Search results for ""Author Derek Brewer""

Analysis of the structure of traditional stories and fairytales, bringing out their shared characteristics, and showing why they remain so powerful and resonant today. Many famous stories, from the Old Testament, medieval romance and folktale, to Shakespeare's tragedies and comedies and even some great novels, present apparent inconsistencies or absurdities when judged as plausible representations of 'reality'. Yet the experience of many generations of readers and listeners is that such stories take a powerful hold on the imagination and memory, and create a strong impression on coherent significance. Symbolic Stories shows why the structure of these tales is so significant, and why they are repeated, both in the original and with variations, down the ages. Professor Brewer reveals new aspects of the stories themselves by elucidating the implicit and symbolic meanings that lie below the literal narrative. The stories discussed are those that are especially concerned with the processes of growing up and coming to maturity. They are told from the point of view of the emerging individual as he or she passes through the rites de passage that allow disengagement from parents, self-realisation, the establishment of new relationships, and integration with society. The bookdemonstrates certain characteristic themes and structures in these traditional stories, but is far from reducing them to a single formula. One of the main purposes is to show how selected stories of great artistic value establishtheir own individual meanings within the general pattern. There are new interpretations of the famous romances, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and Malory's Tale of Sir Gareth, and of other romances. Shakespeare'sremarkable portrayals throughout his career of various aspects of the family drama are discussed, and the essence of a new theory of tragedy and comedy is suggested. The extreme type of traditional story in Europe is seen as the fairy tale, which is analysed to show how fundamentally such narrative differs from the novel, but Mansfield Park and Great Expectations are explored in detail to show their equivocal relationships to the tradition. The book will appeal to all those who are interested in the structure of narrative, whether from the point of view of literature, psychology or folklore. The late Professor Derek Brewer was Master of Emmanuel College Cambridge and Reader in Medieval English Literature in the University of Cambridge. He published numerous books and articles, especially on Chaucer, but on all periods of English literature.

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Acknowledgements.- Editor's Preface.- Preface.- PART 1: CONTINUITIES AND BEGINNINGS.- Invasion.- The Anglo-Saxon Literary Achievement.- Social and Religious Bases of Literature.- Layamon's Brut: Almost an English National Epic.- PART 2: THE INNER LIFE.- Spiritual Instruction as Literature.- English Recluses: Christina and Wulfric.- The Ancrene Riwle: Manuscripts and Author.- Other Devotional Texts.- PART 3: THE UESTION OF SONG.- The Owl and the Nightingale.- The Bestiary as an Example of the Archaic World-view.- Anecdotal Didactic Poems and the Church's Educational Effort.- PART 4: THE QUESTION OF SONG LYRICS, SHORT POEMS, BALLADS.- Early Poems: Men Speaking Plainly to Men.- The Love Rune and Religious Love.- Other Gothic Manuscript Miscellanies and Various Poems.- Fifteenth-century Religious and Secular Poems.- Appendix: The Ballards.- PART 5: ADVENTURE AND LOVE: ROMANCES IN RHYME.- King Horn: An Archetypal Romance.- Havelok and Grimsby.- Floris and Blancheflue and Romantic Love.- Fab

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This volume of essays is aimed at advancing the appreciation of Malory, an author who has always been enjoyed by the common reader, but is still sometimes underestimated by the critics. Despite an increasing number of articles onMalory, there is a need for a general survey of recent research, which Aspects of Malory provides. The volume opens with a note by the late Professor Vinaver on Malory's prose, and three essays on Malory's Englishness andhis English sources, including an essay by P. J. C. Field which argues for an English rather than a French origin for the Tale of Gareth. This is followed by two essays on Malory's French sources, by Jill Mann and Mary Hynes-Berry. Terence McCarthy re-exasmines the sequence of the tales, and three further essays look at the scribal and textual tradition of Malory's work, in particular the relationship between the Winchester MS, Caxton's printed version, and the history of the MS. Finally, Richard R. Griffith reconsiders the authorship question, and proposes a long-forgotten Thomas Malory as the most likely candidate. There is a bibliography of recent research compiled byProfessor Takamiya. .`Full of sound scholarship'. TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT

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The illegitimate and impoverished son of a dressmaker and a nobleman, Hyacinth Robinson has grown up with a strong sense of beauty that heightens his acute sympathy for the inequalities that surround him. Drawn into a secret circle of radical politics he makes a rash vow to commit a violent act of terrorism. But when the Princess Casamassima - beautiful, clever and bored - takes him up and introduces him to her own world of wealth and refinement, Hyacinth is torn. He is horrified by the destruction that would be wreaked by revolution, but still believes he must honour his vow, and finds himself gripped in an agonizing and, ultimately, fatal dilemma. A compelling blend of psychological observation, wit and compassion, The Princess Casamassima (1886) is one of Henry James's most deeply personal novels.

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A wide range of new scholarship on Chaucer's poetry. This collection of essays makes available a wide range of new scholarship on Chaucer's poetry. Opening essays address the issues of "Chaucerian representation" and "Chaucerian poetics", arguing for the multiplicity and complexityof what Chaucer "represents" and for the importance of his dual Anglo-French background in enabling him to articulate that complexity. Chaucer's use of Ovidian and Ciceronian sources and ideas is examined, and his pursuit of simplicity and suspicion of "delicacy"; the potent issues of sexuality and spirituality, and money and death (with Chaucer's own ending and his thoughts on last things) complete the collection. Contributors: DEREK BREWER, HELEN COOPER, PAUL DOWER, JOHN V. FLEMING, JOHN HILL, TRAUGOTT LAWLER, CELIA LEWIS, R. BARTON PALMER, WILLIAM PROVOST, JOHN PLUMMER, WILLIAM ROGERS.

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Studies of the influence of the middle ages on aspects of European and American life and culture from 16c to the present day. The eleven essays in this volume are studies of specific instances of the influence and impact of the middle ages on Western life and culture from the sixteenth century to the present day. They cover a wide range of topics -literature, stylistics, lexicography, art, the cinema, philosophy, history and myth-making, oral traditions, feminist issues - and reflect the enduring influence of the middle ages on European art and life. Dr MARIE-FRANÇOISE ALAMICHEL is lecturer in English at the University of Paris IV-Sorbonne; the late DEREK BREWER was Emeritus Professor of English, University of Cambridge. Contributors: CLAIRE VIAL, DERICK S. THOMSON, KEES DEKKER, ERIC G. STANLEY, FLORENCE BOURGNE, RENATE HAAS, DEREK BREWER, LAURA KENDRICK, RENÉ GALLET, JAMES NOBLE, SANDRA GORGIEVSKI.

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