In his most wonderfully intelligent, stunningly honest, and painfully funny book, acclaimed writer David Shields uses himself as a representative for all readers and writers who seek to find salvation
The Earth as a Cradle for Life aims to fill the gap between readers who have a strong and informed scientific interest in the environment (but no access to the journal literature), and their desire fo
Toni Morrison is one of the most celebrated living authors. Her work, for which she received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993, vibrantly portrays American life from the Antebellum period to the p
Featuring close readings of selected poetry, visual texts, short stories and novels published for children since 1945, from Naughty Amelia Jane to Watership Down, this is the first extensive study of
An essential masterwork from Chinese literary giant Lu Yao—winner of the Mao Dun Literature Prize—available for the first time in English.Lu Yao published only two novels before his untimely death—but
You have been wondering about it for some time; finally, Zawadzki (Polish, Jagiellonian U.) has the guts to say it out loud. Weak thought can be a temporary affliction or a life-long avenue of pursuit
The ways in which literary works begin have proved fascinating to readers and critics at least since Aristophanes. This collection of essays gives life to a topic of perennial interest by presenting a variety of original readings in nearly all the major genres of Greek and Latin literature. The subjects of these essays range from narrative voices in the opening of the Odyssey to ideological reasons for Tacitus' choice of a beginning in the Histories, and from a survey of opening devices in Greek poetry to the playwright's negotiations with the audience in Roman comedy. Other papers discuss 'false starts' in Gorgias and Herodotus, the prologues of Greek tragedy, Plato's 'frame' dialogues, delayed proems in Virgil, the role of the patron in Horace, aristocratic beginnings in Seneca, and 'inappropriate' prefaces in Plutarch. By embracing a variety of authors and a broad range of approaches, from formal analysis of opening devices to post-structural interpretation, these twelve contributio
Decadence and Literature explains how the concept of decadence developed since Roman times into a major cultural trope with broad explanatory power. No longer just a term of opprobrium for mannered art or immoral behaviour, decadence today describes complex cultural and social responses to modernity in all its forms. From the Roman emperor's indulgence in luxurious excess as both personal vice and political control, to the Enlightenment libertine's rational pursuit of hedonism, to the nineteenth-century dandy's simultaneous delight and distaste with modern urban life, decadence has emerged as a way of taking cultural stock of major social changes. These changes include the role of women in forms of artistic expression and social participation formerly reserved for men, as well as the increasing acceptance of LGBTQ+ relationships, a development with a direct relationship to decadence. Today, decadence seems more important than ever to an informed understanding of contemporary anxieties
Challenging existing methodological conceptions of the analytic approach to aesthetics, Jukka Mikkonen brings together philosophy, literary studies and cognitive psychology to offer a new theory on the cognitive value of reading fiction. Philosophy, Literature and Understanding defends the epistemic significance of narratives, arguing that it should be explained in terms of understanding rather than knowledge. Mikkonen formulates understanding as a cognitive process, which he connects to narrative imagining in order to assert that narrative is a central tool for communicating understanding. Demonstrating the effects that literary works have on their readers, he examines academic critical analysis, responses of the reading public and nonfictional writings that include autobiographical testimony to their writer’s influences and attitudes to life. In doing so, he provides empirical evidence of the cognitive benefits of literature and of how readers demonstrate the growth of their underst
Ideal for introductory ethics courses, The Moral Life: An Introductory Reader in Ethics and Literature, Fifth Edition, brings together an extensive and varied collection of ninety-one classical and co
Ideal for introductory ethics courses, The Moral Life: An Introductory Reader in Ethics and Literature, Sixth Edition, brings together an extensive and varied collection of eighty-eight classical and
From the Preface:The title for this collection was the title of a course in literary criticism that I gave for many years at Bennington College. And much of the material presented here was used in tha
"Literary criticism, as I attempt to practice it," writes Harold Bloom in The Anatomy of Influence, "is in the first place literary, that is to say, personal and passionate." For more than half a cen
A fun, illustrated history of the umbrella's surprising place in life and literatureHumans have been making, using, perfecting, and decorating umbrellas for millennia--holding them over the heads of r
For most of the two years Koorey (theater and film, Valencia Community College) spent on her doctoral dissertation on American playwright Miller, she says she was looking through bibliographic resourc
