Studies of women and writing frequently take historical woman authors as their starting point. Poet Heroines in Medieval French Narrative proposes a different approach, looking instead at the numerous fictional female characters of 13th-15th century French narrative who are portrayed as composing and performing poetry, and whose gendered literary activity links writing, singing, the body, and performance. Such figures represent a promising new area of exploration in women's literary history, one based on the texts themselves rather than the uncertain circumstances of their composition.

With scrupulous attention to landmark poetic texts and to educational and critical discourse in early 20th-century Palestine, Miryam Segal traces the emergence of a new accent to replace the Ashkenazic or European Hebrew accent in which almost all modern Hebrew poetry had been composed until the 1920s. Segal takes into account the broad historical, ideological, and political context of this shift, including the construction of a national language, culture, and literary canon; the crucial role of schools; the influence of Zionism; and the leading role played by women poets in introducing the new accent. This meticulous and sophisticated yet readable study provides surprising new insights into the emergence of modern Hebrew poetry and the revival of the Hebrew language in the Land of Israel.

Frank McCourt's glorious childhood memoir, Angela's Ashes, has been loved and celebrated by readers everywhere for its spirit, its wit and its profound humanity. A tale of redemption, in which storytelling itself is the source of salvation, it won the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Rarely has a book so swiftly found its place on the literary landscape.

And now we have 'Tis, the story of Frank's American journey from impoverished immigrant to brilliant teacher and raconteur. Frank lands in New York at age nineteen, in the company of a priest he meets on the boat. He gets a job at the Biltmore Hotel, where he immediately encounters the vivid hierarchies of this "classless country," and then is drafted into the army and is sent to Germany to train dogs and type reports. It is Frank's incomparable voice -- his uncanny humor and his astonishing ear for dialogue -- that renders these experiences spellbinding.

When Frank returns to America in 1953, he works on the docks, always resisting what everyone tells him, that men and women who have dreamed and toiled for years to get to America should "stick to their own kind" once they arrive. Somehow, Frank knows that he should be getting an education, and though he left school at fourteen, he talks his way into New York University. There, he falls in love with the quintessential Yankee, long-legged and blonde, and tries to live his dream. But it is not until he starts to teach -- and to write -- that Frank finds his place in the world. The same vulnerable but invincible spirit that captured the hearts of readers in Angela's Ashes comes of age.

As Malcolm Jones said in his Newsweek review of Angela's Ashes, "It is only the best storyteller who can so beguile his readers that he leaves them wanting more when he is done...and McCourt proves himself one of the very best." Frank McCourt's 'Tis is one of the most eagerly awaited books of our time, and it is a masterpiece.

Ousmane Sembene was a Senegalese film director, producer, and writer whom the Los Angeles Times considered one of the greatest authors of Africa. Often called the "father of African film," Sembene strongly believed that African films should be geared primarily toward educating the masses and making the philosophical quandaries and political issues contested by elites accessible to the poor and those with little to no formal education.Although Sembene's central aim was to reach African audiences and encourage a dialogue within Senegalese society, his films are also extraordinarily effective in introducing non-African audiences to many of the most intriguing cultural issues and social changes facing African people today. The films are not fast paced in the manner of many Hollywood films. Rather, they are deliberately unhurried and driven by the narrative. They show actual ways of life, social relations, and patterns of communication and consumption, and the joys and tribulations of West African people. For people who have never been to Africa, the films offer an accessible first gaze. For those who have visited or lived in an African culture, the films provide a way to explore African society and culture more profoundly. Sembene was an independent filmmaker, solely and totally responsible for the content of his films, which were inspired by the realities of daily life. This focus on microcosmic social relations and day-to-day politics is so central to Sembene art, his films breed provocative commentary on social, historical, political, economic, linguistic, religious, and gender issues relevant to Senegalese society. Because of his concern with daily Senegalese life, Sembene targeted the common people whose voices are seldom or never heard. In fact, depicting the struggles and concerns of average Senegalese people was a central preoccupation of his films, as he himself has articulated. This study examines the artistry of Sembene's films as well as the multitude of signifying elements Sembene uses in them to communicate in less direct ways with his audience. The book interprets the meaning conveyed by images through their placement and function within the films, and it contributes new insights into Sembene's interpretations of cultural practices and the meanings he ascribes to social behaviors. It examines how Sembene uses language, mise-en-scene, cinematography, and creative editing to evoke the emotions of his targeted audience. Several chapters in the volume also demonstrate how the many ironies and political economic tensions that are so characteristic of Sembene's work are best understood within the sociocultural context of each film's production. Hence, to make sense of Sembene's cinema, one must be willing to read beyond the denoted meaning of the storyline and to dig into the cultural significance of the carefully selected and manipulated codes and images.

Pregnant Fictions explores the complex role of pregnancy in early modern tale-telling and considers how stories of childbirth were used to rethink gendered "truths" at a key moment in the history of ideas. How male medical authorities and female literary authors struggled to describe the inner workings of the unseen--and competed to shape public understanding of it--is the focus of this engaging work by Holly Tucker. In illuminating the gender politics underlying dramatic changes in reproductive theory and practice, Tucker shows just how tenuous the boundaries of scientific "fact" and marvelous fictions were in early modern France. On the literary front, Tucker argues, women used the fairy tale to rethink the biology of childbirth and the sociopolitical uses to which it had been put. She shows that in references to midwives, infertility, sex selection, and embryological theories, fairy-tale writers experimented with alternative ways of understanding pregnancy. In so doing they suggested new ways in which to envision women, knowledge, and power in both the public and the private spheres.

The myths and legends in this book have been selected both for their excellence as stories and because they illustrate the distinctive nature of Native American storytelling. This book contains a collection of Native American myths and legends, selected for their excellence as stories, and because they illustrate the distinctive nature of Native American storytelling. The text is drawn from the oral traditions of all major areas of aboriginal North America. The book reveals the highly practical functions of myths and legends in Native American societies, and illustrates American Indians' profound engagement with their natural environment. It is edited by an outstanding interpreter of Native American oral stories.

This collection of essays explores the survival of Catholic culture in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England-a time of Protestant domination and sometimes persecution. Contributors examine not only devotional, political, autobiographical, and other written texts, but also material objects such as church vestments, architecture, and symbolic spaces. Among the topics discussed in this volume are the influence of Latin culture on Catholic women, Marian devotion, the activities of Catholics in continental seminaries and convents, the international context of English Catholicism, and the influential role of women as maintainers of Catholic culture in a hostile religious and political environment. Catholic Culture in Early Modern England makes an important contribution to the ongoing project of historians and literary scholars to rewrite the cultural history of post-Reformation English Catholicism.

In this edited collection, authors from various academic, cultural, racial, linguistic, and personal backgrounds use critical discourse analysis as a conceptual framework and method to examine social inequities, identity issues, and linguistic discrimination faced by historically oppressed groups in schools and society. Language, Race, and Power in Schools unravels the ways and degrees to which these groups have faced and resisted oppression, and draws on critical discourse analysis to examine how multiple forms of oppression intersect. This volume interrogates areas of discrimination and injustice and discusses possibilities of developing coalitions and concerted efforts across the lines of diversity.

Fifty years after Camus's untimely death, his work still has a tremendous impact on literature. From a twenty-first century vantage point, his work offer us coexisting ideas and principles by which we can read and understand the other and ourselves. Yet Camus seems to guide us without directing us strictly; his fictions do not offer clear-cut solutions or doctrines to follow. This complexity is what demands that the oeuvre be read, and reread. The wide-ranging articles in this volume shed light, concentrate on the original aspects of Camus' writings and explore how and why they are still relevant for us today.

This companion is the first book of its kind to focus on the whole of European Romanticism.
Describes the way in which the Romantic Movement swept across Europe in the early nineteenth century.
Covers the national literatures of France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Russia and Spain.
Addresses common themes that cross national borders, such as orientalism, Napoleon, night, nature, and the prestige of the fragment.
Includes cross-disciplinary essays on literature and music, literature and painting, and the general system of Romantic arts.
Features 35 essays in all, from leading scholars in America, Australia, Britain, France, Italy, and Switzerland.

This volume documents the life and works of the acclaimed playwright, Edward Albee. His first four plays were all produced Off Broadway from 1960-1961, creating buzz that he was an up-and-coming avant-garde playwright. But his most notable accomplishment came a year later with his first full-length play, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. His plays were linked with the philosophies of the European absurdists, Beckett and Ionesco, and the American traditional social criticism of Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, and Eugene O'Neill. Intended to serve as a quick reference guide and an exhaustive resource, this collection includes play synopses and critical overviews, production histories and credits, and locator suggestions on unpublished archival material and lists of texts/anthologies that have published Albee's material. The two secondary bibliographies contained within are fully annotated chronologically and alphabetically with the year of publication, presenting a fuller sense of Albee's playwriting career.

Leading scholar Albert Russell Ascoli traces the metamorphosis of Dante Alighieri - minor Florentine aristocrat, political activist and exile, amateur philosopher and theologian, and daring experimental poet - into Dante, author of the Divine Comedy and perhaps the most self-consciously 'authoritative' cultural figure in the Western canon. The text offers a comprehensive introduction to Dante's evolving, transformative relationship to medieval ideas of authorship and authority from the early Vita Nuova through the unfinished treatises, The Banquet and On Vernacular Eloquence, to the works of his maturity, Monarchy and the Divine Comedy. Ascoli reveals how Dante anticipates modern notions of personalized, creative authorship and the phenomenon of 'Renaissance self-fashioning'. Unusually, the book examines Dante's career as a whole offering an important point of access not only to the Dantean oeuvre, but also to the history and theory of authorship in the larger Italian and European tradition.

Some authors strongly criticized attempts to rebuild a German literary culture in the aftermath of World War II, while others actively committed themselves to "dealing with the German past." There are writers in Austria and Switzerland that find other contradictions of contemporary life troubling, while some find them funny or even worth celebrating. German postwar literature has, in the minds of some observers, developed a kind of split personality. In view of the traumatic monstrosities of the previous century that development may seem logical to some. The Historical Dictionary of Postwar German Literature is devoted to modern literature produced in the German language, whether from Germany, Austria, Switzerland or writers using German in other countries. This volume covers an extensive period of time, beginning in 1945 at what was called "zero hour" for German literature and proceeds into the 21st century, concluding in 2008. This is done through a list of acronyms and abbreviations, a chronology, an introductory essay, a bibliography, and hundreds of cross-referenced dictionary entries on writers, such as Nobel Prize-winners Heinrich Boll, Gunter Grass, Elias Canetti, Elfriede Jelinek, and W. G. Sebald. There are also entries on individual works, genres, movements, literary styles, and forms."

Russian novelist and philospher Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) is best known for his monumental novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, but his reputation as a master of short fiction is richly evident in this unparalleled anthology. Here, in the largest one-volume collection available, are 36 stories of war, intrigue, treachery, murder, moral turmoil, spiritual anguish, and occasional redemption. They include early stories like the famed "Sevastopol" tales of warfare and "Lost on the Steppe;" the tour de force novellas "The Death of Ivan Ilyitch" and "The Kreutzer Sonata;" as well as folk tales, parables, realistic tales, and many lesser-known gems.

A History of the Chinese Language provides a comprehensive introduction to the historical development of the Chinese language from its Proto-Sino-Tibetan roots in prehistoric times to Modern Standard Chinese. Taking a highly accessible and balanced approach, it presents a chronological survey of the various stages of the Chinese language, covering key aspects such as phonology, syntax, and semantics. The second edition presents a revised and updated version that reflects recent scholarship in Chinese historical linguistics and new developments in related disciplines. Features include: Coverage of the major historical stages in Chinese language development, such as Old Chinese, Middle Chinese, Early Modern Chinese, and Modern Standard Chinese. Treatment of core linguistic aspects of the Chinese language, including phonological changes, grammatical development, lexical evolution, vernacular writing, the Chinese writing system, and Chinese dialects. Inclusion of authentic Chinese texts throughout the book, presented within a rigorous framework of linguistic analysis to help students to build up critical and evaluative skills and acquire valuable cultural knowledge. Integration of materials from different disciplines, such as archaeology, genetics, history, and sociolinguistics, to highlight the cultural and social background of each period of the language. Written by a highly experienced instructor, A History of the Chinese Language will be an essential resource for students of Chinese language and linguistics and for anyone interested in the history and culture of China.

What do narratives by British suffragettes of being forcibly fed have in common with the representation of indigenous women in Canadian police archives? How are literary representations of domestic violence related to the use of silence as a strategy of resistance in African American women's writing? How are modernist fictions of gay male desire connected with ambiguous sexual performances in rock music or with images of Vietnam veterans in American horror movies? What does a narrative of women's participation in Bengali national resistance movements share with an ethnographic study of prostitution in Papua New Guinea?

These are the some of the specific questions raised by the essays in this volume, which examines a wide variety of historical and cultural locations where differently sexed, gendered, and racialized bodies have been constructed. More generally, this volume addresses theoretical debates over whether embodiment is best understood through representations or performances. Are bodies written or enacted? The different answers to these questions have important consequences for how we understand the inscription of bodies with systems of power and the possibilities that exist for resisting those systems.

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First Published in 1971. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Biculturalism and Spanish in Contact: Sociolinguistic Case Studies provides an original and modern analysis of the development of Spanish and its contact with other languages using a sociolinguistic framework from both synchronic and diachronic angles. Split into three sections , (i) Border speech communities , (ii) Outcomes and perceptions in situations of language and dialect contact and (iii) Contact and alternation: social boundaries of language switching, this collection offers new perspectives in the field of language contact and change. Each chapter presents an original study detailing the social factors that have shaped contact varieties of Spanish, providing principal arguments and theories about language use, contact, and change, as well as guided topics for discussion. With its wide scope, this book is a landmark in language interaction processes and studies, and will be a valuable reference for educators, scholars, language professionals and students with an interest in the vitality of the Spanish language in contact with other languages.