Reading Rilke: Reflections on the Problems of Translation


William H. Gass - 1999
    The greatly esteemed essayist, novelist, and philosopher reflects on the art of translation and on Rainer Maria Rilke's Duino Elegies and gives us his own translation of Rilke's masterwork.

How You Play the Game: A Philosopher Plays Minecraft (Kindle Single)


Charlie Huenemann - 2015
    At a glance, it bears few similarities to any place we know and inhabit. But upon closer examination, the differences between this complex virtual reality and our own might not be as vast as we think. In “How You Play the Game,” author and philosopher Charlie Huenemann looks philosophically at the game of Minecraft (“What is the point of this game? How does one win? Well, this depends on what you want to do”) and grapples with the ethical conundrums, existential crises and moral responsibilities of the virtual realm. From the Overworld to the Ender Dragon, Huenemann offers an entertaining, insightful and often hilarious examination of Minecraft and the strange worlds—both virtual and not—surrounding it.Charlie Huenemann is a Professor of Philosophy at Utah State University. He writes for 3quarksdaily, and has published several books on the history of philosophy.Cover design by Adil Dara.

Wallace Stevens: Words Chosen Out of Desire (Revised)


Helen Vendler - 1984
    She shows us that this most intellectual of poets is in fact the most personal of poets; that his words are not devoted to epistemological questions alone but are also "words chosen out of desire."

The Language of Fashion


Roland Barthes - 2006
    The Language of Fashion brings together all Barthes' untranslated writings on fashion.The Language of Fashion presents a set of remarkable essays, revealing the breadth and insight of Barthes' long engagement with the history of clothes. The essays range from closely argued essays laying down the foundations for a structural and semiological analysis of clothing to a critical analysis of the significance of gemstones and jewellery, from an exploration of how the contrasting styles of Courrges and Chanel replayed the clash between ancient and modern to a discussion of the meaning of hippy style in Morocco, and from the nature of desire to the role of the dandy and colour in fashion.Constantly questioning, always changing, Barthes' ideas about clothes and fashion remain to provoke another generation of readers seeking to understand not only the culture of fashion but the fashion of culture.

Millennium


Peter Lamborn Wilson - 1996
    In MILLENNIUM, Hakim Bey both sustains and expands the ideas of his groundbreaking work, THE TEMPORARY AUTONOMOUS ZONE. Here, Bey suggests that mere detachment from (or even outright rejection of) the monolith of global capital is not enough; that either we accept ourselves as the 'last humans,' or else we accept ourselves as the opposition. The book also contains an illuminating interview with Bey, in which he discusses his body of work and assesses our collective position at the turn of the millennium.

The Well Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry


Cleanth Brooks - 1947
    Index.

Crediting Poetry: The Nobel Lecture


Seamus Heaney - 1996
    His Nobel Lecture offers a powerful defense of poetry as "the ship and the anchor" of our spirit within an ocean of violent, divisive world politics.

This I Believe: On Love


Dan Gediman - 2010
    Murrow's radio program, This I Believe, gave voice to the feelings and treasured beliefs of Americans around the country. Fifty years later, the popular update of the series, which now continues on Bob Edwards Weekend on public radio, explores the beliefs that people hold dear today. This book brings together essays on love from ordinary people far and wide whose sentiments and stories will surprise, inspire, and move you.Includes extraordinary essays written by ordinary Americans on love in its many manifestations-from romantic love and love of family to love of place and love of animals Paints a compelling portrait of the diverse range of beliefs and experiences related to what is perhaps the most powerful and complex of human emotions-love Based on the popular This I Believe radio series and thisibelieve.org Web site By turns funny and profound, yet always engaging, This I Believe: On Love is a perfect gift to give or to keep.

The Land of Ulro


Czesław Miłosz - 1977
    A man who was raised a Catholic in rural Lithuania, lived through the Nazi occupation of Poland, and emerged, first in Europe and then in America, as one of our most important men of letters, speaks here of the inherited dilemmas of our civilization in a voice recognizable for its honesty and passion.

Love Letters of Great Men


Beacon Hill Press - 2009
    Find yourself in the middle of torrid love affairs, undying devotion, and scandalous betrayal as you uncover long-lost correspondences between lovers.From great Kings to War Heroes to Philosophers, spanning a period of five centuries, this collection illustrates that the human desires of sex and love were as powerful then as they are now.

More than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor


George Lakoff - 1989
    We've merely been taught to talk as if it had: as though weather maps were more 'real' than the breath of autumn; as though, for that matter, Reason was really 'cool.' What we're saying whenever we say is a theme this book illumines for anyone attentive." — Hugh Kenner, Johns Hopkins University "In this bold and powerful book, Lakoff and Turner continue their use of metaphor to show how our minds get hold of the world. They have achieved nothing less than a postmodern Understanding Poetry, a new way of reading and teaching that makes poetry again important." — Norman Holland, University of Florida

William Blake Now: Why He Matters More Than Ever


John Higgs - 2019
    Although he died nearly 200 years ago, something about his work continues to haunt the twenty-first century. What is it about Blake that has so endured? In this illuminating essay, John Higgs takes us on a whirlwind tour to prove that far from being the mere New Age counterculture figure that many assume him to be, Blake is now more relevant than ever.

Nilling: Prose (Department of Critical Thought)


Lisa Robertson - 2012
    Just beneath the surface of the phonemes, a gendered name rhythmically explodes into a founding variousness. And then the strictures of the text assert again themselves. I want to claim for this inconspicuousness a transformational agency that runs counter to the teleology of readerly intention. Syllables might call to gods who do and don't exist. That is, they appear in the text's absences and densities as a motile graphic and phonemic force that abnegates its own necessity. Overwhelmingly in my submission to reading's supple snare, I feel love.

The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays


Mikhail Bakhtin - 1975
    The Dialogic Imagination presents, in superb English translation, four selections from Voprosy literatury i estetiki (Problems of literature and esthetics), published in Moscow in 1975. The volume also contains a lengthy introduction to Bakhtin and his thought and a glossary of terminology.Bakhtin uses the category "novel" in a highly idiosyncratic way, claiming for it vastly larger territory than has been traditionally accepted. For him, the novel is not so much a genre as it is a force, "novelness," which he discusses in "From the Prehistory of Novelistic Discourse." Two essays, "Epic and Novel" and "Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel," deal with literary history in Bakhtin's own unorthodox way. In the final essay, he discusses literature and language in general, which he sees as stratified, constantly changing systems of subgenres, dialects, and fragmented "languages" in battle with one another.

How to Read Literature


Terry Eagleton - 2013
    How to Read Literature is the book of choice for students new to the study of literature and for all other readers interested in deepening their understanding and enriching their reading experience. In a series of brilliant analyses, Eagleton shows how to read with due attention to tone, rhythm, texture, syntax, allusion, ambiguity, and other formal aspects of literary works. He also examines broader questions of character, plot, narrative, the creative imagination, the meaning of fictionality, and the tension between what works of literature say and what they show. Unfailingly authoritative and cheerfully opinionated, the author provides useful commentaries on classicism, Romanticism, modernism and postmodernism along with spellbinding insights into a huge range of authors, from Shakespeare and Jane Austen to Samuel Beckett and J. K. Rowling.