The Hard Life

The Hard Life

Author: Flann O'Brien

Publisher: Open Road Media

Published: 2024-11-19

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 1504098285

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A “wild, hilarious, fast moving, irreverent and comic” novel of growing up in turn-of-the-century Dublin from the acclaimed Irish author (New York Herald Tribune). When Finbarr’s mother dies, he and his older brother Manus are sent to their half-uncle’s house in Dublin. There, he is introduced to school—and the leather strap—at a benevolent Christian Brothers establishment. Evenings are spent listening to his uncle’s whisky-fueled discussions with a Jesuit priest, arguing the finer points of Roman Catholic theology and local politics. Finbarr follows Manus’s enterprising exploits—which include foregoing formal education to concoct money-making cons that prey on the gullible. As his uncle embarks on an ill-fated pilgrimage to Rome (where he is told to go to hell by the Holy Father himself), it remains to be seen if the life lessons Finbarr has absorbed set him on a path to righteousness and gainful employment . . . “A comic Irish novel that derives its effect from an absolutely deadpan approach, for the narrator is a small boy who, for the better part of the time, has only the foggiest notion of what he is describing. Young Finbarr commands a glorious version of the English language combined with a totally impartial view of adult actions. The two things produce remarkable results.” —The Atlantic “The conversation is a delight . . . and the atmosphere of a lower-middle-class family, with its cheerless, shabby, restricted way of life, is well done.” —Library Journal


After Yeats and Joyce

After Yeats and Joyce

Author: Neil Corcoran

Publisher:

Published: 1997

Total Pages: 216

ISBN-13:

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Irish literature after Yeats and Joyce, from the 1920s onwards, includes texts that have been the subject of much contention. For a start, how should Irish literature be defined: as works which have been written in Irish or as works written in English by the Irish? It is a period in which ideas of Ireland--of people, community, and nation--have been both created and reflected, and in which conceptions of a distinct Irish identity have been articulated, defended, and challenged; a period which has its origins in a time of intense political turmoil. Corcoran focuses his chapters on various themes such as "the Big House," and the rural and the provincial and offers discussions of authors ranging from Kinsella and Beckett to William Trevor, Seamus Heaney, and Mary Lavin, to provide a lucid and far-reaching introduction to modern Irish writing.


Between Poland and the Ukraine

Between Poland and the Ukraine

Author: Frank E. Sysyn

Publisher:

Published: 1985

Total Pages: 444

ISBN-13:

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The collapse of Polish rule in the Ukraine in the mid-seventeenth century changed the course of East European history. The great Cossack revolt of 1648 exposed the weaknesses of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. After the emergence of a Ukrainian polity, a struggle for dominance ensued, paving the way for the Russian annexation of the Ukraine. Frank Sysyn examines the failure of Polish policy through the career of Adam Kysil. A leader of the Ukrainian nobility and an official of the Polish government, Kysil was ideally suited to serve as the mediator between the rebels and the government. His failure signaled the already irreconcilable differences that divided them. Based on extensive archival research in Poland and the USSR, Sysyn's study is a contribution not only to scholarship on Eastern Europe, but also to discussions on the preconditions and nature of early modern revolts and on the change of political and social elites.


Necroperformance

Necroperformance

Author: Dorota Sajewska

Publisher: Diaphanes

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9783035801910

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La 4e de couverture indique : "Dorota Sajewska proposes an innovative perspective for looking back at the formative process of Polish modernity, and delves into repressed areas of experience connected with World War I and the ensuing emancipatory movements. The book shows that underpinning modern Polish nationhood, is both a romantic myth of independence and a horror of fratricidal war. Searching for traces of memory in precarious bodies inflicted with the violence of war, Necroperformance asks us to acknowledge the fragility of life as it actively reinforces an attitude of respect for the right to live. Sajewska's chief objective is to understand the social impact of remains - of the abject body (dead, wounded, disfigured, despoiled by violence) - its place in culture and its agency. These are remains like the body of Rosa Luxemburg, which opens the book's narrative - a woman, a Jew, a Polish-German communist activist who was imprisoned, persecuted, murdered, and desecrated after death. This alternative archive becomes a basis for thought on a new anthropology rooted in the experience of the Great War and recorded in the formule of modern theatre."


J.R.R. Tolkien

J.R.R. Tolkien

Author: Humphrey Carpenter

Publisher: HarperCollins

Published: 2014-03-04

Total Pages: 301

ISBN-13: 0547524420

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The authorized biography of the creator of Middle-earth. “One of the most interesting and readable biographies of a literary figure.” —The Times In the decades since his death in September 1973, millions have read The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion and become fascinated about the very private man behind the books. Born in South Africa in January 1892, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was orphaned in childhood and brought up in near-poverty. He served in the first World War, surviving the Battle of the Somme, where he lost many of the closest friends he’d ever had. After the war he returned to the academic life, achieving high repute as a scholar and university teacher, eventually becoming Merton Professor of English at Oxford where he was a close friend of C. S. Lewis and the other writers known as “The Inklings.” Then suddenly his life changed dramatically. One day while grading essay papers he found himself writing “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit”—and worldwide renown awaited him. Humphrey Carpenter was given unrestricted access to all Tolkien’s papers, and interviewed his friends and family. From these sources he follows the long and painful process of creation that produced The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion and offers a wealth of information about the life and work of the twentieth century’s most cherished author. “J. R. R. Tolkien left his impress upon a whole generation as few recent writers have done . . . an excellent biography.” —Newsweek “A panorama of vignettes done with poise and exhaustive command. A man emerges whole.” —The Washington Post Book World


Stanisław Brzozowski and the Migration of Ideas

Stanisław Brzozowski and the Migration of Ideas

Author: Jens Herlth

Publisher: Transcript Publishing

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13:

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As a writer, critic, and philosopher, Stanislaw Brzozowski (1878-1911) left a lasting imprint on Polish culture. The essays in this volume reassess and contextualize Brzozowski's writings from a distinctly transnational vantage point.