Literary studies: poetry and poets Books
University of Notre Dame Press Seamus Heaneys Regions
Book SynopsisThis is a scholarly and accessible exploration of regionalism in the writing of Seamus Heaney from one of the most insightful readers of his work.Trade Review"Richard Rankin Russell's Seamus Heaney's Regions is a major and original contribution; it is hard to think of another critical work on Heaney that is so complete in its coverage, from the earliest activities to Human Chain. Russell is extremely well-versed in Heaney's writings and extends his analysis beyond the usual concentration on the poetry to bring in the crucial prose and dramatic works, including the early, largely forgotten items. The breadth of his approach makes his book of interest to scholars in such neighboring fields as social geography, history, and theology as well as contemporary literature." —Bernard O'Donoghue, Wadham College, University of Oxford"In this study of Heaney's Northern Irish regionalism, Baylor University English professor Russell (Poetry and Peace) neatly traces the impact of the author's Ulster roots across his poetry, politics, culture, and spirituality. Russell delves into the political and cultural implications of a divided Ireland, noting that Heaney was an optimist—always imagining "a new region of Northern Ireland," healed and undivided. . . . A substantial and magisterial work of literary criticism, Russell's volume stands as a valuable companion to Heaney's writing." —Publishers Weekly"Richard Rankin Russell’s new study, Seamus Heaney’s Regions, is the first which is able to take account of the full run of Heaney’s oeuvre. While it was completed before August 2013, it is also, of course, the first study to appear since Heaney’s death last summer. . . . Russell’s work is deeply sensitive to the ethical dimension of Heaney’s writing, and he is concerned to emphasise and laud the beneficent conscience of the poet as it is manifest in his work throughout a writing career of nearly 50 years. . . . Another merit of the book, for first-time students of Heaney and longstanding readers and critics alike, is that Russell is scrupulous in dealing with and responding to a staggering number of the critical opinions which have emerged from that industrial load of scholarship." —The Oxonian Review“Those of you in search of a book that will tell you what Seamus Heaney [was] all about need look no further. Bringing together studies over the past fifteen years, Russell embeds the poet who attained rock-star notoriety and the Nobel prize in the context of the conquered and economically suppressed Catholic population of Northern Ireland and Ulster in particular, who managed to ‘cross over’, attain a first-rate education at Queen’s University, Belfast, and with it an expertise in drama, poetry, and cultural studies that allowed him to socialize smoothly with the cream of the established and ‘entitled’ Anglo-Irish settler class. . . . Russell demonstrates that the most powerful wing in British poetry since the Romantics Byron, Wordsworth, Keats, etc. has been regionalism. . . . Russell discusses thoroughly Heaney’s engagement with each of his significant predecessors and contemporaries and gives extended commentaries on each of his works, retrieving early radio dramas, uncollected poems, and first drafts of important works.” —Heythrop Journal"Richard Rankin Russell’s Seamus Heaney’s Regions is, by any standard, a major contribution to the field. Reading it, one becomes aware of how much Heaney commentary has matured over the last couple of decades. Russell’s study is liminal only in the sense that it presumes that the reader is familiar with the scholarship that has gone before; in itself, it represents the beginning of what is yet to come." —New Hibernia Review"This book is a sustained, well-drawn and nuanced argument that takes the region as an alembic through which to look awry at Heaney's work. This book is structured like a Prezi presentation, as there is a chronology at work, but what Russell does is to offer an overview and then zoom in on a specific area to illustrate his point . . . a significant addition to the Heaney critical canon." —Irish Studies Review“. . . Russell’s new book provides an extensive study of regionalism in Heaney’s poetry and prose. Russell provides a broad view of current perceptions of Heaney’s work and a history of regionalism in Northern Ireland . . . . Especially valuable for the close reading of Heaney’s oeuvre in support of the focus on sense of place, the book is a valuable resource for Irish studies.” —Choice“. . . Seamus Heaney’s Regions is a welcome and vital contribution to what is now a very populated field, a field that can and should be called Heaney Studies. While at this stage no single critical volume can be transformative of how Heaney’s work is read and considered for years to come, in its exploration of the poet’s regionalism Russell’s astute, readable, and insightful book provides an important, clarifying vantage from which to view Seamus Heaney’s remarkable achievement.” —Irish Literary Supplement"This is a scholarly and accessible exploration of regionalism in the writing of Seamus Heaney from one of the most insightful readers of his work . . . . Russell’s book is full of such information and is a significant and original addition to the critical work on Seamus Heaney.” —SHARP News “The book is impressive for its knowledge not just of Heaney’s work, but [also] of the awesome amount of scholarship that Heaney’s work has generated. By focusing on the regional, Russell achieves a task similar to that of its subject ‘the writer,’ wrote Heaney, ‘must re-envisage the region as the original point.’” —The Year’s Work in English Studies
£40.50
University of Notre Dame Press Accounting for Dante
Book SynopsisIn Accounting for Dante, Justin Steinberg reexamines Dante''s relation to his contemporary public, an audience that included those poets who responded to Dante''s early work as well as the readers who first copied, preserved, and circulated his poetry. Based on original research of manuscripts and documents, Steinberg''s study reveals in particular the importance of professional, urban classesnamely, merchants and notariesas cultivators of early Italian poetry.Although not officially trained as glossators or scribes, these newly educated readers were full participants in an emergent vernacular literature, demonstrating at times a marked degree of sophistication in their choices of which lyric poems to include in their personal anthologies. Adapting their methods of memorializing contracts and keeping accounts to the collecting of medieval Italian poetry, these urban readers and writers made copying Italian poetry a crucial aspect of how they understood and represented Trade Review“By considering Dante primarily in the context of the larger manuscript culture of his time, Steinberg delves deep into the past in order to say something entirely new about Dante and his self-conscious desire to reshape poetic tradition. Such an approach, relying on cutting-edge methods of philology, codicology, and paleography, reveals the degree to which the prevailing manuscript tradition conditioned Dante's views of fellow poets, and indeed of his own work . . . Recommended.” —Choice“Steinberg analyzes archival documents such as the Memoriali bolognesi and the register-book Vaticano Latino 3793 for evidence of how these merchants and notaries gathered and copied anthologies for personal reading, building rich historical, political and social contexts for the poetical debates of Dante's day and Dante's interpretations of how his reading public responded.” —Research Book News“It is clear from the first pages that Justin Steinberg’s book is innovative and groundbreaking. Returning the rightful importance to the cultural circumstances and social context surrounding some of Dante’s most important declarations of poetics, this critical analysis provides new and convincing answers to highly debated issues. It effectively accounts for Dante’s repeated attempts at directing his readership, not only using well-known self-referential speech acts, but especially through careful manipulation of the instruments and techniques of book production and circulation.” —Renaissance Quarterly“This volume offers a scholarly feast. It aims ‘to trace a history of duecento lyric poetry that takes into account the localized and socially stratified centers of textual production active in late medieval Italy.’ In fact, it focuses on poetry written in Emilia and Tuscany in the second half of the thirteenth century . . . This book is essential reading for all students of Dante.” —Speculum“Justin Steinberg's unusually keen capacity to draw upon historical, paleographical, and sociological realms of literary inquiry introduces to Anglophone audiences these approaches that tend to be more common in scholarship by Italian critics. But it is his readings of lesser-known poets (particularly Monte Andrea and Chiaro Davanzati) that are particularly illuminating and his suggestions concerning the class-conscious motivations behind poetic canon formation that are most suggestive. . . . Steinberg's scholarship effectively bridges some of the widest gaps between European and American sensibilities in literary analysis.” —The Sixteenth Century Journal“In his fascinating new book, Accounting for Dante, Justin Steinberg performs a veritable tour de force by bringing poetic and banking practices in late medieval Italy under the microscope for the first time.” —Christianity and Literature"Justin Steinberg's excellent new book expands the field of Dante studies with a close examination of Due and Trecento lyric culture, its material expression in manuscript form, and its historic readerships. As such, it is a very welcome contribution not only to Dante studies but also to the interface between book history and early literary studies. Stripping away the accretion of centuries of literary historiography, he re-presents Dante within his historical publishing context, showing how Dante responds to and attempts to direct the way in which his works circulated and were transmitted in the wider public sphere. . . . Steinberg's book, like the best studies, remakes the critical landscape in its wake, and should become essential reading for all concerned with textual production in medieval Italy." —Italian Studies"A rich and refreshingly innovative study of manuscript culture that sets Dante firmly within a material context. This is an adroitly layered book, with literary criticism and theory set over a solid base of physical examination of the material text. It brings manuscript studies, and, with it, associated political and social contexts, back to a central place in literary criticism.” —Medium Aevum
£25.19
University of Notre Dame Press The Hunt in Arabic Poetry
Book SynopsisAmong the world's major literary traditions, Arabic poetry is perhaps unique in that the theme of the hunt runs in a continuous, if uneven, current from the pre-Islamic, oral tradition, dating as far back as the fifth century CE, through the coming of Islam in the seventh century and the Umayyad and ''Abbasid caliphates, ultimately serving as a classical substrate for the radical Modernism of the twentieth century. This striking continuity of theme and motif of the pursuerthe hunter, companions, his steed, hounds, or falconand the pursued, whether the prey be oryx, onager, gazelle, hare, quail, or fox, is subject to dramatic transformations of poetic genre, structure, and sensibility throughout the arc of Arab cultural history. Through elegant translations and compelling interpretations, Jaroslav Stetkevych brings this dynamic Arabic tradition fully into the purview of contemporary cultural and humanistic studies. In the chapters of Part I of The Hunt in Arabic Poetry,Trade Review"Jaroslav Stetkevych's The Hunt in Arabic Poetry is an astounding achievement. Not only does he map the genealogy of the hunt as a poetic preoccupation with a number of thematic and semiotic markers and mechanisms, he also draws a history of cultural complexity through significant temporal signposts that happen to reflect on Arab political and social life. In the end, reading his book is no less than studying Arab cultural history through one significant poetic endeavor that distinguishes it among other cultures." —Muhsin al-Musawi, Columbia University"In The Hunt in Arabic Poetry, Jaroslav Stetkevych argues for creative evolution and adaption of a little known and little understood genre. He demonstrates how Arabic poets took a pre-Islamic theme found in the rahil (quest) section of the Arabic ode and transformed it into a powerful rhetoric about wanting and pursuing, evoking the lyricism of yearning, and beyond that to metalanguage. The translations are consistently elegant, mood sensitive, and works of literature in their own right." —Samer M. Ali, University of Michigan"Jaroslav Stetkevych traces the development of the hunting theme in Arabic poetry from its remote beginnings in pre-Islamic Arabia to the present. He shows how certain social and historical factors, predominant in each period, helped to shape the poet's compositions, making them highly original with respect to what preceded them. Stetkevych's book is destined to become a lasting and most welcome contribution to Arabic literary criticism, and one that illuminates a theme central to the study and appreciation of Arabic poetry." —James T. Monroe, emeritus, University of California, Berkeley"The Hunt in Arabic Poetry is a masterful meditation not only upon the hunt motif but also upon the deeper poetic structures in which the hunt motif is embedded, through which it emerges, and with which it is not infrequently in tension. Throughout this book, which readers interested in Arabic poetry may find themselves coming back to again and again, Stetkevych follows his theoretically challenging and elegantly written arguments with close readings of specific poems that are presented in both Arabic and in the author's meticulously faithful and materially vivid translations. The achievement of The Hunt in Arabic Poetry mirrors that of his earlier book, Zephyrs of Najd, which engaged the Arabic Nasib—the elegiac remembrance of the lost beloved—with the same qualities of theoretical depth, conceptual sweep, and brilliant close readings." —Michael Sells, John Henry Barrows Professor of Islamic History and Literature, University of Chicago“Throughout, Jaroslav Stetkevych allows the poems to speak for themselves both in their original Arabic texts and in his extraordinarily poetic English translations, as he adeptly and patiently guides us to a deeper understanding of the tardiyyah, one of the classical genres of Arabic poetry." —Journal of Arabic Literature"Stetkevych traces his theme in detail—illustrating with Arabic and English versions—showing the subtle evolution of tone, structure and cultural meanings of the hunt motif." — Choice
£24.29
University of Notre Dame Press Book of Irish American Poetry
Book SynopsisThis is the first major anthology of Irish American poetry. It breaks new ground in the field of Irish American literary scholarship by collecting for the first time the work of over two hundred Irish American poets, as well as other American poets whose work enjoins Irish American themes.Trade Review". . . If the purpose of a good poetry anthology is to introduce readers to unfamiliar writers and reacquaint them with neglected masters, this one must be judged a raging success. Tobin does provide a meaningfully convivial context in which to engage, in close proximity, the work of Galway Kinnell, Billy Collins, and Paul Muldoon. They’re good company, and there’s plenty more where that came from." —Booklist". . . A prodigious and remarkable work of literary scholarship. This anthology is far more than an original work of scholarship: it is a major act of recovery, which rescues from oblivion the work of important writers who have been the creators of the Irish American literary consciousness. Professor Tobin has achieved the invention of a whole new field. With publication of this anthology, we will finally understand both the scale and importance of Irish American poetry." —Eammon Wall, Jefferson Smurfit Professor of Irish Studies, University of Missouri-St. Louis"More than two hundred poets from the eighteenth century to now are represented in The Book of Irish American Poetry, some resurrected and restored, others seen anew from the perspective of Irish American studies, still others deservedly anthologized for the first time. Poet and editor Daniel Tobin demonstrates beyond question the length, depth, strength and variety of Irish American poetry. His anthology—complete with historical chronology, biographical and explanatory notes, and extensive bibliographies—is the first accurate map of a new territory." —Brendan Galvin, author of Habitat: New and Selected Poems, 1965-2005“This handsome book, with its dust jacket reproduction of Hughson Hawley’s Laying the Tracks at Broadway and 14th Street (ca. 1891), is unique in American anthology-making . . . . a major literary and critical achievement . . . it is basically a superb poetic treasury, just as suitable for one’s home collection as for research libraries. Its hundreds of poems, full of lyricism, though veined with Celtic melancholy and the sense of the tragic, constitute versions of an historical and cultural tradition of enormous importance to America and still vigorous, proving that Irish American culture is more than just a good pub or a St. Patrick’s Day parade.” —Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture“Tobin's 900-plus-page anthology is a gem. . . . It is an effusive text of Irish American poetry, rather than of Irish American poets, and because of this it is inclusive in a way that one might not expect. . . . This is an anthology at once rigorously defined and researched and yet also open to every type of poet and poem.” —The Virginia Quarterly Review“Editor and poet Daniel Tobin took on a mammoth task in attempting to compile the most authoritative collection of Irish-American poetry . . . . This book is a must-have for lovers of Irish and Irish-American writing.” —Irish America“. . . an intelligent, imaginative collection that sheds new light on a literary tradition while highlighting exciting work that might otherwise go unnoticed. Definitive enough to belong on the book shelf of any scholar who teaches or writes about American poetry, it is also a marvelous read, a browsing treasure.” —New Hibernia Review“Tobin as editor reaches beyond ethnic boundaries to capture a deeper and universal sense of freedom and exile. These poets, not all Irish or Irish-American, feel deeply the trauma of history.” —Multicultural Review“Daniel Tobin’s The Book of Irish American Poetry: From the Eighteenth Century to the Present means to be for poetry what Charles Fanning’s two great works, The Irish Voice in America and Exiles of Erin, do for Irish-American prose. That is, to be the last word. And certainly, what he has created with this encyclopedia collection is a compendium of works remarkable for its scope and depth.” —An Sionnach“This is a book that one will enjoy dipping into again and again through the years. It appeals to poetry-loving Americans of all backgrounds, not only those who rejoice in some sort of 'Irish connection.'” —Doxa: A Quarterly Review
£48.60
University of Notre Dame Press Awake in America
Book SynopsisAs the first comprehensive study of Irish American poetry ever published, Awake in America seeks to establish a conversation between Irish and Irish American literature that challenges many of the long-accepted boundaries between the two. In this distinctive book, Daniel Tobin presents a series of essays that combine poetry and literary criticism to form what he calls the poet''s essay. The first section of Awake in America reconsiders the dual tradition of Irish poetry through discussions of nineteenth- and twentieth-century poets as well as contemporary writers. The second section features a series of shorter chapters on poets in America. The third section explores the theme of Crossings and includes a consideration of Irish American and African American literature. The fourth, and final, section is comprised of a compositional memoir in which Tobin explores the role of hidden history in his own long poem, The Narrows. Awake in America offers an Trade Review“Daniel Tobin’s remarkable range of literary and historical reference and his ability to convey his own sense of excitement to the reader make him a marvelous ambassador for poetry. This is a man who weaves webs of words with a magical touch—a bravura performance.” —Joseph Lee, New York University"This incisive and moving critique of poetry and tradition pushes the frontiers of Irish studies, limning Irish American culture through its poets—O’Reilly, Ridge, Moore, Stevens, Coffey, Bogan, McGrath, Liddy, Montague, Wall, Grennan, Delanty, Agee, Donaghy, Tobin himself, and many others. Awake in America trumps the many facile takes on Irish America, revealing its cultural poetics of self-exclusion, solidarity politics, linguistic hybridity, and indelible (be)longings. Tobin’s insights will challenge scholars and readers to survey a new country of Irishness, at once inner, ardent, and textual." —Joseph Lennon, Villanova University"Daniel Tobin’s Awake in America: On Irish American Poetry is a comprehensive and excellently written examination of exchanges between Irish and Irish American poets from John Boyle O’Reilly in the 1870s to a galaxy of contemporary literary artists. He emphasizes the doubleness of Irish poetic vision resulting from a replacement of Irish with English, 'the grafted tongue' of John Montague’s description. Tobin finds that Irish American poets born and resident in this country, those here from Ireland, and American natives who have found a place and perspective in Ireland also have double vision, Irish and American. As a multiple-prize winning poet, Tobin has added an important and necessary dimension to the cultural history of Irish America." —Lawrence J. McCaffrey, Loyola University of Chicago“These essays usefully identify a tradition of twentieth-century Atlantic Irish writing in both Irish and American literature. Tobin’s commentaries will appeal both to the general reader of poetry and to the academic reader who has an interest in American literature, Irish studies, and the conundra of hyphenate or hybrid subcultures. Tobin has already established the canon of poetry in that literature with The Book of Irish American Poetry. Awake in America promises to be a useful and popular companion to that book.” —Thomas Dillon Redshaw, University of St. Thomas“Poet, archivist, and literary historian Tobin expands the field of Irish American poetry beyond the usual canon (Yeats, Joyce, Beckett, Heaney). Writing in a leisurely style . . . the author treats his readers like sympathetic friends. He not only regales the reader with discussions of writers hardly heard of, like John Boyle O’Reilly and Lola Ridge, but also shows the Irishness of American poets whose Celtic roots typically go unmentioned—for example, Robinson Jeffers, Marianne Moore, and Wallace Stevens.” —Choice"Tobin's careful meditation on Irish, Irish American, and American poetry is persuasive and pertinent precisely because the study has roots in learned enquiry and personal experience; as familiar with Wexford and Dublin as he is with Brooklyn and Boston, the author scans Irish and American poetry with precision and flair. This thought-provoking fusion of exegesis and reverie offers a particularly useful and enlivening frame of reference which Tobin uses to examine specifically Irish American senses of liberating doubleness, transatlanticism, roots/routes, and historical memory. . . . It is not only destined to become the pre-eminent study of Irish American poetry, but is set to make a vital contribution to Irish Studies and Irish American Studies as well." —Modern Language Review"Daniel Tobin's earlier book from the University of Notre Dame Press, the magisterial anthology The Book of Irish-American Poetry from the Eighteenth Century to the Present (2007), set out what amounts to a canon for a previously unacknowledged literature. Awake in America builds on that achievement. The earlier volume made it possible to identify a tradition suitable for study, even if pinning down the habitat of that tradition remains a challenge. Irish-American poets often seem to live in both places, or in no place, or to pinball between their transatlantic identities. . . . The inventive essays of Awake in America: On Irish American Poetry begin the study of this elusive tradition in earnest. Any future writing on the topic will have to reckon with Tobin's book. . . ." —Irish Literary Supplement". . . this book is significant in its aims to unravel the complexities of Irish, American and Irish American identity—and to trace some of the ways in which these complexities reveal themselves in verse. Tobin's vast knowledge of the field comes through particularly in his close readings, where he is able to trace lines of influence throughout Irish and American history and back again: and these open up new areas of scrutiny and investigation that will excite scholars of Irish American literature." —Irish Studies Review
£26.99
University of Notre Dame Press Understanding Dante
Book SynopsisDante and Shakespeare divide the modern world between them; there is no third. This study attempts to explain and justify T.S. Eliot's claim. John Scott offers a critical overview of Dante's writings: the ""Vita Nova"", the ""Convivio"", the ""De Vulgari Eloquentia"", his ""Rime"", and ""Monarchia"",Trade Review"John Scott's book gives English-speaking readers the richest and clearest account in any language of Dante's entire oeuvre. . . ." —Times Literary Supplement“This is the summa of a lifetime’s work on Dante by one of the leading Dantisti in the English-speaking world. Written in perfectly lucid, often vigorous prose, it is a nearly perfect assessment of the status quaestionis in Dante studies.” —Piero Boitani, University of Rome, “La Sapienza”"Wonderfully detailed and comprehensive, equally attentive to the power of Dante's thinking and the texture of his writing, this book will be an invaluable resource for both beginning and more experienced readers of Dante's works." —Steven Botterill, University of California, Berkeley“Understanding Dante should quickly become an indispensable work for Dante students and scholars. In an elegantly balanced way, it presents an impressive body of information about Dante and his works, critical debates around them, and the author's own sensitive, learned, and sensible readings.” —Joan M. Ferrante, Columbia University"Scott, a leading Dante scholar, has written a useful, comprehensive book that will appeal to a broad audience. . . . Genuinely impressive for the amount of information it provides and for its sensitive analysis of Dante's writings, this book is obviously the distillation of decades of dedicated study and teaching [of] one of the giants of world literature. . . . Essential." —Choice". . . very good, almost ideal. . . . Scott's genial good sense is reflected in every detail of his text. . . . [E]very page bursts with insights and brief accounts of disputed interpretations without ever feeling forced." —Commonweal"An Australian scholar, Scott is one of the world’s leading Dantisti. In this summa of his career he has written a commanding, elegant overview of Dante’s works, analyzing his historical context; his political, moral, and religious ideas; the structure and texture of his writing; and the state of Dante scholarship. Scott has accomplished the nearly impossible: he has married close interpretation with broad synthesis—and in clear, often vigorous prose. This is a significant and deeply satisfying book." —The Atlantic Monthly“For the reader looking for an all-purpose guide that takes account of just about everything, John A. Scott's magisterial Understanding Dante is the clear choice. . . . What he has produced is a one-volume handbook that may be helpful to someone trying to 'understand Dante' for the first time-a college student, for instance, or the 'general educated reader' we all still hope is out there-but even more useful to the advanced reader or even the Dante professional” —Christianity and Literature". . . a most useful, enjoyable, and accomplished resource in Dante studies, and should be found on the shelves not just of every Dante student, or novice seeking a scholarly introduction to the writer, but also of those with a more general interest in medieval literature." —Medium Ævum"John A. Scott, one of the most distinguished English-speaking Dantists now working, offers in his magisterial Understanding Dante a complete survey of Dante's works that handily supersedes other recent introductions to the poet. . . This volume will without any question establish itself as the indispensable vade mecum for students whether beginning or advanced." —Speculum"John Scott's Understanding Dante is a significant contribution to the study and teachings of Dante. In eleven chapters Scott has succeeded in providing a relatively succinct overview of Dante's life, world, and work. . . . Although several influential collections of essays on Dante's work have been published in English in the last decades, most importantly in this context the Cambridge Companion to Dante none of these comes close to the comprehensiveness of Understanding Dante. Scott provides the essential background and orientation for the nonspecialist to teach and write about Dante. The book will be especially helpful for teaching Dante in translation in 'great book' or 'world civilization' courses. At the same time, it could also serve as an ideal textbook for courses dealing in more depth with Dante." —Modern Philology"This book introduces the beginner to Dante's opera omnia, without disregarding aspects that may interest the more experienced reader. . . Scott successfully encapsulates in one important work all the research a beginner needs to undertake in order to understand Dante the author, his problematic life, and how this is reflected in his writings. Rarely has a comprehensive study shown how the man's own experience and his work are inextricably intertwined in such an accessible way." —MLR "Understanding Dante goes a long way to help bridge this gap between the so-called minor works and the Comedy, and will become a standard handbook in any language and literature department teaching Dante. . . There is no book quite like this in English: it is part introduction, part critical review, and part close reading, and the overall result is a very readable and stimulating survey of Dante's opera omnia." —Sixteenth Century Journal “ . . . an always intelligent and eloquent guide to the works of the prince of poets. The book is organized chronologically, beginning with Dante's early La Vita Nuova and ending with a discussion of his late eclogues and philosophical disquisitions; about 150 pages are devoted to La Commedia alone.” —Faith and Reason
£27.90
University of Notre Dame Press Volitions Face
Book SynopsisTrade Review“This exhilarating and brilliant book will be a most welcome and timely addition to the ReFormations series, to which it will add distinction. . . . It is also a book that can be relished sentence by sentence, as Escobedo is a writer of intellectual verve and boldness, making hard-won claims look obvious once made.” —Sarah Beckwith, Katherine Everett Gilbert Professor of English, Duke University"In Volition's Face, Andrew Escobedo tracks the uses of allegorical personification from its prehistory in the Greek daemonic to its high points in Spenser and Milton. The originality of the argument is sure to draw attention, for Escobedo engages with the landmark studies of Fletcher, Teskey, and others, respectfully but convincingly redrawing the boundaries of the topic. He does so on the basis of a sustained and rigorous engagement with modern philosophical approaches to agency and volition, which lets him return to early modern literary texts in order to show how distinct conceptions of these categories are encoded within the literary practice of personification. It's a very strong book." —David Miller, Carolina Distinguished Professor, University of South Carolina"Volition’s Face is remarkably subtle, nuanced, and comprehensive. Engaging works by Christopher Marlowe, Edmund Spenser, and John Milton, the book aims to capture premodern intuitions about the human will. Escobedo’s deft treatment of the tensions inherent in such a will—both cause and effect, both active and passive, both within and without—shows an intellectual control of a very high order. The historical sweep of Volition’s Face and its compelling arguments will make it an influential contribution to early modern literary studies." —David J. Baker, Peter G. Phialas Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill“In chapter after chapter, Escobedo sees and delineates the connections between ancient and early modern ideas of personification and will, and it is difficult to do justice to the nuances of Escobedo’s argument in a brief review. Regardless, it is clear that specialists in medieval and Renaissance studies will find rewarding insights and significant contributions to the field in these pages.” —Sixteenth Century Journal“Volition’s Face is a highly exhilarating, informative, and entertaining study. Escobedo often reminds the academic reader that the most obvious explanations belie a complex theoretical framework.” —Parergon“An excellent study, Volition’s Face is the most sophisticated account to date of the trope known as prosopopoeia, personification, as it developed from Classical times through the Christian Middle Ages to the Renaissance.” —Religion and Literature
£87.55
University of Notre Dame Press Volitions Face
Book SynopsisModern readers and writers find it natural to contrast the agency of realistic fictional characters to the constrained range of action typical of literary personifications. Yet no commentator before the eighteenth century suggests that prosopopoeia signals a form of reduced agency. Andrew Escobedo argues that premodern writers, including Spenser, Marlowe, and Milton, understood personification as a literary expression of will, an essentially energetic figure that depicted passion or concept transforming into action. As the will emerged as an isolatable faculty in the Christian Middle Ages, it was seen not only as the instrument of human agency but also as perversely independent of other human capacities, for example, intellect and moral character. Renaissance accounts of the will conceived of volition both as the means to self-creation and the faculty by which we lose control of ourselves. After offering a brief history of the will that isolates the distinctive features of the faculTrade Review“This exhilarating and brilliant book will be a most welcome and timely addition to the ReFormations series, to which it will add distinction. . . . It is also a book that can be relished sentence by sentence, as Escobedo is a writer of intellectual verve and boldness, making hard-won claims look obvious once made.” —Sarah Beckwith, Katherine Everett Gilbert Professor of English, Duke University"In Volition's Face, Andrew Escobedo tracks the uses of allegorical personification from its prehistory in the Greek daemonic to its high points in Spenser and Milton. The originality of the argument is sure to draw attention, for Escobedo engages with the landmark studies of Fletcher, Teskey, and others, respectfully but convincingly redrawing the boundaries of the topic. He does so on the basis of a sustained and rigorous engagement with modern philosophical approaches to agency and volition, which lets him return to early modern literary texts in order to show how distinct conceptions of these categories are encoded within the literary practice of personification. It's a very strong book." —David Miller, Carolina Distinguished Professor, University of South Carolina"Volition’s Face is remarkably subtle, nuanced, and comprehensive. Engaging works by Christopher Marlowe, Edmund Spenser, and John Milton, the book aims to capture premodern intuitions about the human will. Escobedo’s deft treatment of the tensions inherent in such a will—both cause and effect, both active and passive, both within and without—shows an intellectual control of a very high order. The historical sweep of Volition’s Face and its compelling arguments will make it an influential contribution to early modern literary studies." —David J. Baker, Peter G. Phialas Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill“In chapter after chapter, Escobedo sees and delineates the connections between ancient and early modern ideas of personification and will, and it is difficult to do justice to the nuances of Escobedo’s argument in a brief review. Regardless, it is clear that specialists in medieval and Renaissance studies will find rewarding insights and significant contributions to the field in these pages.” —Sixteenth Century Journal“Volition’s Face is a highly exhilarating, informative, and entertaining study. Escobedo often reminds the academic reader that the most obvious explanations belie a complex theoretical framework.” —Parergon“An excellent study, Volition’s Face is the most sophisticated account to date of the trope known as prosopopoeia, personification, as it developed from Classical times through the Christian Middle Ages to the Renaissance.” —Religion and Literature
£28.80
University of Notre Dame Press Among Ruins
Book SynopsisAmong Ruins is the final volume of Homestead Works, a collection of four books of poetry that explore the industrial past and legacy of the old steel town of Homestead, Pennsylvania.Trade Review"Hailing from Homestead, Pennsylvania, not far from Pittsburgh, the man makes poetry from ore and fire, slag and steel: from boyhood memories of small-city America to the middlish, late years of the twentieth century—the length of time it takes for a prosperous city to go through hell and begin a climb back. This collection is the fourth and final volume of Robert Gibb's study of his old industrial steel town." —ForeWord Reviews"Once again Robert Gibb has found a gritty, searing, haunting, bluesy lyricism in the heart of industrial America. His poems remember growing up in and around Pittsburgh, where he still lives amid the ruins and art and photos and repurposed structures where memories remain most available, most scalding. Whether dealing with the danger of steel or steam, the inescapable clamor of machinery, or the shenanigans of youth shadowed and bounded by factory life, Gibb's fiercely elegant poems explore how a city, a landscape, a person 'could heal / And yet still be broken.'" —Floyd Skloot, author of In the Shadow of Memory"Poet Robert Gibb strains to see what once was in his native Homestead in his extraordinary Among Ruins. . . . His neighborhood is a place where 'Pittsburgh looks celestial' and the memories of the locals are as haunted as the police station is said to be. . . . [Gibb] confront[s] the reader with the question of what becomes of our neighborhoods as the city changes. Which is just another way of asking what will become of us." —Pittsburgh Magazine"I was lucky as editor of Notre Dame Review to have received poems by Robert Gibb one at a time for some years before I actually registered his stature as one of the best poets of his generation. I think I’d rather walk through Homestead, Pennsylvania, with Robert Gibb than through Dublin with Stephen Dedalus. I return to his poems the way I return to the great poets of place: Yeats, Hardy, Williams. I don’t just 'admire' these poems, I love them. I couldn’t be more delighted that ND Press is publishing his new book as a Sandeen Prize winner. I knew Ernest Sandeen for many years. This is a book that he too would have celebrated. " —John Matthias, emeritus, University of Notre Dame
£13.29
University of Notre Dame Press Splinters Are Children of Wood
Book SynopsisThe wildly unrestrained poems in Splinters Are Children of Wood, Leia Penina Wilson''s second collection and winner of the Ernest Sandeen Prize in Poetry, pose an increasingly desperate question about what it means to be a girl, the ways girls are shaped by the world, as well as the role myth plays in this coming of age quest. Wilson, an afakasi Samoan poet, divides the book into three sections, linking the poems in each section by titles. In this way the poems act as a continuous song, an ode, or a lament revivifying a narrative that refuses to adopt a storyline.Samoan myths and Western stories punctuate this volume in a search to reconcile identity and education. The lyrical declaration is at once an admiration of love and self-loathing. She kills herself. Resurrects herself. Kills herself again. She is also killed by the world. Resurrected. Killed again. These poems map displacement, discontent, and an increasing suspicion of the world itself, or the ways people leaTrade Review"Leia Penina Wilson has carved an epic, avant-garde, feminist spell. She calls forth the wildness of language in order to dispel the violence against––and to evoke the power of––'gurls' and women. Within the mythos of this book, we encounter 'guardian beasts,' the Samoan female warrior Nafanua, scarred/sacred bodies, a 'sharpsharp' tongue, golden cunt, and ancestral skulls. Read these poems aloud to hear its haunting 'bloodsong' emblossom the wounds of this splintered world." —Craig Santos Perez"Like the sea, this book is feral, choral, and female. The speaker bares fang and claw to dig to the source of all violences but finds there is no bottom to the violences she must unearth; drawing on her own capacity for newness as well as the ingenuity of her grandmothers, she denatures and remakes these violences, configuring shield and spear, shrapnel-epic and battle-engine. If this poetry is cannibalistic and blood-drenched, it is the trans-hemispheric, trans-historical patriarchy that it consumes with cosmic joy, growing larger and stronger as it does so. 'Vengeance! come!' she sings in self-delight. 'A poem / pigeon eaten out by rat saved you.'" —Joyelle McSweeney, author of The Necropastoral"Unbecoming is the sister wife of becoming. In Leia Penina Wilson’s Splinters are Children of Wood, the things of the world give themselves over to partiality to find a place to bear and be. As the splinter is the offspring byproduct of the wood, so Wilson’s poems put forward an ongoing, generative womanhood that is as joyous as it is terrified and angry. I’m gratified by the ultimate welcome I hear in this lovely book, and by Leia Wilson’s unwillingness to accept anything but her whole experience." —Claudia Keelan, author of We Step into the Sea: New and Selected Poems"In this stark and arresting book-length sequence, Wilson asks questions of violence, victimization, and complicity . . . with its blend of spare but powerful lines, many readers will find this an inspired effort to rally disempowered voices." —Publishers WeeklyTable of Contentsam i the world or the gurl i appear seeking revenge for the destruction of those children you must always feed from the bodies
£55.80
University of Notre Dame Press Splinters Are Children of Wood
Book SynopsisThe wildly unrestrained poems in Splinters Are Children of Wood, Leia Penina Wilson''s second collection and winner of the Ernest Sandeen Prize in Poetry, pose an increasingly desperate question about what it means to be a girl, the ways girls are shaped by the world, as well as the role myth plays in this coming of age quest. Wilson, an afakasi Samoan poet, divides the book into three sections, linking the poems in each section by titles. In this way the poems act as a continuous song, an ode, or a lament revivifying a narrative that refuses to adopt a storyline.Samoan myths and Western stories punctuate this volume in a search to reconcile identity and education. The lyrical declaration is at once an admiration of love and self-loathing. She kills herself. Resurrects herself. Kills herself again. She is also killed by the world. Resurrected. Killed again. These poems map displacement, discontent, and an increasing suspicion of the world itself, or the ways people leaTrade Review"Leia Penina Wilson has carved an epic, avant-garde, feminist spell. She calls forth the wildness of language in order to dispel the violence against––and to evoke the power of––'gurls' and women. Within the mythos of this book, we encounter 'guardian beasts,' the Samoan female warrior Nafanua, scarred/sacred bodies, a 'sharpsharp' tongue, golden cunt, and ancestral skulls. Read these poems aloud to hear its haunting 'bloodsong' emblossom the wounds of this splintered world." —Craig Santos Perez"Like the sea, this book is feral, choral, and female. The speaker bares fang and claw to dig to the source of all violences but finds there is no bottom to the violences she must unearth; drawing on her own capacity for newness as well as the ingenuity of her grandmothers, she denatures and remakes these violences, configuring shield and spear, shrapnel-epic and battle-engine. If this poetry is cannibalistic and blood-drenched, it is the trans-hemispheric, trans-historical patriarchy that it consumes with cosmic joy, growing larger and stronger as it does so. 'Vengeance! come!' she sings in self-delight. 'A poem / pigeon eaten out by rat saved you.'" —Joyelle McSweeney, author of The Necropastoral"Unbecoming is the sister wife of becoming. In Leia Penina Wilson’s Splinters are Children of Wood, the things of the world give themselves over to partiality to find a place to bear and be. As the splinter is the offspring byproduct of the wood, so Wilson’s poems put forward an ongoing, generative womanhood that is as joyous as it is terrified and angry. I’m gratified by the ultimate welcome I hear in this lovely book, and by Leia Wilson’s unwillingness to accept anything but her whole experience." —Claudia Keelan, author of We Step into the Sea: New and Selected Poems"In this stark and arresting book-length sequence, Wilson asks questions of violence, victimization, and complicity . . . with its blend of spare but powerful lines, many readers will find this an inspired effort to rally disempowered voices." —Publishers WeeklyTable of Contentsam i the world or the gurl i appear seeking revenge for the destruction of those children you must always feed from the bodies
£11.39
University of Notre Dame Press Accounting for Dante
Book SynopsisIn Accounting for Dante, Justin Steinberg reexamines Dante''s relation to his contemporary public, an audience that included those poets who responded to Dante''s early work as well as the readers who first copied, preserved, and circulated his poetry. Based on original research of manuscripts and documents, Steinberg''s study reveals in particular the importance of professional, urban classesnamely, merchants and notariesas cultivators of early Italian poetry.Although not officially trained as glossators or scribes, these newly educated readers were full participants in an emergent vernacular literature, demonstrating at times a marked degree of sophistication in their choices of which lyric poems to include in their personal anthologies. Adapting their methods of memorializing contracts and keeping accounts to the collecting of medieval Italian poetry, these urban readers and writers made copying Italian poetry a crucial aspect of how they understood and represented Trade Review“By considering Dante primarily in the context of the larger manuscript culture of his time, Steinberg delves deep into the past in order to say something entirely new about Dante and his self-conscious desire to reshape poetic tradition. Such an approach, relying on cutting-edge methods of philology, codicology, and paleography, reveals the degree to which the prevailing manuscript tradition conditioned Dante's views of fellow poets, and indeed of his own work . . . Recommended.” —Choice“Steinberg analyzes archival documents such as the Memoriali bolognesi and the register-book Vaticano Latino 3793 for evidence of how these merchants and notaries gathered and copied anthologies for personal reading, building rich historical, political and social contexts for the poetical debates of Dante's day and Dante's interpretations of how his reading public responded.” —Research Book News“It is clear from the first pages that Justin Steinberg’s book is innovative and groundbreaking. Returning the rightful importance to the cultural circumstances and social context surrounding some of Dante’s most important declarations of poetics, this critical analysis provides new and convincing answers to highly debated issues. It effectively accounts for Dante’s repeated attempts at directing his readership, not only using well-known self-referential speech acts, but especially through careful manipulation of the instruments and techniques of book production and circulation.” —Renaissance Quarterly“This volume offers a scholarly feast. It aims ‘to trace a history of duecento lyric poetry that takes into account the localized and socially stratified centers of textual production active in late medieval Italy.’ In fact, it focuses on poetry written in Emilia and Tuscany in the second half of the thirteenth century . . . This book is essential reading for all students of Dante.” —Speculum“Justin Steinberg's unusually keen capacity to draw upon historical, paleographical, and sociological realms of literary inquiry introduces to Anglophone audiences these approaches that tend to be more common in scholarship by Italian critics. But it is his readings of lesser-known poets (particularly Monte Andrea and Chiaro Davanzati) that are particularly illuminating and his suggestions concerning the class-conscious motivations behind poetic canon formation that are most suggestive. . . . Steinberg's scholarship effectively bridges some of the widest gaps between European and American sensibilities in literary analysis.” —The Sixteenth Century Journal“In his fascinating new book, Accounting for Dante, Justin Steinberg performs a veritable tour de force by bringing poetic and banking practices in late medieval Italy under the microscope for the first time.” —Christianity and Literature"Justin Steinberg's excellent new book expands the field of Dante studies with a close examination of Due and Trecento lyric culture, its material expression in manuscript form, and its historic readerships. As such, it is a very welcome contribution not only to Dante studies but also to the interface between book history and early literary studies. Stripping away the accretion of centuries of literary historiography, he re-presents Dante within his historical publishing context, showing how Dante responds to and attempts to direct the way in which his works circulated and were transmitted in the wider public sphere. . . . Steinberg's book, like the best studies, remakes the critical landscape in its wake, and should become essential reading for all concerned with textual production in medieval Italy." —Italian Studies"A rich and refreshingly innovative study of manuscript culture that sets Dante firmly within a material context. This is an adroitly layered book, with literary criticism and theory set over a solid base of physical examination of the material text. It brings manuscript studies, and, with it, associated political and social contexts, back to a central place in literary criticism.” —Medium Aevum
£70.55
University of Notre Dame Press Beyond Reformation
Book SynopsisPresents a sustained close reading of the final version of William Langland’s Piers Plowman, the most searching Christian poem of the Middle Ages in English.Trade Review“As a biblical scholar and historian of ancient Christianity, I knew next to nothing about Piers Plowman before reading David Aers’s completely accessible book, but I feel I have learned a huge amount from it. This magisterial and powerful exposition is certainly informative about a period of pre-Reformation English religious and political history not well known to many of us. But it is also timely for today. The book demonstrates how relevant Piers Plowman is, at least in Aers’s interpretation, for current epistemology, ecclesiology, politics, and religion.” —Dale Martin, Woolsey Professor of Religious Studies, Yale University“David Aers, as a master interpreter, shows us how he reads Langland and, while doing so, instructs us in how to read. His brilliant essay models for us how it is possible, and indeed desirable, to open the usually well-policed border between theological reflection and literary analysis and thereby aim at a fuller reading of what a life of faith encompasses. Along the way, we gain an appreciation of William Langland’s formidable Middle English epic masterpiece, Piers Plowman, and the riches it repays our careful attention." —James Wetzel, Augustinian Endowed Chair in the Thought of St. Augustine and Professor of Philosophy, Villanova University"Beyond Reformation? is a remarkable book by a master who has creatively invented a form to match and elucidate its complex and compelling object of attention. The book is designed for all readers interested in late medieval English and early modern literary and theological culture. Many scholars will read it, especially scholars of Middle English literature. It is less an introduction than a re-introduction of an extraordinary and very readable kind. I expect it to be received with lively acclaim within that large field." —James Simpson, Donald P. and Katherine B. Loker Professor of English, Harvard University"Beyond Reformation? is a singular and immensely rewarding book, a theological meditation on the nature of the Church and the Christian life by means of a close engagement with the Middle-English poem Piers Plowman. Difficult to summarize, the book reads as something of a marvelous fugue, with themes and authors appearing, disappearing, and reappearing transformed into new guises as author David Aers imitates the dialectical processes of his poetic subject." —Reading Religion“For those of us who have committed ourselves to the life-long study of the poem, Aers’ book offers a refreshingly clean and straightforward take on it—one that focuses on . . . a strong and consistent through-line that has consequences not only for us as readers of the poem, but also for us as sometimes unwilling participants in massive and coercive hierarchies of power.” —The Medieval Review “Aers’s book is provocative, challenging, memorable, and rewarding.” —Modern Philology“There is much to admire in this book . . . [it] has the advantage of Aers’s style of writing, which is very pleasant to read and often provides a poetic touch that reflects its source material.” —Renaissance and Reformation“Even those most likely to disagree with Aers will find his ‘idiosyncratic little book’ very well worth reading. It is passionately sincere, richly informative, and always stimulating.” —Medium Aevum“Overall, the work is an incredible display of scholarship, and few give the same level of details found in Aers’s writing. Aers has written a book that takes an incredibly complex discussion and made it surprisingly accessible to scholars from multiple disciplines.” —Sixteenth Century Journal
£70.55
University of Notre Dame Press Curator of Silence
Book SynopsisThe title poemabout a group of schoolchildren illustrating Shelley''s Ode to a Skylarkends with the following assertion: these are the only / lessons they will ever need to learn: that life / is not artifact, but aperturea stepping into / and a falling away; that to sing is to rise / from the grave of the body. And still / say less than nothing. This idea of the aperture, the gap, the silence that exists between what we want to say and what we actually do say pervades The Curator of Silence. The paradox, of course, is that the creation of art itself makes this gap, as there is always a gulf between the impulse and the gesture, the vision and the poem. Nutter''s experience of living for two months in the Antarctic, perhaps the greatest silence and solitude possible on earth, is the archetype of silence whose many dimensions she explores in this volume. She considers both literal, obvious silencesdeath, abandonment, loneliness, the silence into which lost things vTrade Review“If you buy only one poetry collection this year, don’t miss this book. . . . What a joy to read Jude Nutter’s poems, with their capacious, thrilling range of language and image.” —ForeWord "Making is what the poet or artist does. But the 'lessons' of which [Nutter] speaks in the title poem . . . are: 'that life/is not artifact, but aperture—a stepping into // and a falling away; that to sing is to rise / from the grave of the body. And still / say less than nothing.' The greatest subject, paradoxically, is what cannot be said or shown. There is thus a quality of silence about real art that is like nothing else on earth. It was an intimation of this, in verse ambitious to reach into darkness and silence, yet to taste fully of life, that surprised and impressed me in Jude Nutter's work twenty-five years ago. In her subsequent poetry, culminating in The Curator of Silence, she has learned to speak eloquently of that which cannot be put into words." —Notre Dame Review"The Curator of Silence is a wonderful book, both generous and challenging. From the very first page, Jude Nutter asks the reader to join with her in an exploration that curates not only silence but the many varieties of human experience that enliven, threaten, and sometimes deepen that silence. Her poems are imaginative, and their music always feels authentic, as if born from far inside the poem. The voice of the poems speaks from intimacy and demands intimacy from the reader in return. If those poems are sometimes harrowing, they are also redeeming, and leave us strangely renewed. I envy those who have the pleasure of reading her book for the first time." —Jim Moore, author of Lightning at Dinner: PoemsThese astonishing poems take my breath away with their beauty and deeply held knowledge. Not only are they wedded to the earth as they emerge from the poet's personal mythology, but—like a shawl thrown over the shoulders—they give comfort as they explore the fragile balance between life and death, gain and loss. Here is a poet who speaks subtle truths; I know I'll want to return to her poems again and again." —Judith Minty"She is still celebrating the variousness of God's creation and listening to the heartbeat of nature often heard faintly only amid "the dross and the mementoes of a life." She knows the importance of naming things and places in order to call them into life. With this new collection Jude Nutter enters the league of poets who are here to stay. In "The Curator of Silence" she confirms the promise of earlier work, emerging as a major poet who makes a startling difference to our perceptions of the extraordinary in the everyday and giving voice to deep-felt thoughts and feelings in poems that startle and delight." —Seamus Hosey, Senior Arts Producer, RTE Radio 1, Ireland
£55.80
University of Notre Dame Press Fleshly Tabernacles
Book SynopsisFleshly Tabernacles examines how John Milton’s engagement with the Incarnation affected nonconformist sects of revolutionary England.Trade Review"Fleshly Tabernacles is an important investigation of the Incarnation in Milton's thought and works and in revolutionary England, especially in the 1640s and 1650s. This is a learned, often powerful, and conceptually rich study of an important topic in its broad cultural context. Bryan Adams Hampton makes an original contribution to the field of seventeenth-century literary and religious studies." —David Loewenstein, University of Wisconsin-Madison"In Fleshly Tabernacles Bryan Adams Hampton brings fresh attention to the critical topic of Milton's heterodox Christology and its implications for his efforts as polemicist and poet. Hampton's arguments are particularly illuminating as they concern the idiosyncratic doctrine of the incarnate word presented in Milton's theological treatise in relation to his poetry. This original and thought-provoking book concludes with telling studies of heterodox incarnational theology as it shapes the writings of other radical seventeenth-century English religious writers such as Gerrard Winstanley and James Nayler." —John Rumrich, University of Texas at Austin“Bryan Hampton’s book makes an original and important contribution to the field of Milton studies, as well as to the study of seventeenth-century radical English religious thought. His work has further implications for the study of comparative hermeneutics, proposing provocative continuities and correlations between medieval and early modern approaches to interpretation on the one hand, and contemporary theories of language and meaning on the other. Exhaustively researched and meticulously annotated, Hampton’s readings of incarnational epistemologies offer a wealth of insights and suggestive parallels among early modern writers who are not often taken together.” —Jeffrey Spencer Shoulson, University of Miami“By taking the Logos seriously as divinity and language, Fleshly Tabernacles finds new depths in seventeenth-century religious poetry, and adds a great deal to our understanding of Milton’s Christology. It develops a wide array of critical approaches, deftly synthesizing Patristic with postmodern theologians, with the historically specific discourses of early modern preachers and radicals, with language theorists such as Ricoeur and Wittgenstein, with Milton and Milton criticism.” —Milton Quarterly“Hampton’s Fleshly Tabernacles is an interesting exposition of how Milton’s Christology shaped his reading, writing, and politics. It focuses on the Incarnation as a central preoccupation throughout Milton’s oeuvre and how Incarnational thinking was applied to such disparate realms as poetics, aesthetics, hermeneutics, and economics. . . . Hampton’s book can be praised for its boldness, and the requisite command of the Miltonic corpus required to sustain such a sweeping argument is impressive.” —Sixteenth Century Journal“Fleshly Tabernacles is a clearly learned and meticulously researched piece of Milton scholarship, which students of intellectual and cultural history will find extremely useful.” —Renaissance Quarterly“. . . anyone interested in Milton will want to engage Fleshly Tabernacles. Hampton’s scholarship here is certainly worthy of the common accolade offered in each of three back-cover blurbs from eminent Milton scholars (David Loewenstein, John Rumrich, Jeffrey Spencer Shoulson): this book makes an ‘original’ and ‘important’ (or ‘thought-provoking’) contribution to Milton studies. This I affirm and add only that Hampton does this in a lucid prose style that incarnates his superb reading of Milton’s texts in a more virtuous fashion.” —Modern Philology“The strength of this book lies in Hampton’s wide interests in literature, theology, and hermeneutics. . . . Fleshly Tabernacles sets us well on the way toward discovering new registers of meaning in writing that embodies the complex material, spiritual, and political meanings of the Incarnation in seventeenth-century England.” —Renaissance and Reformation
£87.55
University of Notre Dame Press Savoring Power Consuming the Times
Book SynopsisPina Palma's Savoring Power, Consuming the Times: The Metaphors of Food in Medieval and Renaissance Italian Literature is an innovative look at the writings of five important Italian authorsBoccaccio's Decameron, Pulci's Morgante, Boiardo's Innamorato, Ariosto's Furioso, and Aretino's Ragionamento. Through the prism of gastronomy, Palma examines these key works in the Western literary canon, bringing into focus how their authors use food and gastronomy as a means to critique the social, political, theological, philosophical, and cultural beliefs that constitute the fabric of the society in which they live. Palma begins with the anthropological principle that food represents the universal transformation of nature into culture and that it functions as a language that distinguishes every society and its culture from others. This suggests that foodits preparation, presentation, and consumptionis more than merely a source of nourishment. RTrade Review"With clarity and wit, Pina Palma has used the central metaphor of food to uncover unexpectedly fresh dimensions of Renaissance intellectual traditions. Her fascinating and original exploration of the connections between food and sexuality, political power, moral hypocrisy, ascetic discipline of the body, and the world of the appetites in a selection of key Italian Renaissance works is sure to engage historians as well as literary scholars." —Giuseppe Mazzotta, Yale University"Savoring Power, Consuming the Times is not simply a book about food in Italian literature. It is a subtle and far-reaching work of criticism, which discloses an original aspect of the Renaissance. Not only does food provide a way of accessing a privileged perspective on the Renaissance religious, philosophical, and moral thinking; but it is also the perfect means of building an unexpected web of relationships between authors." —Salvatore Silvano Nigro, Libera Universita di Lingue e Comunicazione, IULM“This book will be a landmark. . . This richly detailed, consistently fascinating study deepens readers’ understanding of early-modern Italian literature and shows there is much more to literary criticism than the merely literary. Highly recommended.” —Choice“Savoring Power, Consuming the Times studies a group of important literary works of the Italian Renaissance in an attempt to understand the ideological and literary implications of food metaphors. . . . The main thrust of the book remains high literature where the analysis of food metaphors is the key to understanding that culture in its broadest context.” —Renaissance Quarterly“. . . the strength of Palma’s book is the variety of texts considered and the messages she is able to tease out in her analysis. Her weaving of historical context throughout her literary analysis not only supports her themes, but also allows Savoring Power, Consuming the Times to serve as a relevant text for historians, as well as for literary scholars.” —Comitatus: A Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies“. . . the reality of this beautiful book is that it analyzes food not only as nourishment but as reference and ‘tool’ used by culture and literature to teach, explain, and critique. Pina Palma’s book is an intriguing read that goes well beyond appearances and brings to light an intricate network of connections that a modern reader would definitely miss without the help of her accurate and well-balanced transversal reading.” —Renaissance and Reformation“In undertaking this broader analysis, Palma illuminates the shared ideas and concerns that link her five authors across three centuries. Her work, then, is more than a simple canonical study. . . . it is a rich and useful work with many fascinating ideas for students of literature, history, philosophy, and cultural theory.” —Sixteenth Century Journal“Pina Palma investigates the representation of food in medieval and Renaissance Italian literature by stressing its metaphorical meanings and its multifaceted connections with language, society, history, politics, power, art, and nature. . . . Savoring Power, Consuming the Times provides a stimulating opportunity to reread some masterpieces of medieval and Renaissance Italian literature through the lens of food, and to discover fascinating, complex, and sometimes overlooked metaphorical meanings.” —Modern Language Review“The volume of Pina Palma presents the analysis of a series of works or Italian literature medieval and early modern age, centered on food and the different implications it entails: the representation of power relations among social groups to ethical evaluation of the reports and human behavior.” —The Medieval Review
£105.40
University of Notre Dame Press The Open Light
Book SynopsisThe Open Light: Poets from Notre Dame, 1991–2008 celebrates the distinction and diversity of poets associated with the university during these nearly two decades.Trade Review"The principal pleasures of this collection—and rightly so—lie in the richness and diversity of the poems it contains. Varied in style, form, voice, and subject matter, traditional, experimental, centered in the ethnic self, sharply placed in concrete landscapes, or deliberately abstract, they represent the reach, not just of Notre Dame poetry, but of much of recent poetry in America. The Notre Dame connections among these poets invite another kind of tantalizing, speculative reading. There are real commonalities here, a sense throughout that poetry has consequence and gravity in the world and that style is a kind of commitment. Other threads can be followed in autobiographical sketches Orlando Menes has included in the “Statements” section in the Appendix, but whether reading for poetry’s sake or Notre Dame’s Open Light is a treasure." —Michael Anania, University of Illinois at Chicago"The poems in The Open Light are not only good. Beyond the fine work of these many excellent poets, what strikes me is the tremendous diversity of voices and sensibilities represented here. Where else could I find the intricate sonic complexity of the work of Robert Archambeau or Michael Coffey set against the wild, energetic playfulness of Jenny Boully’s experimental forms? What other anthology might include Bei Dao’s lovely, crystalline meditations set against Stacy Cartledge’s or Anthony Walton’s plainspoken, deceptively complex narratives? These poems cover more aesthetic territory than any ten anthologies and are a ringing testimony to the talent and the catholicity of tastes at work at the University of Notre Dame." —Kevin Prufer, The University of Houston“The anthology celebrates the work of 24 poets associated with the University then, including graduates Beth Ann Fennelly ’93, Francisco Aragon ‘03 MFA and Anthony Walton ’82, and faculty members Jacque Vaught Brogan, Seamus Deane and John Wilkinson. A follow up to The Space Between: Poets from Notre Dame, 1950-1990, this updated collection takes its name from a poem by former ND English professor Cornelius Eady.” —Notre Dame Magazine“The new anthology is a follow-up to one published in 1990. . . both books feature poems by writers who either taught at or attended the university. Both volumes aim to display the role that poetry plays at Notre Dame. . . . Menes says that diversity of voices can be seen in the growth of female poets with works featured in The Open Light. The increased diversity reflects the growth in creative writing programs at Notre Dame and other colleges across the nation.” —South Bend Tribune
£74.70
University of Notre Dame Press Wild Track
Book SynopsisWild Track is a compilation of the best of Kevin Hart’s poetry from eight different collections.Trade Review"Pondus meum amor meus—my weight is my love, writes Augustine, as he describes how love carries him wherever it will. The 'wild track' of Kevin Hart's new and selected poems seems akin to Augustine's path; it is a collection deeply pondered, yet as lightly formed as a new leaf curved by wind. He writes of 'a name within a name' and of 'a darkness in the dark' while everywhere the reader finds the life inside the life. His is a poetry of the 'should have said'—clear-eyed thoughts set to music, speakable only when fear has vanished, set forth without nostalgia or regret." —Susan Stewart"Kevin Hart's poetry is lucid and accessible while giving voice to rich depths where mystery and being coalesce. It approaches the unapproachable, the impossible borders of experience, through praise and song, and sets the everyday experience of the real world in close proximity to a deeper world of spirit." —Michael Brennan, author of The Imageless World"This splendid selection contains Kevin Hart's finest poetry. From the 'Ten Thousand Things' that calm the mind to the double loss of Eurydice we encounter the symbolism of 'Dark Bird,' where it becomes frightening to learn that 'finches are in blossom' either in a poem or a world. Hart's penetrating lucidity is dense with passionate knowledge, the lovely series of new poems entitled 'Sugar' are so lyrical you catch your breath when a sharp edge appears to cut away any sign of sentimentality. Hart is a master craftsman, he needs to be, so that his visionary imagination doesn't brim over—he travels along a wild track to enter the calm recording-time, so the reader's mind can 'move upon silence.' A great poet of the intellect but touched by his knowledge of love and the possibility, these days, of the soul." —Robert Adamson, author of Net Needle"Hart's relationship with the initial singularity that has driven so much of his best work, the 'space between two thoughts,' the 'silence older than the sky,' the darkness 'before God spoke a word,' is quite obviously, and inexorably, changing. At times it feels as if he has been caught between masks in this process but nevertheless, in the heart-rending Lullaby to his stillborn sister that comes late in Wild Track, we are left in no doubt that the poetic power within him still moves." —The Australian"The point of Hart's poetry, it seems, is to speak from the heart about the objects of his contemplation: poetic myth, philosophic ideas, loved ones both living and deceased and love of the Father. . . . What is most striking about Hart's world is the chaos of angels, nature, people, ghosts and home-made rats all jostling for attention in Hart's gaze or heart which is otherwise turned to God." —The Lake"Although [Kevin Hart] has won extravagant praise from Americans such as Charles Simić and Harold Bloom, he remains, to Australian readers, an Australian poet. This 'new and selected' from a university where he once taught is a convenient way to familiarise, or refamilarise, oneself with the nature and range of his achievement so far." —Australian Book Review“Hart’s contemplative mien, his unabashed candor about the Godhead, his conflation of the sacred and secular, his attention to the seamless Benedictine synthesis of spirit and body, brings to mind Thomas Merton and his mystical temperament, though Hart shares much, as well, with Wendell Berry and Gary Snyder, especially their more accessible gaits, the lean, modest, immaculate lines, their devotion and devotionals to the natural world. Blake lurks in these gorgeous lines as well.” —Anglican Theological Review
£70.55
University of Notre Dame Press Dantes Vita Nova
Book SynopsisTrade Review“The range of contributions is impressive and unprecedented: combined, they amount to what is probably the single most valuable resource for generating new interpretive perspectives on one of the most important works of European literature.” —Vittorio Montemaggi, author of Reading Dante’s “Commedia” as TheologyTable of ContentsPreface: Dante’s Vita nova: A Collaborative Reading, by Zygmunt G. Barański and Heather Webb Vita nova I-IV [1-2.5]: Introduction, by Claire E. Honess Vita nova I [1.1], by Brian F. Richardson Vita nova II [1.2-10], by Ruth Chester Vita nova III [1.12-2.2], by Federica Pich Vita nova IV [2.3-5], by Matthew Treherne Vita nova V-XII [2.6-5]: Introduction, by Catherine Keen Vita nova V and VI [2.6–2.11], by Catherine Keen Vita nova VII [2.12-18], by Jennifer Rushworth Vita nova VIII [3], by Daragh O’Connell Vita nova IX [4], by Sophie V. Fuller Vita nova X and XI [5.1-7], by Giulia Gaimari Vita nova XII [5.8-24], by Emily Kate Price Vita nova XIII-XVIII [6-10.11]: Not Just a Passing Phase, by Manuele Gragnolati, Elena Lombardi, and Francesca Southerden Vita nova XIII [6], by Rebecca Bowen Vita nova XIV [7], by Nicolò Crisafi Vita nova XV [8], by Lachlan Hughes Vita nova XVI [9], by Franco Costantini Vita nova XVII-XVIII [10.1-11], by David Bowe Vita nova XIX-XXIV [10.12-15]: Introduction, by Tristan Kay Vita nova XIX [10.12-33], by Filippo Gianferrari Vita nova XX [11], by Simon Gilson Vita nova XXI [12], by Rebekah Locke Vita nova XXII [13], by Luca Lombardo Vita nova XXIII [14], by Peter Dent Vita nova XXIV [15], by George Ferzoco Vita nova XXV-XXVII [16-18]: Literature as Truth, by Paola Nasti Vita nova XXV [16], by Rebecca Bowen Vita nova XXVI [17], by Marco Grimaldi Vita nova XXVII [18], by David G. Lummus Vita nova XXVIII-XXXIV [19-23]: The Poetics of a New Affective Community, by Heather Webb Vita nova XXVIII [19.1-3], by Helena Phillips-Robins Vita nova XXIX [19.4-7], by Aistė Kiltinavičiūtė Vita nova XXX [19.8-10], by Alessia Carrai Vita nova XXXI [20], by Ryan Pepin Vita nova XXXII [21], by Valentina Mele Vita nova XXXIII [22], by Katherine Powlesland Vita nova XXXIV [23], by Katherine Powlesland Vita nova XXXV-XXXIX [24-28]: Introduction, by Simon Gilson Vita nova XXXV [24], by Federica Coluzzi Vita nova XXXVI-XXXVII [25-26], by K. P. Clarke Vita nova XXXVIII-XXXIX [27-28], by Nicolò Maldina Vita nova XL-XLII [29-31]: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, by Theodore J. Cachey Jr Vita nova XL [29], by Chiara Sbordoni Vita nova XLI [30], by Lorenzo Dell’Oso Vita nova XLII [31], by Anne C. Leone Bibliography List of contributors Index
£105.40
University of Notre Dame Press Dantes Vita Nova
Book SynopsisTrade Review“The range of contributions is impressive and unprecedented: combined, they amount to what is probably the single most valuable resource for generating new interpretive perspectives on one of the most important works of European literature.” —Vittorio Montemaggi, author of Reading Dante’s “Commedia” as TheologyTable of ContentsPreface: Dante’s Vita nova: A Collaborative Reading, by Zygmunt G. Barański and Heather Webb Vita nova I-IV [1-2.5]: Introduction, by Claire E. Honess Vita nova I [1.1], by Brian F. Richardson Vita nova II [1.2-10], by Ruth Chester Vita nova III [1.12-2.2], by Federica Pich Vita nova IV [2.3-5], by Matthew Treherne Vita nova V-XII [2.6-5]: Introduction, by Catherine Keen Vita nova V and VI [2.6–2.11], by Catherine Keen Vita nova VII [2.12-18], by Jennifer Rushworth Vita nova VIII [3], by Daragh O’Connell Vita nova IX [4], by Sophie V. Fuller Vita nova X and XI [5.1-7], by Giulia Gaimari Vita nova XII [5.8-24], by Emily Kate Price Vita nova XIII-XVIII [6-10.11]: Not Just a Passing Phase, by Manuele Gragnolati, Elena Lombardi, and Francesca Southerden Vita nova XIII [6], by Rebecca Bowen Vita nova XIV [7], by Nicolò Crisafi Vita nova XV [8], by Lachlan Hughes Vita nova XVI [9], by Franco Costantini Vita nova XVII-XVIII [10.1-11], by David Bowe Vita nova XIX-XXIV [10.12-15]: Introduction, by Tristan Kay Vita nova XIX [10.12-33], by Filippo Gianferrari Vita nova XX [11], by Simon Gilson Vita nova XXI [12], by Rebekah Locke Vita nova XXII [13], by Luca Lombardo Vita nova XXIII [14], by Peter Dent Vita nova XXIV [15], by George Ferzoco Vita nova XXV-XXVII [16-18]: Literature as Truth, by Paola Nasti Vita nova XXV [16], by Rebecca Bowen Vita nova XXVI [17], by Marco Grimaldi Vita nova XXVII [18], by David G. Lummus Vita nova XXVIII-XXXIV [19-23]: The Poetics of a New Affective Community, by Heather Webb Vita nova XXVIII [19.1-3], by Helena Phillips-Robins Vita nova XXIX [19.4-7], by Aistė Kiltinavičiūtė Vita nova XXX [19.8-10], by Alessia Carrai Vita nova XXXI [20], by Ryan Pepin Vita nova XXXII [21], by Valentina Mele Vita nova XXXIII [22], by Katherine Powlesland Vita nova XXXIV [23], by Katherine Powlesland Vita nova XXXV-XXXIX [24-28]: Introduction, by Simon Gilson Vita nova XXXV [24], by Federica Coluzzi Vita nova XXXVI-XXXVII [25-26], by K. P. Clarke Vita nova XXXVIII-XXXIX [27-28], by Nicolò Maldina Vita nova XL-XLII [29-31]: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, by Theodore J. Cachey Jr Vita nova XL [29], by Chiara Sbordoni Vita nova XLI [30], by Lorenzo Dell’Oso Vita nova XLII [31], by Anne C. Leone Bibliography List of contributors Index
£45.90
University of Texas Press Stylistic and Narrative Structures in the Middle
Book Synopsis This volume provides a generic description, based on a formal analysis of narrative structures, of the Middle English noncyclic verse romances. As a group, these poems have long resisted generic definition and are traditionally considered to be a conglomerate of unrelated tales held together in a historical matrix of similar themes and characters. As single narratives, they are thought of as random collections of events loosely structured in chronological succession. Susan Wittig, however, offers evidence that the romances are carefully ordered (although not always consciously so) according to a series of formulaic patterns and that their structures serve as vehicles for certain essential cultural patterns and are important to the preservation of some community-held beliefs. The analysis begins on a stylistic level, and the same theoretical principles applied to the linguistic formulas of the poems also serve as a model for the study of narrative structures. The author findTable of Contents Acknowledgments Note to the reader Introduction 1. Problems of stylistic analysis in the Middle English romance 2. Larger structural units: the motifeme 3. Larger structural units: the type-scene 4. Larger structural units: the type-episode 5. Speculations and conclusions Notes Bibliography Index
£17.99
University of Washington Press Mobilizing Krishnas World
Book SynopsisTrade Review"Those interested in Indian religions, bhakti and the formation of mod-ern Hinduism, the history of literatures and languages in South Asia, the emergence of a public sphere and early modernity, and the relationship of images to literature willfind this volume particularly rewarding." * History of Religions *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Notes on Texts, Transliterations, and Dates Introduction: Rādhā-Krishna Devotion in Kishangarh 1. Soldiers Marching: Kishangarh at the Crossroads 2. Gods and Saints Relocated: Sectarian Rivalries and Hinduism in the Making 3. Devotees on the Move: The Pilgrim’s Bliss 4. Legends Mobilized: Garland of Stories and Songs 5. Myth Retold: Garland of Rāma’s Romance Conclusion: Pilgrimage, Hagiography, and Scripture Notes Bibliography List of Illustrations Index
£33.98
University of Washington Press John Donnes Marriage Letters in the Folger
Book SynopsisA facsimile edition of fourteen autograph letters of John Donne. It features letters dating from February and March 1602, which relate to Donne's clandestine marriage to Anne More and are addressed to his father-in-law, Sir George More, and to Sir Thomas Egerton, the lord keeper, who was also Donne's employer.Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroductionA Note on Transcriptions, Reproductions, and Donne's Heraldic SealsTranscriptionsJohn Donne to Sir George More, February 2, 1602John Donne to Sir George More, February 11, 1602John Donne to Sir Thomas Egerton, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, February 12, 1602John Donne to Sir George More, February 13, 1602John Donne to Lord Keeper Thomas Egerton, February 13, 1602John Donne to Lord Keeper Thomas Egerton, February [ca. 15], 1602Christopher Brooke to Lord Keeper Thomas Egerton, February 25, 1602John Donne to Sir George More, March 1, 1602John Donne to Lord Keeper Thomas Egerton, March 1, 1602Decree of Richard Swale, LL.D., Court of Audience, Canterbury, April 27, 1602John Donne's Receipt for £100 from Lord Keeper Thomas Egerton, July 6, 1602John Donne to Sir Robert More, February 7, 1612John Donne to Sir Robert More, July 28, 1614John Donne to Sir Robert More, August 10, 1614John Donne to Sir George More, December 3, 1614John Donne's Epitaph for Anne Donne, August 15, 1617John Donne to Sir Henry Wotten, July 12, 1925John Donne to Sir George More, June 22, 1629Reproductions of the DocumentsCurator's Afterword
£32.95
University of Washington Press Womens Poetry of Late Imperial China
Book SynopsisProvides and analyzes examples of poetic themes, motifs, and imagery associated with the inner chambers by increasingly aware and sophisticated women writersTrade Review"An important addition to the study of Ming-Qing women [that]…ground[s] the study of poetic images and syntax in the contexts of women’s experience as readers, writers, and historical agents." -- Wai-yee Li * Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies *"Xiaorong Li’s book opens up this lost world for readers. . . . This book offers an insightful peep into the inner chambers of late-imperial China. It is just as suitable for general readers as it is for those who have foundational knowledge of Chinese history and literature. . . . [A]n enjoyable introduction to Chinese women’s history." -- Queenie Kwan Yee Lo * New England Journal of History *"[A]n illuminating study of Chinese women’s poetry from the late Ming to the early Republic, focusing on the trope of the gui (“boudoir” or “inner quarters”). . . . In giving sensitive translations and insightful commentaries on this “boudoir” poetr, Xiaorong Li has demonstrated its relevance far beyond the inner quarters in documenting three centuries of women’s participation in social, political and cultural change." -- Paul S. Ropp * The China Quarterly *"The book successfully shows the manifold significance of the poetics of the gui, which fills a gap in Western scholarship on women poets in late imperial China. . . . A valuable addition to the field of gender studies and the field of traditional Chinese poetry and poetics." -- Ji Hao * Ming Studies *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction 1. The Green Window | The Boudoir in Poetic Convention 2. A New Feminine Ideal | The Case of The Anthology of Correct Beginnings 3. Convention and Intervention | The Lyrical World of Gu Zhenli 4. Inside Out | The Gui in Times of Chaos 5. The Old Boudoir and the “New Woman” | The Late Qing and Early Republican Era Conclusion Notes Glossary of Chinese Characters Bibliography Index
£110.48
University of Washington Press Womens Poetry of Late Imperial China
Book SynopsisProvides and analyzes examples of poetic themes, motifs, and imagery associated with the inner chambers by increasingly aware and sophisticated women writersTrade Review"An important addition to the study of Ming-Qing women [that]…ground[s] the study of poetic images and syntax in the contexts of women’s experience as readers, writers, and historical agents." -- Wai-yee Li * Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies *"Xiaorong Li’s book opens up this lost world for readers. . . . This book offers an insightful peep into the inner chambers of late-imperial China. It is just as suitable for general readers as it is for those who have foundational knowledge of Chinese history and literature. . . . [A]n enjoyable introduction to Chinese women’s history." -- Queenie Kwan Yee Lo * New England Journal of History *"[A]n illuminating study of Chinese women’s poetry from the late Ming to the early Republic, focusing on the trope of the gui (“boudoir” or “inner quarters”). . . . In giving sensitive translations and insightful commentaries on this “boudoir” poetr, Xiaorong Li has demonstrated its relevance far beyond the inner quarters in documenting three centuries of women’s participation in social, political and cultural change." -- Paul S. Ropp * The China Quarterly *"The book successfully shows the manifold significance of the poetics of the gui, which fills a gap in Western scholarship on women poets in late imperial China. . . . A valuable addition to the field of gender studies and the field of traditional Chinese poetry and poetics." -- Ji Hao * Ming Studies *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction 1. The Green Window | The Boudoir in Poetic Convention 2. A New Feminine Ideal | The Case of The Anthology of Correct Beginnings 3. Convention and Intervention | The Lyrical World of Gu Zhenli 4. Inside Out | The Gui in Times of Chaos 5. The Old Boudoir and the “New Woman” | The Late Qing and Early Republican Era Conclusion Notes Glossary of Chinese Characters Bibliography Index
£33.98
University of Washington Press Island
Book SynopsisIn the early twentieth century, most Chinese immigrants coming to the United States were detained at the Angel Island Immigration Station in San Francisco Bay. This book tells these immigrants' stories while underscoring their relevance to contemporary immigration issues.Trade Review"During the time they spent on the island, as little as a few days, as long as three years, [immigrants] carved and ink-brushed their concerns onto the walls of their barracks. One hundred thirty-five calligraphic poems survived, first discovered by a Federal park ranger after Angel Island was abandoned in 1940. Together with the interviews, the poems — angry, heroic, wrenchingly forlorn, despairing, provocative, resistant — convey, as no secondhand or thirdhand account could ever do, what it was like to be Chinese and to be on Angel Island." * New York Times *"More than two decades ago, the first edition of Island brought the plight of Chinese immigrants in America to the academic forefront through the poetry they left behind at Angel Island. The updated and recently published second edition expands that focus with more poems, interviews, archival photos and an enhanced discussion of historical context….The resulting tome is sure to be a touchstone for Chinese and Asian American Studies for generations to come…. As our nation continues to be a mecca for impoverished people from other countries, Angel Island reminds us to check our attitudes and policies toward immigration, because for all the benefits of being a multicultural and democratic nation there are myriad untold costs." -- Misa Shikuma * International Examiner *"It reclaims the migration history of ordinary Chinese Americans. . . . Poignant testimony to what it meant to be Chinese in America at the beginning of the twentieth century." -- Elena Barabantseva * Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies *
£29.66
MP-WIS Uni of Wisconsin De Rerum Natura The Latin Text of Lucretius
Book SynopsisTitus Lucretius Carus (ca 99-55 BC) is known primarily as the Roman author of the long didactic poem ""De Rerum Natura"" (""On the Nature of Things""). In it, he set out to explicate the universe, embracing and refuting ideas of the Greek philosophers. This Latin text features an introduction to Lucretius' life and work.Trade ReviewA volume which no student of Lucretius, of the classics, of philosophic literature can afford to ignore. - Paul Friedlander, American Journal of Philology (1945) ""For students approaching Lucretius this remains the only commentary in English on the entire work in one volume. Leonard's passionate introduction is a signal milestone in the history of the poem's reception, while the notes in Smith's commentary are a helpful guide to interpretation."" - Peter Knox, editor of Oxford Readings in Ovid ""A tremendous amount of material which will undoubtedly prove of great value to the students of Lucretius."" - Phillip de Lacy, Classical Philology (1943)
£37.76
MP-WIS Uni of Wisconsin The Song of Songs and the Ancient Egyptian Love
Book SynopsisAvailable once more, this is a comprehensive, comparative literary philological examination of two enduring bodies of love poetry from the ancient Near East.
£19.96
MP-WIS Uni of Wisconsin Mail and Female Epistolary Narrative and Desire
Book SynopsisUsing feminist and psychoanalytic approaches to examine the ""female voice"" in the ""Heroides"", Sara H. Lindheim closely reads these fictive letters. She points out that in Ovid's verse epistles all the women represent themselves in a strikingly similar and disjointed fashion.Trade ReviewOpens up whole new vistas of interpretation within Heroides scholarship. - Micaela W. Janan, Duke University
£22.46
MP-WIS Uni of Wisconsin The Poetry and Poetics of Olga Sedakova Origins
Book SynopsisOlga Sedakova stands out among contemporary Russian poets for the integrity, erudition, intellectual force, and moral courage of her writing. This first collection of scholarly essays on her work in English assesses her contributions as a poet and thinker, presenting far-reaching accounts of broad themes and patterns of thought across her writings.Trade ReviewA comprehensive overview of Olga Sedakova's poetry and thought that will be an essential resource for anyone interested in this poet and, more broadly, in contemporary Russian culture."" - Barry Scherr, Dartmouth CollegeTable of Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgments A Note on Transliteration and Sources Introduction Stephanie Sandler Ways of Seeing the Poet and Her Poems If This Is Not a Garden: Olga Sedakova and the Unfinished Work of Creation Benjamin Paloff The Poet and Darkness: The Politics of Artistic Form Ksenia Golubovich (translated from Russian by Philip Redko) Childhood and Vibrant Stasis in Olga Sedakova’s Poetry Emily R. Grosholz The Guest at the Door: The Poetry of Olga Sedakova Aleksandr Kutyrkin (translated from Russian by Bethany Braley) Constricted Freedom: On Dreams and Rhythms in the Poetry of Olga Sedakova Stephanie Sandler Theology, Philosophy, and Modes of Knowing Sedakova’s Book of Hours and the Devotional Lyric: Reading “Fifth Stanzas” Andrew Kahn The Art of Change: Adaptation and the Apophatic Tradition in Sedakova’s Chinese Journey Martha M. F. Kelly Disruption of Disruption: The Orthodox Christian Impulse in the Works of Nikolai Zabolotsky and Olga Sedakova Sarah Pratt The Topography of the Other World in Olga Sedakova’s Poetics Ketevan Megrelishvili (translated from Russian by Maria Vassileva) The Immanence of Transcendence: Poetic Reflections on the Mystical Aspects of Olga Sedakova’s Lyric Poetry Henrieke Stahl (translated from German by Philipp Penka) Contextual Readings: Languages, Cultures, Sources Stylized Folklore as a Recollection of Europe: Olga Sedakova’s Old Songs and Alexander Pushkin’s Songs of the Western Slavs Ilya Kukulin (translated from Russian by Ainsley Morse) The Poetic Anthropology of Olga Sedakova: In Dialogue with Sergei Averintsev and Boris Pasternak Vera Pozzi (translated from Italian by Gabriella A. Ferrari) The Semantic Vertical: Church Slavonic Heritage and Olga Sedakova’s Poetics of Translation Maria Khotimsky Olga Sedakova’s Journey through The Book of Changes Natalia Chernysh (translated from Russian by Sarah Vitali) Afterword On Olga Sedakova and Poetic Thinking David Bethea Chronology Notes on Contributors Index
£62.96
MP-WIS Uni of Wisconsin American Sex Tape
Book SynopsisIn this stunning debut collection, Jameka Williams offers a deeply personal investigation into how Americans (herself included) have been duped, buying into classism, sexism, and racist beauty ideals, while sacrificing the freedom of self-love and self-determination.Trade Review“Every now and then, but rarely, a book of poems comes along that is biblical in its authority and iconoclastic in its capacity to rearrange or explode the furniture, the nation, and the self. American Sex Tape™ is one of those.”—Diane Seuss, author of frank: sonnets“Split between a love of watching and the fear created by it, Jameka Williams demolishes misogynist, racist logic with weaponized line breaks and wrecking-ball wit. And then does something stranger, braver: she looks into the camera. Because this is a book about taking back power, it’s also about the thin line between pleasure and collusion. ‘I love to see it,’ she admits, ‘I love to live inside that camera’s orgasm.’ Complex and messy and necessary in all the ways sex is, American Sex Tape™ is brilliant Black feminist truth.”—Brian Teare “A triumph of a debut. Part cultural criticism, part self-investigation, Williams defies genre convention. Her poems burst onto the page with purpose, veracity, tenacity, and the self-assuredness of a long-established literary dynamo.”—Laura Joyce-Hubbard, TriQuarterlyTable of Contents American Sex Cento Scopophilia “People are dying, Kim” Intelligent Women Brief Notes on the End of the World, Women The All-American Girl “But maybe boredom is erotic, when women do it, for men” Plastic White Girl I Intend to Outlast Consider an Animal Ignition “There’s a lot of baggage that comes with us, but it’s like Louis Vuitton baggage (you always want it)” Black, or Apologies for the Line “Sally Hemings in Leggings” The All-American Girl New Black Venus My Sister Says (“Everyone can catch this smoke”) Original Sin The Kardashians for a Better America American Sex Tape Black, or Even Now I Eat Like a Butcher’s Dog Birth of the Nation Scopophobia I’m Not the Queen of the Selfie Woman Devours His Gaze This World Is Not Good Black, or I Sit on My Front Porch in the Projects, Waiting, on God Erotic Women Do It “Now that I’ve survived, when does living begin?” The Future Is Female Black, or There Is No Nation Both Under God & Above Ground Who Will Save Kim Kardashian? I Intend to Outlast War & Marriage The All-American Girl #Free Britney, Brittany, BritnÉe & Brittani, Too Black, or The Natural World Doesn’t Know Me Nothing Is Promised “I can’t dwell?!?” The New Me The All-American Girl “The new american girl doll is no longer a slave” Since I Laid My Burden Down Acknowledgments Notes
£14.20
University of Wisconsin Press Epic Ambition Hercules and the Politics of
Book SynopsisBy the time the Roman poet Valerius Flaccus wrote in the first century CE, the tale of Jason and his famous ship had been retold so often it was a byword for poetic banality. Why, then, did Valerius construct his epic Argonautica? Jessica Blum-Sorensen argues that it was precisely the myth’s overplayed nature that appealed to Valerius.Trade ReviewThis exciting new study of Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica brings out the richness of this often underrated poem, showing its political sophistication and its importance for understanding the culture of Roman exemplarity. Anyone interested in Roman epic and its development should read this for an astute overview of the generic complexity and a balanced assessment of Valerius’ politics." - Helen Lovatt, author of The Epic Gaze: Vision, Gender and Narrative in Ancient Epic "Blum-Sorensen’s focus on the ambivalence of mimetic behavior allows for a middle path between optimistic and pessimistic readings of Valerius’ Argonautica. This is an original and compelling interpretation, one that enhances our understanding of Valerius’ text and the politics of Latin epic more broadly." - Tim Stover, author of Epic and Empire in Vespasianic Rome: A New Reading of Valerius Flaccus’ArgonauticaTable of Contents Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Conflicting Agendas 2. Hercules in the Jovian Age 3. Exemplary Translation 4. Juno’s Tragedy 5. Mistaken Identities 6. Through the Looking Glass 7. Rome Refracted Conclusion References Index Index Locorum
£70.55
Yale University Press Waka and Things Waka as Things
Book SynopsisA challenging study offering a new perspective on classical Japanese poems and how they interact with and are part of material cultureTrade Review“Anyone interested in Japanese court poetry, court ritual and culture, and painting should read this book with pleasure and come away with a more profound knowledge of the cultures it describes.”—Steven D. Carter, Monumenta Nipponica"Through the adroit use of four multivalent case studies, this authoritative work demonstrates with eloquence and insight the vital importance of material, social, conceptual, and other approaches to premodern Japanese poetic culture."—H. Mack Horton, University of California, Berkeley“Waka and Things, Waka as Things is a major contribution to the field and will be widely acknowledged as a major scholarly accomplishment. The research, writing, and exegesis on display in the book are all absolutely top-notch.”—Morgan Pitelka, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill“The theoretical framework is sound, engrossing, and wholly applicable. The scholarship and research that went into the book are superior, and the integration of primary and secondary sources is adroit and engaging.”—Joseph T. Sorensen, University of California, Davis
£999.99
Yale University Press Who Wants to Be a Jewish Writer And Other Essays
Book SynopsisFrom one of today's keenest critics comes a collection of essays on poetry, religion, and the connection between the two Adam Kirsch is one of today's finest literary critics. This collection brings together his essays on poetry, religion, and the intersections between them, with a particular focus on Jewish literature. He explores the definition of Jewish literature, the relationship between poetry and politics, and the future of literary reputation in the age of the internet. Several essays look at the way Jewish writers such as Stefan Zweig and Isaac Deutscher, who coined the phrase the non-Jewish Jew, have dealt with politics. Kirsch also examines questions of spirituality and morality in the writings of contemporary poets, including Christian Wiman, Kay Ryan, and Seamus Heaney. He closes by asking why so many American Jewish writers have resisted that category, inviting us to consider Is there such a thing as Jewish literature?Trade Review“From one of our most distinguished public intellectuals and an indispensable voice on matters literary and spiritual, Adam Kirsch’s collection of essays on poetry and religion shows him at his very best.”—David Mikics, author of Slow Reading in a Hurried Age
£18.04
Yale University Press Lorca After Life
Book SynopsisA reflection on Federico García Lorca's life, his haunting death, and the fame that reinvigorated the marvelous in the modern worldTrade Review“Brilliant and meticulously researched.”—Luis Fernández Cifuentes, Times Literary Supplement“Valis is adept at exposing the ins and outs of powerful but slippery concepts. Was Lorca… Spain’s “poet of the people”, as both the right and left claimed?” —Luis Fernandez Cifuentes, Times Literary Supplement2023 PROSE Award winner in the Literature category“A galaxy of critical insights into the cultural shock waves circling and crisscrossing Lorca’s execution and his unknown resting place, there is not a single book on Lorca like this one.”—Andrés Zamora, Vanderbilt University“An example of cultural history at its best, Valis’s superbly written exploration of Lorca’s contested afterlives demonstrates once again why she is our leading scholar of modern Spanish letters.”—Gustavo Pérez Firmat, Columbia University“Noël Valis elucidates the enduring appeal of the great Andalusian writer. Arguing that the bold nature of his gifts could not have been adequately appreciated in his brief life, she maintains that only the vastness of death can accommodate our growing understanding of Lorca’s innovative accomplishments.”—Jaime Manrique, author of Eminent Maricones
£52.25
WW Norton & Co The Fourth Dimension of a Poem
Book SynopsisA new collection of essays by the legendary literary scholar and critic.
£19.94
WW Norton & Co Pablo Neruda
Book SynopsisNobel Prize winner Pablo Neruda wrote often about the natural world and the beloved objects he surrounded himself with.
£25.19
WW Norton & Co Poetry of Witness
Book SynopsisA groundbreaking anthology containing the work of poets who have witnessed war, imprisonment, torture, and slavery.Trade Review"The selections are blazing and haunting, poems of fierce precision, communal consciousness, courage, and reverberating beauty, and Forche and Wu succinctly establish the historical context for each poet's work in glinting biographical essays." -- Donna Seaman "[A] testament to the travails of men and women over the last 500 years, collected and curated with infinite care." -- Valerie Ryan "Argues for the importance of a public-spirited poetry, willing to speak the truth to power." -- Robyn Creswell
£22.79
WW Norton & Co The Immortal Evening
Book SynopsisA window onto the lives of the Romantic poets through the re-creation of one legendary night in 1817.Trade Review"Engrossing account..." -- The Bookseller
£12.34
WW Norton & Co These Fevered Days
Book SynopsisAn engaging, intimate portrait of Emily Dickinson that sheds new light on her ground-breaking poetry.Trade Review"Martha Ackmann is a rare scholar. She is steeped in her subject's work, but also fills her book with the light and sounds of Dickinson's home. Dickinson is at once the most mysterious and yet most accessible of American poets, and she led what has been called the most remarkable unremarkable life in American letters. Ackmann does justice to this creative paradox in her warm and stirring book." -- Cullen Murphy - The Atlantic
£19.94
John Wiley and Sons Ltd Life of William Wordsworth
Book SynopsisBy examining the family and financial circumstances of Wordsworth's early years, this illuminating biography reshapes our understanding of the great Romantic poet's most creative period of life and writing. Features new research into Wordsworth's financial situation, and into how the poet and his family survived financially Offers a new understanding of the role of his great unwritten poem The Recluse' Presents a new assessment of the relationship between Wordsworth and Coleridge Trade Review“John Worthen’s engaging new biography of Wordsworth begins by quoting the poet’s recollection of himself at around the age of 10, surveying tall trees, black chasms, and dizzy crags: ‘I loved to stand and & read j Their looks forbidding’, he says, ‘read & disobey’ (p. 3). . . Worthen’s book is a revealing account of the consequences of that daring.” (The Review of English Studies, 15 October 2014)Table of ContentsList of Illustrations ix Acknowledgments x Abbreviations and Texts xii Foreword: “The Prelude”: A Poem of My Own Life? xvii Part I Early Years 1 1 Versions of Home: 1770–83 3 2 Hawkshead and Esthwaite: 1783–7 18 3 Cambridge: 1787–90 37 4 To the Alps: and What Followed: 1790–1 53 5 Annette Vallon, Michel de Beaupuy, and the Bishop of Llandaff: 1791–3 69 Part II Writer 91 6 Salisbury Plain and its Consequences: 1793–5 93 7 Racedown: 1795–7 113 8 Coleridge and Alfoxton: 1797–8 135 9 Lyrical Ballads: 1798 157 10 Hamburg to the Harz: 1798 173 11 Writing in Goslar: 1798–9 183 12 Sockburn to Grasmere: 1799–1800 198 Part III Town-End 213 13 “Home at Grasmere,” the “Ode,” “Michael”: 1800–1 215 14 Hurting: 1800–1 241 15 Marrying: 1801–2 249 16 Grasmere to Calais and on to Gallow Hill: 1802 265 17 Marriage, First Child, and the Trip to Scotland: 1802–3 284 18 “The Prelude” I: 1804 303 19 “The Prelude” II: 1804–5 315 20 “Elegiac Stanzas,” Poems, in Two Volumes: 1806–7 328 Part IV The Light of Common Day 341 21 “The Recluse” and The Convention of Cintra: 1808–9 343 22 Loss and Grief: 1809–12 356 23 Stamp-officer and Poet of The Excursion: 1812–14 368 24 “What though it be past”: 1814 387 Part V Sketches of Late Years 397 25 Poetry, Family, and Polemic: 1815–18 399 26 Peter Bell and “the ghosts of what they were”: 1819–26 407 27 “The Recluse” and “The Prelude”: 1827–33 418 28 The Past Enshrined: 1834–42 429 29 No Resting Place: 1843–50 439 Afterword 447 Bibliography 451 Index 457
£84.56
John Wiley and Sons Ltd A Concise Companion to Milton
Book Synopsis* A concise, accessible guide to understanding and appreciating the works of John Milton. * Presents new and authoritative essays by internationally respected Milton scholars. * Explains how and why Milton's works established their central place in the English literary canon.Table of ContentsNotes on Contributors ix Introduction 1Angelica Duran Part I Surveys 1 A Reading of His "left hand": Milton's Prose 7Robert Thomas Fallon 2 "Shedding sweet influence": The Legacy of John Milton's Works 25John T. Shawcross 3 "The world all before [us]": More than Three Hundred Years of Criticism 43Roy Flannagan Part II Textual Sites 4 First and Last Fruits of Education: The Companion Poems, Epistola, and Educational Prose Works 61Angelica Duran 5 Milton's Heroic Sonnets 78Annabel Patterson 6 The Lives of Lycidas 95Paul Alpers 7 A Mask: Tradition and Innovation 111Katsuhiro Engetsu 8 The Bible, Religion, and Spirituality in Paradise Lost 128Achsah Guibbory 9 Gender, Sex, and Marriage in Paradise 144Karen L. Edwards 10 The Ecology of Paradise Lost 161Juliet Lucy Cummins 11 The Messianic Vision of Paradise Regained 178David Gay 12 The Nightmare of History: Samson Agonistes 197Louis Schwartz Part III Reference Points Select Chronology: "Speak of things at hand/ Useful" 217Edward Jones Select Bibliography: "Much arguing, much writing, many opinions" 235J. Martin Evans Index 270
£31.30
John Wiley and Sons Ltd Reading Shakespeares Poetry
Book SynopsisReading Shakespeare's Poetry A lively exploration of Shakespeare's poems and how they speak to readers Reading Shakespeare's Poetry presents a fresh interpretation of Shakespeare's non-dramatic poems, providing insights into the individual poems, their themes and composition, and their relation to the cultural context of Shakespeare's world. Dympna Callaghan considers what makes Shakespeare's language poetic and shows how his poetry is comprised not only of lyrical intensity but also of the language of everyday life. Presented chronologically, lucidly-written chapters examine Venus and Adonis, Lucrece, The Phoenix and the Turtle, the Sonnets, and A Lover's Complaint. Special attention is paid to the distinctive ways in which lineation, rhyme, verse forms, and meter serve to delineate or erase the boundaries of Shakespeare's poetry. Throughout the book, the author explains how Shakespeare's language is influenced by predecessors such asTable of ContentsAcknowledgments viii Introduction 1 1 Venus and Adonis 25 2 Lucrece 82 3 The Phoenix and the Turtle 129 4 Shakespeare’s Sonnets 159 5 A Lover’s Complaint 209 Conclusion 240 Bibiography 251 Index 262
£32.29
LUP - University of Michigan Press Nimble Believing
Book Synopsis
£23.70
LUP - University of Michigan Press The Black Arts Enterprise and the Production of
Book Synopsis
£23.70
The University of Michigan Press Yes There Will Be Singing
Book SynopsisBrings together Marilyn Krysl’s essays on the origins of language and poetry, poetic form, the poetry of witness, and poetry’s collaboration with the healing arts. Beginning with pieces on her own origins as a poet, she branches into poetry’s profound spiritual and political possibilities, drawing on rich examples from poets such as Anna Akhmatova, W.S. Merwin, and Vénus Khoury-Ghata.
£21.80
The University of Michigan Press Pivotal Voices Era of Transition
Book SynopsisGathers Rigoberto González's most important essays and book reviews that consider the work of emerging poets whose identities and political positions are transforming what readers expect from contemporary poetry. Many of these voices represent intersectional communities, such as queer writers of colour, and many writers have deep connections to their Latino communities.
£27.50
The University of Michigan Press Tales of Dionysus The Dionysiaca of Nonnus of
Book SynopsisProvides the first English verse translation of one of the most extraordinary poems of the Greek literary tradition, the Dionysiaca of Nonnus of Panopolis. The Dionysiaca is by far the longest poem surviving from the classical world, a massive mythological epic stretching to over 20,000 lines, written in the tradition of Homer.Table of Contents Editors’ Preface: William Levitan and Stanley Lombardo Acknowledgments Introduction: Gordon Braden Summary of the Poem The Poem Book 1:Douglass Parker Book 2:Douglass Parker Book 2 (continued):William Levitan Book 3:Joseph Harrington Book 4:Judith Roitman Book 5:Rob Turner Book 6:Brian Walters Book 7:Christian Teresi Book 8:Frederick Ahl Book 9:Anne Shaw Book 10:Michael Shaw Book 11:Darwin Michener-Rutledge Book 12:John L. Gronbeck-Tedesco Book 13:Mike Lala Book 14:Michael B. Lippman Book 15:John L. Gronbeck-Tedesco Book 16:Rachel Hadas Book 17:Catherine Anderson Book 18:Tessa Cavagnero Book 19:Sheila H. Murnaghan Book 20:Andrew W. Barrett Book 21:Zachary Puckett Book 22:Richard Jenkyns Book 23:Anne Carson Book 24:Gordon Braden Book 25:Alex Dressler Book 26:Darwin Michener-Rutledge Book 27:Melina McClure Book 28:Denise Low and Eileen R. Tabios Book 29:Adrienne Atkins Book 30:Alison R. Parker Book 31:David Fredrick and Rachel Murray Book 32:Joseph Harrington Book 33:Adrienne Atkins Book 34:Anna Mayersohn Book 35:Maryrose Larkin Book 36:Rebekah Curry Book 37:Jonathan Mayhew Book 38:Denise Low Book 39:Anthony Corbeill Book 40:Deborah H. Roberts Book 41:Diane Arnson Svarlien Book 42:Charles-Elizabeth Boyles Book 43:Bethany Christiansen Book 44:Tessa Cavagnero Book 45:Anna Mayersohn Book 46:Melina McClure Book 47:Cyrus Console Book 48:Stanley Lombardo On Translating Nonnus Notes on Contributors Suggestions for Further Reading Glossary of Personal Names
£31.30
