Download or read book Laughter in Ancient Rome written by Mary Beard and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2024-03-05 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What made the Romans laugh? Was ancient Rome a carnival, filled with practical jokes and hearty chuckles? Or was it a carefully regulated culture in which the uncontrollable excess of laughter was a force to fear—a world of wit, irony, and knowing smiles? How did Romans make sense of laughter? What role did it play in the world of the law courts, the imperial palace, or the spectacles of the arena? Laughter in Ancient Rome explores one of the most intriguing, but also trickiest, of historical subjects. Drawing on a wide range of Roman writing—from essays on rhetoric to a surviving Roman joke book—Mary Beard tracks down the giggles, smirks, and guffaws of the ancient Romans themselves. From ancient “monkey business” to the role of a chuckle in a culture of tyranny, she explores Roman humor from the hilarious, to the momentous, to the surprising. But she also reflects on even bigger historical questions. What kind of history of laughter can we possibly tell? Can we ever really “get” the Romans’ jokes?

Download or read book That Reminds Me of a Story written by Barry Fireman and published by Fulton Books, Inc.. This book was released on 2022-03-14 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These short stories started as only-one story, which was an episode that took place when the author was a child in first grade. But as life would have it, many episodes just happened. The single-story became two stories, and then when an interesting episode would happen, the little group of stories grew and grew. Friends and family who have read them have encouraged the author to put them into a collection and have them published. So here it is. Enjoy!

Download or read book Unity in Variety written by Anna Harwell Celenza and published by Hollitzer Wissenschaftsverlag. This book was released on 2024-11-06 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Festschrift celebrates the great Mendelssohn scholar R. Larry Todd, Arts & Sciences Professor at Duke University, whose dedication to, study of, and mentorship in 19th-century music has shaped two generations of musicological study. Encompassing former/current students and colleagues, the contributing authors to this book investigate the life and work of the Mendelssohns, their circle, and issues of reception history; Beethoven and piano-related studies; and special musical relationships. The book's title references a famous quote by Felix Mendelssohn: "The essence of the beautiful is unity in variety." It also acknowledges the thematic diversity of this volume and the unifying effect that Todd's outstanding monographs on Felix and Fanny have had on a variety of musicians and scholars.

Download or read book Samuel Beckett written by Jennifer Birkett and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-06-11 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bringing together seminal writings on Beckett from the 1950s and 1960s with critical readings from the 1980s and 1990s, this collection is inspired by a wide variety of literary-theoretical approaches and covers the whole range of Beckett's creative work. Following an up-to-date review and analysis of Beckett criticism, fifteen extracts of Beckett criticism are introduced and set in context by editors' headnotes. The book aims to make easily accessible to students and scholars stimulating and innovative writing on the work of Samuel Beckett, representing the wide range of new perspectives opened up by contemporary critical theory: philosophical, political and psychoanalytic criticism, feminist and gender studies, semiotics, and reception theory.

Download or read book The Stability of Laughter written by James Nikopoulos and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-12-17 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A "sad and corrupt" age, a period of "crisis" and "upheaval"—what T.S. Eliot famously summed up as "the panorama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary history." Modernism has always been characterized by its self-conscious sense of suffering. Why, then, was it so obsessed with laughter? From Baudelaire, Nietzsche, Bergson and Freud to Pirandello, Beckett, Hughes, Barnes, and Joyce, no moment in cultural history has written about laughter this much. James Nikopoulos investigates modernity’s paradoxical relationship with mirth. Why was the gesture we conventionally associate with happiness deemed the only sensible way of responding to a world, as Max Weber wrote, that had been "disenchanted of its gods?" In answering these questions, Nikopoulos also delves into our ongoing relationship with laughter. He looks to contemporary research in emotion and evolutionary theory, as well as to the two-thousand-plus-year history of the philosophy of humor, in order to propose a novel way of understanding laughter, humor, and their complicated relationships with modern life. The Stability of Laughter explores how art unsettles the simplifications we revert to in our attempts to make sense of human history and social interaction.

Download or read book Inked Chaos written by M. J. Grace and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2015-05-19 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After a bad divorce, Jorgi's self-preservation has built a wall. A wall that subconsciously she uses to let no one get close to her or she to them. That is until the handsome tattooed AJ Lewis "rock star" with the band 'Inked Chaos' comes into her life. Can he break through her insecurities with his forthright manner? Or will Jorgi be too scared to let herself be freed from her self-inflicted isolation?

Download or read book Finding the Light in Cancer s Shadow written by Lynn Eib and published by Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.. This book was released on 2006 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Author and cancer patient advocate Lynn Eib, a colon cancer survivor, draws on her own experiences, the wisdom of Scripture, and the stories of others who battled cancer, to help survivors and their loved ones deal with their fears, their moods, their questions, and more.

Download or read book A Collection of Newspaper Extracts written by and published by . This book was released on 1839 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Changing Styles in Shakespeare written by Ralph Berry and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-10-16 with total page 135 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1981. Each of Shakespeare's plays is in a continuous state of development in performance. This book examines major changes whilst focusing on six plays in detail: Coriolanus, Measure for Measure, Troilus and Cressida, Henry V, Hamlet and Twelfth Night. Changing Styles in Shakespeare looks at representative and key productions to trace the evolution of each play on today's stage, illustrating how production changes relate to a changed perception of the play, and thus to shifts in social attitudes. It singles out the salient features of many productions, paying special attention to reviews and prompt books.

Download or read book Laughter on My Path written by Ann Lowrance Allman, Ed.D. and published by WestBow Press. This book was released on 2014-04 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Laughter on My Path is the memoir of a medical school professor's fun-loving, pet-collecting, musical daughter. She wanted a more normal life and career apart from studying human brains on the kitchen table, being introduced to cadavers, and facing puberty with Gray's Anatomy. Still terribly naïve, she married the wrong man, who later became her brother-in-law and their boys' "Uncle Dad." As Ann Hamilton in this first marriage, she began teaching Spanish. When she became Joplin High School's dean of girls, she realized she must be both administrator and counselor to solve students' problems. Later, she married Joplin's entertaining school superintendent, Dr. Jack Allman. Soon they served as educators in Buenos Aires, where she made colorful mistakes using Mexican Spanish. Then they re-entered the States to stir up three more school systems.

Download or read book A Tournament of Misfits written by Aldo Palazzeschi and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2005-12-15 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Aldo Palazzeschi (1885-1974) is arguably the major twentieth-century Italian writer who has been most neglected by the English-speaking world. Born in Florence and trained as an actor, Palazzeschi ranks high as a poet and fiction writer in his homeland. His work, which attempts to recreate the experience of a spectator watching and listening to a character on stage, won him the praise of F.T. Marinetti, the founder of Italian futurism, who enrolled the young poet in his avant-garde coterie despite the fact that, stylistically, Palazzeschi's work had little in common with futurism. A Tournament of Misfits brings together a selection of Palazzeschi's short fiction for the first time in English. Through clear and fluid translations, Nicolas J. Perella demonstrates Palazzeschi's use of laughter to debunk social and literary myths. As a social being, Palazzeschi felt himself a deviant, but he was saved from a self-destructive bitterness by his capacity for irony, which he often directed at himself as well as at others. Yet, it would be a mistake not to see the desperate yearning for liberation from society’s rigid code behind the irony and the fun in Palazzeschi's work. With this translation, Perella brings Palazzeschi to life for a new audience to appreciate.

Download or read book The Wise King written by Simon R. Doubleday and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2015-12-01 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An illuminating biography of Alfonso X, the 13th-century philosopher-king whose affinity for Islamic culture left an indelible mark on Western civilization "If I had been present at the Creation," the thirteenth-century Spanish philosopher-king Alfonso X is said to have stated, "Many faults in the universe would have been avoided." Known as El Sabio, "the Wise," Alfonso was renowned by friends and enemies alike for his sparkling intellect and extraordinary cultural achievements. In The Wise King, celebrated historian Simon R. Doubleday traces the story of the king's life and times, leading us deep into his emotional world and showing how his intense admiration for Spain's rich Islamic culture paved the way for the European Renaissance. In 1252, when Alfonso replaced his more militaristic father on the throne of Castile and Leóthe battle to reconquer Muslim territory on the Iberian Peninsula was raging fiercely. But even as he led his Christian soldiers onto the battlefield, Alfonso was seduced by the glories of Muslim Spain. His engagement with the Arabic-speaking culture of the South shaped his pursuit of astronomy, for which he was famed for centuries, and his profoundly humane vision of the world, which Dante, Petrarch, and later Italian humanists would inherit. A composer of lyric verses, and patron of works on board games, hunting, and the properties of stones, Alfonso is best known today for his Cantigas de Santa Marí/i> (Songs of Holy Mary), which offer a remarkable window onto his world. His ongoing struggles as a king and as a man were distilled-in art, music, literature, and architecture-into something sublime that speaks to us powerfully across the centuries. An intimate biography of the Spanish ruler in whom two cultures converged, The Wise King introduces readers to a Renaissance man before his time, whose creative energy in the face of personal turmoil and existential threats to his kingdom would transform the course of Western history.

Download or read book Custodian of the Spirits written by Bronwyn Long Borne and published by The Wild Rose Press Inc. This book was released on 2020-02-05 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Left penniless after her husband's death, Fiona Lenihan and her two children set out for California in search of a fresh start. Ten years ago Fiona fled the Irish Potato Famine. She has crossed an ocean, so why not a continent? Kier Moran is a loner with a reputation for being the best tracker, best shot, and best guide. As a favor to his aging parents, he is leading their wagon train West, to the Santa Clara Valley, known as the Valley of Heart's Delight. Kier intends to deliver his parents safely to California then resume life under the sun and stars. But meeting Fiona Lenihan threatens his simple plan.

Download or read book Midsummer Night written by Freda Warrington and published by Jabberwocky Literary Agency, Inc.. This book was released on 2020-01-23 with total page 587 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the the American Library Association’s Top Ten Fantasy and SF Novels of 2010. A sensuous, suspenseful modern fantasy of love, betrayal, and redemption. An “Aetherial Tales” novel that can be read as a standalone, Freda Warrington’s Midsummer Night is a powerful contemporary fantasy, beginning with a prank that turns lethal when supernatural forces are unwittingly set loose. A century may not be enough to undo the terrible consequences of one fateful night’s mischief. Decades ago, at the remote Cairndonan estate on a storm-lashed coastline where the veil between our world and the Aetherial realm is thin, Juliana Flagg’s uncle – a young man called Adam – vanished in mysterious circumstances. Now Dame Juliana, a visionary artist, has inherited Cairndonan where she sculpts and runs a summer art school. However, all is not well, as she is plagued by ghosts, money troubles and her sinister ex-husband. A young athlete named Gill arrives to rent a cottage on the estate, in order to escape her own problems; a monstrous betrayal and an accident have destroyed her Olympic hopes. Now all Gill wants is solitude, but soon she’s entangled with the mischievous, flamboyant artist Peta, the creepy manservant Ned Badger and other residents of the great house – not least Juliana herself. One day Gill wanders into a strange village called Boundry that appears on no map. There she meets the seductive Rufus and his equally attractive but silent, brooding companion, Leith. The encounter leaves her unsettled. Soon after, during a violent storm, Leith comes through the portal in a state of distress and begs shelter at Gill’s cottage. Though he can explain nothing of his past, his innocence and charm capture her heart. But Leith becomes the focus of increasingly vicious arguments among the estate’s residents. Who is he – and who is the charismatic, cruel Rufus who claims to be his brother? Are these two young men as innocent as they seem – or are they poised to visit vengeance, death and heartbreak upon the human world? Gill, aided by Peta, stumbles into ever-greater danger as she tries to untangle the mysteries of Cairndonan’s past. But only when Dame Juliana finally dares to reveal Midsummer Night – the sinister, haunted sculpture to which she’s devoted years of her life – will the full storm break loose at last. A magical, romantic and suspenseful story filled with intrigue and adventure, Midsummer Night is a “moody and spine-shivering” (Publishers Weekly) follow up to Elfland, which won the Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Award for “Best Fantasy Novel of 2009.” This standalone novel will appeal to readers of urban and modern fantasy and grab the attention of fans who love dark and sinister tales. Praise for Midsummer Night “Warrington doesn’t miss a beat with this sinister, ghostly tale of some of the darker aspects of the Aetherial world and its denizens’ dealings with humanity.” —Publishers Weekly “Each book is a stand-alone volume and an absolute delight.” —Charles de Lint, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction “With its elegant but not over-the-top flowery prose, immersive setting, well-developed characters, natural dialogue and mystery-filled plot, it has left me eager for more Aetherial Tales.” —Fantasy Café “A powerful sense of wild landscape and strong characterization, plus a resonance of ancient magic, make Midsummer Night a truly compelling read.” —Liz Williams, author of The Ghost Sister “Delicate as gossamer, rich as darkest chocolate, Midsummer Night is a delicious, delectable, ravishing concoction of a book that fills the senses and satisfies the dreaming mind.” —Kari Sperring, author of Living With Ghosts “A sumptuous contemporary fantasy, rich with mysterious characters, romance and intrigue. Beautifully written, a delight to read.” —Justina Robson, author of Glorious Angels “One of the things that defines great fantasy is a Mythos that ‘speaks’ to the reader... In Midsummer Night, and the book in the series before it, Elfland, Freda Warrington shapes a rich Mythos. But Midsummer Night is not just a fantasy set in another world; it's also a contemporary mystery, thriller and romance. I thoroughly enjoyed it, lost myself in Freda's world quite happily for hours at a time and look forward to more.” —Storm Constantine, author of the Wraeththu Chronicles “Now let’s see why I found Midsummer Night so impressive... The plotting of the novel is superb with all the aforementioned secrets slowly revealed... This seamless integration of character back story and forward action is another major strength and Midsummer Night just flows with no narrative walls... all integrated in a tapestry.” —Fantasybookcritic.blogspot.com “Like so many British and Irish fantasy writers, Warrington writes beautiful prose with lush descriptions. She digs deep into her characters, and, as they develop, the readers learn surfaces are far different from the real people. The sculptures of Juliana form an apt metaphor for the complex personalities of both human and the Aetherials. They are different people by the end of the novel and she excels at weaving in tantalizing bits of past history to show why they act and react as they do.” —SF Revu

Download or read book Plant Speech written by Ellyn E. Hugus and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2011-10-31 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Weeks have passed since the initial events of the conflict that joined Thomas Mc-Carthy with his roommates and fellow Peace Keepers, Lisbeth Moore and Katarina Contigas, together in destiny. That time marked the beginning of a mysterious series of events the trio is now destined to repeat for lifetimes on end. Newly promoted to the rank of detective in the Chicago Police Department, Tom has landed in the middle of an ongoing FBI kidnapping investigation. Sixteen-year-old Natasha Patel has disappeared, and all eyes are now on chief suspect Nikolous Tiernay. Aware that he alone has access to the information that would rescue the young woman he has yet to meet, Tom must juggle the investigation, mastering changes in his talent with plants, and a budding relationship with Natashas aunt, Anne Morretti. Furthermore, he must protect his secret at all costs. He must not betray his identity as a Peace Keeper to the FBI. Torn in many directions by multiple allegiances, Tom ultimately realizes he will have to do far more than simply be a part of the investigation if he hopes to locate either Natasha or Nikolous in timeand end the second stage of the conflict of lifetimes that Lisbeth has set back into motion.

Download or read book Beckett s Creatures written by Joseph Anderton and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-05-05 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the shadow of the Holocaust, Samuel Beckett captures humanity in ruins through his debased beings and a decomposing mode of writing that strives to 'fail better'. But what might it mean to be a 'creature' or 'creaturely' in Beckett's world? In the first full-length study of the concept of the creature in Beckett's prose and drama, this book traces the suspended lives and melancholic existences of Beckett's ignorant and impotent creatures to assess the extent to which political value marks the divide between human and inhuman. Through close readings of Beckett's prose and drama, particularly texts from the middle period, including Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable, Waiting for Godot and Endgame, Anderton explicates four arenas of creaturely life in Beckett. Each chapter attends to a particular theme – testimony, power, humour and survival – to analyse a range of pressures and impositions that precipitate the creaturely state of suspension. Drawing on the writings of Adorno, Agamben, Benjamin, Deleuze and Derrida to explore the overlaps between artistic and political structures of creation, the creature emerges as an in-between figure that bespeaks the provisional nature of the human. The result is a provocative examination of the indirect relationship between art and history through Beckett's treatment of testimony, power, humour and survival, which each attest to the destabilisation of meaning after Auschwitz.

Download or read book An Inch of Love an Inch of Ashes written by Leone Mary Britt and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2013-03-28 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An Inch of Love, An Inch of Ashes is the story of an anguished search by a woman for a meaningful and productive life. But how can Calinda Carruthers truly love anyone when all she knows is betrayal and abuse of trust? As a child, she longs for her father, Frankie. He deserted her mother, Hazel, when he ran off with a dancer from Bobby Le Bruns travelling tent show. Calinda's great ambition in life is to find him. By taking her to a dodgy screen test when the girl is only thirteen, Hazel sets Calinda up for a sad life. As a grownup her troubles intensify when she is referred to psychiatrist, Dr Hal Hatter, who compounds her problems.