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Books > Language & Literature > Literary & linguistic reference works
Of the five major Shakespearean tragedies-Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo
and Juliet, King Lear, and Othello-King Lear is perhaps the most
challenging. Issues of rulership, family and blood, are overlaid
with bastardy, loyalty, lust, and deceit. Add to this the
apparently gratuitous on-stage blinding of Gloucester, the deaths
of Cordelia, Lear, Gloucester, and Kent, and one might be inclined
to agree with Samuel Johnson that "The good suffer more than the
evil, that love and suffering, in this play, are almost
interchangeable terms and the driving force of the action is
derived from the power of the evil to inflict mental agony upon the
good" (quoted in Kermode, 505). However, one would be mistaken to
accept wholeheartedly the happy endings of the eighteenth and
nineteenth century revisionists. While the pleasant ending would
certainly ease the sensibilities of the audience, it would omit the
Aristotlean concepts of hamartia and the purgation of fear and pity
attendant upon actually witnessing Shakespeare's King Lear, the
necessary catharsis, a possible scapegoat for our own emotions. Of
course, the ending is to some extent unpleasant and even shocking;
however, one can argue that the ending is organic to the play; the
ending IS, to a great extent, the play.
Melville's Other Lives is the first book-length study on The Piazza
Tales-Herman Melville's only authorized collection of short fiction
published in his lifetime-and the first book to explore the rich
and varied subject of embodiment in any published collection of
Melville's stories. As Christopher Sten shows, all of the stories
in The Piazza Tales present encounters between established white
male figures: a writer, a lawyer, a ship captain, a homeowner, an
architect, a world traveler, and characters who are outsiders,
minorities, outcasts, or "others": a seamstress, an office drudge,
enslaved Africans, a traveling salesman, island castaways, the
poor. In each, Melville concentrates on the trials of the human
body, its pain and trauma, its struggles and frustrations. Some
tales concern common trials such as illness or invalidism ("The
Piazza"), the tedium of office work ("Bartleby"), or the
aggravation of door-to-door salesmen ("The Lightning-Rod Man").
Others concern extraordinary trials: the traumatic violence of a
rebellion on a slave ship ("Benito Cereno"), the hardships of
surviving on a wasteland archipelago ("The Encantadas"), the perils
of creating a monstrous "man-machine" ("The Bell-Tower"). In their
concern for the cultural meanings of such trials, Melville's
stories look forward to the work of Michel Foucault, Raymond
Williams, and other cultural materialists who have shown how
cultures define, control, and oppress bodies based on their
otherness. As a storyteller, Melville understood how such cultural
dynamics operate and seized on our collective obsession with the
human body as subject, symbol, and vehicle to dramatize his tales.
Contributes to the history of Middle Eastern narrative lore and its
impact on Western tradition.
Understanding an epic story's key belief patterns can reveal
community-level values, the nature of familial bonds, and how
divine and human concerns jockey for power and influence. These
foundational motifs remain understudied as they relate to South
Asian folk legends, but are nonetheless crucial in shaping the
values exemplified by such stories' central heroes and heroines. In
Hidden Paradigms, anthropologist Brenda E.F. Beck describes The
Legend of Ponnivala, an oral epic from rural South India. Recorded
in 1965, this story was sung to a group of village enthusiasts by a
respected pair of local bards. This grand legend took more than 38
hours to complete over 18 nights. Bringing this unique example of
Tamil culture to the attention of an international audience, Beck
compares this virtually unknown South Indian epic to five other
culturally significant works - the Ojibwa Nanabush cycle, the
Mahabharata, an Icelandic Saga, the Bible, and the Epic of
Gilgamesh - establishing this foundational Tamil story as one that
engages with the same universal human struggles and themes present
throughout the world. Copiously illustrated, Hidden Paradigms
provides a fresh example of the power of comparative thinking,
offering a humanistic complement to scientific reasoning.
En cu ntas ocasiones te has preguntado: Puedo ser poeta? C mo
lograrlo? Ser sencillo o complicado? ..".me gust mucho hacer poes
a, es muy lindo porque puedes expresarte y a la misma vez hacer
arte." TESTIMONIO 1 "Se me hace una forma muy bonita de expresarse
y de ense arnos a hacer poes a...." TESTIMONIO 2 "Fue una bonita
experiencia, el inspirarme y dejar fluir mis sentimientos de amor y
tristeza...." TESTIMONIO 3 "Me gust la manera en que explica la
forma de hacer una d cima y como lo detalla...yo no sab a y pens
que no podr a." TESTIMONIO 4 La poes a es creaci n porque a trav s
de ella logras que cobren vida tus emociones, pasiones, vivencias
que deleitan tus sentidos y despiertan tu sensibilidad, te permite
plasmar tus momentos de alegr a, de locura, de amores truncados, de
fantas as, etc. Para ser poeta s lo necesitas un l piz, un pedazo
de papel o tu procesador de textos y apoyarte con la t cnica para
escribir. En este libro encontrar s consejos a trav s de una t
cnica sencilla para elaborar tus poes as en "d cima espinela," una
forma f cil para compartir la verdad de tu ser a compa eros,
familiares, amigos, alumnos, etc.
Andre and Madeleine have been in love for over fifty years. This
weekend, as their daughters visit, something feels unusual. A bunch
of flowers arrive, but who sent them? A woman from the past turns
up, but who is she? And why does Andre feel like he isn't there at
all? Christopher Hampton's translation of Florian Zeller's The
Height of the Storm was first performed at Richmond Theatre,
London, and opened in the West End at Wyndham's Theatre in October
2018.
This book documents modern Baba Malay, a critically endangered
Austronesian-based contact language with a Sinitic substrate.
Formed via intermarriage between Hokkien-speaking male traders and
indigenous women in the Malay Peninsula, the language has less than
1,000 speakers in Singapore and less than 1,000 speakers in
Malacca, Malaysia. This volume fills a gap for reference grammars
of contact languages in general. Reference grammars written on
contact languages are rare, and much rarer is a reference grammar
written about a critically endangered Austronesian-based contact
language. The reference grammar, which aims to be useful to
linguists and general readers interested in Baba Malay, describes
the language's sociohistorical background, its circumstances of
endangerment, and provides information regarding the phonology,
parts of speech, and syntax of Baba Malay as spoken in Singapore. A
chapter that differentiates this variety from that spoken in
Malacca is also included. The grammar demonstrates that the nature
of Baba Malay is highly systematic, and not altogether simple,
providing structural information for those who are interested in
the typology of contact languages.
This unique collection of data includes concise definitions and
explanations relating to all aspects of the European Union. It
explains the terminology surrounding the EU, and outlines the roles
and significance of its institutions, member countries, foreign
relations, programmes and policies, treaties and personalities. It
contains over 1,000 clear and succinct definitions and explains
acronyms and abbreviations, which are arranged alphabetically and
fully cross-referenced. Among the 1,000 entries you can find
explanations of and background details on: ACP states Article 50
Brexit competition policy Donald Tusk the European Maritime and
Fisheries Fund the euro Greece Jean-Claude Juncker Europol
migration and asylum policy the Schengen Agreement the Single
Supervisory Mechanism the single rulebook the Treaty of Lisbon
Ukraine
This book explains the emotion concepts of the Ibans, one of the
indigenous peoples in Sarawak, Malaysia. It is an outcome of a
research study, which aims to analyse the Iban emotion concepts
utilizing Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM), an analytical tool
developed by Anna Wierzbicka (1991), and the concrete/abstract
cultural continuum framework, a framework introduced by J. Vin
D'Cruz and G. Tham (1993), and later, J. Vin D'Cruz and William
Steele (2000). NSM enables emotion terminologies in Iban to be
explicated and further defined along the concrete/abstract cultural
continuum framework. The respondents of this study were the village
community of Sbangki Panjai, a longhouse located in Lubok Antu,
Sarawak. The findings reveal the core cultural values that underlie
the people's behaviours in the ways they express their emotions.
The complex 'rules of logic' called "adat" and the rules of
speaking in this speech community are discussed in detail in this
book, which explain the Ibans' communicative behaviours. Although
the semantic analysis of the emotion words is exhaustive and
comprehensive, it is necessary in order to reveal the complete
meaning of the emotions being examined without creating
ethnocentric bias. Thus, this book essentially describes how the
Ibans relate themselves to others in their interaction.
Atong is a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in Northeast India and
Bangladesh. Seino van Breugel provides a deep and thorough coverage
and analysis of all major areas of the grammar, which makes this
book of great interest and value to general linguists and
typologists as well as area specialists. Alongside an Atong-English
dictionary and five fully-glossed Atong texts recorded during
extensive fieldwork, this work also provides a sizable
ethnolinguistic introduction to the speakers and their culture. Of
particular interest is the pragmatic approach taken for the
grammatical analysis. Whereas the form of an utterance provides
some clue as to its possible meaning, inference is always needed to
arrive at the most relevant interpretation within the context in
which the utterance occurs. "This is a very important book for
South Asian and Sino-Tibetan linguistic scholarship. Of the 200
languages of Northeast India, only a handful have been documented;
the present work brings the number of full-scale modern grammars
for these languages to six. Thus it represents a unique and
extremely valuable contribution." Professor Scott DeLancey
University of Oregon "This is a solid academic work which makes a
huge contribution to the field. There is no other detailed account
of this particular language, and it is highly doubtful that anyone
will write something more comprehensive in the future." Dr Willem
de Reuse University of North Texas
In the 1990s federal laws were created to encourage the teaching
and speaking of American Indian languages. The "Dictionary of
Jicarilla Apache," developed within the auspices of the Jicarilla
Apache Nation Cultural Preservation Program with support from the
Jicarilla Apache Nation Tribal Council and funding from the
National Science Foundation, provides documentation of Jicarilla
Apache, an Eastern Apachean language, and is intended to provide
the basis for classroom and home teaching of the language. This is
the first large-scale dictionary of any of the Eastern Apachean
languages.
The editors are scholars specializing in Native American
languages who worked with Wilhelmina Phone, Maureen Olson, and
Matilda Martinez, native Jicarilla speakers. Together they created
this dictionary, which will be a valuable teaching and learning
tool for instructing children and young adults in the Jicarilla
Apache community who otherwise have no sustained contact with their
heritage language. Today there are fewer than three hundred native
speakers of Jicarilla Apache, and the majority of them are elderly.
The school-age population is in the hundreds and this dictionary
has been specifically developed to support language learning in
their schools. Other Apachean peoples, as well as linguists and
anthropologists, will find the dictionary useful as well.
Included here are over five thousand entries organized both
alphabetically and by semantic field. The "Dictionary" also
includes a grammatical sketch of the language and a guide to using
the dictionary, in addition to the Jicarilla Apache to English
dictionary, an English to Jicarilla index, and a lexicon organized
according to semantic domainssuch as plants, animals, household
items, etc., and for nouns and for verbs and semantic and
grammatical groupings such as descriptions, activities, and motion
verbs.
Peculiar Whiteness: Racial Anxiety and Poor Whites in Southern
Literature, 1900-1965 argues for deeper consideration of the
complexities surrounding the disparate treatment of poor whites
throughout southern literature and attests to how broad such
experiences have been. While the history of prejudice against this
group is not the same as the legacy of violence perpetrated against
people of color in America, individuals regarded as ""white trash""
have suffered a dehumanizing process in the writings of various
white authors. Poor white characters are frequently maligned as
grotesque and anxiety inducing, especially when they are aligned in
close proximity to blacks or to people with disabilities. Thus, as
a symbol, much has been asked of poor whites, and various
iterations of the label (e.g., ""white trash,"" tenant farmers, or
even people with a little less money than average) have been
subject to a broad spectrum of judgment, pity, compassion, fear,
and anxiety. Peculiar Whiteness engages key issues in contemporary
critical race studies, whiteness studies, and southern studies,
both literary and historical. Through discussions of authors
including Charles Chesnutt, Thomas Dixon, Sutton Griggs, Erskine
Caldwell, Lillian Smith, William Faulkner, and Flannery O'Connor,
we see how whites in a position of power work to maintain their
status, often by finding ways to recategorize and marginalize
people who might not otherwise have seemed to fall under the
auspices or boundaries of ""white trash.
The Dark Tower series is the backbone of Stephen King's legendary
career. Eight books and more than three thousand pages make up this
bestselling fantasy epic. This revised and updated concordance,
incorporating the 2012 Dark Tower novel The Wind Through the
Keyhole, is the definitive encyclopedic reference book that
provides readers with everything they need to navigate their way
through the series. With hundreds of characters, Mid-World
geography, High Speech lexicon, and extensive cross-references,
this comprehensive handbook is essential for any Dark Tower fan.
Includes:
Characters and Genealogies
Magical Objects and Forces
Mid-World and Our World Places
Portals and Magical Places
Mid-, End-, and Our World Maps
Timeline for the Dark Tower Series
Mid-World Dialects
Mid-World Rhymes, Songs, and Prayers
Political and Cultural References
References to Stephen King's Own Work
This volume of fourteen interviews covers the prolific and rich
career of author Jerome Charyn (b. 1937). Four of the interviews
appear in English for the first time, and two interviews appear
here in print for the first time as well. As one of his
autobiographical volumes claims, Jerome Charyn is a ""Bronx Boy,""
a child born from immigrant parents who went through Ellis Island
in the 1920s like so many other travelers without luggage, a
""little werewolf"" who grew up on his own in the chaos of the
Bronx ghetto. ""I think I was defined by two things: World War Two
and the movies."" His work remains deeply marked by this childhood
largely forgotten by the American Dream. If Charyn has spent much
of his life in Paris, he has paradoxically never left the Bronx:
""'El Bronx' is there inside my head, and I revisit it the way
Hemingway would fish the Big Two-Hearted River in his dreams."" His
whole work is a long attempt at evoking his own history and
celebrating his lifelong marveling at the power of language--""our
second skin""--as well as his deep, unflinching belief in the
promises of fiction. Since 1964, Charyn has published more than
fifty books ranging from fiction to nonfiction and including short
stories, very popular crime novels, graphic novels co-written with
European artists, essays on American culture and cinema as well as
on New York, autobiography and biography--an ever-changing
production that has made it difficult for critics to classify him.
And yet in many ways Charyn's writing thrives on constant currents:
the words ""voice,"" ""song,"" ""undersong,"" or ""rhythm"" return
frequently in his interviews as he explains what literature is to
him and ceaselessly asserts that he is trying ""to find a music for
a musicless world,"" a language for ""people who cannot speak.""
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