtless on TrialProceedings at the Court of Censorial Enquiry, Etc. (1752)Appendix D: Reading Haywood in her own centuryClara Reeve, The Progress of Romance (1785)Appendix E: A Stage Adaptation of Betsy ThoughtlessRobert Hitchcock, The Coquette; or, The Mistakes of the Heart (1777) Select Bibliography

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"One of FiveBooks' Best Philosophy Books of 2019""Aphorisms come at us in so many forms and from so many periods that one might think an academic study of aphorisms would aim to give them a family tree . . . . But Andrew Hui’s new study, A Theory of the Aphorism: From Confucius to Twitter, does something oddly and interestingly different . . . . Once the reader accepts [his] more expansive and sombre definition of the aphorism, much of interest follows."---Adam Gopnik, New Yorker"In A Theory of the Aphorism: From Confucius to Twitter, Andrew Hui makes a lot out of a little . . . . If you have a hankering for infinity, eternity, or inexhaustibility, this is a book for you."---Willis Goth Regier, World Literature Today"Lovers of aphorisms will derive huge pleasure from this elegant and informative book." * Paradigm Explorer *"This ambitious book explores some 2500 years of literature in under 250 pages to establish a theory of the aphorism. . . . Just as aphorisms rest on authority, not argument, so too Hui sidelines the systematic in favor of more aphoristic pursuits: to observe, pronounce, and artfully describe."---Stephen Kidd, Bryn Mawr Classical Review"In my view, this book is groundbreaking. There’s an assumption in the way philosophy is often taught—in the West at least—that aphorisms are a quirky, awkward bit of philosophy that we’ll admit is there but we won’t focus on. I think it’s time other philosophers started thinking seriously about how aphorisms work. . . . It’s a really interesting and entertaining book."---Nigel Warburton, Five Books"For anyone concerned with the humanities and their future within and without the academy [A Theory of the Aphorism] should prove compelling."---Lachlan Mackinnon, Times Literary Supplement"In my view, this book is groundbreaking. There should be a lot of other books about aphorisms because it’s such a rich area."---Nigel Warburton, FiveBooks"Like aphorism itself, Hui’s book is not bogged down with systematic argumentation, but rather proceeds in short sections that often end aphoristically. . . . Just as aphorisms rest on authority, not argument, so too Hui sidelines the systematic in favor of more aphoristic pursuits: to observe, pronounce, and artfully describe."---Stephen Kidd, Bryn Mawr Classical Review"This book offers an engaging look at the aphorism, the shortest and perhaps most dismissed of literary forms. . . . A splendid, thought-provoking book." * Choice *"A book through which Hui proposes a new reading of the aphorism and its history up to the present time, including social media platforms such as Twitter."---Petru Moldovan, Gnosis: Journal of Gnostic Studies

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Book SynopsisTable of ContentsIntroduction : Caliban's women -- Race signs of the interwar times : Pan-Noirisme and La D epaeche Africaine -- Jane Nardal : a new race spirit and the new francophone negro -- Les soeurs Nardal and the Clamart salon : content and context of La Revue du Monde Noir, 1931-32 -- Paulette Nardal : antillean literature and race consciousness -- Suzanne C esaire : tropiques, negritude, surrealism, 1941-45 -- Appendix : edited and annotated translations / T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting and Georges Van Den Abbeele.

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Book SynopsisExploring how adults mistreat children, this book focuses on adults not only as hostile characters in fairy tales themselves but also as real people who use frightening stories to discipline young listeners.Trade ReviewWinner of the 1992 Book Prize in Literature, German Studies Association "As provocative and stimulating as her The Hard Facts of the Grimms' Fairy Tales, this book should give a salutary shock to everyone who brings children and tales together, convincing them that "every interpretation is a rewriting' and encouraging them "to identify what is transmitted in the stories we tell children.'"--Library JournalTable of ContentsList of IllustrationsPrefaceIRewritten by Adults: The Inscription of Children's Literature3II"Teaching Them a Lesson": The Pedagogy of Fear in Fairy Tales22IIIJust Desserts: Reward-and-Punishment Tales51IVWilhelm Grimm/Maurice Sendak: Dear Mili and the Art of Dying Happily Ever After70VDaughters of Eve: Fairy-Tale Heroines and Their Seven Sins94VITyranny at Home: "Catskin" and "Cinderella"120VIIBeauties and Beasts: From Blind Obedience to Love at First Sight140VIII"As Sweet as Love": Violence and the Fulfillment of Wishes163IXTable Matters: Cannibalism and Oral Greed190XTelling Differences: Parents vs. Children in "The Juniper Tree"212Epilogue: Reinvention through Intervention229Notes239Select Bibliography273Index289

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

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Book SynopsisAgainst Theory, the title essay in this volume, challenges the notion that literary theory has any real work to do, or any results to show. This challengeissued by Steven Knapp and Walter Benn Michaels in Critical Inquiry (8:4)strikes some critics as scandalous, others as provocative and productive. The argument is directed against both sides of the current debates in literary theory, criticizing theoretical objectivists like E. D. Hirsch, Jr., on the one hand, and proponents of indeterminacy like Paul de Man on the other. The attack is not just on a particular way of doing theory but on the entire project of literary theory. The challenge is not only to a way of thinking and writing but to a way of making a living. The resulting controversy has drawn so much attention among literary critics that it has been collected in a single volume so that the debate can be followed from start to finish. This collection includes the essay Against Theory, seven responses to it, and a rejoinder by K

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Book SynopsisThis comprehensive guide to the history of literary criticism from antiquity to the present day provides an authoritative overview of the major movements, figures, and texts of literary criticism, as well as surveying their cultural, historical, and philosophical contexts. Supplies the cultural, historical and philosophical background to the literary criticism of each era Enables students to see the development of literary criticism in context Organised chronologically, from classical literary criticism through to deconstruction Considers a wide range of thinkers and events from the French Revolution to Freud's views on civilization Can be used alongside any anthology of literary criticism or as a coherent stand-alone introduction Trade ReviewWinner of a 2006 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Award “[A] magnificently comprehensive history of literary criticism. Authoritative, formidable, generous and compassionate … Habib's achievements are many, but two stand out. The first is the putting of theory into historical perspective and the second is to make connections between criticism and philosophy.” Times Higher Education Supplement "This is a book to be read cover to cover, and those who undertake that happy task will be better informed. They will understand the twin pillars of Western civilization, Hellenism and the Judaic Christian ethic. They will understand the intersections of philosophy, literature, and religion. They will understand Plato, Aristotle, the Age of Enlightenment, Romanticism, and the three great thinkers who forever shifted thought at the beginning of the 20th century: Marx, Freud, and Darwin. Dividing the discussion into eight chronological sections, from ancient Greece to the 20th century, Habib (English, Rutgers Univ.) discusses each period in detail, exploring major critical figures and their works in a way that illuminates, rather than exhausts, the issues they are concerned with. His explorations entice one to read more, and that is the best kind of criticism. Summing Up: Essential. All readers; all levels." CHOICE "Philosophically sophisticated and full of fascinating connections and distinctions ...a monumental achievement." Ron Bush, University of Oxford “Rafey Habib's History of Literary Criticism, with its substantial grounding in classical texts and its excellent coverage of contemporary criticism and theory, is certain to be as highly regarded as Wimsatt and Brooks' Literary Criticism: A Short History. Habib's lucidity and wit will also make his book highly teachable.” Michael Payne, Bucknell University "This huge undertaking offers a comprehensive, expository and lucid account - including close readings of selected formative texts - of the history of literary criticism and theory from the earliest western classics to influential contemporary movements, while also embedding these in their broader social, cultural and philosophical contexts. A major resource - as narrative or as compendium - for students at all levels." Peter Widdowson, University of Gloucestershire "Beginning with Plato and Aristotle, Habib traces how the study of literature evolved in the West. His strength lies in his short segments, which allow readers to absorb the major thoughts of the critics and movements without being overwhelmed. While the book runs nearly 900 pages, it is easy to maneuver. All told, Habib delivers an accessible yet scholarly survey of literary criticism." Ron Ratliff, Kansas State University “A History of Literary Criticism: From Plato to the Present by M. A. R. Habib is a useful introduction and quick reference … The attention to each writer and their major works is significant and detailed, with major historical interpretive shifts noted.” Studies in English Literature 1500 - 1900 “Best single-volume introduction to Western literary theory … .With its admirably clear explanation of concepts and terminology, [it] admirably fulfils the promise of its title.” Literary Research Guide"Habib's survey of literary theory and criticism is serious, ambitious, informative and intellectually challenging." Bryn Mawr Classical ReviewTable of ContentsAcknowledgments viii Abbreviations of Frequently Cited Works ix Introduction 1 Part I Ancient Greek Criticism 7 Classical Literary Criticism: Intellectual and Political Backgrounds 9 1 Plato (428–ca. 347 bc) 19 2 Aristotle (384–322 bc) 41 Part II The Traditions of Rhetoric 63 3 Greek Rhetoric 65Protagoras, Gorgias, Antiphon, Lysias, Isocrates, Plato, Aristotle 4 The Hellenistic Period and Roman Rhetoric 80Rhetorica, Cicero, Quintilian Part III Greek and Latin Criticism During the Roman Empire 103 5 Horace (65–8 bc) 105 6 Longinus (First Century ad) 118 7 Neo-Platonism 129Plotinus, Macrobius, Boethius Part IV The Medieval Era 149 8 The Early Middle Ages 151 St. Augustine 9 The Later Middle Ages 166Hugh of St. Victor, John of Salisbury, Dante Alighieri, Geoffrey de Vinsauf, Ibn Rushd (Averroës), St. Thomas Aquinas 10 Transitions: Medieval Humanism 215Giovanni Boccaccio, Christine de Pisan Part V The Early Modern Period to the Enlightenment 227 11 The Early Modern Period 229Giambattista Giraldi, Lodovico Castelvetro, Giacopo Mazzoni, Torquato Tasso, Joachim Du Bellay, Pierre de Ronsard, Sir Philip Sidney, George Gascoigne, George Puttenham 12 Neoclassical Literary Criticism 273Pierre Corneille, Nicolas Boileau, John Dryden, Alexander Pope, Aphra Behn, Samuel Johnson 13 The Enlightenment 311John Locke, Joseph Addison, Giambattista Vico, David Hume, Edmund Burke, Mary Wollstonecraft Part VI The Earlier Nineteenth Century and Romanticism 347 Introduction to the Modern Period 349 14 The Kantian System and Kant’s Aesthetics 357 15 G. W. F. Hegel (1770–1831) 382 16 Romanticism (I): Germany and France 408Friedrich von Schiller, Friedrich Schleiermacher, Germaine de Staël 17 Romanticism (II): England and America 428William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edgar Allan Poe Part VII The Later Nineteenth Century 467 18 Realism and Naturalism 469George Eliot, Émile Zola, William Dean Howells, Henry James 19 Symbolism and Aestheticism 489Charles Baudelaire, Walter Pater, Oscar Wilde 20 The Heterological Thinkers 502Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche, Henri Bergson, Matthew Arnold 21 Marxism 527Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, György Lukács, Terry Eagleton Part VIII The Twentieth Century 555 The Twentieth Century: Backgrounds and Perspectives 557 22 Psychoanalytic Criticism 571Freud and Lacan 23 Formalisms 602Victor Shklovsky, Boris Eichenbaum, Mikhail Bakhtin, Roman Jakobson, John Crowe Ransom, William K. Wimsatt, Monroe C. Beardsley, T. S. Eliot 24 Structuralism 631Ferdinand de Saussure, Roland Barthes 25 Deconstruction 649Jacques Derrida 26 Feminist Criticism 667Virginia Woolf, Simone de Beauvoir, Elaine Showalter, Michèle Barrett, Julia Kristeva, Hélène Cixous 27 Reader-Response and Reception Theory 708Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Hans Robert Jauss, Wolfgang Iser, Stanley Fish 28 Postcolonial Criticism 737Frantz Fanon, Edward Said, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Homi Bhabha, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. 29 New Historicism 760Stephen Greenblatt, Michel Foucault Epilogue 772 Selective Bibliography 777 Index 791

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Book SynopsisA biography of one of the most important writers in English of the late twentieth century and early twenty-first century. It offers fresh insights into his life and work, concentrating on the themes, patterns, relationships, ideas and language common to his life and creative output.Trade Review"William Baker's Harold Pinter affords readers with a comprehensive, career-spanning analysis of the Nobel Laureate's life and art. A deft and eminently rewarding exploration of one of postwar literature's great masters, Baker's study will become the standard-bearer for our understanding and enjoyment of Pinter's time-eclipsing work." - Professor Ken Womack, Penn State University, USATable of ContentsIntroduction and Acknowledgements; 1. Growing Up; 2. Ireland, Precarious Existence and Marriage; 3. Early Plays; 4. Success; 5. Turning Points; 6. The 1970s and 1980s; 7. The 1990s and Beyond: Political Engagement; 8. Conclusion: Cancer, The Nobel Prize, Mutations of Mortality, Poetry; Bibliography; Index.

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Book SynopsisCounteracts the misconception of Africa having no history before colonisation.Eminent historian A. Adu Boahen gives an African perspective on colonialism. A. ADU BOAHEN was Professor Emeritus of History, University of Ghana (Legon), fellow of the Ghana Academy of Arts & Sciences NorthAmerica: The Johns Hopkins University PressTrade ReviewHere is the story from the other side: it serves as a needed corrective to the ubiquitous Eurocentric point of view....the extraordinary myth...that Africa has no history. * THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT *Boahen's interpretation is not only interesting in itself, but also constitutes a significant document in the intellectual history of Africa, a statement of what Africans in the mid-1980s think about their colonial past. - -- Philip D. Curtin, The Johns Hopkins University

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Book SynopsisHow do we think? The author poses this question at the beginning of this bracing exploration of the idea that we think through, with, and alongside media. She examines the evolution of the field from the traditional humanities and how the digital humanities are changing academic scholarship, research, teaching, and publication.Trade Review"Hayles is a rare and welcome voice.... A leading writer on the interplay between science and literature." -New Scientist "One book by Hayles is the equivalent of any five by the competition." -Science Fiction Studies "Hayles has once again produced a compelling synthesis of highly complex, widely scattered discourses.... The achievement is formidable." -American Book Review "Hayles's work is admirable in its open-ended, open-minded engagement of a continuously changing intellectual and artistic field." -Electronic Book Review"

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Book SynopsisPurgatorio is the second of three volumes of a new edition and translation of Dantes' masterpiece, The Divine Comedy. Similar to Vol. I: The Inferno, this translation will be into English prose, emphasizing the literal-vs-phonetic. A newly edited version of the Italian text will be on facing pages and includes fully comprehensive notes with the latest in contemporary scholarship. A new addition to the notes will be the Intercantica a section for each canto that discusses its relation to the Inferno.Trade Review'This new edition of Inferno is distinctly user-friendly....Serious students-in or out of the classroom-who...examine the original poem alongside a readable and reliable prose translation will find this edition excellently suited to their needs.' -The Christian Science Monitor 'A useful volume for students and first-time visitors to Dante's cosmos.'- Publishers Weekly 'In this new translation, Durling tries to be as concrete as possible, producing a version that is more fluent and accurate than the versions of Mandelbaum and Musa.... Highly recommended.' -Library Journal 'Like the Inferno edition that preceded it, the Durling-Martinez Purgatorio, with its beautiful translation and superb apparatus of notes, is simply the best edition of Dante's second canticle in English. No other version offers anything close to what we find gathered here in one volume.' -Robert Harrison, Professor of Italian, Stanford University "As Durling and Martinez complete their monumental three-volume presentation of Dante's masterpiece, we can sense their triumph and elation, despite their characteristic modesty. This, after all, is the volume with which they can demonstrate the fullness and consistency of Dante's great project, its final approach to what they describe in one footnote as 'a pitch of intensity unique in all literature.' The scholarship, as always, is graceful, comprehensive, and acute, and it surrounds a translation that is so carefully considered and fully realized as to be, at times, quite breathtaking." --David Young, translator of The Poetry of Petrarch "Durling and Martinez deliver Paradiso in elegant English prose faithful to Dante's Italian. The general introduction and succinct notes to each canto enable an informed reading of a frequently daunting text, while the longer 'Additional Notes,' bibliography, and indices will more than satisfy the most exigent critic. Marvelous, in the richest medieval sense of the term." --Michael Wyatt, author of The Italian Encounter with Tudor England "At the end of his poem Dante claims that his 'high imagining failed of power,' but Durling and Martinez have suffered no such fate in completing their translation of the Divine Comedy. Their Paradiso is a crowning achievement, a work of lucid prose and of impeccable accuracy. Readers will find themselves rewarded by the succinct, richly informative notes at the end of each canto and the extended essay-notes at the back of the volume. A splendid accomplishment." --Richard Lansing, editor of The Dante EncyclopediaTable of ContentsCONTENTS Abbreviations, xv Introduction, 2 PARADISO CANTO 1 Notes to Canto 1 CANTO 2 Notes to Canto 2 CANTO 3 Notes to Canto 3 CANTO 4 Notes to Canto 4 CANTO 5 Notes to Canto 5 CANTO 6 Notes to Canto 6 CANTO 7 Notes to Canto 7 CANTO 8 Notes to Canto 8 CANTO 9 Notes to Canto 9 CANTO 10 Notes to Canto 10 CANTO 11 Notes to Canto 11 CANTO 12 Notes to Canto 12 CANTO 13 Notes to Canto 13 CANTO 14 Notes to Canto 14 CANTO 15 Notes to Canto 15 CANTO 16 Notes to Canto 16 CANTO 17 Notes to Canto 17 CANTO 18 Notes to Canto 18 CANTO 19 Notes to Canto 19 CANTO 20 Notes to Canto 20 CANTO 21 Notes to Canto 21 CANTO 22 Notes to Canto 22 CANTO 23 Notes to Canto 23 CANTO 24 Notes to Canto 24 CANTO 25 Notes to Canto 25 CANTO 26 Notes to Canto 26 CANTO 27 Notes to Canto 27 CANTO 28 Notes to Canto 28 CANTO 29 Notes to Canto 29 CANTO 30 Notes to Canto 30 CANTO 31 Notes to Canto 31 CANTO 32 Notes to Canto 32 CANTO 33 Notes to Canto 33 THE NICENE CREED BOETHIUS' O QUI PERPETUA MUNDUM RATIONE GUBERNAS Notes to "O qui perpetua' ADDITIONAL NOTES 1. The Figure of Beatrice (After Canto 2) 2. The Paradiso and the Monarchia 3.The Primacy of the Intellect, the Sun, and the Circling Theologians (After Canto 14) 4. Dante and the Liturgy (After Canto 15) 5. The Religious Orders in the Paradiso 6. The Threshold Cantos in the Comedy 7. The Fate of Phaethon in the Comedy 8. Circle-Cross-Eagle-Scales: Images in the Paradiso 9. The Final Image 10. The Neoplatonic Background 11. Dante and Neoplatonism 12. Dante's Astrology 13. The Heavens and the Sciences: Convivio 2 14. The Paradiso as Alpha and Omega Textual Variants Bibliography Index of Italian, Latin, and Other Foreign Words Discussed in the Notes Index of Passages Cited in the Notes Index of Proper Names in the Notes Index of Proper Names in the Text and Translation

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Book SynopsisSince the 1950s, Abe Kobo (19241993) has achieved an international reputation for his surreal or grotesque brand of literature. Bolton explores how this reconciliation of ideas and dialects is for Abe part of the process whereby texts and individuals form themselvesa search for identity that occurs at the level of the self and society at large.

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Book SynopsisInspired by a landmark exhibition mounted by the British Museum in 1963 to celebrate five eventful centuries of the printed word, this book offers a consideration of writings that have "made things happen" in the world, works that have both nudged the course of history and fired the imagination of countless influential people.Trade Review"If Oprah would only join the ranks of Cervantes's fans, he'd have a chance at today's bestseller list." -- Brigitte Weeks, Washington Post Book World "Every Book Its Reader reminds us that books, in all their myriad forms, are necessary equipment for living." -- Los Angeles Times "These essays...occupy a corner of the grand salon of the history of ideas." -- Amanda Heller, Boston Globe "'Affection, laughter, argument'--aptly characterize the work of this great contemporary celebrant of the common, and the uncommon reader, Basbanes." -- Michael Dirda, Weekly Standard "First-rate reporting...[EBIR] allows us to step away from our myopic fixation on writers and consider the reader." -- Karen Long, Cleveland Plain Dealer "No living person has thought more about the extraordinary power of books than Nicholas Basbanes." -- Ellis Henican, Newsday "[An] admirably wide excursion into literature, history and biography." -- Kathleen Burke, Smithsonian Magazine "Nicholas Basbanes is the Pied Piper of bibliophiles." -- John Harper, Orlando Sentinel

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Book SynopsisThe puppet creates delight and fear. It may evoke the innocent play of childhood, or become a tool of ritual magic, able to negotiate with ghosts and gods. In this book, the author contemplates the fascination of these unsettling objects - objects that are also actors and images of life.Trade Review"No one better illustrates the evolution of academic literary criticism into poetry than Kenneth Gross.... He dreams and muses, offering endless insights into the strange and archaic world of puppets, inanimate things breathed to life. This is a book of literary mysticism, rich with accrued culture yet never weighed down by it." (New York Times) "You have in your hands a uniquely beautiful book, a book of uncommon brilliance and lucidity. It is as wondrous as the theaters of marvels it describes; its leaps and mutabilities provide a thrilling adventure in imaginative thinking. 'How are we devoured by the things we make?' it asks. 'And when might that devouring save us?' My copy burns brightly on my favorite shelf, beside The Poetics of Space, Eccentric Spaces, and In Praise of Shadows.... A treasure!" (Rikki Ducornet, author of Netsuke and The Fan-Maker's Inquisition)"

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Book SynopsisThe Routledge new edition of this classic book functions as an accessible introduction to the historical and theoretical exchanges between film and literature and also includes the key critical readings necessary for an understanding of this increasingly vibrant and popular field of adaption studies. This new edition has been fully updated and is usefully separated into three sections: in the first section Timothy Corrigan guides readers through the history of film and literature to the present; the second section has expanded to reprint 28 key essays by leading theorists in the field including Andrà Bazin, Linda Hutcheon and Robert Stam, as well as new essays by Timothy Corrigan and William Galperin; and the third section offers hands-on strategies and advice for students writing about film and literature.Film and Literature will fill a gap for many film and literature courses and courses concentrating on the interplay between the two.The companion website features an interactive timeline, extended filmography and comprehensive bibliography, by Geoff Wright, Samford University, USA. www.routledge.com/cw/corriganTrade ReviewStriking the perfect balance between text and context, Corrigan’s volumes proves a wonderful tool for students as well as teachers. Jan Baetens, Leuven Uni, BelgiumCorrigan’s Film and Literature offers an accessible history of the contentious intellectual relationship between literature and film as well as the often symbiotic history of their industrial relations. The selected readings cover an excellent range of influential, as well as cutting-edge, approaches to the area of study, and the concluding guide to writing about Film and Literature is a welcome addition. Dr. Shelley Cobb, Southampton, UKThis text offers ‘the complete package’—containing history, theory, and praxis—for professors teaching courses in this growing field. Without a doubt, this will be the book I use for film and literature courses in the years to come.Dr. Melissa Croteau, California Baptist University, USAThe Corrigan book admirably fulfills its roles as an overview on the subject and as an anthology of theoretical positions and critical approaches. James Goodwin, University of California, USACorrigan’s lucid introduction to the phases of early cinema in respect of the intrinsic but often under-appreciated interface between literary and filmic forms of expression offers a concise, lucid and authoritative account of its genealogy and development.Mike Ingham, Lingnan University, H.K.Table of ContentsPart I: Film and Literature in the Crosscurrents of History 1. The Prehistory of Film and Literature 2. Filming Literature: From Early Cinema to Classical Form, 1895-1925 3. Testing and Expanding the Value of Film and Literature, 1915-1940 4. Pens, Pulp, and the Crisis of the Word, 1940-1960 5. Academic Cinema and International Spectacles, 1960-1980 6. Books and Movies as Multimedia, 1990 to the Present Part 2: Documents and Debates 1. Adaptation Studies 2. Adaptation in History 3. Authors and Auteurs 4. Novels, Theater, Poetry, and Non-Fiction 5. Major Writers/Major Films: On William Shakespeare’s MacBeth and Jane Austen’s Emma 6. Beyond Film and Literary Texts Part 3: Writing about Film and Literature 1. Themes, Strategies, and Elements of Style 2. Genres and Other Topics 3. Writing about Film and Literature

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Book SynopsisShows, contrary to the traditional view, that the major authors of German literary realism not only thematized environmental transformation but that it was central to their aesthetics.

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Book Synopsis“Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?” —Mary OliverThis luminous anthology brings together great poets from around the world whose work transcends culture and time. Their words reach past the outer divisions to the universal currents of love and revelation that move and inspire us all. These poems urge us to wake up and love. They also call on us to relinquish our grip on ideas and opinions that confine us and, instead, to risk moving forward into the life that is truly ours.In his selection, Roger Housden has placed strong emphasis on contemporary voices such as the American poet laureate Billy Collins and the Nobel Prize-winners Czeslaw Milosz and Seamus Heaney, but the collection also includes some timeless echoes of the past in the form of work by masters such as Goethe, Wordsworth, and Emily Dickinson.The tens of thousands of readers of Roger Housden’s “Ten Poems” series will welcome this beautiful harvest of poems that both open the mind and heal the heart.

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Book SynopsisThis book makes the case for a re-placing of Lamb as reader, writer and friend in the midst of the lively political and literary scene of the 1790s. Reading his little-known early works alongside others by the likes of Coleridge and Wordsworth, it allows a revealing insight into the creative dynamics of early Romanticism.Trade ReviewShortlisted for the CCUE Book Prize 2010 'Charles Lamb, Coleridge and Wordsworth contributes a serious revaluation of Lamb's reputation, and deals comprehensively and deftly with the important field of Romantic friendship and networks in their psychological and political aspects. Often using colourful anecdotes to illuminate more general analysis, Felicity James's book is a mature and elegant work which makes a genuine contribution to Romantic scholarship.' - R. S. White, Professor of English and Cultural Studies, University of Western Australia 'Charles Lamb, Coleridge and Wordsworth is a great achievement. It is a paean to the profitable complexity of friendship in a time when talk among friends could potentially result in charges of sedition, or in the mass-production of verse with which we are still familiar.' - John Regan, University of Cambridge 'This outstanding book approaches 'reading friendship in the 1790s' by reading Charles Lamb alongside his friends and fellow-writers... James traces the intertwined friendships and examines their turning points and crises in a series of consistently superb close readings...admirable and inspiring...' - Alison Hickey, Review of English StudiesTable of ContentsList of Abbreviations Introduction: Placing Lamb PART I: IDEALISING FRIENDSHIP 'Frendotatoi meta frendous': Constructing Friendship in the 1790s Rewritings of Friendship, 1796-1797 PART II: DOUBTING FRIENDSHIP The 'Day of Horrors', 1796 'Cold, cold, cold': Loneliness and Reproach Blank Verse and Fears in Solitude PART III: RECONSTRUCTING FRIENDSHIP A Text of Friendship: Rosamund Gray Sympathy, Allusion and Experiment in John Woodvil The Urban Romantic: Lamb's Landscapes of Affection Index

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Book SynopsisTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Helene Cixous: Blood and Language 1. Writing and Dreaming the Feminine 1. The Laugh of the Medusa (1975) 2. Coming to Writing (1976) 3. Tales of Sexual Difference (1990) 2. The Origins: Algeria and Germany 4. A Real Garden (1971) 5. Osnabruck (1999) 6. Letter-Beings and Time (2007) 3. Love (and) the Other 7. Lemonade Everything Was So Infinite (1982) 8. Love of the Wolf (1994) 9. On February 12, I committed an Error (2005) 4. The Animal 10. Dedication to the Ostrich (1988) 11. Messiah (1996) 12. My Three-Legged Dog (2000) 5. Derrida 13. Second Skin (2001) 14. On Style (A Question to H. Cixous and J. Derrida) (2004) 15. Today (2006) 6. The Theater of Helene Cixous: Re-memberings, Refashionings, and Revenants 16. The Name of Oedipus: Song of the Forbidden Body, Twelfth Movement (1979) 17. The Indiad or India of Their Dreams, Act 1, Scene 2 (1988) 18. Rouen, the Thirtieth Night of May '31, Vignette 4: The Trial (2001) 19. The Blindfolded Fiancee or Amelait, Scenes 5 and 6 (2004) Notes Select Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisPresents a history of the English language from the age of Beowulf to the rap of Eminem. The author describes the differences between English and American usage and, the link between regional dialect and race, class, and gender. He discusses contact with foreign languages, the Internet, and e-mail continue to shape English for future generations.Trade ReviewThe book percolates with creative energy and will please anyone intrigued by how our richly variegated language came to be. Publishers Weekly Nonspecialists will join scholars in praising this remarkable linguistic investigation. -- Bryce Christensen Booklist An important and valuable source for anyone who loves the English language, and language in general. -- Gale Zoe Garnett Toronto Globe & Mail Written with real authority, enthusiasm, and love for our unruly and exquisite language. -- Michael Dirda The Washington Post A wonderful book. It's not hard to find well-informed books about the history of the English language, and it's not hard to find good critical accounts of English literature, but to have the two intertwined in one book is remarkable. Language Hat Interesting and informative. -- Tom Oleson Winnipeg Free Press A personal, selective and impassioned journey through the history of English. Times Higher Education Supplement Lerer not only navigates the shifting currents and boiling rapids of English, but also explores its secret coves. -- Rob Kyff Advocate [An] elegant book. -- Karenn Krangle Vancouver Sun A fresh look at the history of the English language. -- Cynthia Lee Katona Magill Book Reviews Inventing English is an invigorating read for the mind and the mouth. Bloomsbury Review Fun and illuminating. -- Carol White The Main Artery This absorbing book provides sufficient information about linguistics and early English language and literature for clarification... Essential. Choice Erudite and accessible. [Lerer] brings both love and rigour to his subject. -- Gale Zoe Garnett Globe & Mail An unusual linguistic and literary feast. -- Anne Curzan Michigan Quarterly Review The casual, witty, and sometimes provocative style in which the book is written provides a very apt vehicle for this very personal account. -- Tim William Machan Journal of English and Germanic PhilologyTable of ContentsA Note on Texts and Letter Forms Introduction: Finding English, Finding Us 1. Caedmon Learns to Sing: Old English and the Origins of Poetry 2. From Beowulf to Wulfstan: The Language of Old English Literature 3. In This Year: The Politics of Language and the End of Old English 4. From Kingdom to Realm: Middle English in a French World 5. Lord of This Langage: Chaucer's English 6. I Is as Ille a Millere as Are Ye: Middle English Dialects 7. The Great Vowel Shift and the Changing Character of English 8. Chancery, Caxton, and the Making of English Prose 9. I Do, I Will: Shakespeare's English 10. A Universal Hubbub Wild: New Words and Worlds in Early Modern English 11. Visible Speech: The Orthoepists and the Origins of Standard English 12. A Harmless Drudge: Samuel Johnson and the Making of the Dictionary 13. Horrid, Hooting Stanzas: Lexicography and Literature in American English 14. Antses in the Sugar: Dialect and Regionalism in American English 15. Hello, Dude: Mark Twain and the Making of the American Idiom 16. Ready for the Funk: African American English and Its Impact 17. Pioneers Through an Untrodden Forest: The Oxford English Dictionary and its Readers 18. Listening to Private Ryan: War and Language 19. He Speaks in Your Voice: Everybody's English Appendix. English Sounds and Their Representation Glossary References and Further Reading Acknowledgments

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Book SynopsisMany people deploy photo media tools to document everyday events and rituals. For generations we have stored memories in albums, diaries, and shoeboxes to retrieve at a later moment in life. Autobiographical memory, its tools, and its objects are pressing concerns in most people's everyday lives, and recent digital transformation cause many to reflect on the value and meaning of their own mediated memories. Digital photo cameras, camcorders, and multimedia computers are rapidly replacing analogue equipment, inevitably changing our everyday routines and conventional forms of recollection. How will digital photographs, lifelogs, photoblogs, webcams, or playlists change our personal remembrance of things past? And how will they affect our cultural memory? The main focus of this study is the ways in which (old and new) media technologies shape acts of memory and individual remembrances. This book spotlights familiar objects but addresses the larger issues of how technology penetrates ouTrade Review"The book is accessible to undergraduates and provides an excellent framework for postgraduates both in terms of its clarity in developing the conceptual tool of 'mediated memory' and in addressing some aspects of the digital in relation to this. One of its strengths concerns the way in which van Dijck unpacks the conceptual flaws conventionally associated with collective memory and the problematic assumptions that underlie much of the discussion of the relationship of media to this... The book is beautifully written, telling an engaging story, as well as tackling with academic erudition the study of mediated memories in the digital age." -- Memory Studies"Van Dijck shares many fascinating insights." -- CHOICE"Mediated Memories in the Digital Age is an engaging and important book that challenges scholarly understanding of the relation between memory, memory artifacts, and memory practices and elucidates how these relationships are changing in the digital age. José van Dijck brings a theoretically sophisticated yet pragmatic approach to bear on her survey of today's most widespread digital practices of mediating memories. Her persuasive and timely thesis is solidly grounded in cultural and media studies, and her work is well informed by recent research in cognitive science, neuroscience, psychology, and visualization technologies." -- Richard Grusin * ayne State University *"The medium is the experience. A personal memory box full of private media objects was the inspiration for José van Dijck's newest and most innovative contribution to the zone between media studies and science studies where she has been such an important voice internationally. Detailing the ways that media and memory are not separate experiences through readings of the digital diaries and lifelogs of people suffering from Alzheimer's disease, Dutch recorded popular music, and still and moving images from a range of contexts, van Dijck presents an exciting new way of thinking about cultural memory and a cultural sense of self." -- Lisa Cartwright, University of California * San Diego *"José van Dijck performs a sophisticated analysis that blends neurological research on memory, media technologies, and the "personal cultural" construction of memories into a coherent, far-reaching theory of the function, role, and significance of memory as we move from analogue to digital representations. Filled with deep insights and surprising observations, this book should be required reading for anyone interested in memory, digital technologies, and their co-evolution." -- N. Katherine Hayles, University of California * Los Angeles *Table of ContentsContents Preface Acknowledgements 1 Mediated Memories as a Conceptual Tool 2 Memory Matters in the Digital Age 3 Composing the Self 4 Record and Hold 5 Pictures of Life, Live Pictures 6 Projecting the Family's Future Past 7 From Shoebox to Digital Memory Machine 8 Epilogue Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisFew writers are as integrally bound to a place as Pablo Neruda was to the landscape of Isla Negra. From his arrival there in the late '30s to his death in 1973, Isla Negra became a text that unravelled in a series of essential images that are fundamental to an understanding of his mature work.

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Book SynopsisMiri Nakamura examines bodily metaphors such as doppelgangers and robots that were ubiquitous in the literature of imperial Japan. Reading them against the historical rise of the Japanese empire, she argues they must be understood in relation to the most “monstrous” body of all in modern Japan: the carefully constructed image of the empire itself.

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Book SynopsisPrometheus the god stole fire from heaven and bestowed it on humans. In punishment, Zeus chained him to a rock, where an eagle clawed unceasingly at his liver, until Herakles freed him. For the Greeks, the myth of Prometheus' release reflected a primordial law of existence and the fate of humankind. The author examines the story of Prometheus.Trade Review"A sterling example of classical scholarship, literary exegesis, and cultural inference... Not only does this book tell us much about man, through his prototypical image, but also much about the Greek civilization which created Prometheus in its image."--Contemporary PsychologyTable of ContentsList of PlatesIntroductionIWho Is Goethe's Prometheus?3IIThe Titanic, and the Eternity of the Human Race19IIIThe Prometheus Mythologem in the 'Theogony'33IVArchaic Prometheus Mythology50VMethodological Intermezzo63VIThe World in Possession of Fire69VIIThe Fire Stealer77VIIIThe 'Prometheus Bound'83IXPrometheus the Knowing One93XThe Promethean Prophecy107XI'Prometheus Delivered'112XIIConclusion after Goethe129Abbreviations134List of Works Cited135Index145

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Book SynopsisHere is the world''s most famous master plan for seizing and holding power.  Astonishing in its candor The Prince even today remains a disturbingly realistic and prophetic work on what it takes to be a prince . . . a king . . . a president.  When, in 1512, Machiavelli was removed from his post in his beloved Florence, he resolved to set down a treatise on leadership that was practical, not idealistic.  In The Prince he envisioned would be unencumbered by ordinary ethical and moral values; his prince would be man and beast, fox and lion.  Today, this small sixteenth-century masterpiece has become essential reading for every student of government, and is the ultimate book on power politics.

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Book Synopsis

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