Vidarian Rulorat, called the Tesseract, a powerful magic-user whose abilities spread across multiple elements, finds himself at war with the Alorean Import Company, a powerful cabal of merchants wealthy enough to buy nations. By opening the gate between worlds, Vidarian released the Starhunter, goddess of chaos. With her coming, wild magic returned to the world of Andovar, bringing with it shape- changers and strange awakened elemental technologies, including many-sailed ships powered by air magic, and mechanical automata lit from within by earth and fire. Now, Vidarian discovers that the Alorean Import Company is determined to eliminate two- thirds of this new life on Andovar in the hopes of hoarding more magic for themselves in a new, worldwide plutocracy. Along with his human, gryphon, and shapechanger allies, he must stop the Company if he is to safeguard any future for the diverse life of Andovar, including his and Ariadel's newborn daughter. With the existence of whole species hanging in the balance, Vidarian is locked in a race for the future of the world.
Example in this ebook BOOK X ORGELUSE Now tell we of strange adventures thro' which joy shall be waxen low, And yet pride shall grow the greater, of the twain doth this story show. Now the year of truce was ended, when the strife must needs be fought Which the Landgrave unto King Arthur at Plimizöl had brought. At Schamfanzon he challenged Gawain to meet him at Barbigöl, Yet still unavenged was Kingrisein at the hand of Kingrimursel— In sooth, Vergulacht, he rode there, and thither had come Gawain, And the whole world was 'ware of their kinship nor might strife be betwixt the twain; For the murder, Count Eckunât did it, and Gawain must they guiltless hold, At rest did they lay their quarrel and friends were those heroes bold. Then they parted for both would ride thence, Vergulacht and the knight Gawain, Tho' both for the Grail were seeking yet apart would they ride, those twain. And many a joust must they ride now, for he who the Grail would see Sword in hand must he draw anigh it, and swift must his seeking be! Now all that befell to Gawain, the lot of that blameless knight Since he rode forth from fair Schamfanzon, if he oft on his way must fight, Ye shall ask of those who there saw him, since naught may I tell ye here, Yet hearken, and heed the story and the venture that draweth near. One morning Gawain rode gaily o'er a grassy plain and green, When a shield, in the sun fair shining, with lance-thrust pierced thro' was seen, And a charger stood beside it that bare women's riding-gear, And the bridle and aye the housing were of costly stuff and dear— And the charger and shield beside it were bound to a linden tree. Then he thought, 'Who shall be this woman? for valiant I ween is she, Since she beareth a shield so knightly—If she thinketh with me to fight, How, then, may I best withstand her? Were it better to here alight? If too long she wrestle with me perchance I were overthrown, If hatred or love I shall win here I will fight her on foot alone; Yea, e'en an she were Kamilla, who before Laurentium fought— Did she live still to battle with me, as awhile she for honour sought, I would face her, nor fear her prowess, if here she my foe would be, Tho' ne'er with a maid have I foughten and the chance seemeth ill to me!' Battle-hewn was the shield and dinted, as Gawain right well espied The nearer he rode unto it, and pierced with a lance-thrust wide. Such token by joust is painted, little payment his skill should know Whose hand erst the shield had fashioned an he thought him to paint it so! By the trunk of the mighty linden sat a maid on the grass so green, And sore did she weep and bewail her, and joyless, I wot, her mien. Then around the tree rode Gawain, and lo! on her knee she bore A knight, and she wept above him, and grieved with a sorrow sore. To be continue in this ebook
With an unmatched roll call of amazing Marvel creators, our second Doctor Strange Omnibus is guaranteed to cast a spell on you! The adventures of the Master of the Mystic Arts continue with as Doctor Strange faces Kaluu, the mystic threat from the Nameless Nowhere! Other legendary tales include the origin of the Ancient One, the return of Baron Mordo, an otherworldly odyssey to save Victoria Bentley, and the arrival of the Living Tribunal! And in 1968, Doctor Strange received his own solo title, allowing the Sorcerer Supreme to soar to new horizons -- including showdowns with Eternity and Dormammu, a new costume, and the beginnings of the Defenders! COLLECTING: Doctor Strange (1968) 169-183, Avengers (1963) 61, Sub-Mariner (1968) 22, Incredible Hulk (1968) 126; material from Strange Tales (1951) 147-168, Marvel Feature (1971) 1, Not Brand Echh (1967) 13
When Steve Rogers was restored to his natural age, he chose one of his closest and most trusted allies to take up his shield: Sam Wilson, formerly the Avenger known as the Falcon! But Sam isn't Steve, and after recent events he's on the outs with both his old friend and S.H.I.E.L.D. What could have sent the high-flying new Cap's approval rating plummeting so dramatically? Things get slithery when the vile Sons of the Serpent make the scene, and you'll howl at the glorious return of fan-favorite Cap-Wolf - well, Fal-Cap-Wolf! But what other horrors await in the dungeon of Doctor Malus? And who will be the All-New, All-Different Falcon? The headline-making Sam Wilson is a Captain America for today! COLLECTING: CAPTAIN AMERICA: SAM WILSON #1-6.
Collects Defenders (1972) #7-16, Giant-Size Defenders #1 & Avengers #115-118. The Dynamic Defenders, comicdom's most famous non-team, launch into their second Marvel Masterworks collection with the granddaddy of all mega-events-the Avengers/Defenders War! Thor vs. Hulk! Silver Surfer vs. the Vision! Namor vs. Cap! It's a super hero battle royale orchestrated by the mystic menace Dormammu and the mischievous Loki. Concocted by Steve Englehart, the cross-title adventure is collected in full and has never looked better! And that's just the tip of the iceberg! This packed-to-the-gills collection also includes Attuma's invasion of the surface world; Hawkeye's joining the ranks of the Defenders; the all-time classic battle with the Squadron Sinister that brought Nighthawk into the Defenders' fold; a team-up with Professor X to stop Magneto and the his Ultimate Mutant; and at long last, the return of the Black Knight! They're classics that redefined super teams forever, one and all, so come join the revolution with the Marvel Masterworks!
Enlightenment critics from Dryden through Johnson and Wordsworth conceived the modern view that art and especially literature entails a double reflection: a reflection of the world, and a reflection on the process by which that reflection is accomplished. Instead “neoclassicism” and “Augustanism” have been falsely construed as involving a one-dimensional imitation of classical texts and an unselfconscious representation of the world. In fact these Enlightenment movements adopted an oblique perspective that registers the distance between past tradition and its present reenactment, between representation and presence. Two modern movements, Romanticism and modernism, have appropriated as their own these innovations, which derive from Enlightenment thought. Both of these movements ground their error in a misreading of “imitation” as understood by Aristotle and his Enlightenment proponents. Rightly understood, neoclassical imitation, constitutively aware of the difference between what it knows and how it knows it, is an experimental inquiry that generates a range of prefixes—“counter-,” “mock-,” “anti-,” “neo-”—that mark formal degrees of its epistemological detachment. Romantic ideology has denied the role of the imagination in Enlightenment imitation, imposing on the eighteenth century a dichotomous periodization: duplication versus imagination, the mirror versus the lamp. Structuralist ideology has dichotomized narration and description, form and content, structure and history. Poststructuralist ideology has propounded for the novel a contradictory “novel tradition”—realism, modernism, postmodernism, postcolonialism—whose stages both constitute a sequence and collapse it, each stage claiming the innovation of the stage that precedes it. Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.
Example in this ebook In presenting, for the first time, to English readers the greatest work of Germany's greatest mediæval poet, a few words of introduction, alike for poem and writer, may not be out of place. The lapse of nearly seven hundred years, and the changes which the centuries have worked, alike in language and in thought, would have naturally operated to render any work unfamiliar, still more so when that work was composed in a foreign tongue; but, indeed, it is only within the present century that the original text of the Parzival has been collated from the MSS. and made accessible, even in its own land, to the general reader. But the interest which is now felt by many in the Arthurian romances, quickened into life doubtless by the genius of the late Poet Laureate, and the fact that the greatest composer of our time, Richard Wagner, has selected this poem as the groundwork of that wonderful drama, which a growing consensus of opinion has hailed as the grandest artistic achievement of this century, seem to indicate that the time has come when the work of Wolfram von Eschenbach may hope to receive, from a wider public than that of his own day, the recognition which it so well deserves. Of the poet himself we know but little, save from the personal allusions scattered throughout his works; the dates of his birth and death are alike unrecorded, but the frequent notices of contemporary events to be found in his poems enable us to fix with tolerable certainty the period of his literary activity, and to judge approximately the outline of his life. Wolfram's greatest work, the Parzival, was apparently written within the early years of the thirteenth century; he makes constant allusions to events happening, and to works produced, within the first decade of that period; and as his latest work, the Willehalm, left unfinished, mentions as recent the death of the Landgrave Herman of Thuringia, which occurred in 1216, the probability seems to be that the Parzival was written within the first fifteen years of the thirteenth century. Inasmuch, too, as this work bears no traces of immaturity in thought or style, it is probable that the date of the poet's birth cannot be placed much later than 1170. The name, Wolfram von Eschenbach, points to Eschenbach in Bavaria as in all probability the place of his birth, as it certainly was of his burial. So late as the end of the seventeenth century his tomb, with inscription, was to be seen in the Frauen-kirche of Ober-Eschenbach, and the fact that within a short distance of the town are to be found localities mentioned in his poems, such as Wildberg, Abenberg, Trühending, Wertheim, etc., seems to show that there, too, the life of the poet-knight was spent. By birth, as Wolfram himself tells us, he belonged to the knightly order (Zum Schildesamt bin Ich geboren), though whether his family was noble or not is a disputed point, in any case Wolfram was a poor man, as the humorous allusions which he makes to his poverty abundantly testify. Yet he does not seem to have led the life of a wandering singer, as did his famous contemporary, Walther von der Vogelweide; if Wolfram journeyed, as he probably did, it was rather in search of knightly adventures, he tells us: 'Durchstreifen muss Der Lande viel, Wer Schildesamt verwalten will,' and though fully conscious of his gift of song, yet he systematically exalts his office of knight above that of poet. The period when Wolfram lived and sang, we cannot say wrote, for by his own confession he could neither read nor write ('I'ne kan decheinen buochstap,' he says in Parzival; and in Willehalm, 'Waz an den buochen steht geschrieben, Des bin Ich kunstelos geblieben'), and his poems must, therefore, have been orally dictated, was one peculiarly fitted to develop his special genius. To be continue in this ebook
Nearly as global in its ambition and sweep as its subject, Franco Moretti's The Novel is a watershed event in the understanding of the first truly planetary literary form. A translated selection from the epic five-volume Italian Il Romanzo (2001-2003), The Novel's two volumes are a unified multiauthored reference work, containing more than one hundred specially commissioned essays by leading contemporary critics from around the world. Providing the first international comparative reassessment of the novel, these essential volumes reveal the form in unprecedented depth and breadth--as a great cultural, social, and human phenomenon that stretches from the ancient Greeks to today, where modernity itself is unimaginable without the genre. By viewing the novel as much more than an aesthetic form, this landmark collection demonstrates how the genre has transformed human emotions and behavior, and the very perception of reality. Historical, statistical, and formal analyses show the novel as a complex literary system, in which new forms proliferate in every period and place. Volume 2: Forms and Themes, views the novel primarily from the inside, examining its many formal arrangements and recurrent thematic manifestations, and looking at the plurality of the genre and its lineages. These books will be essential reading for all students and scholars of literature.
One of the earliest great stories of English literature after ?Beowulf?, ?Sir Gawain? is the strange tale of a green knight on a green horse, who rudely interrupts King Arthur's Round Table festivities one Yuletide, challenging the knights to a wager. Simon Armitrage, one of Britain's leading poets, has produced an inventive and groundbreaking translation that " helps] liberate ?Gawain ?from academia" (?Sunday Telegraph?).
