She shows how much the themes of freedom and individualism, manhood and innocence, depended on the existence of a black population that was manifestly unfree--and that came to serve white authors as embodiments of their own fears and desires.Written with the artistic vision that has earned Toni Morrison a pre-eminent place in modern letters, Playing in the Dark will be avidly read by Morrison admirers as well as by students, critics, and scholars of American literature.

    Borges's writings are models of succinct power; by temperament and by artistic ambition, he was a minimalist, given to working his wonders on the smallest scale possible. A master of fiction, Borges never published a novel -- or even, it seems, felt the lure of attempting one. He professed a heartfelt conservative piety for the older literary forms, for the saga and epic, the lyric and tale, but he made radically inventive uses of the traditional forms in his own literary labors.Borges possessed an uncommon complement of gifts. He was capable of launching startling, even unnerving flights of cerebral fantasy or metaphor but owned a first-rate mind and a critical intelligence entirely at ease with the metaphysical abstractions of the philosophers and theologians. All the same, in his intellectual bearing Borges was a skeptic, critical of but not disparaging or cynical toward the truth claims of systematic philosophical or religious thought. He was at once a genuine artist and a judicious, sympathetic critic.The posthumous publication of This Craft of Verse, Borges's 1967 Norton Lectures, reacquaints us with his splendid critical faculties. The volume is a welcome gift, too, reminding us of Borges's generous insistence on identifying with his fellow readers, who are ever ready to be transported by their love for literature. (Harvard University Press scheduled release of the remastered recordings for the fall of 2000.) Enough cause, then, to celebrate the recent discovery of these long-stored and forgotten tape recordings of lectures delivered at Cambridge more than three decades ago. By the late 1960s, Borges was quite blind and incapable of consulting notes when delivering an address. The lectures transcribed and collected here -- with their frequent quotations from the European languages, both ancient and modern -- were delivered extemporaneously, performances made possible by Borges's own powers of recollection (which were, it need hardly be said, formidable).In life and in literary manner Borges was a cosmopolitan, his range of reference almost inexhaustibly wide. His reading embraced Homer and Virgil, the Icelandic sagas and Beowulf, Chaucer and Milton, Rabelais and Cervantes, Kafka and Joyce. This Craft of Verse addresses issues central to the art of poetry: essential metaphors, epic poetry, the origins of verse, and poetic meaning. The lectures conclude with a statement of Borges's own "poetic creed." This slim but profound volume, however, ranges much farther afield. Borges serves up intriguing asides on the novel, on literary criticism and history, and on theories of translation. Ultimately, his comments touch on the largest questions raised by literature and language and the thornier puzzles of human communication.The lectures convey Borges's evident delight in English and his eloquence and ease in the language, even when facing a distinguished audience of native English speakers. But perhaps that is not so surprising, after all, for Borges carried on a lifelong love affair with the English language and the literatures of the British Isles and North America. His parents, who were fluent in English, introduced Borges to the language when he was a young boy, and Borges was allowed the run of his father's extensive library of English classics. Among the bookshelves of his father's study he first encountered authors he would admiringly cite over a long literary life: Wells and Kipling and Chesterton and Shaw, to name only a few. And the study of Old English became a hobby to which Borges remained passionately devoted until his death. The English language he counted as his second (and perhaps even preferred) home.Since the 1960s, when the then relatively obscure Buenos Aires writer was first introduced to English-speaking readers in translations of the classic Ficciones and the anthology Labyrinths, it has been apparent that Borges survives the ordeal of translation without obvious loss. His power remains intact on the page. This he owes to the virtues of his prose style, to the elegant simplicity and naturalness that, as the transcribed Norton Lectures demonstrate, were indistinguishable from the man. Borges's style is classical: concise, understated, cleanly cadenced, strict in its devotion to the old-fashioned values of clarity and logical order. Whether in his native Spanish or in his adopted English, Borges is a writer and lecturer who impresses us with his singular intellectual wit, charm, and refinement.This Craft of Verse makes an exquisite addition to a distinguished series and offers, moreover, invaluable insights into the mind and work of a true modern master. Between its covers, this small book holds the pleasures of the modest, warm voice of a writer who stands unquestionably with the strongest literary talents of the 20th century.--Gregory Tietjen, Academic & Scholarly Editor

    In About Looking he explores our role as observers to reveal new layers of meaning in what we see. How do the animals we look at in zoos remind us of a relationship between man and beast all but lost in the twentieth century? What is it about looking at war photographs that doubles their already potent violence? How do the nudes of Rodin betray the threats to his authority and potency posed by clay and flesh? And how does solitude inform the art of Giacometti? In asking these and other questions, Berger quietly -- but fundamentally -- alters the vision of anyone who reads his work.

    In this book, Louis Sass, a clinical psychologist, offers a new vision of schizophrenia, comparing it with the works of such artists and writers as Kafka, Beckett, and Duchamp and philosophers including Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault and Derrida. It provides a portrait of the world of the madman, along with a commentary on modernist and postmodernist culture.

    Artifice of Absorption, a key essay, is written in verse, and its structures and rhythms initiate the reader into the strength and complexity of the argument. In a wild variety of topics, polemic, and styles, Bernstein surveys the current poetry scene and addresses many of the hot issues of poststructuralist literary theory. Poetics is the continuation of poetry by other means, he writes. What role should poetics play in contemporary culture? Bernstein finds the answer in dissent, not merely in argument but in form--a poetic language that resists being easily absorbed into the conventions of our culture.Insisting on the vital need for radical innovation, Bernstein traces the traditions of modern poetry back to Stein and Wilde, taking issue with those critics who see in the postmodern a loss of political and aesthetic relevance. Sometimes playful, often hortatory, always intense, he joins in the debate on cultural diversity and the definition of modernism. We encounter Swinburne and Morris as surprising precursors, along with considerations of Wittgenstein, Khlebnikov, Adorno, Jameson, and Pac-Man. A Poetics is both criticism and poetry, both tract and song, with no dull moments.

    Her first retrospective exhibition in London in 1988, which brought together a range of her dramatically simplified paintings of the ambiguous relatioships between men, women and children, sent shock waves through the art scene on both sides of the Atlantic. Rego's view of the world as expressed in her work is a particularly female one. Germaine Greer has written of her: 'It is not often given to women to recognize themselves in painting, still less to see their private world, their dreams, the insides of their heads, projected on such a scale and so immediately, with such depth and colour.' In Rego's words, it was the turn of the dog to tell its story and her powerful images explore the obsessions and fears of childhood which have helped form her adult vision.Born in Portugal in 1935, Rego has worked in Britain since 1976 and in recent years has established herself as an artist of international standing. This highly acclaimed book was first published in 1992, but since then Rego has produced an impressive range of new work. Bringing together a wealth of paintings, drawings and prints, alongside revealing documentary illustrations, this book has now been updated to include three new chapters and a revised chronology, bibliography and list of exhibitions.

    The fifteen pieces collected here range from the history of the Salman Rushdie affair to the dream of Atlantis, from the turf wars among ethnographic filmmakers to the unlikely romance between poetry and espionage, from the pilgrims in Plymouth to the students in Tiananmen Square. Above all, Weinberger's concern is poetry––whether written in medieval Baghdad or by Mexicans in Japan––and the perennially underground yet global network through which it travels. With his modernist sensibility and internationalist perspective, Weinberger's inventive prose transports old myths and texts to the strange realities of contemporary life.

    This analysis provides an in-depth look at Dylan as a performer, exploring his work on stage and in the studio, and looks at the evolution of his style and concerns.

    Seen by some as simply a gifted buffoon, Ridiculous Theatre: Scourge of Human Folly exposes Ludlam as a clear-eyed, hard-headed thinker and master craftsman. His luminous essays (never widely available in his lifetime) and provocative opinions (drawn from interviews, unpublished papers and notebooks) reveal a complex mind comprehensively focused on theatrical invention.Charles Ludlam: Artistic director, playwright, director, designer and star of New York’s acclaimed Ridiculous Theatrical Company. During his twenty years with the Ridiculous, Ludlam won Obie and Drama Desk awards as well as playwriting fellowships from the Guggenheim, Rockefeller and Ford foundations and the National Endowment for the Arts. His more than thirty plays are among the most thought-provoking entertainments in the modern repertoire and continue to be widely performed throughout the world.

    Less fortunate than these few were West Coasters such as Sonny Criss, Harold Land, Curtis Counce, Carl Perkins, Lennie Niehaus, Roy Porter, Teddy Edwards, Gerald Wilson, and those others whose careers languished without achieving either a later revival or even an early brief taste of fame. Certainly some West Coast jazz players have been awarded a central place in jazz history, but invariably they have been those who, like Charles Mingus or Eric Dolphy, left California for Manhattan. Those who stayed behind were, for the most part, left behind. The time has come for a critical re-evaluation of this body of work. With more than forty years of perspective--since modern jazz came to California-we can perhaps now begin to make sense of the rich array of music presented there during those glory years. But to do so, we need to start almost from scratch. We need to throw away the stereotypes of West Coast jazz, reject the simplifications, catchphrases, and pigeonholings that have only confused the issue. So many discussions of the music have begun by asking, "What was West Coast jazz?"--as if some simple definition would answer all our questions. And when no simple answer emerged--how could it when the same critics asking the question could hardly agree on a definition of jazz itself?--this failure was brandished as grounds for dismissing the whole subject. My approach is different. I start with the music itself, the musicians themselves, the geography and social situation, the clubs and the culture. I tried to learn what they have to tell us, rather than regurgitate the dubious critical consensus of the last generation. Was West Coast jazz the last regional style or merely a marketing fad? Was there really ever any such thing as West Coast jazz? If so, was it better or worse than East Coast jazz? Such questions are not without merit, but they provide a poor start for a serious historical inquiry. I ask readers hoping for quick and easy answers to approach this work with an open mind and a modicum of patience. Generalizations will emerge; broader considerations will become increasingly clear; but only as we approach the close of this complex story, after we have let the music emerge in all its richness and diversity. By starting with some theory of West Coast jazz, we run the risk of seeing only what fits into our theory. Too many accounts of the music have fallen into just this trap. Instead, we need to see things with fresh eyes, hear the music again with fresh ears.

    Also included are Adorno's reflections on a variety of subjects: literary titles, the physical qualities of books, political commitment in literature, the light-hearted and the serious in art, and the use of foreign words in writing, to name a few.

    Ted Hughes sees Shakespeare's early poems Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece as embodying two great myths of the archaic world, that of the hero who rejects the love of the Goddess and is killed in revenge by a boar; and that of the king, or god, whose crime is rape and whose punishment is banishment. These two complexes merge as Shakespeare's work develops into what Hughes calls the Tragic Equation, a flexible formula through which the poet was able to tap into the innate power of these myths to enliven his own imagination - and through him the imagination of Elizabethan England, in which the conflicts between Catholicism and Protestantism in the "living myth" of the English Reformation never lay far from the bloody surface of events. With his characteristic mixture of erudition and immediacy, Ted Hughes traces this idea in a close reading of Shakespeare's entire work. This text originally grew out of correspondence with dramatists, and anyone for whom intimate attention to the plays is important - scholar, student, actor, or common reader - will profit greatly from Hughes's loving, intensive, engrossing, and radical analysis of the greatest writing in the language.

    By manipulating the cinematic apparatus in unorthodox ways, avant-garde filmmakers challenge the standardized versions of seeing perpetuated by the dominant film industry and generate ways of seeing that are truer to actual human vision.Beginning with the proposition that the images of cinema and vision derive from the same basic elements—light, movement, and time—Wees argues that cinematic apparatus and human visual apparatus have significant properties in common. For that reason they can be brought into a dynamic, creative relationship which the author calls the dialectic of eye and camera. The consequences of this relationship are what Wees explores.Although previous studies have recognized the visual bias of avant-garde film, this is the first to place the visual aesthetics of avant-garde film in a long-standing, multidisciplinary discourse on vision, visuality, and art.

    Her subjects are various––poetics, the imagination, politics, spirituality, other writers––and her approach independent minded and richly complex. Here in a single volume are recent essays exploring new ground broken by Levertov in the past decade as well as the finest and most useful prose pieces from The Poet in the World (1973) and Light Up the Cave (1981). This is a book to read and reread. With their combination of sensitivity and practicality, the New Selected Essays will prove enormously helpful to the writer and reader of poetry. As Kirkus Reviews remarked about her prose: "This is humanism in its true sense––her attitude as evidenced (not described) by her writing is such that the reader cannot help but experience life, at least temporarily, with more intensity, joy, and imagination."

    She explores the somewhat deflated world of post-revolutionary Prague, guides us through the labyrinthine New York art world of the eighties, and takes us behind the one-way mirror of Salvador Minuchin's school of family therapy.And to each subject she brings the incisive skepticism and dazzling epigrammatic style that are her hallmarks.“Why don’t more people write like [Malcolm]?... She is cast from the mold of the Eastern European intellectual: beholden to modernism. as familiar with Kundera’s exile as she is with Freud’s Vienna. This sensibility must grant her the detachment she sometimes so mercilessly employs, but it also gives her an unassailable passion for getting to the center of things.” —Boston Globe

    He analyses them in detail, paying particular attention to theme, interprets complexities of structure and characterisation, and defines Dostoyevsky's literary achievement. His arguments are reinforced by extensive quotation in English.

    Contributors to the text include William Burroughs and Timothy Leary.

    Roberto Schwarz’s writings have had a profound effect throughout Latin America. This is the first volume of those writings to appear in English. Taking its title from what has probably been Schwarz’s most influential essay, Misplaced Ideas first examines the slave-owning Brazil of the nineteenth century, to show the persistent gap between liberal ideology based on the free market, and the reality of forced labour. The essays which follow range across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and across film and fiction, theatre and music. They include four pieces on the great novelist Machado de Assis, and a powerful essay on the sometimes bizarre ways Brazilian culture reacted to the imposition of military rule. Throughout, Schwarz continually demonstrates the wit and sharpness which make his writings both a challenge and a pleasure to read.

    Thecontributors write with philosophical subtlety and wide-ranging scholarship, locating their interpretations firmly within the context of Aristotle's thought as a whole.

    Slatkin reveals the full importance of mythic allusion in Homeric composition and in the experience of Homer's audience.

    Drawing on a number of current literary theories (but avoiding most of their jargon), Attebery makes a case for fantasy as a significant movement within postmodern literature rather than as a simple exercise of nostalgia. Attebury examines recent and classic fantasies by Ursula K. Le Guin, John Crowley, J.R.R. Tolkien, Diana Wynne Jones, and Gene Wolfe, among others. In both its popular and postmodern incarnations, fantasic fiction exhibits a remarkable capacity for reinventing narrative concentions. Attebery shows how plots, characters, settings, storytelling frameworks, gender divisions, and references to cultural texts such as history and science are all called into question the moment the marvelous is admited into a story.

    Here too are sketches from his penniless bohemian life in Paris, seven "Letters from Morocco" written for the New York Herald Tribune, and Chester's final piece--the half-mad, previously unpublished "Letter from the Wandering Jew," a howl of rage and despair from his hated final home, Jerusalem. Together these pieces are testament to the life and the talent of the Sixties' most memorable literary iconoclasts.

    Years before Mickey Mouse, the young entrepreneur recruited and nurtured an extraordinary array of talented people. Drawing on interviews with Disney's coworkers, Disney's business papers, promotional materials, scripts, drawings, and correspondence, the richly illustrated Walt in Wonderland reconstructs Disney's silent film career and places his early films in critical perspective.

    In addition to analyzing his major texts, these chapters provide insight on Hemingway's relationship with gender history, journalism, fame, and the political climate of the 1930s. Contributors include both the most distinguished established figures and brilliant newcomers, all chosen with regard to the clarity and readability of their prose.

    I cannot think of one so calculated to delight, intrigue, beguile, and inform. To pick up and browse through it . . . is like meeting some venerable old man of letters comfortably ensconced in his library, only to ready to reveal some pear of humor or wisdom about each of the writers he has chosen to deal with."—Kate Wharton, Evening Standard"Powell is one of the great novelists of our time, much more interested in other people than in his own views and ideas. The result is that his extraordinary richness of act and detail also embodies a far more arresting and penetrating quantity of critical judgements on books, authors, fashions, developments, than are to be found in the theoretical pronouncement of modern academic criticism."—John Bayley, The Sunday Times"These delightful reviews could be said to amount to a latter-day Brief Lives."—David Plante, Times Literary Supplement

    Romanticism and Contemporary Criticism represents de Man's reflections on some of the major texts of English, German, and French Romanticism and their reception in twentieth-century literary criticism and theory. The Gauss Seminar lectures in particular convey de Man's consideration of Romanticism as a distinct form of historical consciousness, and illuminate his conviction that this romantic historical consciousness had been a powerful influence on our own development of a historical identity. De Man had planned to use the Gauss lectures as a basis for a major historical study of Romanticism, but the volume was never completed and de Man eventually abandoned the project.Drawn from four decades of de Man's career, these essays reflect the transition in the critic's work from the thematics and vocabulary of "consciousness" and "temporality" characteristic of his work in the 1960s, to the language-oriented concerns and terminology of his later writings.

    Nagy illuminates in particular the forces of interaction and change that transformed the Indo-European linguistic and cultural heritage into distinctly Greek social institutions between the eighth and the fifth centuries B.C. Included in the volume are thirteen of Nagy's major essays--all extensively revised for book publication--on various aspects of the Hellenization of Indo-European poetics, myth and ritual, and social ideology.The primary aim of this book is to examine the Greek language as a reflection of society, with special attention to its function as a vehicle for transmitting mythology and poetics. Nagy's emphasis on the language of the Greeks, and on its comparison with the testimony of related Indo-European languages such as Latin, Indic, and Hittite, reflects his long-standing interest in Indo-European linguistics. The individual chapters examine the development of Hellenic poetics in the traditions of Homer and Hesiod; the Hellenization of Indo-European myths and rituals, including myths of the afterlife, rituals of fire, and symbols in the Greek lyric; and the Hellenization of Indo-European social ideology, with reference to such cultural institutions as the concept of the city-state.A path-breaking application of the principles of social anthropology, comparative mythology, historical linguistics, and oral poetry theory to the study of classics, Greek Mythology and Poetics will be an invaluable resource for classicists and other scholars of linguistics and literary theory.

    To interpret Hamlet's words and actions at the many crises, the reader needs to double in the role of actor, imagining the character from the inside and observing from the outside. Winner of the Theatre Library Association Award for 1993.

    Written by two well-known scholars in the field of literary study, this well-respected text puts an emphasis on the individual contributors to the development of literary criticism, from Plato and Aristotle to the present.

    Organized by topic, each word is explained in a comprehensive yet concise definition, with a pronunciation guide and derivation added for easy reference. The book includes definitions of more than 150 words, from baroque to expressionism, iconography to pointillism, and archetype to zeitgeist.

    He also tackles the prejudices, questions and practices of modern reviewing.

    The description of western culture as superior and in opposition to other cultures of the world preoccupied our aesthetic philosophy for at least 200 years, whether or not explicitly stated. That argument was undertaken in various guises, especially as the historical determinism of Hegel which proposed to quantify human "progress." Recently, however, the term "multiculturalism" has come to signify a post-Modern understanding of how visual arts transgress artificial boundaries, and of how there may now exist, perhaps for the first time in history, a post-colonial globalism in the arts freed of ethnocentric value judgments. In these ten crucial essays, McEvilley clarifies how the presentation of art can determine its reception, how "influence" can be bi-directional, how "otherness" serves to define "self," and how art need not necessarily lose its meaningfulness when stripped of badges of universality. Once again illustrating his argument by drawing upon an array of sources and cultures, Thomas McEvilley demonstrates that the post-Modern crisis in cultural identity demands an imaginative, integrating response.

    But his war against the French intelligentsia did not end there, and Burke continued to take pen in hand against the Jacobins until his death in 1797.This collection brings together for the first time in unabridged form Burke’s writings on the French Revolution that anticipate, refine, and summarize the works in his famous Reflections on the Revolution in France. There are seven items in the collection. Included are “Letter to a Member of the National Assembly,” “Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs,” and “A Letter to a Noble Lord.” A foreword and headnotes to each selection point the reader to some of the key issues.Daniel E. Ritchie is Professor of English Literature at Bethel College.Please note: This title is available as an ebook for purchase on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and iTunes.

    Combat-style reporting gave way to national debate as officials deplored 'senseless violence' and pundits saw the unravelling of civilization or deplored the shame of the cities. But why was the crisis of South Central Los Angeles visible only when backlit by flames? Amid all the sensationalized accounts of fragmented, chaotic communities, efforts of valour are seldom reported. Neither helpless nor without hope, black Angelenos go about their lives, bolstering their communities from within. Far from giving up or giving in, they persist, using anger, faith and the cold logic of experience to deal with drugs, gangs and unemployment; build churches, schools and community centres; weave together new music, films, stories.

    Their intense creative relationship, fuelled by a deep personal affinity that endured until Williams's death, lasted from 1947 until 1960. The production of A Streetcar Named Desire established Williams as America's greatest playwright and Kazan as its most important director; together they created some of the most influential theatrical events of the post-war era. In this book Brenda Murphy analyses this artistic partnership and the plays and theatrical techniques the artists developed collaboratively in their productions of A Streetcar Named Desire, Camino Real, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and Sweet Bird of Youth. In addition, Murphy suggests alternative ways to examine the working relationship between playwright and director which can be applied to other practitioners in twentieth-century drama. The book contains numerous illustrations from important productions.

    The reader is encouraged to write poetry, fiction and drama "on your own" and the text includes methods for submission of material for publication and resources for writers. For professional and aspiring writers of poetry, fiction, and drama.

    One by one, he describes the stories they portray, their meticulous composition, and the crucial and surprising role of fate in the commission for the church of San Francesco. Originally published in 1993, the book quickly achieved a cult following; this new edition includes, for the first time, Aldous Huxley's "The Best Picture," the famous essay that first inspired Pope-Hennessy to seek out the luminous and enigmatic works that now constitute the pilgrimage known as The Piero della Francesca Trail. The thousands of tourists who travel to Tuscany each year to follow the trail will welcome the republication of this beautifully designed volume.

    Not aimed at excising theological concerns from Dante, this approach instead attempts to break out of the hermeneutic guidelines that Dante structured into his poem and that have resulted in theologized readings whose outcomes have been overdetermined by the poet. By detheologizing, the reader can emerge from this poet's hall of mirrors and discover the narrative techniques that enabled Dante to forge a true fiction. Foregrounding the formal exigencies that Dante masked as ideology, Barolini moves from the problems of beginning to those of closure, focusing always on the narrative journey. Her investigation--which treats such topics as the visionary and the poet, the One and the many, narrative and time--reveals some of the transgressive paths trodden by a master of mimesis, some of the ways in which Dante's poetic adventuring is indeed, according to his own lights, Ulyssean.

    He turns to his colleagues and their plights, in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and the Soviet Union, to explain why oppressive regimes could not succeed in their attempts to transform the Eastern European into homo sovieticus.

    Christopher Bigsby takes a fresh look at the major figures who have shaped postwar American drama, exploring the works of Eugene O'Neill, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Edward Albee, David Mamet, and Sam Shepard. Bigsby also looks at Broadway and at the theatre which geared itself to the experiences of race and gender, examining the works of Lorraine Hansberry, August Wilson, and Marsha Norman, among others.

    Explores how human beings use animals and images of animals to define themselves--and how those depictions interfere with our abilities to understand the true nature of animals.

    D. Fulk offers a wide-ranging reference on Anglo-Saxon meter. Fulk examines the evidence for chronological and regional variation in the meter of Old English verse, studying such linguistic variables as the treatment of West Germanic parasite vowels, contracted vowels, and short syllables under secondary and tertiary stress, as well as a variety of supposed dialect features. Fulk's study of such variables points the way to a revised understanding of the role of syllable length in the construction of early Germanic meters and furnishes criteria for distinguishing dialectal from poetic features in the language of the major Old English poetic codices. On this basis, it is possible to draw conclusions about the probable dialect origins of much verse, to delineate the characteristics of at least four discrete periods in the development of Old English meter, and with some probability to assign to them many of the longer poems, such as Genesis A, Beowulf, and the works of Cynewulf.A History of Old English Meter will be of interest to scholars of Anglo-Saxon, historians of the English language, Germanic philologists, and historical linguists.

    Saunders Redding (1906-1988) was often and justifiably called "the dean of Afro-American scholars." As professor and man of letters, he wrote about Afro-American literature and culture in vivid and scholarly prose. And of all the writers of his generation, he best represented, and came close to explaining, the hopes and conflicts of American democracy in a multiracial society. Yet his perceptions and writings were never limited to race, nationality, academia, or one literary genre. In this first published anthology drawn from Redding's books, essays, and speeches, Faith Berry has compiled representative selections from every period and genre in which Redding wrote: autobiography, fiction, biography, history, journalism, travelogue, and literary criticism. The collection offers a wide range of his thought and criticism from numerous publications, as well as a comprehensive bibliography of his works. Redding is essential reading for all those who argue for or against the intellectual credo he espoused: that Afro-American writing and culture be studied in the context of American life and culture, not in isolation. This useful and balanced edition of Redding's writing should serve to introduce him to a new audience certain to find his texts worthy of attention and discussion. Readers concerned with literary and social history, higher education, race relations, American and ethnic studies, foreign affairs, cultural exchange--or indeed the humanities in general--will find this work an important resource. Contemporary Afro-American scholars will value the book as a lasting reference. And anyone unfamiliar with Redding's work will discover and appreciate the breadth of his contributions to scholarship and literature.

    They belong to different genres and have been appropriated by scholars in different disciplines. But, as Richard Helgerson shows in this ambitious and wide-ranging study, all were part of an extraordinary sixteenth- and seventeenth-century enterprise: the project of making England.

    Represented in this rich collection are Thomas Jefferson, Malcolm X, Walt Disney, Mark Twain, Georgia O'Keeffe, Al Capone, Allen Ginsberg, and others.

    She sheds light on the history of voice as a narrative strategy and as a means of attaining social power. She considers the dynamics in personal voice in authors such as Mary Shelley, Charlotte Bront�, Zora Neale Hurston, and Jamaica Kincaid. In writers who attempt a communal voice--including Mary Wollstonecraft, Elizabeth Gaskell, Joan Chase, and Monique Wittig--she finds innovative strategies that challenge the conventions of Western narrative.

    With the Bandung Conference and the formation of the Non-Aligned Movement, many of Europe’s former colonies banded together to form a common bloc, aligned with neither the advanced capitalist “First World” nor with the socialist “Second World.” In this historical context, the category of “Third World literature” emerged, a category that has itself spawned a whole industry of scholarly and critical studies, particularly in the metropolitan West, but increasingly in the homelands of the Third World itself.Setting himself against the growing tendency to homogenize “Third World” literature and cultures, Aijaz Ahmad has produced a spirited critique of the major theoretical statements on “colonial discourse” and “post-colonialism,” dismantling many of the commonplaces and conceits that dominate contemporary cultural criticism. With lengthy considerations of, among others, Fredric Jameson, Edward Said, and the Subaltern Studies group, In Theory also contains brilliant analyses of the concept of Indian literature, of the genealogy of the term “Third World,” and of the conditions under which so-called “colonial discourse theory” emerged in metropolitan intellectual circles.Erudite and lucid, Ahmad’s remapping of the terrain of cultural theory is certain to provoke passionate response.

    Edited by one of the leading Wagner scholars of modern times, and with contributions from seventeen experts from around the world, The Wagner Compendium is the key to a complete understanding of the composer— the most comprehensive, informative and well-organized guide to his life and times.Features include:calendar of Wagner's life, works and related events who's who of Wagner's contemporariesdetails of historical, intellectual and musical backgroundexploration of Wagner's character and opinionsfull list of Wagner's prose writingscomprehensive listing and discussion of the works

    Law, All in the Family, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Hill Street Blues, The Young & the Restless, Sesame Street, Oprah, and ABC's Wide World of Sports • Who's never won--and why: Susan Lucci, Angela Landsbury and others keep striking out just like lifelong losers Jackie Gleason and Ed Sullivan • How winning Emmys saved Cheers, Cagney & Lacey, Mission: Impossible, Santa Barbara and other top shows

    But why Shakespeare? and what different interests did this process serve? The Making of the National Poet is the first full-length study since the 1920s of the Restoration and eighteenth century's revisions and revaluations of Shakespeare, and the first to consider the period's much-reviledstage adaptations in the context of the profound cultural changes in which they participate. Drawing on a wide range of evidence--including engravings, promptbooks, diaries, statuary, and previously unpublished poems (among them traces of the hitherto mysterious Shakespeare Ladies' Club), itexamines how and why Shakespeare was retrospectively claimed as both a respectable Enlightenment author and a crucial and contested symbol of British national identity. It shows in particular how the deification of Shakespeare co-existed with and even demanded the drastic and sometimes bizarrerewriting of his plays for which the period is notorious. Through engaging and informative analysis, Dobson's book provides the definitive account of the theatre's role in establishing Shakespeare as Britain's National Poet.