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As with all other forms of popular culture, comics in East Germany were tightly controlled by the state. Comics were…
employed as extensions of the regime’s educational system, delivering official ideology so as to develop the “socialist personality” of young people and generate enthusiasm for state socialism. The East German children who avidly read these comics, however, found their own meanings in and projected their own desires upon them. Four-Color Communism gives a lively account of East German comics from both perspectives, showing how the perceived freedoms they embodied created expectations that ultimately limited the regime’s efforts to bring readers into the fold.
Shakespeare And The Political Way
By Elizabeth Frazer. 2020
Studies of Shakespeare and politics often ask the question whether his dramas are on the side of aristocratic or monarchical…
sovereign authority, or are on the side of those who resist; whether he endorses a standard view of male and patriarchal authority, or whether his cross-dressing heroines put him among feminist thinkers. Scholars also show that Shakespeare's representations of rule, revolt, and arguments about laws and constitutions draw on and allude to stories and real events that were contemporaneous for him, as well as historical ones. <p><p> Building on scholarship about Shakespeare and politics, this book argues that Shakespeare's representations and stagings of political power, sovereignty, resistance, and controversy are more complex. The merits of political life, as opposed to life governed by monetary exchange, religious truth, supernatural power, military heroism, or interpersonal love, are rehearsed in the plots. And the clashing and contradictory meanings of politics -- its association with free truthful speech but also with dishonest hypocrisy, with open action and argument as much as occult behind the scenes manoevring -- are dramatized by him, to show that although violence, lies, and authoritarianism do often win out in the world there is another kind of politics, and a political way that we would do well to follow when we can. The book offers original readings of the characters and plots of Shakespeare's dramas in order to illustrate the subtlety of his pictures of political power, how it works, and what is wrong and right with it.
Bold Words: A Century of Asian American Writing
By Rajini Srikanth. 2001
A century of Asian American writing has generated a forceful cascade of "bold words." This anthology covers writings by Asian…
Americans in all genres, from the early twentieth century to the present. Some sixty authors of Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Korean, South Asian, and Southeast Asian American origin are represented, with an equal split between male and female writers. The collection is divided into four sections-memoir, fiction, poetry, and drama-prefaced by an introductory essay from a well-known practitioner of that genre: Meena Alexander on memoir, Gary Pak on fiction, Eileen Tabios on poetry, and Roberta Uno on drama. The selections depict the complex realities and wide range of experiences of Asians in the United States. They illuminate the writers' creative responses to issues as diverse as resistance, aesthetics, biculturalism, sexuality, gender relations, racism, war, diaspora, and family. Rajini Srikanth teaches at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. She is the coeditor of the award-winning anthology Contours of the Heart: South Asians Map North America and the collection A Part, Yet Apart: South Asians in Asian America. Esther Y. Iwanaga teaches Asian American literature and literature-based writing courses at Wellesley College and the University of Massachusetts, Boston.
Strategies of Silence: Reflections on the Practice and Pedagogy of Creative Writing (Routledge Studies in Creative Writing)
By Simon Heywood, Moy McCrory. 2021
This unique book takes silence as its central concept and questions the range of meanings and values which inform the…
idea as it impinges on the creative process and its content and contexts. The thematic core of silence allows a consideration of silencing and silence as opposite ends of a spectrum: one shutting down, the other enabling and opening up. As a multidisciplinary collection of essays derived from the teaching and implementation of Creative Writing at university level, the contributors consider silence as strategic, both through the need for silence and as something which compels resistance. They explore how writing has employed images and tropes of silence in the past, and used silence and gaps technically. In considering marginalised and forgotten voices, this book shows how writers bring their diverse range of backgrounds and experience to work with and against silence in Creative Writing Studies. The first theoretical work on silence in Creative Writing, this field-shifting book is an essential read for both practitioners and students of Creative Writing at the higher education level.
Robert Lepage's Intercultural Encounters (Elements in Shakespeare Performance)
By Christie Carson. 2021
This study returns to the origins of Robert Lepage's directorial work and his first cross-cultural interaction with a Shakespearean text…
to provide some background for his later work. This early work is situated within the political and social context of Quebec and Canada in the 1980s. Constitutional wrangling and government policies of bilingualism, biculturalism and multiculturalism all had a profound impact on this director, helping to forge his priorities and working methods. In 2018 two of Lepage's productions were cancelled due to concerns about cultural appropriation. Lepage responded by stating his view that the artist is as above the concerns of political correctness. While this approach was deemed acceptable in the 1980s, this study looks at the dangers posed by approaching cross-cultural creation from this standpoint in the 21st century.
A User's Guide to Melancholy
By Mary Ann Lund. 2021
A User's Guide to Melancholy takes Robert Burton's encyclopaedic masterpiece The Anatomy of Melancholy (first published in 1621) as a…
guide to one of the most perplexing, elusive, attractive, and afflicting diseases of the Renaissance. Burton's Anatomy is perhaps the largest, strangest, and most unwieldy self-help book ever written. Engaging with the rich cultural and literary framework of melancholy, this book traces its causes, symptoms, and cures through Burton's writing. Each chapter starts with a case study of melancholy - from the man who was afraid to urinate in case he drowned his town to the girl who purged a live eel - as a way into exploring the many facets of this mental affliction. A User's Guide to Melancholy presents in an accessible and illustrated format the colourful variety of Renaissance melancholy, and contributes to contemporary discussions about wellbeing by revealing the earlier history of mental health conditions.
Love and Money: A Literary History of Desires
By Michael Tratner. 2021
When people speak about love and money, they usually are referring to a conflict: love distorted by the desire for…
money. Such statements imply that love has a distinct form before economics interferes, but this book aims to show that such a view simplifies what is going on, because people have always been deeply shaped by everything in the social order, including economics. So when people say that money is distorting love, what they are really saying is that the current relationship of love and economics is different from an earlier relationship. This book seeks then to demonstrate the intertwining of the discourses of love and money over a long history by focusing on moments when parallel conceptions appear in economic theories and love stories. The two discourses intersect because both seek to define qualities and behaviors of human beings which are most valuable and hence most desirable. Similar descriptions of valuable behaviors appear at roughly the same time in economic theories of how to acquire wealth and literary stories of how to find ideal lovers. By tracking mutual expressions of desire, value, and acquisition in economics and love stories, this book argues for the ubiquity of the intertwining of these discourses, while exploring shifts in conceptions of value. It focuses on four eras when economic and romantic conceptions of what is most desirable were actively changing in English discourses: the early modern 17th century, the Victorian 19th, the modernist 20th, and the postmodern present.
The Cambridge History of the Novel in French
By Adam Watt. 2021
This History is the first in a century to trace the development and impact of the novel in French from…
its beginnings to the present. Leading specialists explore how novelists writing in French have responded to the diverse personal, economic, socio-political, cultural-artistic and environmental factors that shaped their worlds. From the novel's medieval precursors to the impact of the internet, the History provides fresh accounts of canonical and lesser-known authors, offering a global perspective beyond the national borders of 'the Hexagon' to explore France's colonial past and its legacies. Accessible chapters range widely, including the French novel in Sub-Saharan Africa, data analysis of the novel system in the seventeenth century, social critique in women's writing, Sade's banned works and more. Highlighting continuities and divergence between and within different periods, this lively volume offers routes through a diverse literary landscape while encouraging comparison and connection-making between writers, works and historical periods.
The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Race (Cambridge Companions to Literature)
By Ayanna Thompson. 2021
The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Race shows teachers and students how and why Shakespeare and race are inseparable. Moving…
well beyond Othello, the collection invites the reader to understand racialized discourses, rhetoric, and performances in all of Shakespeare's plays, including the comedies and histories. Race is presented through an intersectional approach with chapters that focus on the concepts of sexuality, lineage, nationality, and globalization. The collection helps students to grapple with the unique role performance plays in constructions of race by Shakespeare (and in Shakespearean performances), considering both historical and contemporary actors and directors. The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Race will be the first book that truly frames Shakespeare studies and early modern race studies for a non-specialist, student audience.
High Anxiety: Masculinity in Crisis in Early Modern France (Sixteenth Century Essays & Studies #59)
By Kathleen P. Long. 2002
This collection explores the evolution of notions about masculinity during the intense crisis of Renaissance and early modern France. Authors…
of the period reflect the anxieties about masculinity that became more pronounced against the backdrop of major events and innovations of the period: the religious conflict in France, the repeated questioning of religious and royal authority, the revival of Greek skepticism, the discovery of the New World, and the rise of clinical medicine. These events in turn fueled growing doubt concerning the fixed and hierarchical nature of gender distinction, a distinction upon which many felt French culture was dependent for its very survival.
Images of Plague and Pestilence: Iconography and Iconology (Sixteenth Century Essays & Studies #53)
By Christine M. Boeckl. 2001
Since the late fourteenth century, European artists created an extensive body of images, in paintings, prints, drawings, sculptures, and other…
media, about the horrors of disease and death, as well as hope and salvation. This interdisciplinary study on disease in metaphysical context is the first general overview of plague art written from an art-historical standpoint. The book selects masterpieces created by Raphael, Titian, Tintoretto, Rubens, Van Dyck, and Poussin, and includes minor works dating from the fourteenth to twentieth centuries. It highlights the most important innovative artistic works that originated during the Renaissance and the Catholic Reformation. This study of the changing iconographic patterns and their iconological interpretations opens a window to the past.
A Comprehensive Study of Tang Poetry II (China Perspectives)
By Lin Geng. 2021
Tang poetry is one of the most valuable cultural inheritances of Chinese history. Its distinctive aesthetics, delicate language and diverse…
styles constitute great Literature in itself, as well as a rich topic for literary study. This two-volume set constitutes a classic analysis of Tang poetry in the “Golden Age” of Chinese poetry (618–907 CE). This volume focuses on the prominent poets and poems of Tang poetry. Beginning with an introduction to the “four greatest poets” - Li Bai, Du Fu, Wang Wei and Bai Juyi - the author discusses their subjects, language, influence, and key works. The volume also includes essays on the masterpieces of Tang poetry, categorized by topics such as love and friendship, aspirations and seclusion, as well as travelling and nostalgia. As the author stresses, Tang poetry is worth rereading because it makes our invigorates our mental wellbeing, leaving it powerful and full of vitality. This book will appeal to researchers and students of Chinese literature, especially of classical Chinese poetry. People interested in Chinese culture will also benefit from the book.
A Comprehensive Study of Tang Poetry I (China Perspectives)
By Lin Geng. 2021
Tang poetry is one of the most valuable cultural inheritances of Chinese history. Its distinctive aesthetics, delicate language, and diverse…
styles constitute great literature in itself, as well as a rich topic for literary study. This two-volume set constitutes a classic analysis of Tang poetry in the “Golden Age” of Chinese poetry (618–907 CE). In this volume, the author provides a general understanding of poetry in the “High Tang” era from a range of perspectives. Starting with an in-depth discussion of the Romantic tradition and historical context, the author focuses on poetic language patterns, Youth Spirit, maturity symbols, and prototypes of the poetry. The author demonstrates that the most valuable part of Tang poetry is how it can provide people with a new perspective on every aspect of life. This book will appeal to researchers, scholars, and students of Chinese literature and especially of classical Chinese poetry. People interested in Chinese culture more widely will also benefit from this book.
In Heaven's Interpreters, Ashley Reed reveals how nineteenth-century American women writers transformed the public sphere by using the imaginative power…
of fiction to craft new models of religious identity and agency. Women writers of the antebellum period, Reed contends, embraced theological concepts to gain access to the literary sphere, challenging the notion that theological discourse was exclusively oppressive and served to deny women their own voice. Attending to modes of being and believing in works by Augusta Jane Evans, Harriet Jacobs, Catharine Maria Sedgwick, Elizabeth Oakes Smith, Elizabeth Stoddard, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Susan Warner, Reed illuminates how these writers infused the secular space of fiction with religious ideas and debates, imagining new possibilities for women's individual agency and collective action.Thanks to generous funding from Virginia Tech and its participation in TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem), the ebook editions of this book are available as Open Access volumes from Cornell Open (cornellopen.org) and other repositories.
De Auden a Yeats: Análise Crítica de 30 Poemas Selecionados
By Geetanjali Mukherjee, Allan Felipe Rocha Penoni. 2017
Este livro é uma referência pronta para alunos de Literatura Inglesa que querem ajuda para navegar pela poesia de alguns…
dos maiores poetas do final do século XIX e do século XX. O livro contém análises críticas profundas de 30 poemas selecionados das obras de W.H. Auden, Ted Hughes, John Keats, Philip Larkin e W.B. Yeats. Uma coletânia de 30 ensaios, o livro objetiva ajudar que alunos de literatura tenham uma visão geral da vida e do trabalho de casa poeta representado, assim como entender os poemas discutidos com suficiente profundidade. CARACTERÍSTICAS DO LIVRO * Uma seção sobre a vida e o histórico de cada poeta, para melhor entender as influências em sua poesia, e ter uma visão do contexto dos poemas selecionados * Uma explanação simples de cada poema * Explanações dos temas, motivos e símbolos usados nos poemas * Um ensaio dedicado para cada poema selecionado, analisando-os para o benefício do estudante de literatura * Perguntas curtas para que os alunos pensem sobre os temas mais profundos dos poemas Este é um guia inestimável para de literatura inglesa na escola ou universidade, ou para qualquer um que deseje obter uma compreensão mais apurada de alguns dos poemas mais reconhecidos do último século. Este livro funciona melhor como um guia de estudos, e não deve substituir a leitura de fato dos poemas (POEMAS NÃO INCLUSOS). Alguns poemas discutidos: * W.H. Auden - Refugee Blues * Ted Hughes - Crow Tyrannosaurus * Philip Larkin - The Whitsun Weddings * John Keats - To Autumn * W.B. Yeats - The Second Coming
The Virus Paradigm: A Planetary Ecology of the Mind (Elements in Environmental Humanities)
By Roberto Marchesini. 2021
In recent years, the word 'virus' has lost its biological perimeter of reference to acquire a much broader – could…
say 'paradigmatic' – meaning. The term 'virus' can be seen as a key word or an explanatory model also for processes that go beyond the infectious sphere. Every event appears to have a viral character: from the way information is transmitted to the processes of cultural globalization, from the impact of human beings on the planet to the subversion of ecosystems, from pandemic risks to the demographic increase on the planet. This seems to be indeed the Age of the Virus. Its model can be applied to most of the phenomena that characterize the twenty-first. Its profile – its looming and invisible nature, its ability to use other people's resources to spread and to transform into a dangerous doppelganger – is perfect to represent the fears of the contemporary age.
A new poetic century demands a new set of approaches. This Companion shows that American poetry of the twenty-first century,…
while having important continuities with the poetry of the previous century, takes place in new modes and contexts that require new critical paradigms. Offering a comprehensive introduction to studying the poetry of the new century, this collection highlights the new, multiple centers of gravity that characterize American poetry today. Essays on African American, Asian American, Latinx, and Indigenous poetries respond to the centrality of issues of race and indigeneity in contemporary American discourse. Other essays explore poetry and feminism, poetry and disability, and queer poetics. The environment, capitalism, and war emerge as poetic preoccupations, alongside a range of styles from spoken word to the avant-garde, and an examination of poetry's place in the creative writing era.
This Element draws on the concept of ecosystems to investigate selected Beckett works across different media which present worlds where…
the human does not occupy a privileged place in the order of creation: rather Beckett's human figures are trapped in a regulated system in which they have little agency. Readers, listeners or viewers are complicit in the operation of techniques of observation inherent to the system, but also reminded of the vulnerability of those subjected to it. Beckett's work offers new paradigms and practices which reposition the human in relation to space, time and species.
Inviting Interruptions: Wonder Tales in the Twenty-First Century (Series in Fairy-Tale Studies)
By Emma Donoghue, Susanna Clarke, Rosario Ferré, Kelly Link, Nisi Shawl, Shaun Tan, Sofia Samatar, David Kaplan, Danielle Wood, Su Blackwell, Shary Boyle, Associate Professor Nalo Hopkinson, Anne Kamiya, Maya Kern, Bryan Kamaoli Kuwada, Dan Taulapapa McMullin, Rosalind Hyatt Orme, Diriye Osman, Joellyn Rock, Veronica Schanoes, Miwa Yanagi. 2021
Inviting Interruptions: Wonder Tales in the Twenty-First Century anthologizes contemporary stories, comics, and visual texts that intervene in a range…
of ways to challenge the popular perception of fairy tales as narratives offering heteronormative happy endings that support status-quo values. The materials collected in Inviting Interruptions address the many ways intersectional issues play out in terms of identity markers, such as race, ethnicity, class, and disability, and the forces that affect identity, such as non-normative sexualities, addiction, abuses of power, and forms of internalized self-hatred caused by any number of external pressures. But we also find celebration, whimsy, and beauty in these same texts—qualities intended to extend readers’ enjoyment of and pleasure in the genre. Edited by Cristina Bacchilega and Jennifer Orme, the book is organized in two sections. "Inviting Interruptions" considers the invitation as an offer that must be accepted in order to participate, whether for good or ill. This section includes Emma Donoghue’s literary retelling of "Hansel and Gretel," stills from David Kaplan’s short Little Red Riding Hood film, Bryan Kamaoli Kuwada’s story about stories rooted in Hawaiian tradition and land, and Shary Boyle, Shaun Tan, and Dan Taulapapa McMullin’s interruptions of mainstream images of beauty-webs, commerce, and Natives. "Interrupting Invitations" contemplates the interruption as a survival mechanism to end a problem that has already been going on too long. This section includes reflections on migration and sexuality by Diriye Osman, Sofia Samatar, and Nalo Hopkinson; and invitations to rethink human and non-human relations in works by Anne Kamiya, Rosario Ferré, Veronica Schanoes, and Susanna Clark. Each text in the book is accompanied by an editors’ note, which offers questions, critical resources, and other links for expanding the appreciation and resonance of the text. As we make our way deeper into the twenty-first century, wonder tales—and their critical analyses—will continue to interest and enchant general audiences, students, and scholars.
Shakespeare and the Evolution of the Human Umwelt brings together research on Shakespeare, biosemiotics, ecocriticism, epigenetics and actor network theory…
as it explores the space between nature and narrative in an effort to understand how human bodies are stories told in the emergent language of evolution, and how those bodies became storytellers themselves. Chapters consider Shakespeare’s plays and contemporary works, such as those of Barbara Kingsolver and Margaret Atwood, or productions for which Shakespeare is a genetic forebear, as evolutionary artefacts which have helped to shape the human umwelt—the species-specific linguistic habitat that humans share in common. The work investigates the juncture where semisphere meets biosphere and illuminates the role that narrative plays in our construction of the world we occupy. The plays of Shakespeare, as works that have had unparalleled cultural diffusion, are uniquely situated to speak to the ways in which ideas and the texts they use as vehicles are always material, always environmental, and always alive. The book discusses Shakespeare’s works as vital nodes in our cultural, historical, moral and philosophical networks, but also as environmental actors in and of themselves. Plays are presented alternately as digitally encoded bits of culture awaiting their connection to an analog world, or as bacteria interacting with living organisms in both productive and destructive ways, altering their structure and creating new meaning through movement that is simultaneously biological and poetic. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of ecocriticism looking to model ecocritical readings and bridge gaps between scientific, philosophical and literary thinking.