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Monstrous Progeny: A History of the Frankenstein Narratives
By Lester D. Friedman, Allison B. Kavey. 2016
Mary Shelley's 1818 novel Frankenstein is its own type of monster mythos that will not die, a corpus whose parts…
keep getting harvested to animate new artistic creations. What makes this tale so adaptable and so resilient that, nearly 200 years later, it remains vitally relevant in a culture radically different from the one that spawned its birth? Monstrous Progeny takes readers on a fascinating exploration of the Frankenstein family tree, tracing the literary and intellectual roots of Shelley's novel from the sixteenth century and analyzing the evolution of the book's figures and themes into modern productions that range from children's cartoons to pornography. Along the way, media scholar Lester D. Friedman and historian Allison B. Kavey examine the adaptation and evolution of Victor Frankenstein and his monster across different genres and in different eras. In doing so, they demonstrate how Shelley's tale and its characters continue to provide crucial reference points for current debates about bioethics, artificial intelligence, cyborg lifeforms, and the limits of scientific progress. Blending an extensive historical overview with a detailed analysis of key texts, the authors reveal how the Frankenstein legacy arose from a series of fluid intellectual contexts and continues to pulsate through an extraordinary body of media products. Both thought-provoking and entertaining, Monstrous Progeny offers a lively look at an undying and significant cultural phenomenon.A Brief History of Manga: The Essential Pocket Guide To The Japanese Pop Culture Phenomenon
By Helen Mccarthy. 1982
Manga is more than a genre in the comics field: it is a vital creative medium in its own right,…
with hundreds of millions of readers worldwide, a host of graphic styles, and a rich history now spanning seven decades. Now for the first time, that history is told by an award-winning expert in the field. Covering topics from Akira to Mazinger Z, this book is fully illustrated throughout, and photos of key creators accompany accessible sidebars and timelines. The text is chronological, telling the story of Manga from its early-20th-century origins to its global dominance. Timelines relate key publications to events in Japanese and World history, and frequent sidebars give short biographies of key creative figures. Answering the key questions of any fan - where did my favourite manga come from, and what should I read next? - this book will open doors to neophytes and experts alike. Fans of manga and anime will: - discover the stories behind their favorite manga creator - be inspired by the history of the medium and its genre - find new manga to read and fall in love withDylan Thomas: A New Life
By Andrew Lycett. 2003
Dylan Thomas was a romantic and controversial figure; a poet who lived to excess and died young. An inventive genius…
with a gift for both lyrical phrases and impish humour, he also wrote for films and radio, and was renowned for his stage performances. He became the first literary star in the age of popular culture - a favourite of both T.S. Eliot and John Lennon. As his status as a poet and entertainer increased, so did his alcoholic binges and his sexual promiscuity, threatening to destroy his marriage to his fiery Irish wife Caitlin. As this extraordinary biography reveals, he was a man of many contradictions. But out of his tempestuous life, he produced some of the most dramatic and enduring poetry in the English language.A thoroughly revised and updated edition of Thomas C. Foster's classic guide--a lively and entertaining introduction to literature and literary…
basics, including symbols, themes, and contexts--that shows you how to make your everyday reading experience more rewarding and enjoyable.While many books can be enjoyed for their basic stories, there are often deeper literary meanings interwoven in these texts. How to Read Literature Like a Professor helps us to discover those hidden truths by looking at literature with the eyes--and the literary codes--of the ultimate professional reader: the college professor.What does it mean when a literary hero travels along a dusty road? When he hands a drink to his companion? When he's drenched in a sudden rain shower? Ranging from major themes to literary models, narrative devices, and form, Thomas C. Foster provides us with a broad overview of literature--a world where a road leads to a quest, a shared meal may signify a communion, and rain, whether cleansing or destructive, is never just a shower--and shows us how to make our reading experience more enriching, satisfying, and fun.This revised edition includes new chapters, a new preface, and a new epilogue, and incorporates updated teaching points that Foster has developed over the past decade.Fantasies of Neglect: Imagining the Urban Child in American Film and Fiction
By Pamela Robertson Wojcik. 2016
In our current era of helicopter parenting and stranger danger, an unaccompanied child wandering through the city might commonly be…
viewed as a victim of abuse and neglect. However, from the early twentieth century to the present day, countless books and films have portrayed the solitary exploration of urban spaces as a source of empowerment and delight for children. Fantasies of Neglect explains how this trope of the self-sufficient, mobile urban child originated and considers why it persists, even as it goes against the grain of social reality. Drawing from a wide range of films, children's books, adult novels, and sociological texts, Pamela Robertson Wojcik investigates how cities have simultaneously been demonized as dangerous spaces unfit for children and romanticized as wondrous playgrounds that foster a kid's independence and imagination. Charting the development of free-range urban child characters from Little Orphan Annie to Harriet the Spy to Hugo Cabret, and from Shirley Temple to the Dead End Kids, she considers the ongoing dialogue between these fictional representations and shifting discourses on the freedom and neglect of children. While tracking the general concerns Americans have expressed regarding the abstract figure of the child, the book also examines the varied attitudes toward specific types of urban children--girls and boys, blacks and whites, rich kids and poor ones, loners and neighborhood gangs. Through this diverse selection of sources, Fantasies of Neglect presents a nuanced chronicle of how notions of American urbanism and American childhood have grown up together.Borrowed Voices: Writing and Racial Ventriloquism in the Jewish American Imagination
By Jennifer Glaser. 2016
In the decades following World War II, many American Jews sought to downplay their difference, as a means of assimilating…
into Middle America. Yet a significant minority, including many prominent Jewish writers and intellectuals, clung to their ethnic difference, using it to register dissent with the status quo and act as spokespeople for non-white America. In this provocative book, Jennifer Glaser examines how racial ventriloquism became a hallmark of Jewish-American fiction, as Jewish writers asserted that their own ethnicity enabled them to speak for other minorities. Rather than simply condemning this racial ventriloquism as a form of cultural appropriation or commending it as an act of empathic imagination, Borrowed Voices offers a nuanced analysis of the technique, judiciously assessing both its limitations and its potential benefits. Glaser considers how the practice of racial ventriloquism has changed over time, examining the books of many well-known writers, including Bernard Malamud, Cynthia Ozick, Philip Roth, Michael Chabon, Saul Bellow, and many others. Bringing Jewish studies into conversation with critical race theory, Glaser also opens up a dialogue between Jewish-American literature and other forms of media, including films, magazines, and graphic novels. Moreover, she demonstrates how Jewish-American fiction can help us understand the larger anxieties about ethnic identity, authenticity, and authorial voice that emerged in the wake of the civil rights movement.City Room
By Arthur Gelb. 2003
When Arthur Gelb joinedThe New York Times in 1944, manual typewriters, green eyeshades, spittoons, floors littered with cigarette butts, and…
two bookies were what he found in the city room. Gelb was twenty, his position the lowliest-night copy boy. When he retired forty-five years later, he was managing editor. On his way to the top, he exposed crooked cops and politicians; mentored a generation of our most talented journalists; was the first to praise such yet undiscovered talents as Woody Allen and Barbra Streisand; and brought Joe Papp public recognition. As metropolitan editor, Gelb reshaped the way the paper covered New York, and while assistant managing editor, he launched the paper's daily special sections. From D-Day to the liberation of the concentration camps; from the agony of Vietnam to the resignation of a President; from the fall of Joe McCarthy to the rise of the Woodstock Nation, Gelb's time at the Times reveals his intimate take on the great events of the past fifty years. The raffish early days are long gone, the hum of computers has replaced the clatter of typewriter keys, but the same ambition, passion, grandstanding, and courage Gelb found at twenty still fill the city room.The Cambridge Companion To Beckett
By John Pilling. 1994
The world fame of Samuel Beckett is due to a combination of high academic esteem and immense popularity. An innovator…
in prose fiction to rival Joyce, his plays have been the most influential in modern theatre history. As an author in both English and French and a writer for the page and the stage, Beckett has been the focus for specialist treatment in each of his many guises, but there have been few attempts to provide a conspectus view. This book provides thirteen introductory essays on every aspect of Beckett's work, some paying particular attention to his most famous plays (e. g. Waiting for Godot and Endgame) and his prose fictions (e. g. the 'trilogy' and Murphy). Other essays tackle his radio and television drama, his theatre directing and his poetry, followed by more general issues such as Beckett's bilingualism and his relationship to the philosophers. Reference material is provided at the front and back of the book.Inspiring Life of Eudora Welty, The
By Richelle Putnam, John Aycock. 2014
Eudora Alice Welty led an exciting and surprising life. Before she won a Pulitzer Prize, as a little girl she…
made her own books and won national poetry prizes. As a young woman during the Great Depression, she was a photographer and took pictures all over the South. These and other stories pack the life of one of Mississippi's most famous authors. With author and teacher Richelle Putnam, learn about the remarkable life of one of Mississippi's literary treasures, complete with vivid illustrations by John Aycock that are as colorful as Eudora's stories.i before e (except after c)
By Parkinson Judy. 2011
Here is an amusing collection of ingenious mnemonics devised to help us learn and understand hundreds of important fact as…
children and can continue to resonate with us as adults. Featuring all the mnemonics you?ll ever need to know, this fun little book will bring back all the simple, easy-to-remember rhymes from your childhood?once learned, fix the information in the brain forever?such as learning to count by reciting ?One, Two, buckle my shoe, Three, Four, knock at the door.? Packed with clever verses, engaging acronyms, curious?and sometimes hilarious?sayings that can be used to solve a problem or cap an argument. Take a trip back to the classroom, and rediscover the assortment of practical memory aids covering a range of different subjects, including spelling, time, mathematics, history, general trivia, and much more. The information is organized in short snippets by category such as: * Geographically Speaking: Remember North East South West by reciting Never Eat Slimy Worms or Naughty Elephants Squirt Water. * Time and the Calendar: ?Thirty days hath September, April, June, and November; All the rest have 31 excepting February alone; And that has 28 days clear; With 29 in each leap year? * Think of a Number: Know the Roman numerals by remembering ?I Value Xylophones Like Cows Dig Milk? * World History: ?In fourteen hundred, ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue, And found this land, land of the Free, beloved by you, beloved by me? The clever verses, engaging acronyms, curious sayings are endless. Guaranteed to amuse and inform, here is a perfect gift for any language lover?complete with a To/From gift plate.Who Is Jeff Kinney?
By Patrick Kinney, John Hinderliter. 2015
Even as a kid, everyone thought Jeff Kinney was talented. People loved his drawings, and when he went to college,…
his comic strip Igdoof was so popular that it spread to other universities! Still, Jeff faced challenges. His cartoons were rejected by syndicates that claimed his art was unprofessional. Then, an idea struck: Jeff would write a journal from the perspective of a child, illustrated with doodles just like a kid might do. And so, the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series was born--and it was a hit! In this biography, Jeff's brother, Patrick Kinney, provides a knowledgeable look at the life of this best-selling author/illustrator. From Jeff's childhood pranks to his job developing online games, kids will love the chance to learn more about the creator of the popular Wimpy Kid books.Shakespeare
By Andi Diehn. 2016
"Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?” Teenagers have been sighing an approximation of these words for centuries, ever since William…
Shakespeare had Juliet utter them from her balcony in one of the most popular plays of all time, Romeo and Juliet. Tales of love, loss, rebellion, rivalry--before there was Twilight, Warm Bodies, and The Lion King, there was Shakespeare. The characters, language, imagery, and plot elements of many books and movies that appear on bookshelves and in cinemas today are directly influenced by the plays of the Bard. In Shakespeare: Investigate the Bard’s Influence on Today’s World, readers discover links between the books, movies, and music they listen to today and the words that were written and acted out more than 400 years ago. Readers deconstruct Shakespearean themes, imagery, language, and meaning by finding familiar ground on which to gain literary insight. Through hands-on projects such as coding a video game based on one of Shakespeare’s plays to rewriting a scene in the text language of emoji, readers find compelling avenues into the dramatic, sometimes intimidating language, leaving them well-equipped to tackle any major text in the academic years to come.Dancing Fish and Ammonites: A Memoir
By Penelope Lively. 2013
The beloved and bestselling author takes an intimate look back at a life of reading and writing"The memory that we…
live with . . . is the moth-eaten version of our own past that each of us carries around, depends on. It is our ID; this is how we know who we are and where we have been."Memory and history have been Penelope Lively's terrain in fiction over a career that has spanned five decades. But she has only rarely given readers a glimpse into her influences and formative years.Dancing Fish and Ammonites traces the arc of Lively's life, stretching from her early childhood in Cairo to boarding school in England to the sweeping social changes of Britain's twentieth century. She reflects on her early love of archeology, the fragments of the ancients that have accompanied her journey--including a sherd of Egyptian ceramic depicting dancing fish and ammonites found years ago on a Dorset beach. She also writes insightfully about aging and what life looks like from where she now stands.A Hero Of Our Time
By Vladimir Nabokov, Dmitri Nabokov, Mikhail Lermontov. 1958
A brilliant new translation of a perennial favorite of Russian Literature The first major Russian novel, A Hero of Our…
Time was both lauded and reviled upon publication. Its dissipated hero, twenty-five-year-old Pechorin, is a beautiful and magnetic but nihilistic young army officer, bored by life and indifferent to his many sexual conquests. Chronicling his unforgettable adventures in the Caucasus involving brigands, smugglers, soldiers, rivals, and lovers, this classic tale of alienation influenced Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and Chekhov in Lermontov's own century, and finds its modern-day counterparts in Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange, the novels of Chuck Palahniuk, and the films and plays of Neil LaBute.The Bronte Sisters
By Catherine Reef. 2012
The Brontë sisters are among the most beloved writers of all time, best known for their classic nineteenth-century novels Jane…
Eyre (Charlotte), Wuthering Heights (Emily), and Agnes Grey (Anne). In this sometimes heartbreaking young adult biography, Catherine Reef explores the turbulent lives of these literary siblings and the oppressive times in which they lived. Brontë fans will also revel in the insights into their favorite novels, the plethora of poetry, and the outstanding collection of more than sixty black-and-white archival images. A powerful testimony to the life of the mind. (Endnotes, bibliography, index.)Ed vs. Yummy Fur
By Brian Evenson, Tom Kaczynski. 2014
Brian Evenson delves deeply into the pages of Chester Brown's (Louis Riel, Paying for It) seminal comic book Yummy Fur.…
Brian's comics archaeology excavates the discarded fragments of Brown's masterpiece Ed The Happy Clown, examines the never re-printed adaptions of the Gospels, and meditates on the pleasures of reading serialized pamphlet comic books. The book also features a brand new interview with Chester Brown shining a new spotlight on this important work.Brian Evenson is the multiple award winning author of several books of fiction. His work has been translated into many languages. He lives and works in Providence, Rhode Island, where he directs Brown University's Literary Arts Program.Southwest Asia: The Transpacific Geographies of Chicana/o Literature
By Jayson Gonzales Sae-Saue. 2016
Chicana/o literature is justly acclaimed for the ways it voices opposition to the dominant Anglo culture, speaking for communities ignored…
by mainstream American media. Yet the world depicted in these texts is not solely inhabited by Anglos and Chicanos; as this groundbreaking new book shows, Asian characters are cast in peripheral but nonetheless pivotal roles. Southwest Asia investigates why key Chicana/o writers, including Américo Paredes, Rolando Hinojosa, Oscar Acosta, Miguel Méndez, and Virginia Grise, from the 1950s to the present day, have persistently referenced Asian people and places in the course of articulating their political ideas. Jayson Gonzales Sae-Saue takes our conception of Chicana/o literature as a transnational movement in a new direction, showing that it is not only interested in North-South migrations within the Americas, but is also deeply engaged with East-West interactions across the Pacific. He also raises serious concerns about how these texts invariably marginalize their Asian characters, suggesting that darker legacies of imperialism and exclusion might lurk beneath their utopian visions of a Chicana/o nation. Southwest Asia provides a fresh take on the Chicana/o literary canon, analyzing how these writers have depicted everything from interracial romances to the wars Americans fought in Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. As it examines novels, plays, poems, and short stories, the book makes a compelling case that Chicana/o writers have long been at the forefront of theorizing U.S.-Asian relations.Romeo and Juliet (The Folger Shakespeare Library)
By William Shakespeare, Paul Werstine, Barbara Mowat. 1992
The Literature Made Easy Series is more than just plot summaries. Each book describes a classic novel and drama by…
explaining themes, elaborating on characters, and discussing each author's unique literary style, use of language, and point of view. Extensive illustrations and imaginative, enlightening use of graphics help to make each book in this series livelier, easier, and more fun to use than ordinary literature plot summaries. An unusual feature, "Mind Map" is a diagram that summarizes and interrelates the most important details that students need to understand about a given work. Appropriate for middle and high school students.Where Silence Reigns
By Rainer Maria Rilke, G. Craig Houston. 1978
In this collection of excerpts from his essays, notebooks, and letters, pre-eminent modern poet Rainer Maria Rilke meditates on subjects…
as varied as a dolls, walking among trees, and the great sculptor Rodin. Where Silence Reigns, a sampling from his essays, notebooks, and letters, shows Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), the pre-eminent modern poet of solitude and inwardness, seeking to reconcile his personal conflict between the claims of "life" and the claims of art. His subjects are commonplace, seemingly innocuous at times: the encounter between a man and a dog, a collection of dolls, a walk among trees. But always the deceptively simple external phenomenon is seen as the symbol, the catalyst of an intensely felt inner experience. As he confided to his friend Frau Wunderly-Volkart: "Oh, how often one longs to speak a few degrees more deeply! My prose... lies deeper... but one gets only a minimal layer further down; one's left with a mere intimation of the kind of speech that may be possible THERE where silence reigns." In addition to occasional pieces and notebook entries, this volume contains selections from the strange and haunting "Dream-Book," the lyrical "Lay of the Love and Death of Cornet Christoph Rilke," and the entire "Rodin-Book"--Rilke's appreciation of the great sculptor whom he had served as secretary.Between You and Me: A Memoir
By Mike Wallace, Gary Paul Gates. 2005
At the age of 87, Mike Wallace is a legendary figure in broadcast journalism. Now, after 60 years of reporting…
on important events around the world, he shares his personal stories about the incredible range of celebrities, newsmakers, criminals, and world leaders who have subjected themselves to his unique brand of questioning.Through Wallace's intimate observations about these figures, we experience afresh the pivotal events that have shaped our world. Here, we meet the guilt-racked Secret Service agent assigned to John F. Kennedy's car in Dallas. We learn about the candid moment when President Nixon revealed an unexpected softer side. We witness the underpinnings of the century's greatest social movement through Wallace's eyes as he manages to earn the trust of major civil rights leaders, and we see the trauma Wallace experienced while covering the conflict in Israel. These off-camera anecdotes and fascinating excerpts from Wallace's interviews--with everyone from Eleanor Roosevelt to all the presidents of the last half century, from Frank Lloyd Wright to Johnny Carson, from Margaret Sanger to Malcom X--give us a new perspective on some of the greatest lives and minds of our time.With a reporter's eye for detail, Wallace mingles laughter, tragedy, and revelatory insight in a memoir unlike any other. For anyone who's ever wondered what it's like to make history for a living, this is a must-read.