Best of
Criticism

2013

The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study


Fred Moten - 2013
    Today the general wealth of social life finds itself confronted by mutations in the mechanisms of control, from the proliferation of capitalist logistics through governance by credit and management of pedagogy. Working from and within the social poesis of life in the undercommons Moten and Harney develop and expand an array of concepts: study, debt, surround, planning, and the shipped. On the fugitive path of an historical and global blackness, the essays in this volume unsettle and invite the reader to the self-organised ensembles of social life that are launched every day and every night amid the general antagonism of the undercommons.

Less is Enough: On Architecture and Asceticism


Pier Vittorio Aureli - 2013
    But is it? In an age when we are endlessly urged to do “more with less”, can we still romanticise the pretensions of minimalism? For Pier Vittorio Aureli, the return of “austerity chic” is a perversion of what ought to be a meaningful way of life. Charting the rise of asceticism in early Christianity and its institutionalisation with the medieval monasteries, Aureli examines how the basic unit of the reclusive life – the monk’s cell – becomes the foundation of private property. And from there, he argues, it all starts to go wrong. By late capitalism, asceticism has been utterly aestheticised. It manifests itself as monasteries inspired by Calvin Klein stores, in the monkish lifestyle of Steve Jobs and Apple’s aura of restraint. Amid all the hypocrisy, it must still be possible to reprise the idea of “less” as a radical alternative, as the first step to living the life examined.

Marcel Duchamp: The Afternoon Interviews


Calvin Tomkins - 2013
    Casual yet insightful, Duchamp reveals himself as a man and an artist whose playful principles toward living freed him to make art that was as unpredictable, complex, and surprising as life itself. Those interviews have never been edited and made public, until now. "The Afternoon Interviews," which includes an introductory interview with Tomkins reflecting on Duchamp as an artist, guide and friend, reintroduces the reader to key ideas of his artistic world and renews Duchamp as a vital model for a new generation of artists.Calvin Tomkins was born in 1925 in Orange, New Jersey. He joined the New Yorker as a staff writer in 1960. His many profiles include John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg, Merce Cunningham, Leo Castelli, Damien Hirst, Richard Serra, Bruce Nauman, Cindy Sherman and Jasper Johns. Tomkins is the author of 12 books, including "The Bride and the Bachelors" (1965), "Living Well Is the Best Revenge" (1971), "Lives of the Artists" (2008) and "Duchamp: A Biography" (1996).

Nay Rather


Anne Carson - 2013
    This newest installment unites two texts by celebrated Canadian poet Anne Carson. The first, “Variations on the Right to Remain Silent,” is an essay on the stakes involved when translation happens and covers works ranging from Homer through Joan of Arc to Paul Celan. It also includes the author’s seven translations of a poetic fragment from the Greek poet Ibykos. The second, “By Chance the Cycladic People,” is a poem about Cycladic culture in which the order of the lines has been determined by a random number generator. The cahier is lavishly illustrated with drawings and gouaches by Lanfranco Quadrio.

9.5 Theses on Art and Class


Ben Davis - 2013
    In 9.5 Theses on Art and Class and Other Writings Ben Davis takes on a broad array of contemporary art’s most persistent debates: How does creative labor fit into the economy? Is art merging with fashion and entertainment? What can we expect from political art? Davis argues that returning class to the center of discussion can play a vital role in tackling the challenges that visual art faces today, including the biggest challenge of all—how to maintain faith in art itself in a dysfunctional world.

The Letters of William Gaddis


William Gaddis - 2013
    Beginning in 1930 when Gaddis was at boarding-school and ending in September 1998, a few months before his death, these letters function as a kind of autobiography, and are all the more valuable because Gaddis was not an autobiographical writer. Here we see him forging his first novel The Recognitions (1955) while living in Mexico, fighting in a revolution in Costa Rica, and working in Spain, France, and North Africa. Over the next twenty years he struggles to find time to write the National Book Award-winning J R (1975) amid the complications of work and family; deals with divorce and disillusionment before reviving his career with Carpenter 's Gothic (1985); then teaches himself enough about the law to indite A Frolic of His Own (1994), which earned him another NBA. Returning to a topic he first wrote about in the 1940s, he finishes his last novel Agape Agape as he lay dying.

In Translation: Translators on Their Work and What It Means


Esther Allen - 2013
    With this anthology, editors Bernofsky (Foreign Words: Translator-Authors in the Age of Goethe) and Allen (translator and editor of The Selected Writings of Jose Marti) hope to educate current and prospective translators to see their work as "a particularly complex ethical position" rather than a "'problematic necessity.'" The book is divided between theory and practice, though all essays focus on the experience of translators. The 18 translators included--among them Eliot Weinberger (translator of Bei Dao, Jorge Luis Borges, and Octavio Paz), David Bellos (Georges Perec), and Haruki Murakami (whose afterword to his Japanese translation of The Great Gatsby is itself translated into English reprinted here)-- offer memorable anecdotes. Maureen Freely describes the "intense and volatile exchanges" with Orhan Pamuk that followed her first translation of the author's work; Jose Manuel Prieto explains the historical context, phrase by phrase, that made Osip Mandelstam's "Epigram Against Stalin" into "the sixteen lines of a death sentence. - Publisher's Weekly

The Daniel Clowes Reader: A Critical Edition of Ghost World and Other Stories, with Essays, Interviews, and Annotations


Ken Parille - 2013
    It also includes stories some reprinted for the first time about boys coming of age, troubled superheroes, and the place of artists and critics in popular culture. The volume s dozen critical essays illuminate Clowes s comics by locating them within biographical, artistic, and socio-historical contexts, including the Indie and DIY movements, Generation X philosophy, and the history of American cartooning. Selections by artists who influenced Clowes and a detailed chronology of his work round out the collection, and extensive annotations shed light on the cartoonist s sources and cultural references. Perfect for the college literature/graphic narrative classroom.

State of the Union: The Nation's Essays 1958-2008


Gore Vidal - 2013
    The early literary ones reflected Vidal’s status as a rising young novelist of the postwar generation, and as he expanded confidently into nonfiction, his essays range widely over politics, religion, society, manners and morals. We see him emerge as the pre-eminent essayist of his generation, winning a 1993 Nation Book Award for a collection of nonfiction works.Vidal’s Nation years—his Golden Age at the magazine—really commenced in 1981 when Victor Navasky invited him to become a contributing editor. Gore’s first contribution, “Some Jews and the Gays,” would be his most explosive one. This collection exemplifies his critical vision in great works like “Requiem for the American Empire,” “Monotheism and Its Discontents,” “Notes on Our Patriarchal State,” and the delightful “Birds and the Bees” with its Monica–Lewinsky era sequel, “The Birds and the Bees and Clinton.”Prepare to have your preconceptions challenged. Prepare also to smile or laugh out loud.

Milton's Paradise Lost


Leland Ryken - 2013
    Some of us have even read them on our own. But for those of us who remain a bit intimidated or simply want to get more out of our reading, Crossway’s Christian Guides to the Classics are here to help.In these short guidebooks, popular professor, author, and literary expert Leland Ryken takes you through some of the greatest literature in history while answering your questions along the way.Each book:Includes an introduction to the author and workExplains the cultural contextIncorporates published criticismContains discussion questions at the end of each unit of the textDefines key literary termsLists resources for further studyEvaluates the classic text from a Christian worldviewThis particular guide opens up the paramount epic in the English language, Milton’s Paradise Lost, and showcases Milton’s understanding of crime and punishment in the events of creation, paradisal perfection, the fall, and redemption.

The Bourgeois: Between History and Literature


Franco Moretti - 2013
    Who could repeat these words today?Thus begins Franco Moretti’s study of the bourgeois in modern European literature, where a gallery of individual portraits is entwined around the analysis of specific keywords – such as ‘useful’ and ‘earnest’, ‘efficiency’, ‘influence’, ‘comfort’, ‘roba’ – and of the formal mutations of the medium of prose. The book charts the rise and fall of bourgeois culture, exploring the causes for its historical weakness, and searches for the seeds of its failures.

Essays and Reviews: 1959-2002


Bernard Williams - 2013
    This is the first collection of Williams's popular essays and reviews. Williams writes about a broad range of subjects, from philosophy to science, the humanities, economics, feminism, and pornography.Included are reviews of major books such as John Rawls's Theory of Justice, Richard Rorty's Consequences of Pragmatism, and Martha Nussbaum's Therapy of Desire. But many of these essays extend beyond philosophy, providing an intellectual tour through the past half century, from C. S. Lewis to Noam Chomsky. No matter the subject, readers see a first-class mind grappling with landmark books in real time, before critical consensus had formed and ossified.

Reading Dante


Giuseppe Mazzotta - 2013
    The work gained universal acclaim and came to be known as La Divina Commedia, or The Divine Comedy. Giuseppe Mazzotta brings Dante and his masterpiece to life in this exploration of the man, his cultural milieu, and his endlessly fascinating works.   Based on Mazzotta’s highly popular Yale course, this book offers a critical reading of The Divine Comedy and selected other works by Dante. Through an analysis of Dante’s autobiographical Vita nuova, Mazzotta establishes the poetic and political circumstances of The Divine Comedy. He situates the three sections of the poem—Inferno, Purgatory, Paradise—within the intellectual and social context of the late Middle Ages, and he explores the political, philosophical, and theological topics with which Dante was particularly concerned.

The Quality of Mercy: Reflections on Shakespeare


Peter Brook - 2013
    He also revisits some of the plays which he has directed with notable brilliance, including King Lear, Titus Andronicus and A Midsummer Night's Dream.Taken as a whole, this short but immensely wise book offers an illuminating and provocative insight into a great director's relationship with our greatest playwright."An invaluable gift from the greatest Shakespeare director of our time... Brook's genius, modesty, and brilliance shine through on every page." - James Shapiro, author of 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare

English and Literature


C.S. Lewis - 2013
    S.Lewis is part of a larger collection, C. S. Lewis: Essay Collection and Other Short Pieces. In addition to his many books, letters, and poems,C. S. Lewis wrote a great number of essays and shorter pieces on various subjects. He wrote extensively on Christian theology and the defense of faith but also on ethical issues and the nature of literature and storytelling. Within these pages is a treasure trove of Lewis' reflections on diverse topics. This volume includes1. "Christianity and Literature"2. "High and Low Brows"3. "Is English Doomed?"4. "On the Reading of Old Books"5. "The Parthenon and the Optative"6. "The Death of Words"7. "On Science Fiction"8. "Miserable Offenders"9. "Different Tastes in Literature"10. "Modern Translations of the Bible"11. "On Juvenile Tastes"12. "Sex in Literature"©1976 Arthur Owen Barfield (P)2013 Blackstone Audiobooks

Sorting Facts; or, Nineteen Ways of Looking at Marker


Susan Howe - 2013
    Scribble grammar has no neighbor. In the name of reason I need to record something because I am a survivor in this ocean.

Potluck Supper with Meeting to Follow: Essays


Andy Sturdevant - 2013
    Craigslist ads, homemade signs at Target Field, and alleyways all open up with possibilities for measuring cultural time and the resonance, not provincialism, of spaces closely observed. Published to coincide with Sturdevant's solo show at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Potluck Supper with Meeting to Follow reveals the essayist as pied piper and artist, whose canvas is the city.Andy Sturdevant is an artist, writer, and arts administrator living in south Minneapolis, Minnesota. He has written about art, history, and culture for a variety of Twin Cities–based publications and websites, including mnartists.org, Rain Taxi, Art Review, Preview!, Mpls.St.Paul, and heavytable.com. His essays have also appeared in publications of the Walker Art Center, and he writes a weekly column on arts and visual culture in Minneapolis–St. Paul for MinnPost. His work has been exhibited at the Minneapolis Institute of Art and The Soap Factory. Andy was born in Ohio, raised in Kentucky, and has lived in Minneapolis since 2005.

Gravity's Rainbow, Domination, and Freedom


Luc Herman - 2013
    Pynchon's extensive references to modern science, history, and culture challenged any reader, while his prose bent the rules for narrative art and his satirical practices taunted U.S. obscenity and pornography statutes. His writing thus enacts freedom even as the book's great theme is domination: humanity's diminished "chances for freedom" in a global military-industrial system birthed and set on its feet in World War II. Its symbol: the V-2 rocket."Gravity's Rainbow," Domination, and Freedom broadly situates Pynchon's novel in "long sixties" history, revealing a fiction deeply of and about its time. Herman and Weisenburger put the novel's abiding questions about freedom in context with sixties struggles against war, restricted speech rights, ethno-racial oppression, environmental degradation, and subtle new means of social and psychological control. They show the text's close indebtedness to critiques of domination by key postwar thinkers such as Erich Fromm, Herbert Marcuse, and Hannah Arendt. They detail equally powerful ways that sixties countercultural practices--free-speech resistance played out in courts, campuses, city streets, and raucously satirical underground presswork--provide a clearer bearing on Pynchon's own satirical practices and their implicit criticisms.If the System has jacketed humanity in a total domination, may not a solitary individual still assert freedom? Or has the System captured all--even supposedly immune elites--in an irremediable dominion? Reading Pynchon's main characters and storylines, this study realizes a darker Gravity's Rainbow than critics have been willing to see.

Deleuze's Difference and Repetition: An Edinburgh Philosophical Guide


Henry Somers-Hall - 2013
    This Edinburgh Philosophical Guide helps students to negotiate these hurdles, taking them through the text step by step. It situates Deleuze within Continental philosophy more broadly and explains why he develops his philosophy in his unique way. Seasoned Deleuzians will also be interested in Somers-Hall's novel interpretation of Difference and Repetition.

Time, History, and Literature: Selected Essays of Erich Auerbach


Erich Auerbach - 2013
    Yet the true depth of Auerbach's thinking and writing remains unplumbed. Time, History, and Literature presents a wide selection of Auerbach's essays, many of which are little known outside the German-speaking world. Of the twenty essays culled for this volume from the full length of his career, twelve have never appeared in English before, and one is being published for the first time.Foregrounded in this major new collection are Auerbach's complex relationship to the Judaeo-Christian tradition, his philosophy of time and history, and his theory of human ethics and responsible action. Auerbach effectively charts out the difficult discovery, in the wake of Christianity, of the sensuous, the earthly, and the human and social worlds. A number of the essays reflect Auerbach's responses to an increasingly hostile National Socialist environment. These writings offer a challenging model of intellectual engagement, one that remains as compelling today as it was in Auerbach's own time.

Shot in the Face: A Savage Journey to the Heart of Transmetropolitan


Chad NevettJason Michelitch - 2013
    This book explores all these topics and more, from multiple points of view. It also includes interviews with both Ellis and Robertson.From Sequart Organization. More info at http://sequart.org

The Wiley Guide to Writing Essays About Literature


Paul Headrick - 2013
    The program is tailored to meet the specific needs of beginning undergraduates. Features unique, detailed guidance on paragraph structure Includes sample essays throughout to model each stage of the essay-writing process Focused exercises develop the techniques outlined in each chapter Dedicated checklists enable quick, accurate assessment by teachers and students Enhanced glossary with advice on usage added to core definitions

Beethoven The Creator


Roman Rolland - 2013
    We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

Critical Mass: Four Decades of Essays, Reviews, Hand Grenades, and Hurrahs


James Wolcott - 2013
    This collection features the best of Wolcott in whatever guise—connoisseur, intrepid reporter, memoirist, and necessary naysayer—he has chosen to take on.      Included in this collection is “O.K. Corral Revisited,” a fresh take on the famed Norman Mailer–Gore Vidal dustup on The Dick Cavett Show that launched Wolcott from his Maryland college to New York City (via bus) to begin his brilliant career. His prescient review of Patti Smith’s legendary first gig at CBGB leads off a suite of eyewitness and insider accounts of the rise of punk rock, while another set of pieces considers the vast cultural influence of the enigmatic Johnny Carson and the scramble of his late-night successors to inherit the “swivel throne.” There are warm tributes to such diverse figures as Michael Mann, Sam Peckinpah, Lester Bangs, and Philip Larkin and masterly  summings-up of the departed giants of American literature—John Updike, William Styron, John Cheever, and Mailer and Vidal. Included as well are some legendary takedowns that have entered into the literary lore of our time.      Critical Mass is a treasure trove of sparkling, spiky prose and a fascinating portrait of our lives and cultural times over the past decades. In an age where a great deal of back scratching and softball pitching pass for criticism, James Wolcott’s fearless essays and reviews offer a bracing taste of the real critical thing.

Beyond the Mother Tongue: The Postmonolingual Condition


Yasemin Yildiz - 2013
    Adorno); producing an oeuvre in two separate languages simultaneously (Yoko Tawada); and mixing different languages, codes, and registers within one text (Feridun Zaimoglu).

Nosferatu (1922): eine Symphonie des Grauens


Kevin Jackson - 2013
    W. Murnau's Nosferatu (1922), the first screen adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula, remains a potent and disturbing horror film. One of the outstanding documents of Weimar culture's dark side, the film's prevailing themes of human destructiveness, insanity, and moral and physical pollution had a stinging topicality for contemporary audiences.Kevin Jackson's illuminating study traces Nosferatu's production and reception history, including attempts by Stoker's widow to suppress the film's circulation. Exploring the evolution of the vampire myth, both in the film and in wider culture, Jackson exposes how and why this film of horror and death remains enduringly beautiful and chilling today.This special edition features original cover artwork by Julia Soboleva.

Shakespeare's Macbeth


Leland Ryken - 2013
    Part of the Christian Guides to the Classics series.

Reading Like a Girl: Narrative Intimacy in Contemporary American Young Adult Literature


Sara K. Day - 2013
    Reading Like a Girl explains the construction of narrator-reader relationships in recent American novels written about adolescent women and marketed to adolescent women.Sara K. Day explains, though, that such levels of imagined friendship lead to contradictory cultural expectations for the young women so deeply obsessed with reading these novels. Day coins the term "narrative intimacy" to refer to the implicit relationship between narrator and reader that depends on an imaginary disclosure and trust between the story's narrator and the reader. Through critical examination, the inherent contradictions between this enclosed, imagined relationship and the real expectations for adolescent women's relations prove to be problematic.In many novels for young women, adolescent female narrators construct conceptions of the adolescent woman reader, constructions that allow the narrator to understand the reader as a confidant, a safe and appropriate location for disclosure. At the same time, such novels offer frequent warnings against the sort of unfettered confession the narrators perform. Friendships are marked as potential sites of betrayal and rejection. Romantic relationships are presented as inherently threatening to physical and emotional health. And so, the narrator turns to the reader for an ally who cannot judge. The reader, in turn, may come to depend upon narrative intimacy in order to vicariously explore her own understanding of human expression and bonds.

The Mystery Shopping Cart: Essays on Poetry and Culture


Anita Lahey - 2013
    Anita Lahey, who edited Arc Poetry Magazine, Canada's most distinguished and lively poetry journal, from 2005-2012, brings together here her thought-provoking Arc essays with appreciations and reviews of a who's who of Canadian women poets, including Diana Brebner, M. Travis Lane, P.K. Page, the long-neglected Dorothy Roberts, and Gwendolyn MacEwen, whose dramatic life and death unfortunately persist in overshadowing the legacy of her work. She writes on her Polish-immigrant grandmother and on growing up as the daughter of a cash register repairman, and engages in probing discussions with eminent Canadian authors Stephanie Bolster, John Barton, Joan Thomas and Alice Munro.Anita Lahey’s second poetry collection, Spinning Side Kick, was released by Véhicule Press in 2011. Out to Dry in Cape Breton (2006), was nominated for the Trillium Book Award for Poetry and the Ottawa Book Award. A journalist and former editor of Arc Poetry Magazine, she lives in Toronto.

Ruins: Revised Edition


Morgan Meis - 2013
    A collection of the best essays from one of America's best (winner of an Andy Warhol Foundation Grant) and most poignant, personal and philosophical young critics, Morgan Meis Ph.D, on art, culture, politics and the transitory and illusory nature of time.

The Novel: An Alternative History, 1600-1800


Steven Moore - 2013
    The Novel: An Alternative History, 1600-1800 picks up the story, beginning with Cervantes's Don Quixote,examines the flowering of the novel in early modern Europe and the East, and concludes with the earliest novels written in the newly formed United States. By 1600 the novel was an established literary genre and experienced a remarkable growth spurt for the next two centuries as authors experimented with different approaches, transforming the novel from a rather disreputable form of entertainment into the respectable genre it became in the nineteenth century. For most readers, their familiarity with pre-1800 European fiction is limited to Don Quixote, Candide, The Sorrows of Young Werther, perhaps The Princess of Cleves, Dangerous Liaisons, or Jacques the Fatalist, and the names of Rousseau and Sade. Even familiarity with pre-1800 English novels is for most readers limited to a half-dozen classics (Pilgrim's Progress, Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver's Travels, Pamela, Tom Jones, Tristram Shandy). Regarding Oriental fiction, few lovers of literature are aware of perhaps the greatest novel of that period (The Dream of Red Mansions) much less any of the dozens of other fascinating works published in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Novel: An Alternative History, 1600-1800 covers all of the famous classics mentioned above, as well as hundreds of other novel novels. After his first volume, Moore's ability to read deeply and bring forgotten novels to the surface was praised by critics and readers alike. His exploration of the novel's formative age is sure to provoke and challenge what we know - or what we think we know - about the history of the novel.Table of contentsPreface Chapter 1: The Early Modern European Novel Spanish German Latin Chapter 2: The Early Modern French Novel Chapter 3: The Early Modern English Novel Chapter 4: The Early Modern Eastern Novel Chinese Korean Japanese Tibetan Persian Indian Chapter 5: The Early Modern American Novel Bibliography Chronological Index of Novels Discussed General Index

The Rural Gothic in American Popular Culture: Backwoods Horror and Terror in the Wilderness


Bernice M. Murphy - 2013
    The Rural Gothic in American Popular Culture argues that complex and often negative initial responses early European settlers expressed toward the North American Wilderness continue to influence American horror and gothic narratives to this day. The book undertakes a detailed and historically grounded analysis of key literary and filmic texts. The works of canonical authors such as Mary Rowlandson, Charles Brockden Brown and Nathaniel Hawthorne are discussed, as are the origins and characteristics of the backwoods horror film tradition and the post-1960 eco-horror narrative.

The Lyric Theory Reader: A Critical Anthology


Virginia Walker Jackson - 2013
    Representing a wide range of perspectives in Anglo-American literary criticism from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the collection as a whole documents the diversity and energy of ongoing critical conversations about lyric poetry.Virginia Jackson and Yopie Prins frame these conversations with a general introduction, bibliographies for further reading, and introductions to each of the anthology’s ten sections: genre theory, historical models of lyric, New Criticism, structuralist and post-structuralist reading, Frankfurt School approaches, phenomenologies of lyric reading, avant-garde anti-lyricism, lyric and sexual difference, and comparative lyric.Designed for students, teachers, scholars, poets, and readers with a general interest in poetics, this book presents an intellectual history of the theory of lyric reading that has circulated both within and beyond the classroom, wherever poetry is taught, read, discussed, and debated today.

The Noisiest Book Review in the Known World


Lolita Lark - 2013
    The reviews are quirky, conversational, and sarcastic; as the editor reminds readers: “What we do is not namby-pamby stuff.” The editors of RALPH have collected in these two volumes what they deem the 160+ best and brightest book reviews written since the company’s inception. With titles of essays such as “How to Kick a Duck,” “When I Was a German: An English Woman Living in Nazi Germany,” “Johann Sebastian Bach and the Aliens,” and “Two Hundred Horse-Power Cheeses,” The Noisiest Book Review in the Known World comments on a wide variety of books in a distinctively snarky voice. Perfect for cynical fans of journalistic works.

Cultural Cohesion: The Essential Essays


Clive James - 2013
    Originally appearing as As of This Writing, Cultural Cohesion examines the twisted cultural terrain of the twentieth century in one of the most accessible and cohesive volumes available. Divided into four sections—“Poetry,” “Fiction and Literature,” “Culture and Criticism,” and “Visual Images”—James comments on poets like W. H. Auden and Phillip Larkin, novelists like D. H. Lawrence and Raymond Chandler (not to mention Judith Krantz!), and filmmakers like Fellini and Bogdanovich. Throughout, James delights his readers with his manic energy and critical aplomb. This volume, featuring a new introduction, is a one-volume cultural education that few recent books can rival.

Creative Criticism: An Anthology and Guide


Stephen Benson - 2013
    The Anthology is of interest to all students, teachers and critics of literature and creative writing, and especially those students who are required to write critical essays. All 14 texts included respond innovatively to the question: How do we write criticism? As examples of academic critical writing they are all sympathetic to works whose aim is to change the ways in which we see and describe our world.Key Features- Unique as an anthology of and guide to creative critical writing- Demonstrates a range of ways to write critically and creatively - Extensive introduction & explanatory headnotes to each textContents Roland Barthes, from A Lover's Discourse: Fragments; John Cage, from 'Where Are We Going? And What Are We Doing?'; Anne Carson, 'Every Exit is an Entrance (A Praise of Sleep)'; H�l�ne Cixous, 'Without end, no, State of drawingness, no, rather: The Executioner's taking off'; Jacques Derrida 'Aphorism Countertime'; Geoff Dyer, from Out of Sheer Rage: In the Shadow of D.H. Lawrence; Benjamin Friedlander, 'Gertrude Stein: A Retrospective Criticism'; Peter Gizzi, 'Correspondences of the Book'; Kevin Kopelson, 'Music Lessons'; Denise Riley, 'Lyric Selves'; Eve Sedgwick, 'Jane Austen and the Masturbating Girl'; Ali Smith, 'Green'; John Wilkinson, 'Imperfect Pitch'; Sarah Wood, 'Anew Again'.Stephen Benson and Clare Connors teach in the School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. Stephen Benson is the author of Cycles of Influence: Fiction, Folktale, Theory (2002) and Literary Music: Writing Music in Contemporary Fiction (2006), and the editor of Contemporary Fiction and the Fairy Tale (2008). Clare Connors is the author of Force from Nietzsche to Derrida and Literary Theory: A Beginner's Guide (2010).

Pirates and Farmers: Essays on Taste


Dave Hickey - 2013
    Arguably one of the most astute art and cultural critics working today, Hickey’s collection of essays questions and challenges the cultural status quo.He recently announced his retirement from the field of criticism due to the new extreme popularity and over-simplification and commoditisation of art, he said ‘I miss being an elitist and not having to talk to idiots.’Author of popular books such as Air Guitar: Essays on Art & Democracy and The Invisible Dragon: Four Essays on Beauty, Hickey’s newest body of essays looks at the super collectors, the trope of the biennale, the loss of looking and much, much more!

Film Technique and Film Acting - The Cinema Writings of V.I. Pudovkin


V.I. Pudovkin - 2013
    We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

TV Horror: Investigating the Dark Side of the Small Screen


Lorna Jowett - 2013
    This complete, utterly accessible, sometimes scary new book is the definitive work on TV horror. It shows how this most adaptable of genres has continued to be a part of the broadcast landscape, unsettling audiences and pushing the boundaries of acceptability. The authors demonstrate how TV Horror continues to provoke and terrify audiences by bringing the monstrous and the supernatural into the home, whether through adaptations of Stephen King and classic horror novels, or by reworking the gothic and surrealism in Twin Peaks and Carnivale. They uncover horror in mainstream television from procedural dramas to children's television and, through close analysis of landmark TV auteurs including Rod Serling, Nigel Kneale, Dan Curtis and Stephen Moffat, together with case studies of such shows as Dark Shadows, Dexter, Pushing Daisies, Torchwood, and Supernatural, they explore its evolution on television. This book is a must-have for those studying TV Genre as well as for anyone with a taste for the gruesome and the macabre.

Extraordinary Hearts: Reclaiming Gay Sensibility's Central Role in the Progress of Civilization


Nicholas F. Benton - 2013
    Metropolitan area LGBT community. Benton covered the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," the Broadway revival of Larry Kramer's powerful play The Normal Heart, a President of the United States proclaiming gay marriage is a right for every American, and the positive progression of gay rights.

Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube


Trav S.D. - 2013
    As in his first book, the critically acclaimed No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, author Trav S.D. mixes a wicked wit, a scholar's curiosity, and a keen critical appreciation for laugh-makers through the ages, from classical clowns like Joseph Grimaldi to comedy kings like Mack Sennett, Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton . . . to more recent figures, from Red Skelton, Sid Caesar and Ernie Kovacs to Adam Sandler, Jim Carrey and Steve Carell . . . all the way down to the teenagers on YouTube whose backyard antics bring us full circle to slapstick's beginnings. This valentine to the great clowns contains enough insights and surprises to open the eyes of even life-long comedy fans. Here's what critics had to say about Trav S.D.'s first book, No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous: "A book that sharpens the mind and stirs the heart . . .The writing is as snappy as these troupers and headliners deserve. And the scholarship is high-class. - Margo Jefferson, New York Times "Almost a vaudeville show unto itself...Open a single chapter of No Applause and you'll get a great snapshot of the industry at that time. . .An ode to the tenacity, the freaks, the slapstick, and yes, the art form that was responsible for entertainment today as we know it." - Rachel Shindelman, Time Out Chicago "Much has been written about the American institution of vaudeville, but readers would be hard-pressed to find an account as humorous and sharp as writer and performer Trav S.D.'s tasty chronicle . . . A well-researched, riotous book." - Publisher's Weekly (starred review) "Thorough and thoroughly entertaining . . . One of the year's best historical performing arts texts; a wonderful story wonderfully told." - Barry X. Miller, Library Journal (starred review) "Both performer and theatre historian, [Trav S.D.] knows of what he speaks. His rich, well-researched history of American vaudeville from its roots in the 1880s onward is a rare enough feat made all the more startling by the wit, zest and fresh eyes [he] brings to the subject." - Jack Helbig, Booklist (starred review)

The Iranian Talmud: Reading the Bavli in Its Sasanian Context


Shai Secunda - 2013
    Delving deep into Sasanian material culture and literary remains, Shai Secunda pieces together the dynamic world of late antique Iran, providing an unprecedented and accessible overview of the world that shaped the Bavli.Secunda unites the fields of Talmudic scholarship with Old Iranian studies to enable a fresh look at the heterogeneous religious and ethnic communities of pre-Islamic Iran. He analyzes the intercultural dynamics between the Jews and their Persian Zoroastrian neighbors, exploring the complex processes and modes of discourse through which these groups came into contact and considering the ways in which rabbis and Zoroastrian priests perceived one another. Placing the Bavli and examples of Middle Persian literature side by side, the Zoroastrian traces in the former and the discursive and Talmudic qualities of the latter become evident. The Iranian Talmud introduces a substantial and essential shift in the field, setting the stage for further Irano-Talmudic research.

Voyage in Noise: Warren Ellis and the Demise of Western Civilization


Kevin Thurman - 2013
    In this book, Kevin Thurman and Julian Darius examine Ellis’s body of work, exploring (among other topics) how his early work for Marvel Comics prefigures the concerns of his later work, how his super-heroes respond to comics history, his use of religion, his use of violence, his fascination with lizards (and what they reveal about the human condition), and how his characters often use anger as a stimulus for revolutionary social action, in defiance of the West’s 21st-century malaise. Topical interviews with Ellis complement several essays, expanding the reader’s understanding of the themes in Ellis’s work.

Nature's Nightmare: Analyzing David Foster Wallace's Oblivion


Greg Carlisle - 2013
    Nature's Nightmare is the first book of criticism devoted to Wallace's masterful story collection. Carlisle gives an in-depth narrative analysis of each story: "Mr. Squishy," "The Soul is Not a Smithy," "Incarnations of Burned Children," "Another Pioneer," "Good Old Neon," "Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature," "Oblivion," and "The Suffering Channel." Carlisle's methodical approach walks readers through Wallace's thematic interests and situates Oblivion in the broader arc of Wallace's career. Every passage of each story is analyzed in terms of 1) interrelation of narrative form and content, 2) relation of story to the theme of oblivion, 3) recurring thematic motifs in Wallace's work, and 4) assessment of content in relation to Infinite Jest and The Pale King. The book includes nine charts that illustrate narrative devices Wallace employs throughout the stories. Jason Kottke called Elegant Complexity the reference book for Infinite Jest and now Nature's Nightmare is the primary reference work for Oblivion.

The Voices of Silence: Meditations on T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets


J.C. Woods - 2013
    S. Eliot had moved on to Drama and was uncertain whether he would ever write poetry again, but some lines he had cut from his first play, Murder in the Cathedral, stuck in his imagination. They became seeds. And, in the tumult preceding the Second World War, the seeds began to sprout. This was the genesis of Eliot's final suite of poems, the Four Quartets. Each poem saw separate publication before they were bound together into a single unit. There are four poems: one for each of the base elements of physical reality air, earth, water and fire. Each poem is connected to a place the poet revisits in memory: Burnt Norton, East Coker, The Dry Salvage and Little Gidding . As a whole it constitutes a brilliant meditation on time, eternity and those timeless moments when the two intersect. Eliot is a notoriously difficult poet, known for his wide allusions to the entire of the European poetic canon. In this poem he also alludes to the ancient scriptures of India. Luckily, Father Woods is available as tour guide, to lead you profitably through this literary adventure.

Prophets of the Posthuman: American Fiction, Biotechnology, and the Ethics of Personhood


Christina Bieber Lake - 2013
    Christina Bieber Lake argues that works by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Walker Percy, Flannery O'Connor, Toni Morrison, George Saunders, Marilynne Robinson, Raymond Carver, James Tiptree, Jr., and Margaret Atwood must be reevaluated in light of their contributions to larger ethical questions. Drawing on a wide range of sources in philosophical and theological ethics, Lake argues that these writers share a commitment to maintaining a category of personhood more meaningful than that allowed by utilitarian ethics. Prophets of the Posthuman insists that because technology can never ask whether we should do something that we have the power to do, literature must step into that role.  Each of the chapters of this interdisciplinary study sets up a typical ethical scenario regarding human enhancement technology and then illustrates how a work of fiction uniquely speaks to that scenario, exposing a realm of human motivations that might otherwise be overlooked or simplified. Through the vision of the writers she discusses, Lake uncovers a deep critique of the ascendancy of personal autonomy as America’s most cherished value. This ascendancy, coupled with technology’s glamorous promises of happiness, helps to shape a utilitarian view of persons that makes responsible ethical behavior toward one another almost impossible. Prophets of the Posthuman charts the essential role that literature must play in the continuing conversation of what it means to be human in a posthuman world. "As we attempt to make sense of the technologically accelerated—and 'enhanced'—world in which we find ourselves, Christina Bieber Lake provides incisive analysis of contemporary encroachments upon our common humanity. She demonstrates how centrally significant the inexorable march of science to know and do whatever it can will be to our individual and collective sense of self." —Avis Hewitt, Grand Valley State University

Samuel Beckett's Library


Mark Nixon - 2013
    Previously inaccessible to scholars, this is the first study to assess the importance of the marginalia, inscriptions, and other manuscript notes in the 750 volumes of the library. Setting the library into context with other manuscript material such as drafts and notebooks, Samuel Beckett's Library examines the way in which Beckett absorbed, translated, and transmitted his reading into his own work. This book thus illuminates Beckett's cultural and intellectual world, and shows the means by which his reading often engendered writing.

Ali Smith


Monica Germana - 2013
    Covering her complete oeuvre, from the short stories to her most recent novel There but for the, this is the first comprehensive critical guide to Smith's work. Bringing together leading scholars, Ali Smith: Contemporary Critical Perspectives covers such topics as: Language, truth and reality Spectral presences and the uncanny Gender and sexuality Cosmopolitanism Smith's place in the contemporary canon Including a new interview with the author, a chronology of her life and authoritative guides to further reading, this is an essential guide for anyone interested in the best of contemporary fiction."

Coming Close: Forty Essays on Philip Levine


Mari L'Esperance - 2013
    Throughout his fifty-year teaching career, the Pulitzer Prize–winning Levine taught scores of younger poets, many of whom went on to become famous in their own right. These forty essays honor and celebrate one of our most vivid and gifted poets.           Whether in Fresno, New York, Boston, Detroit, or any of the other cities where Levine taught, his students benefited from his sharp, humorous honesty in the classroom. In these personal essays, poets spanning a number of generations reveal how their lives and work were forever altered by studying with Levine. The heartfelt tributes illuminate how one dedicated teacher’s intangible gifts can make a vast difference in the life of a developing poet, as well as providing insight into the changing tenor of the poetry workshop in the American university setting.Here, poets as diverse as Nick Flynn and David St. John, Sharon Olds and Larry Levis, Ada Limon and Mark Levine, Malena Morling and Lawson Fusao Inada are united in their deep regard for Philip Levine. The voices echo and reverberate as each strikes its own honoring tone. Contributors: Aaron Belz, Ciaran Berry, Paula Bohince, Shane Book, B. H. Boston, Xochiquetzal Candelaria, Colin Cheney, Michael Clifton, Michael Collier, Nicole Cooley, Kate Daniels, Blas Manuel De Luna, Kathy Fagan, Andrew Feld, Nick Flynn, Edward Hirsch, Sandra Hoben, Ishion Hutchinson, Lawson Fusao Inada, Dorianne Laux, Joseph O. Legaspi, Mark Levine, Larry Levis, Ada Limón, Elline Lipkin, Jane Mead, Dante Micheaux, Malena Mörling, John Murillo, Daniel Nester, Sharon Olds, January Gill O’Neil, Greg Pape, Kathleen Peirce, Sam Pereira, Jeffrey Skinner, Tom Sleigh, David St. John, Brian Turner, Robert Wrigley

The Reckoning: Women Artists of the New Millennium


Eleanor Heartney - 2013
    In After the Revolution, the authors concluded that The battles may not all have been won...but barricades are gradually coming down, and work proceeds on all fronts in glorious profusion. Now, with The Reckoning, authors Heartney, Posner, Princenthal, and Scott bring into focus the accomplishments of 24 acclaimed international women artists born since 1960 who have benefited from the groundbreaking efforts of their predecessors. The book is organized in four thematic sections: Bad Girls profiles artists whose work represents an assault on conventional notions of gender and racial difference. History Lessons offers reflections on the self in the context of history and globalization. Spellbound focuses on women's embrace of the irrational, subjective, and surreal, while Domestic Disturbances takes on women's conflicted relationship to home, family, and security. Written in lively prose and fully illustrated throughout, this book gives an informed account of the wonderful diversity of recent contemporary art by women.

The Cambridge Companion to Cormac McCarthy


Steven Frye - 2013
    His fiction draws on recognizable American themes and employs dense philosophical and theological subtexts, challenging readers by depicting the familiar as inscrutably foreign. The essays in this Companion offer a sophisticated yet concise introduction to McCarthy's difficult and provocative work. The contributors, an international team of McCarthy scholars, analyze some of the most well-known and commonly taught novels - Outer Dark, Blood Meridian, All the Pretty Horses, and The Road - while providing detailed treatments of McCarthy's work in cinema, including the many adaptations of his novels to film. Designed for scholars, teachers, and general readers, and complete with a chronology and bibliography for further reading, this Companion is an essential reference for anyone interested in gaining a deeper understanding of one of America's most celebrated living novelists.

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism (Idiot's Guides)


Steven Venturino - 2013
    Authoritative, genuinely helpful, and just funny enough. You'll see.Literary interpretation can be a complex topic. This lively and entertaining guide takes the intimidation out of it, offering readers a scholarly yet easy-to-follow examination of literary theory's central arguments, key figures, and fascinating history. From Plato to ecocriticism, this helpful guide gives you everything you need to know to really understand literature--plus hundreds of references to novels, stories, poems, plays, and more.

Writing Against Time


Michael W. Clune - 2013
    Thinkers from Edmund Burke to Elaine Scarry have understood this effort as the attempt to create new forms. But as anyone who has ever worn out a song by repeated listening knows, artistic form is hardly immune to sensation-killing habit. Some of our most ambitious writers—Keats, Proust, Nabokov, Ashbery—have been obsessed by this problem. Attempting to create an image that never gets old, they experiment with virtual, ideal forms. Poems and novels become workshops, as fragments of the real world are scrutinized for insights and the shape of an ideal artwork is pieced together. These writers, voracious in their appetite for any knowledge that will further their goal, find help in unlikely places. The logic of totalitarian regimes, the phenomenology of music, the pathology of addiction, and global commodity exchange furnish them with tools and models for arresting neurobiological time. Reading central works of the past two centuries in light of their shared ambition, Clune produces a revisionary understanding of some of our most important literature.

Minding the Modern: Human Agency, Intellectual Traditions, and Responsible Knowledge


Thomas Pfau - 2013
    Pfau traces the evolution and eventual deterioration of key concepts of human agency—will, person, judgment, action—from antiquity through Scholasticism and on to eighteenth-century moral theory and its critical revision in the works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Featuring extended critical discussions of Aristotle, Gnosticism, Augustine, Aquinas, Ockham, Hobbes, Shaftesbury, Mandeville, Hutcheson, Hume, Adam Smith, and Coleridge, this study contends that humanistic concepts they seek to elucidate acquire meaning and significance only inasmuch as we are prepared positively to engage (rather than historicize) their previous usages. Beginning with the rise of theological (and, eventually, secular) voluntarism, modern thought appears increasingly reluctant and, in time unable to engage the deep history of its own underlying conceptions, thus leaving our understanding of the nature and function of humanistic inquiry increasingly frayed and incoherent. One consequence of this shift is to leave the moral self-expression of intellectual elites and ordinary citizens alike stunted, which in turn has fueled the widespread notion that moral and ethical concerns are but a special branch of inquiry largely determined by opinion rather than dialogical reasoning, judgment, and practice. A clear sign of this regression is the present crisis in the study of the humanities, whose role is overwhelmingly conceived (and negatively appraised) in terms of scientific theories, methods, and objectives. The ultimate casualty of this reductionism has been the very idea of personhood and the disappearance of an adequate ethical language. Minding the Modern is not merely a chapter in the history of ideas; it is a thorough phenomenological and metaphysical study of the roots of today's predicaments. “[A] learned, deeply important, and accomplished study . . . that calls upon a set of interpretive and communal traditions that, far from being fossilized, contain radical and renovating power, but whose power can be called on, extended, elaborated, and applied to the present and future only if one knows that those traditions can and do remain alive and available, and that we ignore or pronounce them 'past' at our peril. The sweep and comprehensiveness of the work are remarkable. This is not a history of philosophy at all. It is a call for us to rededicate ourselves to a serious, demanding practice of humanistic studies.” —James Engell, Gurney Professor of English and Professor of Comparative Literature, Harvard University "Minding the Modern is comparable to Alasdair MacIntyre’s Whose Justice? Which Rationality? and Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age. With extraordinary erudition, Pfau locates the philosophical developments that contributed to the agony of the modern mind. Moreover, he helps us see why many who exemplify that intellectual stance do not recognize their own despair. Suffice it to say, this is an immensely important book that hopefully will be read widely and across the disciplines." —Stanley Hauerwas, Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics, Duke Divinity School

Corrected Slogans: Reading and Writing Conceptualism


R.H. Quaytman - 2013
    In conjunction with the exhibition Postscript: Writing After Conceptual Art at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver, the online magazine Triple Canopy hosted a series of public conversations between some of the most innovative artists and poets working today. The symposium Poems for America asked how conceptual writing has transformed conventional notions of expression, while Automatic Reading, a seminar-style roundtable, focused on reading as a creative practice, and the book as a material object. Corrected Slogans features annotated transcripts of these events, which include contributions from Nora Abrams, Andrea Andersson, Erica Baum, Franklin Bruno, Corina Copp, Michael Corris, Brian Droitcour, Jim Fletcher, Zachary German, Lucy Ives, Aaron Kunin, Margaret Lee, Paul Legault, K. Silem Mohammad, Ken Okiishi, R. H. Quaytman, Katie Raissian, Ariana Reines, William S. Smith, Monica de la Torre, Gretchen Wagner, Hannah Whitaker and Matvei Yankelevich, along with new essays, artworks and poetry.

Biopolitics: A Reader


Timothy Campbell - 2013
    The far-reaching influence of the biopolitical—the relation of politics to life, or the state to the body—is not surprising given its centrality to matters such as healthcare, abortion, immigration, and the global distribution of essential medicines and medical technologies.Michel Foucault gave new and unprecedented meaning to the term "biopolitics" in his 1976 essay "Right of Death and Power over Life." In this anthology, that touchstone piece is followed by essays in which biopolitics is implicitly anticipated as a problem by Hannah Arendt and later altered, critiqued, deconstructed, and refined by major political and social theorists who explicitly engaged with Foucault's ideas. By focusing on the concept of biopolitics, rather than applying it to specific events and phenomena, this Reader provides an enduring framework for assessing the central problematics of modern political thought.Contributors. Giorgio Agamben, Hannah Arendt, Alain Badiou, Timothy Campbell, Gilles Deleuze, Roberto Esposito, Michel Foucault, Donna Haraway, Michael Hardt, Achille Mbembe, Warren Montag, Antonio Negri, Jacques Rancière, Adam Sitze, Peter Sloterdijk, Paolo Virno, Slavoj Žižek

Children's Literature and the Posthuman: Animal, Environment, Cyborg


Zoe Jaques - 2013
    In complicating questions of human identity, ecology, gender, and technology, Jaques engages with a multifaceted posthumanism to understand how philosophy can emerge from children's fantasy, disclosing how such fantasy can build upon earlier traditions to represent complex issues of humanness to younger audiences. Interrogating the place of the human through the non-human (whether animal or mechanical) leads this book to have interpretations that radically depart from the critical tradition, which, in its concerns with the socialization and representation of the child, has ignored larger epistemologies of humanness. The book considers canonical texts of children's literature alongside recent bestsellers and films, locating texts such as Gulliver's Travels (1726), Pinocchio (1883) and the Alice books (1865, 1871) as important works in the evolution of posthuman ideas. This study provides radical new readings of children's literature and demonstrates that the genre offers sophisticated interventions into the nature, boundaries and dominion of humanity.

We Modern People: Science Fiction and the Making of Russian Modernity


Anindita Banerjee - 2013
    We Modern People investigates why science fiction appeared here, on the margins of Europe, before the genre had even been named, and what it meant for people who lived under conditions that Leon Trotsky famously described as "combined and uneven development." Russian science fiction was embraced not only in literary circles and popular culture, but also by scientists, engineers, philosophers, and political visionaries. Anindita Banerjee explores the handful of well-known early practitioners, such as Briusov, Bogdanov, and Zamyatin, within a much larger continuum of new archival material comprised of journalism, scientific papers, popular science texts, advertisements, and independent manifestos on social transformation. In documenting the unusual relationship between Russian science fiction and Russian modernity, this book offers a new critical perspective on the relationship between science, technology, the fictional imagination, and the consciousness of being modern.

Promised Bodies: Time, Language, and Corporeality in Medieval Women's Mystical Texts


Patricia Dailey - 2013
    This study links the embodied poetics of HadewijchOCOs visions and letters to the work of such mystics and visionaries as Julian of Norwich, Hildegard of Bingen, and Marguerite of Oingt. It introduces new criteria for re-assessing the style, language, interpretative practices, forms of literacy, and uses of textuality in womenOCOs mystical texts.

WHO Won?!?: An Irreverent Look at the Oscars, Volume 2: 1944-1952


Robert James - 2013
    Robert James looks at all the major categories, slashing and burning his way through the bad, praising the good, and offering the best for your consideration. A comic, biting analysis of hundreds of films, WHO Won?!? is a guide to the wonderful movies you missed - and a warning against the ones you should never have seen in the first place. As Norma Desmond says in Sunset Blvd., in here, it's "...just us, the cameras, and those wonderful people out there in the dark!" This time around, we take up the moonlit shadows and night terrors of Hollywood from 1944-1952, as the studio system begins collapsing and the censorship boards show their first fracturing. Hollywood dimmed the lights as film noir emerged, along with more serious, adult pictures. Sadly, the arrival of television also pushed Hollywood into producing more Big Dumb Movies, although the rise of spectacle could sometimes pay off. The Supreme Court would break up the studios. Congress would do even more damage by launching an investigation of Hollywood, driving the studios to stop making more than a handful of pictures for mature minds while they frantically searched for some new way to bring people back into the theaters. At the same time, Hollywood would begin its own persecution with the blacklist, driving many out of work, even as it drove itself into a corner with little room to do anything but play it safe. Don't miss the early years of film history in Volume 1 of WHO Won?!? covering 1927-1943.

Iconographic Exegesis of the Hebrew Bible / Old Testament: An Introduction to Its Theory, Method, and Practice


Brent A. Strawn - 2013
    Studying ancient visual art that is contemporary with the documents of the Old Testament gives remarkable insight, not only on the meaning and historical context of the biblical text, but also because it facilitates greater understanding of how the ancient authors and audiences saw, thought, and made sense of the world. Iconography thus merits close attention as another avenue that can lead to a more nuanced and more complete understanding of the biblical text. Each chapter of this book provides an exegesis of a particular biblical text or theme. The book is organized around the tripartite structure of the Hebrew Bible, and demonstrates that iconographical exegesis is pertinent to -every nook and cranny- of the Bible. Within the three parts, there is special emphasis on Genesis, Isaiah, and the Psalms in order to make the book attractive for classes that deal with one or more of these books and might therefore include an iconographic perspective. In addition to connecting with a major issue in biblical interpretation, theology, or visual studies each chapter will end with one or two exercises directing the reader/student to comparable texts and images, enabling them to apply what was described in the chapter for themselves. This approach enables beginners as well as advanced readers to integrate iconography into their toolbox of exegetical skills.

Antigone, Interrupted


Bonnie Honig - 2013
    Studying the play in its fifth-century and modern contexts, Bonnie Honig argues for an Antigone committed not just to dissidence but to a positive politics of counter-sovereignty and solidarity.

The Poet Resigns: Poetry in a Difficult World (Akron Series in Contemporary Poetics)


Robert Archambeau - 2013
    In addition to pursuing these topics, The Poet Resigns peers into the role of the critic and the manifesto, the nature of wit, the poetics of play, and the persistence of modernism, while providing detailed readings of poets as diverse as Harryette Mullen and Yvor Winters, George Oppen and Robert Pinsky, Pablo Neruda and C.S. Giscombe. Behind it all is a sense of poetry, not just as an academic area of study, but also as a lived experience and a way of understanding. Few books of poetry criticism show such range—yet the core questions remain clear: what is this thing we love and call poetry, and what is its consequence in the world?

Shakespeare and Classical Antiquity


Colin Burrow - 2013
    Each book is written by an authority in its field, and combines accessible style with original discussion of its subject.This book explains that Shakespeare did not have 'small Latin and less Greek' as Ben Jonson claimed.Shakespeare and Classical Antiquity shows the range, extent and variety of Shakespeare's responses to classical antiquity. Individual chapters on Virgil, Ovid, Classical Comedy, Seneca, and Plutarch show how Shakespeare's understanding of and use of classical authors, and of the classical past moregenerally, changed and developed in the course of his career. An opening chapter shows the kind of classical learning he acquired through his education, and subsequent chapters provide stimulating introductions to a range of classical authors as well as to Shakespeare's responses to them.Shakespeare and Classical Antiquity shows how Shakespeare's relationship to classical authors changed in response to contemporary events and to contemporary authors. Above all, it shows that Shakespeare's reading in classical literature informed more or less every aspect of his work.

Inside Paradise Lost: Reading the Designs of Milton's Epic


David Quint - 2013
    David Quint's comprehensive study demonstrates how systematic patterns of allusion and keywords give structure and coherence both to individual books of Paradise Lost and to the overarching relationship among its books and episodes. Looking at poems within the poem, Quint provides new interpretations as he takes readers through the major subjects of Paradise Lost--its relationship to epic tradition and the Bible, its cosmology and politics, and its dramas of human choice.Quint shows how Milton radically revises the epic tradition and the Genesis story itself by arguing that it is better to create than destroy, by telling the reader to make love, not war, and by appearing to ratify Adam's decision to fall and die with his wife. The Milton of this Paradise Lost is a Christian humanist who believes in the power and freedom of human moral agency. As this indispensable guide and reference takes us inside the poetry of Milton's masterpiece, Paradise Lost reveals itself in new formal configurations and unsuspected levels of meaning and design.

Line Color Form: The Language of Art and Design


Jesse Day - 2013
    So why should they learn art and design theory from a traditional textbook? The only guide of its kind, Line Color Form offers a thorough introduction to design theory and terminology in a visually appealing and accessible format.With hundreds of illustrations and minimal text, this primer was created with visual learners in mind, making it ideal for art students as well as those for whom English is a second language. Each chapter focuses on a single aspect of visual composition, such as line, color, or material. After an illustrated discussion of fundamental vocabulary, the chapters move on to applications of the concepts covered. These applications are again demonstrated through images, including photographs, color wheels, significant works of art, and other visual aids. Each image is accompanied by a descriptive paragraph offering an example of how the vocabulary can be applied in visual analysis. The book culminates with a section on formal analysis, aimed at teaching readers how to express their observations in formal writing and critical discourse. With its emphasis on the visual, this unique guide is a highly effective learning tool, allowing readers to gain an ownership and mastery of terms that will benefit them academically and professionally. Whether you are a design educator, student, or professional, native or non-native English speaker, this bright and concise reference is a must.

Macroanalysis: Digital Methods and Literary History


Matthew L. Jockers - 2013
    Jockers introduces readers to large-scale literary computing and the revolutionary potential of macroanalysis--a new approach to the study of the literary record designed for probing the digital-textual world as it exists today, in digital form and in large quantities. Using computational analysis to retrieve key words, phrases, and linguistic patterns across thousands of texts in digital libraries, researchers can draw conclusions based on quantifiable evidence regarding how literary trends are employed over time, across periods, within regions, or within demographic groups, as well as how cultural, historical, and societal linkages may bind individual authors, texts, and genres into an aggregate literary culture. Moving beyond the limitations of literary interpretation based on the "close-reading" of individual works, Jockers describes how this new method of studying large collections of digital material can help us to better understand and contextualize the individual works within those collections.

Serialization in Popular Culture


Rob Allen - 2013
    In this volume, contributors--literary scholars, media theorists, and specialists in comics, graphic novels, and digital culture--examine the economic, narratological, and social effects of serials from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century and offer some predictions of where the form will go from here.

The Encyclopedia of the Gothic


William Hughes - 2013
    Explores the development of the genre and its impact on contemporary culture

Impossible Joyce: Finnegans Wakes


Patrick O'Neill - 2013
    Nonetheless, it has been translated, transposed, or transcreated into a surprising variety of languages - including complete renditions in French, German, Portuguese, Dutch, Japanese, and Korean, and partial renditions in Italian, Spanish, and a variety of other languages. Impossible Joyce explores the fascinating range of different approaches adopted by translators in coming to grips with Joyce's astonishing literary text.In this study, Patrick O'Neill builds on an approach first developed in his book Polyglot Joyce, but deepens his focus by considering Finnegans Wake exclusively. Venturing from Umberto Eco's assertion that the novel is a machine designed to generate as many meanings as possible for readers, he provides a sustained examination of the textual effects generated by comparative readings of translated excerpts. In doing so, O'Neill makes manifest the ways in which attempts to translate this extraordinary text have resulted in a cumulative extension of Finnegans Wake into an even more extraordinary macrotext encompassing and subsuming its collective renderings.

Sport and Film


Sean Crosson - 2013
    From classic boxing films such as "Raging Bull" (1980) to soccer-themed box-office successes like "Bend it Like Beckham" (2002), the sports film stands at the interface of two of our most important cultural forms. This book examines the social, historical and ideological significance of representations of sport in film internationally, an essential guide for all students and enthusiasts of sport, film, media and culture.Sport and Film traces the history of the sports film, from the beginnings of cinema in the 1890s, its consolidation as a distinct fiction genre in the mid 1920s in Hollywood films such as Harold Lloyd s "The Freshman" (1925), to its contemporary manifestation in Oscar-winning films such as "Million Dollar Baby" (2004) and "The Fighter" (2010). Drawing on an extensive range of films as source material, the book explores key issues in the study of sport, film and wider society, including race, social class, gender and the legacy of 9/11. It also offers an invaluable guide to 'reading' a film, to help students fully engage with their source material. Comprehensive, authoritative and accessible, this book is an important addition to the literature in both film and media studies, sport studies and cultural studies more generally.

A Companion to Jean-Luc Godard


Tom Conley - 2013
     Presents a compendium of original essays offering invaluable insights into the life and works of one of the most important and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema Features contributions from an international cast of major film theorists and critics Provides readers with both an in-depth reading of Godard's major films and a sense of his evolution from the New Wave to his later political periods Brings fresh insights into the great director's biography, including reflections on his personal philosophy, politics, and connections to other critics and filmmakers Explores many of the 80 features Godard made in nearly 60 years, and includes coverage of his recent work in video

A Companion to Film Noir


Helen Hanson - 2013
    An authoritative companion that offers a wide-ranging thematic survey of this enduringly popular cultural form and includes scholarship from both established and emerging scholars as well as analysis of film noir's influence on other media including television and graphic novels.Covers a wealth of new approaches to film noir and neo-noir that explore issues ranging from conceptualization to cross-media influences.Features chapters exploring the wider ‘noir mediascape’ of television, graphic novels and radio.Reflects the historical and geographical reach of film noir, from the 1920s to the present and in a variety of national cinemas.Includes contributions from both established and emerging scholars.

Camp Sites: Sex, Politics, and Academic Style in Postwar America


Michael Trask - 2013
    Both Cold War liberals and radicals understood the university as a privileged site for "doing politics," and both exiled homosexuality from the political ideals each group favored. Liberals, who advanced a politics of style over substance, saw gay people as unable to separate the two, as incapable of maintaining the opportunistic suspension of disbelief on which a tough-minded liberalism depended. Radicals, committed to a politics of authenticity, saw gay people as hopelessly beholden to the role-playing and duplicity that the radicals condemned in their liberal forebears.Camp Sites considers key themes of postwar culture, from the conflict between performance and authenticity to the rise of the meritocracy, through the lens of camp, the underground sensibility of pre-Stonewall gay life. In so doing, it argues that our basic assumptions about the social style of the postwar milieu are deeply informed by certain presuppositions about homosexual experience and identity, and that these presuppositions remain stubbornly entrenched despite our post-Stonewall consciousness-raising.

Merle Haggard: The Running Kind


David Cantwell - 2013
    He's charted more than a hundred country hits, including thirty-eight number ones. He's released dozens of studio albums and another half dozen or more live ones, performed upwards of ten thousand concerts, been inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame, and seen his songs performed by artists as diverse as Lynryd Skynyrd, Elvis Costello, Tammy Wynette, Willie Nelson, the Grateful Dead, and Bob Dylan. In 2011 he was feted as a Kennedy Center Honoree. But until now, no one has taken an in-depth look at his career and body of work.In Merle Haggard: The Running Kind, David Cantwell takes us on a revelatory journey through Haggard's music and the life and times out of which it came. Covering the entire breadth of his career, Cantwell focuses especially on the 1960s and 1970s, when Haggard created some of his best-known and most influential music, which helped invent the America we live in today. Listening closely to a masterpiece-crowded catalogue (including songs such as "Okie from Muskogee," "Sing Me Back Home," "Mama Tried," "Working Man Blues," "Kern River," "White Line Fever," "Today I Started Loving You Again," and "If We Make It through December," among many more), Cantwell explores the fascinating contradictions--most of all, the desire for freedom in the face of limits set by the world or self-imposed--that define not only Haggard's music and public persona but the very heart of American culture.

The Epistle of Forgiveness: Volume One: A Vision of Heaven and Hell


Abū al-ʿAlāʾ al-Maʿarrī - 2013
    449 H/1057 AD) to a letter written by an obscure grammarian, Ibn al-Qarih. With biting irony, The Epistle of Forgiveness mocks Ibn al-Qarih's hypocrisy and sycophancy by imagining he has died and arrived with some difficulty in Heaven, where he meets famous poets and philologists from the past. He also glimpses Hell, and converses with the Devil and various heretics. Al-Ma'arri--a maverick, a vegan, and often branded a heretic himself--seems to mock popular ideas about the Hereafter. This translation is the first complete translation in any language and retains the many digressions, difficult passages, and convoluted grammatical discussions of the original typically omitted in other translations. It is accompanied by extensive annotation and a comprehensive introduction. Geert Jan van Gelder studied Semitic Languages in Amsterdam and Leiden. He was Lecturer in Arabic at the University of Groningen (1975-1998) and Laudian Professor of Arabic at the University of Oxford (1998-2012). He has published numerous articles and several books on classical Arabic literature. Gregor Schoeler studied Arabic and Islamic Studies in Frankfurt am Main and Giessen (Germany). He was the chair of Islamic Studies at the University of Basel (1982-2009). He has published numerous articles and several books in the fields of Islamic Studies and classical Arabic literature.

Middlebrow Queer: Christopher Isherwood in America


Jaime Harker - 2013
    But Christopher Isherwood did, and what makes his accomplishment more remarkable is that while he was negotiating his identity as a gay writer, he was reinventing himself as an American one. Jaime Harker shows that Isherwood refashioned himself as an American writer following his emigration from England by immersing himself in the gay reading, writing, and publishing communities in Cold War America.Drawing extensively on Isherwood’s archives, including manuscript drafts and unpublished correspondence with readers, publishers, and other writers, Middlebrow Queer demonstrates how Isherwood mainstreamed gay content for heterosexual readers in his postwar novels while also covertly writing for gay audiences and encouraging a symbiotic relationship between writer and reader. The result—in such novels as The World in the Evening, Down There on a Visit, A Single Man, and A Meeting by the River—was a complex, layered form of writing that Harker calls “middlebrow camp,” a mode that extended the boundaries of both gay and middlebrow fiction.Weaving together biography, history, and literary criticism, Middlebrow Queer traces the continuous evolution of Isherwood’s simultaneously queer and American postwar authorial identity. In doing so, the book illuminates many aspects of Cold War America’s gay print cultures, from gay protest novels to “out” pulp fiction.

Dave Sim: Conversations


Eric Hoffman - 2013
    1956) began to self-publish Cerebus, one of the earliest and most significant independent comics, which ran for 300 issues and ended, as Sim had planned from early on, in 2004. Over the run of the comic, Sim used it as a springboard to explore not only the potential of the comics medium but also many of the core assumptions of Western society. Through it he analyzed politics, the dynamics of love, religion, and, most controversially, the influence of feminism--which Sim believes has had a negative impact on society. Moreover, Sim inserted himself squarely into the comic as Cerebus's creator, thereby inviting criticism not only of the creation, but also of the creator.What few interviews Sim gave often pushed the limits of what an interview might be in much the same way that Cerebus pushed the limits of what a comic might be. In interviews Sim is generous, expansive, provocative, and sometimes even antagonistic. Regardless of mood, he is always insightful and fascinating. His discursive style is not conducive to the sound bite or to easy summary. Many of these interviews have been out of print for years. And, while the interviews range from very general, career-spanning explorations of his complex work and ideas, to tightly focused discussions on specific details of Cerebus, all the interviews contained herein are engaging and revealing.

Kafka Translated: How Translators have Shaped our Reading of Kafka


Michelle Woods - 2013
    What effect do the translations have on how we read Kafka? Are our interpretations of Kafka influenced by the translators' interpretations? In what ways has Kafka been 'translated' into Anglo-American culture by popular culture and by academics?Michelle Woods investigates issues central to the burgeoning field of translation studies: the notion of cultural untranslatability; the centrality of female translators in literary history; and the under-representation of the influence of the translator as interpreter of literary texts. She specifically focuses on the role of two of Kafka's first translators, Milena Jesenská and Willa Muir, as well as two contemporary translators, Mark Harman and Michael Hofmann, and how their work might allow us to reassess reading Kafka. From here Woods opens up the whole process of translation and re-examines accepted and prevailing interpretations of Kafka's work.