Download or read book A Muse and a Maze written by Peter Turchi and published by Trinity University Press. This book was released on 2014-11-11 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With his characteristic talent for finding the connections between writing and the stuff of our lives (most notably in his earlier hit Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer), Peter Turchi ventures into new, and even more surprising, territory. In A Muse and a Maze, Turchi draws out the similarities between writing and puzzle-making and its flip side, puzzle-solving. He teases out how mystery lies at the heart of all storytelling. And he uncovers the magic—the creation of credible illusion—that writers share with the likes of Houdini and master magicians. In Turchi’s associative narrative, we learn about the history of puzzles, their obsessive quality, and that Benjamin Franklin was a devotee of an ancient precursor of sudoku called Magic Squares. Applying this rich backdrop to the requirements of writing, Turchi reveals as much about the human psyche as he does about the literary imagination and the creative process. With the goal of giving writers new ways to think about their work and readers new ways to consider the books they encounter, A Muse and a Maze suggests ways in which every piece of writing is a kind of puzzle. The work argues that literary writing is defined, at least in part, by its embrace of mystery; offers tangrams as a model for the presentation of complex characters; compares a writer’s relationship to his or her narrator to magicians and wizards; offers the maze and the labyrinth as alternatives to the more common notion of the narrative line; and concludes with a discussion of how readers and writers, like puzzle solvers, not only tolerate but find pleasure in difficulty. While always balancing erudition with accessibility, Turchi examines the work of writers as various as A. A. Milne, Dashiell Hammett, Truman Capote, Anton Chekhov, Alison Bechdel, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Antonya Nelson, Vladimir Nabokov, Charles D’Ambrosio, Michael Ondaatje, Alice Munro, Thomas Bernhard, and Mark Twain, elaborating and illuminating ways in which their works expand and deliver on the title’s double entendre, A Muse and a Maze. With 100 images that range from movie stills from Citizen Kane and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid to examples of sudokus, crosswords, and other puzzles; from Norman Rockwell’s famous triple self-portrait to artwork by Charles Richie; and from historical arcana to today’s latest magic, A Muse and a Maze offers prose exposition, images, text quotations, and every available form of wisdom, leading the reader step-by-step through passages from stories and novels to demonstrate, with remarkable clarity, how writers evolve their eventual creations.

Download or read book 10th Muse Maze of the Minotaur written by Darren G. Davis and published by Storm. This book was released on 2016-01-23 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 10th Muse Volume One

Download or read book The Idea of the Labyrinth from Classical Antiquity through the Middle Ages written by Penelope Reed Doob and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2019-03-15 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ancient and medieval labyrinths embody paradox, according to Penelope Reed Doob. Their structure allows a double perspective—the baffling, fragmented prospect confronting the maze-treader within, and the comprehensive vision available to those without. Mazes simultaneously assert order and chaos, artistry and confusion, articulated clarity and bewildering complexity, perfected pattern and hesitant process. In this handsomely illustrated book, Doob reconstructs from a variety of literary and visual sources the idea of the labyrinth from the classical period through the Middle Ages. Doob first examines several complementary traditions of the maze topos, showing how ancient historical and geographical writings generate metaphors in which the labyrinth signifies admirable complexity, while poetic texts tend to suggest that the labyrinth is a sign of moral duplicity. She then describes two common models of the labyrinth and explores their formal implications: the unicursal model, with no false turnings, found almost universally in the visual arts; and the multicursal model, with blind alleys and dead ends, characteristic of literary texts. This paradigmatic clash between the labyrinths of art and of literature becomes a key to the metaphorical potential of the maze, as Doob's examination of a vast array of materials from the classical period through the Middle Ages suggests. She concludes with linked readings of four "labyrinths of words": Virgil's Aeneid, Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy, Dante's Divine Comedy, and Chaucer's House of Fame, each of which plays with and transforms received ideas of the labyrinth as well as reflecting and responding to aspects of the texts that influenced it. Doob not only provides fresh theoretical and historical perspectives on the labyrinth tradition, but also portrays a complex medieval aesthetic that helps us to approach structurally elaborate early works. Readers in such fields as Classical literature, Medieval Studies, Renaissance Studies, comparative literature, literary theory, art history, and intellectual history will welcome this wide-ranging and illuminating book.

Download or read book Masks of the Muse written by Veronica Cummer and published by Pendraig Publishing. This book was released on 2009-02 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Who is the Muse? Why do we need Her? How do we tap into that shining current of inspiration and create something never before seen, something beautiful and terrible, fantastical and infinitely real. The Muse is as vital to our lives today as She was in ancient times. She changes as we change and Her Arts are continually in flux, Arts that we simply cannot live without...or that we wouldn't want to. Among other things, they are tools to make and re-make our world even as we work with Fate to weave the web of life and death, of creation and destruction. Through four faces, four masks of the Muse, this book explores different aspects of inspiration, creativity, and magick. Aphrodite, Cerridwen, Ariadne, and the Lady of the Lake await--each to teach us of the Arts and what we are capable of at our very best. By the poetry, prayer, invocation, and ritual contained within we can come to know the Muse and so know ourselves and the gifts we all have within us that demand recognition and expression. The path of the Muse may not always be an easy or a safe one, but anything worth having is worth paying the price for. Who is the Muse? Who are we? This book is a journey, one that we must dare to take and dare to take hold of what is revealed.. As we must return to the well of memory, the depths of the ocean, and the currents below the earth, there to claim what was ours all along.

Download or read book The Late Hector Kipling written by David Thewlis and published by Pan Macmillan. This book was released on 2011-06-01 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hector Kipling has everything to live for: he is a talented artist with loving parents, a beautiful girlfriend, dependable mates and good health. But when Kirk Church, one of his best friends, and a habitual painter of cutlery, announces that he may have a brain tumour, the prospect of a character-building bereavement, with all the attendant suffering and sympathy, is a little too difficult for Hector to resist. Will it make him a better artist? Will it make him as successful as his friend Lenny Snook, who fills limousines with blood and has just been nominated for the Turner Prize? As events begin to unravel it doesn't take long for Hector's charmed world to fall completely and irreparably apart. From settees to stalkers, con men to corpses, paranoid self-portraits to S&M, The Late Hector Kipling is an irreverent and candid exploration of life, death, art and everything in between. 'Wonderful entertainment . . . A funny and successful satire' Observer Review 'Exquisitely written with a warm heart and a wry wit, this is a stunning debut.' Elle 'David Thewlis has written an extraordinarily good novel, which is not only brilliant in its own right, but stands proudly beside his work as an actor, no mean boast.' Billy Connolly 'I laughed and laughed until I read my own name amongst the carnage of Thewlis's unfortunate characters. This book is a disgrace - it's mean, cruel and refreshingly cynical.' Jake Chapman

Download or read book 10 PRINT CHR 205 5 RND 1 GOTO 10 written by Nick Montfort and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2012-11-23 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A single line of code offers a way to understand the cultural context of computing. This book takes a single line of code—the extremely concise BASIC program for the Commodore 64 inscribed in the title—and uses it as a lens through which to consider the phenomenon of creative computing and the way computer programs exist in culture. The authors of this collaboratively written book treat code not as merely functional but as a text—in the case of 10 PRINT, a text that appeared in many different printed sources—that yields a story about its making, its purpose, its assumptions, and more. They consider randomness and regularity in computing and art, the maze in culture, the popular BASIC programming language, and the highly influential Commodore 64 computer.

Download or read book Maze written by Matt Bialer and published by . This book was released on 2021-06-18 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bialer's poem Maze takes the reader on a circuitous expedition exploring memories, reflections and shifting time and place. Compelling lines and phrases resurface over and again serving as a drumbeat egging the reader deeper into Bialer's journey of love for and loss of his wife. Facts and memories link "bandits and burial grounds' in Tombstone, Arizona to the Siege of Sarajevo, illuminating how painful the mere act of remembering can be. "Memories are like snipers". With the knowledge that life is fleeting, Maze keenly succeeds at reminding the reader of the sacredness of living in the present moment. -LORETTA OLECK, author of PAPER CHAINS In his beautiful and poignant elegy Maze poet Matt Bialer summons loving memories of his late wife Lenora to conjure the strain of Covid and politics, turning angst and sorrow into a song of life. -SEB DOUBINSKY, author of THE INVISIBLE and MISSING SIGNAL

Download or read book The Sister from Below written by Naomi Ruth Lowinsky and published by Fisher King Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Who is She, this Sister from Below? She's certainly not about the ordinary business of life: work, shopping, making dinner. She speaks from other realms. If you'll allow, She'll whisper in your ear, lead your thoughts astray, fill you with strange yearnings, get you hot and bothered, send you off on some wild goose chase of a daydream, eat up hours of your time. She's a siren, a seductress, a shapeshifter . . . Why listen to such a troublemaker? Because She is essential to the creative process: She holds the keys to the doors of our imaginations and deeper life the evolution of Soul.

Download or read book The Hero Journey in Literature written by Evans Lansing Smith and published by University Press of America. This book was released on 1997 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides an overview of the hero journey theme in literature, from antiquity to the present, with a focus on the imagery of the rites of passage in human life (initiation at adolescence, mid-life, and death). This is the only book to focus on the major works of the literary tradition, detailing discussions of the hero journey in major literary texts. Included are chapters on the literature of Antiquity (Sumerian, Egyptian, Biblical, Greek, and Roman), the Middle Ages (with emphasis on the Arthurian Romance), the Renaissance to the Enlightenment (Shakespeare, Milton, Marvell, Pope, Fielding, the Arabian Nights, and Alchemical Illustration), Romanticism and Naturalism (Coleridge, Selected Grimm's Tales, Bront%, Bierce, Whitman, Twain, Hawthorne, E.T.A. Hoffman, Rabindranath Tagore), and Modernism to Contemporary (Joyce, Gilman, Alifa Rifaat, Bellow, Lessing, Pynchon, Eudora Welty).

Download or read book Houseboat on the Styx written by A. F. Moritz and published by Ekstasis Editions. This book was released on 1998 with total page 92 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two lovers find their houseboat stuck in a reedy marsh in Hades. What to do? A work of exhilarating range, Houseboat on the Styx finds in primal human wanderlust the mythological journey of the soul.

Download or read book Maze of Blood written by Marly Youmans and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Conall Weaver, the mundane world and the wonders of the imagination collide and shoot out sparks. Inspired by the life of pulp writer Robert E. Howard, Maze of Blood explores the roots of story and the compulsions and conflicts of the heart in a Southern landscape.

Download or read book The Maze of Banking written by Gary Gorton and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2015 with total page 690 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Financial crises must be studied in the context of history. The Maze of Banking is a collection of academic papers by Gary Gorton---an expert on the financial crisis of 2007-2008---on the history and analysis of banks, banking, and financial crises spanning the past 175 years. These papers provide the framework for understanding how the financial crisis of 2007-2008 developed and what can be done to promote a stabile banking industry and prevent future economic crises.

Download or read book The Pilgrim s Progress written by John Bunyan and published by . This book was released on 1900 with total page 684 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Maze at Windermere written by Gregory Blake Smith and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-01-22 with total page 371 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Named one of the best books of 2018 by The Washington Post, The Seattle Times, and The Advocate “Staggeringly brilliant . . . You’ll start The Maze of Windermere with bewilderment, but you’ll close it in awe.” —The Washington Post “Pitch perfect.” —New York Times Book Review When a drunken party guest challenges him to a late-night tennis match, Sandy Allison finds himself unexpectedly entangled in the monied world of Newport, Rhode Island. A former touring pro a little down on his luck, Sandy has nothing to stake against the vintage motorcycle his opponent wagers. But then Alice DuPont—the young heiress to a Newport mansion called Windermere—offers up her diamond necklace. With this reckless wager begins a dazzling narrative odyssey that braids together four centuries of aspiration and adversity in this renowned seaside society capital. A witty and urbane bachelor of the Gilded Age embarks on a high-risk scheme to marry into a fortune; a young Henry James, soon to make his mark on the world, turns himself to his craft with harrowing social consequences; an aristocratic British officer during the American Revolution carries on a courtship that leads to murder; and, in Newport’s earliest days, a tragically orphaned Quaker girl imagines a way forward for herself and the slave girl she has inherited. Gregory Blake Smith weaves these intersecting worlds into a rich, brilliant tapestry. A deftly layered novel of love, ambition, and duplicity, The Maze at Windermere charts a voyage across the ages into the maze of the human heart.

Download or read book The Ordinances for the Holy Oblation in the Typical Prophecy of Ezekiel s Vision written by William Hewson and published by . This book was released on 1870 with total page 798 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Bunyan The Pilgrim s Progress written by John Bunyan and published by . This book was released on 1879 with total page 586 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Teaching Shakespeare with Purpose written by Ayanna Thompson and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-01-28 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What does it mean to teach Shakespeare with purpose? It means freeing teachers from the notion that teaching Shakespeare means teaching everything, or teaching “Western Civilisation” and universal themes. Instead, this invigorating new book equips teachers to enable student-centred discovery of these complex texts. Because Shakespeare's plays are excellent vehicles for many topics -history, socio-cultural norms and mores, vocabulary, rhetoric, literary tropes and terminology, performance history, performance strategies - it is tempting to teach his plays as though they are good for teaching everything. This lens-free approach, however, often centres the classroom on the teacher as the expert and renders Shakespeare's plays as fixed, determined, and dead. Teaching Shakespeare with Purpose shows teachers how to approach Shakespeare's works as vehicles for collaborative exploration, to develop intentional frames for discovery, and to release the texts from over-determined interpretations. In other words, this book presents how to teach Shakespeare's plays as living, breathing, and evolving texts.