The Movement was the preeminent poetical grouping of post-war Britain. This collection of original essays by distinguished poets, critics, and scholars from Britain and America provides new accounts not only of the best-known of Movement writers - Philip Larkin, Kingsley Amis, Thom Gunn and Donald Davie - but of less-familiar contemporaries.
In the decades surrounding World War I, religious belief receded in the face of radical new ideas such as Marxism, modern science, Nietzschean philosophy, and critical theology. Modes of Faith addresses both this decline of religious belief and the new modes of secular faith that took religion's place in the minds of many writers and poets. Theodore Ziolkowski here examines the motives for this embrace of the secular, locating new modes of faith in art, escapist travel, socialism, politicized myth, and utopian visions. James Joyce, he reveals, turned to art as an escape while Hermann Hesse made a pilgrimage to India in search of enlightenment. Other writers, such as Roger Martin du Gard and Thomas Mann, sought temporary solace in communism or myth. And H. G. Wells, Ziolkowski argues, took refuge in utopian dreams projected in another dimension altogether. Rooted in innovative and careful comparative reading of the work of writers from France, England, Germany, Italy, and Russia, Modes of Faith is a critical masterpiece by a distinguished literary scholar that offers an abundance of insight to anyone interested in the human compulsion to believe in forces that transcend the individual.
The nineteenth century witnessed rapid economic and social developments, profound political and intellectual upheaval, and startling innovations in art and literature. As Europeans peered into an uncertain future, they drew upon the Renaissance for meaning, precedents, and identity. Many claimed to find inspiration or models in the Renaissance, but as we move across the continent's borders and through the century's decades, we find that the Renaissance was many different things to many different people. This collection brings together the work of sixteen authors who examine the many Renaissances conceived by European novelists and poets, artists and composers, architects and city planners, political theorists and politicians, businessmen and advertisers. The essays fall into three groups: "Aesthetic Recoveries of Strategic Pasts"; "The Renaissance in Nineteenth-Century Culture Wars"; and "Material Culture and Manufactured Memories."
In recent years, schools have started introducing more inclusive syllabi emphasizing the works and ideas of previously overlooked or underrepresented writers. Readers of all ages can now explore the rich contributions of writers from around the world. These writers have various backgrounds, and unlike most writers from the U.S. or the United Kingdom, information on them in English can be difficult to find. Encyclopedia of World Writers: 1800 to the Present covers the most important writers outside of the U.S., Britain, and Ireland since 1800. More than 330 insightful, A-to-Z entries profile novelists, poets, dramatists, and short-story writers whose works are anthologized in textbooks or assigned in high school English classes. Entries range in length from 200 to 1,000 words each and include a biographical sketch, synopses of major works, and a brief bibliography. Dozens of entries are new to this edition and many existing entries have been updated and significantly expanded with new "Critical Analysis" sections. Coverage includes: Chinua Achebe Margaret Atwood Roberto Bolaño Albert Camus Khalid Hosseini Victor Hugo Mohammad Iqbal Franz Kafka Stieg Larsson Mario Vargas Llosa Naghib Mahfouz Gabriel García Márquez Kenzaburo Oe Marcel Proust Leo Tolstoy Emile Zola and more.
The year’s most memorable writing on mathematics This anthology brings together the year's finest writing on mathematics from around the world. Featuring promising new voices alongside some of the foremost names in mathematics, The Best Writing on Mathematics makes available to a wide audience many articles not easily found anywhere else—and you don't need to be a mathematician to enjoy them. These writings offer surprising insights into the nature, meaning, and practice of mathematics today. They delve into the history, philosophy, teaching, and everyday occurrences of math, and take readers behind the scenes of today's hottest mathematical debates. Here readers will discover why Freeman Dyson thinks some mathematicians are birds while others are frogs; why Keith Devlin believes there's more to mathematics than proof; what Nick Paumgarten has to say about the timing patterns of New York City's traffic lights (and why jaywalking is the most mathematically efficient way to cross Sixty-sixth Street); what Samuel Arbesman can tell us about the epidemiology of the undead in zombie flicks; and much, much more. In addition to presenting the year's most memorable writing on mathematics, this must-have anthology also includes a foreword by esteemed mathematician William Thurston and an informative introduction by Mircea Pitici. This book belongs on the shelf of anyone interested in where math has taken us—and where it's headed.
David Foster Wallace is regarded as one of the most important American writers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. This book introduces readers to the literary, philosophical and political contexts of Wallace's work. An accessible and useable resource, this volume conceptualizes his work within long-standing critical traditions and with a new awareness of his importance for American literary studies. It shows the range of issues and contexts that inform the work and reading of David Foster Wallace, connecting his writing to diverse ideas, periods and themes. Essays cover topics on gender, sex, violence, race, philosophy, poetry and geography, among many others, guiding new and long-standing readers in understanding the work and influence of this important writer.
divThis groundbreaking book of literary detective work alters our understanding of T. S. Eliot’s poetic masterpiece, The Waste Land. Lawrence Rainey not only resolves longstanding mysteries surrounding the composition of the poem but also overturns traditional interpretations of the poem that have prevailed for more than eighty years. He shines new light on Eliot’s greatest achievement and on the poem’s place in the modern canon. Far from the austere and sober monument to neoclassicism that admirers have praised, The Waste Land turns out to be something quite different: something grim and wild, unruly and intractable, violent and shocking and radically indeterminate, yet also deeply compassionate. Rainey looks at how Eliot went about writing the poem and at the sequence in which he composed the parts. Arriving at new insights into the poet’s intentions, Rainey unsettles tradition-bound views of the poem and shows us that The Waste Land is even stranger and more startling than we knew./DIV
The Facts On File Companion to World Poetry : 1900 to the Present is a comprehensive introduction to 20th and 21st-century world poets and their most famous, most distinctive, and most influential poems.
