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Books > Language & Literature > Literature: texts > General
In this ground-breaking work, Bridget Orr shows that popular
eighteenth-century theatre was about much more than fashion,
manners and party politics. Using the theatre as a means of
circulating and publicizing radical Enlightenment ideas, many plays
made passionate arguments for religious and cultural toleration,
and voiced protests against imperial invasion and forced conversion
of indigenous peoples by colonial Europeans. Irish and
labouring-class dramatists wrote plays, often set in the
countryside, attacking social and political hierarchy in Britain
itself. Another crucial but as yet unexplored aspect of early
eighteenth-century theatre is its connection to freemasonry.
Freemasons were pervasive as actors, managers, prompters,
scene-painters, dancers and musicians, with their own lodges,
benefit performances and particular audiences. In addition to
promoting the Enlightened agenda of toleration and cosmopolitanism,
freemason dramatists invented the new genre of domestic tragedy, a
genre that criticized the effects of commercial and colonial
capitalism.
First published in 1938, this collection of stories set in the rich farmland of the Salinas Valley includes the O. Henry Prize-winning story "The Murder," as well as one of Steinbeck's most famous short works, "The Snake."
This collection brings together current research on topics that are
perennially important to Romantic studies: the life and work of
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and the landscape and history of his native
Switzerland.
How is tonight different from all other nights? For Jacob
Rappaport, a Jewish soldier in the Union army during the Civil War,
it is a question his commanders have already answered for him-on
Passover, 1862, he is ordered to murder his own uncle in New
Orleans, who is plotting to assassinate President Lincoln. After
this harrowing mission, Jacob is recruited to pursue another enemy
agent, the daughter of a Virginia family friend. But this time, his
assignment isn't to murder the spy, but to marry her. Their
marriage, with its riveting and horrifying consequences, reveals
the deep divisions that still haunt American life today. Based on
real personalities such as Judah Benjamin, the Confederacy's Jewish
secretary of state and spymaster, and on historical facts and
events ranging from an African American spy network to the dramatic
self-destruction of the city of Richmond, All Other Nights is a
gripping and suspenseful story of men and women driven to the
extreme limits of loyalty and betrayal. It is also a brilliant
parable of the rift in America that lingers a century and a half
later: between those who value family and tradition first, and
those dedicated, at any cost, to social and racial justice for all.
In this eagerly awaited third novel, award-winning author Dara Horn
brings us page-turning storytelling at its best. Layered with
meaning, All Other Nights reinvents the most American of subjects
with originality and insight.
"My greatest thought in living is Heathcliff. If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be... Nelly, I am Heathcliff! He's always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure... but as my own being." Wuthering Heights is the only novel of Emily Bronte, who died a year after its publication, at the age of thirty. A brooding Yorkshire tale of a love that is stronger than death, it is also a fierce vision of metaphysical passion, in which heaven and hell, nature and society, are powerfully juxtaposed. Unique, mystical, with a timeless appeal, it has become a classic of English literature.
"A spectre is haunting Europe - the spectre of Communism." So
begins one of history's most important documents, a work of such
magnitude that it has forever changed not only the scope of world
politics, but indeed the course of human civilization. The
Communist Manifesto was written in Friedrich Engels's clear,
striking prose and declared the earth-shaking ideas of Karl Marx.
Upon publication in 1848, it quickly became the credo of the poor
and oppressed who longed for a society "in which the free
development of each is the condition for the free development of
all."
The Communist Manifesto contains the seeds of Marx's more
comprehensive philosophy, which continues to inspire influential
economic, political, social, and literary theories. But the
Manifesto is most valuable as an historical document, one that led
to the greatest political upheaveals of the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries and to the establishment of the Communist
governments that until recently ruled half the globe.
This Bantam Classic edition of The Communist Manifesto includes
Marx and Engels's historic 1872 and 1882 prefaces, and Engels's
notes and prefaces to the 1883 and 1888 editions.
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.
Each of these delightful interconnected tales is devoted to a family living in a fertile valley on the outskirts of Monterey, California, and the effects that one particular family has on them all. Steinbeck tackles two important literary traditions here; American naturalism, with its focus on the conflict between natural instincts and the demand to conform to society's norms, and the short story cycle. Set in the heart of 'Steinbeck land', the lush Californian valleys.
Fiction. African & African American Studies. Translated from
the Hausa by Aliyu Kamal. Beginning in the late 1980s, northern
Nigeria saw a boom in popular fiction written in the Hausa
language. Known as littattafan soyyaya ("love literature"), the
books are often inspired by Hindi films, which have been hugely
popular among Hausa speakers for decades and are primarily written
by women. They have sparked a craze among young adult readers as
well as a backlash from government censors and book-burning
conservatives. SIN IS A PUPPY THAT FOLLOWS YOU HOME is an Islamic
soap opera complete with polygamous households, virtuous women,
scheming harlots, and black magic.
Imitating the habits, chores, beliefs of the Indian culture, it is
the dominant form in texts like the Pancatantra, the Jatakas, and
the Hitopadesha. It is included at different places in the long
narratives of the Mahabharata and the Yogavasishtha, and is
disseminated in the form of the various folktales of India. This
volume explores the unique tradition of Indian fables to present a
theoretical understanding and critical analysis of the various
aspects of the Indian fable. The work studies the Indian fables
spread across various compositions in the context of the dominant
discourses of the narratives, their form and structure and their
continuing relevance. It develops an overall understanding of the
Indian fables, their philosophy, mutual relationships,
proliferation and textual scholarship. It also establishes the
chronological development of the fables, right from the earliest
utterances found in the Vedas to the epics, the PaA catantra and
Buddhist texts. It emphasises the significance of the Indian fable
as a discourse, often the narrative becoming subservient to the
fable's discursive function. This interesting study will prove
useful to scholars and students of Indology, particularly those
concerned with Indian culture and literary tradition, as well as
general readers interested in fables and stories of the Indian
tradition.
Somshuklla has a pure and undefeated poetic heart. Her poems
resonate with this quality. Her poems are not constrained due to
any so called perspective. As a river flows its own course.
Somshuklla's creativity, particularly her language, is spontaneous
and original. The most interesting thing about her which touches
the readers' mind is her poetic eye---how she observes and
interprets her world! What Somshuklla sees in the myriad moments of
daily existence, she literally transcreates those visuals. As a
reader when we read her poems, she coaxes us to share her journey
into her world. We identify ourselves with the contours she etches
through her deft interplay of words, and simultaneously we feel
that she has compelled
Hailed as one of the world's supreme masterpieces on the subject of
death and dying, The Death of Ivan Ilyich is the story of a worldly
careerist, a high court judge who has never given the inevitability
of his death so much as a passing thought. But one day death
announces itself to him, and to his shocked surprise he is brought
face to face with his own mortality. How, Tolstoy asks, does an
unreflective man confront his one and only moment of truth?
This short novel was the artistic culmination of a profound
spiritual crisis in Tolstoy's life, a nine-year period following
the publication of Anna Karenina during which he wrote not a word
of fiction. A thoroughly absorbing and, at times, terrifying
glimpse into the abyss of death, it is also a strong testament to
the possibility of finding spiritual salvation.
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