At the heart of his ever-relevant inquiry is the inescapable conflict in the West between marriage and passion—the first associated with social and religious responsiblity and the second with anarchic, unappeasable love as celebrated by the troubadours of medieval Provence. These early poets, according to de Rougemont, spoke the words of an Eros-centered theology, and it was through this "heresy" that a European vocabulary of mysticism flourished and that Western literature took on a new direction.Bringing together historical, religious, philosophical, and cultural dimensions, the author traces the evolution of Western romantic love from its literary beginnings as an awe-inspiring secret to its commercialization in the cinema. He seeks to restore the myth of love to its original integrity and concludes with a philosophical perspective on modern marriage.

    Together these two volumes form the most comprehensive books available on Dylan's words. Clinton Heylin is the world's leading Dylan biographer and expert, and he has arranged the songs in a continually surprising chronology of when they were actually written rather than when they appeared on albums. Using newly discovered manuscripts, anecdotal evidence, and a seemingly limitless knowledge of every Bob Dylan live performance, Heylin reveals hundreds of facts about the songs. Here we learn about Dylan's contributions to the Traveling Wilburys, the women who inspired "Blood on the Tracks "and "Desire," " "the sources Dylan "plagiarized" for "Love and Theft "and "Modern Times," " "why he left "Blind Willie McTell" off of "Infidels "and "Series of Dreams" off of "Oh Mercy," " "what broke the long dry spell he had in the 1990s, and much more. This is an essential purchase for every true Bob Dylan fan.

    The palace itself has been radically altered since 1789, and the court was long ago swept away. Versailles sets out to rediscover what is now a vanished world: a great center of power, seat of royal government, and, for thousands, a home both grand and squalid, bound by social codes almost incomprehensible to us today.Using eyewitness testimony as well as the latest historical research, Spawforth offers the first full account of Versailles in English in over thirty years. Blowing away the myths of Versailles, he analyses afresh the politics behind the Sun King’s construction of the palace and shows how Versailles worked as the seat of a royal court. He probes the conventional picture of a “perpetual house party” of courtiers and gives full weight to the darker side: not just the mounting discomfort of the aging buildings but also the intrigue and status anxiety of its aristocrats. The book brings out clearly the fateful consequences for the French monarchy of its relocation to Versailles and also examines the changing place of Versailles in France’s national identity since 1789. Many books have told the stories of the royals and artists living in Versailles, but this is the first to turn its focus on the palace itself---from architecture and politics to scandal and restoration.

    Despite the challenges of ill health and asylum life, Van Gogh continued to produce a series of masterpieces – cypresses, wheatfields, olive groves and sunsets during his time there. This fascinating and insightful work from Van Gogh specialist Martin Bailey examines his time there, from the struggles that sent him to the asylum, to the brilliant creative inspiration that he found during his time here. He wrote very little about the asylum in letters to his brother Theo, so this book sets out to give an impression of daily life behind the walls of the asylum of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole and looks at Van Gogh through fresh eyes, with newly discovered material. An essential insight into the mind of a flawed genius , Starry Night is indispensable for those who wish to understand the life of one of the most talented and brilliant artists to have put paintbrush to canvas.

    Mark Twain celebrates the unbridled energy of the Can-Can. Sylvia Beach recalls the excitement of opening Shakespeare & Company on the Rue Dupuytren. David Sedaris praises Parisians for keeping quiet at the movies. These are just a few of the writers assembled here, and each selection is as surprising and rewarding as the next.Including essays, book excerpts, letters, articles, and journal entries, this seductive collection captures the long and passionate relationship Americans have had with Paris. Accompanied by an illuminating introduction, Paris in Mind is sure to be a fascinating voyage for literary travelers.Jennifer Allen * Deborah Baldwin * James Baldwin * Dave Barry * Sylvia Beach * Saul Bellow * Bricktop * Art Buchwald * T. S. Eliot * M.F.K. Fisher * Janet Flanner * Benjamin Franklin * Ernest Hemingway *Langston Hughes * Thomas Jefferson * Stanley Karnow * Patric Kuh * A. J. Liebling * Anaïs Nin * Grant Rosenberg * David Sedaris * Irwin Shaw *Gertrude Stein * Mark Twain * Edith Wharton * E. B. White

    Shot entirely in France, much on location at the Palace of Versailles, the film is visually stunning, bringing together a cast that includes Kirsten Dunst, Jason Schwartzman, Rip Torn, and Marianne Faithful, and the extraordinary costume designs of Oscar-winner Milena Canonero (Barry Lyndon, A Clockwork Orange). A moving story of naivety and responsibility, reputation and misunderstanding, Marie Antoinette is a film that Sofia Coppola has wanted to make for years. In a book that is at once the personal chronicle of a major work and a beautiful tribute to the potential of film, featuring elements of the director's own screenplay as well as captivating stills, the director's personal photos, and original designs for costumes and sets, Marie Antoinette is an essential companion for any lover of modern cinema.

    As Lucile explores these two versions of love, she vacillates in confusion, but in the end she must choose, and her heart’s instinct is surprising and poignant. Originally published under the title La Chamade, this new translation by Douglas Hofstadter returns a forgotten classic to English.In Translator, Trader, Douglas Hofstadter reflects on his personal act of devotion in rewriting Françoise Sagan’s novel La Chamade in English, and on the paradoxes that constantly plague any literary translator on all scales, ranging from the humblest of commas to entire chapters. Flatly rejecting the common wisdom that translators are inevitably traitors, Hofstadter proposes instead that translators are traders, and that translation, like musical performance, deserves high respect as a creative act. In his view, literary translation is the art of making subtle trades in which one sometimes loses and sometimes gains, often both losing and gaining at the same time. This view implies that there is no reason a translation cannot be as good as the original work, and that the result inevitably bears the stamp of the translator, much as a musical performance inevitably bears the stamp of its artists. Both a companion to the beloved Sagan novel and a singular meditation on translation, Translator, Trader is a witty and intimate exploration of words, ideas, communication, creation, and faithfulness.

    To many people, she is still 'la reine méchante', whose extravagance and frivolity helped to bring down the French monarchy; her indifference to popular suffering epitomised by the (apocryphal) words: 'let them eat cake'. Others are equally passionate in her defence: to them, she is a victim of misogyny.Antonia Fraser examines her influence over the king, Louis XVI, the accusations and sexual slurs made against her, her patronage of the arts which enhanced French cultural life, her imprisonment, the death threats made against her, rumours of lesbian affairs, her trial (during which her young son was forced to testify to sexual abuse by his mother) and her eventual execution by guillotine in 1793.

    Outrageous evaluations of Picasso, Turner, Cézanne, many more. Text includes 15 renderings of paintings discussed and 44 of Dalí's calligraphic decorations. Will delight anyone who enjoys the artist's unconventional opinions and egotistical posturing.

    With characteristic vigor and iconoclasm, Pound illustrates his precepts with exhibits meticulously chosen from the classics, and the concluding “Treatise on Meter” provides an illuminating essay for anyone aspiring to read and write poetry. The ABC of Reading emphasizes Pound's ability to discover neglected and unknown genius, distinguish originals from imitations, and open new avenues in literature for our time.

    There is no question that Robert Frank's The Americans is the most famous and influential photography book ever published. It was 1959 when the book first came out: a series of deceptively simple photographs that Frank took on a trip through America in '55 and '56, pictures of normal people, everyday scenes: lunch counters, bus depots, cars, and the stangely familiar faces of people we don't quite know but have seen somewhere. They are pictures that saw the "American way of life" as we hadn't yet quite been able to see it ourselves, photographs that condensed the entire life of a nation in classic images that still speak to us today, forty years and several generations later.

    Written in a lively anecdotal style, entries include character descriptions, historical background, and much more.

    With SAINT JOAN (1923) Shaw reached the height of his fame and Joan is one of his finest creations; forceful, vital, and rebelling against the values that surround her. The play distils Shaw's views on the subjects of politics, religion and creative evolution.

    1525-1569) turned his eye on the everyday. Most of Bruegel's 45 surviving works, which are all reproduced in this book, record the facts of 16th century life in rural or small town communities. In this title in the Basic Art Series, Rose-Marie and Rainer Hagen outline the artist's account of his society and times, and the relevance that account has for us today.

    "Reading" offers ardent, freewheeling considerations of talismanic writers from her own private canon, such as Marina Tsvetaeva, Randall Jarrell, Roland Barthes, Machado de Assis, W. G. Sebald, Borges and Elizabeth Hardwick. "Seeing" is a series of luminous and incisive encounters with film, dance, photography, painting, opera, and theatre. And in the final section, "There and Here," Sontag explores some of her own commitments: to the work (and activism) of conscience, to the concreteness of historical understanding, and to the vocation of the writer. Where the Stress Falls records a great American writer's urgent engagement with some of the most significant aesthetic and moral issues of the late twentieth century, and provides a brilliant and clear-eyed appraisal of what is at stake, in this new century, in the survival of that inheritance.