Beyond the His Dark Materials series lies a vast fictional realm populated by the many diverse character creations of Philip Pullman. During a more than 30-year career, Pullman has created worlds filled with quests, trials, tragedies and triumphs, and this book explores those worlds. The picture books, novellas and novels written for children, adolescents and adults are analyzed through the themes of innocence and experience. The journeys Pullman sets his characters on teach them that one must embrace change, loss and suffering to grow in wisdom and grace.
Benny Kaminsky and Thunderbolt Dobney lead a rag-tag gang of neighborhood rowdies. Their territory is the New Cut on London's South Bank--a place bristling with swindlers, bookies, pickpockets, and the occasional policeman. And their aim is to solve crimes. When counterfeit coins start showing up in their neighborhood, Thunderbolt fears his own father may be behind the crime. But his friends devise a way to trap the real culprit. Then the gang takes on the case of some stolen silver. They have just two clues--a blob of wax, and an unusually long match. But even this slippery thief is unmasked by the determined kids of the New Cut Gang. Filled with silly sleuthing, improbable disguises, crazy ruses, and merry mayhem, these stories are action-packed romps from one of the best storytellers ever--Philip Pullman.
The New Cut Gang is a group of urchins ranging from 6-year-old Sharkey Bob to 13-year-old Bridie Malone. They inhabit the streets around Lambeth Walk and the New Cut. In 1892, it is a place full of gangsters, bookies, pickpockets, swindlers, horse thieves and the occasional tentative policeman.
A revealing new biography—the first in more than fifty years—of one of the twentieth-century's towering literary figures James Joyce is one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century, his novels and stories foundational in the history of literary modernism. Yet Joyce's genius was by no means immediately recognized, nor was his success easily won. At twenty-two he chose a life of exile; he battled poverty and financial dependency for much of his adult life; his out-of-wedlock relationship with Nora Barnacle was scandalous for the time; and the attitudes he held towards the Irish and Ireland, England, sexuality, politics, Catholicism, popular culture—to name a few—were complex, contradictory, and controversial. Gordon Bowker draws on material recently come to light and reconsiders the two signal works produced about Joyce's life—Herbert Gorman's authorized biography of 1939 and Richard Ellman's magisterial tome of 1959—and, most importantly by binding together more intimately than has ever before been attempted the life and work of this singular artist, Gordon Bowker here gives us a masterful, fresh, eminently readable contribution to our understanding, both of Joyce's personality and of the monumental opus he created. Bowker goes further than his predecessors in exploring Joyce's inner depths—his ambivalent relationships to England, to his native Ireland, and to Judaism—uncovering revealing evidence. He draws convincing correspondences between the iconic fictional characters Joyce created and their real-life models and inspirations. And he paints a nuanced portrait of a man of enormous complexity, the clearest picture yet of an extraordinary writer who continues to influence and fascinate over a century after his birth. Widely acclaimed on publication in Britain last year, perhaps the highest compliment paid was by Chris Proctor, of London's Tribune: "Bowker's success is to lead you back to the texts, perhaps understanding them better for this rich account of the maddening insane genius who wrote them."
International folkloristics is a worldwide discipline in which scholars study various forms of folklore ranging from myth, folktale, and legend to custom and belief. Twenty classic essays, beginning with a piece by Jacob Grimm, reveal the evolving theoretical underpinnings of folkloristics from its nineteenth century origins to its academic coming-of-age in the twentieth century. Each piece is prefaced by extensive editorial introductions placing them in a historical and intellectual context. The twenty essays presented here, including several never published previously in English, will be required reading for any serious student of folklore.
This book investigates Yeats's experiments with the media of language and dance in his plays. He was allied to other artists of the 1890s in his fascination with the biblical dancer Salome and in his preoccupation with things Japanese, particularly 'Noh' Theatre with its central dance. The impact of Diaghliev's Ballets Russes also played its part in influencing Yeats's drama, and his interest in the 'dance-as-meaning' debate places him firmly not only in his time but also in our own.
This collection brings together all of W. B. Yeats’s published prose writings on Irish folklore, legend and myth, with pieces on subjects including ghosts, kidnappers, fairies, ancient tribes, precious stones and Gaelic love songs. Through his researches on Irish folklore, Yeats attempted to create a movement in literature that was enriched by and rooted in a vital native tradition. In this volume Yeats’s essays, introductions and sketches are presented chronologically, giving a clear picture of how his analysis developed, increasing in its depth and complexity in his quest to create an Ireland of the imagination.
