Can anyone really own a culture? This magnificent account argues that the story of global civilisations is one of mixing, sharing, and borrowing. It shows how art forms have crisscrossed continents over centuries to produce masterpieces. From Nefertiti's lost city and the Islamic Golden Age to twentieth century Nigerian theatre and Modernist poetry, Martin Puchner explores how contact between different peoples has driven artistic innovation in every era - whilst cultural policing and purism have more often undermined the very societies they tried to protect. Travelling through Classical Greece, Ashoka's India, Tang dynasty China, and many other epochs, this triumphal new history reveals the crossing points which have not only inspired the humanities, but which have made us human.

Few novels ever swept the world with such overpowering impact as LES MISERABLES. Within twenty-four hours of its publication in 1862, the first Paris edition was sold out. In other great cities throughout the world, it was devoured with equal relish.

Sensational, dramatic, packed with rich excitement and filled with the sweep and violence of human passions, LES MISERABLES is not only a superb adventure but a powerful social document. The story of how the convict Jean Valjean struggles to escape his past and reaffirm his humanity in a world brutalized by poverty and ignorance became the gospel of the poor and the oppressed. One of the greatest works in Western literature, LES MISERABLES is an exhilarating and deeply profound reading experience.

"Sofia Petrovna" is Lydia Chukovskaya's fictional account of the Great Purge. Sofia is a Soviet Everywoman, a doctor's widow who works as a typist in a Leningrad publishing house. When her beloved son is caught up in the maelstrom of the purge, she joins the long lines of women outside the prosecutor's office, hoping against hope for good news. Confronted with a world that makes no moral sense, Sofia goes mad, a madness which manifests itself in delusions little different from the lies those around her tell every day to protect themselves.

'Gripping, emotional, utterly engrossing' Lisa Ballantyne 'Stunning writing and wonderful nuanced characterisation. I was hooked' Rosamund Lupton A sweeping and turbulent drama about the anxieties of post-war Britain, where one strong and inspirational young woman looks to find her place, no matter the cost... Perfect for fans of Maggie O'Farrell, Celeste Ng and Anne Tyler. 1957: Within a year of arriving at an American airbase in Suffolk, the loving, law-abiding Delaney family is destroyed. Did they know something they weren't allowed to know? Did they find something they weren't supposed to find? Only one girl has the courage to question what really went on behind closed doors . . . Hedy's journey to the truth leads her to read a manuscript that her talented twin brother had started months before he died, a story inspired by an experience in the forest surrounding the airbase perimeter. Only through deciding to finish what her brother started does Hedy begin to piece together what happened to her family. But would she have continued if she'd known then what she knows now? Sometimes, it's safer not to finish what you've started... Praise for Saskia Sarginson: 'An engrossing read with endearing characters thrust into traumatic circumstances. It stayed with me long after the last page' Lisa Ballantyne on How It Ends 'Outstandingly good. Part thriller, part love story, I guarantee you will not be able to put it down' Sun on The Twins 'Atmospheric, readable, beautifully evoked' Sunday Mirror on Without You 'Stunning in its insight and beautifully written' Judy Finnigan on The Twins 'This enthralling read will keep you up long into the night' Ruth Ware on The Other Me 'A stunning writer with deep insight into people, their thoughts and behaviour' NZ Women's Weekly

Freedom of the printed word is a defining feature of the modern world. Yet censorship and the suppression of literature never cease, and remain topical issues even in the most liberal of democracies. Today, just as in the past, advances in media technology are followed by new regulatory mechanisms. Similarly, any attempt to control cultural expression inevitably spurs fresh discussions about freedom of speech. In Forbidden Literature scholars from a variety of disciplines address censorship s past and present, whether in liberal democracies or totalitarian regimes. Through in-depth case studies they trace a historical continuum in which literature reveals its two-sided nature: it demands both regulation and protection. The contributors investigate the logic of literary repression, particularly in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and analyse why it is thought essential to control literature. Moreover, the authors determine how literary practices are shaped and transformed by regulation and censorship.

In this fascinating book Kenneth Baker explores how the Seven Deadly Sins - Pride, Anger, Sloth, Envy, Avarice, Gluttony and Lust - have shaped history from the Greek and Roman Civilisations, through their heyday in the Middle Ages, when sinners really believed they could go to Hell for all eternity, to the secular world of today, where they are still an alluring and destructive force. Today most sinners are punished in this world not the next: * Black Pride and Gay Pride have made tens of millions more understood and more accepted, but the overweening pride of certain leaders - Hubris - has led to wars and devastation: Hitler in Russia; the Japanese at Pearl Harbour; Saddam Hussein in Kuwait; and Blair and Bush in Iraq. * Anger, when righteous, can be a virtue, which helped to end the slave trade in the 19th century and to expose child abuse today, but there is still personal anger in domestic violence and Daesh terrorism. * Sloth can be an amiable weakness as Tennyson said, 'Ah why should life all labour be', but the rewards go to the energetic. * Envy is the mainstay of the global advertising industry encouraging everyone to improve their lives, but it is also a secret vice, a self-destroying morbid appetite. * Avarice, has led to better living conditions for many people but also to the Great Depression, the financial collapse of 2008, and to 1,800 billionaires with the combined wealth of US $6.48 trillion. * Gluttony is not a sin but a destructive ailment leading to obesity, bottle-noses, bleary eyes, grog-blossoms and breath like a blowlamp. * Lust that demands immediate gratification is clearly still a sin, whether Paris' abduction of Helen of Troy, or websites that encourage marital infidelity, or the fate of many politicians, as Kipling said, 'For the sins they do by two and two, they must pay for one by one.' This book is lavishly illustrated from Medieval manuscripts to Picasso, and Kenneth Baker has drawn on his knowledge of cartoons down the ages to include a few by Gillray, Rowlandson, Bateman, Eric Gill and today Peter Brookes.

Catafalque offers a revolutionary new reading of the great psychologist Carl Jung as mystic, gnostic and prophet for our time.

This book is the first major re-imagining of both Jung and his work since the publication of the Red Book in 2009 -- and is the only serious assessment of them written by a classical scholar who understands the ancient Gnostic, Hermetic and alchemical foundations of his thought as well as Jung himself did. At the same time it skillfully tells the forgotten story of Jung's relationship with the great Sufi scholar, Henry Corbin, and with Persian Sufi tradition.

The strange reality of the Red Book, or "New Book" as Carl Jung called it, lies close to the heart of Catafalque. In meticulous detail Peter Kingsley uncovers its great secret, hidden in plain sight and still -- as if by magic -- unrecognized by all those who have been unable to understand this mysterious, incantatory text.

But the hard truth of who Jung was and what he did is only a small part of what this book uncovers. It also exposes the full extent of that great river of esoteric tradition that stretches all the way back to the beginnings of our civilization. It unveils the surprising realities behind western philosophy, literature, poetry, prophecy -- both ancient and modern.

In short, Peter Kingsley shows us not only who Carl Jung was but who we in the West are as well. Much more than a brilliant spiritual biography, Catafalque holds the key to understanding why our western culture is dying. And, an incantatory text in its own right, it shows the way to discovering what we in these times of great crisis must do.

Machiavelli's ideas are as important in our time as in his own. His insights and prescriptions help us make sense of today's political upheavals and natural calamities and reduce them to a working order. The chapters in Machiavelli Then and Now explore Machiavelli's central concerns: statecraft and order, liberty and citizenship, diplomacy and leadership, modes of strategization, the quest for empire - all set against the basic contention between autarchy, oligarchy and democracy. They also address the ethical and behaviourial factors behind political practice, such as force, suasion, ambition, corruption and vigilance in public discourse. The contributors consider the role of language, text and the imagination in Machiavelli, and they also bring the Machiavellian discourse closer to our own times, in relation to Gandhi, Gramsci and Althusser. The book will interest historians, political scientists and students of public policy; philosophers, rhetoricians and literary critics; and no less institution builders, diplomats and, administrators.

The Pro Milone numbers among Cicero's most famous speeches. In it he defends his friend T. Annius Milo against the charge of murdering P. Clodius Pulcher, Cicero's own archenemy. Clodius' death, Milo's trial, and their aftermath consumed Roman public life in 52 BC, involving every major political figure of the day. Although Cicero's defense failed, the published speech remains one of his finest, a fascinating document from a turbulent time, full of interest both historical and rhetorical. This edition, aimed at students and scholars alike, provides readers with the help that they need to appreciate the speech as a literary masterpiece and a historical text. Including a comprehensive introduction and a newly constituted Latin text, it provides detailed treatment of Cicero's language, style, and rhetorical techniques, as well as full discussion of the historical background and the larger social and cultural issues relevant to the speech.

Revised to reflect critical trends of the past 15 years, the third iteration of this widely adopted critical edition presents the 1831 text of Mary Shelley's English Romantic novel along with critical essays that introduce students to Frankenstein from contemporary psychoanalytic, Marxist, feminist, gender/queer, postcolonial, and cultural studies perspectives. The text and essays are complemented by contextual documents, introductions (with bibliographies), and a glossary of critical and theoretical terms. In the third edition, three of the six essays are new, representing recent gender/queer, postcolonial, and cultural theories. The contextual documents have been significantly revised to include many images of Frankenstein from contemporary popular culture.

In many parts of the world, oppositional publishing has emerged in contexts of state oppression. In South Africa, censorship laws were enacted in the 1960s, and the next decade saw increased pressure on freedom of speech and publishing. With growing restrictions on information, activist publishing emerged. These highly politicised publishers had a social responsibility, to contribute to social change. In spite of their cultural, political and social importance, no academic study of their history has yet been undertaken. This Element aims to fill that gap by examining the history of the most vocal and arguably the most radical of this group, Ravan Press. Using archival material, interviews and the books themselves, this Element examines what the history of Ravan reveals about the role of oppositional print culture.

The groundbreaking trans-genre work of Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) has been insinuating itself into the structure, stance, and very breath of world literature for well over half a century. Multi-layered, self-referential, elusive, and allusive writing is now frequently labeled Borgesian. Umberto Eco's international bestseller, The Name of the Rose, is, on one level, an elaborate improvisation on Borges' fiction "The Library," which American readers first encountered in the original 1962 New Directions publication of Labyrinths. This new edition of Labyrinths, the classic representative selection of Borges' writing edited by Donald A. Yates and James E. Irby (in translations by themselves and others), includes the text of the original edition (as augmented in 1964) as well as Irby's biographical and critical essay, a poignant tribute by Andre Maurois, and a chronology of the author's life. Borges enthusiast William Gibson has contributed a new introduction bringing Borges' influence and importance into the twenty-first century."

Scholars of the Gothic have long recognised Blake's affinity with the genre. Yet, to date, no major scholarly study focused on Blake's intersection with the Gothic exists. William Blake's gothic imagination seeks to redress this disconnect. The papers here do not simply identify Blake's Gothic conventions but, thanks to recent scholarship on affect, psychology, and embodiment in Gothic studies, reach deeper into the tissue of anxieties that take confused form through this notoriously nebulous historical, aesthetic, and narrative mode. The collection opens with papers touching on literary form, history, lineation, and narrative in Blake's work, establishing contact with major topics in Gothic studies. Then refines its focus to Blake's bloody, nervous bodies, through which he explores various kinds of Gothic horror related to reproduction, anatomy, sexuality, affect, and materiality. Rather than transcendent images, this collection attends to Blake's 'dark visions of torment'. -- .

Shakespeare and Gender guides students, educators, practitioners and researchers through the complexities of the representation of gender and sexuality in Shakespeare's work. Informed by contemporary and early modern debates and insights into gender and sexuality, including intersectionality, feminist geography, queer and performance studies and fourth-wave feminism, this book provides a lucid and lively discussion of how gender and sexual identity are debated, contested and displayed in Shakespeare's plays and sonnets. Using close textual analysis hand-in- hand with diverse contextual materials, the book offers an accessible and intelligent introduction to how gender debates are integral to the plays and poems, and why we continue to read and perform them with this in mind. Topics and themes discussed include gendering madness, paternity and the patriarchy, sexuality, anxious masculinity, maternal bodies, gender transgression, and kingship and the male body politic.

2022 erscheint der 61. Jahrgang des Heine-Jahrbuchs. Er enthalt u. a. Untersuchungen zu zwei der beruhmtesten lyrischen Werke Heines: eine narratologische Analyse der "Heimkehr" und eine Quellenstudie zum "Sklavenschiff". Neben Artikeln von Norbert Waszek uber Heines Verhaltnis zu dem franzoesischen Philosophen Victor Cousin, Ernst-Ulrich Pinkert uber Heine-Rezeption in Danemark und von Inge Rippmann und Joseph A. Kruse uber Literatur und Judenemanzipation im 19. Jahrhundert prasentiert er bisher unbekannte Briefe Heinrich Heines.

W. C. Fields was a virtuoso comedian, often called a comic genius, legendary iconoclast, and "Great Man," who brought so much laughter to millions while enduring so much anguish. This book explores his little-known, long stage career from 1898 to 1930, which had a major influence on his comedy and screen presence.

The essays collected within this volume ask how literary practices are shaped by the experience of being at sea-and also how they forge that experience. Individual chapters explore the literary worlds of naval ships, whalers, commercial vessels, emigrant ships, and troop transports from the seventeenth to the twentieth-first century, revealing a rich history of shipboard reading, writing, and performing. Contributors are interested both in how literary activities adapt to the maritime world, and in how individual and collective shipboard experiences are structured through-and framed by-such activities. In this respect, the volume builds on scholarship that has explored reading as a spatially situated and embodied practice. As our contributors demonstrate, the shipboard environment and the ocean beyond it place the mind and body under peculiar forms of pressure, and these determine acts of reading-and of writing and performing-in specific ways.

This book evaluates twentieth century British and Global Anglophone literature in relation to the growth of ecological thinking in the United Kingdom. Restless modernists such as D. H. Lawrence, James Joyce, Djuna Barnes, and Jean Rhys developed a literary aesthetic of slowness and immediacy to critique the exhausting and dehumanizing aspects of modern urban and industrial life. At the same time, environmental groups such as the Society for the Promotion of Nature Reserves and the Smoke Abatement League moved from economic registers of 'value' and 'trust' to more cultural terms of 'recovery' and 'regeneration' to position nature as a healing force in the postwar era. Through a variety of literary, scientific, and political texts, an environmental movement emerged alongside the fast, fragmented, and traumatic aspects of modernization in order to sustain place and community in terms of lateral influence and ecological dependence.