Download or read book The Grounds of English Literature written by Christopher Cannon and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2004-12-09 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The centuries just after the Norman Conquest are the forgotten period of English literary history. In fact, the years 1066-1300 witnessed an unparalleled ingenuity in the creation of written forms, for this was a time when almost every writer was unaware of the existence of other English writing. In a series of detailed readings of the more important early Middle English works, Cannon shows how the many and varied texts of the period laid the foundations for the project of English literature. This richness is for the first time given credit in these readings by means of an innovative theory of literary form that accepts every written shape as itself a unique contribution to the history of ideas. This theory also suggests that the impoverished understanding of literature we now commonly employ is itself a legacy of this early period, an attribute of the single form we have learned to call 'romance'. A number of reading methods have lately taught us to be more generous in our understandings of what literature might be, but this book shows us that the very variety we now strive to embrace anew actually formed the grounds of English literature-a richness we only lost when we forgot how to recognize it.
Download or read book Ground Work written by Hillary Eklund and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2017-03-21 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How does soil, as an ecological element, shape culture? With the sixteenth-century shift in England from an agrarian economy to a trade economy, what changes do we see in representations of soil as reflected in the language and stories during that time? This collection brings focused scholarly attention to conceptions of soil in the early modern period, both as a symbol and as a feature of the physical world, aiming to correct faulty assumptions that cloud our understanding of early modern ecological thought: that natural resources were then poorly understood and recklessly managed, and that cultural practices developed in an adversarial relationship with natural processes. Moreover, these essays elucidate the links between humans and the lands they inhabit, both then and now.
Download or read book Grounds of Literary Criticism written by Suresh Raval and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This sophisticated and wide-ranging look at literary criticism addresses the major theorists of today and proposes a constructive approach to challenging critical debates. Disclosing conflict as the inevitable outcome of historical change, Suresh Raval refuses the stark either-or choice between the foundationalist stance, which seeks to find the right answers, and the relativist position, which denies the possibility of identifying right and wrong. Raval explores the question of conflict in literary criticism and theory by analyzing how different theories have treated key issues, not to resolve these problems but to show why they resist decisive solution.
Download or read book Literature Suppressed on Political Grounds written by Nicholas J. Karolides and published by Infobase Publishing. This book was released on 2014-05-14 with total page 639 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Literature Suppressed on Religious Grounds, Revised Edition profiles the censorship of many such essential works of literature. The entries new to this edition include extensive coverage of the Harry Potter series, which has been frequently banned in the United States on the grounds that it promotes witchcraft, as well as entries on two popular textbook series, The Witches by Roald Dahl, Women Without Men: A Novel of Modern Iran, and more. Also included are updates to such entries as The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie and On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin.
Download or read book From Literacy to Literature written by Christopher Cannon and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-10-06 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first lessons we learn in school can stay with us all our lives, but this was nowhere more true than in the last decades of the fourteenth century when grammar-school students were not only learning to read and write, but understanding, for the first time, that their mother tongue, English, was grammatical. The efflorescence of Ricardian poetry was not a direct result of this change, but it was everywhere shaped by it. This book characterizes this close connection between literacy training and literature, as it is manifest in the fine and ambitious poetry by Gower, Langland and Chaucer, at this transitional moment. This is also a book about the way medieval training in grammar (or grammatica) shaped the poetic arts in the Middle Ages fully as much as rhetorical training. It answers the curious question of what language was used to teach Latin grammar to the illiterate. It reveals, for the first time, what the surviving schoolbooks from the period actually contain. It describes what form a 'grammar school' took in a period from which no school buildings or detailed descriptions survive. And it scrutinizes the processes of elementary learning with sufficient care to show that, for the grown medieval schoolboy, well-learned books functioned, not only as a touchstone for wisdom, but as a knowledge so personal and familiar that it was equivalent to what we would now call 'experience'.
Download or read book Book from the Ground written by Bing Xu and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2018-11-06 with total page 129 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A book without words, recounting a day in the life of an office worker, told completely in the symbols, icons, and logos of modern life. Twenty years ago I made Book from the Sky, a book of illegible Chinese characters that no one could read. Now I have created Book from the Ground, a book that anyone can read. —Xu Bing Following his classic work Book from the Sky, the Chinese artist Xu Bing presents a new graphic novel—one composed entirely of symbols and icons that are universally understood. Xu Bing spent seven years gathering materials, experimenting, revising, and arranging thousands of pictograms to construct the narrative of Book from the Ground. The result is a readable story without words, an account of twenty-four hours in the life of “Mr. Black,” a typical urban white-collar worker. Our protagonist's day begins with wake-up calls from a nearby bird and his bedside alarm clock; it continues through tooth-brushing, coffee-making, TV-watching, and cat-feeding. He commutes to his job on the subway, works in his office, ponders various fast-food options for lunch, waits in line for the bathroom, daydreams, sends flowers, socializes after work, goes home, kills a mosquito, goes to bed, sleeps, and gets up the next morning to do it all over again. His day is recounted with meticulous and intimate detail, and reads like a postmodern, post-textual riff on James Joyce's account of Bloom's peregrinations in Ulysses. But Xu Bing's narrative, using an exclusively visual language, could be published anywhere, without translation or explication; anyone with experience in contemporary life—anyone who has internalized the icons and logos of modernity, from smiley faces to transit maps to menus—can understand it.
Download or read book English Literature A Very Short Introduction written by Jonathan Bate and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010-10-07 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: English Literature: A Very Short Introduction discusses why literature matters, how narrative works, and what is distinctly English about English literature. Jonathan Bate considers how we determine the content of the field, and looks at the three major kinds of imaginative literature - English poetry, English drama and The English novel.
Download or read book Literature in English written by Dominic Rainsford and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-05-19 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Literature in English: How and Why is an accessible guide for students. It deals with the fundamental concepts of literary form and genre; the history of English-language literature from the medieval period to the present; relations between the study of literature and other disciplines; literary theory; researching a topic; and writing a paper. This new edition contains a brand new chapter which takes literary theory to another level, using it to link literature to the issues that concern us most, whether in our own lives or in the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. The book has also been fully updated throughout, with significant additions to the introduction and further reading sections. Overall, Literature in English: • Grounds the study of literature throughout by referencing a selection of well-known novels, plays and poems • Examines the central questions that readers ask when confronting literary texts, and shows how these make literary theory meaningful and necessary • Links British, American and postcolonial literature into a coherent whole • Discusses film as literature and provides the basic conceptual tools needed to study film within a literature-course framework • Places particular emphasis on interdisciplinarity by examining the connections between the study of literature and other disciplines • Links literary theory to current global challenges, placing special emphasis on new and evolving approaches such as ecocriticism, new materialism and the spatial turn • Provides extensive guidance on further reading. Written in a clear and engaging style, this is an essential guide for literature students around the world.
Download or read book Mastering English Literature written by Richard Gill and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2006-07-28 with total page 560 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The third edition of this leading text provides a comprehensive guide to literary study. Emphasis has been placed on contextualizing literature and this updated version takes these changes into account by incorporating more material on historical and cultural contexts as well as in-depth discussions on novels, drama and poetry.
Download or read book A History of Old English Literature written by Robert D. Fulk and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-03-06 with total page 506 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A HISTORY OF OLD ENGLISH LITERATURE A History of Old English Literature has been significantly revised to provide an unequivocal response to the renewed historicism in medieval studies. Focusing on the production and reception of Old English texts and on their relation to Anglo-Saxon history and culture, this new edition covers an exceptionally broad array of genres. These range from riddles and cryptograms to allegory, liturgical texts, and romance, as well as lyric poetry and heroic legend. The authors also integrate discussions of Anglo-Latin texts, crucial to understanding the development of Old English literature. This second edition incorporates extensive reference to scholarship that has evolved over the past decade, with new chapters on both Anglo-Saxon manuscripts and on incidental and marginal texts. There is expanded treatment throughout, including increased coverage of legal texts and scientific and scholastic texts. The book concludes with a retrospective outline of the reception of Anglo-Saxon literature and culture in subsequent periods.
Download or read book The Fringes of Belief written by Sarah Ellenzweig and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2008-09-25 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Fringes of Belief is the first literary study of freethinking and religious skepticism in the English Enlightenment. Ellenzweig aims to redress this scholarly lacuna, arguing that a literature of English freethinking has been overlooked because it unexpectedly supported aspects of institutional religion. Analyzing works by John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, Aphra Behn, Jonathan Swift, and Alexander Pope, she foregrounds a strand of the English freethinking tradition that was suspicious of revealed religion yet often strongly opposed to the open denigration of Anglican Christianity and its laws. By exposing the contradictory and volatile status of categories like belief and doubt this book participates in the larger argument in Enlightenment studies—as well as in current scholarship on the condition of modernity more generally—-that religion is not so simply left behind in the shift from the pre-modern to the modern world.
Download or read book English Grounds written by Andrew Rumsey and published by SCM Press. This book was released on 2021-11-30 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this journal of short, lyrical reflections, Andrew Rumsey takes the reader on an exploration of faith, place and identity. Focusing on the author’s home in Wiltshire, as he arrives to take up an ancient role in a testing time, English Grounds is both an affirmation and critique of this country’s Christian heritage. Together the essays challenge us to think more deeply about the place of the Church in the consciousness of the English, and the place of England in the consciousness of the Church.
Download or read book Grounds of Engagement written by Stéphane Robolin and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2015-08-30 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Part literary history, part cultural study, Grounds of Engagement examines the relationships and exchanges between black South African and African American writers who sought to create common ground throughout the antiapartheid era. Stéphane Robolin argues that the authors' geographic imaginations crucially defined their individual interactions and, ultimately, the literary traditions on both sides of the Atlantic. Subject to the tyranny of segregation, authors such as Richard Wright, Bessie Head, Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, Keorapetse Kgositsile, Michelle Cliff, and Richard Rive charted their racialized landscapes and invented freer alternative geographies. They crafted rich representations of place to challenge the stark social and spatial arrangements that framed their lives. Those representations, Robolin contends, also articulated their desires for black transnational belonging and political solidarity. The first book to examine U.S. and South African literary exchanges in spatial terms, Grounds of Engagement identifies key moments in the understudied history of black cross-cultural exchange and exposes how geography serves as an indispensable means of shaping and reshaping modern racial meaning.
Download or read book The Politics Book written by DK and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2015-03-02 with total page 729 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Learn about how the world of government and power works in The Politics Book. Part of the fascinating Big Ideas series, this book tackles tricky topics and themes in a simple and easy to follow format. Learn about Politics in this overview guide to the subject, great for novices looking to find out more and experts wishing to refresh their knowledge alike! The Politics Book brings a fresh and vibrant take on the topic through eye-catching graphics and diagrams to immerse yourself in. This captivating book will broaden your understanding of Politics, with: - More than 100 groundbreaking ideas in the history of political thought - Packed with facts, charts, timelines and graphs to help explain core concepts - A visual approach to big subjects with striking illustrations and graphics throughout - Easy to follow text makes topics accessible for people at any level of understanding The Politics Book is a captivating introduction to the world's greatest thinkers and their political big ideas that continue to shape our lives today, aimed at adults with an interest in the subject and students wanting to gain more of an overview. Delve into the development of long-running themes, like attitudes to democracy and violence, developed by thinkers from Confucius in ancient China to Mahatma Gandhi in 20th-century India, all through exciting text and bold graphics. Your Politics Questions, Simply Explained This engaging overview explores the big political ideas such as capitalism, communism, and fascism, exploring their beginnings and social contexts - and the political thinkers who have made significant contributions. If you thought it was difficult to learn about governing bodies and affairs, The Politics Book presents key information in a clear layout. Learn about the ideas of ancient and medieval philosophers and statesmen, as well as the key personalities of the 16th to the 21st centuries that have shaped political thinking, policy, and statecraft. The Big Ideas Series With millions of copies sold worldwide, The Politics Book is part of the award-winning Big Ideas series from DK. The series uses striking graphics along with engaging writing, making big topics easy to understand.
Download or read book Smoothing the Ground written by Brian Swann and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1983 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A compilation of essays and translations in which leading scholars in the fields of linguistics, folklore, ethnopoetics and literary criticism discuss the continuing American Indian oral tradition as literature. Native Americans invested the spoken word with reverence and power, and the oral literature that resulted from the fusing of language and event into vital force is extraordinarily rich and potent. Authors such as Dell Hymes, Karl Kroeber, Dennis Tedlock, Jarold Ramsey and John Bierhorst address the many aspects of the study of this literature, from the problem of translation and of the role of the literary critic to the interpretation of specific stories. ISBN 0-520-04902-0 : $12.95.
Download or read book The Rise and Fall of English written by Robert Scholes and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2008-10-01 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this lucid book an eminent scholar, teacher, and author takes a critical look at the nature and direction of English studies in America. Robert Scholes offers a thoughtful and witty intervention in current debates about educational and cultural values and goals, showing how English came to occupy its present place in our educational system, diagnosing the educational illness he perceives in today’s English departments, and recommending theoretical and practical changes in the field of English studies. Scholes’s position defies neat labels—it is a deeply conservative expression of the wish to preserve the best in the English tradition of verbal and textual studies, yet it is a radical argument for reconstruction of the discipline of English. The book begins by examining the history of the rapid rise of English at two American universities—Yale and Brown—at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century. Scholes argues that the subsequent fall of English—discernible today in college English departments across the United States—is the result of both cultural shifts and changes within the field of English itself. He calls for a fundamental reorientation of the discipline—away from political or highly theoretical issues, away from a specific canon of texts, and toward a canon of methods, to be used in the process of learning how to situate, compose, and read a text. He offers an eloquent proposal for a discipline based on rhetoric and the teaching of reading and writing over a broad range of literatures, a discipline that includes literariness but is not limited to it.
Download or read book Fresh Grounds in English Literature written by M. K. Sen and published by . This book was released on 1974 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
