Download or read book Curious Pleasures written by Rev'd Dr Eramus St Jude Croom DD and published by Random House. This book was released on 2012-07-31 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The best libraries in Victorian Britain kept this tome under lock and key, permitting access only to doctors and professors. Scotland Yard had a copy in their reference library, and even Sherlock Holmes may have had recourse to a copy in certain investigations. In private collections across the English speaking world, it was kept on top shelves, or safely stowed in locked cabinets, beyond the reach of minors, domestics and spouses. Any woman who gazed upon its pages was said to have fainted away. The church campaigned to have it banned and the German translation was burned at Nuremberg. Many antiquarian book sellers believe the book to have been a myth, others claimed it changed hands at enormous cost, and some are certain all original copies are now lost. But Curious Pleasures does exist and is back in print - nearly a century since it's last apocryphal edition. This encyclopaedic treasure of adult pleasures, dysfunctions and unacceptable female behaviour has been fully restored with the original illustrations intact. In modern hands, this forbidden work of scholarly madness will prove hilarious.
Download or read book Deciphering Culture written by Jane Crisp and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-07-23 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Representation, subjectivity and sexuality continue to be central to scholarly inquiry in the humanities and social sciences. Deciphering Culture explores their relationship, each author taking a distinct approach to the concept of 'curiosity' as a way of deciphering the working of particular cultural formations. In the process they address a variety of topics including: * the historical formation of subjectivities, identities and differences * cultural conduct and habits of the self * everyday cultures and negotiation * consumption and the body * memory, history and autobiography * the ethics of critical and textual inquiry. This fascinating book will appeal to students and academics from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds in the social sciences and cultural studies.
Download or read book The Tiny Book of Tiny Pleasures written by Irene Smit and published by Workman Publishing Company. This book was released on 2017-04-04 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A perfect gift book filled with whimsical, colorful illustrations, short lists, cheerful prompts, recipes, and fun facts, The Tiny Book of Tiny Pleasures is the sweetest reminder imaginable that it’s the little things in life that make us happy. Little things like sharing tea with a friend. An ice cream cone with sprinkles. Finding a forgotten item of clothing in the closet. The smell in the air right after a summer rain. Created by the editors of Flow magazine, The Tiny Book of Tiny Pleasures is a celebration of slowing down and appreciating the simple moments of life—all you have to do is take notice.
Download or read book The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction written by Alan Jacobs and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-05-26 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years, cultural commentators have sounded the alarm about the dire state of reading in America. Americans are not reading enough, they say, or reading the right books, in the right way. In this book, Alan Jacobs argues that, contrary to the doomsayers, reading is alive and well in America. There are millions of devoted readers supporting hundreds of enormous bookstores and online booksellers. Oprah's Book Club is hugely influential, and a recent NEA survey reveals an actual uptick in the reading of literary fiction. Jacobs's interactions with his students and the readers of his own books, however, suggest that many readers lack confidence; they wonder whether they are reading well, with proper focus and attentiveness, with due discretion and discernment. Many have absorbed the puritanical message that reading is, first and foremost, good for you--the intellectual equivalent of eating your Brussels sprouts. For such people, indeed for all readers, Jacobs offers some simple, powerful, and much needed advice: read at whim, read what gives you delight, and do so without shame, whether it be Stephen King or the King James Version of the Bible. In contrast to the more methodical approach of Mortimer Adler's classic How to Read a Book (1940), Jacobs offers an insightful, accessible, and playfully irreverent guide for aspiring readers. Each chapter focuses on one aspect of approaching literary fiction, poetry, or nonfiction, and the book explores everything from the invention of silent reading, reading responsively, rereading, and reading on electronic devices. Invitingly written, with equal measures of wit and erudition, The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction will appeal to all readers, whether they be novices looking for direction or old hands seeking to recapture the pleasures of reading they first experienced as children.
Download or read book Small Pleasures written by Clare Chambers and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2021-10-12 with total page 403 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the best tradition of Tessa Hadley, Kazuo Ishiguro, and Ann Patchett—an astonishing, keenly observed period piece about an ordinary British woman in the 1950s whose dutiful life takes a sudden turn into a pitched battle between propriety and unexpected passion. "With wit and dry humor...quietly affecting in unexpected ways. Chambers' language is beautiful, achieving what only the most skilled writers can: big pleasure wrought from small details."--The New York Times LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 1957: Jean Swinney is a feature writer on a local paper in the southeast suburbs of London. Clever but with limited career opportunities and on the brink of forty, Jean lives a dreary existence that includes caring for her demanding widowed mother, who rarely leaves the house. It’s a small life with little joy and no likelihood of escape. That all changes when a young woman, Gretchen Tilbury, contacts the paper to claim that her daughter is the result of a virgin birth. Jean seizes onto the bizarre story and sets out to discover whether Gretchen is a miracle or a fraud. But the more Jean investigates, the more her life becomes strangely (and not unpleasantly) intertwined with that of the Tilburys, including Gretchen’s gentle and thoughtful husband Howard, who mostly believes his wife, and their quirky and charming daughter Margaret, who becomes a sort of surrogate child for Jean. Gretchen, too, becomes a much-needed friend in an otherwise empty social life. Jean cannot bring herself to discard what seems like her one chance at happiness, even as the story that she is researching starts to send dark ripples across all their lives…with unimaginable consequences. Both a mystery and a love story, Small Pleasures is a literary tour-de-force in the style of The Remains of the Day, about conflict between personal fulfillment and duty; a novel that celebrates the beauty and potential for joy in all things plain and unfashionable.
Download or read book Moving On written by Shashi Deshpande and published by Penguin Books India. This book was released on 2008 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shashi Deshpande&Rsquo;S Novel Is About The Secret Lives Of Men And Women Who Love, Hate, Plot And Debate With An Intensity That Will Absorb Every Reader. It Is A Story That Begins, Conventionally Enough, With A Woman&Rsquo;S Discovery Of Her Father&Rsquo;S Diary. As Manjari Unlocks The Past Through Its Pages, Rescuing Old Memories And Recasting Events And Responses, The Present Makes Its Own Demands: A Rebellious Daughter, Devious Property Sharks And A Lover Who Threatens To Throw Her Life Out Of Gear Again. The Ensuing Struggle To Reconcile Nostalgia With Reality And The Fire Of The Body With The Desire For Companionship Races To An Unexpected Resolution, Twisting And Turning Through Complex Emotional Landscapes. In Moving On Shashi Deshpande Explodes The Stereotypes Of Familial Bonds With An Uncanny Insight Into The Nature Of Human Relationships And An Equally Unerring Eye For Detail.
Download or read book Poems and Plays written by William Shakespeare and published by . This book was released on 1821 with total page 562 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Plays written by William Shakespeare and published by . This book was released on 1803 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Plays of William Shakspeare written by William Shakespeare and published by . This book was released on 1802 with total page 590 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Cultural Politics in the 1790s written by A. McCann and published by Springer. This book was released on 1998-12-13 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cultural Politics in the 1790s examines the relationship between sentimental literature, political activism and the public sphere at the end of the eighteenth century. Drawing on critical theorists such as Habermas, Negt and Kluge, Marcuse and Foucault, it attempts to demonstrate how major literary and political figures of the 1790s can be read in terms of the broader dynamics of modernity. Reading a diverse range of political and literary material from the period, it examines how relationships between the aesthetic and the political, the private and the public, mark the emergence and consolidation of bourgeois behavioural norms and the simultaneous marginalization of potentially more radical forms of political and cultural production.
Download or read book Parallel Lives written by Louise Fothergill-Payne and published by Bucknell University Press. This book was released on 1991 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Parallel Lives, the contributors observe particular Spanish and English plays from the perspective of the numerous parallels and apparent similarities in the evolution of this art form in the two countries. Illustrated.
Download or read book The Chicago of Europe and Other Tales of Foreign Travel written by Mark Twain and published by Sterling Publishing Company, Inc.. This book was released on 2009 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introduction. Mark Twain's own letters from the Earth -- Part I. The Mississippi. The lure of the river -- More river thoughts -- Steam boat magic and a small town boy -- The face of the water -- Goin' to the theater in the big city (a letter from "Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass," 1856) -- Mardi-Gras in New Orleans (A letter to Pamela A. Moffett, 1859) -- A tour of New Orleans -- The scene of battle: Vicksburg -- Part II. The West. "Roughing it" lecture -- Among the miners -- The killing of Julius Caesar "localized" -- A trip to Tahoe -- Off for San Francisco -- A San Francisco day trip -- San Francisco weather and other natural events -- Part III. Back East. Philadelphia: the first visit -- New York: the overgrown metropolis -- New York: the dreadful Russian bath -- New York: changes in the city -- New York: street people -- New York: personal ads -- Plymouth Rock and the Pilgriims -- First visit to Boston -- Boston: a modern Cretan labyrinth -- Boston antiquities --
Download or read book Fraught Decisions in Plato and Shakespeare written by Dianne Rothleder and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2020-11-17 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the reincarnation myth in Book X of Plato’s Republic, the unnamed first soul, who has lived a good life and has been rewarded in the afterlife, chooses a new life and fate, and chooses catastrophically badly. He finds himself fated to eat his own children. Despite being warned to blame only himself, he wails and blames anything and everything else in his conviction that his fate is undeserved. Though he should not be shocked because he has made this choice himself, he is incredulous because he has completely misunderstood the nature of his choice. Starting with Plato’s myth, this book looks at the errors this soul has made and considers these errors through both the Republic and a series of paired Shakespeare plays. Reading the Republic along with Othello and The Comedy of Errors, the first section focuses on the misreading of comedy and tragedy in the life of the individual; returning to the Republic and using The Merchant of Venice and Pericles, Part II focuses on the broadened context of the misuse of political and economic forces; returning again to the Republic and reading Timon of Athens and Measure for Measure, Part III focuses on the broadest context, the misunderstanding of the inseparability of birth and infinite debt. The hope of the text, and the hope of human life, is to help us avoid choosing lives that devour what we most love.
Download or read book Jurgen written by James Branch Cabell and published by Standard Ebooks. This book was released on 2020-07-13T23:04:39Z with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jurgen is James Branch Cabell’s most famous novel, and a highly influential one in the fantasy genre. The novel is a witty, parodic send-up of the ideal of courtly love. Soon after publication, its bawdy style and double-entendre-laden dialog brought it to the attention of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, who promptly attempted to prosecute it for obscenity. After some years Cabell finally won the trial, and the publicity the trial brought made the book and Cabell famous. In his revised 1922 edition (on which this ebook is based) Cabell satirizes the Society in his Foreword, where Jurgen is placed on trial by the Philistines, overseen by a giant dung beetle as prosecutor. The eponymous Jurgen is a pawnbroker and self-described “monstrous clever fellow” who, after passing by a demon and offering an offhand compliment, finds himself having regained his youth as he is launched on a magical, amorous journey. On his quest for love Jurgen meets a series of mythological and legendary characters—from Nessus the centaur, to Guinevere, to Helen of Troy, to the Lady of the Lake, and more. His wit charms all of them, though Jurgen never seems happy with whatever astonishing situation he finds himself in—whether it’s pestering the devils of hell or chatting with the creator in heaven. The novel is dense with allegory and allusion, but despite its erudition it maintains a brisk pace as puns and witticism zip by. It influenced a huge number of authors, including Fritz Leiber and Robert A. Heinlein, and was widely considered a masterpiece of its time, with personalities like Aleister Crowley proclaiming it an “epoch-making masterpiece of philosophy.” Its publication and widespread popularity and acclaim set the stage for the modern fantasy-comedy genre perfected by authors like Terry Pratchett and Piers Anthony. This book is part of the Standard Ebooks project, which produces free public domain ebooks.
Download or read book Chaste Value written by Katherine Gillen and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2017-06-09 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chaste Value reassesses chastity's significance in early modern drama, arguing that presentations of chastity inform the stage's production of early capitalist subjectivity and social difference. Plays invoke chastity-itself a quasi-commodity-to interrogate the relationship between personal and economic value. Through chastity discourse, the stage disrupts pre-capitalist ideas of intrinsic value while also reallocating such value according to emerging hierarchies of gender, race, class, and nationality. Chastity, therefore, emerges as a central category within early articulations of humanity, determining who possesses intrinsic value and, conversely, whose bodies and labor can be incorporated into market exchange.
Download or read book Shaping Remembrance from Shakespeare to Milton written by Patricia Phillippy and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-06-14 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Whether situated in churches or circulating in more flexible, mobile works - manuscript or printed texts, jewels or rosaries, personal bequests or antique 'rarities' - monuments were ubiquitous in post-Reformation England. In this period of religious change, the unsettled meanings of sacred sites and artifacts encouraged a new conception of remembrance and, with it, changed relationships between devotional and secular writings, arts, and identities. Beginning in the parish church, Shaping Remembrance from Shakespeare to Milton moves beyond that space to see remembrance as shaping dynamic systems within which early modern men and women experienced loss and recollection. Removing monuments from parochial or antiquarian concerns, this study re-imagines them as pervasively involved with other commemorative works, not least the writings of our most canonical authors. These far-reaching, flexible chapters combine three critical strands - religion, materiality, and gender - to describe the arts of remembrance as material and textual remains of living webs of connection in which creators and creations are mutually involved.
Download or read book The Women of Shakespeare written by Frank Harris and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-12-22 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Frank Harris argues that the way women are presented in Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets are a reflection of the real-life women in his life, namely his wife, mother, mistress and daughter. Originally published in 1911, The Women of Shakespeare also analyses the traditional criticism of the time and places his own views in this context. This title will be of interest to students of English Literature.
