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Playwriting: The First Workshop
by Kathleen E. GeorgeThis is a practical introduction to the basic principles, structures and processes of writing plays. Beginning with simple concepts and exercises, this book gradually builds in complexity, until the reader is writing his or her one act play. Writing plays is unique because feedback, alternative approaches and discussion spur creativity. This book encourages this and thereby encourages the reader to write. The reader will discover how stage plays differ from screenplays, novels and television. The book also describes how autobiographical materials are transformed into playable parts, and how characters are moved by action. `Playwriting: The first workshop' gives readers the necessary background to begin working on their first play. Captures the workshop experience through writing, analyzing and testing plays. Contains synopsis and analysis of several well-known plays, such as `The Dining Room'. Each chapter provides study questions and exercises that reinforce important concepts.
Playwriting: A Practical Guide
by Noël GreigPlaywriting offers a practical guide to the creation of text for live performance. It contains a wealth of exercises for amateur and professional playwrights. Usable in a range of contexts, the book works as: a step-by-step guide to the creation of an individual play a handy resource for a teacher or workshop leader a stimulus for the group-devised play. The result of Noël Greig's thirty years' experience as a playwright, actor, director and teacher, Playwriting is the ideal handbook for anyone who engages with playwriting and is ultimately concerned with creating a story and bringing it to life on the stage.
Playwriting For Dummies
by Angelo ParraThe easy way to craft, polish, and get your play on stage Getting a play written and produced is a daunting process. From crystallizing story ideas, formatting the script, understanding the roles of the director stagecraft people, to marketing and financing your project, and incorporating professional insights on writing, there are plenty of ins and outs that every aspiring playwright needs to know. But where can you turn for guidance? Playwriting For Dummies helps any writer at any stage of the process hone their craft and create the most dramatic and effective pieces. Guides you through every process of playwriting?from soliloquies, church skits, and one act plays to big Broadway musicals Advice on moving your script to the public stage Guidance on navigating loopholes If you're an aspiring playwright looking to begin the process, or have already penned a masterpiece and need trusted advice to bring it into the spotlight, Playwriting For Dummies has you covered.
Playwriting in Europe: Mapping Ecosystems and Practices with Fabulamundi (Routledge Advances in Theatre & Performance Studies)
by Margherita LaeraThis book maps contemporary playwriting and theatre translation practices and ecologies in the European continent. Whether you are a scholar researching contemporary drama and translation, or a theatre practitioner looking for ways to navigate theatrical conventions in other countries, this book is for you. Through questionnaires and one-to-one interviews with key stakeholders, Dr Laera collects qualitative and quantitative data about how each national theatre culture supports living dramatists, what conventions drive the production and translation (or lack thereof) of contemporary plays, and what perceptions are held by gatekeepers, theatre-makers and other cultural operators about the theatre system in which they work. Through country-by-country descriptions and analyses; interviews with playwrights, translators, directors and gatekeepers; a list of key facts and best practices; and a rigorous assessment of its methodologies, this volume is indispensable for those interested in contemporary European theatre practice.
Playwriting In Process: Thinking And Working Theatrically
by Michael WrightPlaywriting in Process: Thinking and Working Theatrically is written to encourage new and experienced playwrights to build techniques for a greater range of creative expression in writing for the stage. The book uses exercises to guide playwrights towards thinking and working theatrically. The exercises help playwrights start or revise their work by providing alternate ways of thinking about their subject and their processes. New to the second edition: new exercises, a general updating such as the use of the internet, a new chapter for teachers and playwriting group leaders on using this book in class, and end-of-chapter "Call Out" exercises. Useful for playwrights at all levels.
Playwriting Playgoers in Shakespeare's Theater
by Matteo A. PangalloAmong the dramatists who wrote for the professional playhouses of early modern London was a small group of writers who were neither members of the commercial theater industry writing to make a living nor aristocratic amateurs dipping their toes in theatrical waters for social or political prestige. Instead, they were largely working- and middle-class amateurs who had learned most of what they knew about drama from being members of the audience.Using a range of familiar and lesser-known print and manuscript plays, as well as literary accounts and documentary evidence, Playwriting Playgoers in Shakespeare's Theater shows how these playgoers wrote and revised to address what they assumed to be the needs of actors, readers, and the Master of the Revels; how they understood playhouse materials and practices; and how they crafted poetry for theatrical effects. The book also situates them in the context of the period's concepts of, and attitudes toward, playgoers' participation in the activity of playmaking.Plays by playgoers such as the rogue East India Company clerk Walter Mountfort or the highwayman John Clavell invite us into the creative imaginations of spectators, revealing what certain audience members wanted to see and how they thought actors might stage it. By reading Shakespeare's theater through these playgoers' works, Matteo Pangallo contributes a new category of evidence to our understanding of the relationships between the early modern stage, its plays, and its audiences. More broadly, he shows how the rise of England's first commercialized culture industry also gave rise to the first generation of participatory consumers and their attempts to engage with mainstream culture by writing early modern "fan fiction."
Playwriting with Purpose: A Guide and Workbook for New Playwrights
by Jacqueline GoldfingerPlaywriting with Purpose: A Guide and Workbook for New Playwrights provides a holistic approach to playwriting from an award-winning playwright and instructor. This book incorporates craft lessons by contemporary playwrights and provides concrete guidance for new and emerging playwrights. The author takes readers through the entire creative process, from creating characters and writing dialogue and silent moments to analyzing elements of well-made plays and creating an atmospheric environment. Each chapter is followed by writing prompts and pro tips that address unique facets of the conversation about the art and craft of playwriting. The book also includes information on the business of playwriting and a recommended reading list of published classic and contemporary plays, providing all the tools to successfully transform an idea into a script, and a script into a performance. Playwriting with Purpose gives writers and students of playwriting hands-on lessons, artistic concepts, and business savvy to succeed in today’s theater industry.
La plaza y la torre: Redes y poder: de los masones a Facebook
by Niall FergusonUna historia de las redes organizacionales que han cambiado el mundo y una invitación a la reflexión escéptica sobre el papel que tienen en nuestra sociedad. La mayor parte de la historia es jerárquica: tiene que ver con papas, presidentes o primeros ministros. Pero, ¿y si fuera así por el simple hecho de que han sido ellos los que han creado los archivos históricos? ¿Y si estuviéramos omitiendo y relegando la influencia de poderosas pero menos visibles redes de organización? El siglo XXI ha sido proclamado como la Era de la Red, pero en este libro Niall Ferguson nos recuerda que las redes sociales no tienen nada de novedoso. Desde el tiempo de las imprentas y los predicadores que llevaron a cabo la Reforma hasta los masones que lideraron la Revolución estadunidense, fueron las redes organizacionales quienes interrumpieron el orden establecido. Así pues, lejos de ser una novedad, nuestra era es más bien la Segunda Era de la Red, con el ordenador ocupando el papel central que en su momento ocupó el papel impreso. Quienes esperan una utopía de «internautas» interconectados pueden, por lo tanto, sentirse decepcionados. Las redes son propensas a la agrupación, los contagios, pero ante todo a las interrupciones y los conflictos del pasado encuentran paralelismos desconcertantes hoy, en el tiempo de Facebook, el Estado Islámico y el mundo trumpiano. Este maravilloso libro revela la historia oculta de las redes organizacionales que han cambiado el rumbo de la historia y se presenta a la vez como un antídoto hacia las teorías de la conspiración y un desafío a la historiografía tradicional que nunca han prestado demasiada atención a las redes informales de influencia. Reseñas:«Cautivante y convincente.»The New York Times «Niall Ferguson ha escrito nuevamente un brillante libro... En 400 páginas habrás reabastecido tu mente. Hazlo.»The Wall Street Journal «Ferguson nos recuerda que la red social no surgió completa de la mente de Mark Zuckerberg; más bien, es una fuerza persistente en los asuntos humanos que ofrece una lente novedosa sobre el pasado y el desconcertante presente.»San Francisco Chronicle
The Plea: His client is innocent. His wife is guilty. (Eddie Flynn Series)
by Steve CavanaghFraud. Blackmail. Murder. It's all in a day's work for Eddie Flynn.For years, major New York law firm Harland & Sinton has operated a massive global fraud. The FBI are on to them, but they need witnesses to secure their case. When a major client of the firm, David Child, is arrested for murder, the FBI ask con-artist-turned-lawyer Eddie Flynn to secure Child as his client and force him to testify against the firm.Eddie's not a man to be forced into representing a guilty client, but the FBI have incriminating files on Eddie's wife, Christine, and if Eddie won't play ball, she'll pay the price.When Eddie meets David Child he knows Child is innocent, despite the overwhelming evidence against him. With the FBI putting pressure on him to secure the plea, Eddie must find a way to prove Child's innocence while keeping his wife out of danger - not just from the FBI, but from the firm itself.(p) 2016 Isis Publishing Ltd
The Plea: His client is innocent. His wife is guilty. (Eddie Flynn Series)
by Steve CavanaghYour client is innocent. Your wife is guilty.Who would you fight for?*'Quite simply, THE PLEA is one of the most purely entertaining books you'll read this year' John Connolly'A gripping thriller' Ian Rankin*When David Child, a major client of a corrupt New York law firm, is arrested for murder, the FBI ask con artist-turned-lawyer Eddie Flynn to persuade him to testify against the firm.Eddie is not someone who is easily coerced, but when the FBI reveal that they have incriminating files on his wife, he knows he has no choice.But Eddie is convinced the man is innocent, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. With the FBI putting pressure on him to secure the deal, Eddie must find a way to prove his client's innocence.But the stakes are high - his wife is in danger. And not just from the FBI . . .*Praise for race-against-time legal thriller writer, Steve Cavanagh:'A fantastic thriller writer' Mark Billingham'Cavanagh stands head and shoulders above the competition, with his skilfully plotted, action-packed and big-hearted Eddie Flynn novels . . . highly intelligent, twist-laden and absolutely unputdownable' Eva Dolan, author of the critically acclaimed Tell No Tales'What a thriller! Breathlessly brilliant and fiendishly clever' Miranda Dickinson'A cleverly constructed legal thriller combined with a classic locked-room mystery. Eddie Flynn is fast becoming one of my favourite fictional heroes and Cavanagh one of my favourite thriller writers.' S.J.I. Holliday, author of Black Wood'Raymond Chandler could have created Eddie Flynn. THE PLEA is Phillip Marlowe and Michael Connolly's Mickey Haller combined, with a bit of Jim Thompson's THE GRIFTERS thrown in. A superb read with a main character destined to be one of the most talked about in crime fiction.' Howard Linskey, author of The Search*If you like John Grisham, Lee Child and Michael Connelly, you will LOVE the gripping and twisty Eddie Flynn series:1. The Defence2. The Plea3. The Liar4. Thirteen* Each Eddie Flynn thriller can be read as a standalone or in series order *
The Plea: His client is innocent. His wife is guilty. (Eddie Flynn Series)
by Steve CavanaghYour client is innocent. Your wife is guilty.Who would you fight for?*'Quite simply, THE PLEA is one of the most purely entertaining books you'll read this year' John Connolly'A gripping thriller' Ian Rankin*When David Child, a major client of a corrupt New York law firm, is arrested for murder, the FBI ask con artist-turned-lawyer Eddie Flynn to persuade him to testify against the firm.Eddie is not someone who is easily coerced, but when the FBI reveal that they have incriminating files on his wife, he knows he has no choice.But Eddie is convinced the man is innocent, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. With the FBI putting pressure on him to secure the deal, Eddie must find a way to prove his client's innocence.But the stakes are high - his wife is in danger. And not just from the FBI . . .*Praise for race-against-time legal thriller writer, Steve Cavanagh:'A fantastic thriller writer' Mark Billingham'Cavanagh stands head and shoulders above the competition, with his skilfully plotted, action-packed and big-hearted Eddie Flynn novels . . . highly intelligent, twist-laden and absolutely unputdownable' Eva Dolan, author of the critically acclaimed Tell No Tales'What a thriller! Breathlessly brilliant and fiendishly clever' Miranda Dickinson'A cleverly constructed legal thriller combined with a classic locked-room mystery. Eddie Flynn is fast becoming one of my favourite fictional heroes and Cavanagh one of my favourite thriller writers.' S.J.I. Holliday, author of Black Wood'Raymond Chandler could have created Eddie Flynn. THE PLEA is Phillip Marlowe and Michael Connolly's Mickey Haller combined, with a bit of Jim Thompson's THE GRIFTERS thrown in. A superb read with a main character destined to be one of the most talked about in crime fiction.' Howard Linskey, author of The Search*If you like John Grisham, Lee Child and Michael Connelly, you will LOVE the gripping and twisty Eddie Flynn series:1. The Defence2. The Plea3. The Liar4. Thirteen* Each Eddie Flynn thriller can be read as a standalone or in series order *
A Plea For Eros
by Siri HustvedtA stunning collection of essays by the author of WHAT I LOVED, in which she addresses many of the themes explored in her novels - identity, sexual attraction, relationships, family, mental illness, the power of the imagination, a sense of belonging and mortality. In three cases, she focuses on the novels of other writers - Dickens, James and Fitzgerald. She also refers to her own novels, affording an unusual insight into their creation. Whatever her topic, her approach is unaffected, intimate and conversational, inviting us both to share her thoughts and reflect on our own views and ideas.
The Pleasant Nights - Volume 1
by Don BeecherRenowned today for his contribution to the rise of the modern European fairy tale, Giovan Francesco Straparola (c. 1480-c. 1557) is particularly known for his dazzling anthology The Pleasant Nights. Originally published in Venice in 1550 and 1553, this collection features seventy-three folk stories, fables, jests, and pseudo-histories, including nine tales we might now designate for 'mature readers' and seventeen proto-fairy tales. Nearly all of these stories, including classics such as 'Puss in Boots,' made their first ever appearance in this collection; together, the tales comprise one of the most varied and engaging Renaissance miscellanies ever produced. Its appeal sustained it through twenty-six editions in the first sixty years.This full critical edition of The Pleasant Nights presents these stories in English for the first time in over a century. The text takes its inspiration from the celebrated Waters translation, which is entirely revised here to render it both more faithful to the original and more sparkishly idiomatic than ever before. The stories are accompanied by a rich sampling of illustrations, including originals from nineteenth-century English and French versions of the text.As a comprehensive critical and historical edition, these volumes contain far more information on the stories than can be found in any existing studies, literary histories, or Italian editions of the work. Donald Beecher provides a lengthy introduction discussing Straparola as an author, the nature of fairy tales and their passage through oral culture, and how this phenomenon provides a new reservoir of stories for literary adaptation. Moreover, the stories all feature extensive commentaries analysing not only their themes but also their fascinating provenances, drawing on thousands of analogue tales going back to ancient Sanskrit, Persian, and Arabic stories.Immensely entertaining and readable, The Pleasant Nights will appeal to anyone interested in fairy tales, ancient stories, and folk creations. Such readers will also enjoy Beecher's academically solid and erudite commentaries, which unfold in a manner as light and amusing as the stories themselves.
The Pleasant Nights - Volume 2
by Don BeecherRenowned today for his contribution to the rise of the modern European fairy tale, Giovan Francesco Straparola (c. 1480-c. 1557) is particularly known for his dazzling anthology The Pleasant Nights. Originally published in Venice in 1550 and 1553, this collection features seventy-three folk stories, fables, jests, and pseudo-histories, including nine tales we might now designate for 'mature readers' and seventeen proto-fairy tales. Nearly all of these stories, including classics such as 'Puss in Boots,' made their first ever appearance in this collection; together, the tales comprise one of the most varied and engaging Renaissance miscellanies ever produced. Its appeal sustained it through twenty-six editions in the first sixty years.This full critical edition of The Pleasant Nights presents these stories in English for the first time in over a century. The text takes its inspiration from the celebrated Waters translation, which is entirely revised here to render it both more faithful to the original and more sparkishly idiomatic than ever before. The stories are accompanied by a rich sampling of illustrations, including originals from nineteenth-century English and French versions of the text.As a comprehensive critical and historical edition, these volumes contain far more information on the stories than can be found in any existing studies, literary histories, or Italian editions of the work. Donald Beecher provides a lengthy introduction discussing Straparola as an author, the nature of fairy tales and their passage through oral culture, and how this phenomenon provides a new reservoir of stories for literary adaptation. Moreover, the stories all feature extensive commentaries analysing not only their themes but also their fascinating provenances, drawing on thousands of analogue tales going back to ancient Sanskrit, Persian, and Arabic stories.Immensely entertaining and readable, The Pleasant Nights will appeal to anyone interested in fairy tales, ancient stories, and folk creations. Such readers will also enjoy Beecher's academically solid and erudite commentaries, which unfold in a manner as light and amusing as the stories themselves.
Please Miss: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Penis
by Grace Lavery&“The queer memoir you&’ve been waiting for&”—Carmen Maria MachadoGrace Lavery is a reformed druggie, an unreformed omnisexual chaos Muppet, and 100 percent, all-natural, synthetic female hormone monster. As soon as she solves her &“penis problem,&” she begins receiving anonymous letters, seemingly sent by a cult of sinister clowns, and sets out on a magical mystery tour to find the source of these surreal missives. Misadventures abound: Grace performs in a David Lynch remake of Sunset Boulevard and is reprogrammed as a sixties femmebot; she writes a Juggalo Ghostbusters prequel and a socialist manifesto disguised as a porn parody of a quiz show. Or is it vice versa? As Grace fumbles toward a new trans identity, she tries on dozens of different voices, creating a coat of many colors.With more dick jokes than a transsexual should be able to pull off, Please Miss gives us what we came for, then slaps us in the face and orders us to come again.
Pleasurable Instruction: Form and Convention in Eighteenth-Century Travel Literature
by Charles L BattenThis title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1978.
Pleasure and Efficacy: Of Pen Names, Cover Versions, and Other Trans Techniques
by Grace Elisabeth LaveryA leading trans scholar and activist explores cultural representations of gender transition in the modern periodIn Pleasure and Efficacy, Grace Lavery investigates gender transition as it has been experienced and represented in the modern period. Considering examples that range from the novels of George Eliot to the psychoanalytic practice of Sigmund Freud to marriage manuals by Marie Stopes, Lavery explores the skepticism found in such works about whether it is truly possible to change one’s sex. This ambivalence, she argues, has contributed to both antitrans oppression and the civil rights claims with which trans people have confronted it. Lavery examines what she terms “trans pragmatism”—the ways that trans people resist medicalization and pathologization to achieve pleasure and freedom. Trans pragmatism, she writes, affirms that transition works, that it is possible, and that it happens.With Eliot and Freud as the guiding geniuses of the book, Lavery covers a vast range of modern culture—poetry, prose, criticism, philosophy, fiction, cinema, pop music, pornography, and memes. Since transition takes people out of one genre and deposits them in another, she suggests, it should be no surprise that a cultural history of gender transition will also provide, by accident, a history of genre transition. Considering the concept of technique and its associations with feminine craftiness, as opposed to masculine freedom, Lavery argues that techniques of giving and receiving pleasure are essential to the possibility of trans feminist thriving—even as they are suppressed by patriarchal and antitrans feminist philosophies. Contesting claims for the impossibility of transition, she offers a counterhistory of tricks and techniques, passed on by women to women, that comprises a body of knowledge written in the margins of history.
Pleasure Dome: New and Collected Poems (Wesleyan Poetry Series)
by Yusef KomunyakaaYusef Komunyakaa has become one of America's most compelling poets. Pleasure Dome gathers over twenty-five years of work, including early uncollected poems and a rich selection of new poems. Best known for Neon Vernacular, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1994, and for Dien Cai Dau, a collection of poems chronicling his experiences as a journalist in Vietnam, Yusef Komunyakaa has become one of America's most compelling poets. Pleasure Dome gathers the poems in these two distinguished books and five others—over two and a half decades of Komunyakaa's work. In addition, Pleasure Dome includes 25 early, uncollected poems and a rich selection of 18 new poems.
Pleasure in Profit: Popular Prose in Seventeenth-Century Japan
by Laura MorettiIn the seventeenth century, Japanese popular prose flourished as waves of newly literate readers gained access to the printed word. Commercial publishers released vast numbers of titles in response to readers’ hunger for books that promised them potent knowledge. However, traditional literary histories of this period position the writings of Ihara Saikaku at center stage, largely neglecting the breadth of popular prose.In the first comprehensive study of the birth of Japanese commercial publishing, Laura Moretti investigates the vibrant world of vernacular popular literature. She marshals new data on the magnitude of the seventeenth-century publishing business and highlights the diversity and porosity of its publishing genres. Moretti explores how booksellers sparked interest among readers across the spectrum of literacies and demonstrates how they tantalized consumers with vital ethical, religious, societal, and interpersonal knowledge. She recasts books as tools for knowledge making, arguing that popular prose engaged its audience cognitively as well as aesthetically and emotionally to satisfy a burgeoning curiosity about the world. Crucially, Moretti shows, readers experienced entertainment within the didactic, finding pleasure in the profit gained from acquiring knowledge by interacting with transformative literature. Drawing on a rich variety of archival materials to present a vivid portrait of seventeenth-century Japanese publishing, Pleasure in Profit also speaks to broader conversations about the category of the literary by offering a new view of popular prose that celebrates plurality.
The Pleasure of Miss Pym
by Charles BurkhartWhen British writers Philip Larkin and Lord David Cecil named Barbara Pym one of the twentieth century's most underrated authors in a 1977 Times Literary Supplement survey, they started a Barbara Pym revival that continued unabated in Great Britain and the United States. Barbara Pym's delightful tales of jumble sales and parish meetings, her ironic insights into the relationships between women and men, have won a devoted following. Indeed she is often compared to that most accomplished author of comedies of manners, Jane Austen. The Pleasure of Miss Pym is a critical study of Pym as comic writer and of the links between her life and autobiographical writings and her fiction, written with a liveliness of style and tone that matches Pym's own. Not only does Charles Burkhart provide perceptive discussions of Pym's life and novels, he also illuminates the worldview represented in her work, the unique nature of her comedy, her religion, her place within the history of the novel, and her penetrating insights into male-female relationships. All of Pym's work, including the 1986 posthumous publication, An Academic Question, is intelligently surveyed here. Scholars of contemporary English literature will derive both instruction and pleasure from this elegantly written study, as will Pym's admiring readers, for whom it is also intended. When British writers Philip Larkin and Lord David Cecil named Barbara Pym one of the twentieth century's most underrated authors in a 1977 Times Literary Supplement survey, they started a Barbara Pym revival that continued unabated in Great Britain and the United States. Barbara Pym's delightful tales of jumble sales and parish meetings, her ironic insights into the relationships between women and men, have won a devoted following. Indeed she is often compared to that most accomplished author of comedies of manners, Jane Austen. The Pleasure of Miss Pym is a critical study of Pym as comic writer and of the links between her life and autobiographical writings and her fiction, written with a liveliness of style and tone that matches Pym's own. Not only does Charles Burkhart provide perceptive discussions of Pym's life and novels, he also illuminates the worldview represented in her work, the unique nature of her comedy, her religion, her place within the history of the novel, and her penetrating insights into male-female relationships. All of Pym's work, including the 1986 posthumous publication, An Academic Question, is intelligently surveyed here. Scholars of contemporary English literature will derive both instruction and pleasure from this elegantly written study, as will Pym's admiring readers, for whom it is also intended.
The Pleasure Of The Text
by Roland Barthes Richard MillerWhat is it that we do when we enjoy a text? What is the pleasure of reading? The French critic and theorist Roland Barthes's answers to these questions constitute "perhaps for the first time in the history of criticism . . . not only a poetics of reading . . . but a much more difficult achievement, an erotics of reading . . . . Like filings which gather to form a figure in a magnetic field, the parts and pieces here do come together, determined to affirm the pleasure we must take in our reading as against the indifference of (mere) knowledge. " --Richard Howard
The Pleasures of Death: Kurt Cobain’s Masochistic and Melancholic Persona
by Arthur Flannigan Saint-AubinThe year 2019 marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of the death of Kurt Cobain, an artist whose music, words, and images continue to move millions of fans worldwide. As the first academic study that provides a literary analysis of Cobain’s creative writings, Arthur Flannigan Saint-Aubin’s The Pleasures of Death: Kurt Cobain’s Masochistic and Melancholic Persona approaches the journals and songs crafted by Nirvana’s iconic front man from the perspective of cultural theory and psychoanalytic aesthetics.Drawing on critiques and reformulations of psychoanalytic theory by feminist, queer, and antiracist scholars, Saint-Aubin considers the literary means by which Cobain creates the persona of a young, white, heterosexual man who expresses masochistic and melancholic behaviors. On the one hand, this individual welcomes pain and humiliation as atonement for unpardonable sins; on the other, he experiences a profound sense of loss and grief, seeking death as the ultimate act of pleasure. The first-person narrators and characters that populate Cobain’s texts underscore the political and aesthetic repercussions of his art. Cobain’s distinctive version of grunge, understood as a subculture, a literary genre, and a cultural practice, represents a specific performance of race and gender, one that facilitates an understanding of the self as part of a larger social order. Saint-Aubin approaches Cobain’s writings independently of the artist’s biography, positioning these texts within the tradition of postmodern representations of masculinity in twentieth-century American fiction, while also suggesting connections to European Romantic traditions from the nineteenth century that postulate a relation between melancholy (or depression) and creativity. In turn, through Saint-Aubin’s elegant analysis, Cobain’s creative writings illuminate contradictions and inconsistencies within psychoanalytic theory itself concerning the intersection of masculinity, masochism, melancholy, and the death drive.By foregrounding Cobain’s ability to challenge coextensive links between gender, sexuality, and race, The Pleasures of Death reveals how the cultural politics and aesthetics of this tragic icon’s works align with feminist strategies, invite queer readings, and perform antiracist critiques of American culture.
The Pleasures of Memory: Learning to Read with Charles Dickens
by Sarah WinterWhat are the sources of the commonly held presumption that reading literature should make people more just, humane, and sophisticated? Rendering literary history responsive to the cultural histories of reading, publishing, and education, The Pleasures of Memory illuminates the ways in which Dickens’s serial fiction shaped not only the popular practice of reading for pleasure and instruction but also the school subject we now know as “English.”Winter shows how Dickens’s serial fiction instigated specific reading practices by reworking the conventions of religious didactic tracts from which most Victorians learned to read. Incorporating an influential associationist psychology of learning founded on the cumulative functioning of memory, Dickens’s serial novels consistently led readers to reflect on their reading as a form of shared experience.Dickens’s celebrity authorship, Winter argues, represented both a successful marketing program for popular fiction and a cultural politics addressed to a politically unaffiliated, social-activist Victorian readership. As late-nineteenth century educational reforms consolidated British and American readers into “mass” populations served by state school systems, Dickens’s beloved novels came to embody the socially inclusive and humanizing goals of democratic education.
The Pleasures of Metamorphosis: Japanese and English Fairy Tale Transformations of "The Little Mermaid" (Series in Fairy-Tale Studies)
by Lucy FraserLucy Fraser’s The Pleasures of Metamorphosis: Japanese and English Fairy-Tale Transformations of “The Little Mermaid” explores Japanese and English transformations of Hans Christian Andersen’s 1837 Danish fairy tale “The Little Mermaid” by focusing on pleasure as a means to analyze the huge variety of texts that transform a canonical fairy tale such as Andersen’s. Fraser examines over twenty Japanese and English transformations, including literary texts, illustrated books, films, and television series. This monograph also draws upon criticism in both Japanese and English, meeting a need in Western fairy-tale studies for more culturally diverse perspectives. Fraser provides a model for critical cross-cultural fairy tale analysis in her examination of the journey of a single fairy tale across two languages. The book begins with the various approaches to reading and writing fairy tales, with a history of “The Little Mermaid” in Japanese and English culture. Disney’s The Little Mermaid and Studio Ghibli’s Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea are discussed as examples that simulate pleasurable physical experiences through animation’s tools of music and voice, and visual effects of movement and metamorphosis. Fraser then explores the literary effects of the fairy tale by male authors, such as Oscar Wilde, Tanizaki Jun’ichiro, and Abe Kobo, who invoke familiar fairy-tale conventions and delineate some of the pleasures of what can be painful enchantment with a mermaid or with the fairy tale itself. The author examines the portrayals of the mermaid in three short stories by Matsumoto Yuko, Kurahashi Yumiko, and Ogawa Yoko, engaging with familiar fairy tales, reference to fairy-tale research, and reflections on the immersive experience of reading. Women characters and authors are also hyperaware of the possible meanings of Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid” and of the fairy tale itself, furthering the discussion with Nonaka Hiiragi’s novel Ningyo-hime no kutsu, and D[di?]’s novel Sento no ningyo-hime to majo no mori, as well as an episode of the science fiction television series Dark Angel. Fraser concludes that the “pleasure” framework is useful for a cross-cultural study of creative engagements with and transformations of a particular fairy tale. Few studies have examined Japanese fairy-tale transformations to the extent that Fraser has, presenting fascinating information that will intrigue fairy-tale scholars and those wanting to learn more about the representation of pleasure behind the imaginative and fantastical.
The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction
by Alan JacobsIn 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.