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The Drowned Muse is a study of the extraordinary destiny, in the history of European culture, of an object which could seem, at first glance, quite ordinary in the history of European culture. It tells the story of a mask, the cast of a young girl's face entitled "L'Inconnue de la Seine," the Unknown Woman of the Seine, and its subsequent metamorphoses as a cultural figure. Legend has it that the "Inconnue" drowned herself in Paris at the end of the nineteenth century. The forensic scientist tending to her unidentified corpse at the Paris Morgue was supposedly so struck by her allure that he captured in plaster the contours of her face. This unknown girl, also referred to as "The Mona Lisa o...
Literature is one of the richest sources of information concerning the ways in which human beings play with cognition. Human cognition is grounded in the ability to feel, perceive, and move. Kinesic Humor examines literary works written in different languages and various historical periods, in which the cognitive processing of gestures and kinesic interactions trigger humorous effects. By bringing together literary studies, cognitive studies, gesture studies, and humor studies, this book offers an original perspective on literary artworks such as Chrétien de Troyes' Yvain, Milton's Paradise Lost, Cervantes' Don Quixote, Rousseau's Confessions, Sterne's Tristram Shandy, and Stendhal's Le Rouge et le Noir.^N
This is the first comprehensive study in any language of anagnorisis (recognition) - one of the least familiar terms in Aristotelian poetics, yet used to describe one of the most familiar features of drama and narrative fiction. The book traces the history of the term 'anagnorisis' and explores some of the ways in which it continues to be of value as a focus for theoretical reflection. Then, in a series of critical essays, the author analyses examples of recognition plots drawn from French, German, and English literature,including Corneille, Racine and Goethe, Shakespeare, James, and Conrad. Examined thus from many angles, recognition can at last been seen to deserve its place in the limelight, as a topic of the first importance, perhaps the most strictly literary of all topics in poetics. The book is aimed at a very wide readership, with English translations provided for quotations where necessary.
"Terence Cave's work has made a major contribution to the rethinking of the relationship between literature, history and culture over the last half-century. Retrospectives brings together substantially revised versions of studies written since 1970: together they constitute a searching methodological investigation of the practice of reading past texts. How do our ways of reading such texts compare with those practised in the periods when they were written? How do we distinguish between what a text meant in its own time and what it has come to mean over time? And how might reading provide access to past experiences? The book's epicentre is early modern French culture, but it extends to that culture's ancient Greek and Roman models, its European contexts, and the afterlives of some of its themes, from Pascal via George Eliot to Angela Carter."
After outlining a general perspective of the work of the interdisciplinary Balzan research project 'Literature as an Object of Knowledge' (St John's College Research Centre, Oxford, 2010-13), this eminent scholar considers some of the problems encountered, in particular the relation between literary study and cognitive science.
This book presents an interpretation of Maurice Scève’s lyric sequence Délie, object de plus haulte vertu (Lyon, 1544) in literary relation to the Vita nuova, Commedia, and other works of Dante Alighieri. Dante’s subtle influence on Scève is elucidated in depth for the first time, augmenting the allusions in Délie to the Canzoniere of Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca). Scève’s sequence of dense, epigrammatic dizains is considered to be an early example, prior to the Pléiade poets, of French Renaissance imitation of Petrarch’s vernacular poetry, in a time when imitatio was an established literary practice, signifying the poet’s participation in a tradition. While the Canzoniere is an important source for Scève’s Délie, both works are part of a poetic lineage that includes Occitan troubadours, Guinizzelli, Cavalcanti, and Dante. The book situates Dante as a relevant predecessor and source for Scève, and examines anew the Petrarchan label for Délie. Compelling poetic affinities emerge between Dante and Scève that do not correlate with Petrarch.
Provides a reflection on the relations between nature and culture as manifested by literary artefacts, and reframes literary study as a form of cognitive anthropology and archaeology.
To speak of 'thinking with literature' is to make the assumption that literature (in the broadest sense) is neither a side-show nor a side-issue in human cultures: it belongs to the spectrum of imaginative modes that includes both philosophical and scientific thought. Whether one regards it as a practice or as an archive, literature is highly pervasive, robust, enduring, and pregnant with values. Thinking with Literature argues that what it affords above all is a way of thinking, whether for writer, reader, or critic. Literature constitutes one of the prime instruments of cultural improvisation; it is the embodiment of a powerful, inventive, and ever-changing cognitive agency. As such, it in...
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For Frederick the Great, the prescription for warfare was simple: kurz und vives (short and lively) - wars that relied upon swift, powerful, and decisive military operations. Robert Citino takes us on a dramatic march through Prussian and German military history to show how that primal theme played out time and time again. Citino focuses on operational warfare to demonstrate continuity in German military campaigns from the time of Elector Frederick Wilhelm and his great sleigh-drive against the Swedes to the age of Adolf Hitler and the blitzkrieg to the gates of Moscow. Along the way, he underscores the role played by the Prussian army in elevating a small, vulnerable state to the ranks of the European powers, describes how nineteenth-century victories over Austria and France made the German army the most respected in Europe, and reviews the lessons learned from the trenches of World War I.