In Preface to Paradise Lost, C. S. Lewis presents an illuminating reflection on John Milton's Paradise Lost, the seminal classic that profoundly influenced Christian thought as well as Lewis's own work. Lewis a revered scholar and professor of literature closely examines the style, content, structure, and themes of Milton's masterpiece, a retelling of the biblical story from the Fall of Humankind, Satan's temptation, and the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. Considering this story within the context of the Western literary tradition, Lewis offers invaluable insights into Paradise Lost and the nature of literature itself, unveiling the poem's beauty and its wisdom. With a clarity of thought and a style that are the trademarks of Lewis's writing, he provides answers with a lucidity and lightness that deepens our understanding of Milton's immortal work. Also inspiring new readers to revisit Paradise Lost, Lewis reminds us of why elements including ritual, splendour and joy deserve to exist and hold a sacred place in human life. One of Lewis's most revered scholarly works, Preface to Paradise Lost is an indispensable read for new and lifelong fans of Lewis's writing.

This volume of conversation not only provides a succinct philosophical biography that highlights the wide range of Attridge's interests. It likewise foregrounds his energetic engagements with literary theory, poetics, and stylistics, as well as his reassessments of contemporary philosophy and literary ideas, specifically those pertaining to the work Jacques Derrida, James Joyce, and J. M. Coetzee. Readers will find in this book a wonderful balancing act as Attridge negotiates the dynamics between the orthodoxies of critical practice and the strategic interventions of deconstructive reading. This book, with an appendix of a chronological listing of Attridge's publications, is an accessible and provocative introduction to the ideas of one of the most brilliant critical voices and generous presences in literary studies in the Anglophone world.

This 8-volume collection contains titles originally published between 1976 and 2004. It covers women's writing from a variety of perspectives, exploring the options open to women writers through the centuries, which allowed women's voices to be heard through their writing. From novels and poetry to autobiography and oral histories. Individual titles include the female social narrative, psychological and literary analysis, lesbian history, feminist and literary criticism, and more. This set will be a valuable resource for those interested in literature, history, feminism, and women's studies.

This book is a four-volume study on modern Chinese complex sentences, giving an overview and detailed analysis on the key attributes and three major types of this linguistic unit. Complex sentences in modern Chinese are unique in formation and meaning. The author proposes a tripartite classification of Chinese complex sentences according to the semantic relationships between the clauses, i.e., coordinate, causal, and adversative. The first volume defines Chinese complex sentences and makes detailed comparisons between the tripartite and dichotomous systems for the classification of complex sentences. It then thoroughly investigates causal complex sentences in their eight typical forms. The second volume analyses the coordinated type in the broad sense and the relevant forms, while the third focuses on adversative type, examining the major forms and implications for research and language teaching. The final volume looks into attributes of Chinese complex sentences as a whole, discussing the constituents, related sentence forms, and semantic and pragmatic relevance of complex sentences. The book will be a useful reference for scholars and learners of the Chinese language interested in Chinese grammar and language information processing.

• Practical, with easy to follow rules, without getting into the technicalities of linguistics. • Includes examples of correct and incorrect ways to report stories, as well as examples of common mistakes, problem words, and real journalism headlines. • Suitable for practicing journalists as well as students of journalism. • Written by a respected and well known journalist, experienced in working on national newspapers and in teaching.

Russell Krabill's church membership study for young believers. This pupil book is a workbook with 12 lessons for 12 weeks of work. Instead of a catechism with questions and answers, Krabill has interwoven Christian doctrine into the lessons. Included are projects which put the new believer to work.

The eight-volume set systematically studies the phonetic and lexical system and evolution of the Chinese language in three phases. The history of the Chinese language is generally split into three phases: 1) Old Chinese, the form of the Chinese language spoken between the 18th century BC and the 3rd century AD, 2) Middle Chinese, between the 4th century AD to around the 12th century AD, and 3) Modern Chinese, since the 13th century, comprised of an 'early modern' phase before the early 20th century and the contemporary period since. The first three volumes examine the phonetical systems of the language in each period and distinct changes across time, covering the initials system, finals system and tone system. The subsequent 5 volumes focus on lexical development throughout the different phases. The author also analyses basic issues of Chinese language study, the standardization of a modern common language and the foreign influence on the lexicon, helping us to better understand the history and development of the Chinese language. Illustrated with abundant examples, this comprehensive groundwork on Chinese phonetical history will be a must read for scholars and students studying Chinese language, linguistics and especially Chinese phonetics and lexicon.

An essential companion for IELTS writing instructors and students, Developing Writing Skills for IELTS provides IELTS test-takers with the necessary skills to succeed in the two academic writing tasks in IELTS. Adopting an original exemplar-based writing instructional approach, this text offers an in-depth and reader-friendly analysis of the assessment standards of the two academic writing tasks in IELTS. Authentic exemplars written by EFL university students are included to illustrate high (Bands 8-9), average (Bands 6-7), and low (Bands 4-5) performances in IELTS writing. Key Features: * Diagrammatical representation of assessment standards of the two academic writing tasks by experienced IELTS writing examiners and instructors. * 100 writing questions modelled after the IELTS format, designed by the authors, and categorised according to question types and topics that emerge from an analysis of over 400 IELTS writing questions. * Over 100 writing exemplars by EFL university students, accompanied by guided activities and suggested answers. Designed as a classroom text, a resource for workshops and consultations, or a self-study material, Developing Writing Skills for IELTS: A Research-based Approach will support IELTS writing instructors and test-takers with a variety of writing proficiencies.

This two-volume set presents a comprehensive syntactical picture of Singapore Mandarin and discusses the distinguishing characteristics of the Chinese language and especially Singapore Mandarin. As a variety of Mandarin Chinese, Singapore Mandarin is characterised by syntactic rules taking precedence over morphological rules. The first volume provides an overview of the grammar of Singapore Mandarin and argues that word order and functional words are specifically important in the study of Singapore Mandarin. It also explains the properties and functions of the nine grammatical components, including phrase types, word classes, sentences, subjects and predicates, predicates and objects, predicates and complements, attributes and adverbials, complex predicate phrases and prepositions and prepositional phrases. The second volume describes expressions of number, quantity, time and place and composite sentences, covering seven types of compound sentences, eight types of complex sentences and connective words with a focus on conjunctions. The concluding part of the study explores the characteristics of Singapore Mandarin grammar compared with Chinese Mandarin (Putonghua) and issues of language standardisation. With rich and authentic language examples, the book will serve as a must read for learners and teachers of Mandarin Chinese and linguistics scholars interested in global Chinese and especially Singapore Mandarin.

Pierre Nicole was a major figure in the Jansenist controversy in seventeenth-century France. His essays, which were widely read and appeared in various editions during his lifetime, cover a broad range of religious subjects. John Locke first came across Nicole's work during his visit to France in the 1670s, and was so struck by it that he intended to translate all the Essais de morale into English. When he had translated three of them, however he learned that the work had been done already, so he abandoned the project and presented what he had done so far to the countess of Shaftesbury, wife of his patron. Locke's translation, in a neatly written presentation copy, is now housed in the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York. The three essays that he translated - 'Discours (...) de l'existence de Dieu & l'immortalite de l'ame', 'Traite de la faiblesse de l'homme', and 'Traite des moyens de conserver la paix avec les hommes' - deal with topics that he later discusses at length in his own writings: society, morality, toleration and opinion. This volume reproduces the text of Nicole's three essays from an early edition facing Locke's deliberately free and impressionistic rendering into English, a style which he hoped might convey the sense of the author better than a literal translation. The choice of these three essays to translate first, out of the whole of the Essais de morale, and the changes that Locke made to his French original in the course of translation, illuminate our understanding of his thought and of its development.

The World Perspectives series presented short books written by some of the most eminent thinkers of the 20th Century. Each volume discusses the interrelation of the changing religious, scientific, artistic, political, economic and social influences on the human experience. This set reissues 9/10 of the volumes originally published between 1957 and 1965 and presents the thought and belief of its author and discuss: The role of architecture on social well-being and democracy The problems of international cooperation The impact of increased technology on global society The philosophies of logical positivism and materialism The meaning and function of language.

The functional perspective on Chinese syntax has yielded various new achievements since its introduction to Chinese linguistics in the 1980s. This two-volume book is one of the earliest and most influential works to study the Chinese language using functional grammar. With local Beijing vernacular (Pekingese) as a basis, the information structure and focus structure of the Chinese language are systematically examined. By using written works and recordings from Beijingers, the authors discuss topics such as the relationship between word order and focus, and the distinction between normal focus and contrastive focus. In addition, the authors also subject the reference and grammatical categories of the Chinese language to a functional scrutiny while discussion of word classes and their functions creatively combines modern linguistic theories and traditional Chinese linguistic theories. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of Chinese linguistics and linguistics in general.

Want to impress the hot stranger at the bar who asks for your take on Infinite Jest? Dying to shut up the blowhard in front of you who's pontificating on Cormac McCarthy's "recurring road narratives"? Having difficulty keeping Francine Prose and Annie Proulx straight?

For all those overwhelmed readers who need to get a firm grip on the relentless onslaught of must-read books to stay on top of the inevitable conversations that swirl around them, Lauren Leto's Judging a Book by Its Lover is manna from literary heaven A hilarious send-up of--and inspired homage to--the passionate and peculiar world of book culture, this guide to literary debate leaves no reader or author unscathed, at once adoring and skewering everyone from Jonathan Franzen to Ayn Rand to Dostoyevsky and the people who read them.

Historians have long debated the nature of the relationships between the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. This study traces a cultural and doctrinal current from the intellectual revolution of the seventeenth century to 1789, arguing that the contribution of the philosophes to this current had a fundamental bearing on the events of the revolutionary decade. How might a state in decline reform, in not transform, its constitution? Two generations of French philosophes struggled to answer this question. Their conclusions took the form of a deistic political theology, according to which comprehensive reform had to be the work of an enlightened legislatior. The generation of 1789 inherited this outlook and set about enacting the reforms of their philosophic forefathers. Important to this enterprise was the rich variety of symbolic representations accompanying the theoretical writings of eighteenth-century publicists and activists. Enlightenment historiography, reflecting the reforming tendencies in the writing of the philosophes, included multiple allusions to the figure of the lawgiver in history, all the while looking for improvement. By the 1770s such reform appeared both necessary and imminent. Meanwhile, the various loci of enlightenment sociability took in the air of the 'constitutional arena'. But the philosophes also invested their movement with a variety of religious forms, which complemented the logic of their political theology. Theirs was indeed a cult of the legislator. These varied tendecies crystallised during the early years of the Revolution. The author shows how Frenchmen self-consciously imitated their historic role models as they participated in revolutionary assemblies. A new phase in history seemed to be dawning, one in which goodness would reign supreme. As Hegel put it some decades later, it appeared as if the heavens and the earth had been rejoined. Such sentiments found a central place in Jacques-Louis David's Serment du Jeu de Paume, commissioned in 1790 by the Paris Jacobin Club to hang in the chambers of the National Assembly. In a novel interpretation of David's project, the author demonstrates how his composition wove the strands of the Enlightenment cult of the legislator into a lively canvas in which future generations of French men and women would be confronted with the providentially inspired founding act of the new regime.

This study illustrates the significance of Jean-Jacques Dortous de Mairan's networking in the spread of Enlightenment thought. It focuses primarily on the unpublished correspondence between Mairan and the Geneva scientists, Firmin Abauzit, Gabriel Cramer, Jean Jallabert and Charles Bonnet. Mairan was an assiduous correspondent whose letters reveal the progress of scientific thought in the first three quarters of the eighteenth century. Despite the high regard in which of his contemporaries, he has been, until recently, relatively neglected by Enlightenment scholars. This is the first full-length study devoted to Mairan's relations with scientists in other countries, to the process of cross-fertilisation in the production of scientific knowledge, and to his considerable influence on the development of scientific thought on key issues. The topics covered in the letters range from the Shape of the Earth and vis vivacontroversies and the medical powers of electricity, to the nature of the Seichesin the Lac du Leman and the origin of monsters. One of the major interests of the correspondence is Mairan's obvious fascination with Newton. Neglect of his contribution to the history of ideas can be partly explained by the fact that he was unfairly considered a 'last-ditch' Cartesian in a triumphantly Newtonian world. The detailed analysis of the letters in this study amply shows a constant preoccupation with both the Opticks and the Principiaand a fairly sophisticated understanding of scientific method. The letters abound in references to other scientists, such as the Bernoullis, Nollet, Dufay and Maupertuis. They provide an exciting, unguarded and 'behind-the-scenes' view of scientific developments before they were finalised and appeared in published works. It is particularly revealing, therefore, to compare the letters to Mairan's contributions to the Memoires de l'Academie royale des sciences, his early dissertations, and his mature works. Mairan's unpublished correspondence with Geneva scientists is a treasure-house of information on personalities, ideas and controversies of crucial importance to the international scientific community from 1717 to 1769.

enables readers to better appreciate the ways in which language functions simultaneously as an instrument to encode and communicate meaning, build and sustain interpersonal relationships, and to express identity. Provides readers with well-grounded tools that they can use to inform their daily work as well as to reflect upon their own communicative practices and – where necessary – to improve them. Features ‘discussion points’ in the form of questions, suggestions for reflection, and small analysis tasks throughout.

The Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment series, previously known as SVEC (Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century), has published over 500 peer-reviewed scholarly volumes since 1955 as part of the Voltaire Foundation at the University of Oxford. International in focus, Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment volumes cover wide-ranging aspects of the eighteenth century and the Enlightenment, from gender studies to political theory, and from economics to visual arts and music, and are published in English or French.

Politics, Lies and Conspiracy Theories: A Cognitive Linguistic Perspective shows how language influences mechanisms of cognition, perception and belief, and by extension its power to manipulate thoughts and beliefs. This exciting and original work is the first to apply cognitive linguistics to the analysis of political lies and conspiracy theories, both of which have flourished in the internet age and which many argue are threatening democracy. It unravels the verbal mechanisms that make these "different truths" so effective and proliferative, dissecting the verbal structures (metaphor, irony, connotative implications etc) of the words of a variety of real-life cases in the form of politicians, conspiracy theorists and influencers. Marcel Danesi goes on to demonstrate how these linguistic structures "switch on" or "switch off" alternative mind worlds. This book is essential reading for students of cognitive linguistics and will enrich the studies of any student or researcher in language and linguistics more broadly, as well as discourse analysis, rhetoric or political science.

Best Books of 2022 Financial Times 'A literary phenomenon.' - Times Literary Supplement 'Imaginative, lively and contemporary...masterly.' - Economist 'Vallejo enlivens history with imagination and personal anecdote' - Observer 'A mindboggling history of the earliest books... the story she tells is impressively rip-roaring' - Daily Telegraph 'Packed with fascinating insights.' - The i Review Long before books were mass produced, those made of reeds from along the Nile were worth fighting and dying for. Journeying along the battlefields of Alexander the Great, beneath the eruptions of Mount Vesuvius, at Cleopatra's palaces and the scene of Hypatia's murder, award-winning author Irene Vallejo chronicles the excitement of literary culture in the ancient world, and the heroic efforts that ensured this impressive tradition would continue. Weaved throughout are fascinating stories about the spies, scribes, illuminators, librarians, booksellers, authors, and statesmen whose rich and sometimes complicated engagement with the written word bears remarkable similarities to the world today: Aristophanes and the censorship of the humourists, Sappho and the empowerment of women's voices, Seneca and the problem of a post-truth world. Vallejo takes us to mountainous landscapes and the roaring sea, to the capitals where culture flourished and the furthest reaches where knowledge found refuge in chaotic times. In this sweeping tour of the history of books, the wonder of the ancient world comes alive and along the way we discover the singular power of the written word.

Closely examining how the news media reports economic and financial matters, this book equips students with solid methodological skills for reading and interpreting the news alongside a toolkit for best practice as an economic journalist. How to Read Economic News combines theory and practice to explore the discourse surrounding economics in the mass media and how this specialised form of reporting can be improved. Beginning by introducing major concepts such as financialised economic reporting, media amnesia and loss of trust, the book goes on to help students to interpret, understand and analyse existing news discourse and to identify subtle biases in news reports stemming from hegemonic belief systems. The final section puts this analytical knowledge into practice, providing students with methods for the critical production of news and covering such skills as identifying newsworthiness, story sourcing, achieving clarity, and using complex datasets in news stories. This is a key text for students and academics in the fields of financial journalism and critical discourse analysis who wish to approach the subject with a critical eye.