This adaptable instrument's origins date back centuries. Celtic legends amuse us with mystical stories describing the creation of stringed music, but practical history recounts that the modern birth of the violin occurred in Italy as early as the sixteenth century. The skilled craft of hand production was renowned in France as well, but it is the British classic type and its history that W. Meredith Morris writes about in British Violin Makers . This classic, comprehensive reference to violin making, reprinted in 1920, features a biographical dictionary of craftsmen, along with many of their signatures and marks. Twenty-six photographs of selected makers and their instruments help place the contemporary reader in the style of the period. Reverend Morris's second editionimproves upon the first 1904 edition by adding more than 150 names to the list of makers who produced six violins or more. A new foreword by music scholar Benjamin Hebbert explains the important role British violin makers played in the development of the instrument. From Morris's narrative, one gets a feel for the importance of the craftsman and his materials. He explains the various types of wood and varnish used, and how they, along with the arch and contour, work together to produce a specific tone. Speaking with fervor, the way a wine connoisseur does when describing a certain vintage, Morris compares and contrasts the quality of British instruments to that of other nations.
For the Renaissance, all the world may have been a stage and all its people players, but Shakespeare was also an actor on the literal stage. Meredith Anne Skura asks what it meant to be an actor in Shakespeare's England and shows why a knowledge of actual theatrical practices is essential for understanding both Shakespeare's plays and the theatricality of everyday life in early modern England. Despite the obvious differences between our theater and Shakespeare's, sixteenth-century testimony suggests that the experience of acting has not changed much over the centuries. Beginning with a psychoanalytically informed account of acting today, Skura shows how this intense and ambivalent experience appears not only in literal references to acting in Shakespearean drama but also in recurring narrative concerns, details of language, and dramatic strategies used to engage the audience. Looking at the plays in the context of both public and private worlds outside the theater, Skura rereads the canon to identify new configurations in the plays and new ways of understanding theatrical self-consciousness in Renaissance England. Rich in theatrical, psychoanalytic, biographical, and historical insight, this book will be invaluable to students of Shakespeare and instructive to all readers interested in the dynamics of performance.
Meredith Maran lived a daughter's nightmare: she accused her father of sexual abuse, then realized, nearly too late, that he was innocent. During the 1980s and 1990s, tens of thousands of Americans became convinced that they had repressed memories of childhood sexual abuse, and then, decades later, recovered those memories in therapy. Journalist, mother, and daughter Meredith Maran was one of them. Her accusation and estrangement from her father caused her sons to grow up without their only grandfather, divided her family into those who believed her and those who didn't, and led her to isolate herself on "Planet Incest," where "survivors" devoted their lives, and life savings, to recovering memories of events that had never occurred. Maran unveils her family's devastation and ultimate redemption against the backdrop of the sex-abuse scandals, beginning with the infamous McMartin preschool trial, that sent hundreds of innocents to jail—several of whom remain imprisoned today. Exploring the psychological, cultural, and neuroscientific causes of this modern American witch-hunt, My Lie asks: how could so many people come to believe the same lie at the same time? What has neuroscience discovered about the brain's capacity to create false memories and encode false beliefs? What are the "big lies" gaining traction in American culture today—and how can we keep them from taking hold? My Lie is a wrenchingly honest, unexpectedly witty, and profoundly human story that proves the personal is indeed political—and the political can become painfully personal.
In 1993 a small group of women gathered to celebrate the retirement of the original Ernie, a notoriously sexist trade union official who claimed that the only reason women wanted to become shearers was for the sex. The event grew to become the Annual Ernie Awards, the world's premier event shaming men for outrageous sexism. Fifteen years of Australian male chauvinist piggery is faithfully chronicled here with name, rank and serial number - from John Laws to John Howard, from David Oldfield to David Hookes, from Pat Cash to Paddy McGuinness and Australia's former favourite son-in-law, Tom Cruise. Chefs, archbishops, judges, footballers, shock jocks and politicians are all in our sights. I never turned away from Cathy. No matter how fat she was... -Nick Bideau, Cathy Freeman's ex-coach and ex-partner I bet she's now sorry she burnt her bra all those years ago (on Germaine Greer at 63). -Ray Hadley, broadcaster What do you think you're looking at, sugar tits? -Mel Gibson, actor With a nod to the good guys such as Don Bradman and Russell Crowe (really!), The Ernies Book is unashamedly wicked. If it weren't so funny, you'd have to cry. For all these years Meredith Burgmann and Yvette Andrews ran the Ernie Awards. They are now running for their lives.
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