The Bard meets "House" in this illumination of the medical mysteries surrounding 10 of the English language's most heralded writers, including John Milton, Jonathan Swift, and Jack London.
The ethnically diverse scope, broad chronological coverage, and mix of biographical, critical, historical, political, and cultural entries make this the most useful and exciting poetry reference of its kind for students today. American poetry springs up out of all walks of life; its poems are "maternal as well as paternal...stuff'd with the stuff that is coarse and stuff'd with the stuff that is fine," as Walt Whitman wrote, adding "Of every hue and caste am I, of every rank and religion." Written for high school and undergraduate students, this two-volume encyclopedia covers U.S. poetry from the Colonial era to the present, offering full treatments of hundreds of key poets of the American canon. What sets this reference apart is that it also discusses events, movements, schools, and poetic approaches, placing poets in their social, historical, political, cultural, and critical contexts and showing how their works mirror the eras in which they were written. Readers will learn about surrealism, ekphrastic poetry, pastoral elegy, the Black Mountain poets, and "language" poetry. There are long and rich entries on modernism and postmodernism as well as entries related to the formal and technical dimensions of American poetry. Particular attention is paid to women poets and poets from various ethnic groups. Poets such as Amiri Baraka, Nathaniel Mackey, Natasha Trethewey, and Tracy Smith are featured. The encyclopedia also contains entries on a wide selection of Latino and Native American poets and substantial coverage of the avant-garde and experimental movements and provides sidebars that illuminate key points.
Originally published in 1956. In Ishmael, Professor James Baird responds to the increasing secularization of Western civilization and the creation of what he calls "authentic primitivism." For Baird, the aesthetic austerity of Protestantism undermined the structure of symbols created by Catholicism. In the absence of a meaningful structure of cultural authority in Western civilization, "primary art" took on a quasi-religious role by connecting humans to a transcendent being. Ishmael describes a new system of art, beginning around 1850, that supplanted Christian symbolism. Baird examines writers who helped to create a modern authentic primitivism, with emphasis on Herman Melville, whom Baird sees as a locus of change for the cultural significance of primary art. Baird provides a social history and biography of writers who participated in the primary art movement from 1850 to 1950
Contemporary reception study has developed a diversity of approaches and methods, including the institutional, textual, historical, authorial, and reader-response, which, to a greater or lesser extent, acknowledge the various ways in which readers have found texts-- literature, television shows, movies, and newspapers--meaningful. This collection emphasizes that new diversity, examining movies, newspapers, fans, television shows, and traditional American as well as modern Hispanic, Black, and Women's literature. The essays on literature include James Machor on Melville's short fiction, Kenneth Roemer on Edward Bellamy's utopian work Looking Backward, Amy Blair on the popularity of Sinclair Lewis's Main Street, Marcial Gonzalez on Danny Santiago and his Hispanic novel Famous All Over Town, and Leonard Diepeveen on modernist fiction and criticism. The theoretical essays on reader-oriented criticism include Patsy Schweickart on interpretation and the ethics of careand Jack Bratich on active audiences. Media versions of response criticism include Andrea Press and Camille Johnson's ethnographic analysis of fans of the Oprah Winfrey Show, Janet Staiger on Robert Aldrich's film version of Mickey Spillane's Kiss Me Deadly, and Rhiannon Bury on the fans of the HBO television show Six Feet Under. History-of-the-book versions include Barbara Hochman on the popularity of the 1890s editions of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, Ellen Garvey on nineteenth-century scrapbooks of newspaper, and David Nord on early twentieth-century newspapers' relations to audience charges of bias and unfairness. Poststructuralist studies include Philip Goldstein on Richard Wright's Native Son, Steve Mailloux on Reading Lolita in Tehran, and Tony Bennett on the cultural analyses of Pierre Bourdieu. The collection concludes with essays by Janice Radway on the limits of these methods and on the possibility of new forms of sociological and anthropological reception study and byToby Miller on the "reception deception" in relation to the worldwide distribution and reception of movies and television shows.
This intriguing study examines the truth behind the myths and misconceptions that defined the American Civil War, as portrayed through the popular literary works of the time. The Civil War Era: A Historical Exploration of Literature examines the tremendous change the American Civil War brought to society as reflected in the literature of the time. It delves into the cultural, historical, and literary contexts of the era, looking beyond common conceptions and instead reflecting on the era's complexities and contradictions. The book profiles key American literature related to the war, both on and off the battlefield, including Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage, Ambrose Bierce's "Chickamauga," Louisa May Alcott's Hospital Sketches, the Civil War poems of Walt Whitman and Herman Melville, and Lincoln's "Gettysburg Address." This book serves to demonstrate how profoundly the actions on the Civil War battlefield shaped American politics, society, and the arts.
James L. Machor offers a sweeping exploration of how American fiction was received in both public and private spheres in the United States before the Civil War. Machor takes four antebellum authors—Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, Catharine Sedgwick, and Caroline Chesebro'—and analyzes how their works were published, received, and interpreted. Drawing on discussions found in book reviews and in private letters and diaries, Machor examines how middle-class readers of the time engaged with contemporary fiction and how fiction reading evolved as an interpretative practice in nineteenth-century America. Through careful analysis, Machor illuminates how the reading practices of nineteenth-century Americans shaped not only the experiences of these writers at the time but also the way the writers were received in the twentieth century. What Machor reveals is that these authors were received in ways strikingly different from how they are currently read, thereby shedding significant light on their present status in the literary canon in comparison to their critical and popular positions in their own time. Machor deftly combines response and reception criticism and theory with work in the history of reading to engage with groundbreaking scholarship in historical hermeneutics. In so doing, Machor takes us ever closer to understanding the particular and varying reading strategies of historical audiences and how they impacted authors’ conceptions of their own readership.
Sailing the uncharted waters of the Pacific in 1830, Captain Benjamin Morrell of Connecticut became the first outsider to encounter the inhabitants of a small island off New Guinea. The contact quickly turned violent, fatal cannons were fired, and Morrell abducted young Dako, a hostage so shocked by the white complexions of his kidnappers that he believed he had been captured by the dead. This gripping book unveils for the first time the strange odyssey the two men shared in ensuing years. The account is uniquely told, as much from the captive's perspective as from the American's. Upon returning to New York, Morrell exhibited Dako as a “cannibal” in wildly popular shows performed on Broadway and along the east coast. The proceeds helped fund a return voyage to the South Pacific—the captain hoping to establish trade with Dako's assistance, and Dako seizing his only chance to return home to his unmapped island. Supported by rich, newly found archives, this wide-ranging volume traces the voyage to its extraordinary ends and en route decrypts Morrell's ambiguous character, the mythic qualities of Dako's life, and the two men's infusion into American literature—Dako inspired Melville's Queequeg, for example. The encounters confound indigenous peoples and Americans alike as both puzzle over what it is to be truly human and alive.
This book recalls an era when criticism could change the way we look at the world. In the tradition of Matthew Arnold and Edmund Wilson, James Wood reads literature expansively, always pursuing its role and destiny in our lives. In a series of essays about such figures as Melville, Flaubert, Chekhov, Virginia Woolf, and Don DeLillo, Wood relates their fiction to questions of religious and philosophical belief. He suggests that the steady ebb of the sea of faith has much to do with the revo- lutionary power of the novel, as it has developed over the last two centuries. To read James Wood is to be shocked into both thinking and feeling how great our debt to the novel is. In the grand tradition of criticism, Wood's work is both commentary and literature in its own right--fiercely written, polemical, and richly poetic in style. This book marks the debut of a masterly literary voice.
Roland and Romanesque : Biblical iconography in The song of Roland by William R . Cook, Ronald B. Herzman. Wordworth, Coleridge, and Turner by James A.W. Heffe rnan. Alexander Pope and picturesque landscape by James R. Aubrey. The metamorp hosis of the centaur in fifth-century Greek arts and society by Krin Gabbard. F orm and protest in atonal music : a meditation on Adorno by Lucian Krukowski. "That hive of sublety" : "Benito Cereno" as critique of ideology by James H. Kavanagh. Poetry and kingship : Shakespeare's A midsummer night's dream by Leo Pau l S. de Alvarez. Hugh MacDiarmid and the Lenin/Douglas line by Stephen P. Smith .
Castaway in Paradise explores the reality in the myth through the exciting stories of castaways who, because of shipwrecks, perfidious sea captains, or their own choice, found themselves true-life Robinson Crusoes.
In The Soldier’s Two Bodies, James M. Greene investigates an overlooked genre of early American literature—the Revolutionary War veteran narrative—showing that it by turns both promotes and critiques a notion of military heroism as the source of U.S. sovereignty. Personal narratives by veterans of the American Revolution indicate that soldiers in the United States have been represented in two contrasting ways from the nation’s first days: as heroic symbols of the body politic and as human beings whose sufferings are neglected by their country. Published from 1779 through the late 1850s, narrative accounts of Revolutionary War veterans’ past service called for recognition from contemporary audiences, inviting readers to understand the war as a moment of violence central to the founding of the nation. Yet, as Greene reveals, these calls for recognition at the same time underscored how many veterans felt overlooked and excluded from the sovereign power they fought to establish. Although such narratives stem from a discourse that supports centralized, continental nationalism, they disrupt stable notions of a unified American people by highlighting those left behind. Greene discusses several well-known examples of the genre, including narratives from Ethan Allen, Joseph Plumb Martin, and Deborah Sampson, along with Herman Melville's fictional adaptation of the life of Israel Potter. Additional chapters focus on accounts of postwar frontier actions, including narratives collected by Hugh Henry Brackenridge that voice concerns over populist violence, along with stranger narratives like those of Isaac Hubbell and James Roberts, which register as fantastic imitations of the genre commenting on antebellum racial politics. With attention to questions of historical context and political ideology, Greene charts the process by which veteran narratives promote exception, violence, and autonomy, while also encouraging restraint, sacrifice, and collectivity. Revolutionary War veteran narratives offer no easy solutions to the appropriation of veterans’ lives within military nationalism and sovereign violence. But by bringing forward the paradox inherent in the figure of the U.S. soldier, the genre invites considerations of how to reimagine those representations. Drawing attention to paradoxes presented by the memory of the American Revolution, The Soldier’s Two Bodies locates the origins of a complicated history surrounding the representation of veterans in U.S. politics and culture.
Enjoy beloved classics while developing vocabulary, reading, and critical thinking skills! Each literature book in the series is a one-year course Each chapter has five lessons with daily concept-building exercises, warm-up questions, and guided readings Easy-to-use with suggested reading schedules and daily calendar Equips students to think critically about philosophy and trends in culture, and articulate their views through writing A well-crafted presentation of whole-book or whole-work selections from the major genres of classic literature (prose, poetry, and drama), each course has 34 chapters representing 34 weeks of study, with an overview of narrative background material on the writers, their historical settings, and worldview. The rich curriculum’s content is infused with critical thinking skills, and an easy-to-use teacher’s guide outlines student objectives with each chapter, providing the answers to the assignments and weekly exercises. The final lesson of the week includes both the exam, covering insights on the week’s chapter, as well as essays developed through the course of that week’s study, chosen by the educator and student to personalize the coursework for the individual learner.
This volume argues that Jack London's Martin Eden and Henry Adams' The Education of Henry Adams are two of the first works in American literature to embody the motif of existentialism. The development of the existential dilemma in each work will be supported through references to earlier European existentialist writers, with Nietzsche as a focal point. The 19th century fin de siècle was a time of tremendous change, both materially and philosophically. The dawn of the last century was a time of great wealth and imperialistic expansion for Western civilization, but also a time in which the seeds were sown for later military conflict; the enormity of which the world had never witnessed before. From the vantage point of the post-World War years, the materialism of the fin de siècle was a decorative façade that concealed from view the underlying reality of the human abyss. The outbreak of the First World War changed all of that, and the two works examined here anticipated that change. Henry James described the underlying reality of the fin de siècle when he remarked: "To have to take it all now for what the treacherous years were all the while making for and meaning is too tragic for any words." Henry Adams and Jack London mirror this sentiment in their respective works by depicting the philosophical turbulence of the 19th century fin de siècle.
Describes the men and women who made a lasting impact on Christian faith and experience. With over 1,500 biographical entries, this book is the most comprehensive resource available. It spans the first through the twentieth centuries--from Jesus and the apostles to Billy Graham and Mother Teresa. A great reference book for pastors, Bible students and teachers, or anyone desiring a one-volume biographical dictionary of who's who in Christian history.
In "Muting White Noise," James H. Cox considers how Native authors have liberated our imaginations from colonial narratives. Cox takes his title from Sherman Alexie, for whom the white noise of a television set represents the white mass-produced culture that mutes American Indian voices. Cox foregrounds the work of Native intellectuals in his readings of the American Indian novel tradition. He thereby develops a critical perspective from which to re-see the role played by the Euro-American novel tradition in justifying and enabling colonialism.
In this book, James Boon ranges through history and around the globe in a series of provocative reflections on the limitations, attractions, and ambiguities of cultural interpretation. The book reflects the unusual keyword of its title, extra-vagance, a term Thoreau used to refer to thought that skirts traditional boundaries. Boon follows Thoreau's lead by broaching subjects as diverse as Balinese ritual, Montaigne, Chaucer, Tarzan, Perry Mason, opera, and the ideas of Jacques Derrida, Ruth Benedict, Kenneth Burke, and Mary Douglas. He makes creative and often playful leaps among eclectic texts and rituals that do not hold single, fixed meanings, but numerous, changing, and exceedingly specific ones. Boon opens by exploring links between ritual and reading, focusing on commentaries about the seclusion of menstruating women in Native American culture, trance dances in Bali, and circumcision (or lack of it) in contrasting religions. He considers the ironies of "first-person ethnography" by telling stories from his own fieldwork, reflecting on ethnological museums, and making seriocomic connections between Mark Twain and Marcel Mauss. In expansive discussions that touch on Manhattan and Sri Lanka, the Louvre and the "World of Coca-Cola" museum, willfully obscure academic theory and shamelessly commercial show business, Boon underlines the inadequacies of simple ideologies and pat generalizations. The book is a profound and eloquent exploration of cultural comparison by one of America's most original and innovative anthropologists.
New York Times Bestseller: This life story of the quirky physicist is “a thorough and masterful portrait of one of the great minds of the century” (The New York Review of Books). Raised in Depression-era Rockaway Beach, physicist Richard Feynman was irreverent, eccentric, and childishly enthusiastic—a new kind of scientist in a field that was in its infancy. His quick mastery of quantum mechanics earned him a place at Los Alamos working on the Manhattan Project under J. Robert Oppenheimer, where the giddy young man held his own among the nation’s greatest minds. There, Feynman turned theory into practice, culminating in the Trinity test, on July 16, 1945, when the Atomic Age was born. He was only twenty-seven. And he was just getting started. In this sweeping biography, James Gleick captures the forceful personality of a great man, integrating Feynman’s work and life in a way that is accessible to laymen and fascinating for the scientists who follow in his footsteps.
The rich curriculum's content is infused with critical thinking skills, and an easy-to-use teacher's guide outlines student objectives with each chapter, providing the answers to the assignments and weekly exercises. The final lesson of the week includes both the exam, covering insights on the week's chapter, as well as essays developed through the course of that week's study, chosen by the educator and student to personalize the coursework for the individual learner.
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